e ordure of the slums, bringing with it the leaven
of social rottenness, had poisoned all these men by merely alighting on
them. It was well done--it was just. She had avenged the beggars and
the wastrels from whose caste she issued. And while, metaphorically
speaking, her sex rose in a halo of glory and beamed over prostrate
victims like a mounting sun shining brightly over a field of carnage,
the actual woman remained as unconscious as a splendid animal, and in
her ignorance of her mission was the good-natured courtesan to the last.
She was still big; she was still plump; her health was excellent, her
spirits capital. But this went for nothing now, for her house struck her
as ridiculous. It was too small; it was full of furniture which got in
her way. It was a wretched business, and the long and the short of
the matter was she would have to make a fresh start. In fact, she was
meditating something much better, and so she went off to kiss Satin for
the last time. She was in all her finery and looked clean and solid and
as brand new as if she had never seen service before.

CHAPTER XIV

Nana suddenly disappeared. It was a fresh plunge, an escapade, a flight
into barbarous regions. Before her departure she had treated herself
to a new sensation: she had held a sale and had made a clean sweep of
everything--house, furniture, jewelry, nay, even dresses and linen.
Prices were cited--the five days' sale produced more than six hundred
thousand francs. For the last time Paris had seen her in a fairy piece.
It was called Melusine, and it played at the Theatre de la Gaite, which
the penniless Bordenave had taken out of sheer audacity. Here she again
found herself in company with Prulliere and Fontan. Her part was simply
spectacular, but it was the great attraction of the piece, consisting,
as it did, of three POSES PLASTIQUES, each of which represented the same
dumb and puissant fairy. Then one fine morning amid his grand success,
when Bordenave, who was mad after advertisement, kept firing the
Parisian imagination with colossal posters, it became known that she
must have started for Cairo the previous day. She had simply had a few
words with her manager. Something had been said which did not please
her; the whole thing was the caprice of a woman who is too rich to let
herself be annoyed. Besides, she had indulged an old infatuation, for
she had long meditated visiting the Turks.

Months passed--she began to be forgotten