. When her name was mentioned
among the ladies and gentlemen, the strangest stories were told, and
everybody gave the most contradictory and at the same time prodigious
information. She had made a conquest of the viceroy; she was reigning,
in the recesses of a palace, over two hundred slaves whose heads she now
and then cut off for the sake of a little amusement. No, not at all! She
had ruined herself with a great big nigger! A filthy passion this, which
had left her wallowing without a chemise to her back in the crapulous
debauchery of Cairo. A fortnight later much astonishment was produced
when someone swore to having met her in Russia. A legend began to
be formed: she was the mistress of a prince, and her diamonds were
mentioned. All the women were soon acquainted with them from the current
descriptions, but nobody could cite the precise source of all this
information. There were finger rings, earrings, bracelets, a REVIERE of
phenomenal width, a queenly diadem surmounted by a central brilliant the
size of one's thumb. In the retirement of those faraway countries she
began to gleam forth as mysteriously as a gem-laden idol. People now
mentioned her without laughing, for they were full of meditative respect
for this fortune acquired among the barbarians.

One evening in July toward eight o'clock, Lucy, while getting out of her
carriage in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, noticed Caroline
Hequet, who had come out on foot to order something at a neighboring
tradesman's. Lucy called her and at once burst out with:

"Have you dined? Are you disengaged? Oh, then come with me, my dear.
Nana's back."

The other got in at once, and Lucy continued:

"And you know, my dear, she may be dead while we're gossiping."

"Dead! What an idea!" cried Caroline in stupefaction. "And where is she?
And what's it of?"

"At the Grand Hotel, of smallpox. Oh, it's a long story!"

Lucy had bidden her coachman drive fast, and while the horses trotted
rapidly along the Rue Royale and the boulevards, she told what had
happened to Nana in jerky, breathless sentences.

"You can't imagine it. Nana plumps down out of Russia. I don't know
why--some dispute with her prince. She leaves her traps at the station;
she lands at her aunt's--you remember the old thing. Well, and then she
finds her baby dying of smallpox. The baby dies next day, and she has a
row with the aunt about some money she ought to have sent, of which the
other one has never se