he could not in the
least understand these stupid feminine devotions. But Fauchery was
crossing the boulevard, and he, too, came up anxiously and asked for
news. The two men egged each other on. They addressed one another
familiarly in these days.

"Always the same business, my sonny," declared Mignon. "You ought to go
upstairs; you would force her to follow you."

"Come now, you're kind, you are!" said the journalist. "Why don't you go
upstairs yourself?"

Then as Lucy began asking for Nana's number, they besought her to make
Rose come down; otherwise they would end by getting angry.

Nevertheless, Lucy and Caroline did not go up at once. They had caught
sight of Fontan strolling about with his hands in his pockets and
greatly amused by the quaint expressions of the mob. When he became
aware that Nana was lying ill upstairs he affected sentiment and
remarked:

"The poor girl! I'll go and shake her by the hand. What's the matter
with her, eh?"

"Smallpox," replied Mignon.

The actor had already taken a step or two in the direction of the court,
but he came back and simply murmured with a shiver:

"Oh, damn it!"

The smallpox was no joke. Fontan had been near having it when he was
five years old, while Mignon gave them an account of one of his nieces
who had died of it. As to Fauchery, he could speak of it from personal
experience, for he still bore marks of it in the shape of three little
lumps at the base of his nose, which he showed them. And when Mignon
again egged him on to the ascent, on the pretext that you never had it
twice, he violently combated this theory and with infinite abuse of the
doctors instanced various cases. But Lucy and Caroline interrupted them,
for the growing multitude filled them with astonishment.

"Just look! Just look what a lot of people!" The night was deepening,
and in the distance the gas lamps were being lit one by one. Meanwhile
interested spectators became visible at windows, while under the
trees the human flood grew every minute more dense, till it ran in one
enormous stream from the Madeleine to the Bastille. Carriages rolled
slowly along. A roaring sound went up from this compact and as yet
inarticulate mass. Each member of it had come out, impelled by the
desire to form a crowd, and was now trampling along, steeping himself
in the pervading fever. But a great movement caused the mob to flow
asunder. Among the jostling, scattering groups a band of men in
workmen's ca