All the house looked round.  It was the cherub, the truant from the boarding-school, who sat with his fine eyes very wide open and his fair face glowing very hotly at sight of Nana.  When he saw everybody turning toward him he grew extremely red at the thought of having thus unconsciously spoken aloud.  Daguenet, his neighbor, smilingly examined him; the public laughed, as though disarmed and no longer anxious to hiss; while the young gentlemen in white gloves, fascinated in their turn by Nana’s gracious contours, lolled back in their seats and applauded.

“That’s it!  Well done!  Bravo!”

Nana, in the meantime, seeing the house laughing, began to laugh herself.  The gaiety of all redoubled itself.  She was an amusing creature, all the same, was that fine girl!  Her laughter made a love of a little dimple appear in her chin.  She stood there waiting, not bored in the least, familiar with her audience, falling into step with them at once, as though she herself were admitting with a wink that she had not two farthings’ worth of talent but that it did not matter at all, that, in fact, she had other good points.  And then after having made a sign to the conductor which plainly signified, “Go ahead, old boy!” she began her second verse: 

“’Tis Venus who at midnight passes—­”

Still the same acidulated voice, only that now it tickled the public in the right quarter so deftly that momentarily it caused them to give a little shiver of pleasure.  Nana still smiled her smile:  it lit up her little red mouth and shone in her great eyes, which were of the clearest blue.  When she came to certain rather lively verses a delicate sense of enjoyment made her tilt her nose, the rosy nostrils of which lifted and fell, while a bright flush suffused her cheeks.  She still swung herself up and down, for she only knew how to do that.  And the trick was no longer voted ugly; on the contrary, the men raised their opera glasses.  When she came to the end of a verse her voice completely failed her, and she was well aware that she never would get through with it.  Thereupon, rather than fret herself, she kicked up her leg, which forthwith was roundly outlined under her diaphanous tunic, bent sharply backward, so that her bosom was thrown upward and forward, and stretched her arms out.  Applause burst forth on all sides.  In the twinkling of an eye she had turned on her heel and was going up the stage, presenting the nape of her neck to the spectators’ gaze, a neck where the red-gold hair showed like some animal’s fell.  Then the plaudits became frantic.

The close of the act was not so exciting.  Vulcan wanted to slap Venus.  The gods held a consultation and decided to go and hold an inquiry on earth before granting the deceived husband satisfaction.  It was then that Diana surprised a tender conversation between Venus and Mars and vowed that she would not take her eyes off them during the whole of the voyage.  There was also a scene where Love, played by a little