Mme Lerat, whom the country greatly affected, used to begin snoring the moment her head touched the pillow.  Louiset did not hurt Zizi’s position in the least.  On the contrary, Nana said that she had now two children, and she treated them with the same wayward tenderness.  At night, more than ten times running, she would leave Zizi to go and see if Louiset were breathing properly, but on her return she would re-embrace her Zizi and lavish on him the caresses that had been destined for the child.  She played at being Mamma while he wickedly enjoyed being dandled in the arms of the great wench and allowed himself to be rocked to and fro like a baby that is being sent to sleep.  It was all so delightful, and Nana was so charmed with her present existence, that she seriously proposed to him never to leave the country.  They would send all the other people away, and he, she and the child would live alone.  And with that they would make a thousand plans till daybreak and never once hear Mme Lerat as she snored vigorously after the fatigues of a day spent in picking country flowers.

This charming existence lasted nearly a week.  Count Muffat used to come every evening and go away again with disordered face and burning hands.  One evening he was not even received, as Steiner had been obliged to run up to Paris.  He was told that Madame was not well.  Nana grew daily more disgusted at the notion of deceiving Georges.  He was such an innocent lad, and he had such faith in her!  She would have looked on herself as the lowest of the low had she played him false.  Besides, it would have sickened her to do so!  Zoe, who took her part in this affair in mute disdain, believed that Madame was growing senseless.

On the sixth day a band of visitors suddenly blundered into Nana’s idyl.  She had, indeed, invited a whole swarm of people under the belief that none of them would come.  And so one fine afternoon she was vastly astonished and annoyed to see an omnibus full of people pulling up outside the gate of La Mignotte.

“It’s us!” cried Mignon, getting down first from the conveyance and extracting then his sons Henri and Charles.

Labordette thereupon appeared and began handing out an interminable file of ladies—­Lucy Stewart, Caroline Hequet, Tatan Nene, Maria Blond.  Nana was in hopes that they would end there, when La Faloise sprang from the step in order to receive Gaga and her daughter Amelie in his trembling arms.  That brought the number up to eleven people.  Their installation proved a laborious undertaking.  There were five spare rooms at La Mignotte, one of which was already occupied by Mme Lerat and Louiset.  The largest was devoted to the Gaga and La Faloise establishment, and it was decided that Amelie should sleep on a truckle bed in the dressing room at the side.  Mignon and his two sons had the third room.  Labordette the fourth.  There thus remained one room which was transformed into a dormitory with four