beds in it for Lucy, Caroline, Tatan and Maria.  As to Steiner, he would sleep on the divan in the drawing room.  At the end of an hour, when everyone was duly settled, Nana, who had begun by being furious, grew enchanted at the thought of playing hostess on a grand scale.  The ladies complimented her on La Mignotte.  “It’s a stunning property, my dear!” And then, too, they brought her quite a whiff of Parisian air, and talking all together with bursts of laughter and exclamation and emphatic little gestures, they gave her all the petty gossip of the week just past.  By the by, and how about Bordenave?  What had he said about her prank?  Oh, nothing much!  After bawling about having her brought back by the police, he had simply put somebody else in her place at night.  Little Violaine was the understudy, and she had even obtained a very pretty success as the Blonde Venus.  Which piece of news made Nana rather serious.

It was only four o’clock in the afternoon, and there was some talk of taking a stroll around.

“Oh, I haven’t told you,” said Nana, “I was just off to get up potatoes when you arrived.”

Thereupon they all wanted to go and dig potatoes without even changing their dresses first.  It was quite a party.  The gardener and two helpers were already in the potato field at the end of the grounds.  The ladies knelt down and began fumbling in the mold with their beringed fingers, shouting gaily whenever they discovered a potato of exceptional size.  It struck them as so amusing!  But Tatan Nene was in a state of triumph!  So many were the potatoes she had gathered in her youth that she forgot herself entirely and gave the others much good advice, treating them like geese the while.  The gentlemen toiled less strenuously.  Mignon looked every inch the good citizen and father and made his stay in the country an occasion for completing his boys’ education.  Indeed, he spoke to them of Parmentier!

Dinner that evening was wildly hilarious.  The company ate ravenously.  Nana, in a state of great elevation, had a warm disagreement with her butler, an individual who had been in service at the bishop’s palace in Orleans.  The ladies smoked over their coffee.  An earsplitting noise of merrymaking issued from the open windows and died out far away under the serene evening sky while peasants, belated in the lanes, turned and looked at the flaring rooms.

“It’s most tiresome that you’re going back the day after tomorrow,” said Nana.  “But never mind, we’ll get up an excursion all the same!”

They decided to go on the morrow, Sunday, and visit the ruins of the old Abbey of Chamont, which were some seven kilometers distant.  Five carriages would come out from Orleans, take up the company after lunch and bring them back to dinner at La Mignotte at about seven.  It would be delightful.