“Oh, just to think of it!” cried Nana.  “She’s got eyes like gimlet holes, and her hair’s the color of tow.”

“Hold your tongue, do!” said Fontan.  “She has a superb head of hair and such fire in her looks!  It’s lovely the way you women always tear each other to pieces!”

He looked annoyed.

“Come now, we’ve had enough of it!” he said at last in savage tones.  “You know I don’t like being bored.  Let’s go to sleep, or things’ll take a nasty turn.”

And he blew out the candle, but Nana was furious and went on talking.  She was not going to be spoken to in that voice; she was accustomed to being treated with respect!  As he did not vouchsafe any further answer, she was silenced, but she could not go to sleep and lay tossing to and fro.

“Great God, have you done moving about?” cried he suddenly, giving a brisk jump upward.

“It isn’t my fault if there are crumbs in the bed,” she said curtly.

In fact, there were crumbs in the bed.  She felt them down to her middle; she was everywhere devoured by them.  One single crumb was scorching her and making her scratch herself till she bled.  Besides, when one eats a cake isn’t it usual to shake out the bedclothes afterward?  Fontan, white with rage, had relit the candle, and they both got up and, barefooted and in their night dresses, they turned down the clothes and swept up the crumbs on the sheet with their hands.  Fontan went to bed again, shivering, and told her to go to the devil when she advised him to wipe the soles of his feet carefully.  And in the end she came back to her old position, but scarce had she stretched herself out than she danced again.  There were fresh crumbs in the bed!

“By Jove, it was sure to happen!” she cried.  “You’ve brought them back again under your feet.  I can’t go on like this!  No, I tell you, I can’t go on like this!”

And with that she was on the point of stepping over him in order to jump out of bed again, when Fontan in his longing for sleep grew desperate and dealt her a ringing box on the ear.  The blow was so smart that Nana suddenly found herself lying down again with her head on the pillow.

She lay half stunned.

“Oh!” she ejaculated simply, sighing a child’s big sigh.

For a second or two he threatened her with a second slap, asking her at the same time if she meant to move again.  Then he put out the light, settled himself squarely on his back and in a trice was snoring.  But she buried her face in the pillow and began sobbing quietly to herself.  It was cowardly of him to take advantage of his superior strength!  She had experienced very real terror all the same, so terrible had that quaint mask of Fontan’s become.  And her anger began dwindling down as though the blow had calmed her.  She began to feel respect toward him and accordingly squeezed herself against the wall in order to leave him as much room as possible.  She even ended by going to sleep, her cheek tingling, her eyes full of tears and feeling so deliciously depressed and wearied and submissive that she no longer noticed the crumbs.  When she woke up in the morning she was holding Fontain in her naked arms and pressing him tightly against her breast.  He would never begin it again, eh?  Never again?  She loved him too dearly.  Why, it was even nice to be beaten if he struck the blow!