“It will be very fine,” said the count, whose square-cut, regular-featured face retained a certain gravity.

“I visited the Champ de Mars today and returned thence truly astonished.”

“They say that things won’t be ready in time,” La Faloise ventured to remark.  “There’s infinite confusion there—­”

But the count interrupted him in his severe voice: 

“Things will be ready.  The emperor desires it.”

Fauchery gaily recounted how one day, when he had gone down thither in search of a subject for an article, he had come near spending all his time in the aquarium, which was then in course of construction.  The countess smiled.  Now and again she glanced down at the body of the house, raising an arm which a white glove covered to the elbow and fanning herself with languid hand.  The house dozed, almost deserted.  Some gentlemen in the stalls had opened out newspapers, and ladies received visits quite comfortably, as though they were at their own homes.  Only a well-bred whispering was audible under the great chandelier, the light of which was softened in the fine cloud of dust raised by the confused movements of the interval.  At the different entrances men were crowding in order to talk to ladies who remained seated.  They stood there motionless for a few seconds, craning forward somewhat and displaying the great white bosoms of their shirt fronts.

“We count on you next Tuesday,” said the countess to La Faloise, and she invited Fauchery, who bowed.

Not a word was said of the play; Nana’s name was not once mentioned.  The count was so glacially dignified that he might have been supposed to be taking part at a sitting of the legislature.  In order to explain their presence that evening he remarked simply that his father-in-law was fond of the theater.  The door of the box must have remained open, for the Marquis de Chouard, who had gone out in order to leave his seat to the visitors, was back again.  He was straightening up his tall, old figure.  His face looked soft and white under a broad-brimmed hat, and with his restless eyes he followed the movements of the women who passed.

The moment the countess had given her invitation Fauchery took his leave, feeling that to talk about the play would not be quite the thing.  La Faloise was the last to quit the box.  He had just noticed the fair-haired Labordette, comfortably installed in the Count de Vandeuvres’s stage box and chatting at very close quarters with Blanche de Sivry.

“Gad,” he said after rejoining his cousin, “that Labordette knows all the girls then!  He’s with Blanche now.”

“Doubtless he knows them all,” replied Fauchery quietly.  “What d’you want to be taken for, my friend?”

The passage was somewhat cleared of people, and Fauchery was just about to go downstairs when Lucy Stewart called him.  She was quite at the other end of the corridor, at the door of her stage box.  They were getting cooked in there, she said, and she took up the whole corridor in company with Caroline Hequet and her mother, all three nibbling burnt almonds.  A box opener was chatting maternally with them.  Lucy fell out with the journalist.  He was a pretty fellow; to be sure!  He went up to see other women and didn’t even come and ask if they were thirsty!  Then, changing the subject: