tray full of visiting cards and four white marble women, with bosoms displayed, raised lamps in their uplifted hands.  Bronzes and Chinese vases full of flowers, divans covered with old Persian rugs, armchairs upholstered in old tapestry, furnished the entrance hall, adorned the stairheads and gave the first-floor landing the appearance of an anteroom.  Here men’s overcoats and hats were always in evidence, and there were thick hangings which deadened every sound.  It seemed a place apart:  on entering it you might have fancied yourself in a chapel, whose very air was thrilling with devotion, whose very silence and seclusion were fraught with mystery.

Nana only opened the large and somewhat too-sumptuous Louis XVI drawing room on those gala nights when she received society from the Tuileries or strangers of distinction.  Ordinarily she only came downstairs at mealtimes, and she would feel rather lost on such days as she lunched by herself in the lofty dining room with its Gobelin tapestry and its monumental sideboard, adorned with old porcelain and marvelous pieces of ancient plate.  She used to go upstairs again as quickly as possible, for her home was on the first floor, in the three rooms, the bed, dressing and small drawing room above described.  Twice already she had done the bedchamber up anew:  on the first occasion in mauve satin, on the second in blue silk under lace.  But she had not been satisfied with this; it had struck her as “nohowish,” and she was still unsuccessfully seeking for new colors and designs.  On the elaborately upholstered bed, which was as low as a sofa, there were twenty thousand francs’ worth of point de Venise lace.  The furniture was lacquered blue and white under designs in silver filigree, and everywhere lay such numbers of white bearskins that they hid the carpet.  This was a luxurious caprice on Nana’s part, she having never been able to break herself of the habit of sitting on the floor to take her stockings off.  Next door to the bedroom the little saloon was full of an amusing medley of exquisitely artistic objects.  Against the hangings of pale rose-colored silk—­a faded Turkish rose color, embroidered with gold thread—­a whole world of them stood sharply outlined.  They were from every land and in every possible style.  There were Italian cabinets, Spanish and Portuguese coffers, models of Chinese pagodas, a Japanese screen of precious workmanship, besides china, bronzes, embroidered silks, hangings of the finest needlework.  Armchairs wide as beds and sofas deep as alcoves suggested voluptuous idleness and the somnolent life of the seraglio.  The prevailing tone of the room was old gold blended with green and red, and nothing it contained too forcibly indicated the presence of the courtesan save the luxuriousness of the seats.  Only two “biscuit” statuettes, a woman in her shift, hunting for fleas, and another with nothing at all on, walking on her hands and waving her feet in the air, sufficed to sully the room with a note of stupid originality.