For a minute or two he had felt the truth of this, and now he began scheming out a method of submission.  Nevertheless, he still talked jokingly, not wishing the matter to grow serious, and after he had put on his gloves he demanded the hand of Mlle Estelle de Beuville in the strict regulation manner.  Nana ended by laughing, as though she had been tickled.  Oh, that Mimi!  It was impossible to bear him a grudge!  Daguenet’s great successes with ladies of her class were due to the sweetness of his voice, a voice of such musical purity and pliancy as to have won him among courtesans the sobriquet of “Velvet-Mouth.”  Every woman would give way to him when he lulled her with his sonorous caresses.  He knew this power and rocked Nana to sleep with endless words, telling her all kinds of idiotic anecdotes.  When they left the table d’hote she was blushing rosy-red; she trembled as she hung on his arm; he had reconquered her.  As it was very fine, she sent her carriage away and walked with him as far as his own place, where she went upstairs with him naturally enough.  Two hours later, as she was dressing again, she said: 

“So you hold to this marriage of yours, Mimi?”

“Egad,” he muttered, “it’s the best thing I could possibly do after all!  You know I’m stony broke.”

She summoned him to button her boots, and after a pause: 

“Good heavens!  I’ve no objection.  I’ll shove you on!  She’s as dry as a lath, is that little thing, but since it suits your game—­oh, I’m agreeable:  I’ll run the thing through for you.”

Then with bosom still uncovered, she began laughing: 

“Only what will you give me?”

He had caught her in his arms and was kissing her on the shoulders in a perfect access of gratitude while she quivered with excitement and struggled merrily and threw herself backward in her efforts to be free.

“Oh, I know,” she cried, excited by the contest.  “Listen to what I want in the way of commission.  On your wedding day you shall make me a present of your innocence.  Before your wife, d’you understand?”

“That’s it!  That’s it!” he said, laughing even louder than Nana.

The bargain amused them—­they thought the whole business very good, indeed.

Now as it happened, there was a dinner at Nana’s next day.  For the matter of that, it was the customary Thursday dinner, and Muffat, Vandeuvres, the young Hugons and Satin were present.  The count arrived early.  He stood in need of eighty thousand francs wherewith to free the young woman from two or three debts and to give her a set of sapphires she was dying to possess.  As he had already seriously lessened his capital, he was in search of a lender, for he did not dare to sell another property.  With the advice of Nana herself he had addressed himself to Labordette, but the latter, deeming it too heavy an undertaking, had mentioned it to the hairdresser Francis, who willingly busied himself in such affairs