Twelve struck.  The public would have to wait more than three hours for the Grand Prix to be run.  When the landau had drawn up beside the barriers Nana settled herself comfortably down as though she were in her own house.  A whim had prompted her to bring Bijou and Louiset with her, and the dog crouched among her skirts, shivering with cold despite the heat of the day, while amid a bedizenment of ribbons and laces the child’s poor little face looked waxen and dumb and white in the open air.  Meanwhile the young woman, without troubling about the people near her, talked at the top of her voice with Georges and Philippe Hugon, who were seated opposite on the front seat among such a mountain of bouquets of white roses and blue myosotis that they were buried up to their shoulders.

“Well then,” she was saying, “as he bored me to death, I showed him the door.  And now it’s two days that he’s been sulking.”

She was talking of Muffat, but she took care not to confess to the young men the real reason for this first quarrel, which was that one evening he had found a man’s hat in her bedroom.  She had indeed brought home a passer-by out of sheer ennui—­a silly infatuation.

“You have no idea how funny he is,” she continued, growing merry over the particulars she was giving.  “He’s a regular bigot at bottom, so he says his prayers every evening.  Yes, he does.  He’s under the impression I notice nothing because I go to bed first so as not to be in his way, but I watch him out of the corner of my eye.  Oh, he jaws away, and then he crosses himself when he turns round to step over me and get to the inside of the bed.”

“Jove, it’s sly,” muttered Philippe.  “That’s what happens before, but afterward, what then?”

She laughed merrily.

“Yes, just so, before and after!  When I’m going to sleep I hear him jawing away again.  But the biggest bore of all is that we can’t argue about anything now without his growing ‘pi.’  I’ve always been religious.  Yes, chaff as much as you like; that won’t prevent me believing what I do believe!  Only he’s too much of a nuisance:  he blubbers; he talks about remorse.  The day before yesterday, for instance, he had a regular fit of it after our usual row, and I wasn’t the least bit reassured when all was over.”

But she broke off, crying out: 

“Just look at the Mignons arriving.  Dear me, they’ve brought the children!  Oh, how those little chaps are dressed up!”

The Mignons were in a landau of severe hue; there was something substantially luxurious about their turnout, suggesting rich retired tradespeople.  Rose was in a gray silk gown trimmed with red knots and with puffs; she was smiling happily at the joyous behavior of Henri and Charles, who sat on the front seat, looking awkward in their ill-fitting collegians’ tunics.  But when the landau had drawn up by the rails and she perceived Nana sitting in triumph among her bouquets, with her four horses and her liveries, she pursed up her lips, sat bolt upright and turned her head away.  Mignon, on the other hand, looking the picture of freshness and gaiety, waved her a salutation.  He made it a matter of principle to keep out of feminine disagreements.