her mother and two gentlemen in an open carriage, Louise Violaine quite alone, driving a little basket chaise decked with orange and green ribbons, the colors of the Mechain stables, and finally, Lea de Horn on the lofty seat of a mail coach, where a band of young men were making a great din.  Farther off, in a Huit RESSORTS of aristocratic appearance, Lucy Stewart, in a very simple black silk dress, sat, looking distinguished beside a tall young man in the uniform of a naval cadet.  But what most astounded Nana was the arrival of Simonne in a tandem which Steiner was driving, while a footman sat motionless, with folded arms, behind them.  She looked dazzling in white satin striped with yellow and was covered with diamonds from waist to hat.  The banker, on his part, was handling a tremendous whip and sending along his two horses, which were harnessed tandemwise, the leader being a little warm-colored chestnut with a mouselike trot, the shaft horse a big brown bay, a stepper, with a fine action.

“Deuce take it!” said Nana.  “So that thief Steiner has cleared the Bourse again, has he?  I say, isn’t Simonne a swell!  It’s too much of a good thing; he’ll get into the clutches of the law!”

Nevertheless, she exchanged greetings at a distance.  Indeed, she kept waving her hand and smiling, turning round and forgetting no one in her desire to be seen by everybody.  At the same time she continued chatting.

“It’s her son Lucy’s got in tow!  He’s charming in his uniform.  That’s why she’s looking so grand, of course!  You know she’s afraid of him and that she passes herself off as an actress.  Poor young man, I pity him all the same!  He seems quite unsuspicious.”

“Bah,” muttered Philippe, laughing, “she’ll be able to find him an heiress in the country when she likes.”

Nana was silent, for she had just noticed the Tricon amid the thick of the carriages.  Having arrived in a cab, whence she could not see anything, the Tricon had quietly mounted the coach box.  And there, straightening up her tall figure, with her noble face enshrined in its long curls, she dominated the crowd as though enthroned amid her feminine subjects.  All the latter smiled discreetly at her while she, in her superiority, pretended not to know them.  She wasn’t there for business purposes:  she was watching the races for the love of the thing, as became a frantic gambler with a passion for horseflesh.

“Dear me, there’s that idiot La Faloise!” said Georges suddenly.

It was a surprise to them all.  Nana did not recognize her La Faloise, for since he had come into his inheritance he had grown extraordinarily up to date.  He wore a low collar and was clad in a cloth of delicate hue which fitted close to his meager shoulders.  His hair was in little bandeaux, and he affected a weary kind of swagger, a soft tone of voice and slang words and phrases which he did not take the trouble to finish.

“But he’s quite the thing!” declared Nana in perfect enchantment.