“You ought to tell me what’s going to happen—­I’ve made my bets,” she rejoined.  “Has Nana a chance?”

A sudden, unreasonable burst of anger overpowered him.

“Won’t you deuced well let me be, eh?  Every horse has a chance.  The odds are shortening because, by Jove, people have taken the horse.  Who, I don’t know.  I should prefer leaving you if you must needs badger me with your idiotic questions.”

Such a tone was not germane either to his temperament or his habits, and Nana was rather surprised than wounded.  Besides, he was ashamed of himself directly afterward, and when she begged him in a dry voice to behave politely he apologized.  For some time past he had suffered from such sudden changes of temper.  No one in the Paris of pleasure or of society was ignorant of the fact that he was playing his last trump card today.  If his horses did not win, if, moreover, they lost him the considerable sums wagered upon them, it would mean utter disaster and collapse for him, and the bulwark of his credit and the lofty appearance which, though undermined, he still kept up, would come ruining noisily down.  Moreover, no one was ignorant of the fact that Nana was the devouring siren who had finished him off, who had been the last to attack his crumbling fortunes and to sweep up what remained of them.  Stories were told of wild whims and fancies, of gold scattered to the four winds, of a visit to Baden-Baden, where she had not left him enough to pay the hotel bill, of a handful of diamonds cast on the fire during an evening of drunkenness in order to see whether they would burn like coal.  Little by little her great limbs and her coarse, plebeian way of laughing had gained complete mastery over this elegant, degenerate son of an ancient race.  At that time he was risking his all, for he had been so utterly overpowered by his taste for ordure and stupidity as to have even lost the vigor of his skepticism.  A week before Nana had made him promise her a chateau on the Norman coast between Havre and Trouville, and now he was staking the very foundations of his honor on the fulfillment of his word.  Only she was getting on his nerves, and he could have beaten her, so stupid did he feel her to be.

The man at the gate, not daring to stop the woman hanging on the count’s arm, had allowed them to enter the enclosure.  Nana, greatly puffed up at the thought that at last she was setting foot on the forbidden ground, put on her best behavior and walked slowly by the ladies seated at the foot of the stands.  On ten rows of chairs the toilets were densely massed, and in the blithe open air their bright colors mingled harmoniously.  Chairs were scattered about, and as people met one another friendly circles were formed, just as though the company had been sitting under the trees in a public garden.  Children had been allowed to go free and were running from group to group, while over head the stands rose tier above crowded tier and the light-colored dresses therein faded into the delicate shadows of the timberwork.  Nana stared at all these ladies.  She stared steadily and markedly at the Countess Sabine.  After which, as she was passing in front of the imperial stand, the sight of Muffat, looming in all his official stiffness by the side of the empress, made her very merry.