“That’s right; it’ll teach him!”

And she lay down again and blew forth a thin jet of smoke, as though she had no interest in present events and were resolved not to meddle in any of them.  No, it was all too silly!

Zoe, however, introduced Muffat into the bedroom, where a scent of ether lingered amid warm, heavy silence, scarce broken by the dull roll of occasional carriages in the Avenue de Villiers.  Nana, looking very white on her pillow, was lying awake with wide-open, meditative eyes.  She smiled when she saw the count but did not move.

“Ah, dear pet!” she slowly murmured.  “I really thought I should never see you again.”

Then as he leaned forward to kiss her on the hair, she grew tender toward him and spoke frankly about the child, as though he were its father.

“I never dared tell you; I felt so happy about it!  Oh, I used to dream about it; I should have liked to be worthy of you!  And now there’s nothing left.  Ah well, perhaps that’s best.  I don’t want to bring a stumbling block into your life.”

Astounded by this story of paternity, he began stammering vague phrases.  He had taken a chair and had sat down by the bed, leaning one arm on the coverlet.  Then the young woman noticed his wild expression, the blood reddening his eyes, the fever that set his lips aquiver.

“What’s the matter then?” she asked.  “You’re ill too.”

“No,” he answered with extreme difficulty.

She gazed at him with a profound expression.  Then she signed to Zoe to retire, for the latter was lingering round arranging the medicine bottles.  And when they were alone she drew him down to her and again asked: 

“What’s the matter with you, darling?  The tears are ready to burst from your eyes—­I can see that quite well.  Well now, speak out; you’ve come to tell me something.”

“No, no, I swear I haven’t,” he blurted out.  But he was choking with suffering, and this sickroom, into which he had suddenly entered unawares, so worked on his feelings that he burst out sobbing and buried his face in the bedclothes to smother the violence of his grief.  Nana understood.  Rose Mignon had most assuredly decided to send the letter.  She let him weep for some moments, and he was shaken by convulsions so fierce that the bed trembled under her.  At length in accents of motherly compassion she queried: 

“You’ve had bothers at your home?”

He nodded affirmatively.  She paused anew, and then very low: 

“Then you know all?”

He nodded assent.  And a heavy silence fell over the chamber of suffering.  The night before, on his return from a party given by the empress, he had received the letter Sabine had written her lover.  After an atrocious night passed in the meditation of vengeance he had gone out in the morning in order to resist a longing which prompted him to kill his wife.  Outside, under a sudden, sweet influence of a fine June morning, he had lost the thread of his thoughts and had come to Nana’s, as he always came at terrible moments in his life.  There only he gave way to his misery, for he felt a cowardly joy at the thought that she would console him.