“I’ll keep my eye on the evening papers.  At half-past five as usual, eh?”

“Bring me a pot of pomade and a pound of burnt almonds from Boissier’s,” Nana cried to him across the drawing room just as he was shutting the door after him.

Then the two women, once more alone, recollected that they had not embraced, and they planted big kisses on each other’s cheeks.  The notice warmed their hearts.  Nana, who up till now had been half asleep, was again seized with the fever of her triumph.  Dear, dear, ’twas Rose Mignon that would be spending a pleasant morning!  Her aunt having been unwilling to go to the theater because, as she averred, sudden emotions ruined her stomach, Nana set herself to describe the events of the evening and grew intoxicated at her own recital, as though all Paris had been shaken to the ground by the applause.  Then suddenly interrupting herself, she asked with a laugh if one would ever have imagined it all when she used to go traipsing about the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or.  Mme Lerat shook her head.  No, no, one never could have foreseen it!  And she began talking in her turn, assuming a serious air as she did so and calling Nana “daughter.”  Wasn’t she a second mother to her since the first had gone to rejoin Papa and Grandmamma?  Nana was greatly softened and on the verge of tears.  But Mme Lerat declared that the past was the past—­oh yes, to be sure, a dirty past with things in it which it was as well not to stir up every day.  She had left off seeing her niece for a long time because among the family she was accused of ruining herself along with the little thing.  Good God, as though that were possible!  She didn’t ask for confidences; she believed that Nana had always lived decently, and now it was enough for her to have found her again in a fine position and to observe her kind feelings toward her son.  Virtue and hard work were still the only things worth anything in this world.

“Who is the baby’s father?” she said, interrupting herself, her eyes lit up with an expression of acute curiosity.

Nana was taken by surprise and hesitated a moment.

“A gentleman,” she replied.

“There now!” rejoined the aunt.  “They declared that you had him by a stonemason who was in the habit of beating you.  Indeed, you shall tell me all about it someday; you know I’m discreet!  Tut, tut, I’ll look after him as though he were a prince’s son.”

She had retired from business as a florist and was living on her savings, which she had got together sou by sou, till now they brought her in an income of six hundred francs a year.  Nana promised to rent some pretty little lodgings for her and to give her a hundred francs a month besides.  At the mention of this sum the aunt forgot herself and shrieked to her niece, bidding her squeeze their throats, since she had them in her grasp.  She was meaning the men, of course.  Then they both embraced again, but in the midst of her rejoicing Nana’s face, as she led the talk back to the subject of Louiset, seemed to be overshadowed by a sudden recollection.