She had crouched down at his feet and was striving to catch his eye with a look of tender submission.  She was fain to know whether he was very vexed with her.  Presently, as he gave a long sigh and seemed to recover himself, she grew more coaxing and with grave kindness of manner added a final reason: 

“You see, dearie, you must try and understand how it is:  I can’t refuse it to my poor friends.”

The count consented to give way and only insisted that Georges should be dismissed once for all.  But all his illusions had vanished, and he no longer believed in her sworn fidelity.  Next day Nana would deceive him anew, and he only remained her miserable possessor in obedience to a cowardly necessity and to terror at the thought of living without her.

This was the epoch in her existence when Nana flared upon Paris with redoubled splendor.  She loomed larger than heretofore on the horizon of vice and swayed the town with her impudently flaunted splendor and that contempt of money which made her openly squander fortunes.  Her house had become a sort of glowing smithy, where her continual desires were the flames and the slightest breath from her lips changed gold into fine ashes, which the wind hourly swept away.  Never had eye beheld such a rage of expenditure.  The great house seemed to have been built over a gulf in which men—­their worldly possessions, their fortunes, their very names—­were swallowed up without leaving even a handful of dust behind them.  This courtesan, who had the tastes of a parrot and gobbled up radishes and burnt almonds and pecked at the meat upon her plate, had monthly table bills amounting to five thousand francs.  The wildest waste went on in the kitchen:  the place, metaphorically speaking was one great river which stove in cask upon cask of wine and swept great bills with it, swollen by three or four successive manipulators.  Victorine and Francois reigned supreme in the kitchen, whither they invited friends.  In addition to these there was quite a little tribe of cousins, who were cockered up in their homes with cold meats and strong soup.  Julien made the trades-people give him commissions, and the glaziers never put up a pane of glass at a cost of a franc and a half but he had a franc put down to himself.  Charles devoured the horses’ oats and doubled the amount of their provender, reselling at the back door what came in at the carriage gate, while amid the general pillage, the sack of the town after the storm, Zoe, by dint of cleverness, succeeded in saving appearances and covering the thefts of all in order the better to slur over and make good her own.  But the household waste was worse than the household dishonesty.  Yesterday’s food was thrown into the gutter, and the collection of provisions in the house was such that the servants grew disgusted with it.  The glass was all sticky with sugar, and the gas burners flared and flared till the rooms seemed ready to explode.  Then, too, there were