What most astonished the young woman was that she was endlessly short of money amid a river of gold, the tide of which almost enveloped her.  On certain days she was at her wit’s end for want of ridiculously small sums—­sums of only a few louis.  She was driven to borrow from Zoe, or she scraped up cash as well as she could on her own account.  But before resignedly adopting extreme measures she tried her friends and in a joking sort of way got the men to give her all they had about them, even down to their coppers.  For the last three months she had been emptying Philippe’s pockets especially, and now on days of passionate enjoyment he never came away but he left his purse behind him.  Soon she grew bolder and asked him for loans of two hundred francs, three hundred francs—­never more than that—­wherewith to pay the interest of bills or to stave off outrageous debts.  And Philippe, who in July had been appointed paymaster to his regiment, would bring the money the day after, apologizing at the same time for not being rich, seeing that good Mamma Hugon now treated her sons with singular financial severity.  At the close of three months these little oft-renewed loans mounted up to a sum of ten thousand francs.  The captain still laughed his hearty-sounding laugh, but he was growing visibly thinner, and sometimes he seemed absent-minded, and a shade of suffering would pass over his face.  But one look from Nana’s eyes would transfigure him in a sort of sensual ecstasy.  She had a very coaxing way with him and would intoxicate him with furtive kisses and yield herself to him in sudden fits of self-abandonment, which tied him to her apron strings the moment he was able to escape from his military duties.

One evening, Nana having announced that her name, too, was Therese and that her fete day was the fifteenth of October, the gentlemen all sent her presents.  Captain Philippe brought his himself; it was an old comfit dish in Dresden china, and it had a gold mount.  He found her alone in her dressing room.  She had just emerged from the bath, had nothing on save a great red-and-white flannel bathing wrap and was very busy examining her presents, which were ranged on a table.  She had already broken a rock-crystal flask in her attempts to unstopper it.

“Oh, you’re too nice!” she said.  “What is it?  Let’s have a peep!  What a baby you are to spend your pennies in little fakements like that!”

She scolded him, seeing that he was not rich, but at heart she was delighted to see him spending his whole substance for her.  Indeed, this was the only proof of love which had power to touch her.  Meanwhile she was fiddling away at the comfit dish, opening it and shutting it in her desire to see how it was made.

“Take care,” he murmured, “it’s brittle.”

But she shrugged her shoulders.  Did he think her as clumsy as a street porter?  And all of a sudden the hinge came off between her fingers and the lid fell and was broken.  She was stupefied and remained gazing at the fragments as she cried: