thought of Georges comforted her.  Georges was still left her; he would be able to act, perhaps to save them.  Thereupon, without seeking aid of anyone else—­for she wished to keep these matters shrouded in the bosom of her family—­she dragged herself up to the next story, her mind possessed by the idea that she still had someone to love about her.  But upstairs she found an empty room.  The porter told her that M. Georges had gone out at an early hour.  The room was haunted by the ghost of yet another calamity; the bed with its gnawed bedclothes bore witness to someone’s anguish, and a chair which lay amid a heap of clothes on the ground looked like something dead.  Georges must be at that woman’s house, and so with dry eyes and feet that had regained their strength Mme Hugon went downstairs.  She wanted her sons; she was starting to reclaim them.

Since morning Nana had been much worried.  First of all it was the baker, who at nine o’clock had turned up, bill in hand.  It was a wretched story.  He had supplied her with bread to the amount of a hundred and thirty-three francs, and despite her royal housekeeping she could not pay it.  In his irritation at being put off he had presented himself a score of times since the day he had refused further credit, and the servants were now espousing his cause.  Francois kept saying that Madame would never pay him unless he made a fine scene; Charles talked of going upstairs, too, in order to get an old unpaid straw bill settled, while Victorine advised them to wait till some gentleman was with her, when they would get the money out of her by suddenly asking for it in the middle of conversation.  The kitchen was in a savage mood:  the tradesmen were all kept posted in the course events were taking, and there were gossiping consultations, lasting three or four hours on a stretch, during which Madame was stripped, plucked and talked over with the wrathful eagerness peculiar to an idle, overprosperous servants’ hall.  Julien, the house steward, alone pretended to defend his mistress.  She was quite the thing, whatever they might say!  And when the others accused him of sleeping with her he laughed fatuously, thereby driving the cook to distraction, for she would have liked to be a man in order to “spit on such women’s backsides,” so utterly would they have disgusted her.  Francois, without informing Madame of it, had wickedly posted the baker in the hall, and when she came downstairs at lunch time she found herself face to face with him.  Taking the bill, she told him to return toward three o’clock, whereupon, with many foul expressions, he departed, vowing that he would have things properly settled and get his money by hook or by crook.