Nowadays among her intimates she always spoke thus of Count Muffat, and the gentlemen had ceased to inquire after him otherwise.

“Did you see your little rough last night?” they used to say.

“Dear me, I expected to find the little rough here!”

It was a simple familiarity enough, which, nevertheless, she did not as yet venture on in his presence.

Labordette began rolling up the designs as he gave the final explanations.  The goldsmiths, he said, were undertaking to deliver the bed in two months’ time, toward the twenty-fifth of December, and next week a sculptor would come to make a model for the Night.  As she accompanied him to the door Nana remembered the baker and briskly inquired: 

“By the by, you wouldn’t be having ten louis about you?”

Labordette made it a solemn rule, which stood him in good stead, never to lend women money.  He used always to make the same reply.

“No, my girl, I’m short.  But would you like me to go to your little rough?”

She refused; it was useless.  Two days before she had succeeded in getting five thousand francs out of the count.  However, she soon regretted her discreet conduct, for the moment Labordette had gone the baker reappeared, though it was barely half-past two, and with many loud oaths roughly settled himself on a bench in the hall.  The young woman listened to him from the first floor.  She was pale, and it caused her especial pain to hear the servants’ secret rejoicings swelling up louder and louder till they even reached her ears.  Down in the kitchen they were dying of laughter.  The coachman was staring across from the other side of the court; Francois was crossing the hall without any apparent reason.  Then he hurried off to report progress, after sneering knowingly at the baker.  They didn’t care a damn for Madame; the walls were echoing to their laughter, and she felt that she was deserted on all hands and despised by the servants’ hall, the inmates of which were watching her every movement and liberally bespattering her with the filthiest of chaff.  Thereupon she abandoned the intention of borrowing the hundred and thirty-three francs from Zoe; she already owed the maid money, and she was too proud to risk a refusal now.  Such a burst of feeling stirred her that she went back into her room, loudly remarking: 

“Come, come, my girl, don’t count on anyone but yourself.  Your body’s your own property, and it’s better to make use of it than to let yourself be insulted.”

And without even summoning Zoe she dressed herself with feverish haste in order to run round to the Tricon’s.  In hours of great embarrassment this was her last resource.  Much sought after and constantly solicited by the old lady, she would refuse or resign herself according to her needs, and on these increasingly frequent occasions when both ends would not meet in her royally conducted establishment, she was sure to find twenty-five louis awaiting her at the other’s house.  She used to betake herself to the Tricon’s with the ease born of use, just as the poor go to the pawnshop.