of pride, the names of the ladies with whom she had served as lady’s maid.  Zoe spoke of these ladies as one who had had the making of their fortunes.  It was very certain that without her more than one would have had some queer tales to tell.  Thus one day, when Mme Blanche was with M. Octave, in came the old gentleman.  What did Zoe do?  She made believe to tumble as she crossed the drawing room; the old boy rushed up to her assistance, flew to the kitchen to fetch her a glass of water, and M. Octave slipped away.

“Oh, she’s a good girl, you bet!” said Nana, who was listening to her with tender interest and a sort of submissive admiration.

“Now I’ve had my troubles,” began Mme Lerat.  And edging up to Mme Maloir, she imparted to her certain confidential confessions.  Both ladies took lumps of sugar dipped in cognac and sucked them.  But Mme Maloir was wont to listen to other people’s secrets without even confessing anything concerning herself.  People said that she lived on a mysterious allowance in a room whither no one ever penetrated.

All of a sudden Nana grew excited.

“Don’t play with the knives, Aunt.  You know it gives me a turn!”

Without thinking about it Mme Lerat had crossed two knives on the table in front of her.  Notwithstanding this, the young woman defended herself from the charge of superstition.  Thus, if the salt were upset, it meant nothing, even on a Friday; but when it came to knives, that was too much of a good thing; that had never proved fallacious.  There could be no doubt that something unpleasant was going to happen to her.  She yawned, and then with an air, of profound boredom: 

“Two o’clock already.  I must go out.  What a nuisance!”

The two old ladies looked at one another.  The three women shook their heads without speaking.  To be sure, life was not always amusing.  Nana had tilted her chair back anew and lit a cigarette, while the others sat pursing up their lips discreetly, thinking deeply philosophic thoughts.

“While waiting for you to return we’ll play a game of bezique,” said Mme Maloir after a short silence.  “Does Madame play bezique?”

Certainly Mme Lerat played it, and that to perfection.  It was no good troubling Zoe, who had vanished—­a corner of the table would do quite well.  And they pushed back the tablecloth over the dirty plates.  But as Mme Maloir was herself going to take the cards out of a drawer in the sideboard, Nana remarked that before she sat down to her game it would be very nice of her if she would write her a letter.  It bored Nana to write letters; besides, she was not sure of her spelling, while her old friend could turn out the most feeling epistles.  She ran to fetch some good note paper in her bedroom.  An inkstand consisting of a bottle of ink worth about three sous stood untidily on one of the pieces of furniture, with a pen deep in rust beside it.  The letter was for Daguenet.  Mme Maloir herself wrote in her bold English hand, “My darling little man,” and then she told him not to come tomorrow because “that could not be” but hastened to add that “she was with him in thought at every moment of the day, whether she were near or far away.”