The subject bored him, and he had rejoined Fauchery.

“My dear fellow, have you ever seen a woman who was really loved become a nun?”

He did not wait for an answer, for he had had enough of the topic, and in a hushed voice: 

“Tell me,” he said, “how many of us will there be tomorrow?  There’ll be the Mignons, Steiner, yourself, Blanche and I; who else?”

“Caroline, I believe, and Simonne and Gaga without doubt.  One never knows exactly, does one?  On such occasions one expects the party will number twenty, and you’re really thirty.”

Vandeuvres, who was looking at the ladies, passed abruptly to another subject: 

“She must have been very nice-looking, that Du Joncquoy woman, some fifteen years ago.  Poor Estelle has grown lankier than ever.  What a nice lath to put into a bed!”

But interrupting himself, he returned to the subject of tomorrow’s supper.

“What’s so tiresome of those shows is that it’s always the same set of women.  One wants a novelty.  Do try and invent a new girl.  By Jove, happy thought!  I’ll go and beseech that stout man to bring the woman he was trotting about the other evening at the Varietes.”

He referred to the chief clerk, sound asleep in the middle of the drawing room.  Fauchery, afar off, amused himself by following this delicate negotiation.  Vandeuvres had sat himself down by the stout man, who still looked very sedate.  For some moments they both appeared to be discussing with much propriety the question before the house, which was, “How can one discover the exact state of feeling that urges a young girl to enter into the religious life?” Then the count returned with the remark: 

“It’s impossible.  He swears she’s straight.  She’d refuse, and yet I would have wagered that I once saw her at Laure’s.”

“Eh, what?  You go to Laure’s?” murmured Fauchery with a chuckle.  “You venture your reputation in places like that?  I was under the impression that it was only we poor devils of outsiders who—­”

“Ah, dear boy, one ought to see every side of life.”

Then they sneered and with sparkling eyes they compared notes about the table d’hote in the Rue des Martyrs, where big Laure Piedefer ran a dinner at three francs a head for little women in difficulties.  A nice hole, where all the little women used to kiss Laure on the lips!  And as the Countess Sabine, who had overheard a stray word or two, turned toward them, they started back, rubbing shoulders in excited merriment.  They had not noticed that Georges Hugon was close by and that he was listening to them, blushing so hotly the while that a rosy flush had spread from his ears to his girlish throat.  The infant was full of shame and of ecstasy.  From the moment his mother had turned him loose in the room he had been hovering in the wake of Mme de Chezelles, the only woman present who struck him as being the thing.  But after all is said and done, Nana licked her to fits!