Then Nana fell a-laughing.  It was quite possible; she really didn’t know.  So then, since these gentlemen were on the spot, they had her leave to come in.  Everything was quietly arranged; several of the newcomers found friends in the drawing room, and the scene ended in handshakings.  The little sickly looking light-haired man bore one of the greatest names in France.  Furthermore, the eleven announced that others were to follow them, and, in fact, the door opened every few moments, and men in white gloves and official garb presented themselves.  They were still coming from the ball at the Ministry.  Fauchery jestingly inquired whether the minister was not coming, too, but Nana answered in a huff that the minister went to the houses of people she didn’t care a pin for.  What she did not say was that she was possessed with a hope of seeing Count Muffat enter her room among all that stream of people.  He might quite have reconsidered his decision, and so while talking to Rose she kept a sharp eye on the door.

Five o’clock struck.  The dancing had ceased, and the cardplayers alone persisted in their game.  Labordette had vacated his seat, and the women had returned into the drawing room.  The air there was heavy with the somnolence which accompanies a long vigil, and the lamps cast a wavering light while their burned-out wicks glowed red within their globes.  The ladies had reached that vaguely melancholy hour when they felt it necessary to tell each other their histories.  Blanche de Sivry spoke of her grandfather, the general, while Clarisse invented a romantic story about a duke seducing her at her uncle’s house, whither he used to come for the boar hunting.  Both women, looking different ways, kept shrugging their shoulders and asking themselves how the deuce the other could tell such whoppers!  As to Lucy Stewart, she quietly confessed to her origin and of her own accord spoke of her childhood and of the days when her father, the wheel greaser at the Northern Railway Terminus, used to treat her to an apple puff on Sundays.

“Oh, I must tell you about it!” cried the little Maria Blond abruptly.  “Opposite to me there lives a gentleman, a Russian, an awfully rich man!  Well, just fancy, yesterday I received a basket of fruit—­oh, it just was a basket!  Enormous peaches, grapes as big as that, simply wonderful for the time of year!  And in the middle of them six thousand-franc notes!  It was the Russian’s doing.  Of course I sent the whole thing back again, but I must say my heart ached a little—­when I thought of the fruit!”

The ladies looked at one another and pursed up their lips.  At her age little Maria Blond had a pretty cheek!  Besides, to think that such things should happen to trollops like her!  Infinite was their contempt for her among themselves.  It was Lucy of whom they were particularly jealous, for they were beside themselves at the thought of her three princes.  Since Lucy had begun taking a daily morning ride in the Bois they all had become Amazons, as though a mania possessed them.