“Oh, but I don’t the least bit want to go to bed!” said Nana.  “One ought to find something to do.”

She looked at the sky through the windowpanes.  It was a livid sky, and sooty clouds were scudding across it.  It was six o’clock in the morning.  Over the way, on the opposite side of the Boulevard Haussmann, the glistening roofs of the still-slumbering houses were sharply outlined against the twilight sky while along the deserted roadway a gang of street sweepers passed with a clatter of wooden shoes.  As she viewed Paris thus grimly awakening, she was overcome by tender, girlish feelings, by a yearning for the country, for idyllic scenes, for things soft and white.

“Now guess what you’re to do,” she said, coming back to Steiner.  “You’re going to take me to the Bois de Boulogne, and we’ll drink milk there.”

She clapped her hands in childish glee.  Without waiting for the banker’s reply—­he naturally consented, though he was really rather bored and inclined to think of other things—­she ran off to throw a pelisse over her shoulders.  In the drawing room there was now no one with Steiner save the band of young men.  These had by this time dropped the very dregs of their glasses into the piano and were talking of going, when one of their number ran in triumphantly.  He held in his hands a last remaining bottle, which he had brought back with him from the pantry.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” he shouted.  “Here’s a bottle of chartreuse; that’ll pick him up!  And now, my young friends, let’s hook it.  We’re blooming idiots.”

In the dressing room Nana was compelled to wake up Zoe, who had dozed off on a chair.  The gas was still alight, and Zoe shivered as she helped her mistress on with her hat and pelisse.

“Well, it’s over; I’ve done what you wanted me to,” said Nana, speaking familiarly to the maid in a sudden burst of expansive confidence and much relieved at the thought that she had at last made her election.  “You were quite right; the banker’s as good as another.”

The maid was cross, for she was still heavy with sleep.  She grumbled something to the effect that Madame ought to have come to a decision the first evening.  Then following her into the bedroom, she asked what she was going to do with “those two,” meaning Bordenave, who was snoring away as usual, and Georges, who had slipped in slyly, buried his head in a pillow and, finally falling asleep there, was now breathing as lightly and regularly as a cherub.  Nana in reply told her that she was to let them sleep on.  But seeing Daguenet come into the room, she again grew tender.  He had been watching her from the kitchen and was looking very wretched.

“Come, my sweetie, be reasonable,” she said, taking him in her arms and kissing him with all sorts of little wheedling caresses.  “Nothing’s changed; you know that it’s sweetie whom I always adore!  Eh, dear?  I had to do it.  Why, I swear to you we shall have even nicer times now.  Come tomorrow, and we’ll arrange about hours.  Now be quick, kiss and hug me as you love me.  Oh, tighter, tighter than that!”