Horrified, Bordenave had much ado not to give her a kick.  But the prince smiled and looked pleased and excited by the remark.  He gazed warmly at the little woman who did not care a button for His Highness, and she, on her part, laughed unblushingly.  Bordenave, however, persuaded the prince to follow him.  Muffat was beginning to perspire; he had taken his hat off.  What inconvenienced him most was the stuffy, dense, overheated air of the place with its strong, haunting smell, a smell peculiar to this part of a theater, and, as such, compact of the reek of gas, of the glue used in the manufacture of the scenery, of dirty dark nooks and corners and of questionably clean chorus girls.  In the passage the air was still more suffocating, and one seemed to breathe a poisoned atmosphere, which was occasionally relieved by the acid scents of toilet waters and the perfumes of various soaps emanating from the dressing rooms.  The count lifted his eyes as he passed and glanced up the staircase, for he was well-nigh startled by the keen flood of light and warmth which flowed down upon his back and shoulders.  High up above him there was a clicking of ewers and basins, a sound of laughter and of people calling to one another, a banging of doors, which in their continual opening and shutting allowed an odor of womankind to escape—­a musky scent of oils and essences mingling with the natural pungency exhaled from human tresses.  He did not stop.  Nay, he hastened his walk:  he almost ran, his skin tingling with the breath of that fiery approach to a world he knew nothing of.

“A theater’s a curious sight, eh?” said the Marquis de Chouard with the enchanted expression of a man who once more finds himself amid familiar surroundings.

But Bordenave had at length reached Nana’s dressing room at the end of the passage.  He quietly turned the door handle; then, cringing again: 

“If His Highness will have the goodness to enter—­”

They heard the cry of a startled woman and caught sight of Nana as, stripped to the waist, she slipped behind a curtain while her dresser, who had been in the act of drying her, stood, towel in air, before them.

“Oh, it is silly to come in that way!” cried Nana from her hiding place.  “Don’t come in; you see you mustn’t come in!”

Bordenave did not seem to relish this sudden flight.

“Do stay where you were, my dear.  Why, it doesn’t matter,” he said.  “It’s His Highness.  Come, come, don’t be childish.”

And when she still refused to make her appearance—­for she was startled as yet, though she had begun to laugh—­he added in peevish, paternal tones: 

“Good heavens, these gentlemen know perfectly well what a woman looks like.  They won’t eat you.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said the prince wittily.

With that the whole company began laughing in an exaggerated manner in order to pay him proper court.