Why then
should she have told him this falsehood, and what could she be doing
at the Varietes that evening? Hustled by a passer-by, the count
unconsciously left the paperweights and found himself in front of
a glass case full of toys, where he grew absorbed over an array of
pocketbooks and cigar cases, all of which had the same blue swallow
stamped on one corner. Nana was most certainly not the same woman! In
the early days after his return from the country she used to drive him
wild with delight, as with pussycat caresses she kissed him all round
his face and whiskers and vowed that he was her own dear pet and the
only little man she adored. He was no longer afraid of Georges, whom his
mother kept down at Les Fondettes. There was only fat Steiner to reckon
with, and he believed he was really ousting him, but he did not dare
provoke an explanation on his score. He knew he was once more in an
extraordinary financial scrape and on the verge of being declared
bankrupt on 'change, so much so that he was clinging fiercely to the
shareholders in the Landes Salt Pits and striving to sweat a final
subscription out of them. Whenever he met him at Nana's she would
explain reasonably enough that she did not wish to turn him out of doors
like a dog after all he had spent on her.
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