The whole thing was
princely in the correctness of its style.
At the end of two months the house was set going. The cost had been
more than three hundred thousand francs. There were eight horses in the
stables, and five carriages in the coach houses, and of these five one
was a landau with silver embellishments, which for the moment occupied
the attention of all Paris. And amid this great wealth Nana began
settling down and making her nest. After the third representation of
the Petite Duchesse she had quitted the theater, leaving Bordenave to
struggle on against a bankruptcy which, despite the count's money, was
imminent. Nevertheless, she was still bitter about her failure. It added
to that other bitterness, the lesson Fontan had given her, a shameful
lesson for which she held all men responsible. Accordingly she now
declared herself very firm and quite proof against sudden infatuations,
but thoughts of vengeance took no hold of her volatile brain. What did
maintain a hold on it in the hours when she was not indignant was an
ever-wakeful lust of expenditure, added to a natural contempt for the
man who paid and to a perpetual passion for consumption and waste, which
took pride in the ruin of her lovers.
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