"Here, take Bijou," she said to comfort him, and she passed him the
little dog which had gone to sleep on her dress.
And with that Georges grew happy again, for with the beast still warm
from her lap in his arms, he held, as it were, part of her.
Allusion had been made to a considerable loss which Vandeuvres had
last night sustained at the Imperial Club. Muffat, who did not play,
expressed great astonishment, but Vandeuvres smilingly alluded to his
imminent ruin, about which Paris was already talking. The kind of death
you chose did not much matter, he averred; the great thing was to die
handsomely. For some time past Nana had noticed that he was nervous and
had a sharp downward droop of the mouth and a fitful gleam in the depths
of his clear eyes. But he retained his haughty aristocratic manner and
the delicate elegance of his impoverished race, and as yet these
strange manifestations were only, so to speak, momentary fits of vertigo
overcoming a brain already sapped by play and by debauchery. One night
as he lay beside her he had frightened her with a dreadful story. He had
told her he contemplated shutting himself up in his stable and setting
fire to himself and his horses at such time as he should have devoured
all his substance.
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