Nana smiled.
"I know, I know," she murmured. "So much the better for Paul. He's a
nice boy--he deserves it."
And leaning toward Louiset:
"You're enjoying yourself, eh? What a grave face!"
The child never smiled. With a very old expression he was gazing at all
those crowds, as though the sight of them filled him with melancholy
reflections. Bijou, chased from the skirts of the young woman who was
moving about a great deal, had come to nestle, shivering, against the
little fellow.
Meanwhile the field was filling up. Carriages, a compact, interminable
file of them, were continually arriving through the Porte de la Cascade.
There were big omnibuses such as the Pauline, which had started from the
Boulevard des Italiens, freighted with its fifty passengers, and was now
going to draw up to the right of the stands. Then there were dogcarts,
victorias, landaus, all superbly well turned out, mingled with
lamentable cabs which jolted along behind sorry old hacks, and
four-in-hands, sending along their four horses, and mail coaches, where
the masters sat on the seats above and left the servants to take care
of the hampers of champagne inside, and "spiders," the immense wheels of
which were a flash of glittering steel, and light tandems, which looked
as delicately formed as the works of a clock and slipped along amid a
peal of little bells.
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