This was the beginning of a rebellion
among the servants. When her diamonds had been stolen Victorine and
Francois left. Julien himself disappeared, and the tale ran that the
master had given him a big bribe and had begged him to go, because
he slept with the mistress. Every week there were new faces in the
servants' hall. Never was there such a mess; the house was like a
passage down which the scum of the registry offices galloped, destroying
everything in their path. Zoe alone kept her place; she always looked
clean, and her only anxiety was how to organize this riot until she had
got enough together to set up on her own account in fulfillment of a
plan she had been hatching for some time past.
These, again, were only the anxieties he could own to. The count put up
with the stupidity of Mme Maloir, playing bezique with her in spite of
her musty smell. He put up with Mme Lerat and her encumbrances, with
Louiset and the mournful complaints peculiar to a child who is being
eaten up with the rottenness inherited from some unknown father. But
he spent hours worse than these. One evening he had heard Nana angrily
telling her maid that a man pretending to be rich had just swindled
her--a handsome man calling himself an American and owning gold mines in
his own country, a beast who had gone off while she was asleep without
giving her a copper and had even taken a packet of cigarette papers with
him.
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