Muffat entered the room at last. But what was his surprise when he found the Marquis de Chouard snugly enscounced on a chair between the two dressing tables! The marquis had withdrawn thither some time ago. He was spreading his feet apart because a pail was leaking and letting a whitish flood spread over the floor. He was visibly much at his ease, as became a man who knew all the snug corners, and had grown quite merry in the close dressing room, where people might have been bathing, and amid those quietly immodest feminine surroundings which the uncleanness of the little place rendered at once natural and poignant. “D’you go with the old boy?” Simonne asked Clarisse in a whisper. “Rather!” replied the latter aloud. The dresser, a very ugly and extremely familiar young girl, who was helping Simonne into her coat, positively writhed with laughter. The three pushed each other and babbled little phrases which redoubled their merriment. “Come, Clarisse, kiss the gentleman,” said Fauchery. “You know, he’s got the rhino.” And turning to the count: “You’ll see, she’s very nice! She’s going to kiss you!” But Clarisse was disgusted by the men. She spoke in violent terms of the dirty lot waiting at the porter’s lodge down below. Besides, she was in a hurry to go downstairs again; they were making her miss her last scene. Then as Fauchery blocked up the doorway, she gave Muffat a couple of kisses on the whiskers, remarking as she did so: “It’s not for you, at any rate! It’s for that nuisance Fauchery!” And with that she darted off, and the count remained much embarrassed in his father-in-law’s presence. The blood had rushed to his face. In Nana’s dressing room, amid all the luxury of hangings and mirrors, he had not experienced the sharp physical sensation which the shameful wretchedness of that sorry garret excited within him, redolent as it was of these two girls’ self-abandonment. Meanwhile the marquis had hurried in the rear of Simonne, who was making off at the top of her pace, and he kept whispering in her ear while she shook her head in token of refusal. Fauchery followed them, laughing. And with that the count found himself alone with the dresser, who was washing out the basins. Accordingly he took his departure, too, his legs almost failing under him. Once more he put up flights of half-dressed women and caused doors to bang as he advanced. But amid the disorderly, disbanded troops of girls to be found on each of the four stories, he was only distinctly aware of a cat, a great tortoise-shell cat, which went gliding upstairs through the ovenlike place where the air was poisoned with musk, rubbing its back against the banisters and keeping its tail exceedingly erect. “Yes, to be sure!” said a woman hoarsely. “I thought they’d keep us back tonight! What a nuisance they are with their calls!”