But the truth was that this remark now meant nothing. She thought Georges very nice and would have liked him as a companion, but as nothing else. Nevertheless, when he arrived daily at four o’clock he seemed so wretched that she was often fain to be as compliant as of old and would hide him in cupboards and constantly allow him to pick up the crumbs from Beauty’s table. He hardly ever left the house now and became as much one of its inmates as the little dog Bijou. Together they nestled among Mistress’s skirts and enjoyed a little of her at a time, even when she was with another man, while doles of sugar and stray caresses not seldom fell to their share in her hours of loneliness and boredom. Doubtless Mme Hugon found out that the lad had again returned to that wicked woman’s arms, for she hurried up to Paris and came and sought aid from her other son, the Lieutenant Philippe, who was then in garrison at Vincennes. Georges, who was hiding from his elder brother, was seized with despairing apprehension, for he feared the latter might adopt violent tactics, and as his tenderness for Nana was so nervously expansive that he could not keep anything from her, he soon began talking of nothing but his big brother, a great, strong fellow, who was capable of all kinds of things. “You know,” he explained, “Mamma won’t come to you while she can send my brother. Oh, she’ll certainly send Philippe to fetch me.” The first time he said this Nana was deeply wounded. She said frigidly: “Gracious me, I should like to see him come! For all that he’s a lieutenant in the army, Francois will chuck him out in double-quick time!” Soon, as the lad kept returning to the subject of his brother, she ended by taking a certain interest in Philippe, and in a week’s time she knew him from head to foot—knew him as very tall and very strong and merry and somewhat rough. She learned intimate details, too, and found out that he had hair on his arms and a birthmark on his shoulder. So thoroughly did she learn her lesson that one day, when she was full of the image of the man who was to be turned out of doors by her orders, she cried out: “I say, Zizi, your brother’s not coming. He’s a base deserter!” The next day, when Georges and Nana were alone together, Francois came upstairs to ask whether Madame would receive Lieutenant Philippe Hugon. Georges grew extremely white and murmured: “I suspected it; Mamma was talking about it this morning.” And he besought the young woman to send down word that she could not see visitors. But she was already on her feet and seemed all aflame as she said: “Why should I not see him? He would think me afraid. Dear me, we’ll have a good laugh! Just leave the gentleman in the drawing room for a quarter of an hour, Francois; afterward bring him up to me.”