“Ah yes! I see her,” she said at length. “In the right-hand stand, near a pillar, eh? She’s in mauve, and her daughter in white by her side. Dear me, there’s Daguenet going to bow to them.” Thereupon Philippe talked of Daguenet’s approaching marriage with that lath of an Estelle. It was a settled matter—the banns were being published. At first the countess had opposed it, but the count, they said, had insisted. 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. Every few seconds an equestrian rode by, and a swarm of people on foot rushed in a scared way among the carriages. On the green the far-off rolling sound which issued from the avenues in the Bois died out suddenly in dull rustlings, and now nothing was audible save the hubbub of the ever-increasing crowds and cries and calls and the crackings of whips in the open. When the sun, amid bursts of wind, reappeared at the edge of a cloud, a long ray of golden light ran across the field, lit up the harness and the varnished coach panels and touched the ladies’ dresses with fire, while amid the dusty radiance the coachmen, high up on their boxes, flamed beside their great whips. Labordette was getting out of an open carriage where Gaga, Clarisse and Blanche de Sivry had kept a place for him. As he was hurrying to cross the course and enter the weighing enclosure Nana got Georges to call him. Then when he came up: “What’s the betting on me?” she asked laughingly.