She found able allies in Pauline and Victor Boche. The whole great house resounded with the most extraordinary noises--the thumps of children falling downstairs, little feet tearing up one staircase and down another and bursting out on the sidewalk like a band of pilfering, impudent sparrows. Mme Gaudron alone had nine--dirty, unwashed and unkempt, their stockings hanging over their shoes and the slits in their garments showing the white skin beneath. Another woman on the fifth floor had seven, and they came out in twos and threes from all the rooms. Nana reigned over this band, among which there were some half grown and others mere infants. Her prime ministers were Pauline and Victor; to them she delegated a little of her authority while she played mamma, undressed the youngest only to dress them again, cuffed them and punished them at her own sweet will and with the most fantastic disposition. The band pranced and waded through the gutter that ran from the dyehouse and emerged with blue or green legs. Nana decorated herself and the others with shavings from the cabinetmaker's, which they stole from under the very noses of the workmen. The courtyard belonged to all of these children, apparently, and resounded with the clatter of their heels. Sometimes this courtyard, however, was not enough for them, and they spread in every direction to the infinite disgust of Mme Boche, who grumbled all in vain. Boche declared that the children of the poor were as plentiful as mushrooms on a dung heap, and his wife threatened them with her broom. One day there was a terrible scene. Nana had invented a beautiful game. She had stolen a wooden shoe belonging to Mme Boche; she bored a hole in it and put in a string, by which she could draw it like a cart. Victor filled it with apple parings, and they started forth in a procession, Nana drawing the shoe in front, followed by the whole flock, little and big, an imp about the height of a cigar box at the end. They all sang a melancholy ditty full of "ahs" and "ohs." Nana declared this to be always the custom at funerals. "What on earth are they doing now?" murmured Mme Boche suspiciously, and then she came to the door and peered out. "Good heavens!" she cried. "It is my shoe they have got." She slapped Nana, cuffed Pauline and shook Victor. Gervaise was filling a bucket at the fountain, and when she saw Nana with her nose bleeding she rushed toward the concierge and asked how she dared strike her child. The concierge replied that anyone who had a child like that had best keep her under lock and key. The end of this was, of course, a complete break between the old friends.