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Do they think I'm to be sold so that they can get their bills paid? Why, look here, I'd rather die of hunger than deceive Fontan." "That's what I said," averred Mme Lerat. "'My niece, I said, 'is too noble-hearted!" Nana, however, was much vexed to learn that La Mignotte was being sold and that Labordette was buying it for Caroline Hequet at an absurdly low price.
The passage was somewhat cleared of people, and Fauchery was just about to go downstairs when Lucy Stewart called him. She was quite at the other end of the corridor, at the door of her stage box. They were getting cooked in there, she said, and she took up the whole corridor in company with Caroline Hequet and her mother, all three nibbling burnt almonds.
And the ladies, with pale faces and eyes glittering with covetousness, craned forward and ran over the names of the other kings, the other emperors, who were shortly expected. All of them were dreaming of some royal caprice, some night to be paid for by a fortune. "Now tell me, dear boy," Caroline Hequet asked Vandeuvres, leaning forward as she did so, "how old's the emperor of Russia?"
One evening in July toward eight o'clock, Lucy, while getting out of her carriage in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, noticed Caroline Hequet, who had come out on foot to order something at a neighboring tradesman's. Lucy called her and at once burst out with: "Have you dined? Are you disengaged? Oh, then come with me, my dear. Nana's back."
They were serious and very anxious about the turn events were taking. "For my part," said Caroline Hequet in her decisive way, "I start for London the day after tomorrow. Mamma's already over there getting a house ready for me. I'm certainly not going to let myself be massacred in Paris." Her mother, as became a prudent woman, had invested all her daughters' money in foreign lands.
And Labordette appeared, towing five women in his rear, his boarding school, as Lucy Stewart cruelly phrased it. There was Gaga, majestic in a blue velvet dress which was too tight for her, and Caroline Hequet, clad as usual in ribbed black silk, trimmed with Chantilly lace.
All the other ladies were losers. With a raging movement Rose Mignon had snapped her sunshade, and Caroline Hequet and Clarisse and Simonne nay, Lucy Stewart herself, despite the presence of her son were swearing low in their exasperation at that great wench's luck, while the Tricon, who had made the sign of the cross at both start and finish, straightened up her tall form above them, went into an ecstasy over her intuition and damned Nana admiringly as became an experienced matron.
There was an interchange of jests, and the sound of breaking glasses imparted a note of discord to the high-strung gaiety of the scene. Gaga and Clarisse, together with Blanche, were making a serious repast, for they were eating sandwiches on the carriage rug with which they had been covering their knees. Louise Violaine had got down from her basket carriage and had joined Caroline Hequet.
Some of them began to despair of ever getting to the end of it and began talking of returning. But the more their long walk fatigued them, the more respectful they became, for at each successive step they were increasingly impressed by the tranquil, lordly dignity of the domain. "It's getting silly, this is!" said Caroline Hequet, grinding her teeth. Nana silenced her with a shrug.
And so one fine afternoon she was vastly astonished and annoyed to see an omnibus full of people pulling up outside the gate of La Mignotte. "It's us!" cried Mignon, getting down first from the conveyance and extracting then his sons Henri and Charles. Labordette thereupon appeared and began handing out an interminable file of ladies Lucy Stewart, Caroline Hequet, Tatan Nene, Maria Blond.
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