But all that now struck him as insignificant.

Nana excited him far more.

Viewing the fruit of her labors, he once more experienced the feelings of respect that had overcome him one festal evening in a sugar refiner's chateau.

This chateau had been erected for the refiner, and its palatial proportions and royal splendor had been paid for by a single material--sugar.

It was with something quite different, with a little laughable folly, a little delicate nudity--it was with this shameful trifle, which is so powerful as to move the universe, that she alone, without workmen, without the inventions of engineers, had shaken Paris to its foundations and had built up a fortune on the bodies of dead men.
"Oh, by God, what an implement!" Mignon let the words escape him in his ecstasy, for he felt a return of personal gratitude.
Nana had gradually lapsed into a most mournful condition.