He put up with Mme Lerat and her encumbrances, with Louiset and the mournful complaints peculiar to a child who is being eaten up with the rottenness inherited from some unknown father.

But he spent hours worse than these.

One evening he had heard Nana angrily telling her maid that a man pretending to be rich had just swindled her--a handsome man calling himself an American and owning gold mines in his own country, a beast who had gone off while she was asleep without giving her a copper and had even taken a packet of cigarette papers with him.

The count had turned very pale and had gone downstairs again on tiptoe so as not to hear more.

But later he had to hear all.