One evening at Nana's he began to cry and asked her for a loan of a hundred francs wherewith to pay his maidservant.

And Nana, much affected and amused at the end of this terrible old man who had squeezed Paris for twenty years, brought it to him and said: "I say, I'm giving it you because it seems so funny! But listen to me, my boy, you are too old for me to keep.

You must find something else to do." Then Nana started on La Faloise at once.

He had for some time been longing for the honor of being ruined by her in order to put the finishing stroke on his smartness.

He needed a woman to launch him properly; it was the one thing still lacking.