With that he left off attending to the rehearsal and greeted the count with looks of exaggerated politeness, while Fauchery pretended to be entirely engrossed with his actors, who now grouped themselves round him.

Mignon stood whistling carelessly, with his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed complacently on his wife, who seemed rather nervous.
"Well, shall we go upstairs ?" Labordette asked Nana.

"I'll install you in the dressing room and come down again and fetch him." Nana forthwith left the corner box.

She had to grope her way along the passage outside the stalls, but Bordenave guessed where she was as she passed along in the dark and caught her up at the end of the corridor passing behind the scenes, a narrow tunnel where the gas burned day and night.

Here, in order to bluff her into a bargain, he plunged into a discussion of the courtesan's part.
"What a part it is, eh?
What a wicked little part! It's made for you.
Come and rehearse tomorrow." Nana was frigid.