"Yes, madame, Monsieur Paul went away not ten minutes back. As Madame
was tired, he did not wish to wake her. But he ordered me to tell Madame
that he would come tomorrow."

As she spoke Zoe, the lady's maid, opened the outer shutter. A flood of
daylight entered. Zoe, a dark brunette with hair in little plaits, had
a long canine face, at once livid and full of seams, a snub nose, thick
lips and two black eyes in continual movement.

"Tomorrow, tomorrow," repeated Nana, who was not yet wide awake, "is
tomorrow the day?"

"Yes, madame, Monsieur Paul has always come on the Wednesday."

"No, now I remember," said the young woman, sitting up. "It's all
changed. I wanted to tell him so this morning. He would run against the
nigger! We should have a nice to-do!"

"Madame did not warn me; I couldn't be aware of it," murmured Zoe. "When
Madame changes her days she will do well to tell me so that I may know.
Then the old miser is no longer due on the Tuesday?"

Between themselves they were wont thus gravely to nickname as "old
miser" and "nigger" their two paying visitors, one of whom was a
tradesman of economical tendencies from the Faubourg Saint-Denis, while
the other was a Walachian, a mock count, whose money, paid always at the
most irregular intervals, never looked as though it had been honestly
come by. Daguenet had made Nana give him the days subsequent to the old
miser's visits, and as the trader had to be at home by eight o'clock