He was almost three years old, growing quite a great boy! But he had had an eczema on the back of his neck, and now concretions were forming in his ears, which pointed, it was feared, to decay of the bones of the skull.

When she saw how pale he looked, with his spoiled blood and his flabby flesh all out in yellow patches, she would become serious, but her principal feeling would be one of astonishment.

What could be the matter with the little love that he should grow so weakly?
She, his mother, was so strong and well! On the days when her child did not engross attention Nana would again sink back into the noisy monotony of her existence, with its drives in the Bois, first nights at the theater, dinners and suppers at the Maison-d'Or or the Cafe Anglais, not to mention all the places of public resort, all the spectacles to which crowds rushed--Mabille, the reviews, the races.

But whatever happened she still felt that stupid, idle void, which caused her, as it were, to suffer internal cramps.

Despite the incessant infatuations that possessed her heart, she would stretch out her arms with a gesture of immense weariness the moment she was left alone.