At ten o'clock the next morning Nana was still asleep.

She occupied the second floor of a large new house in the Boulevard Haussmann, the landlord of which let flats to single ladies in order by their means to dry the paint.

A rich merchant from Moscow, who had come to pass a winter in Paris, had installed her there after paying six months' rent in advance.

The rooms were too big for her and had never been completely furnished.

The vulgar sumptuosity of gilded consoles and gilded chairs formed a crude contrast therein to the bric-a-brac of a secondhand furniture shop--to mahogany round tables, that is to say, and zinc candelabras, which sought to imitate Florentine bronze.