The count went up to the dressing glass and discovered that he was looking very flushed and had small drops of perspiration on his forehead.

He dropped his eyes and came and took up a position in front of the toilet table, where the basin, full of soapy water, the small, scattered, ivory toilet utensils and the damp sponges, appeared for some moments to absorb his attention.

The feeling of dizziness which he had experienced when he first visited Nana in the Boulevard Haussmann once more overcame him.

He felt the thick carpet soften under foot, and the gasjets burning by the dressing table and by the glass seemed to shoot whistling flames about his temples.

For one moment, being afraid of fainting away under the influence of those feminine odors which he now re-encountered, intensified by the heat under the low-pitched ceiling, he sat down on the edge of a softly padded divan between the two windows.