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By Root 1468 0

questioned her in regard to some details of vice, amazed at learning something fresh at her age, after all she knew. She laughed, and thought it very funny, yet feeling all the time a slight repugnance, for at heart she was rather conservative in her habits. She often went to Laure’s when Fontan dined out. She was amused with the stories she heard there, with the loves and the jealousies which had so much interest for the other customers, though they never caused them to lose a mouthful. However she was never mixed up with them, as she said. Stout Laure, with her maternal affection, often invited her to spend a few days at her villa at Asnieres—a country house where there were rooms for seven ladies. She declined—she was afraid; but Satin having declared to her that she was mistaken, that gentlemen from Paris would swing them and play at different games in the garden with them, she promised to come later on, as soon as she was able to get away.

At that time Nana was very worried, and was not much inclined for a spree. She was greatly in want of money. When old Tricon had nothing for her, and that occurred only too often, she did not know whom to go to. Then she would wander about with Satin all over Paris, amidst that degrading vice which prowls along the muddy by-streets, beneath the dim glimmer of the gas lamps. Nana returned to the low dancing places of the barriers, where she had first learned to hop about with her dirty skirts. She once more beheld the dark corners of the outer Boulevards, the posts against which men used to kiss her when only fifteen years old, whilst her father was seeking her to give her a hiding. They both hastened along, visiting all the balls and the cafés of a locality, crawling up stairs wet with saliva and spilt beer; or else they walked slowly, following street after street, and standing up every now and then in the doorways. Satin, who had first appeared in the Quartier Latin, took Nana there, to Bullier’s, and to the cafés of the Boulevard Saint-Michel. But it was vacation time, and the quarter was almost deserted; so they returned to the principal Boulevards. It was there that they met with most luck. From the heights of Montmartre to the plateau where the Observatory was situated, they thus rambled about the entire city. Rainy nights when their shoes would become trodden down at heel, warm nights which made their clothes adhere to their skin, long waits and endless wanderings, jostlings and quarrels, brutal abuse from a passer-by enticed into some obscure lodging, down the dirty stairs of which he retired swearing.

The summer was drawing to a close—a stormy summer, with sultry nights. They would start off together after dinner, about nine o‘clock. Along the pavements of the Rue Notre-Dame de Lorette, two lines of women, keeping close to the shops, holding up their skirts, their noses pointing to the ground, might be seen hastening towards the Boulevards, without bestowing a glance on the displays in the windows, and looking as though they had some most important business on hand. It was the famished onslaught of the Bréda quarter, which commenced with the first glimmer of the gas-light. Nana and Satin passed close to the church, and always went along the Rue le Peletier. Then, at a hundred yards from the Café Riche, having reached the exercising ground, they would let fall the trains of their dresses, which until that moment they had carefully held in their hands; and after then, regardless of the dust, sweeping the pavement and swinging their bodies, they would walk slowly along, moving slower still whenever they came into the flood of light of some large café. Holding their heads high, laughing loudly, and looking back after the men who turned to glance at them, they were in their element. Their whitened faces, spotted with the red of their lips and the black of their eye-lashes, assumed in the shadow the disturbing charm of some imitation Eastern bazaar held in the open street. Until twelve o’clock, in spite of the jostling of the crowd, they promenaded gaily along, merely muttering