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By Root 1287 0

“stupid fool!” now and again behind the backs of the awkward fellows whose heels caught in their flounces. They exchanged familiar nods with the café waiters, lingered sometimes to talk at the tables, accepting drinks which they swallowed slowly, like persons happy at having the chance to sit down, while waiting till the people came out of the theatres. But, as the night advanced, if they had not made one or two trips to the Rue la Rochefoucauld, their pursuit became more eager—they no longer picked and chose. Beneath the trees of the now gloomy and almost deserted Boulevards, ferocious bargains were made, and occasionally the sound of oaths and blows would be heard; whilst fathers of families, with their wives and daughters, used to such encounters, would pass sedately by without hastening their footsteps.

Then, after having made the tour ten times from the Opera to the Gymnase Theatre, finding that the men avoided them, and hurried along all the faster in the increasing obscurity, Nana and Satin would adjourn to the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre. There, up till two o’clock in the morning, the lights of the restaurants, of the beer saloons, and of the pork-butchers, blazed away, whilst quite a swarm of women hung about the doors of the cafés; it was the last bright and animated corner of nocturnal Paris, the last open market for the contracts of a night, where business was overtly transacted among the various groups, from one end of the street to the other, the same as in the spacious hall of some public building. And on the nights when they returned home unsuccessful, they wrangled with each other. The Rue Notre-Dame de Lorette appeared dark and deserted, with only the occasional shadow of some woman dragging herself along; it was the tardy return of the poor girls of the neighbourhood, exasperated by an evening of forced idleness, and pertinaciously striving for better luck as they argued in a hoarse voice with some drunkard who had lost his way, and whom they detained at the corner of the Rue Bréda or the Rue Fontaine.

However, they occasionally had some very good windfalls—louis given them by well-dressed gentlemen, who put their decorations in their pockets as they accompanied them. Satin especially scented them from afar. On wet nights, when dank Paris emitted the unsavoury smell of a vast alcove seldom cleansed, she knew that the dampness of the atmosphere, the fetidness of the low haunts, excited the men. And she watched for those that were the best off; she could see it in their pale eyes. It was like a stroke of carnal madness passing over the city. It is true that she was at times rather frightened, for she knew that the most gentlemanly-looking men were generally the most filthy-minded. All the polish vanished and the brute appeared beneath, exacting in his monstrous tastes and refined in his perversion. So Satin, therefore, had no respect for the great people in their carriages, but would say that their coachmen were far nicer, for they treated women as they should be treated, and did not half kill them with ideas worthy of hell.

This fall of well-to-do people into the crapulence of vice still astonished Nana, who had reserved certain prejudices of which Satin relieved her. When seriously discussing the subject she would ask, Was there, then, no virtue? From the highest to the lowest, all seemed to grovel in vice. Well! there were some pretty doings in Paris from nine in the evening till three in the morning; and then she would laugh aloud and exclaim that if one were only able to look into all the rooms, one would witness some very queer things—the lower classes going in for a regular treat, and here and there not a few of the upper classes poking their noses even more than the others into the beastly goings-on. She was completing her education.

One night, on calling for Satin, she recognised the Marquis de Chouard coming down the stairs, leaning heavily on the balustrade, his legs yielding beneath him, and his face ghastly pale. She took out her handkerchief and pretended to blow her nose; then, when she