us outside working hours, and not one of them deigned to smile
when the passers-by on the sidewalk turned round to look at them.
Indeed, they were all very full of business and wore a disdainful
expression, as became good housewives for whom men had ceased to exist.
Just as Satin, for instance, was paying for her bunch of radishes a
young man, who might have been a shop-boy going late to his work, threw
her a passing greeting:

"Good morning, duckie."

She straightened herself up at once and with the dignified manner
becoming an offended queen remarked:

"What's up with that swine there?"

Then she fancied she recognized him. Three days ago toward midnight, as
the was coming back alone from the boulevards, she had talked to him at
the corner of the Rue Labruyere for nearly half an hour, with a view to
persuading him to come home with her. But this recollection only angered
her the more.

"Fancy they're brutes enough to shout things to you in broad daylight!"
she continued. "When one's out on business one ought to be respectfully
treated, eh?"

Nana had ended by buying her pigeons, although she certainly had her
doubts of their freshness. After which Satin wanted to show her where
she lived in the Rue Rochefoucauld close by. And the moment they were
alone Nana told her of her passion for Fontan. Arrived in front of the
house, the girl stopped with her bundle of radishes under her arm and
listened eagerly to a final detail which the other imparted to her. Nana
fibbed away and vowed that it was she who had turned Count Muffat out of
doors with a perfect hail of kicks on the posterior.

"Oh how smart!" Satin repeated. "How very smart! Kicks, eh? And he never
said a word, did he? What a blooming coward! I wish I'd been there to
see his ugly mug! My dear girl, you were quite right. A pin for the
coin! When I'M on with a mash I starve for it! You'll come and see
me, eh? You promise? It's the left-hand door. Knock three knocks, for
there's a whole heap of damned squints about."

After that whenever Nana grew too weary of life she went down and saw
Satin. She was always sure of finding her, for the girl never went out
before six in the evening. Satin occupied a couple of rooms which a
chemist had furnished for her in order to save her from the clutches
of the police, but in little more than a twelvemonth she had broken the
furniture, knocked in the chairs, dirtied the curtains, and that in a
manner so furiously filthy