she said furiously:

"What a conspiracy, eh? It's all owing to jealousy. Oh, if they only
knew how I despise 'em! What do I want them for nowadays? Look here!
I'll bet a hundred louis that I'll bring all those who made fun today
and make 'em lick the ground at my feet! Yes, I'll fine-lady your Paris
for you, I will!"

CHAPTER X

Thereupon Nana became a smart woman, mistress of all that is foolish and
filthy in man, marquise in the ranks of her calling. It was a sudden but
decisive start, a plunge into the garish day of gallant notoriety and
mad expenditure and that daredevil wastefulness peculiar to beauty.
She at once became queen among the most expensive of her kind. Her
photographs were displayed in shopwindows, and she was mentioned in the
papers. When she drove in her carriage along the boulevards the people
would turn and tell one another who that was with all the unction of
a nation saluting its sovereign, while the object of their adoration
lolled easily back in her diaphanous dresses and smiled gaily under the
rain of little golden curls which ran riot above the blue of her made-up
eyes and the red of her painted lips. And the wonder of wonders was that
the great creature, who was so awkward on the stage, so very absurd the
moment she sought to act the chaste woman, was able without effort to
assume the role of an enchantress in the outer world. Her movements
were lithe as a serpent's, and the studied and yet seemingly involuntary
carelessness with which she dressed was really exquisite in its
elegance. There was a nervous distinction in all she did which suggested
a wellborn Persian cat; she was an aristocrat in vice and proudly and
rebelliously trampled upon a prostrate Paris like a sovereign whom none
dare disobey. She set the fashion, and great ladies imitated her.

Nana's fine house was situated at the corner of the Rue Cardinet, in the
Avenue de Villiers. The avenue was part of the luxurious quarter at that
time springing up in the vague district which had once been the
Plaine Monceau. The house had been built by a young painter, who was
intoxicated by a first success, and had been perforce resold almost as
soon as it was habitable. It was in the palatial Renaissance manner
and had fantastic interior arrangements which consisted of modern
conveniences framed in a setting of somewhat artificial originality.
Count Muffat had bought the house ready furnished and full of hosts of
beautiful objects--