Nana looked steadily at Satin.  “Tut, tut,” she said softly.  After all, it didn’t matter to her!  Yet seeing that the lady was keeping them waiting, she declared that she would not stay longer, and accordingly they both took their departure.

The next day Fontan informed Nana that he was not coming home to dinner, and she went down early to find Satin with a view to treating her at a restaurant.  The choice of the restaurant involved infinite debate.  Satin proposed various brewery bars, which Nana thought detestable, and at last persuaded her to dine at Laure’s.  This was a table d’hote in the Rue des Martyrs, where the dinner cost three francs.

Tired of waiting for the dinner hour and not knowing what to do out in the street, the pair went up to Laure’s twenty minutes too early.  The three dining rooms there were still empty, and they sat down at a table in the very saloon where Laure Piedefer was enthroned on a high bench behind a bar.  This Laure was a lady of some fifty summers, whose swelling contours were tightly laced by belts and corsets.  Women kept entering in quick procession, and each, in passing, craned upward so as to overtop the saucers raised on the counter and kissed Laure on the mouth with tender familiarity, while the monstrous creature tried, with tears in her eyes, to divide her attentions among them in such a way as to make no one jealous.  On the other hand, the servant who waited on the ladies was a tall, lean woman.  She seemed wasted with disease, and her eyes were ringed with dark lines and glowed with somber fire.  Very rapidly the three saloons filled up.  There were some hundred customers, and they had seated themselves wherever they could find vacant places.  The majority were nearing the age of forty:  their flesh was puffy and so bloated by vice as almost to hide the outlines of their flaccid mouths.  But amid all these gross bosoms and figures some slim, pretty girls were observable.  These still wore a modest expression despite their impudent gestures, for they were only beginners in their art, who had started life in the ballrooms of the slums and had been brought to Laure’s by some customer or other.  Here the tribe of bloated women, excited by the sweet scent of their youth, jostled one another and, while treating them to dainties, formed a perfect court round them, much as old amorous bachelors might have done.  As to the men, they were not numerous.  There were ten or fifteen of them at the outside, and if we except four tall fellows who had come to see the sight and were cracking jokes and taking things easy, they behaved humbly enough amid this whelming flood of petticoats.

“I say, their stew’s very good, ain’t it?” said Satin.