a matter of three francs, but she felt it was hard lines all the same—­her way of doing it was too disgusting.  Nevertheless, she paid up, throwing the six francs at Laure, whom at the moment she despised more than the mud in the street.  In the Rue des Martyrs Nana felt her bitterness increasing.  She was certainly not going to run after Satin!  It was a nice filthy business for one to be poking one’s nose into!  But her evening was spoiled, and she walked slowly up again toward Montmartre, raging against Mme Robert in particular.  Gracious goodness, that woman had a fine cheek to go playing the lady—­yes, the lady in the dustbin!  She now felt sure she had met her at the Papillon, a wretched public-house ball in the Rue des Poissonniers, where men conquered her scruples for thirty sous.  And to think a thing like that got hold of important functionaries with her modest looks!  And to think she refused suppers to which one did her the honor of inviting her because, forsooth, she was playing the virtuous game!  Oh yes, she’d get virtued!  It was always those conceited prudes who went the most fearful lengths in low corners nobody knew anything about.

Revolving these matters, Nana at length reached her home in the Rue Veron and was taken aback on observing a light in the window.  Fontan had come home in a sulk, for he, too, had been deserted by the friend who had been dining with him.  He listened coldly to her explanations while she trembled lest he should strike her.  It scared her to find him at home, seeing that she had not expected him before one in the morning, and she told him a fib and confessed that she had certainly spent six francs, but in Mme Maloir’s society.  He was not ruffled, however, and he handed her a letter which, though addressed to her, he had quietly opened.  It was a letter from Georges, who was still a prisoner at Les Fondettes and comforted himself weekly with the composition of glowing pages.  Nana loved to be written to, especially when the letters were full of grand, loverlike expressions with a sprinkling of vows.  She used to read them to everybody.  Fontan was familiar with the style employed by Georges and appreciated it.  But that evening she was so afraid of a scene that she affected complete indifference, skimming through the letter with a sulky expression and flinging it aside as soon as read.  Fontan had begun beating a tattoo on a windowpane; the thought of going to bed so early bored him, and yet he did not know how to employ his evening.  He turned briskly round: 

“Suppose we answer that young vagabond at once,” he said.

It was the custom for him to write the letters in reply.  He was wont to vie with the other in point of style.  Then, too, he used to be delighted when Nana, grown enthusiastic after the letter had been read over aloud, would kiss him with the announcement that nobody but he could “say things like that.”  Thus their latent affections would be stirred, and they would end with mutual adoration.