When she was out in the street her first thought was to go and sleep with Satin, provided the girl had no one with her.  She met her in front of her house, for she, too, had been turned out of doors by her landlord.  He had just had a padlock affixed to her door—­quite illegally, of course, seeing that she had her own furniture.  She swore and talked of having him up before the commissary of police.  In the meantime, as midnight was striking, they had to begin thinking of finding a bed.  And Satin, deeming it unwise to let the plain-clothes men into her secrets, ended by taking Nana to a woman who kept a little hotel in the Rue de Laval.  Here they were assigned a narrow room on the first floor, the window of which opened on the courtyard.  Satin remarked: 

“I should gladly have gone to Mme Robert’s.  There’s always a corner there for me.  But with you it’s out of the question.  She’s getting absurdly jealous; she beat me the other night.”

When they had shut themselves in, Nana, who had not yet relieved her feelings, burst into tears and again and again recounted Fontan’s dirty behavior.  Satin listened complaisantly, comforted her, grew even more angry than she in denunciation of the male sex.

“Oh, the pigs, the pigs!  Look here, we’ll have nothing more to do with them!”

Then she helped Nana to undress with all the small, busy attentions, becoming a humble little friend.  She kept saying coaxingly: 

“Let’s go to bed as fast as we can, pet.  We shall be better off there!  Oh, how silly you are to get crusty about things!  I tell you, they’re dirty brutes.  Don’t think any more about ’em.  I—­I love you very much.  Don’t cry, and oblige your own little darling girl.”

And once in bed, she forthwith took Nana in her arms and soothed and comforted her.  She refused to hear Fontan’s name mentioned again, and each time it recurred to her friend’s lips she stopped it with a kiss.  Her lips pouted in pretty indignation; her hair lay loose about her, and her face glowed with tenderness and childlike beauty.  Little by little her soft embrace compelled Nana to dry her tears.  She was touched and replied to Satin’s caresses.  When two o’clock struck the candle was still burning, and a sound of soft, smothered laughter and lovers’ talk was audible in the room.

But suddenly a loud noise came up from the lower floors of the hotel, and Satin, with next to nothing on, got up and listened intently.

“The police!” she said, growing very pale.

“Oh, blast our bad luck!  We’re bloody well done for!”

Often had she told stories about the raids on hotel made by the plainclothes men.  But that particular night neither of them had suspected anything when they took shelter in the Rue de Laval.  At the sound of the word “police” Nana lost her head.  She jumped out of bed and ran across the room with the scared look of a madwoman about to jump out of the window.  Luckily, however, the little courtyard was roofed with glass, which was covered with an iron-wire grating at the level of the girls’ bedroom.  At sight of this she ceased to hesitate; she stepped over the window prop, and with her chemise flying and her legs bared to the night air she vanished in the gloom.