“Stop, Charles!” she shouted to the coachman and began calling:  “Satin, Satin!”

Passers-by turned their heads; the whole street stared.  Satin had drawn near and was still further soiling herself against the carriage wheels.

“Do get in, my dear girl,” said Nana tranquilly, disdaining the onlookers.

And with that she picked her up and carried her off, though she was in disgusting contrast to her light blue landau and her dress of pearl-gray silk trimmed with Chantilly, while the street smiled at the coachman’s loftily dignified demeanor.

From that day forth Nana had a passion to occupy her thoughts.  Satin became her vicious foible.  Washed and dressed and duly installed in the house in the Avenue de Villiers, during three days the girl talked of Saint-Lazare and the annoyances the sisters had caused her and how those dirty police people had put her down on the official list.  Nana grew indignant and comforted her and vowed she would get her name taken off, even though she herself should have to go and find out the minister of the interior.  Meanwhile there was no sort of hurry:  nobody would come and search for her at Nana’s—­that was certain.  And thereupon the two women began to pass tender afternoons together, making numberless endearing little speeches and mingling their kisses with laughter.  The same little sport, which the arrival of the plainclothes men had interrupted in the Rue de Laval, was beginning again in a jocular sort of spirit.  One fine evening, however, it became serious, and Nana, who had been so disgusted at Laure’s, now understood what it meant.  She was upset and enraged by it, the more so because Satin disappeared on the morning of the fourth day.  No one had seen her go out.  She had, indeed, slipped away in her new dress, seized by a longing for air, full of sentimental regret for her old street existence.

That day there was such a terrible storm in the house that all the servants hung their heads in sheepish silence.  Nana had come near beating Francois for not throwing himself across the door through which Satin escaped.  She did her best, however, to control herself, and talked of Satin as a dirty swine.  Oh, it would teach her to pick filthy things like that out of the gutter!

When Madame shut herself up in her room in the afternoon Zoe heard her sobbing.  In the evening she suddenly asked for her carriage and had herself driven to Laure’s.  It had occurred to her that she would find Satin at the table d’hote in the Rue des Martyrs.  She was not going there for the sake of seeing her again but in order to catch her one in the face!  As a matter of fact Satin was dining at a little table with Mme Robert.  Seeing Nana, she began to laugh, but the former, though wounded to the quick, did not make a scene.  On the contrary, she was very sweet and very compliant.  She paid for champagne made five or six tablefuls tipsy and then carried off Satin when Mme Robert was in the closets.  Not till they were in the carriage did she make a mordant attack on her, threatening to kill her if she did it again.