After that day the same little business began again continually.  On twenty different occasions Nana, tragically furious, as only a jilted woman can be ran off in pursuit of this sluttish creature, whose flights were prompted by the boredom she suffered amid the comforts of her new home.  Nana began to talk of boxing Mme Robert’s ears; one day she even meditated a duel; there was one woman too many, she said.

In these latter times, whenever she dined at Laure’s, she donned her diamonds and occasionally brought with her Louise Violaine, Maria Blond and Tatan Nene, all of them ablaze with finery; and while the sordid feast was progressing in the three saloons and the yellow gaslight flared overhead, these four resplendent ladies would demean themselves with a vengeance, for it was their delight to dazzle the little local courtesans and to carry them off when dinner was over.  On days such as these Laure, sleek and tight-laced as ever would kiss everyone with an air of expanded maternity.  Yet notwithstanding all these circumstances Satin’s blue eyes and pure virginal face remained as calm as heretofore; torn, beaten and pestered by the two women, she would simply remark that it was a funny business, and they would have done far better to make it up at once.  It did no good to slap her; she couldn’t cut herself in two, however much she wanted to be nice to everybody.  It was Nana who finally carried her off in triumph, so assiduously had she loaded Satin with kindnesses and presents.  In order to be revenged, however, Mme Robert wrote abominable, anonymous letters to her rival’s lovers.

For some time past Count Muffat had appeared suspicious, and one morning, with considerable show of feeling, he laid before Nana an anonymous letter, where in the very first sentences she read that she was accused of deceiving the count with Vandeuvres and the young Hugons.

“It’s false!  It’s false!” she loudly exclaimed in accents of extraordinary candor.

“You swear?” asked Muffat, already willing to be comforted.

“I’ll swear by whatever you like—­yes, by the head of my child!”

But the letter was long.  Soon her connection with Satin was described in the broadest and most ignoble terms.  When she had done reading she smiled.

“Now I know who it comes from,” she remarked simply.

And as Muffat wanted her denial to the charges therein contained, she resumed quietly enough: 

“That’s a matter which doesn’t concern you, dear old pet.  How can it hurt you?”

She did not deny anything.  He used some horrified expressions.  Thereupon she shrugged her shoulders.  Where had he been all this time?  Why, it was done everywhere!  And she mentioned her friends and swore that fashionable ladies went in for it.  In fact, to hear her speak, nothing could be commoner or more natural.  But a lie was a lie, and so a moment ago he had seen how angry she grew in the matter of Vandeuvres and the young Hugons!  Oh, if that had been true he would have been justified in throttling her!  But what was the good of lying to him about a matter of no consequence?  And with that she repeated her previous expression: