The conversation continued, and same mention was made of an execution shortly to take place.  The young woman said she was burning to go to it when Satin appeared at the dressing-room door and called her in tones of entreaty.  She got up at once and left the gentlemen lolling lazily about, while they finished their cigars and discussed the grave question as to how far a murderer subject to chronic alcoholism is responsible for his act.  In the dressing room Zoe sat helpless on a chair, crying her heart out, while Satin vainly endeavored to console her.

“What’s the matter?” said Nana in surprise.

“Oh, darling, do speak to her!” said Satin.  “I’ve been trying to make her listen to reason for the last twenty minutes.  She’s crying because you called her a goose.”

“Yes, madame, it’s very hard—­very hard,” stuttered Zoe, choked by a fresh fit of sobbing.

This sad sight melted the young woman’s heart at once.  She spoke kindly, and when the other woman still refused to grow calm she sank down in front of her and took her round the waist with truly cordial familiarity: 

“But, you silly, I said ‘goose’ just as I might have said anything else.  How shall I explain?  I was in a passion—­it was wrong of me; now calm down.”

“I who love Madame so,” stuttered Zoe; “after all I’ve done for Madame.”

Thereupon Nana kissed the lady’s maid and, wishing to show her she wasn’t vexed, gave her a dress she had worn three times.  Their quarrels always ended up in the giving of presents!  Zoe plugged her handkerchief into her eyes.  She carried the dress off over her arm and added before leaving that they were very sad in the kitchen and that Julien and Francois had been unable to eat, so entirely had Madame’s anger taken away their appetites.  Thereupon Madame sent them a louis as a pledge of reconciliation.  She suffered too much if people around her were sorrowful.

Nana was returning to the drawing room, happy in the thought that she had patched up a disagreement which was rendering her quietly apprehensive of the morrow, when Satin came and whispered vehemently in her ear.  She was full of complaint, threatened to be off if those men still went on teasing her and kept insisting that her darling should turn them all out of doors for that night, at any rate.  It would be a lesson to them.  And then it would be so nice to be alone, both of them!  Nana, with a return of anxiety, declared it to be impossible.  Thereupon the other shouted at her like a violent child and tried hard to overrule her.

“I wish it, d’you see?  Send ’em away or I’m off!”

And she went back into the drawing room, stretched herself out in the recesses of a divan, which stood in the background near the window, and lay waiting, silent and deathlike, with her great eyes fixed upon Nana.