Nana knitted her brows as a sign that she was to hold her tongue, for they were surrounded by other women who wore dressing gowns and were without linen, while their disheveled tresses were white with fluff. In the morning, when the man picked up overnight had been newly dismissed, all the courtesans of the quarter were wont to come marketing here, their eyes heavy with sleep, their feet in old down-at-heel shoes and themselves full of the weariness and ill humor entailed by a night of boredom. From the four converging streets they came down into the market, looking still rather young in some cases and very pale and charming in their utter unconstraint; in others, hideous and old with bloated faces and peeling skin. The latter did not the least mind being seen thus outside working hours, and not one of them deigned to smile when the passers-by on the sidewalk turned round to look at them. Indeed, they were all very full of business and wore a disdainful expression, as became good housewives for whom men had ceased to exist. Just as Satin, for instance, was paying for her bunch of radishes a young man, who might have been a shop-boy going late to his work, threw her a passing greeting: “Good morning, duckie.” She straightened herself up at once and with the dignified manner becoming an offended queen remarked: “What’s up with that swine there?” Then she fancied she recognized him. Three days ago toward midnight, as the was coming back alone from the boulevards, she had talked to him at the corner of the Rue Labruyère for nearly half an hour, with a view to persuading him to come home with her. But this recollection only angered her the more. “Fancy they’re brutes enough to shout things to you in broad daylight!” she continued. “When one’s out on business one ought to be respectfully treated, eh?” Nana had ended by buying her pigeons, although she certainly had her doubts of their freshness. After which Satin wanted to show her where she lived in the Rue Rochefoucauld close by. And the moment they were alone Nana told her of her passion for Fontan. Arrived in front of the house, the girl stopped with her bundle of radishes under her arm and listened eagerly to a final detail which the other imparted to her. Nana fibbed away and vowed that it was she who had turned Count Muffat out of doors with a perfect hail of kicks on the posterior. “Oh how smart!” Satin repeated. “How very smart! Kicks, eh? And he never said a word, did he? What a blooming coward! I wish I’d been there to see his ugly mug! My dear girl, you were quite right. A pin for the coin! When I’M on with a mash I starve for it! You’ll come and see me, eh? You promise? It’s the left-hand door. Knock three knocks, for there’s a whole heap of damned squints about.”