Sometimes her landau, in its haste to get by, stopped a file of puissant turnouts, wherein sat plutocrats able to buy up all Europe or Cabinet ministers with plump fingers tight-pressed to the throat of France.

She belonged to this Bois society, occupied a prominent place in it, was known in every capital and asked about by every foreigner.

The splendors of this crowd were enhanced by the madness of her profligacy as though it were the very crown, the darling passion, of the nation.

Then there were unions of a night, continual passages of desire, which she lost count of the morning after, and these sent her touring through the grand restaurants and on fine days, as often as not, to "Madrid." The staffs of all the embassies visited her, and she, Lucy Stewart, Caroline Hequet and Maria Blond would dine in the society of gentlemen who murdered the French language and paid to be amused, engaging them by the evening with orders to be funny and yet proving so blase and so worn out that they never even touched them.

This the ladies called "going on a spree," and they would return home happy at having been despised and would finish the night in the arms of the lovers of their choice.
When she did not actually throw the men at his head Count Muffat pretended not to know about all this.