But Daguenet winked behind his round shoulders and added in chaffing tones: "The deuce, but you're doing nicely! You catch 'em in the Tuileries nowadays!" Nana smiled and laid a finger on her lips to beg him to be silent.

She could see he was very much exalted, and yet she was glad to have met him, for she still felt tenderly toward him, and that despite the nasty way he had cut her when in the company of fashionable ladies.
"What are you doing now ?" she asked amicably.
"Becoming respectable.

Yes indeed, I'm thinking of getting married." She shrugged her shoulders with a pitying air.

But he jokingly continued to the effect that to be only just gaining enough on 'change to buy ladies bouquets could scarcely be called an income, provided you wanted to look respectable too! His three hundred thousand francs had only lasted him eighteen months! He wanted to be practical, and he was going to marry a girl with a huge dowry and end off as a PREFET, like his father before him! Nana still smiled incredulously.

She nodded in the direction of the saloon: "Who are you with in there ?" "Oh, a whole gang," he said, forgetting all about his projects under the influence of returning intoxication.