She listened to him with bowed head while he spoke to her with a pained expression, as became a connoisseur who could not bear to see so fine a girl making such a hash of things.
"Well, that's my affair," she said at last "Thanks all the same, dear boy." She shook his hand, which despite his perfect dress was always a little greasy, and then went off to buy her fish.

During the day that story about the kick on the bottom occupied her thoughts.

She even spoke about it to Fontan and again posed as a sturdy woman who was not going to stand the slightest flick from anybody.

Fontan, as became a philosophic spirit, declared that all men of fashion were beasts whom it was one's duty to despise.

And from that moment forth Nana was full of very real disdain.
That same evening they went to the Bouffes-Parisiens Theatre to see a little woman of Fontan's acquaintance make her debut in a part of some ten lines.