But besides being nervous, that trollop of a Satin was lacking in respect.

She would blurt out awful things in front of dignified gentlemen in carriages and assure them that their coachmen were better bred than they because they behaved respectfully toward the women and did not half kill them with their diabolical tricks and suggestions.

The way in which smart people sprawled head over heels into all the cesspools of vice still caused Nana some surprise, for she had a few prejudices remaining, though Satin was rapidly destroying them.
"Well then," she used to say when talking seriously about the matter, "there's no such thing as virtue left, is there ?" From one end of the social ladder to the other everybody was on the loose! Good gracious! Some nice things ought to be going on in Paris between nine o'clock in the evening and three in the morning! And with that she began making very merry and declaring that if one could only have looked into every room one would have seen some funny sights--the little people going it head over ears and a good lot of swells, too, playing the swine rather harder than the rest.

Oh, she was finishing her education! One evening when she came to call for Satin she recognized the Marquis de Chouard.

He was coming downstairs with quaking legs; his face was ashen white, and he leaned heavily on the banisters.