In the summer they would swoop upon the
boulevard in parties of twelve or fifteen, surround a whole long reach
of sidewalk and fish up as many as thirty women in an evening. Satin,
however, knew the likely places, and the moment she saw a plain-clothes
man heaving in sight she took to her heels, while the long lines of
women on the pavements scattered in consternation and fled through the
surrounding crowd. The dread of the law and of the magistracy was such
that certain women would stand as though paralyzed in the doorways of
the cafes while the raid was sweeping the avenue without. But Satin
was even more afraid of being denounced, for her pastry cook had proved
blackguard enough to threaten to sell her when she had left him. Yes,
that was a fake by which men lived on their mistresses! Then, too, there
were the dirty women who delivered you up out of sheer treachery if you
were prettier than they! Nana listened to these recitals and felt her
terrors growing upon her. She had always trembled before the law, that
unknown power, that form of revenge practiced by men able and willing
to crush her in the certain absence of all defenders. Saint-Lazare she
pictured as a grave, a dark hole, in which they buried live women after
they had cut off their hair.
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