But
Fontan stepped out on the landing. He looked terrible, and he spread out
and crooked his great fingers as if they were pincers.
"Hook it or I'll strangle you!"
Whereupon Nana burst into a nervous fit of sobbing. She was frightened
and she made off. This time it was she that was being kicked out of
doors. And in her fury the thought of Muffat suddenly occurred to her.
Ah, to be sure, Fontan, of all men, ought never to have done her such a
turn!
When she was out in the street her first thought was to go and sleep
with Satin, provided the girl had no one with her. She met her in
front of her house, for she, too, had been turned out of doors by
her landlord. He had just had a padlock affixed to her door--quite
illegally, of course, seeing that she had her own furniture. She swore
and talked of having him up before the commissary of police. In the
meantime, as midnight was striking, they had to begin thinking of
finding a bed. And Satin, deeming it unwise to let the plain-clothes
men into her secrets, ended by taking Nana to a woman who kept a little
hotel in the Rue de Laval. Here they were assigned a narrow room on
the first floor, the window of which opened on the courtyard. Satin
remarked:
"I should gladly have gone to Mme Robert's.
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