Thereupon Nana became a smart woman, mistress of all that is foolish and filthy¹ in man, marquise in the ranks of her calling. It was a sudden but decisive start, a plunge² into the garish³ day of gallant⁴ notoriety and mad expenditure⁵ and that daredevil wastefulness⁶ peculiar⁷ to beauty. She at once became queen among the most expensive of her kind. Her photographs were displayed in shopwindows, and she was mentioned in the papers. When she drove in her carriage along the boulevards the people would turn and tell one another who that was with all the unction of a nation saluting⁸ its sovereign, while the object of their adoration⁹ lolled easily back in her diaphanous¹⁰ dresses and smiled gaily¹¹ under the rain of little golden curls which ran riot above the blue of her made-up eyes and the red of her painted lips. And the wonder of wonders was that the great creature, who was so awkward on the stage, so very absurd the moment she sought to act the chaste¹² woman, was able without effort to assume the role of an enchantress in the outer world. Her movements were lithe¹³ as a serpent's, and the studied and yet seemingly involuntary carelessness with which she dressed was really