The workroom at Titreville’s was a large apartment on the first floor, with a broad work-table standing on trestles in the centre.
Round the four walls, the plaster of which was visible in parts where the dirty yellowish-grey paper was torn away, there were several stands covered with old cardboard boxes, parcels and discarded patterns under a thick coating of dust.
The gas had left what appeared to be like a daub of soot on the ceiling.
The two windows opened so wide that without leaving the work-table the girls could see the people walking past on the pavement over the way.
Madame Lerat arrived the first, in view of setting an example.
Then for a quarter of an hour the door swayed to and fro, and all the workgirls scrambled in, perspiring with tumbled hair.
One July morning Nana arrived the last, as very often happened.
“Ah, me!” she said, “it won’t be a pity when I have a carriage of my own.”
And without even taking off her hat, one which she was weary of patching up, she approached the window and leant out, looking to the right and the left to see what was going on in the street.
“What are you looking at?” asked Madame Lerat, suspiciously.
“Did your father come with you?”
“No, you may be sure of that,” answered Nana coolly.
“I’m looking at nothing — I’m seeing how hot it is.
It’s enough to make anyone, having to run like that.”
It was a stifling hot morning.
The workgirls had drawn down the Venetian blinds, between which they could spy out into the street; and they had at last begun working on either side of the table, at the upper end of which sat Madame Lerat.
They were eight in number, each with her pot of glue, pincers, tools and curling stand in front of her. On the work-table lay a mass of wire, reels, cotton wool, green and brown paper, leaves and petals cut out of silk, satin or velvet.
In the centre, in the neck of a large decanter, one flower-girl had thrust a little penny nosegay which had been fading on her breast since the day before.
“Oh, I have some news,” said a pretty brunette named Leonie as she leaned over her cushion to crimp some rose petals.
“Poor Caroline is very unhappy about that fellow who used to wait for her every evening.”
“Ah!” said Nana, who was cutting thin strips of green paper.
“A man who cheats on her every day!”
Madame Lerat had to display severity over the muffled laughter.
Then Leonie whispered suddenly:
“Quiet.
The boss!”
It was indeed Madame Titreville who entered.
The tall thin woman usually stayed down in the shop.
The girls were quite in awe of her because she never joked with them.
All the heads were now bent over the work in diligent silence. Madame Titreville slowly circled the work-table. She told one girl her work was sloppy and made her do the flower over.
Then she stalked out as stiffly as she had come in. The complaining and low laughter began again.
“Really, young ladies!” said Madame Lerat, trying to look more severe than ever.
“You will force me to take measures.”
The workgirls paid no attention to her. They were not afraid of her.
She was too easy-going because she enjoyed being surrounded by these young girls whose zest for life sparkled in their eyes. She enjoyed taking them aside to hear their confidences about their lovers. She even told their fortunes with cards whenever a corner of the work-table was free.
She was only offended by coarse expressions. As long as you avoided those you could say what you pleased.
To tell the truth, Nana perfected her education in nice style in the workroom!
No doubt she was already inclined to go wrong.
But this was the finishing stroke — associating with a lot of girls who were already worn out with misery and vice.
They all hobnobbed and rotted together, just the story of the baskets of apples when there are rotten ones among them.
They maintained a certain propriety in public, but the smut flowed freely when they got to whispering together in a corner.
For inexperienced girls like Nana, there was an undesirable atmosphere around the workshop, an air of cheap dance halls and unorthodox evenings brought in by some of the girls.
The laziness of mornings after a gay night, the shadows under the eyes, the lounging, the hoarse voices, all spread an odor of dark perversion over the work-table which contrasted sharply with the brilliant fragility of the artificial flowers.
Nana eagerly drank it all in and was dizzy with joy when she found herself beside a girl who had been around.
She always wanted to sit next to big Lisa, who was said to be pregnant, and she kept glancing curiously at her neighbor as though expecting her to swell up suddenly.
“It’s hot enough to make one stifle,” Nana said, approaching a window as if to draw the blind farther down; but she leant forward and again looked out both to the right and left.
At the same moment Leonie, who was watching a man stationed at the foot of the pavement over the way, exclaimed,
“What’s that old fellow about?
He’s been spying here for the last quarter of an hour.”
“Some tom cat,” said Madame Lerat.