"Knock away; I don't care! If I'm not ready, well, they'll have to wait for me!" She grew calm again and, turning to the gentlemen, added with a smile: "It's true: we've only got a minute left for our talk." Her face and arms were now finished, and with her fingers she put two large dabs of carmine on her lips.

Count Muffat felt more excited than ever.

He was ravished by the perverse transformation wrought by powders and paints and filled by a lawless yearning for those young painted charms, for the too-red mouth and the too-white face and the exaggerated eyes, ringed round with black and burning and dying for very love.
Meanwhile Nana went behind the curtain for a second or two in order to take off her drawers and slip on Venus' tights.

After which, with tranquil immodesty, she came out and undid her little linen stays and held out her arms to Mme Jules, who drew the short-sleeved tunic over them.
"Make haste; they're growing angry!" she muttered.
The prince with half-closed eyes marked the swelling lines of her bosom with an air of connoisseurship, while the Marquis de Chouard wagged his head involuntarily.

Muffat gazed at the carpet in order not to see any more.