The gentlemen were blinking in bewilderment over the wild whirl of petticoats eddying at the foot of the narrow stairs.

It made them desperate to think they had waited so long, only to see them all flying away like this without being able to recognize a single one.
The litter of little black cats were sleeping on the oilcloth, nestled against their mother's belly, and the latter was stretching her paws out in a state of beatitude while the big tortoise-shell cat sat at the other end of the table, her tail stretched out behind her and her yellow eyes solemnly following the flight of the women.
"If His Highness will be good enough to come this way," said Bordenave at the bottom of the stairs, and he pointed to the passage.
Some chorus girls were still crowding along it.

The prince began following Nana while Muffat and the marquis walked behind.
It was a long, narrow passage lying between the theater and the house next door, a kind of contracted by-lane which had been covered with a sloping glass roof.

Damp oozed from the walls, and the footfall sounded as hollow on the tiled floor as in an underground vault.

It was crowded with the kind of rubbish usually found in a garret.