two o'clock in the morning
Beneath the trees in the darkening and fast-emptying boulevards fierce bargainings took place , accompanied by oaths and blows . Respectable family parties -- fathers , mothers and daughters -- who were used to such scenes , would pass quietly by the while without quickening their pace . Afterward , when they had walked from the opera to the GYMNASE some half-score times and in the deepening night men were rapidly dropping off homeward for good and all , Nana and Satin kept to the sidewalk in the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre . There up till two o'clock in the morning restaurants , bars and ham-and-beef shops were brightly lit up , while a noisy mob of women hung obstinately round the doors of the cafes . This suburb was the only corner of night Paris which was still alight and still alive , the only market still open to nocturnal bargains . These last were openly struck between group and group and from one end of the street to the other , just as in the wide and open corridor of a disorderly house . On such evenings as the pair came home without having had any success they used to wrangle together .