Comte Muffat and his wife Sabine hold a salon at their imposing ancestral home every Tuesday evening. Though Muffat’s mother decorated the house coldly and austerely, Sabine has no plans to redecorate, ceding to the traditions of her husband’s family. The assembled guests include many prominent society women, Steiner, a well-known libertine and racehorse owner named Comte Xavier de Vandeuvres, and an older man known for his strict Catholicism named Théophile Venot.

In anticipation of a grand world’s fair that will be held in Paris later that year, the guests discuss which prominent European royalty might attend. A debate breaks out about the merits of the King of Prussia and one of his right-hand men, statesman Otto von Bismarck. (Zola’s readers would have seen this conversation as dramatically ironic, since war between France and Prussia would break out two years later.)

Soon, Fauchery and La Faloise arrive. Fauchery is there on a mission from Nana: to invite Muffat to a dinner party at her house the following evening. He knows it is extremely unlikely that Muffat will accept, but he has promised to ask. Fauchery quickly finds out that Steiner and Vandeuvres have also been invited, and Vandeuvres is trying to find men he can invite who will be sure to bring women.