Three months later, Muffat paces outside the theater. His affair with Nana has continued, but she seems disinterested in him, and he has caught her in several lies. As he suspects, she is sick of him. Also, because she manages her money so poorly, she is still in debt despite having been paid by her many rich lovers.

On her way into a café, Nana runs into Daguenet, who tells her he is planning to marry Estelle because of her large dowry. He also reveals that Sabine and Fauchery are having an affair. At her house that evening, Nana undresses and studies her body in the full-length mirror, a ritual she performs every day, while Muffat reads the latest article Fauchery has written about her in the Figaro titled “La Mouche d’Or,” meaning “The Golden Fly.” It is a declaration that Nana’s wanton sexuality is “rotting the aristocracy,” and describes her as “a fly which sucks death from the carrion you are wont to see along the roads and which […] poisons men simply by flying in through the windows of palaces and landing on them” (170). Watching her admire herself in the mirror, Muffat is both attracted to her and disturbed, feeling that the article is right.