Although Madame Desforges was already acquainted with the new establishment, she stopped short, struck by the ardent life which that day animated the immense nave. Below and around her continued the eddying of the crowd; the double current of those entering and those leaving, making itself felt as far as the silk department. It was still a crowd of very mixed elements, though the afternoon was bringing a greater number of ladies amongst the shopkeepers and house-wives. There were many women in mourning, with flowing veils; and there were always some wet nurses straying about and protecting their infantile charges with their outstretched arms. And this sea of faces, of many-coloured hats and bare heads, both dark and fair, rolled from one to the other end of the galleries, vague and discoloured amidst the glare of the stuffs. On all sides Madame Desforges saw large price-tickets bearing enormous figures and showing prominently against the bright printed cottons, the shining silks, and the sombre woollens. Piles of ribbons half hid the heads of the customers, a wall of flannel threw out a promontory; on all sides mirrors multiplied the departments, reflecting the displays and the groups of people, now showing faces reversed, and now halves of shoulders and arms; whilst to the right and to the left the lateral galleries opened up other vistas, the snowy depths of the linen department and the speckled depths of the hosiery counters--distant views which were illumined by rays of light from some glazed bay, and in which the crowd seemed but so much human dust. Then, when Madame Desforges raised her eyes, she beheld on the staircases and the flying bridges and behind the balustrades of each successive storey, a continual buzzing ascent, an entire population in the air, passing along behind the open work of this huge carcass of metal and showing blackly against the diffuse light from the enamelled glass. Large gilded lustres were suspended from the ceiling; decorations of rugs, embroidered silks and stuffs worked with gold, hung down, draping the balustrades as with gorgeous banners; and, from one to the other end were clouds of lace, palpitations of muslin, trophies of silks, fairy-like groups of half-dressed dummies; and right at the top, above all the confusion, the bedding department, hanging, as it were, in the air, displayed its little iron bedsteads provided with mattresses, and hung with curtains, the whole forming a sort of school dormitory asleep amidst the tramping of the customers, who became fewer and fewer as the departments ascended.