At five minutes to nine a.m. on the first day of the year seven vast crowds stood before the seven principal entrances to Hugo's; seven crowds of immortal souls enclosed in the bodies of women. They meant to begin the year well by an honest attempt to get something for nothing. It was a cold, dank, raw, and formidable morning; Hugo's tessellated pavements were covered with moisture, and, moreover, day had not yet conquered night. But the seven crowds, growing larger each moment, recked nothing of these inconveniences. They waited stolidly, silently, in a suppressed and dangerous fever, as besiegers await the signal for an attack. Between the various entrances, on the three facades of the establishment, ran the long lines of windows dressed with all the materials for happiness, and behind these ramparts of materials could be glimpsed Hugo's assistants moving about in anxious expectation under the electric lights, which burned red in the foggy gloom. Over every portal was a purple warning: 'Beware of pickpockets, male and female.' No possible male pickpockets, however, were visible to the eye; perhaps they were disguised as ladies. The seven crowds wedged themselves closer and closer, clutched tighter and tighter their purses, and stared at the golden commissionaires through the glass doors with a glance more and more ferocious. Then suddenly something went off with a boom; it was the first stroke of the great Hugo clock under the dome. Six pairs of double doors opened simultaneously, six pairs of golden commissionaires were overthrown like ninepins, and in a fraction of time six companies of determined and remorseless women had swept like Prussian cavalry into the interior of the doomed edifice.