working of the new style of business. [1] After all, this is only £12,000 or about a quarter of the amount which a single English firm of soap-manufacturers spends in advertising every year. But where Mouret revealed himself as an unrivalled master was in the interior arrangement of his shops. He laid it down as a law that not a corner of The Ladies' Paradise ought to remain deserted; he required a noise, a crowd, evidence of life everywhere; for life, said he, attracts life, increases and multiplies it. And this principle he applied in a variety of ways. In the first place, there ought always to be a crush at the entrance, so that the people in the street should mistake it for a riot; and he obtained this crush by placing a lot of bargains at the doors, shelves and baskets overflowing with low-priced articles; and so the common people crowded there, stopping up the doorway and making the shop look as if it were crammed with customers, when it was often only half full. Then, in the galleries, he found a means of concealing the departments where business occasionally became slack; for instance, he surrounded the shawl department in summer, and the printed calico department in winter, with other busy departments, steeping them in continual uproar. It was he alone who had thought of reserving the second-floor for the carpet and furniture galleries; for customers were less numerous in such departments which if placed on the ground floor would have often presented a chilly void. If he could only have managed it, he would have let the street run through his shop. Just at that moment, Mouret was absorbed in another wonderful inspiration. On the Saturday evening, whilst giving a last look at the preparations for the Monday's great sale, he had been struck with the idea that the arrangement of the departments adopted by him was idiotic; and yet it seemed a perfectly logical one: the stuffs on one side, the made-up articles on the other, an intelligent order of things which would enable customers to find their way about by themselves. He had dreamt of some such orderly arrangement in the old days of Madame Hédouin's narrow shop; but now, just as he had carried out his idea, he felt his faith shaken. And he suddenly cried out that they would "have to alter all that." They had forty-eight hours before them, and half of what had been done had to be changed. The staff, utterly bewildered, had been obliged to work two nights and all day on Sunday, amidst frightful disorder. On the Monday morning even, an hour before the opening, there were still some goods remaining to be placed. Decidedly the governor was going mad, no one understood the meaning of it all, and general consternation prevailed. "Come, look sharp!" cried Mouret, with the quiet assurance of genius. "There are some more costumes to be taken upstairs. And the Japan goods, are they placed on the central landing? A last effort, my boys, you'll see the sale by-and-by."