Nine o'clock struck as Denise came down, leaning on Madame Aurélie's arm. Out of doors an ardent blue sky was warming the streets, cabs were rolling towards the railway stations, the whole population of Paris rigged out in Sunday attire was streaming towards the suburban woods. Inside the Paradise, which the large open bays flooded with sunshine, the imprisoned staff had just commenced stock-taking. They had closed the doors and people halted on the pavement, looking through the windows in astonishment that the shop should be shut when such extraordinary activity prevailed inside. From one end of the galleries to the other, from the top to the bottom floor, there was a continual tramping of employees; arms were ever being raised and parcels were flying about above their heads; and all this amidst a tempest of shouts and calling out of figures, ascending in confusion and becoming a deafening roar. Each of the thirty-nine departments did its work apart, without troubling about its neighbour. At this early hour the shelves had hardly been touched, there were only a few bales of goods on the floors. They must get up a good deal more steam if they were to finish that evening. "Why have you come down?" asked Marguerite of Denise, good-naturedly. "You'll only make yourself worse, and we are quite numerous enough to do the work." "That's what I told her," declared Madame Aurélie, "but she insisted on coming down to help us." All the young ladies flocked round Denise. The work was even interrupted for a time. They complimented her, listening with all sorts of exclamations to the story of her sprained ankle. At last Madame Aurélie made her sit down at a table; and it was understood that she should merely write down the articles as they were called out. On such a day as this they requisitioned all the employees who were capable of holding a pen: the inspectors, the cashiers, the clerks, even the shop messengers; and each department annexed some of these assistants of a day in order to get the work over more quickly. It was thus that Denise found herself installed near Lhomme the cashier and Joseph the messenger, both of whom were bending over large sheets of paper. "Five mantles, cloth, fur trimming, third size, at two hundred and forty francs!" called Marguerite. "Four ditto, first size, at two hundred and twenty!"