And it was always and ever no, in all the departments, in the galleries, the saloons, in every part of the establishment! He went from the silk to the drapery department, from the linen to the lace; he ascended to the upper floors, pausing on the hanging bridges, prolonging his inspection with a maniacal, grievous minuteness. The house had grown and spread beyond all bounds, he had created this department, then that other; he governed that fresh domain, he extended his empire into that industry, the last one conquered; and it was no, always no, in spite of everything. His staff would now have sufficed to people a small town: there were fifteen hundred salesmen, and a thousand other employees of every sort, including forty inspectors and seventy cashiers; the kitchens alone gave occupation to thirty-two men; ten clerks were set apart for the advertising service; there were three hundred and fifty shop messengers, all wearing livery, and twenty-four firemen living on the premises. And the stables, royal buildings situated in the Rue Monsigny, opposite the warehouses, accommodated one hundred and forty-five horses, a splendid set of animals already celebrated. The first four conveyances which had stirred up the whole neighbourhood formerly when the house occupied only the corner of the Place Gaillon, had gradually increased to sixty-two: small hand-trucks, one-horse vans, and heavy two-horse ones. They were continually scouring Paris, skilfully driven by coachmen clad in black, and bearing hither and thither the gold and purple sign of The Ladies' Paradise. They even went beyond the fortifications, and sped through the suburbs; they were to be met in the hollow roads of Bicêtre and along the banks of the Marne, along even the shady drives of the Forest of Saint-Germain. Sometimes one would emerge from the depths of some sunny avenue, where all was silent and deserted, the superb animals which drew it passing by at a trot, whilst it cast the glaring advertisement of its varnished panels upon the mysterious peacefulness of nature. Mouret was actually thinking of sending these vehicles further still, even into the neighbouring departments; he would have liked to hear them rolling along every road in France, from one frontier to the other. But he no longer even crossed the street to visit his horses, though he was passionately fond of them. Of what good was this conquest of the world, since it was no, always no? Nowadays of an evening, when he arrived at Lhomme's desk, he still from force of habit glanced at the amount of the takings written on a card, which the cashier stuck up on an iron file beside him; this figure rarely fell below a hundred thousand francs, sometimes on big sale days it ran up to eight and nine hundred thousand; but the amount no longer sounded in Mouret's ears like a trumpet-blast, he regretted having looked at it, and bitterly went his way, full of hatred and scorn of money.