But where Mouret revealed himself as an unrivalled master was in the interior arrangement of the shops. He laid down as a law that not a corner of The Ladies' Paradise ought to remain deserted, requiring everywhere a noise, a crowd, evidence of life; for life, said he, attracts life, increases and multiplies. From this law he drew all sorts of applications. 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 very low-priced articles; so that the common people crowded there, stopping up the doorway, making the shop look as if it were crammed with customers, when it was often only half full. Then, in the galleries, he had the art of concealing the departments in which business was slack; for instance, the shawl department in summer, and the printed calico department in winter, he surrounded them with busy departments, drowning them with a continual uproar. It was he alone who had been inspired with the idea of placing on the second-floor the carpet and furniture counters, counters where the customers were less frequent, and which if placed on the ground floor would have caused empty, cold spaces. If he could have managed it, he would have had the street running through his shop. Just at that moment, Mouret was a prey to an attack of inspiration. On the Saturday evening, as he was giving a last look at the preparations for the Monday's great sale, he was suddenly struck with the idea that the arrangement of the departments adopted by him was wrong and stupid; and yet It seemed a perfectly logical arrangement: the stuffs on one side, the made-up articles on the other, an intelligent order of things which would enable the customers to find their way themselves. He had thought of this orderly arrangement formerly, in Madame Hédouin's narrow shop; and now he felt his faith shaken, just as he carried out his idea. Suddenly he cried out that they would “have to alter all that.” They had forty-eight hours, and half what had been done had to be changed. The staff, frightened, bewildered, had been obliged to work two nights and the entire Sunday, amidst a frightful disorder. On the Monday morning even, an hour before the opening, there was still some goods to be placed. Decidedly the governor was going mad, no one understood, a general consternation prevailed. [Illustration: 0355] “Come, look sharp!” cried Mouret, with the quiet assurance of his 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.”