Madame de Boves thanked him. But Madame Marty, turning round, no longer saw her daughter Valentine beside her. She was beginning to feel frightened, when she caught sight of her, already a long way off, at the end of the Saint-Augustin Hall, deeply absorbed before a table covered with a heap of women's cravats at nineteen sous. Mouret practised the system of offering articles to the customers, hooking and plundering them as they passed; for he used every sort of advertisement, laughing at the discretion of certain fellow-tradesmen who thought the articles should be left to speak for themselves. Special salesmen, idle and smooth-tongued Parisians, thus got rid of considerable quantities of small trashy things. “Oh, mamma!” murmured Valentine, “just look at these cravats. They have a bird embroidered at the corners.” The shopman cracked up the article, swore it was all silk, that the manufacturer had become bankrupt, and that they would never have such a bargain again. “Nineteen sous--is it possible?” said Madame Marty, tempted as well as her daughter. “Well! I can take a couple, that won't ruin us.” Madame de Boves disdained this style of thing, she detested things being offered. A shopman calling her made her run away. Madame Marty, surprised, could not understand this nervous horror of commercial quackery, for she was of another nature; she was one of those fortunate women who delight in being thus violated, in bathing in the caress of this public offering, with the enjoyment of plunging one's hands in everything, and wasting one's time in useless talk. “Now,” she said, “I'm going for my braid. I don't wish to see anything else.” However, as she crossed the cravat and glove departments, her heart once more failed her. There was, under the diffuse light, a display made up of bright and gay colours, which produced a ravishing effect The counters, symmetrically arranged, seemed like so many flower-borders, changing the hall into a French garden, in which smiled a tender gamut of blossoms. Lying on the bare wood, in open boxes, and protruding from the overflowing drawers, a quantity of silk hand-kerchiefs displayed the bright scarlet of the geranium, the creamy white of the petunia, the golden yellow of the chrysanthemum, the sky-blue of the verbena; and higher up, on brass stems, twined another florescence, fichus carelessly hung, ribbons unrolled, quite a brilliant cordon, which extended along, climbed up the columns, and were multiplied indefinitely by the mirrors. But what most attracted the crowd was a Swiss cottage in the glove department, made entirely of gloves, a chef d'ouvre of Mignot's, which had taken him two days to arrange. In the first place, the ground-floor was composed of black gloves; then came straw-coloured, mignonette, and red gloves, distributed in the decoration, bordering the windows, forming the balconies, and taking the place of the tiles.