the slight shadow of a child sufficed to ravage with anguish. But it was especially during his daily inspection of the departments that he felt his misery. To have built up this giant machine, to reign over such a world of people, and to be dying of grief because a little girl would not accept him! He scorned himself, dragging the fever and shame of his pain about with him everywhere. On certain days he became disgusted with his power, feeling a nausea at the very sight of the long galleries. At other times he would have wished to extend his empire, and make it so vast that she would perhaps yield out of sheer admiration and fear. He first of all stopped in the basement opposite the shoot. It was still in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin; but it had been necessary to enlarge it, and it was now as wide as the bed of a river, down which the continual flood of goods rolled with the loud noise of rushing water; it was a constant succession of arrivals from all parts of the world, rows of waggons from all railways, a ceaseless discharging of merchandise, a stream of boxes and bales running underground, absorbed by the insatiable establishment. He gazed at this torrent flowing into his house, thought of his position as one of the masters of the public fortune, that he held in his hands the fate of the French manufacturers, and that he was unable to buy a kiss from one of his saleswomen. Then he passed on to the receiving department, which now occupied that part of the basement running along the Rue Monsigny. Twenty tables were ranged there, in the pale light of the air-holes; dozens of shopmen were bustling about, emptying the cases, checking the goods, and marking them in plain figures, amidst the roar of the shoot, which almost drowned their voices. Various managers of departments stopped him, he had to resolve difficulties and confirm orders. This cellar was filled with the tender glimmer of the satin, the whiteness of the linen, a prodigious unpacking in which the furs were mingled with the lace, the fancy goods with the Eastern curtains. With a slow step he made his way amongst all these riches thrown about in disorder, heaped up in their rough state. Above, they were destined to ornament the window displays, letting loose the race after money across the counters, no sooner shown than carried off, in the furious current of business which traversed the place. He thought of his having offered the young girl silks, velvets, anything she liked to take in any quantities, from these enormous heaps, and that she had refused by a shake of her fair head.