After that, he passed on to the other end of the basement, to pay his usual visit to the delivery department. Interminable corridors ran along, lighted up with gas; to the right and to the left, the reserves, closed in with gratings, were like so many subterranean stores, a complete commercial quarter, with its haberdashery, underclothing, glove, and other shops, sleeping in the shade. Further on was placed one of the three stoves; further still, a fireman's post guarding the gas-meter, enclosed in its iron cage. He found, in the delivery department, the sorting tables already blocked with loads of parcels, bandboxes, and cases, continually arriving in large baskets; and Campion, the superintendent, gave him some particulars about the current work, whilst the twenty men placed under his orders distributed the parcels into large compartments, each bearing the name of a district of Paris, and from whence the messengers took them up to the vans, ranged along the pavement. One heard a series of cries, names of streets, and recommendations shouted out; quite an uproar, an agitation such as on board a mail boat about to start. And he stood there for a moment, motionless, looking at this discharge of goods which he had just seen absorbed by the house, at the opposite extremity of the basement: the enormous current there discharged itself into the street, after having filled the tills with gold. His eyes became misty, this colossal business no longer had any importance; he had but one idea, that of going away to some distant, land, and abandoning everything, if she persisted in saying no.