“We all know what's the matter with him,” replied Hutin, “Is it my fault if that little jade in the dress-department is turning his head? My dear fellow, you can see the blow comes from there. He's aware I've slept with her, and he doesn't like it; or perhaps it's she herself who wants to get me pitched out, because I'm in her way. But I swear she shall hear from me, if ever she crosses my path.” Two days after, as Hutin was going up into the work-room, upstairs, under the roof, to recommend a person, he started on perceiving at the end of a passage Denise and Deloche leaning out of a window, and plunged so deeply in private conversation that they did not even turn round. The idea of having them caught occurred to him suddenly, when he perceived with astonishment that Deloche was weeping. He at once went away without making any noise; and meeting Bourdoncle and Jouve on the stairs, told them some story about one of the _extincteurs_ the door of which seemed to be broken; in this way they would go upstairs and drop on to the two others. Bourdoncle discovered them first. He stopped short, and told Jouve to go and fetch the governor, whilst he remained there. The inspector had to obey, greatly annoyed at being forced to compromise himself in such a matter. This was a lost corner of the vast world in which the people of The Ladies' Paradise worked. One arrived there by a complication of stairs and passages. The work-rooms occupied the top of the house, a succession of low sloping rooms, lighted by large windows cut in the zinc roof, furnished solely with long tables and enormous iron stoves; and right along were a crowd of work-girls of all sorts, for the under-clothing, the lace, the dressmaking, and the house furnishing; living winter and summer in a stifling heat, amidst the odour special to the business; and one had to go straight through the wing, and turn to the right on passing the dressmakers, before coming to this solitary end of the corridor. The rare customers, that a salesman occasionally brought here for an order, gasped for breath, tired out, frightened, with the sensation of having been turning round for hours and hours, and of being a hundred leagues above the street.