The crowd was slowly diminishing. The bell, at an hour's interval, had already announced the two first dinners; the third was about to be served, and in the departments there were now only a few lingering customers, whose fever for spending had made them forget the time. Outside nothing was heard but the rolling of the last carriages amidst the husky voice of Paris, the snort of a satiated ogre digesting the linens and cloths, silks and lace, with which he had been gorged since the morning. Inside, beneath the flaming gas-jets, which, burning in the twilight, had lighted up the supreme efforts of the sale, everything appeared like a field of battle still warm with the massacre of the various goods. The salesmen, harassed and fatigued, camped amidst the contents of their shelves and counters, which appeared to have been thrown into the greatest confusion by the furious blast of a hurricane. It was with difficulty that one traversed the galleries on the ground floor, blocked up with a crowd of chairs, and in the glove department it was necessary to step over a pile of cases heaped up around Mignot; in the woollen department there was no means of passing at all, Liénard was dozing on a sea of bales, in which certain piles, still standing, though half destroyed, seemed to be houses that an overflowing river was carrying away; and, further on, the linen department was like a heavy fall of snow, one ran up against icebergs of napkins, and walked on light flakes of handkerchiefs. The same disorder prevailed upstairs in the departments; the furs were scattered over the flooring, the readymade clothes were heaped up like the great-coats of wounded soldiers, the lace and the underlinen, unfolded, crumpled, thrown about everywhere, made one think of an army of women who had disrobed there in the disorder of some sudden desire; whilst downstairs, at the other end of the house, the delivery department in full activity was still disgorging the parcels with which it was bursting, and which were carried off by the vans--last vibration of the overheated machine. But it was in the silk department especially that the customers had flung themselves with the greatest ardour. There they had cleared off everything, there was plenty of room to pass, the hall was bare; the whole of the colossal stock of Paris Paradise had been cut up and carried away, as if by a swarm of devouring locusts. And in the midst of this emptiness, Hutin and Favier were running through the counterfoils of their debit-notes, calculating their commission, still out of breath after the struggle. Favier had made fifteen francs, Hutin had only managed to make thirteen, thoroughly beaten that day, enraged at his bad luck. Their eyes sparkled with the passion for money. The whole shop around them was also adding up figures, glowing with the same fever, in the brutal gaiety of the evening of the battle. “Well, Bourdoncle!” cried out Mouret, “are you trembling still?”