rally, a golden ray. From
this fact you may judge how far Paris shops are arranged with a view to
effect.

But to return to the young assistants, to the beribboned man of forty
whom the King of the French receives at his table, to the red-bearded
head of the department with his autocrat's air. Week by week these
meritus Gaudissarts are brought in contact with whims past counting;
they know every vibration of the cashmere chord in the heart of
woman. No one, be she lady or lorette, a young mother of a family, a
respectable tradesman's wife, a woman of easy virtue, a duchess or a
brazen-fronted ballet-dancer, an innocent young girl or a too innocent
foreigner, can appear in the shop, but she is watched from the moment
when she first lays her fingers upon the door-handle. Her measure is
taken at a glance by seven or eight men that stand, in the windows,
at the counter, by the door, in a corner, in the middle of the shop,
meditating, to all appearance, on the joys of a bacchanalian Sunday
holiday. As you look at them, you ask yourself involuntarily, "What can
they be thinking about?" Well, in the space of one second, a woman's
purse, wishes, intentions, and whims are ransacked more thoroughly
than a traveling carriage at a frontier in an hour and three-quarters.
Nothing is lost on these intelligent rogues. As they stand, solemn
as noble fathers on the stage, they take in all the details of a
fair customer's dress; an invisible speck of mud on a little shoe, an
antiquated hat-brim, soiled or ill-judged bonnet-strings, the fashion of
the dress, the age of a pair of gloves. They can tell whether the gown
was cut by the intelligent scissors of a Victorine IV.; they know a
modish gewgaw or a trinket from Froment-Meurice. Nothing, in short,
which can reveal a woman's quality, fortune, or character passes
unremarked.

Tremble before them. Never was the Sanhedrim of Gaudissarts, with
their chief at their head, known to make a mistake. And, moreover, they
communicate their conclusions to one another with telegraphic speed, in
a glance, a smile, the movement of a muscle, a twitch of the lip. If you
watch them, you are reminded of the sudden outbreak of light along
the Champs-Elysees at dusk; one gas-jet does not succeed another more
swiftly than an idea flashes from one shopman's eyes to the next.

At once, if the lady is English, the dark, mysterious, portentous
Gaudissart advances like a romantic character out of one of Byron's