ABSTRACT

The great afternoon rush-hour had arrived, when the overheated machine led the dance of customers, extracting money from their very flesh. In the silk department especially there was a sense of madness . . . In the still air, where the stifling central heating brought out the smell of the materials, the hubbub was increasing, made up of all sorts of noises – the continuous trampling of feet, the same phrase repeated a hundred times at the counters, gold clinking on the brass cash-desks, besieged by a mass of purses, the baskets on wheels with their loads of parcels falling endlessly into the gaping cellars.