The trepidation within was now stifling all outside noise; one no longer heard the rumbling of the vehicles, nor the banging of the carriage-doors; nothing remained above the vast murmur of business but the sentiment of this enormous Paris, of such immensity that it would always furnish buyers. In the heavy still air, in which the fumes of the heating apparatus warmed the odour of the stuffs, the hubbub increased, made up of all sorts of noises, of the continual walking about, of the same phrases, a hundred times repeated around the counters, of the gold jingling on the brass of the pay-desks, besieged by a legion of purses, and of the baskets on wheels loaded with parcels which were constantly disappearing into the gaping cellars. And, amidst the fine dust, everything finished by getting
