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.