But the seven crowds, growing larger each moment,
recked nothing of these inconveniences. They waited stolidly, silently,
in a suppressed and dangerous fever, as besiegers await the signal for
an attack. Between the various entrances, on the three facades of the
establishment, ran the long lines of windows dressed with all the
materials for happiness, and behind these ramparts of materials could
be glimpsed Hugo's assistants moving about in anxious expectation under
the electric lights, which burned red in the foggy gloom. Over every
portal was a purple warning: 'Beware of pickpockets, male and female.'
No possible male pickpockets, however, were visible to the eye; perhaps
they were disguised as ladies. The seven crowds wedged themselves closer
and closer, clutched tighter and tighter their purses, and stared at the
golden commissionaires through the glass doors with a glance more and
more ferocious. Then suddenly something went off with a boom; it was the
first stroke of the great Hugo clock under the dome. Six pairs of double
doors opened simultaneously, six pairs of golden commissionaires were
overthrown like ninepins, and in a fraction of time six companies of
determined and remorseless women had swept like Prussian cavalry into
the interior of the doomed edifice.
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