In
earlier years Hugo had made his annual sale prodigious and incredible,
with no thought of profit, merely for the pleasure of the affair. But he
found that the more he offered to the public the more he received from
them, and that it was practically impossible to lose money by giving
things away. This is, of course, a fundamental axiom of commerce. And
now Hugo's annual sale was to be more astonishing than ever; some said
that he meant at any cost to efface the memory of those discreditable
incidents before mentioned. Decidedly, many of the advertised bargains
were remarkable in the highest degree. There was, for example, the 'fine
silvered fox-stole, with real brush at each end,' at a guinea. Every
woman who can tell a silvered fox-stole from a cock's-feather boa is
aware that a silvered fox-stole simply cannot be sold for a guinea. Yet
Hugo had announced that he would sell two thousand of them at that
price, not to mention muffs to match at the same figure. And there was
the famous 'Incroyable' corset, white coutille, with wide belted band
round hips, double belt to buckle at sides, cut low--' Enough! Further
indiscretions of description are not necessary to show that eighteen and
nine is the lowest price at which a reasonable creature could hope to
obtain the 'Incroyable' corset.
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