Émile Zola (1840–1902)

... he had fifteen hundred sales assistants, and a thousand other employees of every kind, including forty inspectors and seventy cashiers; the kitchens alone employed thirty-two men; there were ten people in advertising, three hundred and fifty porters in livery, twenty-four permanent fire wardens. In the stables -- regal stables, in the Rue Monsigny opposite the shops -- there were one hundred and forty-five horses, a wealth of carriage teams that were already famous.

The silk department was like a huge love nest hung in white to satisfy the fancy of a woman in love who wished her own snow-white nakedness to compete with it in radiance. All the milky pallors of a loved one's body were there, from the velvet of the back to the fine silk of the thighs and the glowing satin of the breasts. Lengths of velvet were hung between the columns, while silks and satins stood out against this background of creamy white as a drapery of metallic white and china white; and there were also arches of silk poults and Sicilian grosgrains, light foulards and surahs which varied in tone from the heavy white of a Norwegian blonde to the transparent, sun-warmed whiteness of a redhead from Italy or Spain.