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.

But the seventh crowd was left on the pavement, for the seventh pair of doors had not opened.  And this was the more extraordinary in that the seventh crowd was the largest crowd, and stood before the entrance nearest to the principal scene of the day’s operations.  Instantly the world became aware that Hugo’s management was less perfect than usual, and people recalled incidents in his business during the previous four months which had not been to his credit.  The seventh crowd was staggered, furious, and homicidal.  If glances could have killed the impassive pair of golden commissionaires behind the seventh portal, they would certainly have fallen down dead.  If the glass of the seventh portal had not been set in small squares of immense thickness, it would have been shattered to bits, and the stronghold forced.  Many women cried out that justice had come to an end in England, for was it not an elementary principle of justice that all doors should open together?  A few women, more practical, and near the edge of the enraged horde, slipped away to other entrances.  One woman fainted, but she was held upright by the press, and as no one paid the slightest attention to her she rapidly came to.  Then at length a tall gentleman in a beautiful frock-coat was seen to be expostulating sternly with the seventh pair of golden commissionaires; the recalcitant doors flew open, and the beautiful frock-coat was hurled violently against a marble pillar for its pains.  Just as the seventh regiment was disappearing to join in the sack and loot, a young and pretty girl drove up in a hansom, threw the driver a shilling (which the driver contemplated with a scorn too deep for words), and joined the tail of the regiment.

‘I knew I should do it,’ she said to herself, ’and Alb said I shouldn’t.’

In another moment Hugo’s was a raging sea of petticoats.  In half an hour the doors had to be shut and locked, and new crowds formed on the tessellated pavements; Hugo’s was full.

Hugo’s was full!