‘Hello! It’s you!’ said Mouret suddenly, recognizing Paul de Vallagnosc, whom a page-boy had brought to him. ‘No, no, you’re not disturbing me … And, in any case, you may as well follow me around if you want to see everything, because today I’ll be totally involved in the sale.’
He still felt anxious. There was no doubt that there were plenty of people, but would the sale be the triumph he had hoped for? Nevertheless, he was laughing with Paul and gaily led him away.
‘It seems to be picking up a bit,’ said Hutin to Favier. ‘But I’m not having any luck, some days are jinxed, honestly! I’ve just drawn another blank, that bitch didn’t buy anything from me.’
With his chin he indicated a woman who was walking off, casting looks of disgust at all the materials. He wouldn’t grow fat on his thousand francs a year if he didn’t sell anything; usually he made seven or eight francs a day in percentages or commission, which gave him with his regular pay an average of about ten francs a day. Favier never earned much more than eight; and here was this animal taking the food out of his mouth, for he had just sold another dress. A cold-blooded fellow who had never known how to amuse a customer! It was exasperating!
‘The sockers and reelers look as if they’re raking it in,’ Favier murmured, referring to the salesmen in the hosiery and haberdashery departments.
But Hutin, who was looking all round the shop, suddenly asked: ‘Do you know Madame Desforges, the governor’s girlfriend? … That dark woman over there in the glove department, the one who’s having some gloves tried on by Mignot.’
He stopped and then, as if talking to Mignot, and without taking his eyes off him, he resumed:
‘Go on, go on, old man, give her fingers a good squeeze, it won’t do you any good! We know all about your conquests!’
There existed between him and the glove assistant the rivalry of two good-looking men, both of whom pretended to flirt with the customers. Neither of them could in fact boast of any real good fortune; Mignot lived on the myth of a police superintendent’s wife who had fallen in love with him, whereas Hutin had really made the conquest of a trimmer, in his department, who had got tired of hanging about the shady hotels in the neighbourhood; but they both invented a lot, letting people believe that they had mysterious adventures, rendezvous with countesses between purchases.
‘You should deal with her yourself,’ said Favier in his deadpan way.
‘That’s an idea!’ exclaimed Hutin. ‘If she comes here, I’ll get round her!’
In the glove department a whole row of ladies was seated in front of the narrow counter covered with green velvet with nickel-plated corners; the smiling assistants were stacking up in front of them flat, bright pink boxes, which they were taking out of the counter itself, like the labelled drawers of a filing cabinet. Mignot, in particular, was leaning forward with his pretty baby face, rolling his Rs like a true Parisian, his voice full of tender inflections. He had already sold Madame Desforges a dozen pairs of kid gloves, Paradise gloves, the shop’s speciality. She had then asked for three pairs of suede gloves. And she was now trying on some Saxon gloves, for fear that the size was not right.
‘Oh! It’s absolutely perfect, madam!’ Mignot was repeating. ‘Six and three-quarters would be too big for a hand like yours.’
Half lying on the counter, he was holding her hand, taking her fingers one by one and sliding the glove on with a long, practised, and sustained caress; and he was looking at her as if he expected to see from her face that she was swooning with voluptuous joy. But she, her elbow on the edge of the velvet, her wrist raised, gave him her fingers with the same detached air with which she would give her foot to her maid to allow her to button her boots. He was not a man; she used him for such intimate services with the familiar disdain she showed for those in her employ, without even looking at him.
‘I’m not hurting you, madam?’
She replied in the negative, with a shake of the head.
The smell of Saxon gloves, that animal smell with a touch of sweetened musk, usually excited her; and she sometimes laughed about it, confessing her liking for this ambiguous perfume, like an animal in rut which has landed in a girl’s powder box. But standing at that commonplace counter she did not smell the gloves; they did not provoke any sensual feeling between her and the ordinary salesman simply doing his job.
‘Is there anything else you would like to see, madam?’
‘Nothing, thank you … Would you take that to cash-desk No. 10, for Madame Desforges.’
Being a regular customer, she gave her name at a cash-desk, and had each purchase sent there, so that she wasn’t followed there by an assistant. When she had left, Mignot turned towards his neighbour and winked, for he would have had him believe that wonderful things had just taken place.
‘It’s a pity she can’t wear gloves all over!’ he murmured crudely.
Meanwhile Madame Desforges was continuing her purchases. She turned to the left, stopping in the linen department to get some dusters; then she walked all round, going as far as the woollens at the end of the gallery.
As she was pleased with her cook, she wanted to make her a present of a dress. The woollen department was overflowing with a dense crowd; all the lower middle-class women were there and were feeling the materials, absorbed in silent calculation; she had to sit down for a moment. The shelves were piled high with thick lengths of material, which the salesmen were taking down one by one, with a sudden pull. They were beginning to get quite confused among the cluttered counters, where the materials were mingling and overflowing. It was a rising tide of neutral tints, of the muted tones of wool, iron greys, yellowish-greys, blue-greys, with here and there a brilliant Scottish tartan, a blood-red background of flannel bursting out. And the white labels on the rolls were like a light shower of white snowflakes, speckling a black December soil.
Behind a pile of poplin Liénard was joking with a tall girl without a hat, a local seamstress sent by her employer to stock up with Merino. He hated these big sale days which made his arms ache, and, since he was largely kept by his father and did not care whether he sold or not, he tried to dodge work, doing just enough to avoid being dismissed.
‘You know, Mademoiselle Fanny,’ he was saying. ‘You’re always in a hurry … Did the Vicuña go well the other day? I’ll come and get my commission from you.’
But the seamstress was making her escape, laughing as she did so, and Liénard found himself facing Madame Desforges; he could not help asking her:
‘Can I help you, madam?’
She wanted a dress, inexpensive but hard-wearing. Liénard, with the aim of sparing his arms, which was his sole concern, manœuvred so as to make her take one of the materials already unfolded on the counter. There were cashmeres, serges, Vicuñas; he swore to her that there was nothing better, they never wore out. But none of them seemed to satisfy her. She had glimpsed a bluish serge twill on a shelf, and in the end he reluctantly decided to get it down; but she said it was too coarse. Next it was a Cheviot, some with diagonal stripes, some greys, and every variety of woollen material, which she was curious to touch for sheer pleasure, though she had already decided that she would just buy anything. So the young man was obliged to empty the highest shelves; his shoulders cracked, and the counter had disappeared beneath the silky grain of the cashmeres and poplins, the rough nap of the Cheviots, and the fluffy down of the Vicuñas. Every material and every shade was now on view. She asked to be shown Grenadine and Chambéry gauze, though she did not have the slightest desire to buy any. Then, when she had had enough, she said:
‘Oh well! The first one was the best. It’s for my cook … Yes, the serge with the little dots, the one at two francs.’
And when Liénard, pale with suppressed anger, had measured it out, she said:
‘Will you take it to cash-desk No. 10 … For Madame Desforges.’
As she was going away she noticed Madame Marty nearby, accompanied by her daughter Valentine, a tall, lanky girl of fourteen
, very uninhibited and already casting the guilty glances of a woman at the goods.
‘Ah! It’s you, my dear?’
‘Yes, dear … Quite a crowd, isn’t it?’
‘Oh! Don’t talk to me about it, it’s stifling. What a success! Have you seen the oriental hall?’
‘Superb! Amazing!’
And, elbowed and jostled by the growing mass of women who had little to spend and were rushing towards the inexpensive woollens, they went into ecstasies over the exhibition of carpets. Then Madame Marty explained that she was looking for some material for a coat; but she had not made up her mind, she wanted to see some woollen quilting.
‘But just look at it, mamma,’ murmured Valentine, ‘it’s too common.’
‘Come and look at the silks,’ said Madame Desforges. ‘You must see their famous Paris-Paradise.’
Madame Marty hesitated for a moment. It would be very expensive, and she had faithfully promised her husband that she would be careful! She had been buying for an hour already; quite a pile of articles were following her—a muff and ruching for herself, some stockings for her daughter. In the end she said to the assistant who was showing her the quilting:
‘Well, no! I’m going to the silk department… There’s really nothing here that I want.’
The assistant took the articles and walked ahead of the ladies.
The crowd had reached the silk department too. There was a tremendous crush before the interior display arranged by Hutin, to which Mouret had added the final touches. At the far end of the hall, around one of the small cast-iron columns which supported the glass roof, material was streaming down like a bubbling sheet of water, falling from above and spreading out on to the floor. First, pale satins and soft silks were gushing out: royal satins and renaissance satins, with the pearly shades of spring water; light silks as transparent as crystal—Nile green, turquoise, blossom pink, Danube blue. Next came the thicker fabrics, the marvellous satins and the duchess silks, in warm shades, rolling in great waves. And at the bottom, as if in a fountain-basin, the heavy materials, the damasks, the brocades, the silver and gold silks, were sleeping on a deep bed of velvets—velvets of all kinds, black, white, coloured, embossed on a background of silk or satin, their shimmering flecks forming a still lake in which reflections of the sky and of the countryside seemed to dance. Women pale with desire were leaning over as if to look at themselves. Faced with this wild cataract, they all remained standing there, filled with the secret fear of being caught up in the overflow of all this luxury and with an irresistible desire to throw themselves into it and be lost.
‘So you’re here?’ said Madame Desforges, on finding Madame Bourdelais installed in front of a counter.
‘Ah! Good-morning!’ the latter replied, shaking hands with the ladies. ‘Yes, I’ve come to have a look.’
‘It’s wonderful, this display, isn’t it? It’s like a dream … And the oriental hall, have you seen the oriental hall?’
‘Yes, yes, extraordinary!’
But beneath this enthusiasm, which was certainly going to be the fashionable attitude of the day, Madame Bourdelais kept her composure as a practical housewife. She was carefully examining a piece of Paris-Paradise, for she had come solely to take advantage of the exceptional cheapness of this silk, if she found it really good value. She was clearly satisfied, for she ordered twenty-five metres, reckoning that it would easily be enough to make a dress for herself and a coat for her little girl.
‘What! You’re going already?’ Madame Desforges resumed. ‘Come and have a look round with us.’
‘No, thank you, they’re expecting me at home … I didn’t want to risk bringing the children in a crowd like this.’
And she went away preceded by the salesman carrying the twenty-five metres of silk; he conducted her to cash-desk No. 10, where young Albert was losing his head in the midst of all the requests for invoices with which he was besieged. When the salesman could get near him, he called out the sale he had made, after entering it with a pencil on his counterfoil book, and the cashier entered it in the register; then it was counter-checked, and the page torn out of the counterfoil book was stuck on an iron spike near the receipt stamp.
‘A hundred and forty francs,’ said Albert.
Madame Bourdelais paid and gave her address, for she had come on foot and did not want to be encumbered with a parcel. Joseph was already holding the silk behind the cash-desk and packing it up; and the parcel, thrown into a basket on wheels, was sent down to the dispatch department, where all the goods in the shop now seemed to be swallowed with a noise like a sluice.
Meanwhile, the congestion was becoming so great in the silk department that Madame Desforges and Madame Marty could not find a free assistant at first. They remained standing, mingling with the crowd of ladies who were looking at the materials and feeling them, remaining there for hours without making up their minds. The Paris-Paradise seemed destined for the greatest success of all, for it was attracting growing waves of enthusiasm, that sudden fever which sets a fashion in a single day. The salesmen were all occupied in measuring this silk; the pale light of the unfolded lengths could be seen above the customers’ hats, while fingers were moving constantly up and down the oak measuring-sticks hanging from brass rods; the noise of the scissors biting into the material could be heard, without a pause, as fast as it was unpacked, as if there were not enough arms to satisfy the greedy, outstretched hands of the customers.
‘It really isn’t bad for five francs sixty,’ said Madame Desforges, who had succeeded in getting hold of a piece from the edge of a table.
Madame Marty and her daughter Valentine were feeling disillusioned. The newspapers had talked about it so much that they had expected something bigger and more striking. But Bouthemont had just recognized Madame Desforges and, wishing to pay court to this beautiful creature who was reputed to hold the governor completely in her power, he came up to her with his rather crude amiability. What! She was not being served! It was unpardonable! She must be indulgent, for they really didn’t know which way to turn. And he went to look for some chairs among the surrounding skirts, laughing with his good-natured laugh, which revealed his brutal love of women, and which Henriette did not, apparently, find unattractive.
‘I say,’ murmured Favier as he went to get a box of velvet from a shelf behind Hutin, ‘there’s Bouthemont making up to your special customer.’
Hutin had forgotten Madame Desforges, for he was beside himself with rage with an old lady who, having kept him for a quarter of an hour, had just bought a metre of black satin for a corset. At particularly busy times they took no notice of the roster; each salesman served customers as they arrived. He was replying to Madame Boutarel, who was finishing off her afternoon at the Ladies’ Paradise, where she had already spent three hours in the morning, when Favier’s warning gave him a start. Was he going to miss the governor’s girlfriend, out of whom he had sworn to make five francs? That would be the height of bad luck, for he had not yet made three francs for himself, in spite of all the skirts cluttering up the place!
Just then Bouthemont was calling out loudly:
‘Come on, gentlemen, someone this way!’
Hutin handed Madame Boutarel over to Robineau, who was not doing anything.
‘Here you are, madam, ask the assistant buyer … He’ll be able to help you better than I can.’
He rushed off and got the salesman who had accompanied the ladies from the woollens to hand Madame Marty’s articles over to him. Nervous excitement must have upset his delicate flair that day. Usually, the first glance told him if a woman would buy, and how much. Then he would dominate the customer, hurrying to get rid of her in order to move on to another, forcing her to make up her mind by persuading her that he knew what material she wanted better than she did.
‘What sort of silk, madam?’ he asked in his most courteous manner.
Madame Desforges had no sooner opened her mouth than he added:
‘I know, I’ve go
t just what you want.’
When the length of Paris-Paradise had been unfolded on a corner of the counter between piles of other silks, Madame Marty and her daughter drew nearer. Hutin, rather anxious, understood that it was a question of supplying them first of all. Words were being exchanged in hushed tones; Madame Desforges was advising her friend.