At last they arrived at the dresses and suits. But, as Denise was about to hand over to the salesgirls the foulard purchased by Madame Desforges, the latter seemed to change her mind, and declared that she would definitely take one of the travel coats, the light grey one; and Denise had to wait obligingly in order to take her back to the ladieswear department. She was quite aware that what lay behind the capricious behaviour of this imperious customer was a desire to treat her like a servant; but she had sworn to herself that she would stick to her job, and maintained her calm manner in spite of her pounding heart and her rebellious pride. Madame Desforges bought nothing in the dress and suit department.
‘Oh, Mamma!’ said Valentine, ‘that little suit there, if it fits me …’
In a low voice Madame Guibal was explaining her tactics to Madame Marty. When she saw a dress she liked in a shop, she would have it sent to her; she would copy the pattern, and then return it. And Madame Marty bought the suit for her daughter, murmuring:
‘That’s a good idea! You’re most practical, my dear!’
They had had to abandon the chair. It had simply been left in the furniture department, beside the work-table. The weight was becoming too much for it, and the back legs were threatening to break; and it was decided that all the purchases should be centralized at one cash-desk, and from there sent down to the dispatch service.
Then the ladies, still accompanied by Denise, wandered around. They revisited all the departments. They seemed to take up all the space on the staircases and in the galleries. Every moment a fresh encounter held them up. Thus, they bumped into Madame Bourdelais and her three children again, near the reading-room. The children were loaded with parcels; Madeleine had a dress for herself, Edmond was carrying a collection of small shoes, while the youngest, Lucien, was wearing a new peaked cap.
‘You too!’ said Madame Desforges laughingly to her old school-friend.
‘Don’t talk to me about it!’ exclaimed Madame Bourdelais. ‘I’m furious. They get at you through your children now! You know, it isn’t as if I spend a lot on myself! But how can I say “no” to these little ones who want everything? I came to show them round, and now I’m plundering the whole shop!’
Mouret, who was still there with Vallagnosc and Monsieur de Boves, was listening to her with a smile. She caught sight of him and complained to him gaily, but with a certain amount of real irritation, about the traps laid for mothers; the idea that she had just succumbed to the fevers aroused by advertising made her indignant; and he, still smiling, bowed, enjoying his triumph. Monsieur de Boves had manœuvred so as to get nearer to Madame Guibal, whom he finally followed, trying for a second time to lose Vallagnosc; but the latter, tired of the crowd, hastened to rejoin the Count. Once more Denise had stopped to wait for the ladies. She was standing with her back to them, and Mouret was pretending not to see her. From that moment on Madame Desforges, with the delicate flair of a jealous woman, no longer had any doubts. While he was complimenting her and walking a few steps at her side, like a gallant host, she was deep in thought, asking herself how she might convict him of his treachery.
Meanwhile, Monsieur de Boves and Vallagnosc, who were walking ahead with Madame Guibal, were arriving at the lace department. It was a luxurious room near the ladieswear department, lined with show-cases whose carved oak drawers had folding flaps. Spirals of white lace twined around the pillars, which were covered with red velvet; from one end of the room to the other were threaded lengths of guipure lace; while on the counters there were avalanches of big cards round which were wound Valenciennes, Malines, and needle-point lace. At the far end of the room two ladies were sitting before a transparency of mauve silk on to which Deloche was throwing some Chantilly; and they looked on in silence, unable to make up their minds.
‘I say!’ said Vallagnosc, in great surprise, ‘you said Madame de Boves wasn’t well… But there she is, standing over there with Mademoiselle Blanche.’
The Count could not help giving a start, casting a sideways glance at Madame Guibal as he did so.
‘Good heavens! So she is!’ he said.
It was very warm. The customers, who were suffocating, were pale-faced and shiny-eyed. It seemed as if all the seductions of the shop had been leading up to this supreme temptation, that this was the hidden alcove where the customers were doomed to fall, the place of perdition where even the strongest succumbed. Hands were being plunged into the overflowing piles of lace, quivering with excitement from touching them.
‘It looks as if these ladies are ruining you,’ resumed Vallagnosc, amused by the encounter.
Monsieur de Boves made the gesture of a husband all the more sure of his wife’s common sense because he did not give her a penny. The Countess, having tramped through all the departments with her daughter without buying anything, had just ended up in the lace department in a rage of unsatisfied desire. Totally exhausted, she was leaning up against a counter. She was rummaging in the heap of lace; her hands were growing limp, and her shoulders appeared hot with fever. Then suddenly, as her daughter turned her head away and the salesman was walking off, she tried to slip a piece of Alençon under her coat. But she gave a start and dropped it, on hearing Vallagnosc’s voice saying gaily:
‘We’ve caught you, madam!’
For several seconds she remained speechless and extremely pale. Then she explained that, as she was feeling much better, she’d wanted to get a breath of air. When she at last noticed that her husband was with Madame Guibal, she completely recovered herself, and looked at them in such a dignified way that Madame Guibal felt obliged to say:
‘I was with Madame Desforges; these gentlemen ran into us.’
Just then the other ladies arrived. Mouret had accompanied them, and he detained them a moment longer in order to point out Jouve, who was still shadowing the pregnant woman and her friend. It was very odd; one couldn’t imagine the number of thieves that were arrested in the lace department. Madame de Boves, who was listening to him, could see herself—forty-five years old, well off, her husband in an important position—with a policeman on either side of her; and yet she felt no remorse, she was only thinking that she should have slipped the lace up her sleeve. In the mean time, Jouve had just made up his mind to apprehend the pregnant woman, having given up hope of catching her red-handed, but suspecting her of having filled her pockets with such sleight of hand that it had escaped him. But when he had taken her aside and searched her, to his embarrassment he found nothing, not even a scarf or a button. The friend had disappeared. Suddenly he understood: the pregnant woman was a blind; it was the friend who did the stealing.
The story amused the ladies. Mouret, a little annoyed, merely said:
‘Old Jouve’s been had this time … But he’ll have his revenge.’
‘Oh!’ replied Vallagnosc, ‘I don’t think he’s up to it… In any case, why do you display so much merchandise? It serves you right if you’re robbed. You shouldn’t tempt poor defenceless women like that.’
This was the last word, and in the mounting fever of the shop it struck the jarring note of the day. The ladies were separating, going through the crowded departments for the last time. It was four o’clock, and the rays of the setting sun were entering obliquely through the wide bays at the front of the shop, lighting up from the side the glazed roofs of the halls; in this fiery brightness, the thick dust, raised from the morning onwards by the trampling of the crowd, was floating upwards, like a golden vapour. A sheet of fire was running through the great central gallery, making the staircases, the suspension bridges, and the hanging iron lacework stand out against a background of flames. The mosaics and the ceramics of the friezes were sparkling, the greens and reds of the paintwork were lit up by the fires from the gold so lavishly applied. It was as if the displays, the palaces of gloves and ties, the clusters of ribbons and lace, the tall piles of woollens and calicoes, the variegated flower-beds blossoming with light silks and foulards, were now burning in live embers. The mirrors were re
splendent. The display of sunshades, curved like shields, was throwing off metallic glints. In the distance, beyond some long shadows, there were faraway, dazzling departments, teeming with a mob gilded by the sunshine.
In this final hour, in the midst of the overheated air, the women reigned supreme. They had taken the shop by storm, camping in it as in conquered territory, like an invading horde which had settled among the devastation of the goods. The salesmen, deafened and exhausted, had become their slaves, whom they treated with sovereign tyranny. Fat women were pushing their way through the crowd. Thinner ones were standing their ground, becoming quite aggressive. All of them, their heads held high and their gestures offhanded, were at home there; they showed no civility to each other, but were making use of the shop to such an extent that they were even carrying away the dust from the walls. Madame Bourdelais, wanting to get back some of the money she had spent, had once again taken her three children to the buffet; the customers were now hurling themselves at it in fits of greed, and even the mothers were gorging themselves on Malaga; since the opening eighty litres of fruit juice and seventy bottles of wine had been drunk. After having bought her travel coat Madame Desforges had been presented with some pictures at the cash-desk; and she went away wondering how she could get Denise into her house and humiliate her in front of Mouret himself, so that she could watch their faces and confirm her suspicions. Finally, just as Monsieur de Boves was successfully losing himself in the crowd and disappearing with Madame Guibal, Madame de Boves, followed by Blanche and Vallagnosc, had had the whim to ask for a red balloon, although she had not bought anything. It was always like that; she would not go home empty-handed, she would win the friendship of her caretaker’s little girl with it. At the distribution counter they were starting on their fortieth thousand: forty thousand red balloons had taken flight in the hot air of the shop, a whole cloud of red balloons which were now floating from one end of Paris to the other, carrying up to heaven the name of the Ladies’ Paradise!
Five o’clock struck. Of all the ladies, Madame Marty and her daughter were the only ones to remain, in the final paroxysms of the sale. She could not tear herself away, dead tired though she was; she was held there by an attraction so strong that she kept retracing her steps needlessly, wandering through the departments with insatiable curiosity. It was the hour during which the mob, already excited by the advertisements, got completely out of hand. The sixty thousand francs spent on announcements in the newspapers, the ten thousand posters on walls, and the two hundred thousand catalogues which had been sent out had emptied the women’s purses and left their nerves suffering from the shock of their intoxication; they were still shaken by all Mouret’s devices: the reduced prices, the system of ‘returns’, his constantly renewed attentions. Madame Marty was lingering by the auction tables, amid the hoarse cries of the salesmen, the clinking of gold from the cash-desks, and the rumble of parcels falling into the basements; once more she walked across the ground floor, through the household linen, the silk, the gloves, and the woollens. Then she went upstairs, again abandoning herself to the metallic vibration of the hanging staircases and suspension bridges, returning to the ladieswear, to the underwear, to the laces, even going as far as the second floor, to the heights of the bedding and furniture departments; and everywhere the salesmen, Hutin and Favier, Mignot and Liénard, Deloche, Pauline, and Denise, their legs nearly dropping off, were making a last effort, snatching victories out of the final fever of the customers. This fever had been gradually growing since the morning, like the intoxication exuded by the materials which were being handled. The crowd was ablaze under the fire of the five o’clock sun. By now Madame Marty had the animated, nervous face of a child that has drunk undiluted wine. She had come into the shop with her eyes clear and her skin fresh from the cold of the street and her sight and complexion had gradually become scorched by the spectacle of all that luxury, of those violent colours, the continual succession of which inflamed her passion. When she finally left, after saying that she would pay at home, terrified by the size of her bill, her features were drawn and she had the dilated eyes of a sick woman. She had to fight her way through the crowd at the door; people were killing each other for the bargains there. Then, outside on the pavement, when she had found her daughter, whom she had lost, the fresh air made her shiver, and she stood there frightened, unhinged by the neurosis caused by big shops.
That evening, as Denise was returning from dinner, a porter called out to her.
‘You’re wanted at the director’s office, miss.’
She had forgotten the order Mouret had given her in the morning to go to his office after the sale. He was standing waiting for her. As she went in she did not push the door to, and it remained open.
‘We’re very pleased with you, Mademoiselle Baudu,’ he said, ‘and we thought we’d give you proof of our satisfaction … You know about the shameful way Madame Frédéric left us. From tomorrow you will take her place as assistant buyer.’
Denise listened to him in surprise, unable to move. She murmured in a shaking voice:
‘But, sir, there are salesgirls who’ve been in the department much longer than I have.’
‘What does that matter?’ he went on. ‘You’re the most capable and the most reliable. It’s very natural that I should choose you … Aren’t you pleased?’
She blushed. She felt a delicious sensation of happiness and embarrassment in which her initial fear was dissolving. Why had she thought first of all of the assumptions with which this unhoped-for favour would be greeted? And she remained confused, in spite of her surge of gratitude. He was smiling and looking at her, in her simple silk dress, without a single piece of jewellery, with no other extravagance than her regal head of blonde hair. She had become more refined; her skin was fairer, her manner softer and more serious. The skinny insignificance she had had in the past was developing into a charm which was discreet, yet penetrating.
‘You’re very kind, sir,’ she stammered. ‘I don’t know how to express …’
But she was cut short. Framed in the doorway stood Lhomme. With his sound hand he was holding a big leather wallet, and with his mutilated arm he was pressing an enormous portfolio to his chest; behind him, his son Albert was carrying a load of bags which were making his arms break.
‘Five hundred and eighty-seven thousand, two hundred and ten francs thirty centimes!’ exclaimed the cashier, whose flabby, worn face seemed lit up with a ray of sunshine, reflected by such a sum.
It was the takings for the day, the largest the Paradise had ever had. Far away, in the depths of the shop through which Lhomme had just slowly walked with the heavy gait of an overloaded ox, could be heard the uproar, the stir of surprise and joy which these giant takings left in their wake.
‘It’s magnificent!’ said Mouret, delighted. ‘My dear Lhomme, put it down there, and have a rest, for you look quite done in. I’ll have the money taken to the counting-house … Yes, yes, put it all on my desk. I want to see it piled up.’
He was like a child in his happiness. The cashier and his son unloaded themselves. The wallet gave out the clear ring of gold, streams of silver and copper came from two of the bursting sacks, while corners of bank notes were sticking out from the portfolio. One end of the large desk was entirely covered; it was like the crumbling of a fortune which had taken ten hours to collect.
When Lhomme and Albert had retired, mopping their brows, Mouret remained motionless for a moment, lost in thought, his eyes on the money. Then he looked up and caught sight of Denise, who had stepped back. He began to smile again; he made her come forward, and ended by saying that he would give her as much as she could take in one handful; and behind his joke there was a kind of love-bargain.
‘Take some from the wallet! I bet you can’t take more than a thousand francs, your hand is so small!’
But she drew back again. So he was in love with her? Suddenly she understood; she felt the growing flame of desire with which he had been surrounding h
er ever since her return to the ladieswear department. What overwhelmed her even more was feeling her own heart beating as if it would burst. Why did he offend her with all that money, when she was brimming over with gratitude and he could have rendered her helpless with one friendly word? He was coming closer to her, still joking, when, to his great annoyance, Bourdoncle appeared under the pretext of giving him the entry figure, the enormous figure of seventy thousand customers who had visited the Paradise that day. She quickly took her leave, after thanking him once again.
CHAPTER 10
ON the first Sunday in August stock-taking took place, and it had to be finished by the evening. All the employees were at their posts early in the morning as if it was a weekday, and the task had begun behind closed doors, in the shop now empty of customers.
Denise had not come down at eight o’clock, with the other salesgirls. She had been confined to her room since the preceding Thursday with a sprained ankle, which she had acquired when going up to the work-rooms; she was now much better, but, as Madame Aurélie was pampering her, she was not hurrying, and sat putting her shoe on with difficulty, resolved to put in an appearance in the department all the same. The girls’ rooms were now on the fifth floor of the new buildings, along the Rue Monsigny; there were sixty of them on either side of a corridor, and they were more comfortable, though still furnished with the iron bedstead, large wardrobe, and little walnut dressing-table. As the girls’ situation improved, so their personal habits became cleaner and more refined; they developed a taste for expensive soap and dainty underwear, and there was a natural upward movement towards the middle class; but coarse words and banging doors could still be heard as they dashed in and out morning and evening, as if in a cheap hotel. In any case Denise, being assistant buyer, had one of the biggest rooms, with two dormer windows overlooking the street. Now that she was better off she allowed herself little luxuries—a red eiderdown covered with lace, a small carpet in front of the wardrobe, two blue glass vases on the dressing-table in which some roses were wilting.