The Ladies' Paradise

"Look here!" resumed Mouret, gaily, "will you be my ambassador? I intended increasing my offer to-morrow – of proposing eighty thousand francs to Bourras. Will you speak to him first about it? Tell him he's cutting his own throat. Perhaps he'll listen to you, as he has a liking for you, and you'll be doing him a real service."

"Very well!" said Denise, smiling also, "I will deliver your message, but I am afraid I shall not succeed."

Then a fresh silence ensued, neither of them having anything more to say. For a moment he attempted to talk of her uncle Baudu; but had to give it up on seeing how uncomfortable this made the girl. Nevertheless, they continued walking side by side, and at last found themselves near the Rue de Rivoli, in a path where it was still light. On emerging from the darkness of the trees this was like a sudden awakening. He understood that he could not detain her any longer.

"Good night, mademoiselle," he said.

"Good night, sir."

Nevertheless he did not go away. On raising his eyes he had perceived in front of him, at the corner of the Rue d'Alger, the lighted windows of Madame Desforges's flat whither he was bound. And looking at Denise, whom he could now see, in the pale twilight, she appeared to him very puny compared to Henriette. Why was it then that she touched his heart in this manner? It was a stupid caprice.

"This little man is getting tired," he resumed, by way of saying something. "Remember, mind, that our house will always be open to you; you've only to knock, and I'll give you every compensation possible. Good night, mademoiselle."

"Good night, sir."

When Mouret had quitted her, Denise went back under the chestnut-trees, into the black gloom. For a long time she walked on at random, between the huge trunks, her face burning, her head in a whirl of confused ideas. Pépé still held her hand and was stretching out his short legs to keep pace with her. She had forgotten him. But at last he said: "You go too quick, little mother."

At this she sat down on a bench; and as he was tired, the child went to sleep on her lap. She held him there, pressing him to her virgin bosom, her eyes wandering far away into the darkness. When, an hour later, they slowly returned to the Rue de la Michodière, she had regained her usual quiet, sensible expression.

"Hell and thunder!" shouted Bourras, when he saw her coming, "the blow is struck. That rascal of a Mouret has just bought my house." He was half mad, and was striking himself in the middle of the shop with such outrageous gestures that he almost broke the windows. "Ah! the scoundrel! It's the fruiterer who's written to tell me of it. And how much do you think the rogue, has got for the house? One hundred and fifty thousand francs, four times its value! There's another thief, if you like! Just fancy, he has taken advantage of my embellishments, making capital out of the fact that the house has been done up. How much longer are they going to make a fool of me?"

The thought that his money spent on paint and whitewash had brought the fruiterer a profit exasperated him. And now Mouret would be his landlord; he would have to pay him! It was beneath this detested competitor's roof that he must in future live! Such a thought raised his fury to the highest pitch.

"Ah! I could hear them digging a hole through the wall. At this moment, they are here, eating out of my very plate, so to say!"

And the shop shook under his heavy fist as he banged it on the counter, making the umbrellas and the parasols dance again.

Denise, bewildered, could not get in a word. She stood there, motionless, waiting for the end of this fit; whilst Pépé, very tired, fell asleep again, this time on a chair. At last, when Bourras became a little calmer, she resolved to deliver Mouret's message. No doubt the old man was irritated, but the excess even of his anger, the blind alley, as it were, in which he found himself, might determine an abrupt acceptance on his part.

"I've just met some one," she commenced. "Yes, a person from The Paradise, who is very well informed. It appears that they are going to offer you eighty thousand francs to-morrow."

"Eighty thousand francs!" he interrupted, in a terrible voice; "eighty thousand francs! Not for a million now!"

She tried to reason with him. But at that moment the shop door opened, and she suddenly drew back, pale and silent. It was her uncle Baudu, with his yellow face and aged look. Bourras caught his neighbour by the buttonhole, and without allowing him to say a word, as if goaded on by his presence, roared in his face: "What do you think they have the cheek to offer me? Eighty thousand francs! They've got to that point, the brigands! they think I'm going to sell myself like a prostitute. Ah! they've bought the house, and think they've got me now! Well! it's all over, they shan't have it! I might have given way, perhaps; but now it belongs to them, let them try to take it!"

"So the news is true?" said Baudu, in his slow voice. "I had heard of it, and came over to know if it was so."

"Eighty thousand francs!" repeated Bourras. "Why not a hundred thousand at once? It's this immense sum of money that makes me so indignant. Do they think they can make me commit a knavish trick with their money! They shan't have it, by heavens! Never, never, you hear me?"

Then Denise broke her silence to remark, in her calm, quiet way: "They'll have it in nine years' time, when your lease expires."

And, notwithstanding her uncle's presence, she begged the old man to accept. The struggle was becoming impossible, he was fighting against a superior force; it would be madness to refuse the fortune offered him. But he still replied no. In nine years' time he hoped to be dead, so as not to see it.

"You hear, Monsieur Baudu," he resumed, "your niece is on their side, it's she whom they have commissioned to corrupt me. She's with the brigands, my word of honour!"

Baudu, who had so far appeared not to notice Denise, now raised his head, with the surly movement that he affected when standing at his shop door, every time she passed. But, slowly, he turned round and looked at her, and his thick lips trembled.

"I know it," he replied in an undertone, and he continued looking at her.

Denise, affected almost to tears, thought him greatly changed by worry. Perhaps too he was stricken with remorse at not having assisted her during the time of misery through which she had lately passed. Then the sight of Pépé sleeping on the chair, amidst the hubbub of the discussion, seemed to suddenly inspire him with compassion.

"Denise," said he simply, "come to-morrow and have dinner with us, and bring the little one. My wife and Geneviève asked me to invite you if I met you."

She turned very red, went up to him and kissed him. And as he was going away, Bourras, delighted at this reconciliation, again cried out to him: "Just give her a lecture, she isn't a bad sort. As for me, the house may fall, I shall be found in the ruins."

"Our houses are already falling, neighbour," said Baudu with a gloomy air. "We shall all of us be crushed under them."

CHAPTER VIII

At this time the whole neighbourhood was talking of the great thoroughfare which was to be opened between the Bourse and the new Opera House, under the name of the Rue du Dix-Décembre.[3 - This is at the present day the Rue du Quatre Septembre. Napoleon III. gave as the name of the new thoroughfare the date of his coronation (Dec. 10); and after Sedan the Republican government ironically retorted by altering the name to the date of his downfall (Sept. 4).] The expropriation judgments had been delivered, and two gangs of demolishers were already beginning operations at either end, the first pulling down the old mansions in the Rue Louis-le-Grand, and the other destroying the thin walls of the old Vaudeville. You could hear the picks getting closer, and the Rue de Choiseul and the Rue de la Michodière waxing quite excited over their condemned houses. Before a fortnight passed, the opening would leave in both these streets a great gap full of sunlight and uproar.

But what stirred up the district still more, was the work undertaken at The Ladies' Paradise. People talked of considerable enlargements, of gigantic shops with frontages on the Rue de la Michodière, the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, and the Rue Monsigny. Mouret, it was said, had made arrangements with Baron Hartmann, the chairman of the Crédit Immobilier, and would occupy the whole block, excepting the future frontage in the Rue du Dix-Décembre, where the baron wished to erect a rival establishment to the Grand Hôtel. The Paradise people were buying up leases on all sides, shops were closing, and tenants moving; and in the empty buildings an army of workmen was commencing the various alterations amidst a cloud of plaster. And alone in all this disorder, old Bourras's narrow hovel remained intact, still obstinately clinging between the high walls covered with masons.

When on the following day, Denise went with Pépé to her uncle Baudu's, the street was blocked up by a line of carts discharging bricks outside the Hôtel Duvillard. Baudu was standing at his shop door looking on with a gloomy air. In proportion as The Ladies' Paradise became larger, The Old Elbeuf seemed to grow smaller. The young girl thought that the windows looked blacker than ever, lower and lower still beneath the first storey, with its rounded prison-like windows. The damp, moreover, had still further discoloured the old green sign-board; woefulness appeared on the whole frontage, livid in hue, and, as it were, shrunken.

"Here you are, then!" said Baudu. "Take care! they would run right over you."

Inside the shop, Denise experienced the same heart pang; she found it darker, steeped more deeply than ever in the somnolence of approaching ruin. Empty corners formed dark cavities, dust was covering the counters and filling the drawers, whilst a cellar-like odour of saltpetre rose from the bales of cloth that were no longer moved about. At the desk Madame Baudu and Geneviève stood mute and motionless, as in some solitary spot, where no one would come to disturb them. The mother was hemming some dusters. The daughter, her hands resting on her knees, was gazing at the emptiness before her.

"Good evening, aunt," said Denise; "I'm delighted to see you again, and if I have hurt your feelings, I hope you will forgive me."

Madame Baudu kissed her, greatly affected. "My poor child," said she, "if I had no other troubles, you would see me gayer than this."

"Good evening, cousin," resumed Denise, kissing Geneviève on the cheeks.

The latter woke with a sort of start, and returned her kisses but without finding a word to say. Then the two women took up Pépé, who was holding out his little arms, and the reconciliation was complete.

"Well! it's six o'clock, let's go to dinner," said Baudu. "Why haven't you brought Jean?"

"Well, he was to have come," murmured Denise, in embarrassment. "I saw him this morning, and he faithfully promised me. Oh! we must not wait for him; his master has kept him, I dare say." In reality she suspected some extraordinary adventure, and wished to apologize for him in advance.

"In that case, we will commence," said her uncle and turning towards the dim depths of the shop, he added:

"You may as well dine with us, Colomban. No one will come."

Denise had not noticed the assistant. Her aunt explained to her that they had been obliged to get rid of the other salesman and the young lady. Business was getting so bad that Colomban sufficed; and even he spent many idle hours, drowsy, falling asleep with his eyes open.

The gas was burning in the dining-room, although they were now in the long days of summer. Denise shivered slightly as she went in, chilled by the dampness oozing from the walls. She once more beheld the round table, the places laid on the American cloth, the window deriving its air and light from the dark and fetid back-yard. And all these things appeared to her to be gloomier than ever, and tearful like the shop.

"Father," said Geneviève, uncomfortable for Denise's sake, "shall I close the window? there's rather a bad smell."

He himself smelt nothing, and seemed surprised. "Shut the window if you like," he replied at last. "But we shan't get any air then."

And indeed they were almost stifled. It was a very simple family dinner. After the soup, as soon as the servant had served the boiled beef, the old man as usual began talking about the people opposite. At first he showed himself very tolerant, allowing his niece to have a different opinion.

"Dear me!" said he, "you are quite free to support those big tricky shows. Each person has his ideas, my girl. If you were not disgusted at being so disgracefully chucked out you must have strong reasons for liking them; and even if you went back again, I should think none the worse of you. No one here would be offended, would they?"

"Oh, no!" murmured Madame Baudu.