The Ladies' Paradise

A silence fell, broken only by the sound of Mouret's pen. Then, in reply to his brief questions, Bourdoncle gave him various information respecting of the great sale of winter novelties, which was to commence on the following Monday. This was an important affair, the house was risking its fortune in it; for the rumours of the neighbourhood had some foundation, Mouret was throwing himself into speculation like a poet, with such ostentation, such desire to attain the colossal, that everything seemed likely to give way under him. It was quite a new style of doing business, a seeming commercial phantasy which had formerly made Madame Hédouin anxious, and even now, notwithstanding certain successes, quite dismayed those who had capital in the business. They blamed the governor in secret for going too quick; accused him of having enlarged the establishment to a dangerous extent, before making sure of a sufficient increase of custom; above all, they trembled on seeing him put all the available cash into one venture, filling the departments with a pile of goods without leaving a copper in the reserve fund. Thus, for this winter sale, after the heavy sums recently paid to the builders, the whole capital was exhausted and it once more became a question of victory or death. Yet Mouret in the midst of all this excitement, preserved a triumphant gaiety, a certainty of gaining millions, like a man so worshipped by women, that there could be no question of betrayal. When Bourdoncle ventured to express certain fears with reference to the excessive development given to several departments of doubtful profit he gave vent to a laugh full of confidence, and exclaimed:

"Pooh, pooh! my dear fellow, the place is still too small!"

The other appeared dumbfounded, seized with a fear which he no longer attempted to conceal. The house too small! an establishment which comprised nineteen departments, and numbered four hundred and three employees!

"Of course," resumed Mouret, "we shall be obliged to enlarge our premises again before another eighteen months are over. I'm seriously thinking about the matter. Last night Madame Desforges promised to introduce me to some one who may be useful. In short, we'll talk it over when the idea is ripe."

Then having finished signing his drafts, he rose, and tapped his lieutenant on the shoulder in a friendly manner, but the latter could not get over his astonishment. The fright displayed by the prudent people around him amused Mouret. In one of those fits of brusque frankness with which he sometimes overwhelmed his familiars, he declared that he was at heart a greater Jew than all the Jews in the world; he took, said he, after his father, whom he resembled physically and morally, a fellow who knew the value of money; and, if his mother had given him that dash of nervous fantasy which he displayed, it was, perhaps, the principal element of his luck, for he felt that his ability to dare everything was an invincible force.

"Oh! You know very well that we'll stand by you to the last," Bourdoncle finished by saying.

Then, before going down into the shop to give their usual look round, they settled certain other details. They examined a specimen of a little book of account forms, which Mouret had just invented for the use of his employees. Having remarked that the old-fashioned goods, the dead stock, went off the more rapidly the higher the commission allowed to the employees, he had based on this observation quite a new system, that of interesting his people in the sale of all the goods, giving them a commission on even the smallest piece of stuff, the most trumpery article they sold. This innovation had caused quite a revolution in the drapery trade, creating between the salespeople a struggle for existence of which the masters reaped the benefits. To foment this struggle was indeed Mouret's favourite method, the principle which he constantly applied. He excited his employees' passions, pitted one against the other, allowed the stronger to swallow up the weaker ones, and for his own part battened on this struggle of conflicting interests. The sample account book was duly approved of; at the top of each leaf on both counterfoil and bill form, appeared particulars of the department and the salesman's number; then also in duplicate came columns for the measurement, the description of the goods sold, and their price. The salesman simply signed the bill form before handing it to the cashier; and in this way an easy account was kept: it was only necessary to compare the bill-forms delivered by the cashier's department to the clearing-house with the salesmen's counterfoils. Every week the latter would receive their commission, without any possibility of error.

"We shan't be robbed so much," remarked Bourdoncle, with satisfaction. "This was a very good idea of yours."

"And I thought of something else last night," explained Mouret. "Yes, my dear fellow, at supper. I have an idea of giving the clearing-house clerks a little bonus for every error they detect while checking the bills. You understand, eh? Like this we shall be sure that they won't pass any, for rather than do that they'll be inventing mistakes!"

He began to laugh, whilst the other looked at him admiringly. This new application of the struggle-for-existence theory delighted Mouret; he had a real genius for administrative functions, and dreamed of so organizing the establishment as to trade upon the selfish instincts of his employees, for the greater satisfaction of his own appetites. He often said that to make people do their best, and even to keep them fairly honest, it was first of all necessary to excite their selfish desires.

"Well, let's go downstairs," he resumed. "We must look after this sale. The silk arrived yesterday, I believe, and Bouthemont must be getting it in now."

Bourdoncle followed him. The receiving office was in the basement on the side of the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin. There, on a level with the pavement, was a kind of glazed cage, into which the vans discharged the goods. They were weighed, and then shot down a rapid slide, whose oak and iron work was polished by the constant chaffing of bales and cases. Everything entered by this yawning trap; it was a continuous swallowing up, a niagara of goods, falling with a roar like that of a torrent. At the approach of big sale times especially, the slide brought down an endless stream of Lyons silks, English woollens, Flemish linens, Alsatian calicoes, and Rouen prints. The vans were sometimes obliged to wait their turn along the street; and as each bale rushed down to the basement there arose a sound as of a stone thrown into deep water.

On his way Mouret stopped for a moment before the slide, which was in full activity. Rows of cases were coming down of themselves, falling like rain from some upper stream. Then bales appeared, toppling over in their descent like rolling stones. Mouret looked on, without saying a word. But this wealth of goods rushing in to his establishment at the rate of thousands of francs each minute, made his clear eyes glisten. He had never before had such a clear, definite idea of the struggle he was engaged in. It was this falling mountain of goods which he must cast to the four corners of Paris. He did not open his mouth, however, but continued his inspection.

By the grey light which came in through the large vent-holes, a squad of men were receiving the goods, whilst others removed the lids of the cases and opened the bales in presence of the managers of different departments. A dockyard kind of bustle filled this basement, whose vaulted roofing was supported by wrought-iron pillars and whose bare walls were simply cemented.

"Have you got everything there, Bouthemont?" asked Mouret, approaching a broad-shouldered young fellow who was checking the contents of a case.

"Yes, everything seems all right," replied he, "but the counting will take me all the morning."

Then the manager of the silk department ran down an invoice he held, standing the while before a large counter on which one of his salesmen deposited, one by one, the pieces of silk which he took from an open case. Behind them ran other counters, also littered with goods which a small army of shopmen was examining. It was a general unpacking, a seeming confusion of stuffs, inspected, turned over, and marked, amidst a continuous buzz of voices.

Bouthemont who was becoming a celebrity in the trade, had the round, jovial face of a right good fellow, with a coal-black beard, and fine hazel eyes. Born at Montpellier, noisy, and over fond of pleasure, he was not of much good for the sales, but in buying he had not his equal. Sent to Paris by his father, who kept a draper's shop in his native town, he had absolutely refused to return home when the old fellow, thinking that he ought to know enough to succeed him in his business, had summoned him to do so; and from that moment a rivalry had sprung up between father and son, the former, absorbed in his little country business and shocked to see a simple shopman earning three times as much as he did himself, and the latter joking at the old man's humdrum routine, chinking his money, and throwing the whole house into confusion at every flying visit he paid. Like the other managers, Bouthemont drew, besides his three thousand francs regular pay, a commission on the sales. Montpellier, surprised and respectful, whispered that young Bouthemont had made fifteen thousand francs the year before, and that that was only a beginning – people prophesied to the exasperated father that this figure would certainly increase.

Meantime Bourdoncle had taken up one of the pieces of silk, and was examining the texture with the eye of a connoisseur. It was a faille with a blue and silver selvage, the famous Paris Delight, with which Mouret hoped to strike a decisive blow.

"It is really very good," observed Bourdoncle.

"And the effect it produces is better than its real quality," said Bouthemont. "Dumonteil is the only one capable of manufacturing such stuff. Last journey when I fell out with Gaujean, the latter was willing to set a hundred looms to work on this pattern, but he asked five sous a yard more."

Nearly every month Bouthemont went to Lyons, staying there days together, living at the best hôtels, with orders to treat the manufacturers with open purse. He enjoyed, moreover, a perfect liberty, and bought what he liked, provided that he increased the yearly business of his department in a certain proportion, settled beforehand; and it was on this proportion that his commission was based. In short, his position at The Ladies' Paradise, like that of all the managers, was that of a special tradesman, in a grouping of various businesses, a sort of vast trading city.

"So," resumed he, "it's decided we mark it at five francs twelve sous? It's barely the cost price, you know."

"Yes, yes, five francs twelve sous," said Mouret, quickly; "and if I were alone, I'd sell it at a loss."

The manager laughed heartily. "Oh! I don't mind, its cheapness will treble the sales and my only interest is to secure heavy receipts – "

But Bourdoncle remained grave, biting his lips. For his part he drew his commission on the total profits, and it was not to his advantage that the prices should be lowered. As it happened, a part of his duties was to exercise a control over the prices fixed upon in order to prevent Bouthemont from selling at too small a profit for the sole purpose of increasing the sales. Moreover, all his former anxiety reappeared in the presence of these advertising combinations which he did not understand, and he ventured to display his repugnance by remarking:

"If we sell it at five francs twelve sous, it will be like selling it at a loss, as we must allow for our expenses, which are considerable. It would fetch seven francs anywhere."

At this Mouret got angry. Striking the silk with his open hand he exclaimed excitedly: "I know that, that's why I want to give it to our customers. Really, my dear fellow, you'll never understand women's ways. Don't you see that they'll fight together over this silk?"

"No doubt," interrupted the other, obstinately, "and the more they buy, the more we shall lose."

"We shall lose a few sous on the stuff, very likely. But what can that matter, if in return we attract all the women here, and keep them at our mercy, fascinated, maddened by the sight of our goods, emptying their purses without thinking? The principal thing, my dear fellow, is to inflame them, and for that purpose you must have an article which will flatter them and cause a sensation. Afterwards, you can sell the other articles as dear as they are sold anywhere else, they'll still think yours the cheapest. For instance, our Golden Grain, that taffetas at seven francs and a half, sold everywhere at the same price, will go down as an extraordinary bargain, and suffice to make up for the loss on the Paris Delight. You'll see, you'll see!"

He was becoming quite eloquent. "Don't you understand?" he resumed, "In a week's time from to-day I want the Paris Delight to effect a revolution in the market. It's our master-stroke, which will save us and send our name everything. Nothing else will be talked of; that blue and silver selvage will be known from one to the other end of France. And you'll hear the furious complaints of our competitors. The small traders will lose another wing by it. Yes, we shall have done for all those slop-sellers who are dying of rheumatism in their cellars!"

The shopmen checking the goods round-about were listening and smiling. Mouret liked to talk in this way without contradiction. Bourdoncle yielded once more. However, the case of silk was now empty and two men were opening another.

"It's the manufacturers who are vexed," now said Bouthemont. "At Lyons they are all furious with you, they pretend that your cheap trading is ruining them. You are aware that Gaujean has positively declared war against me. Yes, he has sworn to give long credits to the little houses rather than accept my prices."

Mouret shrugged his shoulders. "If Gaujean doesn't behave sensibly," he replied, "Gaujean will be floored. What do they all complain of? We pay ready money and we take all they can make; it's strange if they can't work cheaper at that rate. Besides, the public gets the benefit, and that's everything."

The shopman now began emptying the second case, whilst Bouthemont checked the pieces by the invoice. Another employee at the end of the counter then marked them in plain figures, and the checking finished, the invoice, signed by the manager, had to be sent to the chief cashier's office. For another minute Mouret continued looking at the work, at all the activity around this unpacking of goods which threatened to drown the basement; then, never adding a word but with the air of a captain satisfied with his men, he went off, again followed by Bourdoncle.

They slowly crossed the basement floor. The air-holes placed at intervals admitted a pale light; while in the dark corners, and along the narrow corridors, gas was constantly burning. In these corridors were the reserves, large vaults closed with iron railings, containing the surplus goods of each department. As he passed along Mouret glanced at the heating apparatus which was to be lighted on the following Monday for the first time, and at the firemen guarding a giant gas-meter enclosed in an iron cage. The kitchen and dining-rooms, old cellars turned into habitable apartments, were on the left near the corner of the Place Gaillon. At last, right at the other end of the basement, he arrived at the delivery office. Here, all the purchases which customers did not take away with them, were sent down, sorted on tables, and placed in compartments each of which represented a particular district of Paris; then by a large staircase opening just opposite The Old Elbeuf, they were sent up to the vans standing alongside the pavement. In the mechanical working of The Ladies' Paradise, this staircase in the Rue de la Michodière was ever disgorging the goods devoured by the slide in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, after they had passed through the mill of the counters up above.

"Campion," said Mouret to the delivery manager, a retired sergeant with a thin face, "why weren't six pairs of sheets, bought by a lady yesterday about two o'clock, delivered in the evening?"

"Where does the lady live?" asked the employee.

"In the Rue de Rivoli, at the corner of the Rue d'Alger – Madame Desforges."

At this early hour the sorting tables were yet bare and the compartments only contained a few parcels left over night. Whilst Campion was searching amongst these packets, after consulting a list, Bourdoncle looked at Mouret, reflecting that this wonderful fellow knew everything, thought of everything, even when he was supposed to be amusing himself. At last Campion discovered the error; the cashiers' department had given a wrong number, and the parcel had come back.

"What is the number of the pay-desk that debited the order?" asked Mouret: "No. 10, you say?" And turning towards his lieutenant, he added: "No. 10; that's Albert, isn't it? We'll just say two words to him."

However, before starting on a tour round the shops, he wanted to go up to the postal order department, which occupied several rooms on the second floor. It was there that all the provincial and foreign orders arrived; and he went up every morning to see the correspondence. For two years this correspondence had been increasing daily. At first occupying only a dozen clerks, it now required more than thirty. Some opened the letters and others read them, seated on either side of the same table; others again classified them, giving each one a running number, which was repeated on a pigeon-hole. Then when the letters had been distributed to the different departments and the latter had delivered the articles ordered, these articles were placed in the pigeon-holes as they arrived, in accordance with running numbers. Nothing then remained but to check and pack them, which was done in a neighbouring room by a squad of workmen who were nailing and tying up from morning to night.

Mouret put his usual question: "How many letters this morning, Levasseur?"

"Five hundred and thirty-four, sir," replied the chief clerk. "After the new sale has begun on Monday, I'm afraid we sha'n't have enough hands. Yesterday we were driven very hard."

Bourdoncle expressed his satisfaction by a nod of the head. He had not reckoned on five hundred and thirty-four letters arriving on a Tuesday. Round the table, the clerks continued opening and reading the letters, the paper rustling all the time, whilst before the pigeon-holes the various articles ordered began to arrive. This was one of the most complicated and important departments of the establishment, and the rush was continual, for, strictly speaking, all the orders received in the morning ought to be sent off the same evening.

"You shall have whatever more hands you want," replied Mouret, who had seen at a glance that the work of the department was well done. "When there's work," he added, "we never refuse the men."

Up above, under the roof, were the bedrooms occupied by the saleswomen. However, Mouret went downstairs again and entered the chief cash office, which was near his own. It was a room with a glazed partition in which was a metal-work wicket, and it contained an enormous safe, fixed in the wall. Two cashiers here centralised the receipts which Lhomme, the chief cashier of the sales' service, brought in every evening; and with these receipts they discharged the current expenses, paid the manufacturers, the staff, all the people indeed who lived by the house. Their office communicated with another, full of green cardboard boxes, where some ten clerks checked the innumerable invoices. Then came yet a third office, the clearing-house, so to say, where six young men bending over black desks, with quite a collection of registers behind them, made up the commission accounts of the salesmen, by checking the debit notes. This department but recently organized did not as yet work particularly well.

Mouret and Bourdoncle crossed the cashier's office and the invoice room and when they passed into the third office the young men there, who were laughing and joking together, started with surprise. Mouret, without reprimanding them, thereupon explained his scheme of giving them a little bonus for each error they might detect in the debit notes; and when he went out the clerks, quite cured of all inclination for idle laughter, set to work in earnest, hunting for errors.

On reaching the ground-floor, occupied by the shops, Mouret went straight to pay-desk No. 10, where Albert Lhomme was polishing his nails, pending the arrival of customers. People currently spoke of "the Lhomme dynasty," since Madame Aurélie, first-hand in the mantle department, after helping her husband to secure the post of chief cashier, had further managed to get a pay desk for her son, a tall, pale, vicious young man who had been unable to remain in any situation, and had caused her an immense deal of anxiety. On reaching his desk, Mouret, who never cared to render himself unpopular by performing police duty, and from policy and taste preferred to play the part of a benign Providence, retired into the back ground, after gently nudging Bourdoncle with his elbow. It was Bourdoncle, the infallible and impeccable, whom he generally charged with the duty of reprimanding.

"Monsieur Albert," said Bourdoncle, severely, "you have again taken an address wrong; the parcel has come back. It is unbearable!"