The Ladies' Paradise

Mouret, who enjoyed a personal pleasure in satisfying other people’s passions, sometimes gave Lhomme the tickets forced on him by the lady patronesses of such entertainments, and he completed the old man’s delight by saying:

“Ah, Beethoven! ah, Mozart! What music!” And without waiting for a reply, he went off, rejoining Bourdoncle, already on his tour of inspection through the departments.

In the central hall, an inner courtyard with a glass roof formed the silk department. Both went along the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, occupied by the linen department, from one end to the other. Nothing unusual striking them, they passed on through the crowd of respectful assistants. They then turned into the cotton and hosiery departments, where the same order reigned. But in the department devoted to woollens, occupying the gallery which ran through to the Rue de la Michodière, Bourdoncle resumed the character of executioner, on observing a young man, seated on the counter, looking knocked up after a night passed without sleep. And this young man, named Liénard, son of a rich Angers draper, bowed his head beneath the reprimand, fearing nothing in his idle, careless life of pleasure except to be recalled by his father. The reprimands now began to shower down, and the gallery of the Rue de la Michodière received the full force of the storm. In the drapery department a salesman, a fresh hand, who slept in the house, had come in after eleven o’clock; in the haberdashery department, the second counterman had just allowed himself to be caught downstairs smoking a cigarette. But the tempest burst with especial violence in the glove department, on the head of one of the rare Parisians in the house, handsome Mignot, as they called him, the illegitimate son of a music-mistress: his crime was having caused a scandal in the dining-room by complaining of the food. As there were three tables, one at half-past nine, one at half-past ten, and another at half-past eleven, he wished to explain that belonging to the third table, he always had the leavings, the worst of everything.

“What! the food not good?” asked Mouret, naïvely, opening his mouth at last.

He only gave the head cook, a terrible Auvergnat, a franc and a half a head per day, out of which this man still managed to make a good profit; and the food was really execrable. But Bourdoncle shrugged his shoulders: a cook who had four hundred luncheons and four hundred dinners to serve, even in three series, had no time to waste on the refinements of his art.

“Never mind,” said the governor, good-naturedly, “I wish all our employees to have good, abundant food. I’ll speak to the cook.” And Mignot’s complaint was shelved.

Then returning to their point of departure, standing up near the door, amidst the umbrellas and neckties, Mouret and Bourdoncle received the report of one of the four inspectors, charged with the superintendence of the establishment. Old Jouve, a retired captain, decorated at Constantine, a fine-looking man still, with his big sensual nose and majestic baldness, having drawn their attention to a salesman, who, in reply to a simple remonstrance on his part, had called him “an old humbug,” the salesman was immediately discharged.

However, the shop was still without customers, except a few housewives of the neighbourhood who were going through the almost deserted galleries. At the door the time-keeper had just closed his book, and was making out a separate list of the late comers. The salesmen were taking possession of their departments, which had been swept and brushed by the messengers before their arrival. Each young man hung up his hat and great-coat as he arrived, stifling a yawn, still half asleep. Some exchanged a few words, gazed about the shop and seemed to be pulling themselves together ready for another day’s work; others were leisurely removing the green baize with which they had covered the goods over night, after having folded them up; and the piles of stuffs appeared symmetrically arranged, the whole shop was in a clean and orderly state, brilliant in the morning gaiety, waiting for the rush of business to come and obstruct it, and, as it were, narrow it by the unpacking and display of linen, cloth, silk, and lace.

In the bright light of the central hall, two young men were talking in a low voice at the silk counter. One, short and charming, well set, and with a pink skin, was endeavouring to blend the colours of some silks for indoor show. His name was Hutin, his father kept a café at Yvetot, and he had managed after eighteen months’ service to become one of the principal salesmen, thanks to a natural flexibility of character, a continual flow of caressing flattery, under which was concealed a furious rage for business, grasping everything, devouring everybody, even without hunger, just for the pleasure of the thing.

“Look here, Favier, I should have struck him if I had been in your place, honour bright!” said he to the other, a tall bilious fellow with a dry and yellow skin, who was born at Besançon of a family of weavers, and who, without the least grace, concealed under a cold exterior a disquieting will.

“It does no good to strike people,” murmured he, phlegmatically; “better wait.”

They were both speaking of Robineau, who was looking after the shopmen during the manager’s absence downstairs. Hutin was secretly undermining Robineau, whose place he coveted. He had already, to wound him and make him leave, introduced Bouthemont to fill the vacancy of manager which had been promised to Robineau. However, the latter stood firm, and it was now an hourly battle. Hutin dreamed of setting the whole department against him, to hound him out by means of ill-will and vexations. At the same time he went to work craftily, exciting Favier especially, who stood next to him as salesman, and who appeared to allow himself to be led on, but with certain brusque reserves, in which could be felt quite a private campaign carried on in silence.

“Hush! seventeen!” said he, quickly, to his colleague, to warn him by this peculiar cry of the approach of Mouret and Bourdoncle.

These latter were continuing their inspection by traversing the hall. They stopped to ask Robineau for an explanation with regard to a stock of velvets of which the boxes were encumbering a table. And as the latter replied that there wasn’t enough room:

“I told you so, Bourdoncle,” cried out Mouret, smiling; “the place is already too small. We shall soon have to knock down the walls as far as the Rue de Choiseul. You’ll see what a crush there’ll be next Monday.”

And respecting the coming sale, for which they were preparing at every counter, he asked Robineau further questions and gave him various orders. But for several minutes, and without having stopped talking, he had been watching Hutin, who was contrasting the silks – blue, grey, and yellow – drawing back to judge of the harmony of the tones. Suddenly he interfered:

“But why are you endeavouring to please the eyes? Don’t be afraid; blind them. Look! red, green, yellow.”

He had taken the pieces, throwing them together, crushing them, producing an excessively fast effect. Every one allowed the governor to be the best displayer in Paris, of a regular revolutionary stamp, who had founded the brutal and colossal school in the science of displaying. He delighted in a tumbling of stuffs, as if they had fallen from the crowded shelves by chance, making them glow with the most ardent colours, lighting each other up by the contrast, declaring that the customers ought to have sore eyes on going out of the shop. Hutin, who belonged, on the contrary, to the classic school, in which symmetry and harmony of colour were cherished, looked at him lighting up this fire of stuff on a table, not venturing on the least criticism, but biting his lip with the pout of an artist whose convictions are wounded by such a debauch.

“There!” exclaimed Mouret when he had finished. “Leave it; you’ll see if it doesn’t fetch the women on Monday.”

Just as he rejoined Bourdoncle and Robineau, there arrived a woman, who remained stock-still, suffocated before this show. It was Denise, who, having waited for nearly an hour in the street, the prey to a violent attack of timidity, had at last decided to go in. But she was so beside herself with bashfulness that she mistook the clearest directions; and the shopmen, of whom she had stutteringly asked for Madame Aurélie, directed her in vain to the lower staircase; she thanked them, and turned to the left if they told her to turn to the right; so that for the last ten minutes she had been wandering about the ground-floor, going from department to department, amidst the ill-natured curiosity and ill-tempered indifference of the salesmen. She longed to run away, and was at the same time retained by a wish to stop and admire. She felt herself lost, she, so little, in this monster place, in this machine at rest, trembling for fear she should be caught in the movement with which the walls already began to shake. And the thought of The Old Elbeuf, black and narrow, increased the immensity of this vast establishment, presenting it to her as bathed in light, like a city with its monuments, squares, and streets, in which it seemed impossible that she should ever find her way.

However, she had not dared to risk herself in the silk hall, the high glass roof, luxurious counters, and cathedral-like air of which frightened her. Then when she did venture in, to escape the shopmen in the linen department, who were grinning, she had stumbled right on to Mouret’s display; and, notwithstanding her fright, the woman was aroused within her, her cheeks suddenly became red, and she forgot everything in looking at the glow of these silks.

“Hullo!” said Hutin in Favier’s ear; “there’s the girl we saw in the Place Gaillon.”

Mouret, whilst affecting to listen to Bourdoncle and Robineau, was at heart flattered by the startled look of this poor girl, as a marchioness might be by the brutal desire of a passing drayman. But Denise had raised her eyes, and her confusion increased at the sight of this young man, whom she took for a manager. She thought he was looking at her severely. Then not knowing how to get away, quite lost, she applied to the nearest shopman, who happened to be Favier.

“Madame Aurélie, please?”

But Favier, who was disagreeable, contented himself with replying sharply: “First floor.”

And Denise, longing to escape the looks of all these men, thanked him, and had again turned her back to the stairs she ought to have mounted, when Hutin, yielding naturally to his instinct of gallantry, stopped her with his most amiable salesman’s smile, “No – this way, mademoiselle; if you don’t mind.”

And he even went with her a little way to the foot of the staircase on the left-hand side of the hall under the gallery. There he bowed, smiling tenderly, as he smiled at all women.

“When you get upstairs turn to the left. The dress department is straight in front.”

This caressing politeness affected Denise deeply. It was like a brotherly hand extended to her; she raised her eyes and looked at Hutin, and everything in him touched her – his handsome face, his looks which dissolved her fears, and his voice which seemed to her of a consoling softness. Her heart swelled with gratitude, and she bestowed her friendship in the few disjointed words her emotion allowed her to utter.

“Really, sir, you are too kind. Pray don’t trouble to come any further. Thank you very much.”

Hutin had already rejoined Favier, to whom he coarsely whispered: “What a bag of bones – eh?”

Upstairs the young girl suddenly found herself in the midst of the dress department. It was a vast room, with high carved oak cupboards all round, and clear glass windows looking on to the Rue de la Michodière. Five or six women in silk dresses, looking very coquettish with their frizzed chignons and crinolines drawn back, were moving about, talking. One, tall and thin, with a long head, having a runaway-horse appearance, was leaning against a cupboard, as if already knocked up with fatigue.

“Madame Aurélie?” inquired Denise.

The saleswoman looked at her without replying, with an air of disdain for her shabby dress, then turning to one of her friends, a short girl with a sickly white skin and an innocent and disgusted appearance, she asked: “Mademoiselle Vadon, do you know where Madame Aurélie is?”

The young girl, who was arranging some mantles according to their sizes, did not even take the trouble to raise her head. “No, Mademoiselle Prunaire, I don’t know at all,” replied she in a mincing tone.

A silence ensued. Denise stood still, and no one took any further notice of her. However, after waiting a moment, she ventured to put another question: “Do you think Madame Aurélie will be back soon?”

The second-hand, a thin, ugly woman, whom she had not noticed before, a widow with a projecting jaw-bone and coarse hair, cried out from a cupboard, where she was checking some tickets: “You’d better wait if you want to speak to Madame Aurélie herself.” And, addressing another saleswoman, she added: “Isn’t she downstairs?”

“No, Madame Frédéric, I don’t think so,” replied the young lady. “She said nothing before going, so she can’t be far off.”

Denise, thus instructed, remained standing. There were several chairs for the customers; but as they had not told her to sit down, she did not dare to take one, although she felt ready to drop with fatigue. All these ladies had evidently put her down as an applicant for the vacancy, and they were taking stock of her, pulling her to pieces ill-naturedly, with the secret hostility of people at table who do not like to close up to make room for hungry outsiders. Her confusion increased; she crossed the room quietly and looked out of the window into the street, just for something to do. Opposite, The Old Elbeuf, with its rusty front and lifeless windows, appeared to her so ugly, so miserable, seen thus from amidst the luxury and life of her present standpoint, that a sort of remorse filled her already swollen heart with grief.

“I say,” whispered tall Prunaire to little Vadon, “have you seen her boots?”

“And her dress!” murmured the other.

With her eyes still towards the street, Denise felt herself being devoured. But she was not angry; she did not think them handsome, neither the tall one with her carroty chignon falling over her horse-like neck, nor the little one with her sour milk complexion, which gave her flat and, as it were, boneless face a flabby appearance. Clara Primaire, daughter of a clogmaker in the forest of Vilet, debauched by the footmen at the Château de Mareuil, where the countess engaged her as needlewoman, had come later on from a shop at Langres, and was avenging herself in Paris on the men for the kicks with which her father had regaled her when at home. Marguerite Vadon, born at Grenoble, where her parents kept a linen shop, had been obliged to come to The Ladies’ Paradise to conceal an accident she had met with – a brat which had made its appearance one day. She was a well-conducted girl, and intended to return to Grenoble to take charge of her parents’ shop, and marry a cousin who was waiting for her.

“Well,” resumed Clara, in a low voice, “there’s a girl who won’t do much good here!”

But they stopped talking. A woman of about forty-five came in. It was Madame Aurélie, very stout, tightly laced in her black silk dress, the body of which, strained over her massive shoulders and full bust, shone like a piece of armour. She had, under very dark folds of hair, great fixed eyes, a severe mouth, and large and rather drooping cheeks; and in the majesty of her position as first-hand, her face assumed the bombast of a puffy mask of Cæsar, “Mademoiselle Vadon,” said she, in an irritated voice, “you didn’t return the pattern of that mantle to the workroom yesterday, it seems?”

“There was an alteration to make, madame,” replied the saleswoman, “so Madame Frédéric kept it.”

The second-hand then took the pattern out of a cupboard, and the explanation continued. Every one gave way to Madame Aurélie, when she thought it necessary to assert her authority. Very vain, even going so far as not to wish to be called by her real name, Lhomme, which annoyed her, and to deny her father’s humble position, always referring to him as a regularly established tailor, she was only gracious towards those young ladies who showed themselves flexible and caressing, bowing down in admiration before her. Some time previously, whilst she was trying to establish herself in a shop of her own, her temper had become sour, continually thwarted by the worst of luck, exasperated to feel herself born to fortune and to encounter nothing but a series of catastrophes; and now, even after her success at The Ladies’ Paradise, where she earned twelve thousand francs a year, it seemed that she still nourished a secret spite against every one, and she was very hard with beginners, as life had shown itself hard for her at first.

“That will do!” said she, sharply; “you are no more reasonable than the others, Madame Frédéric. Let the alteration be made immediately.”

During this explanation, Denise had ceased to look into the street She had no doubt this was Madame Aurélie; but, frightened at her sharp voice, she remained standing, still waiting. The two saleswomen, delighted to have set their two superiors at variance, had returned to their work with an air of profound indifference. A few minutes elapsed, nobody being charitable enough to draw the young girl from her uncomfortable position. At last, Madame Aurélie herself perceived her, and astonished to see her standing there without moving, asked her what she wanted.

“Madame Aurélie, please.”

“I am Madame Aurélie.”