Complete Works of Emile Zola (702 page)

At last he came to the delicate point. He was aware that the Crédit Immobilier was buying up the houses which surrounded The Ladies’ Paradise, not only those which were to fall under the demolisher’s hands, but the others as well, those which were to remain standing; and he suspected the projectment of some future establishment. He was very anxious about the enlargements of which he continued to extend the dream, seized with fear at the idea of one day clashing with a powerful company, owning property which they certainly would not part with. It was precisely this fear which had decided him to establish a connection immediately between himself and the baron — the amiable connection of a woman, so powerful between men of a gallant nature. No doubt he could have seen the financier in his office, and talked over the affair in question at his ease; but he felt himself stronger in Henrietta’s house; he knew how much the mutual possession of a mistress serves to render men pliable and tender. To be both near her, within the beloved perfume of her presence, to have her ready to convince them with a smile, seemed to him a certainty of success.

“Haven’t you bought the old Hôtel Duvillard, that old building next to mine?” he asked suddenly.

The baron hesitated a moment, and then denied it. But Mouret looked in his face and smiled, playing, from that moment, the part of a good young man, open-hearted, simple, and straightforward in business.

“Look here, baron,” said he, “as I have the unexpected honor of meeting you, I must make a confession. Oh, I don’t ask you any of your secrets, but I am going to entrust you with mine, certain that I couldn’t place them in wiser hands. Besides, I want your advice. I have long wished to call and see you, but dared not do so.”

He did make his confession, he related his start, not even concealing the financial crisis through which he was passing in the midst of his triumph. Everything was brought up, the successive enlargements, the profits continually put back into the business, the sums brought by his employees, the house risking its existence at every fresh sale, in which the entire capital was staked, as it were, on a single throw of the dice. However, it was not money he wanted, for he had a fanatic’s faith in his customers; his ambition ran higher; he proposed to the baron a partnership, into which the Crédit Immobilier should bring the colossal palace he saw in his dreams, whilst he, for his part, would give his genius and the business already created. The estate could be valued, nothing appeared to him easier to realize.

“What are you going to do with your land and buildings?” asked he, persistently. “You have a plan, no doubt. But I’m quite certain your idea is not so good as mine. Think of that. We build a gallery on the ground, we pull down or re-arrange the houses, and we open the most extensive establishment in Paris — a bazaar which will bring in millions.” And he let slip the fervent heartfelt exclamation: “Ah! if I could only do without you! But you get hold of everything now. Besides, I shall never have the necessary capital. Come, we must come to an understanding. It would be a crime not to do so.”

“How you go ahead, my dear sir!” Baron Hartmann contented himself with replying. “What an imagination!”

He shook his head, and continued to smile, determined not to return confidence for confidence. The intention of the Crédit Immobilier was to create in the Rue du Dix-Décembre a rival to the Grand Hôtel, a luxurious establishment, the central position of which would attract foreigners. At the same time, as the hotel was only to occupy a certain frontage, the baron could also have entertained Mouret’s idea, and treated for the rest of the block of houses, occupying a vast surface. But he had already advanced funds to two of Henriette’s friends, and he was getting tired of his position as complacent protector. Besides, notwithstanding his passion for activity, which prompted him to open his purse to every fellow of intelligence and courage, Mouret’s commercial genius astonished more than captivated him. Was it not a fanciful, imprudent operation, this gigantic shop? Would he not risk a certain failure in thus enlarging out of all bounds the drapery trade? In short, he didn’t believe in it; he refused.

“No doubt the idea is attractive, but it’s a poet’s idea. Where would you find the customers to fill such a cathedral?”

Mouret looked at him for a moment silently, as if stupefied at his refusal. Was it possible? — a man of such foresight, who smelt money at no matter what depth! And suddenly, with an extremely eloquent gesture, he pointed to the ladies in the drawing-room and exclaimed: “There are my customers!”

The sun was going down, the golden-red flame was now but a pale light, dying away in a farewell gleam on the silk of the hangings and the panels of the furniture. At this approach of twilight, an intimacy bathed the large room in a sweet softness. While Monsieur de Boves and Paul de Vallagnosc were talking near one of the windows, their eyes wandering far away into the gardens, the ladies had closed up, forming in the middle of the room a narrow circle of petticoats, from which issued sounds of laughter, whispered words, ardent questions and replies, all the passion felt by woman for expenditure and finery. They were talking about dress, and Madame de Boves was describing a costume she had seen at a ball.

“First of all, a mauve silk skirt, then over that flounces of old Alençon lace, twelve inches deep.”

“Oh! is it possible!” exclaimed Madame Marty. “Some women are fortunate!”

Baron Hartmann, who had followed Mouret’s gesture, was looking at the ladies through the door, which was wide open. He was listening to them with one ear, whilst the young man, inflamed by the desire to convince him, went deeper into the question, explaining the mechanism of the new style of drapery business. This branch of commerce was now based on a rapid and continual turning over of the capital, which it was necessary to turn into goods as often as possible in the same year. Thus, that year his capital, which only amounted to five hundred thousand francs, had been turned over four times, and had thus produced business to the amount of two millions. But this was a mere trifle, which could be increased tenfold, for later on he certainly hoped to turn over the capital fifteen or twenty times in certain departments.

“You will understand, baron, that the whole system lies in this. It is very simple, but it had to be found out. We don’t want a very large working capital; our sole effort is to get rid as quickly as possible of our stock to replace it by another, which will give our capital as many times its interest. In this way we can content ourselves with a very small profit; as our general expenses amount to the enormous figure of sixteen per cent., and as we seldom make more than twenty per cent, on our goods, it is only a net profit of four per cent. at most; but this will finish by bringing in millions when we can operate on considerable quantities of goods incessantly renewed. You follow me, don’t you? nothing can be clearer.”

The baron shook his head again. He who had entertained the boldest combinations, of whom people still quoted the daring flights at the time of the introduction of gas, still remained uneasy and obstinate.

“I quite understand,” said he; “you sell cheap to sell a quantity, and you sell a quantity to sell cheap. But you must sell, and I repeat my former question: Whom will you sell to? How do you hope to keep up such a colossal sale?”

The sudden burst of a voice, coming from the drawing-room, cut short Mouret’s explanation. It was Madame Guibal, who was saying she would have preferred the flounces of old Alençon down the front only.

“But, my dear,” said Madame de Boves, “the front was covered with it as well. I never saw anything richer.”

“Ah, that’s a good idea,” resumed Madame Desforges, “I’ve got several yards of Alençon somewhere; I must look them up for a trimming.”

And the voices fell again, becoming nothing but a murmur. Prices were quoted, quite a traffic stirred up their desires, the ladies were buying lace by the mile.

“Why!” said Mouret, when he could speak, “we can see what we like when we know how to sell! There lies our triumph.”

And with his southern spirit, he showed the new business at work in warm, glowing phrases which evoked whole pictures. First came the wonderful power of the piling up of the goods, all accumulated at one point, sustaining and pushing each other, never any stand-still, the article of the season always on hand; and from counter to counter the customer found herself seized, buying here the material, further on the cotton, elsewhere the mantle, everything necessary to complete her dress in fact, then falling into unforeseen purchases, yielding to her longing for the useless and the pretty. He then went on to sing the praises of the plain figure system. The great revolution in the business sprung from this fortunate inspiration. If the old-fashioned small shops were dying out it was because they could not struggle against the low prices guaranteed by the tickets. The competition was now going on under the very eyes of the public; a look into the windows enabled them to contrast the prices; every shop was lowering its rates, contenting itself with the smallest possible profit; no cheating, no stroke of fortune prepared long beforehand on an article sold at double its value, but current operations, a regular percentage on all goods, success depending solely on the orderly working of a sale all the larger from the fact of its being carried on in broad daylight. Was it not an astonishing creation? It was causing a revolution in the market, transforming Paris, for it was made of woman’s flesh and blood.

“I have the women, I don’t care a hang for the rest!” said Mouret, in a brutal confession which passion snatched from him.

At this cry Baron Hartmann appeared moved. His smile lost its touch of irony; he looked at the young man, won over gradually by his confidence, feeling a growing tenderness for him.

“Hush!” murmured he, paternally, “they will hear you.”

But the ladies were now all speaking at once, so excited that they weren’t even listening to each other. Madame de Boves was finishing the description of a dinner-dress; a mauve silk tunic, draped and caught up by bows of lace; the bodice cut very low, with more bows of lace on the shoulders.

“You’ll see,” said she. “I am having a bodice made like it, with some satin—”

“I,” interrupted Madame Bourdelais, “I wanted some velvet. Oh! such a bargain!”

Madame Marty asked: “How much for the silk?”

And off they started again, all together. Madame Guibal, Henriette, and Blanche were measuring, cutting out, and making up. It was a pillage of material, a ransacking of all the shops, an appetite for luxury which expended itself in toilettes longed for and dreamed of — such a happiness to find themselves in an atmosphere of finery, that they lived buried in it, as in the warm air necessary to their existence.

Mouret, however, had glanced towards the other drawing-room, and in a few phrases whispered into the baron’s ear, as if he were confiding to him one of those amorous secrets that men sometimes risk among themselves, he finished explaining the mechanism of modern commerce. And, above the facts already given, right at the summit, appeared the exploitation of woman. Everything depended on that, the capital incessantly renewed, the system of piling up goods, the cheapness which attracts, the marking in plain figures which tranquilizes. It was for woman that all the establishments were struggling in wild competition; it was woman that they were continually catching in the snare of their bargains, after bewildering her with their displays. They had awakened new desires in her flesh; they were an immense temptation, before which she succumbed fatally, yielding at first to reasonable purchases of useful articles for the household, then tempted by their coquetry, then devoured. In increasing their business tenfold, in popularizing luxury, they became a terrible spending agency, ravaging the households, working up the fashionable folly of the hour, always dearer. And if woman reigned in their shops like a queen, cajoled, flattered, overwhelmed with attentions, she was an amorous one, on whom her subjects traffic, and who pays with a drop of her blood each fresh caprice. Through the very gracefulness of his gallantry, Mouret thus allowed to appear the brutality of a Jew, selling woman by the pound. He raised a temple to her, had her covered with incense by a legion of shopmen, created the rite of a new religion, thinking of nothing but her, continually seeking to imagine more powerful seductions; and, behind her back, when he had emptied her purse and shattered her nerves, he was full of the secret scorn of a man to whom a woman had just been stupid enough to yield herself.

“Once have the women on your side,” whispered he to the baron, and laughing boldly, “you could sell the very world.”

Now the baron understood. A few sentences had sufficed, he guessed the rest, and such a gallant exploitation inflamed him, stirring up in him the memory of his past life of pleasure. His eyes twinkled in a knowing way, and he ended by looking with an air of admiration at the inventor of this machine for devouring the women. It was really clever. He made the same remark as Bourdoncle, suggested to him by his long experience: “You know they’ll make you suffer for it.”

But Mouret shrugged his shoulders in a movement of overwhelming disdain. They all belonged to him, were his property, and he belonged to none of them. After having drawn from them his fortune and his pleasure, he intended to throw them all over for those who might still find their account in them. It was the rational, cold disdain of a Southerner and a speculator.

“Well! my dear baron,” asked he in conclusion, “will you join me? Does this affair appear possible to you?”

The baron, half conquered, did not wish, however, to engage himself yet. A doubt remained beneath the charm which was gradually operating on him. He was going to reply in an evasive manner, when a pressing call from the ladies spared him the trouble. Voices were repeating, amidst silvery laughter: “Monsieur Mouret! Monsieur Mouret!”

And as the latter, annoyed at being interrupted, pretended not to hear, Madame de Boves, who had just got up, came as far as the door of the little drawing-room.