The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (52 page)

‘He’s happier than you are,’ said Mouret, getting up.

‘Of course he is!’ declared Vallagnosc. ‘Perhaps it’s only doing wrong that’s rather fun.’

Mouret had recovered. He wanted to escape, but did not wish his departure to look like flight. Therefore, resolved to have a cup of tea, he went back into the large drawing-room with his friend, both of them joking as they did so. Baron Hartmann asked him if the coat was all right now, and Mouret, quite unperturbed, replied that as far as he was concerned he had given it up as a bad job. At that, there were cries of surprise. While Madame Marty hastened to pour him his tea, Madame de Boves accused the shops of always having clothes that were too tight. In the end he managed to sit down next to Bouthemont, who was still there. They were immediately forgotten by the ladies, and in reply to the anxious questions of Bouthemont, who wanted to know his fate, he did not wait until they were outside
in the street, but told him at once that the members of the board had decided to dispense with his services. Between each sentence he took a sip of tea, protesting how sorry he was as he did so. Oh! There had been a quarrel from which he had scarcely recovered, for he had left the room beside himself with rage. But what could he do? He couldn’t break with those gentlemen just over a question of staff. Bouthemont, very pale, was obliged to thank him once more.

‘What a terrible coat it must be,’ said Madame Marty. ‘Henriette’s still out there.’

Indeed, her prolonged absence was beginning to make everyone feel embarrassed. But, at that very moment, Madame Desforges reappeared.

‘So you’re giving it up as a bad job too?’ cried Madame de Boves gaily.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Monsieur Mouret told us you couldn’t do anything with it.’

Henriette displayed the greatest surprise.

‘Monsieur Mouret was joking. The coat will be perfectly all right.’ She was all smiles, and seemed very calm. Doubtless she had bathed her eyelids, for they were quite fresh, without a trace of redness. Although the whole of her being was still quivering and bleeding, she found the strength to hide her torment beneath the mask of her society charm. She offered some sandwiches to Vallagnosc with her customary laugh. Only the Baron, who knew her well, noticed the slight contraction of her lips and the melancholy fire which she had not been able to extinguish in the depths of her eyes. He could picture the whole scene.

‘Dear me! Everyone to his own taste,’ said Madame de Boves, as she too accepted a sandwich. ‘I know some women who wouldn’t buy a ribbon anywhere but at the Louvre. Others swear only by the Bon Marché … It’s a question of temperament, no doubt.’

‘The Bon Marché is terribly provincial,’ murmured Madame Marty, ‘and one gets so jostled at the Louvre!’

The ladies had resumed their discussion about the big stores. Mouret had to give his opinion; he came back into their midst, pretending to be impartial. The Bon Marché was an excellent
shop, reliable and respectable; but the Louvre certainly had a better class of customers.

‘In short, you prefer the Ladies’ Paradise,’ said the Baron, smiling.

‘Yes,’ Mouret replied calmly. ‘In our shop, we like the customers.’

All the women present were of his opinion. That was how it really was; at the Paradise it was as if they were at a private party; when they were there, they felt constantly courted with flattery and showered with adoration which entranced even the most virtuous. The shop’s enormous success came from the seductive way it paid court to them.

‘By the way,’ asked Henriette, wishing to appear very detached, ‘what about my protégée; what are you doing with her, Monsieur Mouret? You know, Mademoiselle de Fontenailles.’

And turning towards Madame Marty, she said:

‘A marchioness, my dear, a poor girl who’s found herself in rather difficult straits.’

‘Oh,’ said Mouret, ‘she earns three francs a day sewing pattern-books together, and I think I’m going to marry her off to one of my porters.’

‘Shame! What a horrible idea!’ exclaimed Madame de Boves.

He looked at her, then carried on in his calm voice:

‘But why, madam? Isn’t it better for her to marry an honest, hard-working porter than run the risk of being picked up in the street by some good-for-nothing?’

Vallagnosc jokingly tried to interrupt.

‘Don’t encourage him, madam. He’ll tell you that all the old families of France should start selling calico.’

‘Well,’ Mouret declared, ‘for many of them it would at least be an honourable end.’

In the end they all laughed; the paradox seemed too outrageous. Mouret, however, continued to sing the praises of what he called the aristocracy of labour. A slight blush had coloured the cheeks of Madame de Boves, who was maddened by the various ploys she was reduced to by her poverty; whereas Madame Marty, on the contrary, stricken with remorse at the thought of her poor husband, was full of approval. Just then the servant announced the teacher, who had come to take her home.
His thin, shiny frock-coat made him seem gaunter than ever, dried up by his hard work. When he had thanked Madame Desforges for having spoken of him to the Minister, he gave Mouret the nervous glance of a man confronted with the disease which is killing him. He was totally confused when he heard the latter ask him:

‘Isn’t it true, sir, that work can achieve everything?’

‘Work and economy,’ he replied, his whole body giving a slight shudder. ‘You must add economy, sir.’

Bouthemont, meanwhile, had remained motionless in his armchair.

Mouret’s words were still ringing in his ears. Finally he got up, and went to tell Henriette in an undertone:

‘You know, he’s given me notice. In a very nice way, of course … But I’ll be damned if I don’t make him regret it! I’ve just thought of a name for my shop: Aux Quatre Saisons, and I’ll take up my position near the Opéra!’

She looked at him and her eyes darkened.

‘Count on me, I’m with you. Wait a moment.’

She drew Baron Hartmann into a window-recess. Without beating about the bush, she commended Bouthemont to him, as a young fellow who, in his turn, was going to revolutionize Paris by setting up in business on his own. When she spoke of financial backing for her new protégé, the Baron, although he was no longer surprised at anything, could not suppress a gesture of dismay. This was the fourth young man of genius she had commended to him, and he was beginning to feel ridiculous. He did not refuse outright, for the idea of creating competition for the Ladies’ Paradise quite appealed to him; he had already, in banking, had the idea of creating competition for himself in order to discourage others. Besides, the idea amused him. He promised to look into it.

‘We must talk about it this evening,’ Henriette came back to whisper in Bouthemont’s ear. ‘At about nine o’clock, don’t forget … The Baron’s on our side.’

At that moment the vast room was filled with voices. Mouret, still standing in the midst of the ladies, had regained his composure: he was gaily defending himself from the charge of ruining them with his clothes, offering to prove with figures that he
was enabling them to save thirty per cent on their purchases. Baron Hartmann was looking at him, once more overcome with the fraternal admiration of one who had himself been quite a womanizer in the past. So the duel was over; Henriette was beaten; she certainly would not be the woman who would come to avenge the others. And he thought he saw once more the modest profile of the girl he had glimpsed when passing through the hall. There she was, patiently waiting, alone, formidable in her gentleness.

O
N
25 September work began on the new façade of the Ladies’ Paradise. Baron Hartmann, true to his promise, had carried the day at the previous general meeting of the Crédit Immobilier. Mouret was at last within reach of realizing his dream: this façade, which was about to arise in the Rue du Dix-Décembre, seemed to represent the full blossoming of his fortune. He wanted therefore to celebrate the laying of the foundation stone. He made a ceremony out of it, distributed bonuses to his salesmen, and gave them game and champagne for dinner. People noticed his happy mood on the building site, and his victorious gesture as he cemented the stone with a stroke of the trowel.
*
For weeks he had been worried, troubled by nervous anxiety which he did not always succeed in hiding; and his triumph brought distraction and a respite to his unhappiness. Throughout the afternoon he seemed to have rediscovered the high spirits of a man in the best of health. But, from dinner onwards, when he went through the canteen to drink a glass of champagne with his staff, he looked feverish again, smiling painfully, his features drawn with the pain which was gnawing at him and which he would not acknowledge.

The next day, in the ladieswear department, Clara Prunaire did her best to be disagreeable to Denise. She had noticed Colomban’s bashful love for her, and took it into her head to make fun of the Baudus. She said loudly to Marguerite, who was sharpening her pencil while waiting for customers:

‘You know my sweetheart opposite … It really distresses me to see him in that dark shop which no one ever goes into.’

‘He’s not so badly off,’ Marguerite replied. ‘He’s going to marry his employer’s daughter.’

‘Really?’ Clara replied. ‘It would be fun to steal him, then! I’ll do it for a laugh, just wait and see!’

She went on in the same vein, delighted to feel that Denise was shocked. The latter forgave her everything else, but the thought of her dying cousin Geneviève being finished off by cruelty of that sort made her beside herself with rage. Just then
a customer appeared, and, as Madame Aurélie had gone down to the basement, Denise took charge of the department and called Clara over.

‘Mademoiselle Prunaire, you ought to see to this lady instead of standing there chatting.’

‘I wasn’t chatting.’

‘Please be quiet and see to madam immediately.’

Clara gave in, beaten. When Denise showed her authority like that, without raising her voice, no one could stand up to her. By her very gentleness she had won absolute authority for herself. For a moment she walked in silence among the girls, who had become very serious. Marguerite had gone back to sharpening her pencil, the lead of which was continually breaking. She was the only one who still approved of the assistant buyer not giving in to Mouret and, shaking her head, declared that, if people had any idea of the trouble caused by such folly, they would prefer to behave themselves.

‘Are we getting angry?’ said a voice behind Denise.

It was Pauline, who was passing through the department. She had witnessed the scene, and spoke in a low voice, smiling as she did so.

‘I have to,’ Denise replied in the same tone. ‘I can’t manage those girls otherwise.’

Pauline shrugged her shoulders.

‘Get away with you, you could be queen over us all whenever you wanted.’

She still could not understand her friend’s refusal. At the end of August she had married Baugé, a silly thing to do, as she would say cheerfully. The awful Bourdoncle now treated her as a hopeless case, a woman lost to business. She lived in dread that one fine day they would be sent away to love each other elsewhere, for the members of the board had decreed that love was deplorable, and fatal to business. So great was her terror that when she met Baugé in one of the galleries she would pretend not to know him. She had just had a fright—old Jouve had nearly caught her talking to her husband behind a pile of dusters.

‘Look! He’s followed me,’ she added, quickly describing the incident to Denise. ‘Just look at him smelling me out with his big nose!’

Jouve, dressed very correctly in a white tie, and his nose on the scent of any misdemeanour he could find, was just coming out of the lace department. But when he saw Denise, he drew himself up to his full height and passed by with a kindly air.

‘Saved!’ murmured Pauline. ‘My dear, it was because of you that he didn’t say anything … I say, if I got into trouble, would you put a word in for me? Yes, yes, don’t look so surprised, everybody knows that a word from you could revolutionize the shop.’

She hurried back to her department. Denise had blushed, upset by these friendly remarks. It was true, however. The flattery with which she was surrounded gave her a vague idea of her power. When Madame Aurélie came upstairs again and found the department peaceful and busy under the assistant buyer’s supervision, she gave her a friendly smile. She was even dropping Mouret himself; every day her friendliness was increasing towards the person who could, one fine day, aspire to her position as buyer. The reign of Denise was beginning.

Bourdoncle alone was unyielding. The secret war he continued to wage against the girl was based on a natural antipathy. He detested her for her gentleness and charm. He fought her, too, as a baneful influence which would endanger the shop if Mouret succumbed. His master’s business faculties must surely founder, he thought, in the midst of such idiotic love: what had been won through women would be lost through this woman. All women left him cold; he treated them with the disdain of a man without passion, whose profession it was to live on them, and who, seeing them at such close quarters in the pursuit of his trade, had lost his last illusions. Instead of intoxicating him, the odour of seventy thousand female customers gave him appalling headaches: as soon as he got home, he would beat his mistresses. And what worried him above all about this little salesgirl, who had gradually become so formidable, was the fact that he did not believe in her disinterestedness, nor in the sincerity of her refusals. As far as he was concerned, she was playing a part, and an extremely artful one; for, if she had succumbed on the first day, Mouret would doubtless have forgotten her on the next; whereas, by refusing, she had whetted his desire, driven him mad, made him capable of any kind of folly. The most experienced
woman of the world, the slyest prostitute, would have acted no differently from this innocent girl. Thus Bourdoncle had only to see her, with her clear eyes, her gentle face, and all her simple ways, to be seized now with real fear, as if faced by a vampire in disguise, the dark enigma of woman, death disguised as a virgin. How could he foil the tactics of this false
ingénue?
He no longer thought of anything except how to see through her stratagems, in the hope of revealing them to the world. She was sure to make some mistake; he would surprise her with one of her lovers, she would be thrown out again, and the shop would at last resume its smooth running like a well-made machine.