‘Why don’t you set up on your own?’ she said suddenly, withdrawing her hands.
He was taken aback. Then he replied:
‘But it would require a lot of capital… I kept thinking about it last year. I’m sure there are still enough customers in Paris for one or two more big shops; but the district would have to be chosen very carefully. The Bon Marché has got the Left Bank; the Louvre is in the middle; at the Paradise we monopolize the rich districts of the west. That leaves the north, where a rival to the Place Clichy could be created. And I’d discovered a superb site, near the Opéra …’
‘Well?’
He began to laugh heartily.
‘Just imagine, I was stupid enough to speak to my father about it… Yes, I was naïve enough to ask him to find shareholders in Toulouse.’
He told her gaily about the old man’s rage and how, in his little country shop, he was bitterly opposed to the big Parisian stores. Old Bouthemont, infuriated by the thirty thousand francs his son earned, had replied that he’d rather give his money and that of his friends to charity than contribute a penny to one of those shops which were nothing more than the brothels of business.
‘Besides,’ the young man concluded, ‘it would require millions.’
‘And if you could find them?’ said Madame Desforges simply.
He looked at her, suddenly serious. Was it just the phrase of a jealous woman? But without giving him time to question her, she added:
‘Well, you know what an interest I take in you … We’ll talk about it again.’
The bell in the hall had sounded. She stood up, and with an instinctive movement he drew his chair away, as if they were already liable to be caught unawares. Silence reigned in the drawing-room; with its pretty hangings and its profusion of green plants it looked rather like a miniature wood between the two windows. She stood waiting, listening with strained attention.
‘Here he is,’ she murmured.
The servant announced:
‘Monsieur Mouret, Monsieur de Vallagnosc’
She could not help making a gesture of anger. Why didn’t he come alone? He must have gone to fetch his friend, fearing a possible tête-à-tête. Then she gave a smile, and held out her hand to the two men.
‘I see you so rarely these days! And that goes for you, too, Monsieur de Vallagnosc’
Her figure was her despair; she squeezed herself into black silk dresses to conceal the fact that she was putting on weight. But her face was still pretty, with her dark hair, and she had not lost the delicacy of her features. Mouret, sweeping his eyes over her, was able to say to her familiarly:
‘There’s no need to ask how you are … You’re as fresh as a daisy.’
‘Oh! I’m too well,’ she replied. ‘In any case, I might have been dead; you wouldn’t have known anything about it.’
She was examining him too, and thought he looked very nervous and tired, with puffy eyes and a livid complexion.
‘Well!’ she resumed in a tone which she tried to make agreeable, ‘I’m not going to return your flattery. You don’t look at all well this evening.’
‘Overwork!’ said Vallagnosc.
Mouret made a vague gesture, without replying. He had just noticed Bouthemont, and nodded to him in a friendly way. During the time when they had been on intimate terms he used to carry Bouthemont off from the department at the busiest time of the afternoon, and take him to Henriette’s. But times had changed, and he said to him in a low voice:
‘You left very early … You know, they saw you leaving and they’re furious, in the shop.’
He was talking of Bourdoncle and the other directors as if he was not the master.
‘Oh!’ murmured Bouthemont nervously.
‘Yes, I want to talk to you … Wait for me; we’ll leave together.’
Meanwhile Henriette had sat down again; and while she was listening to Vallagnosc, who was telling her that Madame de Boves would probably be coming to see her, she did not take her eyes off Mouret. He had lapsed into silence again; he was gazing at the furniture and seemed to be looking for something on the ceiling. Then, as she laughingly complained that she no longer had anyone but men at her tea parties, he so far forgot himself as to let slip the phrase:
‘I thought I’d find Baron Hartmann here.’
Henriette had turned pale. Doubtless she knew that he came to her house only in order to meet the Baron; but he might have refrained from throwing his indifference in her face like that. Just then the door opened, and the servant stood before her. When she questioned him with a movement of her head, he leaned down and said to her in a whisper:
‘It’s about that coat. Madam told me to let her know … The young lady is here.’
Then she raised her voice to make herself heard and, releasing all the sufferings of jealousy in a few sharply contemptuous words, she said:
‘Let her wait!’
‘Shall I show her into madam’s dressing-room?’
‘No, no, let her stay in the hall!’
When the servant had gone out, she calmly resumed her conversation with Vallagnosc. Mouret, who had relapsed into his lassitude, had half heard what she had said, without really taking it in. Bouthemont, preoccupied by the affair, was lost in thought. But almost immediately the door opened again, and two ladies were shown in.
‘Just fancy!’ said Madame Marty, ‘I was getting out of the carriage when I saw Madame de Boves coming through the arcade.’
‘Yes,’ the latter explained, ‘it’s a nice day, and my doctor is always telling me I should walk …’
Then, after everyone had shaken hands, she asked Henriette:
‘So you’re engaging a new housemaid?’
‘No,’ she replied, surprised. ‘Why?’
‘Well, I’ve just seen a girl in the hall who …’
Henriette interrupted her, laughing.
‘It’s funny, isn’t it? Shopgirls all look like housemaids … Yes, it’s a girl who’s come to alter a coat.’
Mouret looked at her intently, suspicion crossing his mind. She went on talking with forced gaiety, explaining how she had bought the coat ready-made at the Ladies’ Paradise the week before.
‘What!’ said Madame Marty, ‘don’t you get your clothes from Sauveur any more?’
‘Yes, my dear, I do, but I wanted to make an experiment. I was quite pleased with the first thing I bought at the Paradise, a travel coat… But this time it wasn’t at all a success. You may say what you like, you just can’t dress well in those big shops of yours. I don’t mind saying it in front of Monsieur Mouret… You’ll never be able to dress a woman who has any sense of style.’
Mouret did not defend his shop; still looking at her, he was trying to reassure himself, telling himself that she would never dare to do such a thing. It was Bouthemont who had to defend the Paradise.
‘If all the society women who buy their clothes from us were to boast about it,’ he retorted gaily, ‘you’d be very surprised at the customers we have … Order a garment from us made-to-measure, and it’ll be as good as one of Sauveur’s, and it’ll cost you half the price. And it’s only because it’s less expensive that it seems less good.’
‘So the coat’s not a success?’ Madame de Boves went on. ‘Now I recognize the girl… It’s rather dark in the hall.’
‘Yes,’ added Madame Marty, ‘I was trying to think where I’d seen that face … Well, go on, my dear, don’t stand on ceremony with us.’
Henriette made a gesture of disdainful unconcern.
‘Oh, later on, there’s no hurry.’
The ladies went on with their discussion about clothes from the big department stores. Then Madame de Boves spoke of her husband who, she said, had just left on a tour of inspection to visit the stud farm at Saint-Lô, and Henriette was telling them how the day before Madame Guibal had been called away to the Franche-Comté because of an aunt’s illness. She was not expecting Madame Bourdelais that day either, for at the end of each month the latter shut
herself up with a seamstress in order to go through her children’s clothes. Meanwhile, Madame Marty seemed troubled by some secret anxiety. Monsieur Marty’s job at the Lycée Bonaparte was in jeopardy as a result of some lessons the poor man had been giving in some shady establishments which were doing quite a trade in matriculation diplomas; he was frenziedly raising money where he could, in order to meet the orgies of spending which were ruining his home; and after she’d seen him weeping one evening in fear of dismissal, she had had the idea of using her friend Henriette’s influence with an undersecretary she knew at the Ministry of Education. Finally Henriette set her mind at rest with a few words. In any case, Monsieur Marty was going to come himself to discover his fate and to thank her.
‘You don’t look well, Monsieur Mouret,’ Madame de Boves observed.
‘Overwork!’ Vallagnosc repeated, in his ironical, phlegmatic way.
Mouret quickly stood up, sorry at having forgotten himself in this way. He took his usual place in the midst of the ladies, regaining all his charm. He was now occupied with the winter fashions, and he spoke of a large consignment of lace; Madame de Boves asked him about the price of Alençon point: she felt inclined to buy some. She was now reduced to saving the one franc fifty it cost for a cab, and would arrive home ill from having stopped to look at the shop-windows. Wearing a coat which was already two years old, in her imagination she would drape over her regal shoulders all the expensive materials she saw; it was like tearing her flesh off when she awoke and found herself dressed in her patched-up dresses, without hope of ever satisfying her passion.
‘Baron Hartmann,’ the servant announced.
Henriette noticed how warmly Mouret shook the newcomer’s hand.
The latter greeted the ladies and glanced at the young man with the subtle expression which sometimes lit up his coarse Alsatian face.
‘Always talking about clothes!’ he murmured with a smile.
Then, being a friend of Madame Desforges, he ventured to add:
‘There’s a very charming girl in the hall… Who is she?’
‘Oh! No one,’ replied Madame Desforges in her unpleasant voice. ‘Just a shopgirl waiting to see me.’
The door remained half open, as the servant was serving the tea. He was going out and coming back again, putting the china service, then plates of sandwiches and biscuits, on the pedestal table. In the vast drawing-room, a bright light, softened by the green plants, illuminated the brasswork, bathing the silk of the furniture in a warm glow, and each time the door opened a dim corner of the hall, lit only by frosted glass windows, could be seen. There, in the dark, a sombre form could be discerned, motionless and patient. Denise had remained standing: there was a leather-covered seat, but pride prevented her from sitting on it. She was conscious of the insult. She had been there for half an hour, without a movement, without a word; those ladies and the Baron had stared at her in passing; she could now hear scraps of conversation from the drawing-room, and she was hurt by the indifference of all that pleasant luxury; but still she did not move. Suddenly, through the half-open door, she recognized Mouret. He had guessed at last that it was she who was waiting.
‘Is it one of your salesgirls?’ Baron Hartmann asked.
Mouret had succeeded in hiding his great agitation. But his emotion made his voice shake.
‘I’m sure it is, but I don’t know which.’
‘It’s the little fair-haired one from the ladieswear department,’ Madame Marty quickly interjected. ‘The one who’s assistant buyer, I believe.’
Henriette looked at Mouret in her turn.
‘Ah!’ he said, simply.
And he tried to turn the conversation towards the festivities that had been organized in honour of the King of Prussia,* who had arrived in Paris the day before. But the Baron mischievously went back to the subject of the girls who worked in the big stores. He was pretending that he wanted information, and was asking questions: What sort of background did they have? Were their morals really as bad as people said? This sparked off quite a discussion.
‘Really,’ he repeated, ‘you think they’re decent girls?’
Mouret defended their virtue with a conviction that made Vallagnosc laugh. Then Bouthemont intervened, in order to save his master. My goodness! There were all sorts, hussies as well as decent girls. What is more, their moral standard was rising. In the past they had had nothing but the dregs of the trade, poor, distracted girls who just drifted into the drapery business; whereas nowadays families in the Rue de Sèvres, for example, were definitely bringing up their little girls for the Bon Marché. In short, when they wanted to behave properly, they could; for unlike the working girls of the Paris streets, they were not obliged to pay for their board and lodging: they were lodged and fed, and their existence was assured, though doubtless it was a very hard existence. The worst thing of all was their neutral, ill-defined position, somewhere between shopkeepers and ladies. Plunged into the midst of luxury, often without any previous education, they formed an anonymous class apart. All their troubles and vices sprang from that.
‘I certainly don’t know any creatures so disagreeable,’ said Madame de Boves. ‘One could slap them sometimes.’
The ladies vented their spite. They devoured each other at the counters: woman ate woman there, in a bitter rivalry of money and beauty. The salesgirls were jealous of well-dressed customers, ladies whose style they tried to imitate; and poorly dressed customers, lower middle-class women, felt even more sourly jealous of the salesgirls, the girls dressed in silk whom they wanted to treat like servants each time they made a purchase costing a few pence.
‘Well, in any case,’ Henriette concluded, ‘the poor wretches are all for sale, like their goods!’
Mouret had the strength to smile. The Baron was studying him, touched by his remarkable self-control. Therefore he changed the conversation by mentioning again the festivities in honour of the King of Prussia: they were superb, the whole business world of Paris would profit from them. Henriette remained silent, and seemed lost in her thoughts; she was divided between her desire to go on forgetting Denise in the hall, and her fear that Mouret, now forewarned, might leave. In the end she got up from her chair.
‘Will you excuse me?’
‘Of course, my dear!’ said Madame Marty. ‘Look! I’ll do the honours of your house!’
She stood up, took the teapot and filled the cups. Henriettte turned towards Baron Hartmann, saying:
‘You’ll stay a few minutes longer, won’t you?’
‘Yes, I want to talk to Monsieur Mouret. We’re going to invade your small drawing-room.’
Then she went out, and her black silk dress rustled against the door like a snake disappearing into the undergrowth.
The Baron immediately manœuvred so as to lead Mouret away, abandoning the ladies to Bouthemont and Vallagnosc. Standing by the window of the other drawing-room, they chatted in low voices, discussing a whole new scheme. For a long time Mouret had been cherishing the dream of realizing his old plan—the invasion of the entire block by the Ladies’s Paradise, from the Rue Monsigny to the Rue de la Michodière, and from the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin to the Rue du Dix-Décembre. In this enormous block there was still a vast frontage on the Rue du Dix-Décembre which he did not own; and this was enough to spoil his triumph: he was tortured by the desire to complete his conquest by erecting a monumental façade there, as an apotheosis. As long as the main entrance remained in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, in a dark street of old Paris, his work would be incomplete; it would lack logic. He wanted to flaunt it before the new Paris, on one of those recently built avenues where, in full sunlight, all the figures of the modern crowd passed by; he could see it towering above everything, imposing itself as the giant palace of commerce, casting a bigger shadow over the city than the old Louvre did. But, so far, he had come up against the obstinacy of the Crédit Immobilier, which was still clinging to its original idea of using the frontage site to build a rival to the Grand Hotel. The plan
s were ready; they were only waiting for the Rue du Dix-Décembre to be opened up in order to dig the foundations. Mouret, making a final effort, had at last almost succeeded in winning over Baron Hartmann.
‘Well!’ the latter began, ‘we had a meeting yesterday, and I came here, thinking I’d see you, to tell you what happened … They still won’t agree.’
The young man allowed himself a gesture of irritation.
‘That’s very unreasonable of them … What did they say?’
‘They said what I said to you myself, and what I’m still inclined to think … Your façade is only a decoration; the new buildings would only increase the shop area by a tenth, and that means throwing away huge sums on a mere advertisement.’
At this Mouret burst out:
‘An advertisement! An advertisement! This one will be in stone, and it’ll outlast us all. Can’t you see that it would increase our business tenfold! We’d get our money back in two years. What does it matter, what you call this lost ground, if it creates enormous interest! You’ll see the crowds we’ll have when our customers are no longer crammed into the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, and can simply charge down a street wide enough for six carriages to travel abreast quite easily.’
‘No doubt,’ resumed the Baron, laughing. ‘But, I must repeat, you’re a poet in your own way. These gentlemen think it would be dangerous to expand your business any more. They want to be prudent on your behalf.’
‘What! Prudence? I don’t understand … Don’t the figures speak for themselves, don’t they show the constant increase in our sales? In the beginning, with a capital of five hundred thousand francs, I had a turnover of two million. The capital was used four times over. Then it became four million, turned over ten times, and produced forty million. Finally, after successive increases, I’ve just ascertained from the last stock-taking that the turnover has now reached a total of eighty million; and the capital, which has increased very little, for it’s only six million, has therefore passed over our counters in the form of goods more than twelve times.’*
He was raising his voice, tapping the fingers of his right hand on his left palm, knocking off millions as if he was cracking nuts. The Baron interrupted him.