The Ladies'' Paradise

  When she got her shoes on she tried to walk round the room. She had to hold on to the furniture, for she was still lame. But she would soon improve. All the same, she had been right to decline uncle Baudu’s invitation to dinner that evening, and to ask her aunt to take out Pépé, whom she had again sent to lodge with Madame Gras. Jean, who had come to see her the day before, was also dining with his uncle. She was still gingerly trying to walk, having resolved that she would go to bed early so as to rest her leg, when Madame Cabin, the housekeeper, knocked on the door and, with an air of mystery, gave her a letter.

  When the door was closed again Denise, astonished by the woman’s discreet smile, opened the letter. She dropped on to a chair; the letter was from Mouret, and in it he said he was happy to hear that she was better, and invited her to come down that evening to dine with him, as she could not go out. The tone of the note, at once familiar and paternal, was in no way offensive; but it was impossible for her to mistake its meaning; the Paradise was well aware of the true significance of these invitations, which had become legendary. Clara had dined with him, others too, all the girls who had caught their employer’s eye. After the dinner, so wags among the salesmen used to say, came the dessert. And the girl’s pale cheeks were gradually flooded with colour.

  The letter slipped on to her lap and, her heart pounding, Denise remained with her eyes fixed on the blinding light from one of the windows. In this very room, during hours of insomnia, she had been forced to make a confession to herself: if she still trembled when he passed, she knew now that it was not from fear; and her uneasiness in the past, her former dread, could have been nothing but her frightened ignorance of love, the confusion caused by feelings which were beginning to dawn in her childish shyness. She did not reason with herself; she simply felt that she had always loved him, ever since the first moment when she had stood trembling and stammering before him. She had loved him when she had feared him as a pitiless master, she had loved him when her bewildered heart, giving way to a need for affection, had unconsciously dreamed of Hutin. Perhaps she might have given herself to another, but never had she loved anyone but this man, whose mere glance terrified her. Her past experiences were coming back, unfolding before her in the light from the window—the hardships she had suffered at the beginning, the walk which had been so pleasant beneath the shady trees in the Tuileries, and lastly his desire, which had been brushing against her ever since her return to the shop. The letter slipped on to the floor; Denise still gazed at the window, dazzled by the glare of the sun.

  Suddenly there was a knock on the door, and she hastened to pick up the letter and hide it in her pocket. It was Pauline who, having found a pretext to escape from her department, had come to have a chat with her.

  ‘Are you better, my dear? We never see each other these days.’

  But as it was forbidden to go upstairs to their rooms and, above all, for two girls to shut themselves up there together, Denise took her to the end of the corridor where there was a common-room—a present from Mouret to the girls, who could chat or work there until eleven o’clock. The room, decorated in white and gold, had the commonplace bareness of a hotel room, and was furnished with a piano, a pedestal table in the centre, and armchairs and sofas protected with white covers. However, after a few evenings spent together there in the first flush of its novelty, the salesgirls could no longer meet there without immediately starting to quarrel with each other. They had yet to be educated to it; the little phalansterian city lacked harmony. Meanwhile there was hardly anyone there in the evening but the assistant buyer from the corset department, Miss Powell, who would strum Chopin discordantly on the piano and whose envied talent succeeded in putting the others to flight.

  ‘You see, my foot’s better,’ said Denise. ‘I was coming down.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Pauline. ‘What enthusiasm! I’d stay and take it easy if I had an excuse!’

  They were both sitting on a sofa. Pauline’s attitude had changed since her friend had become assistant buyer in the ladieswear department. Mingled with her good-natured heartiness there was now a shade of respect, of surprise that the salesgirl who had been such a skinny little thing in the past was now on the road to success. However, Denise was very fond of her and, of the two hundred women now employed in the shop who were endlessly rushing about in it, she confided only in her.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Pauline asked sharply, when she noticed Denise’s agitation.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ she assured her, with an embarrassed smile.

  ‘Oh yes, there is something the matter … Don’t you trust me now, if you won’t tell me your troubles any more?’

  At that Denise, her breast heaving with emotion and unable to regain her composure, gave way. She held out the letter to her friend, stammering:

  ‘Look! He’s just written to me!’

  When they were together they had never spoken openly of Mouret. But their very silence was like a confession of their secret preoccupations. Pauline knew everything. After having read the letter she clasped Denise to her, and putting her arm round her waist murmured gently:

  ‘My dear, if you want me to be frank, I thought it had happened already … Don’t be shocked, I assure you the whole shop must think the same as me. After all, he promoted you to assistant buyer so quickly, and then he’s always after you, it’s so obvious!’

  She gave her a big kiss on the cheek, and then asked her:

  ‘You’ll go tonight, of course?’

  Denise looked at her without replying. Then suddenly she burst into sobs, her head resting on her friend’s shoulder. Pauline was taken by surprise.

  ‘Come on, calm down. There’s nothing in all this to upset you like that.’

  ‘No, no, leave me alone,’ stammered Denise. ‘If you knew how upset I am! Since I got that letter I haven’t known what to do with myself… Let me cry, it makes me feel better.’

  Feeling sorry for her, though not understanding, Pauline tried to console her. First of all, he was no longer seeing Clara. They did say that he visited a lady outside the shop, but that was not proved. Then she explained that one couldn’t be jealous of a man in his position. He had too much money; he was the master, after all.

  Denise listened to her; and if she had not been aware of her love before, she could no longer have any doubts about it after the pain she felt in her heart at the name of Clara and the allusion to Madame Desforges. She could hear Clara’s disagreeable voice, she could see Madame Desforges once more as, with the contempt of a rich woman, she had made her follow her round the shop.

  ‘So you’d go, would you?’ she asked.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Pauline exclaimed:

  ‘Of course, how could one do otherwise?’

  Then she reflected, and added:

  ‘Not now, but in the past, because now I’m going to marry Baugé, and it wouldn’t be right.’

  Indeed Baugé, who had recently left the Bon Marché for the Ladies’ Paradise, was going to marry her towards the middle of the month. Bourdoncle did not care much for married couples; however, they had obtained permission, and they even hoped to have a fortnight’s leave.

  ‘You see,’ declared Denise, ‘when a man loves you, he marries you … Baugé’s marrying you.’

  Pauline laughed heartily.

  ‘But, my dear, it’s not the same thing. Baugé’s marrying me because he’s Baugé. He’s my equal, it’s quite straightforward … Whereas Monsieur Mouret! D’you think Monsieur Mouret could marry one of his salesgirls?’

  ‘Oh no! Oh no!’ cried Denise, shocked by the absurdity of the question. ‘And that’s why he shouldn’t have written to me.’

  This reasoning completed Pauline’s astonishment. Her broad face, with her small, gentle eyes, was assuming a look of motherly commiseration. Then she stood up, opened the piano, and gently played ‘Le Roi Dagobert’* with one finger, no doubt in order to brighten up the situation. Sounds from the streets, the distant chant of a man
selling green peas, were drifting up to the bare common-room, which the white chair-covers seemed to make even emptier. Denise was leaning back on a sofa, her head against the woodwork, shaken by a fresh bout of sobs, which she stifled in her handkerchief.

  ‘Again!’ resumed Pauline, turning round. ‘You really aren’t being reasonable … Why did you bring me in here? We’d have done better to stay in your room.’

  She knelt down in front of her, and began lecturing to her again. How many girls would have liked to be in her place! Besides, if the idea did not appeal to her, it was very simple: she only had to say no, without taking it to heart so much. But she ought to think it over before risking her job with a refusal which would be quite inexplicable, considering that she had no other commitments. Was it really so terrible? And the lecture was ending with some gaily whispered jokes, when the sound of footsteps came from the corridor.

  Pauline ran to the door and peeped out.

  ‘Shh! It’s Madame Aurélie!’ she murmured. ‘I’m off… And you, wipe your eyes. You don’t want her to know.’

  When Denise was alone she stood up and forced back her tears; and, her hands still trembling for fear of being caught like that, she closed the piano which her friend had left open. But she heard Madame Aurélie knock at the door of her room, and left the common-room.

  ‘What’s this! You’re up!’ exclaimed the buyer. ‘That’s very silly of you, my dear child; I was just coming up to see how you were, and to tell you we don’t need you downstairs.’

  Denise assured her that she was better, and that it would do her good to do some work, for it would take her mind off things.

  ‘I won’t get too tired, madam. If you give me a chair to sit on, I’ll do the accounts.’

  They both went downstairs. Madame Aurélie, full of attentions, insisted that she should lean on her shoulder. She must have noticed that her eyes were red, for she was studying her surreptitiously. No doubt there was little she did not know.

  Denise had won an unexpected victory: she had at last conquered the department. After having struggled in the past for nearly ten months, subjected to the tortures of a drudge, without exhausting the ill will of her fellow workers, she had now overcome them in just a few weeks, and found them docile and respectful towards her. Madame Aurélie’s sudden affection had been of great assistance to her in the ungrateful task of softening their hearts; it was whispered that the buyer would oblige Mouret by rendering him certain services of a delicate nature; and she had taken Denise under her wing with such enthusiasm that the girl must, indeed, have been specially commended to her. But Denise, too, had used all the charm she had in order to disarm her enemies. The task was all the more difficult because she had to make them forget her appointment as assistant buyer. The girls complained vociferously about what they saw as an injustice, accusing her of having won the job over dessert with the governor; they even added various salacious details. Yet, in spite of their hostility, the title of assistant buyer had an effect on them, and Denise came to assume an authority which astonished and pacified even the most rebellious among them. Soon she found flatterers among the newcomers, and her gentleness and modesty completed the conquest. Marguerite came over to her side. Only Clara carried on being hostile, and would still venture to use the insulting reference to her ‘unkempt’ appearance, which no longer amused anyone. She had taken advantage of Mouret’s brief infatuation with her to avoid work, for she had a lazy, gossipy nature; and although he had tired of her very quickly, she had not even made any recriminations, for her amorous life was so confused that she was incapable of jealousy, and was content merely to have obtained the advantage of having her idleness tolerated. However, she considered that Denise had robbed her of Madame Frédéric’s job. She would never have accepted it because of the stress it involved; but she was annoyed by this lack of courtesy, for she had the same claim to it as Denise, and a prior claim too.

  ‘Look! Here comes the young mother!’ she murmured when she saw Madame Aurélie leading Denise in on her arm.

  Marguerite shrugged her shoulders, saying:

  ‘If you think that’s funny …’

  Nine o’clock was striking. Outside, a blazing blue sky was warming the streets; cabs were travelling along towards the stations; the whole population, dressed in its Sunday best, was streaming out towards the woods and suburbs. Inside the shop, which was flooded with sunshine from the big open bay windows, the staff, completely shut in, had just begun the stocktaking. The door knobs had been removed, and people on the pavement were stopping to look through the windows, surprised to see the shop closed when there was such extraordinary activity going on inside. From one end of the galleries to the other, from the top floor to the basement, there was an endless scurrying of employees, their arms in the air, parcels flying above their heads; and all this was taking place in a storm of shouting, figures being called out, confusion growing and exploding in a tremendous din. Each of the thirty-nine departments was carrying out its task on its own, without taking any notice of the adjacent departments. In any case, they had hardly started to tackle the shelves; there were so far only a few lengths of material on the ground. The machine would have to get up more steam if they were to finish that evening.

  ‘Why did you come down?’ Marguerite went on kindly, speaking to Denise. ‘You’ll only make your foot worse, and there are enough of us to do the work.’

  ‘That’s what I told her,’ declared Madame Aurélie. ‘But she insisted on coming down to help us.’

  Work was interrupted as all the girls flocked round Denise. They complimented her, listening with exclamations to the story of her sprained ankle. In the end Madame Aurélie made her sit down at a table; it was agreed that she would merely enter the goods as they were called out. In any case, on the stock-taking Sunday, every employee who was capable of holding a pen was commandeered: the shopwalkers, the cashiers, the bookkeepers, even the porters; the various departments shared these one-day assistants between them, in order to get the job done as quickly as possible. Thus, Denise found herself installed near Lhomme the cashier and Joseph the porter, who were both bent over large sheets of paper.

  ‘Five coats, cloth, fur trimming, size three, at two hundred and forty!’ Marguerite was shouting. ‘Four ditto, size one, at two hundred and twenty!’

  The work began again. Behind Marguerite three salesgirls were emptying the cupboards, sorting the goods, giving them to her in bundles; and, when she had called them out, she threw them on to the tables, where they gradually piled up in enormous heaps. Lhomme wrote down the articles, while Joseph compiled another list as a cross-check. In the mean time Madame Aurélie herself, helped by three other salesgirls, counted the silk garments, which Denise entered on a sheet of paper. Clara was charged with looking after the heaps, with arranging them and piling them up so that they took up as little room as possible. But her mind was not on her job, and some piles were already falling down.

  ‘I say,’ she asked a little salesgirl who had joined the shop that winter, ‘are they going to give you a rise? Did you know that they’re going to give the assistant buyer two thousand francs, which means that, with the commission, she’ll be earning almost seven thousand.’

  The little salesgirl, while continuing to pass some cloaks down, replied that if they did not put her salary up to eight hundred francs she would leave. The rises were always given on the day after the stock-taking; it was also the time of the year when, the turnover for the year being known, the heads of departments received their commission on the increase in this figure compared with the preceding year. Therefore, in spite of the uproar and bustle of the job in hand, impassioned gossip went on everywhere. Between calling out two articles they talked of nothing but money. There was a rumour that Madame Aurélie would get over twenty-five thousand francs; such a huge sum made the girls very excited. Marguerite, the best salesgirl after Denise, had made four thousand five hundred francs, of which fifteen hundred was her salary, and about three thou
sand her percentage; whereas Clara had not made two thousand five hundred altogether.

  ‘I couldn’t care about those rises of theirs!’ Clara went on, still talking to the little salesgirl. ‘If Papa was dead, I’d drop the lot of them! But what gets my goat is to see that skinny little thing earning seven thousand francs. Don’t you agree?’

  Madame Aurélie sharply interrupted the conversation. Turning round majestically, she said:

  ‘Be quiet, young ladies! Upon my word, we can’t hear ourselves speak!’

  Then she started shouting again:

  ‘Seven cloaks, old style, Sicilian silk, size one, a hundred and twenty! Three pelisses, surah, size two, a hundred and fifty! Have you got that down, Mademoiselle Baudu?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Clara was forced to turn her attention to the armfuls of clothes piled up on the tables. She pushed them together to make more room. But she soon left them again to reply to a salesman who was looking for her. It was the glover, Mignot, who had escaped from his department. He whispered a request for twenty francs; he already owed her thirty, which he had borrowed the day after the races, after losing his week’s salary on a horse; this time he had already squandered the commission he had been paid the day before, and had not got fifty centimes left for his Sunday. Clara had only ten francs on her, which she lent him with fairly good grace. Then they chatted, talking of how a party of six of them had gone to a restaurant in Bougival, and how the women had paid their share: it was better like that, everyone felt at ease. Then Mignot, wanting his twenty francs, went and bent down to Lhomme’s ear. The latter, who suddenly stopped writing, seemed greatly troubled. However, he did not dare refuse, and was looking for a ten-franc piece in his purse when Madame Aurélie, surprised at no longer hearing the voice of Marguerite, who had had to break off, noticed Mignot and understood at once. She brusquely sent him back to his department, for she did not want people coming to distract her girls! The truth of the matter was that the young man made her very nervous, for he was a great friend of her son Albert, and his accomplice in the shady pranks which she was terrified would get him one day. Therefore, when Mignot had taken the ten francs and made off, she could not help saying to her husband: