The Ladies' Paradise Read online

  ‘Well!’ she resumed, after a pause. ‘There’s a shop for you!’

  They were at the corner of the Rue de la Michodière and the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin,* in front of a drapery shop, the windows of which, on that mild, pale October day, were bursting with bright colours. Eight o’clock was striking at the church of Saint-Roch, and the streets were deserted except for early risers, office workers hurrying to their desks and housewives scurrying to the shops. Two shop assistants, standing on a step-ladder outside the door, had just finished hanging up some woollen goods, while in the window in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin another assistant, on hands and knees and with his back turned, was delicately folding a piece of blue silk. The shop, still waiting for its customers—the staff themselves had only just arrived—was buzzing inside like a beehive coming to life.

  ‘I say!’ said Jean. ‘That beats Valognes … Your shop wasn’t as grand as that.’

  Denise nodded. She had spent two years in Valognes, at Cornaille’s, the main draper in the town; and this shop which had suddenly appeared before her, this building which seemed so enormous, brought a lump to her throat and held her rooted to the spot, excited, fascinated, oblivious to everything else. The high plate-glass door, facing the Place Gaillon, reached the mezzanine floor and was surrounded by elaborate decorations covered with gilding. Two allegorical figures, two laughing women with bare breasts thrust forward, were unrolling a scroll bearing the inscription: The Ladies’ Paradise. The shop windows stretched along the Rue de la Michodière and the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, where, apart from the corner house, they occupied four other houses which had recently been bought and converted, two on the left and two on the right. With its series of perspectives, with the display on the ground floor and the plate-glass windows of the mezzanine floor, behind which could be seen all the intimate life of the various departments, the spectacle seemed to Denise to be endless. Upstairs a girl in a silk dress was sharpening a pencil, while near her two other girls were unfolding some velvet coats.

  ‘The Ladies’ Paradise,’ read Jean with his soft laugh—the laugh of a handsome adolescent who had already had an affair with a woman in Valognes. ‘That’s nice, isn’t it? That must pull the crowds!’

  But Denise stood transfixed before the display at the main door. There, outside in the street, on the pavement itself, was a mountain of cheap goods, placed at the entrance as a bait, bargains which stopped the women as they passed by. It all cascaded down: pieces of woollen material and fabric, merino, cheviot, flannelette, were falling from the mezzanine floor, flapping like flags, their neutral tones—slate grey, navy blue, olive green—broken up by the white of the price cards. Close by, framing the doorway, strips of fur were hanging down, straight bands for dress trimmings, the fine ash of squirrel, the pure snow of swansdown, imitation ermine and imitation sable made of rabbit. And below this, on racks and tables, in the middle of a pile of remnants, there was a profusion of knitted goods being sold for a song, gloves and woollen scarves, hooded capes, cardigans, a whole winter display of many colours, mottled, dyed, striped, with bleeding stains of red. Denise saw a piece of tartan at forty-five centimes, strips of American mink at one franc, and mittens at twenty-five centimes. It was a giant fairground display, as if the shop were bursting and throwing its surplus stock into the street.

  Uncle Baudu was forgotten. Even Pépé, who had not let go of his sister’s hand, was staring with wide-open eyes. A carriage forced all three of them to leave the middle of the square; mechanically they walked down the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, past the shop windows, stopping again in front of each fresh display. First they were attracted by a complicated arrangement: at the top, umbrellas, placed obliquely, seemed to form the roof of some rustic hut, beneath which, suspended from rods and displaying the rounded outline of calves, were silk stockings, some strewn with bunches of roses, others of every hue—black net, red with embroidered clocks, flesh-coloured ones with a satiny texture which had the softness of a blonde woman’s skin; lastly, on the backcloth of the shelves, gloves were symmetrically arranged, their fingers elongated, their palms as delicate as those of a Byzantine virgin, with the stiff, seemingly adolescent grace of women’s clothes which have never been worn. But it was the last window, above all, which held their attention. A display of silks, satins, and velvets spread out before them in a supple, shimmering range of the most delicate flower tones: at the top were the velvets, of deepest black and as white as curds; lower down were the satins, pink and blue, with bright folds fading into infinitely tender pallors; lower down still were the silks, all the colours of the rainbow, pieces rolled into shell shapes, folded as if round a drawn-in waist, brought to life by the knowing hands of the shop assistants; and, between each motif, between each coloured phrase of the display, there ran a discreet accompaniment, a delicate gathered strand of cream-coloured foulard. And in colossal piles at each end were the two silks for which the shop held exclusive rights, the Paris-Paradise and the Cuir-d’Or, exceptional items that were to revolutionize the drapery trade.

  ‘Oh! Look at that faille at five francs sixty!’ murmured Denise, amazed at the Paris-Paradise.

  Jean was beginning to feel bored. He stopped a passer-by.

  ‘Could you tell us where to find the Rue de la Michodière, sir?’

  The man pointed it out as the first street on the right, whereupon they all retraced their steps round the shop. But, as she turned into the street, Denise was struck again by one of the shop windows, which contained a display of ladies’ clothes. She had had special responsibility for the clothing section at Cornaille’s in Valognes, but she had never seen anything like this! She was rooted to the pavement in admiration. At the back, a long scarf worked in Bruges lace, and costing a considerable amount, was spread out like an altar cloth, its two reddish-white wings unfurled; flounces of Alençon lace were strewn like garlands; then there was a cascade of every kind of lace—Mechlin, Valenciennes, Brussels appliqué, Venetian rose-point—streaming down like a snowfall. To the right and left, rolls of cloth formed dark columns, which made the distant tabernacle seem even further away. And there in this chapel built for the worship of woman’s beauty and grace were the clothes: in the centre was a most striking item, a velvet coat trimmed with silver fox; on one side was a silk cloak lined with Siberian squirrel; on the other side was a cloth overcoat edged with cock’s feathers; and finally some evening wraps in white cashmere and white quilting, decorated with swansdown or chenille. There was something for every whim, from evening wraps at twenty-nine francs to the velvet coat priced at eighteen hundred francs. The dummies’ round bosoms swelled out the material, their wide hips exaggerated the narrow waists, and their missing heads were replaced by large price tags with pins stuck through them into the red bunting round the collars, while mirrors on either side of the windows had been skilfully arranged to reflect the dummies, multiplying them endlessly, seeming to fill the street with these beautiful women for sale with huge price tags where their heads should have been.

  ‘They’re amazing!’ murmured Jean, who could think of no other way of expressing his feelings.

  Suddenly he had become motionless again, his mouth open. All this luxurious femininity was making him pink with pleasure. He had the beauty of a girl, beauty which he seemed to have stolen from his sister—dazzling skin, curly auburn hair, lips and eyes moist with love. By his side, Denise, in her astonishment, looked even thinner, her mouth too large in her long face, her complexion already sallow beneath her light-coloured head of hair. Pépé, blond too with the fairness of childhood, clung closer to her, as if overcome by an anxious need for affection, disturbed and delighted by the beautiful ladies in the shop window. These three fair-haired figures poorly clad in black, the sad young girl between the pretty child and the handsome youth, were so conspicuous and so charming as they stood there on the pavement that passers-by turned round and smiled at them.

  A fat man with white hair and a big yellowish face, standing in a shop doorway
at the other end of the street, had been looking at them for some time. He had been standing there with bloodshot eyes and pursed lips, beside himself with rage at the displays at the Ladies’ Paradise, when the sight of the young girl and her brothers completed his exasperation. What were they doing there, those three simpletons, gaping like that at a charlatan’s silly concoctions?

  ‘But what about Uncle?’ asked Denise suddenly, as if waking up with a start.

  ‘We’re in the Rue de la Michodière,’ said Jean. ‘He must live somewhere near here.’

  They raised their heads and looked about them. Then, just in front of them, above the fat man, they noticed a green signboard, its yellow letters discoloured by the rain: Au Vieil Elbeuf, drapery and flannels, Baudu (formerly Hauchecorne). The house, coated with ancient, mildewed whitewash, looked very squat next to the tall Louis XIV mansions, and had only three front windows; and these windows, square and without shutters, were decorated merely with an iron railing, two crossed bars. But what Denise found most striking among all this bareness, her eyes still full of the bright displays at the Ladies’ Paradise, was the shop on the ground floor, crushed by a low ceiling, topped by a very low mezzanine floor, with prison-like, half-moon shaped windows. To the right and left, woodwork of the same colour as the signboard—bottle green, shaded by time with ochre and pitch—surrounded two deep-set windows, black and dusty, in which the heaped-up goods could hardly be seen. The door, which was ajar, seemed to lead into the dank gloom of a cellar.

  ‘This is it,’ said Jean.

  ‘Well, we’d better go in,’ declared Denise. ‘Come on, Pépé.’

  But all three were nervous, suddenly shy. When their father had died, a victim of the same fever which had carried off their mother a month earlier, their uncle Baudu, overwhelmed by this double bereavement, had written to his niece that there would always be room for her in his house if she should ever wish to try her fortune in Paris; but this letter had been written almost a year ago, and the young girl now felt sorry that she had left Valognes on the spur of the moment, without warning her uncle. He did not know them at all, for he had never set foot in Valognes again since he had left, as a boy, to become a junior assistant in the drapery shop of Monsieur Hauchecorne, whose daughter he had later married.

  ‘Monsieur Baudu?’ asked Denise, finally bringing herself to speak to the fat man, who was still looking at them, surprised at their behaviour.

  ‘That’s me,’ he answered.

  Denise blushed deeply and stammered:

  ‘Oh, thank goodness! I’m Denise, this is Jean, and this is Pépé … You see, we did come, Uncle.’

  Baudu seemed stunned. His big bloodshot eyes wavered in his yellow face and he spoke slowly and with difficulty. It was evident that his thoughts were miles away from this family which had suddenly descended on him out of the blue.

  ‘What’s this! What’s this! You here!’ he repeated several times. ‘But you were in Valognes! Why aren’t you in Valognes?’

  In her gentle voice, which was trembling a little, she had to explain to him. After the death of their father, who had squandered every penny he had in his dye-works, she had acted as a mother to the two children. The little she earned at Cornaille’s had been quite insufficient to keep the three of them. Jean had been working with a cabinet-maker who repaired antique furniture, but he wasn’t paid a penny for it. However, he had developed a taste for old things: he carved figures in wood. In fact, one day he had found a piece of ivory and had amused himself by making a head out of it which a gentleman staying in the town had seen and admired; and it was this gentleman who had made them decide to leave Valognes by finding a job for Jean in Paris with an ivory-carver.

  ‘You see, Uncle, Jean will start his apprenticeship with his new employer tomorrow. They don’t want any money from me, and they’ll give him board and lodging … So I thought that Pépé and I would be able to manage. We can’t be worse off than we were in Valognes.’

  She did not mention Jean’s love-affair, letters written to the young daughter of a local nobleman, kisses exchanged over a wall, quite a scandal which had made her decide to leave; and she had accompanied her brother to Paris above all to watch over him, for she felt maternal fears for this big child, who was so handsome and gay and irresistible to women.

  Uncle Baudu could not get over his surprise. He began to repeat his questions. However, when he heard what she told him about her brothers, he used the familiar second person singular.

  ‘So your father didn’t leave you anything? I really thought he still had a bit left. Oh, I told him often enough in my letters not to take that dye-works! He had a good heart, but no head for business … And you were left with these lads on your hands, you had to feed these youngsters!’

  His bilious face had lightened, and his eyes were no longer bloodshot as when he had been looking at the Ladies’ Paradise. Suddenly he noticed that he was blocking the doorway.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Come in, now that you’re here … Come in, it’s better than gaping at that nonsense.’

  And having directed a last furious scowl at the displays opposite, he made way for the children and went into the shop, calling his wife and daughter as he did so.

  ‘Elizabeth, Geneviève, come down, there are some people here to see you!’

  But the gloom of the shop made Denise and the boys hesitate. Blinded by the daylight of the street, they were blinking as if on the brink of an unknown chasm, feeling the ground with their feet with an instinctive fear of some treacherous step. Clinging even closer together in their vague fear, the little boy still clutching the girl’s skirts and the big boy behind, they made their entrance gracefully, smiling and nervous. The bright morning light made the black silhouettes of their mourning clothes stand out, and a slanting ray of light gilded their fair hair.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ repeated Baudu.

  In a few brief sentences he explained everything to his wife and daughter. Madame Baudu was a little woman wasted by anaemia, and quite white, with white hair, white eyes, white lips. Geneviève, in whom her mother’s physical degeneration was even more pronounced, had the debilitated, colourless appearance of a plant left to grow in the dark. And yet she had a melancholy charm which she owed to her magnificent black hair.

  ‘Come in,’ said the two women in their turn. ‘Welcome!’

  And they made Denise sit down behind a counter. Pépé immediately climbed on to his sister’s lap, while Jean, leaning against some panelling, kept close to her. Beginning to feel more at ease, they looked round at the shop, their eyes getting used to the darkness. Now they could see it, a low ceiling blackened with smoke, oak counters shiny with use, ancient show-cases with strong iron hinges. Bales of dark-coloured goods reached up to the beams. The smell of cloth and dyes, a sharp, chemical smell, seemed to be intensified by the dampness of the floorboards. At the back of the shop two male assistants and a girl were putting away pieces of white flannel.

  ‘Perhaps this little chap would like something to eat?’ said Madame Baudu, smiling at Pépé.

  ‘No, thank you,’ replied Denise, ‘we had a cup of milk in a café opposite the station.’

  And, as Geneviève was looking at the small parcel she had put on the floor, she added:

  ‘I left our trunk there too.’

  She was blushing, for she knew that in polite society people did not turn up out of the blue like that. Even on board the train, as it was leaving Valognes, she had felt full of regrets; and that was why, on their arrival, she had left the trunk at the station and given the children their breakfast.

  ‘Look,’ said Baudu suddenly, ‘let’s be brief and to the point… I did write to you, it’s true, but that was a year ago; and you see, my dear, business hasn’t been going at all well, for a year …’

  He stopped, choked with an emotion he did not wish to show. Madame Baudu and Geneviève, with a resigned look, had lowered their eyes.

  ‘Oh!’ he continued, ‘it’s a crisis that
will pass, I’ve no doubt… But I’ve reduced my staff, there are only three here now; and it’s certainly not a good time to take on someone else. In short, my dear, I can’t take you on as I offered to.’

  Denise listened, and turned very pale. He rubbed it in by adding:

  ‘It wouldn’t be worth it, either for you or for us.’

  ‘All right, Uncle,’ she finally said with an effort. ‘I’ll try to manage all the same.’

  The Baudus were not bad people, but they complained of never having had any luck. When their business was flourishing they had had to bring up five boys, of whom three had died before they were twenty; the fourth had gone to the bad; the fifth, an army captain, had just left for Mexico.* They had no one left but Geneviève. Their family had cost them a great deal, and Baudu had completed his own ruin by buying a big broken-down house at Rambouillet,* his father-in-law’s home town. All this was slowly embittering the fanatical old tradesman.

  ‘You might have warned us,’ he went on, gradually getting angry at his own hardness. ‘You could have written to me; I’d have told you to stay in Valognes … Of course, when I heard of your father’s death I said the usual things. But you turn up without warning … It’s very awkward.’

  He was raising his voice, relieving his feelings. His wife and daughter, submissive people who would never have dreamed of interfering, still kept their eyes on the ground. Meanwhile Jean had turned very pale, while Denise had clasped the terrified Pépé to her bosom. Two big tears rolled down her cheeks.

  ‘All right, Uncle,’ she repeated. ‘We’ll go away.’

  At that he stopped. An embarrassed silence ensued. Then he resumed in a surly tone:

  ‘I won’t turn you away … Since you’re here you might as well stay the night. Tomorrow we’ll see.’

  At that Madame Baudu and Geneviève understood with a glance that they could go ahead and make arrangements. Everything was settled. There was no need to do anything for Jean. As for Pépé, he would be well looked after by Madame Gras, an old lady who lived on the ground floor of a house in the Rue des Orties, where she took in young children for forty francs a month, full board. Denise declared that she had enough to pay for the first month. It only remained for her to find a place herself. It would be easy to find her a job in the neighbourhood.