The Ladies' Paradise Read online

  ‘Wasn’t Vinçard looking for a salesgirl?’ said Geneviève.

  ‘Of course!’ exclaimed Baudu. ‘We’ll go and see him after lunch. We must strike while the iron’s hot!’

  Not a single customer had come in to interrupt this family discussion. The shop remained dark and empty. In the background the two male assistants and the girl continued their work, talking to each other in low hissing tones. However, three ladies eventually appeared, and Denise remained alone for a moment. She gave Pépé a kiss, her heart heavy at the thought of their impending separation. The child, affectionate as a kitten, hid his head without saying a word. When Madame Baudu and Geneviève came back they remarked how quiet he was, and Denise assured them that he never made any more noise than that; he would go for whole days without saying anything, living on kisses and caresses. Then, until lunch-time, the three women talked about children, housekeeping, life in Paris and in the country, in short, vague sentences, as relations do when they feel awkward at not knowing each other very well. Jean had gone to the shop-door, and stood there watching the passing crowd and smiling at the pretty girls.

  At ten o’clock a maid appeared. Usually the first meal was served for Baudu, Geneviève, and the first assistant. There was a second meal at eleven o’clock for Madame Baudu, the other male assistant, and the girl.

  ‘Come and eat!’ exclaimed the draper, turning towards his niece.

  And as the others were already seated in the cramped dining-room at the back of the shop, he called the first assistant, who was slow to join them.

  ‘Colomban!’

  The young man apologized, saying he had wanted to finish arranging the flannel. He was a big lad of twenty-five, stupid but crafty, with an honest face, a large, flabby mouth, and cunning eyes.

  ‘What! There’s a time for everything,’ said Baudu, squarely installed before a piece of cold veal, which he was carving with a master’s skill and prudence, weighing each meagre portion at a glance to within an ounce.

  He served everyone, and even cut the bread. Denise had put Pépé next to her to make sure that he ate properly. But the dark room made her feel uneasy; she felt a lump in her throat as she looked round, for she was used to the large, well-lit rooms of her native province. A single window opened on to a little inner courtyard which communicated with the street by means of a dark alley by the side of the house. This yard, sodden and filthy, was like the bottom of a well; a circle of sinister light fell into it. In the winter the gas had to be kept burning from morning to night. When the weather allowed them to do without it, the effect was even more depressing. It took several seconds before Denise’s eyes were sufficiently accustomed to the dark to distinguish what was on her plate.

  ‘There’s a fellow with a good appetite,’ Baudu declared, noticing that Jean had finished his veal. ‘If he works as well as he eats, he’ll get really strong … But what about you, my dear, aren’t you eating? And now that we can talk, tell me why you didn’t get married in Valognes?’

  Denise put down the glass she was raising to her mouth. ‘Oh! Uncle, get married? How can you say that? … What about the little ones?’

  She was forced to laugh, so strange did the idea seem to her. In any case, would any man have wanted her, without a penny, as thin as a rake and showing no signs of becoming beautiful? No, no, she would never marry, she already had enough with two children.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ her uncle repeated, ‘a woman always needs a man. If you’d found a decent young chap you wouldn’t have landed on the streets of Paris, you and your brothers, like gypsies.’

  He stopped in order to divide, once more, with a parsimony that was scrupulously fair, a dish of bacon and potatoes which the maid had brought in. Then, pointing to Geneviève and Colomban with the spoon, he continued:

  ‘Those two will be married in the spring if the winter season is good.’

  It was a patriarchal tradition in the shop.* The founder, Aristide Finet, had given his daughter Désirée to his first assistant, Hauchecorne; Baudu himself, who had arrived in the Rue de la Michodière with seven francs in his pocket, had married old Hauchecorne’s daughter Elizabeth; and he intended, in his turn, to hand over his daughter Geneviève and the shop to Colomban, as soon as business improved. If that meant having to postpone a marriage which had been decided on three years earlier, he did so from scruple, from a stubborn integrity: he had received the business in a prosperous state, and did not wish to pass it on to a son-in-law with fewer customers and worse prospects than when he acquired it.

  Baudu went on talking, introducing Colomban, who came from Rambouillet like Madame Baudu’s father; in fact they were distant cousins. He was an excellent worker and for ten years had been slaving away in the shop and had really earned his promotions! Besides, he wasn’t just anybody, his father was that old reveller Colomban, a veterinary surgeon known throughout the Seine-et-Oise,* an artist in his own line, but so fond of food that there was nothing he wouldn’t eat.

  ‘Thank God!’ said the draper in conclusion. ‘Even if his father does drink and chase skirts, the boy has been able to learn the value of money here.’

  While he was talking Denise was studying Colomban and Geneviève. They were sitting close to each other, but remained very quiet, without a blush or a smile. Since his first day in the shop the young man had been counting on this marriage. He had passed through all the different stages, junior assistant, salaried salesman, etc., and had finally been admitted to the confidences and pleasures of the family; and he had gone through it all patiently, like an automaton, looking on Geneviève as an excellent and honest business deal. The certainty that she would be his prevented him from desiring her. And the girl, too, had grown accustomed to loving him; but she loved him with all the seriousness of her reserved nature, and with a deep passion of which, in the dull, regular, everyday life she led, she was quite unaware.

  ‘When people like each other, and when it’s possible …’ Denise felt obliged to say with a smile, in order to seem pleasant.

  ‘Yes, it always ends up like that,’ declared Colomban, who had not yet said a word, but was slowly munching.

  Geneviève, after giving him a long look, said in her turn:

  ‘When people get on together, the rest comes naturally.’

  Their fondness for each other had grown up in this ground-floor shop in old Paris. It was like a flower in a cellar. For ten years she had known no one but him, had spent her days beside him, behind the same piles of cloth, in the gloomy depths of the shop; and, morning and evening, they had found themselves elbow to elbow in the cramped dining-room, as chilly as a well. They could not have been more hidden, more lost, in the depths of the country beneath the leaves. But a doubt, a jealous fear, was to make the girl discover that, from emptiness of heart and boredom of mind, she had given herself for ever in the midst of those conniving shadows.

  However, Denise, thinking that she could see a dawning anxiety in the look Geneviève had given Colomban, good-naturedly replied:

  ‘Nonsense! When people love each other, they always get on together.’

  But Baudu was keeping a sharp eye on the table. He had distributed slivers of Brie, and to welcome his relatives he ordered a second dessert, a pot of gooseberry preserves, a liberality which seemed to surprise Colomban. Pépé, who had been very good until then, behaved badly at the sight of the preserves. Jean, whose interest had been aroused by the conversation about marriage, was staring at his cousin Geneviève, whom he thought too weak and pale, comparing her in his mind to a little white rabbit, with black ears and pink eyes.

  ‘That’s enough chat, we must make room for the others!’ the draper concluded, giving the signal to leave the table. ‘Just because we’ve given ourselves a treat is no reason for wanting too much of it.’

  Madame Baudu, the other male assistant, and the girl came and took their places at the table. Denise, left alone again, sat near the door, waiting for her uncle to take her to see Vinçard. Pépé was playing at
her feet, while Jean had taken up his observation post on the doorstep again. She sat there for nearly an hour, watching what was going on around her. Now and again a few customers came in: one lady appeared, then two others. The shop retained its musty smell, its half-light, in which the old-fashioned way of business, good-natured and simple, seemed to be weeping at its neglect. But what fascinated Denise was the Ladies’ Paradise on the other side of the street, for she could see the shop-windows through the open door. The sky was still overcast, but the mildness brought by rain was warming the air in spite of the season; and in the clear light, dusted with sunshine, the great shop was coming to life, and business was in full swing.

  Denise felt that she was watching a machine working at high pressure; its dynamism seemed to reach to the display windows themselves. They were no longer the cold windows she had seen in the morning; now they seemed to be warm and vibrating with the activity within. A crowd was looking at them, groups of women were crushing each other in front of them, a real mob, made brutal by covetousness. And these passions in the street were giving life to the materials: the laces shivered, then drooped again, concealing the depths of the shop with an exciting air of mystery; even the lengths of cloth, thick and square, were breathing, exuding a tempting odour, while the overcoats were throwing back their shoulders still more on the dummies, which were acquiring souls, and the huge velvet coat was billowing out, supple and warm, as if on shoulders of flesh and blood, with a heaving breast and quivering hips. But the furnace-like heat with which the shop was ablaze came above all from the selling, from the bustle at the counters, which could be felt behind the walls. There was the continuous roar of the machine at work, of customers crowding into the departments, dazzled by the merchandise, then propelled towards the cash-desk. And it was all regulated and organized with the remorselessness of a machine: the vast horde of women were as if caught in the wheels of an inevitable force.

  Since the morning Denise had felt herself being tempted. She was bewildered and attracted by this shop, which looked so vast to her, and in which she saw more people in an hour than she had seen at Cornaille’s in six months; and in her desire to enter it there was a vague fear, which completed her seduction. At the same time her uncle’s shop made her ill at ease. She felt an irrational disdain, an instinctive repugnance for this icy little place where the old-fashioned methods of business still prevailed. All her sensations, her anxious entry, her relations’ sour welcome, the depressing lunch in the dungeon-like darkness, her long wait in the sleepy solitude of the old house doomed to decay—all this was combining to form a veiled protest, a passionate desire for life and light. And, in spite of her kind heart, her eyes kept turning back to the Ladies’ Paradise, as if the salesgirl in her felt the need to go and warm herself before the blaze of this huge sale.

  She let slip a remark:

  ‘They’ve got plenty of customers over there, at any rate!’

  But she regretted her words when she noticed the Baudus nearby. Madame Baudu, who had finished her lunch, was standing up, white as a sheet, her white eyes fixed on the monster; and, resigned though she was, she could not see it, could not catch sight of it on the other side of the street, without dumb despair filling her eyes with tears. As for Geneviève, she was anxiously watching Colomban, who, not thinking that he was being observed, stood in rapture, looking at the girls selling coats, whose department was visible through the mezzanine windows. Baudu, his face contorted with rage, contented himself by saying:

  ‘All that glisters is not gold. You just wait!’

  The thought of his family was evidently holding back the flood of resentment which was rising in his throat. A sense of pride prevented him from giving vent to his feelings so soon in front of the children, who had only arrived that morning. In the end, the draper made an effort, and turned round in order to tear himself away from the sight of the selling going on opposite.

  ‘Well,’ he went on, ‘let’s go and see Vinçard. Jobs are soon snatched up; tomorrow it may be too late.’

  But before going out he told the second assistant to go to the station to fetch Denise’s trunk. For her part Madame Baudu, to whom the girl had entrusted Pépé, decided that she would take advantage of a free moment by going over to see Madame Gras in the Rue des Orties to arrange about the child. Jean promised his sister that he would not leave the shop.

  ‘It’ll only take a couple of minutes,’ Baudu explained as he walked down the Rue Gaillon with his niece. ‘Vinçard specializes in silks, and he’s still doing a fair trade. Oh, he has his difficulties, like everyone else, but he’s artful and makes ends meet by being as stingy as he can. But I think he wants to retire, because of his rheumatism.’

  The shop was in the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, near the Passage Choiseul. It was clean and light, well fitted out in the modern style, but small and poorly stocked. Baudu and Denise found Vinçard deep in conference with two gentlemen.

  ‘Never mind us,’ the draper called out. ‘We’re not in a hurry, we’ll wait.’

  And, going tactfully back towards the door, he whispered in the girl’s ear:

  ‘The thin one’s at the Paradise, assistant buyer in the silk department, and the fat one’s a manufacturer from Lyons.’

  Denise gathered that Vinçard was talking up his shop to Robineau, the assistant from the Ladies’ Paradise. He was giving his word of honour in a frank, open way, with the facility of a man who could take any number of oaths without any trouble. According to him, the shop was a gold-mine; and, resplendent as he was with good health, he broke off to whine and complain about the infernal pains which were forcing him to give up making his fortune. But Robineau, highly strung and anxious, interrupted him impatiently: he knew about the crisis the trade was going through, and named a shop specializing in silks which had already been ruined by the proximity of the Paradise. Vinçard, extremely angry, raised his voice.

  ‘No wonder! That old chump Vabre* was bound to come a cropper. His wife spent everything he earned … Besides, we’re more than five hundred yards away, whereas Vabre was right next door to it.’

  Gaujean, the silk manufacturer, chimed in. Once more their voices were lowered. Gaujean was accusing the big stores of ruining the French textile industry; three or four of them were dictating to it, completely ruling the market; and he insinuated that the only way to resist them was to encourage small businesses, especially those which specialized, for the future belonged to them. For this reason he was offering Robineau plenty of credit.

  ‘Look how the Paradise has treated you!’ he repeated. ‘They take no account of services rendered, they’re just machines for exploiting people … They promised you the job of buyer ages ago, and then Bouthemont, who was an outsider and had no right to it, got it straight away.’

  Robineau was still smarting from this injustice. All the same, he was hesitating about setting up in business himself, explaining that the money was not his; his wife had inherited sixty thousand francs, and he was full of scruples about this sum, saying that he would rather cut both his hands off on the spot than risk the money in bad business.

  ‘No. I haven’t made up my mind,’ he concluded at last. ‘Give me time to think it over; we’ll discuss it again.’

  ‘As you like,’ said Vinçard, hiding his disappointment with a smile. ‘It’s not in my interest to sell. You know, if it wasn’t for my rheumatism …’

  And returning to the middle of the shop he asked:

  ‘What can I do for you, Monsieur Baudu?’

  The draper, who had been listening with one ear, introduced Denise, told Vinçard as much as he thought necessary of her story, and said that she had been working in the provinces for two years.

  ‘And as I hear that you’re looking for a good salesgirl…’

  Vinçard pretended to be terribly sorry.

  ‘Oh! What bad luck! I have indeed been looking for a salesgirl all week. But I’ve just engaged one, less than two hours ago.’

  A silence ensued.
Denise seemed totally dismayed. Then Robineau, who was looking at her with interest, no doubt touched by her poor appearance, volunteered some information.

  ‘I know they want someone at our place, in the ladieswear department.’

  Baudu could not suppress a heartfelt exclamation:

  ‘At your place! My goodness—no!’

  Then he stopped, embarrassed. Denise had turned very red; she would never dare to enter that huge shop! And yet the idea of being there filled her with pride.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Robineau, surprised. ‘It would be a good opening for her … I’d advise her to go and see Madame Aurélie, the buyer, tomorrow morning. The worst that can happen is that they won’t take her.’

  The draper, in order to hide his inner revulsion, began to chatter vaguely: he knew Madame Aurélie, or at any rate her husband Lhomme, the cashier, a fat man who had had his right arm cut off by an omnibus. Then, suddenly coming back to Denise, he said:

  ‘In any case, it’s her affair, not mine … She’s quite free …’

  And he went out, after saying goodbye to Gaujean and Robineau. Vinçard accompanied him to the door, saying once more how sorry he was. The girl had remained in the middle of the shop, intimidated, anxious to get more information from Robineau. But she did not dare, and said goodbye in her turn, adding simply:

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  On the way back Baudu did not speak to his niece. He walked fast, forcing her to run, as if carried away by his thoughts. In the Rue de la Michodière he was about to go into his shop when a neighbouring shopkeeper, standing at his door, beckoned him over. Denise stopped to wait for him.

  ‘What is it, Bourras, old chap?’ asked the draper.