The Ladies' Paradise Read online

  Bourras was a tall old man with the head of a prophet, long-haired and bearded, and with piercing eyes under great bushy eyebrows. He sold walking-sticks and umbrellas, did repairs, and even carved handles, a skill which had earned him quite a reputation as an artist. Denise glanced at the shop-windows, where the umbrellas and walking-sticks were arranged in straight lines. But when she looked up she was astonished at the appearance of the house: it was a hovel squashed between the Ladies’ Paradise and a large Louis XIV mansion; its two low storeys were collapsing at the bottom of the narrow crevice where it had somehow sprung up. Without supports on each side it would have fallen down; the roof slates were crooked and rotten, and the two-windowed façade was scarred with cracks which ran down in long rusty lines over the worm-eaten signboard.

  ‘You know, he’s written to my landlord about buying the house,’ said Bourras, looking at the draper intently with his blazing eyes.

  Baudu became even paler, and bent his shoulders. There was a silence, during which the two men looked at each other very seriously.

  ‘You must be prepared for everything,’ Baudu murmured finally.

  At that the old man flew into a rage, shaking his hair and his flowing beard.

  ‘Let him buy the house, he’ll pay four times its value for it! But I swear that as long as I’m alive he won’t have a single stone of it. My lease has twelve years to run … We’ll see, we’ll see!’

  It was a declaration of war. Bourras turned towards the Ladies’ Paradise, which neither of them had named. Baudu shook his head in silence, then crossed the street to his shop, his legs giving way, repeating only:

  ‘Oh! God! … Oh! God!’

  Denise, who had been listening, followed her uncle. Madame Baudu had just come back with Pépé, and she said at once that Madame Gras would take the child whenever they wanted. But Jean had just disappeared, which made his sister anxious. When he returned, his face flushed, talking excitedly about the boulevard, she looked at him in such a sad way that it made him blush. Their trunk had arrived and it was agreed that they would sleep in the attic.

  ‘By the way, how did you get on at Vinçard’s?’ asked Madame Baudu.

  The draper told her about his fruitless errand, adding that they had been told about a job for Denise; and, pointing towards the Ladies’ Paradise in a gesture of contempt, he cried out:

  ‘There—in there!’

  The whole family felt hurt at the idea. In the evening, the first meal was at five o’clock. Denise and the two children took their places again with Baudu, Geneviève, and Colomban. The small dining-room was lit by a gas jet, and the smell of food was stifling. They ate in silence, but during the dessert Madame Baudu, who was restless, left the shop to come and sit down behind her niece. And then the storm which had been brewing all morning broke, and they all relieved their feelings by abusing the monster.

  ‘It’s your business, you’re free to do what you want…,’ repeated Baudu. ‘We don’t want to influence you … But the sort of place it is …!’

  In broken sentences he told her the story of Octave Mouret. Wonderful luck! A lad from the Midi* who had turned up in Paris possessing all the attractive audacity of an adventurer; and, from the day he arrived, there had been nothing but affairs with women, an endless exploiting of women, a scandal which was still the talk of the neighbourhood, when he had been caught in the act; then his sudden and inexplicable conquest of Madame Hédouin, which had brought him the Ladies’ Paradise.

  ‘Poor Caroline!’ interrupted Madame Baudu. ‘We were distantly related. Ah! If she had lived things would have been different. She wouldn’t have let them ruin us like this … And he’s the one who killed her. Yes, on his building site! One morning, when she was looking at the works, she fell into a hole. Three days later she died. A fine, healthy woman, who had never had a day’s illness in her life! There’s some of her blood under the foundations of that shop!’

  With her pale, trembling hand she pointed through the walls towards the great shop. Denise, who was listening as one listens to a fairy-tale, shivered slightly. The fear which had mingled with the temptation she had felt since the morning came perhaps from the blood of that woman, which she fancied she could see in the red cement of the basement.

  ‘It seems as if it brings him luck,’ added Madame Baudu without naming Mouret.

  But the draper shrugged his shoulders, contemptuous of these old wives’ tales. He resumed his story, explaining the situation from the commercial point of view. The Ladies’ Paradise had been founded in 1822 by the Deleuze brothers. When the eldest died, his daughter Caroline had married the son of a linen manufacturer, Charles Hédouin; and later on, having become a widow, she had married this man Mouret. He had thus acquired a half-share in the shop. Three months after their marriage, her uncle Deleuze had died childless; so that, when Caroline had met her death, Mouret had become sole heir, sole proprietor of the Paradise. Nothing but luck!

  ‘A man with ideas, but muddle-headed—he’ll turn the whole neighbourhood upside-down if he’s allowed to!’ Baudu went on. ‘I think that Caroline, who was a bit romantic too, must have been taken in by the gentleman’s grand schemes … In short, he persuaded her to buy the house on the left, then the house on the right; and he himself, when he was left on his own, bought two others; so that the shop has gone on growing and growing, to such an extent that it threatens to swallow us all up!’

  His words were addressed to Denise, but he was really talking to himself, brooding obsessively over Mouret’s story, in an attempt to justify himself. At home he was forever irascible and violent, his fists always clenched. Madame Baudu sat motionless on her chair, no longer taking part in the conversation; Geneviève and Colomban, their eyes lowered, were absent-mindedly collecting and eating crumbs. It was so hot and stuffy in the small room that Pépé had fallen asleep on the table, and even Jean’s eyes were closing.

  ‘You wait!’ Baudu went on, suddenly filled with rage. ‘Those swindlers will break their necks! Mouret’s going through a difficult time, I know he is. He’s had to put all his profits into his mad obsession with expansion and advertising. What’s more, in order to raise money, he’s taken it into his head to persuade most of his staff to invest their savings in his business.* So he hasn’t got a penny now, and unless a miracle happens, unless he manages to triple his sales, as he hopes, there’ll be a tremendous crash! Ah! I’m not spiteful, but when that day comes I’ll light up my shop-front, believe me!’

  He went on in a revengeful voice. One would have thought that only the fall of the Paradise could restore the slighted honour of the trade. Had anyone ever seen such a thing? A draper’s shop which sold everything! Just a big bazaar! And a fine staff too: a lot of dandies who pushed things about like porters at a railway station, who treated the goods and the customers like parcels, dropping their employer or being dropped by him at a moment’s notice. No affection, no manners, no art! And suddenly he cited Colomban as an example of a good tradesman: of course, he, Colomban, brought up in the old school, knew the slow, sure way one learned the real subtleties, the real tricks of the trade. The art was not to sell a lot, but to sell at a high price. And Colomban could say, too, how he had been treated, how he had become a member of the family, nursed when he was ill, his things laundered and mended, looked after paternally—loved, in fact!

  ‘Of course!’ Colomban repeated after every statement shouted out by his employer.

  ‘You’re the last, my boy,’ declared Baudu with emotion. ‘After you there’ll be none left… You’re my only consolation; if that mad scrambling over there is what they call business nowadays, I give up; I’d rather clear out.’

  Geneviève, her head on one side, as if her thick black hair was too heavy for her pale forehead, was watching the smiling shop assistant; and in her look there was a suspicion, a desire to see if Colomban would not blush at all this praise. But, as if he was used to the old tradesman’s act, he maintained his quiet manner, his bland air, and the wily
pucker on his lips.

  However, Baudu went on, louder than ever, accusing the bazaar opposite, those savages who were massacring each other in their struggle for existence, destroying all family ties in the process. He quoted as an example their neighbours in the country, the Lhommes, mother, father, and son, all three now employed in that infernal shop, people with no home life, always out, only eating at home on Sundays, nothing but a hotel and restaurant life! To be sure, his own dining-room was not large, and it could have done with a bit more light and air; but at least he had lived his life there, surrounded by the love of his family. As he spoke his eyes travelled round the little room; and he began to tremble at the idea, which he refused to acknowledge, that the savages might one day, if they succeeded in killing his business, dislodge him from this niche where, with his wife and daughter by his side, he felt so comfortable. In spite of the assurance with which he foretold the final crash, in his heart he was terrified; he really did feel that the neighbourhood was being gradually overrun and devoured.

  ‘I don’t want to put you off,’ he resumed, trying to be calm. ‘If it’s in your interest to get a job there, I’ll be the first to say: “Go.”’

  ‘I’m sure you will, Uncle,’ murmured Denise, bewildered; all this emotion made her want more and more to be at the Ladies’ Paradise.

  He had put his elbows on the table, and was staring at her so hard that she felt quite uncomfortable.

  ‘Look, you’ve been in the trade, do you think it’s right that a simple draper’s shop should start selling everything under the sun? In the old days, when trade was trade, drapery meant materials, and nothing else. Nowadays their only aim is to expand their business at the expense of their neighbours and to eat everything up … That’s what the neighbourhood’s complaining about, the little shops are beginning to suffer terribly. That man Mouret is ruining them … Bédoré and his sister, who keep the hosiery shop in the Rue Gaillon, have already lost half their customers. At Mademoiselle Tatin’s, the lingerie shop in the Passage Choiseul, they’ve been forced to lower their prices in order to compete. And the effect of this scourge, this plague, is felt as far as the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, where I venture to say that the Vanpouille brothers, the furriers, can’t hold out. Drapers who sell furs, it’s absurd! Another of Mouret’s ideas!’

  ‘And the gloves,’ said Madame Baudu, ‘isn’t it incredible? He’s had the nerve to create a glove department! Yesterday, as I was going along the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, Quinette was standing at his door looking so depressed that I didn’t dare ask him if business was good.’

  ‘And umbrellas,’ Baudu went on. ‘That beats everything! Bourras is convinced that Mouret simply wants to ruin him; after all, what sense does it make to have umbrellas and materials together? But Bourras is tough, he won’t let himself be killed off. We’ll have a good laugh one of these days.’

  He talked about other shopkeepers, and reviewed the whole neighbourhood. Now and again he let slip a confession: if Vinçard was trying to sell they might as well all pack up, for Vinçard was like the rats that leave sinking ships. Then he would immediately contradict himself; he would dream of an alliance, a league of little retailers to stand up to the colossus. He hesitated a moment before talking about himself, his hands shaking and his mouth twitching nervously. Finally, he took the plunge.

  ‘As for me, so far I haven’t had much to complain about. Of course he’s done me some harm, the scoundrel! But up till now he’s only kept cloth for women, light cloth for dresses, and heavier cloth for coats. People still come to me for men’s things, velvets for shooting outfits, liveries, not to mention flannels and duffels; I challenge him to offer such a wide assortment of those! But he still tries to get at me, he thinks he really annoys me because he’s put his drapery department directly opposite. You’ve seen his display, haven’t you? He always puts his most beautiful dresses there, set in a framework of various cloths, a real circus parade to catch the girls … I swear I’d be ashamed to use such means. The Vieil Elbeuf has been famous for nearly a hundred years, and it doesn’t need confidence tricks like that at its door. As long as I live, the shop will stay the same as it was when I took it over, with its four sample pieces of cloth on the right and the left, and nothing else!’

  The whole family was becoming affected. After a silence, Geneviève ventured to say something:

  ‘Our customers like us, Papa. We must hope that… Madame Desforges and Madame de Boves were here again today, and I’m expecting Madame Marty to look at some flannel.’

  ‘And yesterday I took an order from Madame Bourdelais,’ declared Colomban. ‘Though she did mention an English tweed priced fifty centimes cheaper opposite, and the same as ours, it seems.’

  ‘And to think,’ murmured Madame Baudu in her tired voice, ‘that we knew that shop when it was no bigger than a pocket handkerchief! Yes, really, my dear Denise, when the Deleuzes founded it, it only had one window in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, just like a cupboard, in which there was barely room for a couple of pieces of chintz and three pieces of calico. You couldn’t turn round in the shop, it was so small… At that time the Vieil Elbeuf, which had been here for over sixty years, was already just as you see it today … Ah! it’s all changed, greatly changed!’

  She shook her head, her few words telling the story of her life. Born at the Vieil Elbeuf, she loved it even down to its damp stones, she lived only for it and because of it; in bygone days she had been full of pride for this shop, which had been the largest, the most thriving business in the neighbourhood, but she had had the continual pain of seeing the rival shop gradually growing, at first disdained, then equal in importance, then surpassing it and threatening it. For her it was an open wound; she was slowly dying of the Vieil Elbeuf’s humiliation, still living, like the shop, on the strength of its momentum, but knowing that its death throes would be hers too, and that she would never survive its final closure.

  Silence reigned. Baudu was beating a tattoo with his fingertips on the oilcloth. He felt weary, almost sorry at having relieved his feelings once more in this way. In fact, the whole family, their eyes vacant, felt the effects of his despondency, and could not help turning over in their minds the bitter events of their history. Luck had never smiled on them. The children had been reared, fortune was on the way, when suddenly competition had brought ruin. There was also the house at Rambouillet, the country house to which the draper had been dreaming of retiring for the last ten years; a bargain he called it, an old shack he was obliged continually to repair, which he had reluctantly decided to let to people who never paid the rent. His last profits were being spent on it—the only vice he had ever had in his honest, upright career, obstinately attached to the old ways.

  ‘Now then,’ he suddenly declared, ‘we must make room for the others … That’s enough useless talk!’

  They all seemed to wake up. The gas jet was hissing in the dead, stifling air of the little room. Everyone jumped up, breaking the gloomy silence. Pépé, however, was sleeping so soundly that they laid him down on some pieces of thick flannel. Jean, yawning, had already gone back to the front door.

  ‘In short, you do what you like,’ Baudu repeated once more to his niece. ‘We’re just telling you the facts, that’s all. But it’s your business.’

  He looked at her intently, waiting for a decisive answer. Denise, instead of being turned against the Ladies’ Paradise by these stories, was more fascinated by it than ever, and kept her air of calmness and sweetness, under which there lay an obstinate Norman will. She was content to reply: ‘We’ll see, Uncle.’

  And she talked of going to bed early with the children, for they were all three very tired. But it was only just striking six, so she decided to stay in the shop a few moments longer. Night had fallen, and she found the street quite dark, soaked with fine, dense rain which had been falling since sunset. A surprise greeted her: a few moments had sufficed for the roadway to become filled with pebbles, for the gutters to be running with dirty
water and the pavements to be covered in thick, sticky mud; and through the driving rain she could see nothing but a confused stream of umbrellas, jostling each other, swelling out like great gloomy wings in the darkness. She drew back at first, struck by the cold, feeling even more depressed because of the badly lit shop, which had a particularly dismal appearance at this time of night. A damp breeze, the breath of the old neighbourhood, came in from the street; it seemed as if the water streaming from the umbrellas was running right up to the counters and the pavement, with its mud and puddles, was coming into the old shop’s ground floor, white with saltpetre rot, giving it a final coat of mildew. It was a vision of old Paris, soaked through, and it made her shiver, surprised and dismayed to find the great city so cold and ugly.

  But on the other side of the road the deep rows of gas burners at the Ladies’ Paradise were being lit. She drew nearer, once more attracted and, as it were, warmed by this source of blazing light. The machine was still humming, still active, letting off steam in a final roar, while the salesmen were folding up the materials and the cashiers counting their takings. Through windows dimmed with condensation she could make out a vague profusion of lights, the confused interior of a factory. Behind the curtain of rain this vision, distant and blurred, seemed like some giant stokehold, in which the black shadows of the stokers could be seen moving against the red fire of the furnaces. The window displays had become indistinct also, and nothing could now be seen opposite but the snowy lace, the white of which was heightened by the frosted glass globes of a row of gas jets. Against this chapel-like background, the coats were bursting with energy; the great velvet overcoat trimmed with silver fox suggested the curved outline of a headless woman, running through the downpour to some festivity in the mysterious Parisian night.

  Denise, yielding to temptation, had come as far as the door without noticing the raindrops falling on her. At this time of night, the Ladies’ Paradise, with its furnace-like glare, seduced her completely. In the great metropolis, dark and silent under the rain, in this Paris of which she knew nothing, it was burning like a beacon, it alone seemed to be the light and life of the city. She dreamed of her future there, working hard to bring up the children, and of other things too, she knew not what, far-off things which made her tremble with desire and fear. The thought of the dead woman under the foundations came back to her and she felt afraid; she thought she saw the lights bleeding; then the whiteness of the lace soothed her, a feeling of hope sprang up in her heart, a real certainty of joy, while the soft rain, blowing on her, cooled her hands, and calmed her after the excitement of her journey.