The Ladies' Paradise Page 8

  ‘Have you got it all, Bouthemont?’ asked Mouret, going up to a young man with broad shoulders who was checking the contents of a packing-case.

  ‘Yes, I think it’s all there,’ he replied. ‘But it will take me all morning to count it.’

  The department-manager ran his eye over an invoice; he was standing before a large counter on which one of his salesmen was placing the lengths of silk he was taking out of the packing-case one by one. Behind them were further rows of counters, also littered with goods which a small army of assistants was examining. There was a general unpacking, an apparent confusion of materials as they were examined, turned over, ticketed, in the midst of a buzz of voices.*

  Bouthemont, who was becoming a celebrity in the trade, had a round, jolly face, an inky black beard, and fine brown eyes. A native of Montpellier, noisy and fun-loving, he was a poor salesman; but as a buyer he had no equal. He had been sent to Paris by his father, who had a draper’s shop in Montpellier, and when the old man thought that his son had learned enough to succeed him in the business, he had absolutely refused to go back home. From then on a rivalry had developed between father and son, the former entirely absorbed in his small provincial trade, indignant at seeing a mere assistant earning three times as much as he did himself, and the latter joking about the old man’s routine, boasting about his earnings, and turning the shop upside-down every time he went there. Like the other department-managers he earned, apart from his three thousand francs fixed salary, a commission on sales. Montpellier, surprised and impressed, gave it out that the Bouthemont boy had, in the preceding year, pocketed nearly fifteen thousand francs—and this was only a beginning; people predicted to his exasperated father that this figure would increase even more.

  Meanwhile, Bourdoncle had picked up one of the lengths of silk, and was examining its texture with the attentive air of a man who knows his business. It was a piece of faille with a blue and silver selvage, the famous Paris-Paradise with which Mouret hoped to strike a decisive blow.

  ‘It really is very good,’ murmured his colleague.

  ‘But above all it looks so striking,’ said Bouthemont. ‘Dumonteil is the only one who can make it for us … On my last trip, when I had my argument with Gaujean, he said he was willing to use a hundred looms to make this pattern, but he insisted on twenty-five centimes more per metre.’

  Nearly every month Bouthemont would visit the factories, spending days in Lyons, staying at the best hotels, and with instructions that money was no object when negotiating with manufacturers. Moreover, he enjoyed absolute freedom, and bought as he thought fit, providing that each year he increased the turnover of his department by a ratio agreed in advance; and it was, in fact, on this increase that his commission was based. In short, his position at the Ladies’ Paradise, like that of all his fellow section-managers, was that of a specialized merchant in a group of different trades, a kind of vast city of commerce.

  ‘So, it’s decided then,’ he went on. ‘We’ll price it at five francs sixty … You know that that scarcely covers the purchase price.’

  ‘Yes, yes, five francs sixty,’ said Mouret briskly, ‘and if I was on my own, I’d sell it at a loss.’

  The section-manager laughed heartily.

  ‘Oh! That would suit me perfectly. It would triple sales, and as my only concern is to get big takings …’

  But Bourdoncle remained serious and tight-lipped. His commission was based on the total profits, and it was not in his interest to lower the prices. His task as a supervisor consisted precisely in keeping an eye on the price tickets to see that Bouthemont did not simply indulge his desire to increase sales, and sell at too small a profit. Besides, he was once more filled with his old misgivings when faced with publicity schemes which he did not understand. He ventured to show his distaste by saying:

  ‘If we sell at five francs sixty it’s just as if we were selling it at a loss, because our expenses must be deducted, and they’re considerable … Anywhere else they’d sell it at seven francs.’

  At that Mouret lost his temper. He banged the flat of his hand on the silk, and shouted irritably:

  ‘Yes, I know, and that’s just why I want to give it away to our customers … Really, my dear fellow, you’ll never understand women. Can’t you see they’ll go mad over this silk?’

  ‘No doubt,’ interrupted his associate, obstinately, ‘and the more they buy, the more we’ll lose.’

  ‘We’ll lose a few centimes on these goods, I’ll grant you. But so what? It won’t be such a disaster if it enables us to attract all the women here and hold them at our mercy, their heads turned at the sight of our piles of goods, emptying their purses without counting! The main thing, my dear fellow, is to excite their interest, and for that you must have an article that delights them—which causes a sensation. After that you can sell the other goods at prices as high as anywhere else, and they’ll still think yours are the cheapest. For example, our Cuir-d’Or, that taffeta at seven francs fifty, which is on sale everywhere at that price, will seem an extraordinary bargain, and will be sufficient to make up for the loss on the Paris-. You’ll see, you’ll see.’

  He was becoming quite eloquent.

  ‘Don’t you understand? I want the Paris-Paradise to revolutionize the market in a week. It’s our master-stroke, it’s what’s going to save us and make our name. People won’t talk about anything else, the blue and silver selvage will be known from one end of France to the other … And you’ll hear the groan of fury from our competitors. The small traders will lose some more of their feathers over it. They’re done for, all those old clothes dealers dying of rheumatism in their cellars!’

  The assistants who were checking the goods stood round their employer, listening and smiling. He liked talking in this way without contradiction. Once more, Bourdoncle gave in. In the mean time the packing-case had been emptied, and two men were un-nailing another one.

  ‘It’s the manufacturers who aren’t pleased!’ said Bouthemont. ‘They’re furious with you in Lyons; they claim that your cheap sales are ruining them. You know that Gaujean has definitely declared war against me. Yes, he’s sworn to give the small shops long credit rather than accept my prices.’

  Mouret shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘If Gaujean isn’t reasonable,’ he replied, ‘Gaujean will be left high and dry … What have they got to complain about? We pay them immediately, we take everything they make, the least they can do is work for less … Besides, the public gets the benefit, that’s the main thing.’

  The assistant was emptying the second packing-case, while Bouthemont had gone back to checking the pieces of material against the invoice. Another assistant, at the end of the counter, was marking the price on them and, the checking finished, the invoice signed by the section-manager had to be sent up to the central counting-house. For a moment longer Mouret continued looking at this work, all the activity surrounding the unpacking of the goods, which were piling up and threatening to swamp the basement; then, without saying another word, he went away with the air of a captain satisfied with his troops, followed by Bourdoncle.

  They went slowly through the basement. The ventilators placed at intervals shed a pale light; and in the depths of dark corners, along the narrow corridors, gas jets were continually burning. Leading off these corridors were the stock-rooms, vaults shut off with wooden boards, where the different departments stowed away their surplus goods. As he passed, Mouret glanced at the heating installation, which was to be lit on Monday for the first time, and at the small firemen’s post which was guarding a giant gas meter enclosed in an iron cage. The kitchen and the canteens, old cellars turned into small rooms, were on the left, near the corner of the Place Gaillon. Finally, at the other end of the basement, he came to the dispatch department. The parcels which customers did not take away themselves were sent down there, sorted on tables, and put into pigeon-holes which represented the different districts of Paris; then they were sent up a large staircase which came out ju
st opposite the Vieil Elbeuf, and put into vans parked near the pavement. In the mechanical working of the Ladies’ Paradise, the staircase in the Rue de la Michodière constantly disgorged the goods which had been swallowed up by the chute in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, after they had passed through the mechanism of the various departments upstairs.

  ‘Campion,’ said Mouret to the delivery manager, a thin-faced ex-sergeant, ‘why were six pairs of sheets which a lady bought yesterday at about two o’clock not delivered in the evening?’

  ‘Where does the lady live?’ asked the employee.

  ‘In the Rue de Rivoli, at the corner of the Rue d’Alger … Madame Desforges.’

  At this early hour the sorting tables were bare, and the pigeon-holes contained only a few parcels left over from the day before. While Campion, after consulting a list, was rummaging among these parcels, Bourdoncle watched Mouret, thinking that this devil of a man knew everything, attended to everything, even while sitting at the supper tables of restaurants and in his mistresses’ bedrooms. Finally, Campion discovered the error: the cash-desk had given a wrong number, and the parcel had come back.

  ‘Which cash-desk dealt with it?’ asked Mouret. ‘What? No. 10, you say …?’

  And turning to his lieutenant, he said:

  ‘Cash-desk 10, that’s Albert, isn’t it? … We’ll go and have a word with him.’

  But before going round the shop, he wanted to go upstairs to the mail-order department, which occupied several rooms on the second floor. It was there that all the provincial and foreign orders arrived; and every morning he went there to look at the correspondence. For two years this correspondence had been growing daily. The department had at first kept about ten clerks busy, but now already needed more than thirty. Some opened the letters, others read them, sitting at both sides of the same table; still others sorted them, giving each one a serial number which was repeated on a pigeon-hole; then, when the letters had been distributed to the different departments and the departments had sent up the articles, the articles were put into the pigeon-holes according to the serial number. It remained only to check them and pack them up in a neighbouring room, where a team of workmen nailed and tied things up from morning till night.

  Mouret asked his usual question.

  ‘How many letters this morning, Levasseur?’

  ‘Five hundred and thirty-four, sir,’ replied the chief clerk. ‘After Monday’s sale announcement, I was afraid we wouldn’t have enough staff. It was very difficult to manage yesterday.’

  Bourdoncle expressed his satisfaction with a nod of the head. He had not expected five hundred and thirty-four letters on Tuesday. Round the table the clerks continued slitting the letters open and reading, with a continuous sound of rustling paper, while in front of the pigeon-holes the coming and going of goods was beginning. This was one of the most complicated and important departments in the shop: its members worked constantly at fever-pitch, for, according to regulations, all the orders received in the morning had to be sent off by the evening. ‘You’ll be given the staff you need, Levasseur,’ Mouret answered finally; he had seen at a glance what a good state the department was in. ‘As you know, when there’s work to be done we never refuse the staff.’

  Upstairs, under the roof, were the little attic rooms where the salesgirls slept. But he went downstairs again and entered the central counting-house, which was near his office. It was a room shut off by a glass partition with a brass pay-desk in it, and it contained an enormous safe fixed in the wall. Here two cashiers sorted out the takings which Lhomme, the chief sales cashier, brought up to them every evening; they then settled current expenses and paid the manufacturers, the staff, and the crowd of people who lived off the shop in one way or another. The counting-house communicated with another room, lined with green files, where ten clerks checked the invoices. Then came yet another office, the clearing-house: there six young men, bent over black desks, with piles of registers behind them, drew up accounts of the salesmen’s commissions by collating the sales bills. This section, which was quite new, was not running well.

  Mouret and Bourdoncle had passed through the counting-house and the checking office. When they went into the other office the young men, who were laughing and joking, had a sudden shock. Mouret, without reprimanding them, explained the system of the small bonus he had thought of paying them for every error they discovered in the sales bills; and when he had left the clerks, no longer laughing, and with a cowed air, set to work with a vengeance, hunting for mistakes.

  On the ground floor, in the shop, Mouret went straight to cash-desk No. 10, where Albert Lhomme was polishing his nails while waiting for customers. People often spoke of ‘the Lhomme dynasty’, since Madame Aurélie, the buyer in the ladieswear department, after helping her husband to become chief cashier, had managed to get a retail cash-desk for her son, a tall lad, pale and dissolute, who could never stay anywhere, and who caused her a great deal of anxiety. But when confronted with the young man, Mouret stood aside, not wishing to make himself unpopular by acting like a policeman; from both policy and taste he kept to his role of benevolent god. He nudged Bourdoncle gently with his elbow—Bourdoncle, that model of rectitude, whom he usually charged with the task of reprimanding negligent staff.

  ‘Monsieur Albert,’ said the latter sternly, ‘you’ve taken another address down wrongly; the parcel came back … It’s intolerable!’

  The cashier felt obliged to defend himself, and called as a witness the porter who had tied up the parcel. This porter, Joseph by name, also belonged to the Lhomme dynasty, for he was Albert’s foster-brother and owed his job to Madame Aurélie’s influence. As the young man wanted him to say it was the customer’s mistake, he stuttered, twisting the little goatee beard which made his scarred face seem longer, torn between his conscience as an old soldier and his gratitude towards his protectors.

  ‘Leave Joseph alone,’ Bourdoncle exclaimed at last. ‘Don’t say any more … You’re lucky that we appreciate your mother’s good work!’

  But at that moment Lhomme came running over. From his own cash-desk near the door he could see his son’s, which was in the glove department. Already white-haired, overweight from his sedentary life, he had a flabby, nondescript face, as if worn away by the reflection of the money he was continually counting. The fact that he had had an arm amputated did not hinder him at all in his task, and people even came out of curiosity to see him checking the takings, so swiftly did the notes and coins slip through his left hand, the only one he had. The son of a tax-collector in Chablis,* he had come to Paris as bookkeeper to a wine-merchant in the Port-aux-Vins.* Then he had married the daughter of a small Alsatian tailor, the caretaker of the house where he was living in the Rue Cuvier; and from that day on he had been under the thumb of his wife, whose commercial abilities filled him with respect. She earned more than twelve thousand francs in the clothing department, whereas he had a fixed salary of only five thousand francs. And his respect for a wife who could bring such sums into the home extended to his son as well, for he also belonged to her.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he murmured. ‘Has Albert made a mistake?’

  At that, Mouret reappeared on the scene to play the part of the good prince, as was his custom. When Bourdoncle had made himself feared, Mouret would ensure his own popularity.

  ‘A silly mistake,’ he murmured. ‘My dear Lhomme, your son is a scatter-brain who really should take his example from you.’

  Then, changing the subject and making himself seem even more amiable, he said:

  ‘What about the concert the other day? … Did you have a good seat?’

  A blush spread over the old cashier’s pale cheeks. Music was his only vice, a secret vice he indulged in alone, constantly doing the rounds of the theatres, concerts, auditions; in spite of his amputated arm he played the horn, thanks to an ingenious system of clamps; and as Madame Lhomme hated noise, in the evening he would wrap his instrument up in a cloth, and was nevertheless delighted
to the point of ecstasy by the strangely muffled sounds he extracted from it. In the endless chaos of their domestic life he had made an oasis of music for himself. That and the money in the cash-desk was all that concerned him, apart from his admiration for his wife.

  ‘A very good seat,’ he answered, his eyes shining. ‘It was really too kind of you, sir.’

  Mouret, who took a personal delight in satisfying other people’s passions, sometimes gave Lhomme the tickets forced on him by ladies who were patrons of the arts. And he completed the old man’s delight by saying:

  ‘Ah! Beethoven, ah! Mozart… What music!’

  Without waiting for a reply he moved on and caught up with Bourdoncle, who was already on his tour of inspection through the departments. In the central hall, an inner courtyard covered with a glass roof, were the silks. First they went along the gallery on the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin side, which was filled from one end to the other with household linen. Nothing unusual struck them as they passed slowly through the crowd of respectful assistants. Then they turned into the printed cotton goods and hosiery, where the same order reigned. But in the woollen department, in the gallery which ran at right angles through to the Rue de la Michodière, Bourdoncle resumed his role of chief executioner on glimpsing a young man sitting on a counter and looking worn out after a sleepless night; the young man, Liénard by name, the son of a rich draper in Angers, hung his head as he received the reprimand, fearing nothing in his idle, carefree life of pleasure except being recalled to the provinces by his father. Admonishments now began to fall like hail, the gallery in the Rue de la Michodière bearing the brunt of the storm; in the drapery department one of those salesmen who received board and lodging but no salary, who were starting their careers and slept in their departments, had come in after eleven o’clock; in the haberdashery department the assistant buyer had just been caught in the basement finishing a cigarette. But the storm broke with especial violence in the glove department, over the head of one of the few Parisians in the shop, a young man known as Handsome Mignot, the illegitimate son of a lady who taught the harp: his crime was that he had made a scene in the canteen by complaining about the food. As there were three meal services, one at half-past nine, one at half-past ten, and one at half-past eleven, and he went to the third service, he tried to explain that he always had the left-overs, the worst of everything.