Complete Works of Emile Zola (725 page)

“There’s another they’ve taken from us!” murmured the draper. Then turning towards Denise, of whose re-engagement he was aware, he said: “You as well, they’ve taken you back. Oh, I don’t blame you for it. As they have the money, they are naturally the strongest.”

Just then, Denise, still hoping that Geneviève had not overheard Colomban, was saying to her: “He loves you. Try and cheer up.”

But the young girl replied to her in a very low and heartbroken voice: “Why do you tell me a falsehood? Look! he can’t help it, he’s always glancing up there. I know very well they’ve stolen him from me, as they’ve robbed us of everything else.”

Geneviève went and sat down on the seat at the desk near her mother. The latter had doubtless guessed the fresh blow received by her daughter, for her anxious eyes wandered from her to Colomban, and then to The Ladies’ Paradise. It was true, they had stolen everything from them: from the father, a fortune; from the mother, her dying child; from the daughter, a husband, waited for for ten years. Before this condemned family, Denise, whose heart was overflowing with pity, felt for an instant afraid of being wicked. Was she not going to assist this machine which was crushing the poor people? But she felt herself carried away as it were by an invisible force, and knew that she was doing no wrong.

“Bah!” resumed Baudu, to give himself courage; “we sha’n’t die over it, after all. For one customer lost we shall find two others. You hear, Denise, I’ve got over seventy thousand francs there, which will certainly trouble your Mouret’s rest. Come, come, you others, don’t look so glum!”

But he could not enliven them. He himself relapsed into a pale consternation; and they all stood with their eyes on the monster, attracted, possessed, full of their misfortune. The work was nearly finished, the scaffolding had been removed from the front, a whole side of the colossal edifice appeared, with its white walls and large light windows. Along the pavement, at last open to circulation, stood eight vans that the messengers were loading one after the other before the parcels-office. In the sunshine, a ray of which ran along the street, the green panels, picked out with red and yellow, sparkled like so many mirrors, sending blinding reflections right into The Old Elbeuf. The drivers, dressed in black, of a correct appearance, were holding the horses well in, superb pairs, shaking their silvered bits. And each time a van was loaded, there was a sonorous, rolling noise, which made the neighboring small shops tremble. And before this triumphal procession, which they were destined to submit to twice a day, the Baudus’ hearts broke. The father half fainted away, asking himself where this continual flood of goods could go to; whilst the mother, tormented to death about her daughter, continued to gaze into the street, her eyes drowned in a flood of tears.

CHAPTER IX

It was on a Monday, the 14th of March, that The Ladies’ Paradise inaugurated its new buildings by a great exhibition of summer novelties, which was to last three days. Outside, a sharp wind was blowing, the passers-by, surprised by this return of winter, spun along, buttoned up in their overcoats. However, behind the closed doors of the neighboring shops, quite an agitation was fermenting; and one could see, against the windows, the pale faces of the small tradesmen, occupied in counting the first carriages which stopped before the new grand entrance in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin. This door, lofty and deep like a church porch, surmounted by a group — Industry and Commerce hand-in-hand amidst a complication of symbols — was sheltered by a vast awning, the fresh gilding of which seemed to light up the pavement with a ray of sunshine. To the right and left stretched the shop fronts, barely dry and of a blinding whiteness, running along the Rue Monsigny and the Rue de la Michodière, occupying the whole island, except on the Rue du Dix-Décembre side, where the Crédit Immobilier intended to build. Along this barrack-like development, the small tradesmen, when they raised their heads, perceived the piles of goods through the large plate-glass windows which, from the ground floor up to the second storey, opened the house to the light of day. And this enormous cube, this colossal bazaar, shut out the sky from them, seeming to cause the cold which was making them shiver behind their frozen counters.

As early as six o’clock, Mouret was on the spot, giving his final orders. In the centre, starting from the grand entrance, a large gallery ran from end to end, flanked right and left by two narrower galleries, the Monsigny Gallery and the Michodière Gallery. The court-yards had been glazed and turned into halls, iron staircases rose from the ground floor, iron bridges were thrown from one end to the other on the two storeys. The architect, who happened to be a young man of talent, with modern ideas, had only used stone for the underground floor and the corner pillars, constructing the whole carcase of iron, the assemblage of beams and rafters being supported by columns. The arches of the flooring and the partitions were of brickwork. Space had been gained everywhere, light and air entered freely, and the public circulated with the greatest ease under the bold flights of the far-stretching girders. It was the cathedral of modern commerce, light but solid, made for a nation of customers. Below, in the central gallery, after the door bargains, came the cravat, the glove, and the silk departments; the Monsigny Gallery was occupied by the linen and the Rouen goods; the Michodière Gallery by the mercery, the hosiery, the drapery, and the woollen departments. Then, on the first floor were installed the ready-made, the under-linen, the shawl, the lace, and other new departments, whilst the bedding, the carpets, the furnishing materials, all the cumbersome articles difficult to handle, had been relegated to the second floor. The number of departments was now thirty-nine, with eighteen hundred employees, of whom two hundred were women. Quite a little world operated there, in the sonorous life of the high metallic naves.

Mouret’s unique passion was to conquer woman. He wished her to be queen in his house, and he had built this temple to get her completely at his mercy. His sole aim was to intoxicate her with gallant attentions, and traffic on her desires, work on her fever. Night and day he racked his brain to invent fresh attractions. He had already introduced two lifts lined with velvet for the upper storeys, in order to spare delicate ladies the trouble of mounting the stairs. Then he had just opened a bar where the customers could find, gratis, some light refreshment, syrups and biscuits, and a reading-room, a monumental gallery, decorated with excessive luxury, in which he had even ventured on an exhibition of pictures. But his most profound idea was to conquer the mother through the child, when unable to do so through her coquetry; he neglected no means, speculated on every sentiment, created departments for little boys and girls, arresting the passing mothers by distributing pictures and air-balls to the children. A stroke of genius this idea of distributing to each buyer a red air-ball made of fine gutta-percha, bearing in large letters the name of the shop, and which, held by a string, floated in the air, parading in the streets a living advertisement.

But the greatest power of all was the advertising. Mouret spent three hundred thousand francs a year in catalogues, advertisements, and bills. For his summer sale he had launched forth two hundred thousand catalogues, of which fifty thousand went abroad, translated into every language. He now had them illustrated with engravings, even accompanying them with samples, gummed between the leaves. It was an overflowing display; The Ladies’ Paradise became a household word all over the world, invading the walls, the newspapers, and even the curtains at the theatres. He declared that woman was powerless against advertising, that she was bound to follow the crowd. Not only that, he laid still more seductive traps for her, analyzing her like a great moralist. Thus he had discovered that she could not resist a bargain, that she bought without necessity when she thought she saw a cheap line, and on this observation he based his system of reductions in price, progressively lowering the price of unsold articles, preferring to sell them at a loss, faithful to his principle of the continual renewal of the goods. He had penetrated still further into the heart of woman, and had just thought of the “returns,” a masterpiece of Jesuitical seduction. “Take whatever you like, madame; you can return the article if you don’t like it.” And the woman who hesitated was provided with the last excuse, the possibility of repairing an extravagant folly, she took the article with an easy conscience. The returns and the reduction of prices now formed part of the classical working of the new style of business.

But where Mouret revealed himself as an unrivalled master was in the interior arrangement of the shops. He laid down as a law that not a corner of The Ladies’ Paradise ought to remain deserted, requiring everywhere a noise, a crowd, evidence of life; for life, said he, attracts life, increases and multiplies. From this law he drew all sorts of applications. In the first place, there ought always to be a crush at the entrance, so that the people in the street should mistake it for a riot; and he obtained this crush by placing a lot of bargains at the doors, shelves and baskets overflowing with very low-priced articles; so that the common people crowded there, stopping up the doorway, making the shop look as if it were crammed with customers, when it was often only half full. Then, in the galleries, he had the art of concealing the departments in which business was slack; for instance, the shawl department in summer, and the printed calico department in winter, he surrounded them with busy departments, drowning them with a continual uproar. It was he alone who had been inspired with the idea of placing on the second-floor the carpet and furniture counters, counters where the customers were less frequent, and which if placed on the ground floor would have canoed empty, cold spaces. If he could have managed it, he would have had the street running through his shop.

Just at that moment, Mouret was a prey to an attack of inspiration. On the Saturday evening, as he was giving a last look at the preparations for the Monday’s great sale, he was suddenly struck with the idea that the arrangement of the departments adopted by him was wrong and stupid; and yet it seemed a perfectly logical arrangement: the stuffs on one side, the made-up articles on the other, an intelligent order of things which would enable the customers to find their way themselves. He had thought of this orderly arrangement formerly, in Madame Hédouin’s narrow shop; and now he felt his faith shaken, just as he carried out his idea. Suddenly he cried out that they would “have to alter all that.” They had forty-eight hours, and half what had been done had to be changed. The staff, frightened, bewildered, had been obliged to work two nights and the entire Sunday, amidst a frightful disorder. On the Monday morning even, an hour before the opening, there was still some goods to be placed. Decidedly the governor was going mad, no one understood, a general consternation prevailed.

“Come, look sharp!” cried Mouret, with the quiet assurance of his genius. “There are some more costumes to be taken upstairs. And the Japan goods, are they placed on the central landing? A last effort, my boys, you’ll see the sale by-and-by.”

Bourdoncle had also been there since daybreak. He did not understand any more than the others, and he followed the governor’s movements with an anxious eye. He hardly dared to ask him any questions, knowing how Mouret received people in those critical moments. However, he at last made up his mind, and gently asked:

“Was it really necessary to upset everything like that, on the eve of our sale?”

At first Mouret shrugged his shoulders without replying. Then as the other persisted, he burst out: “So that all the customers should heap themselves into one corner — eh? A nice idea of mine! I should never have got over it! Don’t you see that it would have localized the crowd. A woman would have come in, gone straight to the department she wished, passed from the petticoat counter to the dress one, from the dress to the mantle, then retired, without having even lost herself for a moment! Not one would have thoroughly seen the establishment!”

“But,” remarked Bourdoncle, “now that you have disarranged everything, and thrown the goods all over the place, the employees will wear out their legs in guiding the customers from department to department.”

Mouret gave a look of superb contempt. “I don’t care a hang for that! They’re young, it’ll make them grow! So much the better if they do walk about! They’ll appear more numerous, and increase the crowd. The greater the crush the better; all will go well!” He laughed, and deigned to explain his idea, lowering his voice: “Look here, Bourdoncle, listen to the result. Firstly, this continual circulation of customers disperses them all over the shop, multiplies them, and makes them lose their heads; secondly, as they must be conducted from one end of the establishment to the other, if they want, for instance, a lining after having bought a dress, these journeys in every direction triple the size of the house in their eyes; thirdly, they are forced to traverse departments where they would never have set foot otherwise, temptations present themselves on their passage, and they succumb; fourthly—”

Bourdoncle was now laughing with him. At this Mouret, delighted, stopped to call out to the messengers: “Very good, my boys! now for a sweep, and it’ll be splendid!”

But on turning round he perceived Denise. He and Bourdoncle were opposite the ready-made department, which he had just dismembered by sending the dresses and costumes up on the second-floor at the other end of the building. Denise, the first down, was opening her eyes with astonishment, quite bewildered by the new arrangements.

“What is it?” murmured she; “are we going to move?”

This surprise appeared to amuse Mouret, who adored these sensational effects. Early in February Denise had returned to The Ladies’ Paradise, where she had been agreeably surprised to find the staff polite, almost respectful. Madame Aurélie especially was very kind; Marguerite and Clara seemed resigned; even down to old Jouve, who also bowed his head, with an awkward embarrassed air, as if desirous of effacing the disagreeable memory of the past. It sufficed that Mouret had said a few words, everybody was whispering, following her with their eyes. And in this general amiability, the only things that wounded her were Deloche’s singularly melancholy looks, and Pauline’s inexplicable smiles. However, Mouret was still looking at her in his delighted way.