Complete Works of Emile Zola (748 page)

Ever since the morning the crowd had been increasing. No shop had ever yet stirred up the city with such a profusion of advertisements. The Ladies’ Paradise now spent nearly six hundred thousand francs a year in posters, advertisements, and appeals of all sorts; the number of catalogues sent away amounted to four hundred thousand, more than a hundred thousand francs’ worth of stuff was cut up for patterns. It was a complete invasion of the newspapers, the walls, and the ears of the public, like a monstrous brass trumpet, which, blown incessantly, spread to the four corners of the earth the tumult of the great sales. And, for the future, this façade, before which people were now crowding, became a living advertisement, with its bespangled, gilded magnificence, its windows large enough to display the entire poem of woman’s clothing, its profusion of signs, painted, engraved, and cut in stone, from the marble slabs on the ground floor to the sheets of iron rounded off in semicircles above the roof, unfolding their gilded streamers on which the name of the house could be read in letters bright as the sun, standing out against the azure blue of the sky.

To celebrate the inauguration, there had been added trophies and flags; each storey was gay with banners and standards bearing the arms of the principal cities of France; and right at the top, the flags of all nations, run up on masts, fluttered in the air, while the show of cotton and linen goods downstairs assumed in the windows a tone of blinding intensity. Nothing but white, a complete trousseau, and a mountain of sheets to the left, a lot of curtains forming a chapel, and pyramids of handkerchiefs to the right, fatigued the eyes; and, between the hung goods at the door, whole pieces of cotton, calico, and muslin in clusters, like snow-drifts, were planted some dressed engravings, sheets of bluish cardboard, on which a young bride, or a lady in ball costume, both life size and dressed in real lace and silk, smiled with their painted faces. A circle of idlers was constantly forming, a desire arose from the admiration of the crowd.

What caused an increase of curiosity around The Ladies’ Paradise was a catastrophe of which all Paris was talking, the burning down of The Four Seasons, the big shop Bouthemont had opened near the Opera-house, hardly three weeks before. The newspapers were full of details, of the fire breaking out through an explosion of gas during the night, the hurried flight of the young ladies in their night-dresses, and the heroic conduct of Bouthemont, who had carried five of them out on his shoulders. The enormous losses were covered, and the people commenced to shrug their shoulders, saying what a splendid advertisement it was. But for the moment attention again flowed back to The Ladies’ Paradise, excited by all these stories flying about, occupied to a wonderful extent by these colossal establishments, which by their importance took up such a large place in public life. Wonderfully lucky, this Mouret! Paris saluted her star, and crowded to see him still standing, since the very flames now undertook to sweep all competition from beneath his feet; and the profits of the season were already being calculated, people began to estimate the swollen flood of customers which would be sent into his shop by the forced closing of the rival house. For a moment he had felt anxious, troubled at feeling a jealous woman against him, that Madame Desforges, to whom he owed in a manner his fortune. Baron Hartmanu’s financial dilettantism, putting money into the two affairs, annoyed him also. Then he was exasperated at having missed a genial idea which had occurred to Bouthemont, who had artfully had his shop blessed by the vicar of the Madeleine, followed by all his clergy; an astonishing ceremony, a religious pomp paraded from the silk department to the glove department, and so on throughout the establishment. This imposing ceremony had not, it is true, prevented everything being destroyed, but had done as much good as a million francs’ worth of advertisements, so great an impression had it produced on the fashionable world. From that day, Mouret dreamed of having the archbishop.

The clock over the door was striking three, and the afternoon crush had commenced, nearly a hundred thousand customers were struggling in the various galleries and halls. Outside, the carriages were stationed from one end of the Rue du Dix-Décembre to the other, and over against the Opera-house another compact mass occupied the cul-de-sac, where the future avenue was to commence. Common cabs were mingled with private broughams, the drivers waiting amongst the wheels, the rows of horses neighing and shaking their bits, which sparkled in the sun. The lines were incessantly reformed, amidst the calls of the messengers, the pushing of the animals which closed in of their own accord, whilst fresh vehicles were continually arriving and taking their places with the rest. The pedestrians flew on to the refuges in frightened bands, the pavements were black with people, in the receding perspective of the wide and straight thoroughfare. And a clamor arose from between the white houses, this human stream rolled along under the soul of overflowing Paris, a sweet and enormous breath, of which one could feel the giant caress.

Madame de Boves, accompanied by her daughter Blanche and Madame Guibal, was standing, at a window, looking at a display of half made up costumes.

“Oh! do look,” said she, “at those print costumes at nineteen francs fifteen sous!”

In their square boxes, the costumes, tied round with a favor, were folded so as to present the trimmings alone, embroidered with blue and red; and, occupying the corner of each box, was an engraving showing the garment made up, worn by a young person looking like some princess.

“But they are not worth more,” murmured Madame Guibal. “They fall into rags as soon as you handle them.”

They had now become intimate since Monsieur de Boves had been confined to his arm-chair by an attack of gout. The wife put up with the mistress, preferring that things should take place in her own house, for in this way she picked up a little pocket money, sums that the husband allowed himself to be robbed of, having, himself, need of forbearance.

“Well! let’s go in,” resumed Madame Guibal. “We must see their show. Hasn’t your son-in-law made an appointment with you inside?”

Madame de Boves did not reply, entirely absorbed by the string of carriages, which, one by one, opened their doors and let out more customers.

“Yes,” said Blanche, at last, in her indolent voice. “Paul is to join us about four o’clock in the reading-room, on leaving the ministry.”

They had been married about a month, and De Vallagnosc, after a leave of absence of three weeks, spent in the South of France, had just returned to his post. The young woman had already her mother’s portly look, and her flesh appeared puffed up and coarser since her marriage.

“But there’s Madame Desforges over there!” exclaimed the countess, looking at a brougham that had just arrived.

“Do you think so?” murmured Madame Guibal. “After all those stories! She must still be weeping over the fire at The Four Seasons.”

It was really Henriette. On perceiving her friends, she came up with a gay, smiling air, concealing her defeat beneath the fashionable ease of her manner.

“Dear me! yes, I wanted to have a look round. It’s better to see for one’s self, isn’t it? Oh! we are still good friends with Monsieur Mouret, though he is said to be furious since I have interested myself in that rival house. Personally, there is only one thing I cannot forgive him, and that is, to have pushed on the marriage of my protégé, Mademoiselle de Fontenailles, with that Joseph—”

“What! it’s done?” interrupted Madame de Boves. “What a horror!”

“Yes, my dear, and solely to annoy us. I know him; he wished to intimate that the daughters of our great families are only fit to marry his shop messengers.”

She was getting quite animated. They had all four remained on the pavement, amidst the pushing at the entrance. Little by little, however, the stream carried them in; and they had only to abandon themselves to the current, they passed the door as if lifted up, without being conscious of it, talking louder to make themselves heard. They were now asking each other about Madame Marty; it was said that poor Monsieur Marty, after violent scenes at home, had gone quite mad; he was diving into all the treasures of the earth, exhausting mines of gold, loading tumbrels with diamonds and precious stones.

“Poor fellow!” said Madame Guibal, “he who was always so shabby, with his teacher’s humility! And the wife?”

“She’s ruining an uncle, now,” replied Henriette, “a worthy old man who has gone to live with her, having lost his wife. But she must be here, we shall see her.”

A surprise made the ladies stop short. Before them extended the shop, the largest drapery establishment in the world, as the advertisements said. The grand central gallery now ran from end to end, extending from the Rue du Dix-Décembre to the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin; whilst to the right and to the left, like the aisles of a church, ran the Monsigny Gallery and the Michodière Gallery, right along the two streets, without a break. Here and there the halls crossed and formed open spaces amidst the metallic framework of the suspended stairs and flying bridges. The inside arrangements had been all changed: the bargains were now placed on the Rue du Dix-Décembre side, the silk department was in the centre, the glove department occupied the Saint-Augustin Hall at the back; and, from the new grand vestibule, one beheld, on looking up, the bedding department, moved from one end of the second floor to the other. The number of departments now amounted to the enormous figure of fifty; several, quite fresh, were to be inaugurated that very day; others, become too important, had been simply divided, in order to facilitate the sales; and, owing to this continual increase of business, the staff had been increased to three thousand and forty-five employees.

What caused the ladies to stop was the prodigious spectacle of the grand exhibition of white goods. In the first place, there was the vestibule, a hall with bright mirrors, paved with mosaics, where the low-priced goods detained the voracious crowd. Then there were the galleries, plunged in a glittering blaze of light, a borealistic vista, quite a country of snow, revealing the endless steppes hung with ermine, the accumulation of icebergs shimmering in the sun. One found there the whiteness of the outside windows, but vivified, colossal, burning from one end of the enormous building to the other, with the white flame of a fire in full swing. Nothing but white goods, all the white articles from each department, a riot of white, a white star, the twinkling of which was at first blinding, so that the details could not be distinguished amidst this unique whiteness. But the eye soon became accustomed to it; to the left, in the Monsigny Gallery, jutted out the white promontories of cotton and calico, the white rocks formed of sheets, napkins, and handkerchiefs; whilst to the right, in the Michodière Gallery, occupied by the mercery, the hosiery, and the woollen goods, were exposed constructions of mother of pearl buttons, a pretty decoration composed of white socks, one whole room covered with white swanskin, traversed in the distance by a stream of light. But the brightness shone with especial brilliancy in the central gallery, amidst the ribbons and the cravats, the gloves and the silks. The counters disappeared beneath the whiteness of the silks, the ribbons, and the gloves.

Round the iron columns were twined flounces of white muslin, looped up now and again with white silk handkerchiefs. The staircases were decorated with white drapings, quiltings and dimities alternating along the balustrades, encircling the halls as high as the second storey; and this tide of white assumed wings, hurried off and lost itself, like a flight of swans. And the white hung from the arches, a fall of down, a snowy sheet of large flakes; white counterpanes, white coverlets floated about in the air, suspended like banners in a church; long jets of Maltese lace hung across, seeming to suspend swarms of white butterflies; other lace fluttered about on all sides, floating like fleecy clouds in a summer sky, filling the air with their clear breath. And the marvel, the altar of this religion of white was, above the silk counter, in the great hall, a tent formed of white curtains, which fell from the glazed roof. The muslin, the gauze, the lace flowed in light ripples, whilst very richly embroidered tulles, and pieces of oriental silk striped with silver, served as a background to this giant decoration, which partook of the tabernacle and of the alcove. It made one think of a broad white bed, awaiting in its virginal immensity the white princess, as in the legend, she who was to come one day, all powerful, with the bride’s white veil.

“Oh! extraordinary!” repeated the ladies. “Wonderful!” They never tired of this song in praise of white that the goods of the entire establishment were singing. Mouret had never conceived anything more extraordinary; it was the master stroke of his genius for display. Beneath the flow of all this whiteness, in the apparent disorder of the tissues, fallen as if by chance from the open drawers, there was a harmonious phrase, the white followed up and developed in all its tones, springing into existence, growing, and blossoming forth with the complicated orchestration of a master’s fugue, the continual development of which carries away the mind in an ever-increasing flight. Nothing but white, and never the same goods, all styles outvying with, opposing, and completing one another, attaining the very brilliancy of light itself. Starting from the dull shades of the calico and linen, and the heavy shades of the flannel and cloth, there then came the velvet, silk, and satin goods — quite an ascending gamut, the white gradually lighted up, finishing in little flames at the breaks of the folds; and the white flew away in the transparencies of the curtains, becoming free and clear with the muslin, the lace, and above all the tulle, so light and airy that it was like the extreme and last note; whilst the silver of the oriental silk sung higher than all in the depths of the giant alcove.

The place was full of life. The lifts were besieged with people, there was a crush at the refreshment-bar and in the reading-room, quite a nation was moving about in these regions covered with the snowy fabrics. And the crowd seemed to be black, like skaters on a Polish lake in December. On the ground floor there was a heavy swell, agitated by a reflux, in which could be distinguished nothing but the delicate and enraptured faces of the women. In the chisellings of the iron framework, along the staircases, on the flying bridges, there was an endless procession of small figures, as if lost amidst the snowy peaks of a mountain. A suffocating hot-house heat surprised one on these frozen heights. The buzz of voices made a great noise like a rushing stream. Up above, the profusion of gildings, the glazed work picked out with gold, and the golden roses seemed like a ray of the sun shining on the Alps of the grand exhibition of white goods.