The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (16 page)

And off they went again, all talking at the same time. Madame Guibal, Henriette, Blanche were measuring, cutting, discarding. Materials were being looted, shops ransacked, the women’s lust for luxury running riot as they dreamed of dresses, coveted them, feeling so happy in the world of clothes that they lived immersed in it, as they did in the warm air necessary to their existence.

Mouret glanced towards the drawing-room, and in a few phrases whispered in Baron Hartmann’s ear, as if he were confiding to him one of those amorous secrets men sometimes venture to reveal when they are alone, he finished explaining the techniques of modern big business. Of supreme importance, more important than the facts he had already given, was the exploitation of Woman. Everything else led up to it, the ceaseless renewal of capital, the system of piling up goods, the low prices which attracted people, the marked prices which reassured them. It was Woman the shops were competing for so fiercely, it was Woman they were continually snaring with their bargains, after dazing her with their displays. They had awoken new desires in her weak flesh; they were an immense temptation to which she inevitably yielded, succumbing in the first place to purchases for the house, then seduced by coquetry, finally consumed by desire. By increasing sales tenfold, by making luxury
democratic, shops were becoming a terrible agency for spending, ravaging households, working hand in hand with the latest extravagances in fashion, growing ever more expensive. And if, in the shops, Woman was queen, adulated and humoured in her weaknesses, surrounded with attentions, she reigned there as an amorous queen whose subjects trade on her, and who pays for every whim with a drop of her own blood. Beneath the very charm of his gallantry, Mouret thus allowed the brutality of a Jew selling Woman by the pound to show through; he was building a temple to Woman, making a legion of shop assistants burn incense before her, creating the rites of a new cult; he thought only of her, ceaselessly trying to imagine even greater enticements; and, behind her back, when he had emptied her purse and wrecked her nerves, he was full of the secret scorn of a man to whom a mistress had just been stupid enough to yield.

‘Get the women,’ he whispered to the Baron, laughing impudently as he did so, ‘and you’ll sell the world!’

Now the Baron understood. A few sentences had sufficed, he guessed the rest, and such gallant exploitation excited him, stirring memories of his dissolute past. His eyes twinkled knowingly; he was overtaken by admiration for the inventor of this machine for devouring women. It was very clever. He made the same remark as Bourdoncle, a remark prompted by his long experience:

‘You know, they’ll have their revenge.’

But Mouret shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of crushing disdain. They all belonged to him, they were his property, and he belonged to none of them. When he had extracted his fortune and his pleasure from them, he would throw them on the rubbish heap for those who could still make a living out of them. He had the calculated disdain of a southerner and a speculator.

‘Well, sir,’ he asked in conclusion, ‘will you join me? Does my proposal for the building sites seem possible to you?’

The Baron, half won over, did not wish to commit himself yet. He still felt some doubt about the charm which was gradually having an effect on him. He was about to give an evasive answer, when an urgent summons from the ladies saved him the trouble. In the midst of laughter voices were calling:

‘Monsieur Mouret!’

And since the latter, annoyed at being interrupted, was pretending not to hear, Madame de Boves, who had been standing up for a moment, came to the door of the small drawing-room.

‘They’re asking for you, Monsieur Mouret… It’s not very chivalrous of you to hide in a corner to talk business.’

At this, he decided immediately to join the ladies, and with such apparent good grace and air of delight that the Baron was quite amazed. They both stood up and went into the large drawing-room.

‘I am entirely at your service, ladies,’ he said as he went in, a smile on his lips.

A hubbub of triumph greeted him. He had to go further in, and the ladies made room for him in their midst. The sun had just set behind the trees in the garden; the light was fading, and a soft shadow was gradually filling the vast room. It was the tender hour of twilight, that minute of discreet voluptuousness in Parisian apartments when the light in the street is dying and the lamps are still being lit in the pantry downstairs. Monsieur de Boves and Vallagnosc, still standing at the window, cast a pool of shadow on the carpet; while Monsieur Marty, who had entered discreetly a few minutes earlier, stood motionless in the last ray of light coming from the other window, displaying his thin profile, his skimpy, clean frock-coat, and his face grown pale from teaching. The ladies’ conversation about dresses made him look even more distressed.

‘That sale is going to be next Monday, isn’t it?’ Madame Marty was asking.

‘Indeed it is, madam,’ Mouret replied in a flute-like voice, an actor’s voice which he affected when speaking to women.

Then Henriette interposed.

‘We’re all coming, you know … They say you’re preparing wonders.’

‘Oh! Wonders!’ he murmured with an air of modest self-complacency. ‘I simply try to be worthy of your patronage.’

They pressed him with questions. Madame Bourdelais, Madame Guibal, even Blanche, wanted to know all about it.

‘Come on, give us some details,’ Madame de Boves repeated insistently. ‘You’re making us die of curiosity!’

They were surrounding him, when Henriette noticed that he hadn’t yet had a cup of tea. This provoked consternation; four of them began to serve him, but on condition that he would answer them afterwards. Henriette poured, Madame Marty held the cup, while Madame de Boves and Madame Bourdelais contended for the honour of putting in the sugar. Then, when he had declined to sit down and had started to drink his tea slowly, standing in their midst, they all drew closer, imprisoning him in the closed circle of their skirts. Heads raised and eyes shining, they all sat smiling at him.

‘Your silk, your Paris-Paradise, which all the newspapers are talking about?’ resumed Madame Marty impatiently.

‘Oh!’ he replied, ‘it’s quite exceptional, a coarse faille, supple and strong … You’ll see it, ladies, and you’ll only find it in our shop, for we’ve bought the exclusive rights.’

‘Really! A fine silk at five francs sixty!’ said Madame Bourdelais, quite enraptured. ‘That’s incredible!’

Ever since the advertisements had appeared, this silk had occupied a considerable place in their daily life. They discussed it and promised themselves some of it, tormented by desire and doubt. And, beneath the chattering curiosity with which they overwhelmed the young man, their different temperaments as customers could be seen: Madame Marty, carried away by her mania for spending, taking everything indiscriminately from the Ladies’ Paradise, simply buying at random from the displays; Madame Guibal, walking round the shop for hours without ever making a purchase, happy and satisfied by merely feasting her eyes; Madame de Boves, short of money, constantly tortured by some immoderate desire, bearing a grudge against the goods she could not take away; Madame Bourdelais, with the sharp eye of a careful, practical middle-class woman, making straight for the bargains, using the big shops with such calm housewifely skill that she saved a great deal of money there; and finally Henriette, who, because she dressed with such extreme elegance, only bought certain articles there, such as gloves, hosiery, and all her household linen.

‘We have other materials which are amazingly inexpensive and yet very sumptuous,’ continued Mouret in his melodious voice. ‘For example, I recommend our Cuir-d’Or, a taffeta with
an incomparable sheen … Among the fancy silks there are some charming patterns, designs chosen from thousands of others by our buyer; and as for velvets, you’ll find an extremely rich collection of shades … I can tell you that woollen clothes will be very popular this year. You’ll see our quilts and our Cheviots …’

They had stopped interrupting him, and had narrowed the circle even further, their mouths half open in a vague smile, their faces close together and leaning forward, as if their whole being was yearning towards their tempter. Their eyes were growing dim, a slight shiver ran over the napes of their necks. And he maintained the composure of a conqueror in the midst of the heady scents rising from their hair. Between each sentence he continued to take little sips of tea, the perfume of which cooled those other, more pungent scents, in which there was a touch of musk. Baron Hartmann, who had not taken his eyes off him, felt his admiration mounting before Mouret’s seductive charm, which reflected such self-possession that he could toy with women like that without being overcome by the intoxicating scents which they exude.

‘So woollen things will be worn,’ resumed Madame Marty, whose haggard face was lit up by coquettish passion. ‘I must go and look.’

Madame Bourdelais, who was keeping a clear head, said in her turn:

‘Your remnant sale is on Thursday, isn’t it? I shall wait, I’ve all my little ones to clothe.’

And turning her delicate fair head towards the mistress of the house, she said:

‘You still get your dresses from Sauveur, don’t you?’

‘Oh, yes!’ Henriette replied, ‘Sauveur’s very expensive, but she’s the only dressmaker in Paris who knows how to make a bodice … And, whatever Monsieur Mouret may say, she has the prettiest designs, designs you don’t see anywhere else. I can’t bear to see my dress on every woman’s back.’

Mouret smiled discreetly at first. Then he intimated that Madame Sauveur bought her material at his shop; no doubt she took certain designs, for which she secured the exclusive rights, direct from the manufacturers; but for black silk goods, for example, she kept an eye open for bargains at the Ladies’
Paradise, and laid in considerable supplies which she later disposed of at two or three times the price.

‘So I’m quite sure her buyers will snap up our Paris-Paradise. Why should she go and pay more for this silk at the factory than she would in my shop? Honestly! We’re selling it at a loss.’

This dealt the ladies a final blow. The idea of getting goods below cost price aroused in them the ruthlessness of Woman, whose enjoyment as buyer is doubled when she thinks she’s robbing the shopkeeper. He knew they were incapable of resisting a real bargain.

‘But we sell everything for a song!’ he exclaimed gaily, picking up Madame Desforges’s fan, which was still lying on the pedestal table behind him. ‘Look! Here’s this fan … How much did you say it cost?’

‘Twenty-five francs for the Chantilly, and two hundred for the mount,’ said Henriette.

‘Well, the Chantilly isn’t expensive. But we have the same one for eighteen francs … And as for the mount, my dear lady, it’s pure theft. I wouldn’t dare to sell one like that for more than ninety francs.’

‘That’s just what I said,’ exclaimed Madame Bourdelais.

‘Ninety francs!’ murmured Madame de Boves. ‘One would have to be very poor not to buy one at that price!’

She had picked up the fan again, and was examining it with her daughter Blanche; on her large, regular face, in her big, sleepy eyes, her pent-up, hopeless desire for a whim she would not be able to satisfy was mounting. Then, for a second time, the fan was passed round by the ladies, to the accompaniment of remarks and exclamations. In the mean time Monsieur de Boves and Vallagnosc had left the window. The former came back and took up his former position behind Madame Guibal, his gaze delving into her corsage while he nevertheless maintained his decorous, superior air, while the young man was bending down towards Blanche, trying to think of something agreeable to say.

‘It’s rather depressing, don’t you think, Mademoiselle Blanche, this white frame with black lace?’

‘Oh!’ she replied gravely, without a blush colouring her puffy cheeks. ‘I’ve seen one in mother-of-pearl with white feathers. It was quite virginal!’

Monsieur de Boves, who had doubtless observed his wife’s longing gaze fixed on the fan, finally made his contribution to the conversation:

‘They break straight away, those flimsy little things.’

‘I know!’ Madame Guibal declared, pouting and pretending to be unconcerned. ‘I’m tired of having mine re-glued.’

Madame Marty, excited by the conversation, had for some time been feverishly twisting her red leather bag on her lap. She had not yet been able to show her purchases to the others, and was dying, with a kind of sensual urge, to display them. Suddenly she forgot all about her husband, opened her bag, and took out a few metres of narrow lace rolled round a piece of cardboard.

‘This is the Valenciennes for my daughter,’ she said. ‘It’s three centimetres wide. Isn’t it delightful? One franc ninety centimes.’

The lace passed from hand to hand. The ladies exclaimed in admiration. Mouret declared that he sold little trimmings like that at factory price. But Madame Marty had closed her bag again, as if to hide things in it which could not be shown. However, as the Valenciennes was such a success she could not resist the desire to take out a handkerchief as well.

‘There was this handkerchief too … Brussels lace, my dear … Oh! A real find! Twenty francs!’

From then on, the bag was inexhaustible. As she took out each fresh article she blushed with pleasure, with the modesty of a woman undressing, which made her embarrassment seem quite charming.

There was a scarf in Spanish lace for thirty francs; she had not wanted it, but the assistant had sworn that it was the last one he had and that they were going to go up in price. Next there was a veil in Chantilly; rather dear, fifty francs; if she did not wear it herself she would make something for her daughter with it.

‘Lace is so lovely!’ she repeated with her nervous laugh. ‘Once I’m inside I could buy the whole shop.’

‘And this?’ Madame de Boves asked her, examining a remnant of guipure.

‘That’, she replied, ‘is for an insertion … There are twenty-six metres. It was one franc a metre, you see!’

‘Oh!’ said Madame Bourdelais, surprised, ‘what are you going to do with it, then?’