The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (66 page)

In the reading-room the ladies had to remain standing. All the chairs round the big table covered with newspapers were taken. Portly men were reading, leaning back, displaying their stomachs, without it occurring to them that it would be polite to give up their seats. A few women were writing, their noses buried in their letters, as if they were trying to hide the paper with the flowers on their hats. In any case, Madame de Boves was not there, and Henriette was getting impatient when she noticed Vallagnosc, who was also looking for his wife and mother-in-law. He greeted her, and finally said:

‘They’re bound to be in the lace department, they just can’t be dragged away … I’ll go and see.’

He gallantly procured them two chairs before he disappeared.

In the lace department the crush was increasing every minute. It was the crowning glory of the great display of white, the most delicate and costly whites that could be seen. The temptation was acute; mad desires were driving all the women crazy. The department had been transformed into a white chapel. Tulle and guipure lace were falling from above, forming a white sky, as if veiled by clouds, its flimsy gossamer paling the early morning sun. Round the columns flounces of Mechlin and Valenciennes lace were hanging down like the white skirts of ballerinas, falling to the ground in a shiver of whiteness. And everywhere, on all the counters, there was a snowy whiteness, Spanish blond-lace as light as air, Brussels appliqué with large flowers on fine mesh, needle-point and Venetian lace with heavier designs, Alençon and Bruges lace of regal and almost
religious richness. It seemed as if the God of Fashion had set up his white tabernacle there.

Madame de Boves, after walking about with her daughter for a long time, prowling about in front of the displays and feeling a sensual urge to bury her hands in the materials, had just decided to get Deloche to show her some Alençon lace. At first he had brought out the imitation; but she had wanted to see some real Alençon, and was not content with little trimmings at three hundred francs a metre, but insisted on the big flounces at a thousand francs, and handkerchiefs and fans at seven and eight hundred francs. Soon the counter was covered with a fortune. In one corner of the department Jouve the shopwalker, who had not let Madame de Boves out of his sight in spite of her apparent dawdling, was standing motionless in the midst of the seething crowd, looking quite detached, but still keeping his eye on her.

‘Do you have any berthas
*
in needle-point?’ the Countess asked Deloche. ‘Would you show them to me, please?’

She looked so imposing, with her build and voice of a princess, that the assistant, whom she had been monopolizing for twenty minutes, dared not resist. He did, however, hesitate, for the salesmen were advised not to pile up valuable laces like that, and the week before he had let himself be robbed of ten metres of Mechlin. But she was making him flustered; he gave way and abandoned the pile of Alençon for a moment in order to take the berthas for which she had asked from a drawer behind him.

‘Look, Mamma,’ said Blanche, who was rummaging through a box full of little pieces of inexpensive Valenciennes. ‘You could get some of this for our pillows.’

Madame de Boves did not reply. Then her daughter, looking round with her podgy face, saw her mother with her hands deep in the lace and in the act of making some flounces of Alençon disappear up the sleeve of her coat. Blanche did not seem surprised, and moved forward instinctively to hide her, when Jouve suddenly appeared between them. He leaned forward and murmured politely in the Countess’s ear:

‘Would you be so kind as to follow me, madam?’

She hesitated for a moment.

‘But what for, sir?’

‘Would you be so kind as to follow me?’ the shopwalker repeated, without changing his tone.

She cast a rapid glance around her, her face contorted with anguish. Then, recovering her haughty bearing, she submitted, and walked beside him like a queen who deigns to entrust herself to the care of an aide-de-camp. Not a single customer had even noticed the scene. Deloche, who had returned to the counter with the berthas, watched open-mouthed as she was led away: What? Her too! That lady who looked so aristocratic! They might as well have them all searched! Blanche, who was left at liberty, followed her mother at a distance, lingering in the midst of the surge of shoulders with a ghastly expression, torn between her duty not to abandon her and her terror of being detained with her. She saw her go into Bourdoncle’s office, and was content to wait outside the door.

Bourdoncle, from whom Mouret had just succeeded in escaping, happened to be there. He usually dealt with thefts of this sort, committed by respectable people. Jouve, who had had his eye on Madame de Boves, had told him long ago that he had his doubts about her; therefore he was not surprised when the shopwalker briefly explained the matter to him; besides, such extraordinary cases passed through his hands that he declared that women were capable of anything when they got carried away by their passion for clothes. As he was aware of Mouret’s social connection with the thief, he treated her with the utmost politeness.

‘Madam, we forgive these moments of weakness … But I beg you to reflect where forgetting yourself like this might lead you. If someone else had seen you slipping that lace …’

But she interrupted him indignantly. She, a thief! Who did he take her for? She was the Comtesse de Boves, her husband, Inspector-General of the Stud, was received at Court.

‘I know, I know, madam,’ Bourdoncle calmly repeated. ‘I have the honour of being acquainted with you … But would you first of all please return the lace you have on you …’

She protested again, did not allow him to say another word, magnificent in her violence, even going so far as to shed the tears of a great lady who has been insulted. Anyone else but he would
have been shaken, fearing some deplorable mistake, for in order to avenge such slander she was threatening to take him to court.

‘Be careful, sir! My husband will go to the Minister!’

‘Come on, you’ve got no more sense than the rest of them,’ declared Bourdoncle, losing his patience. ‘We’ll have to search you.’

Still she did not flinch, but said with superb assurance:

‘Very well, search me … But I warn you, you’re putting the shop at risk.’

Jouve went to fetch two salesgirls from the corset department. When he came back he told Bourdoncle that the lady’s daughter had been left at liberty and had not left the door, and asked if he should arrest her too, although he had not seen her take anything. Bourdoncle, always correct in his behaviour, decided in the name of good morals that she should not be brought in, so that a mother should not be forced to blush in front of her daughter. The two men retired to a neighbouring room while the salesgirls searched the Countess, even taking off her dress to inspect her bosom and hips. Apart from the Alençon flounces, twelve metres at a thousand francs a metre, which were hidden in the depths of a sleeve, they found a handkerchief, a fan, and a scarf hidden squashed and warm in her bosom, making a total of about fourteen thousand francs’ worth of lace. Ravaged by a furious, irresistible urge, Madame de Boves had been stealing like this for a year. The attacks had been getting worse, increasing until they had become a sensual pleasure necessary to her existence, sweeping away all the reasonings of prudence and giving her enjoyment which was all the more keen because she was risking, under the very eyes of the crowd, her name, her pride, and her husband’s important position. Now that her husband let her take money from his drawers, she was stealing with her pockets full of money, stealing for stealing’s sake as people love for the sake of loving, spurred on by desire, possessed by the neurosis which had been developed within her in the past by her unsatisfied desire for luxury when confronted by the enormous, violent temptation of the big stores.

‘It’s a trap!’ she cried, when Bourdoncle and Jouve came back in. ‘Someone planted this lace on me, I swear!’

Now she was weeping tears of rage, and had fallen on to a chair, sobbing in her half-fastened dress. Bourdoncle sent the salesgirls away. Then he resumed in his calm manner:

‘We are quite prepared to hush this up, madam, out of consideration for your family. But, first of all, you will have to sign a statement saying: “I have stolen lace from the Ladies’ Paradise,” with details of the lace, and the date … And I’ll let you have this paper back as soon as you bring me two thousand francs for the poor.’

She had risen to her feet again; and declared in a fresh burst of indignation:

‘I’ll never sign such a thing; I’d rather die.’

‘You won’t die, madam. But I warn you that I’m going to send for the police.’

This provoked a terrible scene. She insulted him, telling him that it was cowardly of men to torture a woman like that. Her Junoesque beauty and her tall majestic body were suffused with the fury of a fishwife. Then she tried pity: she begged them in the name of their mothers, she talked of crawling at their feet. And as they remained unmoved, their hearts hardened from practice, she suddenly sat down and with a trembling hand began to write. The pen sputtered; at the words: ‘I have stolen’ she pressed with such fury that she almost tore the thin paper; and she kept repeating in a choking voice:

‘There you are, sir, there you are, sir … I yield to force …’

Bourdoncle took the paper, folded it carefully, and locked it in a drawer as she looked on, saying as he did so:

‘You can see it won’t be alone; for ladies, having talked of dying rather than signing, generally forget to come and collect their love letters … I’ll keep it at your disposal, however. You’ll be able to think about whether it’s worth two thousand francs.’

She finished buttoning up her dress; now that she had paid she was recovering all her arrogance.

‘Can I go now?’ she asked curtly.

Bourdoncle was already busy with other matters. On hearing Jouve’s report, he decided on Deloche’s dismissal: he was stupid; he was continually letting himself be robbed, and would never have any control over the customers. Madame de Boves repeated her question, and when they had dismissed her with a nod, she
enveloped them both with a murderous glance. From the stream of coarse words she was choking back a melodramatic cry rose to her lips:

‘Scoundrels!’ she said, banging the door.

Meanwhile, Blanche had not moved from the door of the office. Her ignorance of what was taking place inside, and the comings and goings of Jouve and the two salesgirls, had upset her, making her conjure up visions of the police, the assizes, prison. But suddenly she stared open-mouthed: Vallagnosc, her husband of a month, whose use of the familiar second person singular still made her feel awkward, was standing before her; surprised at her dazed state, he began to ask her questions.

‘Where’s your mother? Have you lost each other? Answer me, I’m concerned …’

She could think of no plausible lie. In her distress, she told him everything in a whisper.

‘Mamma, Mamma … She stole something …’

What! Stole something! At last he understood. His wife’s bloated face, that pale mask ravaged with fear, terrified him.

‘Some lace, like this, up her sleeve,’ she stammered.

‘So you saw her do it; you were watching?’ he murmured, chilled at the thought that she had been an accomplice.

They had to stop talking; people were already turning round to look at them. For a moment Vallagnosc remained motionless, paralysed by agonized hesitation. What was to be done? He was on the point of going in to see Bourdoncle when he caught sight of Mouret crossing the gallery. He told his wife to wait for him, seized his old friend’s arm, and told him about the affair in broken phrases. The latter took him immediately to his office, where he put his mind at rest about the possible consequences. He assured him that there was no need to intervene, and explained the way things would certainly turn out, without appearing at all disturbed about the theft himself, as if he had foreseen it for a long time. But Vallagnosc, now that he no longer feared an immediate arrest, did not react to the incident with the same coolness. He had thrown himself into an armchair and, now that he could discuss the matter, began to lament his lot. Could it be true? So he had married into a family of thieves! It was a stupid marriage he had fallen into just to please her father! Surprised by
this violence, which was like that of a sickly child, Mouret watched him weep, thinking of the pessimistic pose he had always adopted in the past. Hadn’t he heard him affirm the pointlessness of life scores of times; hadn’t he considered misfortune alone to be interesting? And so, in order to take his mind off his own troubles, Mouret amused himself for a moment by preaching indifference to him, in a friendly, bantering tone. At this Vallagnosc lost his temper: he was quite unable to regain his now compromised philosophy; the whole of his middle-class upbringing recoiled from his mother-in-law in virtuous indignation. As soon as he experienced something personally, at the slightest contact with human misery, at which he had always sneered, the braggart sceptic in him collapsed in suffering. It was abominable, the honour of his ancestry was being dragged through the mud, and the world seemed to be coming to an end.

‘Come on, calm down,’ Mouret said, overcome with pity. ‘I won’t tell you that everything happens and nothing happens, because that wouldn’t console you at the moment. But I think you ought to go and offer your arm to Madame de Boves—that would be more sensible than creating a scandal… Damn it! You who professed such scorn at the universal baseness of mankind!’

‘Of course!’ exclaimed Vallagnosc naively. ‘When it affects other people!’

However, he stood up and followed his old school-friend’s advice. They were both going back to the gallery when Madame de Boves came out of Bourdoncle’s office. She majestically accepted her son-in-law’s arm, and, as Mouret bowed to her with an air of courteous respect, he heard her say:

‘They gave me an apology. Really, mistakes like that are appalling.’

Blanche had rejoined them, and was walking behind them. They slowly disappeared in the crowd.