The Ladies' Paradise. Emile Zola
colours of some silks for an indoor show. His name was Hutin, his father kept a café at Yvetot, and after eighteen months' service he had managed to become one of the principal salesmen, thanks to a natural flexibility of character and a continual flow of caressing flattery, under which were concealed furious appetites which prompted him to grasp at everything and devour everybody just for the pleasure of the thing.
"Well, Favier, I should have struck him if I had been in your place, honour bright!" said he to his companion, a tall bilious fellow with a dry yellow skin, who had been born at Besançon of a family of weavers, and concealed under a cold graceless exterior a disquieting force of will.
"It does no good to strike people," he murmured, phlegmatically; "better wait."
They were both speaking of Robineau, the "second" in the department, who was looking after the shopmen during the manager's absence in the basement. Hutin was secretly undermining Robineau, whose place he coveted. To wound him and induce him to leave, he had already introduced Bouthemont to fill the post of manager which had been previously promised to Robineau. However, the latter stood firm, and it was now an hourly battle. Hutin dreamed of setting the whole department against him, of hounding him out by dint of ill-will and vexation. Still he went to work craftily, ever preserving his amiable air. And it was especially Favier whom he strove to excite against the "second" – Favier, who stood next to himself as salesman, and who appeared willing to be led, though he had certain brusque fits of reserve by which one could divine that he was bent on some private campaign of his own.
"Hush! seventeen!" he all at once hastily remarked to his colleague, intending by this peculiar exclamation to warn him of the approach of Mouret and Bourdoncle. These two, still continuing their inspection, were now traversing the hall and stopped to ask Robineau for an explanation respecting a stock of velvets, the boxes of which were encumbering a table. And as Robineau replied that there wasn't enough room to store things away, Mouret exclaimed with a smile:
"Ah! I told you so, Bourdoncle, the place is already too small. We shall soon have to knock down the walls as far as the Rue de Choiseul. You'll see what a crush there'll be next Monday."
Then, respecting the coming sale, for which they were preparing at every counter, he asked further questions of Robineau and gave him various orders. For some minutes however, whilst still talking, he had been watching Hutin, who was slowly arranging his silks – placing blue, grey, and yellow side by side and then stepping back to judge of the harmony of the tints. And all at once Mouret interfered: "But why are you endeavouring to please the eye?" he asked. "Don't be afraid; blind the customers! This is the style. Look! red, green, yellow."
While speaking he had taken up some of the pieces of silk, throwing them together, crumpling them and producing an extremely violent effect of colour. Every one allowed the governor to be the best "dresser" in Paris albeit one of a revolutionary stamp, an initiator of the brutal and the colossal in the science of display. His fancy was a tumbling of stuffs, heaped pell-mell as if they had fallen by chance from the bursting boxes, and glowing with the most ardent contrasting colours, which heightened each other's intensity. The customers, said he, ought to feel their eyes aching by the time they left the shop. Hutin, who on the contrary belonged to the classic school whose guiding principles were symmetry and a melodious blending of shades, watched him lighting this conflagration of silk on the table, without venturing to say a word; but on his lips appeared the pout of an artist whose convictions were sorely hurt by such a debauch of colour.
"There!" exclaimed Mouret, when he had finished.
"Leave it as it is; you'll see if it doesn't fetch the women on Monday."
Just then, as he rejoined Bourdoncle and Robineau, there arrived a woman, who stopped short, breathless at sight of this show. It was Denise, who, after waiting for nearly an hour in the street, a prey to a violent attack of timidity, had at last decided to enter. But she was so beside herself with bashfulness that she mistook the clearest directions; and the shopmen, of whom in stammering accents she asked for Madame Aurélie, in vain directed her to the staircase conducting to the first floor; she thanked them, but turned to the left if they told her to turn to the right; so that for the last ten minutes she had been wandering about the ground-floor, going from department to department, amidst the ill-natured curiosity and boorish indifference of the salesmen. She longed to run away, but was at the same time retained by a wish to stop and admire. She felt herself lost, so little in this monstrous place, this machine which was still at rest, and trembled with fear lest she should be caught in the movement with which the walls already began to quiver. And in her mind the thought of The Old Elbeuf, so black and narrow, increased the immensity of this vast establishment, which seemed bathed in a golden light and similar to a city with its monuments, squares, and streets, in which it seemed impossible she should ever find her way.
However, she had previously not dared to venture into the silk hall whose high glass roof, luxurious counters, and cathedral-like aspect frightened her. Then when she did venture in, to escape the shopmen of the linen department, who were grinning at her, she stumbled right on Mouret's display; and, despite her bewilderment, the woman was aroused within her, her cheeks suddenly flushed, and she forgot everything in looking at the glow of this conflagration of silk.
"Hullo!" said Hutin in Favier's ear; "there's the drab we saw on the Place Gaillon."
Mouret, whilst affecting to listen to Bourdoncle and Robineau, was at heart flattered by the startled look of this poor girl, just as a marchioness might be by the brutal admiration of a passing drayman. But Denise had raised her eyes, and her confusion increased at the sight of this young man, whom she took for the manager of a department. She thought he was looking at her severely. Then not knowing how to get away, quite lost, she once more applied to the nearest shopman, who happened to be Favier.
"Madame Aurélie, if you please?"
However Favier, who was disagreeable, contented himself with replying sharply: "On the first floor."
Then, Denise, longing to escape the looks of all these men, thanked him, and was again turning her back to the stairs she ought to have ascended when Hutin, yielding naturally to his instinctive gallantry, stopped her with his most amiable salesman's smile albeit he had just spoken of her as a drab.
"No – this way, mademoiselle, if you please," said he.
And he even went with her a little way, as far indeed as the foot of the staircase on the left-hand side of the hall. There he bowed, and smiled at her, as he smiled at all women.
"When you get upstairs turn to the left," he added. "The mantle department will then be in front of you."
This caressing politeness affected Denise deeply. It was like a brotherly hand extended to her; she raised her eyes and looked at Hutin, and everything in him touched her – his handsome face, his smiling look which dissolved her fears, and his voice which seemed to her of a consoling softness. Her heart swelled with gratitude, and she gave him her friendship in the few disjointed words which her emotion allowed her to utter.
"Really, sir, you are too kind. Pray don't trouble to come any further. Thank you very much."
Hutin was already rejoining Favier, to whom he coarsely whispered: "What a bag of bones – eh?"
Upstairs the young girl suddenly found herself in the midst of the mantle department. It was a vast room, with high carved oak cupboards all round it and clear glass windows overlooking the Rue de la Michodière. Five or six women in silk dresses, looking very coquettish with their frizzy chignons and crinolines drawn back, were moving about and talking. One of them, tall and thin, with a long head, and a run-away-horse appearance, was leaning against a cupboard, as if already knocked up with fatigue.
"Madame Aurélie?" inquired Denise.
The saleswoman did not reply but looked at her, with an air of disdain for her shabby dress; then turning to one of her companions, a short girl with a sickly white skin and an innocent and disgusted expression of countenance, she asked: "Mademoiselle Vadon, do you know where Madame Aurélie is?"
The girl, who was arranging some mantles according to their sizes, did not even take the trouble to raise her head. "No, Mademoiselle Prunaire, I don't know at all," she replied in a mincing tone.
Silence