The Ladies' Paradise. Emile Zola

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      Then Baudu went on to speak of other tradesmen, passing the whole neighbourhood in review. Now and again he let slip a confession. If Vinçard wanted to sell it was time for the rest to pack up, for Vinçard was like the rats who make haste to leave a house when it threatens ruin. Then, however, immediately afterwards, he contradicted himself, and talked of an alliance, an understanding between the small tradesmen to enable them to fight the colossus. For a moment, his hands shaking, and his mouth twitching nervously, he hesitated as to whether he should speak of himself. At last he made up his mind to do so.

      "As for me," he said, "I can't complain as yet. Of course he has done me harm, the scoundrel! But up to the present he has only kept ladies' cloths, light stuffs for dresses and heavier goods for mantles. People still come to me for men's goods, velvets and velveteens for shooting suits, cloths for liveries, without speaking of flannels and molletons, of which I defy him to show so complete an assortment as my own. But he thinks he will annoy me by placing his cloth department right in front of my door. You've seen his display, haven't you? He always places his finest mantles there, surrounded by a framework of cloth in pieces – a cheapjack parade to tempt the hussies. Upon my word, I should be ashamed to use such means! The Old Elbeuf has been known for nearly a hundred years, and has no need of any such catchpenny devices at its door. As long as I live, it shall remain as I took it, with its four samples on each side, and nothing more!"

      The whole family was becoming affected; and after a spell of silence Geneviève ventured to make a remark:

      "Our customers know and like us, papa," said she. "We mustn't lose heart. Madame Desforges and Madame de Boves have been to-day, and I am expecting Madame Marty for some flannel."

      "For my part," declared Colomban, "I took an order from Madame Bourdelais yesterday. 'Tis true she spoke of an English cheviot marked up opposite ten sous cheaper than ours, and the same stuff, it appears."

      "Fancy," murmured Madame Baudu in her weak voice, "we knew that house when it was scarcely larger than a handkerchief! Yes, my dear Denise, when the Deleuzes started it, it had only one window in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin; and such a tiny one, there was barely room for a couple of pieces of print and two or three pieces of calico. There was no room to turn round in the shop, it was so small. At that time The Old Elbeuf, after sixty years' trading, was already such as you see it now. Ah! all has greatly changed, greatly changed!"

      She shook her head; the drama of her whole life was expressed in those few words. Born in the old house, she loved each of its damp stones, living only for it and by it; and, formerly so proud of that house, the finest, the best patronised in the neighbourhood, she had had the daily grief of seeing the rival establishment gradually growing in importance, at first disdained, then equal to her own and finally towering above it, and threatening all. This was to her an ever-open sore; she was slowly dying from sheer grief at seeing The Old Elbeuf humiliated; if she still lived it was, as in the case of the shop itself, solely by the effect of impulsion; but she well realised that the death of the shop would be hers as well, and that she would pass away on the day when it should close.

      Silence fell. Baudu began softly beating a tattoo with his fingers on the American cloth on the table. He experienced a sort of lassitude, almost a regret at having once more relieved his feelings in this way. The whole family shared his despondency, and with dreamy eyes chewed the cud of his bitter story. They never had had any luck. The children had been brought up and fortune had seemed at hand, when suddenly this competition had arisen and ruined all their hopes. And there was, also, that house at Rambouillet, that country house to which the draper had been dreaming of retiring for the last ten years – a bargain, he had thought when he acquired it, but it had proved a sorry old building, always in want of repairs, and he had let it to people who never paid any rent. His last profits were swallowed up by this place – the only folly he had been guilty of in his honest, upright career as a tradesman stubbornly attached to the old ways.

      "Come, come!" he suddenly exclaimed, "we must make room for the others. That's enough of this useless talk!"

      It was like an awakening. The gas was hissing in the lifeless, stifling air of the tiny room. They all jumped up, breaking the melancholy silence. Pépé, however, was sleeping so soundly that they decided to lay him on some bales of cloth. Jean had already returned to the street door yawning.

      "In short," repeated Baudu to his niece, "you can do as you like. We have explained the matter to you, that's all. You know your own business best."

      He gave her an urgent glance, waiting for a decisive answer. But Denise, whom these stories had inspired with a still greater longing to enter The Ladies' Paradise, instead of turning her from it, retained her quiet gentle demeanour beneath which lurked a genuine Norman obstinacy. And she simply replied: "We'll see, uncle."

      Then she spoke of going to bed early with the children, for they were all three very tired. But it had only just struck six, so she decided to stay in the shop a little longer. Night had now come on, and she found the street quite dark, drenched by a fine close rain, which had been falling since sunset. It came on her as a surprise. A few minutes had sufficed to fill the roadway with puddles, a stream of dirty water was running along the gutters, the pavement was sticky with a thick black mud; and through the beating rain she saw nothing but a confused stream of umbrellas, pushing along and swelling in the gloom like great black wings. She started back at first, feeling very cold, oppressed at heart by the badly-lighted shop, now so extremely dismal. A moist breeze, the breath of that old quarter of Paris, came in from the street; it seemed as if the rain, streaming from the umbrellas, was running right up to the counters, as if the pavement with its mud and its puddles was coming into the shop, putting the finishing touch to the mouldiness of that ancient, cavernous ground-floor, white with saltpetre. It was quite a vision of old Paris in the wet, and it made her shiver with distressful astonishment at finding the great city so cold and so ugly.

      But across the road The Ladies' Paradise glowed with its deep, serried lines of gas jets. She moved nearer, again attracted and, as it were, warmed by that ardent blaze. The machine was still roaring, active as ever, letting its steam escape with a last roar, whilst the salesmen folded up the stuffs, and the cashiers counted the receipts. Seen through the hazy windows, the lights swarmed vaguely, revealing a confused factory-like interior. Behind the curtain of falling rain, the vision, blurred and distant, assumed the appearance of a giant furnace-house, where the shadows of firemen passed black against the red glare of the furnaces. The displays in the windows likewise became indistinct: you could only distinguish the snowy lace, its whiteness heightened by the ground glass globes of a row of gas jets, and against this chapel-like background the ready-made goods stood out vigorously, the velvet mantle trimmed with silver fox setting amidst them all the curved silhouette of a headless woman who seemed to be running through the rain to some entertainment in the unknown shades of nocturnal Paris.

      Denise, yielding to the fascination, had gone to the door, heedless of the raindrops dripping upon her. At this hour, The Ladies' Paradise, with its furnace-like brilliancy, completed its conquest of her. In the great metropolis, black and silent beneath the rain – in this Paris, to which she was a stranger, it shone out like a lighthouse, and seemed to be of itself the life and light of the city. She dreamed of her future there, working hard to bring up the children, with other things besides – she hardly knew what – far-off things however, the desire and fear of which made her tremble. The idea of that woman who had met her death amidst the foundations came back to her; and she felt afraid, fancying that the lights were tinged with blood; but the whiteness of the lace quieted her, a hope, quite a certainty of happiness, sprang up in her heart, whilst the fine rain, blowing on her, cooled her hands, and calmed the feverishness within her, born of her journey.

      "It's Bourras," all at once said a voice behind her.

      She leant forward, and perceived the umbrella-maker, motionless before the window containing the ingenious roof-like construction of umbrellas and walking-sticks which she СКАЧАТЬ