The Ladies' Paradise. Эмиль Золя

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СКАЧАТЬ it not been for the support of the buildings on either side it must have fallen; the slates of its roof were old and rotten, and its two-windowed front was cracked and covered with stains, running down in long rusty lines to the worm-eaten sign-board over the shop.

      "You know he's written to my landlord, offering to buy the house?" said Bourras, looking steadily at the draper with his fiery eyes.

      Baudu became paler still, and bent his shoulders. There was a silence, during which the two men remained face to face, looking very serious.

      "We must be prepared for anything," murmured Baudu at last.

      Thereupon Bourras flew into a passion, shaking his hair and flowing beard while he shouted: "Let him buy the house, he'll have to pay four times the value for it! But I swear that as long as I live he shan't touch a stone of it. My lease has twelve years to run yet. We shall see! we shall see!"

      It was a declaration of war. Bourras was looking towards The Ladies' Paradise, which neither of them had named. For a moment Baudu remained shaking his head in silence, and then crossed the street to his shop, his legs almost failing him as he repeated: "Ah! good Lord! ah! good Lord!"

      Denise, who had listened, followed her uncle. Madame Baudu had just come back with Pépé, whom Madame Gras had agreed to receive at any time. Jean, however, had disappeared, and this made his sister anxious. When he returned with a flushed face, talking in an animated way of the boulevards, she looked at him with such a sad expression that he blushed with shame. Meantime their box had arrived, and it was arranged that they should sleep in the attic.

      "Ah! By the way, how did you get on at Vinçard's?" inquired Madame Baudu.

      The draper thereupon gave an account of his fruitless errand, adding that Denise had heard of a situation; and, pointing to The Ladies' Paradise with a scornful gesture, he exclaimed: "There—in there!"

      The whole family felt hurt at the idea. The first dinner was at five o'clock. Denise and the two children sat down to it with Baudu, Geneviève, and Colomban. A single gas jet lighted and warmed the little dining-room which reeked with the smell of food. The meal passed off in silence, but at dessert Madame Baudu, who was restless, left the shop, and came and sat down behind Denise. And then the storm, kept back all day, broke out, one and all seeking to relieve their feelings by abusing the "monster".

      "It's your business, you can do as you like," repeated Baudu. "We don't want to influence you. But if you only knew what sort of place it is——" And in broken sentences he commenced to relate the story of that Octave Mouret to whom The Paradise belonged. He had been wonderfully lucky! A fellow who had come up from the South of France with the smiling audacity of an adventurer, who had no sooner arrived in Paris than he had begun to distinguish himself by all sorts of disgraceful pranks, figuring most prominently in a matrimonial scandal, which was still the talk of the neighbourhood; and who, to crown all, had suddenly and mysteriously made the conquest of Madame Hédouin, who had brought him The Ladies' Paradise as a marriage portion.

      "That poor Caroline!" interrupted Madame Baudu. "We were distantly related. If she had lived things would be different. She wouldn't have let them ruin us like this. And he's the man who killed her. Yes, with that very building! One morning, when she was visiting the works, she fell into a hole, and three days after she died. A fine, strong, healthy woman, who had never known what illness was! There's some of her blood in the foundations of that house."

      So speaking she pointed to the establishment opposite with her pale and trembling hand. Denise, listening as to a fairy tale, slightly shuddered; the sense of fear which had mingled with the temptation she had felt since morning, was due, perhaps, to the presence of that woman's blood, which she fancied she could now detect in the red mortar of the basement.

      "It seems as if it brought him good luck," added Madame Baudu, without mentioning Mouret by name.

      But the draper, full of disdain for these old women's tales, shrugged his shoulders and resumed his story, explaining the situation commercially. The Ladies' Paradise had been founded in 1822 by two brothers, named Deleuze. On the death of the elder, his daughter, Caroline, had married the son of a linen manufacturer, Charles Hédouin; and, later on, becoming a widow, she had married Mouret. She thus brought him a half share in the business. Three months after the marriage, however, the second brother Deleuze died childless; so that when Caroline met her death, Mouret became sole heir, sole proprietor of The Ladies' Paradise. Yes, he had been wonderfully lucky!

      "He's what they call a man of ideas, a dangerous busybody, who will overturn the whole neighbourhood if he's left to himself!" continued Baudu. "I fancy that Caroline, who was rather romantic also, must have been carried away by the gentleman's extravagant plans. In short, he persuaded her to buy the house on the left, then the one on the right; and he himself, on becoming his own master, bought two others; so that the establishment has kept on growing and growing to such a point that it now threatens to swallow us all up!"

      He was addressing Denise, but was in reality speaking for himself, feeling a feverish longing to recapitulate this story which continually haunted him. At home he was always angry and full of bile, always violent, with fists ever clenched. Madame Baudu, ceasing to interfere, sat motionless on her chair; Geneviève and Colomban, with eyes cast down, were picking up and eating the crumbs off the table, just for the sake of something to do. It was so warm, so stuffy in that tiny room that Pépé had fallen asleep with his head on the table, and even Jean's eyes were closing.

      "But wait a bit!" resumed Baudu, seized with a sudden fit of anger, "such jokers always go to smash! Mouret is hard-pushed just now; I know that for a fact. He's been forced to spend all his savings on his mania for extensions and advertisements. Moreover, in order to raise additional capital, he has induced most of his shop-people to invest all they possess with him. And so he hasn't a sou to help himself with now; and, unless a miracle be worked, and he manages to treble his sales, as he hopes to do, you'll see what a crash there'll be! Ah! I'm not ill-natured, but that day I'll illuminate my shop-front, I will, on my word of honour!"

      And he went on in a revengeful voice; to hear him you would have thought that the fall of The Ladies' Paradise would restore the dignity and prestige of commerce. Had any one ever seen such doings? A draper's shop selling everything! Why not call it a bazaar at once? And the employees! a nice set they were too—a lot of puppies, who did their work like porters at a railway station, treating both goods and customers as if they were so many parcels; taking themselves off or getting the sack at a moment's notice. No affection, no morals, no taste! And all at once he appealed to Colomban as a witness; he, Colomban, brought up in the good old school, knew how long it took to learn all the cunning and trickery of the trade. The art was not to sell much, but to sell dear. And then too, Colomban could tell them how he had been treated, carefully looked after, his washing and mending done, nursed in illness, considered as one of the family—loved, in fact!

      "Of course, of course," repeated Colomban, after each statement made by his governor.

      "Ah, you're the last of the old stock, my dear fellow," Baudu ended by declaring. "After you're gone there'll be none left. You are my sole consolation, for if all that hurry and scurry is what they now call business I understand nothing of it and would rather clear out."

      Geneviève, with her head on one side as if her thick hair were weighing down her pale brow, sat watching the smiling shopman; and in her glance there was a gleam of suspicion, a wish to see whether Colomban, stricken with remorse, would not blush at all this praise. But, like a fellow well acquainted with every trick of the old style of trade, he retained his sedateness, his good-natured air, with just a touch of cunning about his lips. However, Baudu still went on, louder than ever, accusing the people opposite—that pack of savages who murdered each other in their struggle for existence—of even СКАЧАТЬ