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THE LADIES' PARADISE

(The Sequel To “Piping Hot!”)

A Realistic Novel

By Émile Zola

Translated without Abridgment from the 80th French Edition

London: Vizetelly And Company

1886.


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THE LADIES' PARADISE




CHAPTER I.

DENISE had walked from the Saint-Lazare railway station, where a
Cherbourg train had landed her and her two brothers, after a night
passed on the hard seat of a third-class carriage. She was leading Pépé
by the hand, and Jean was following her, all three fatigued after the
journey, frightened and lost in this vast Paris, their eyes on every
street name, asking at every corner the way to the Rue de la Michodière,
where their uncle Baudu lived. But on arriving in the Place Gaillon, the
young girl stopped short, astonished.

“Oh! look there, Jean,” said she; and they stood still, nestling close
to one another, all dressed in black, wearing the old mourning bought
at their father's death. She, rather puny for her twenty years, was
carrying a small parcel; on the other side, her little brother, five
years old, was clinging to her arm; while behind her, the big brother, a
strapping youth of sixteen, was standing empty-handed.

“Well,” said she, after a pause, “that _is_ a shop!”

They were at the corner of the Rue de la Michodière and the Rue
Neuve-Saint-Augustin, in front of a draper's shop, which displayed a
wealth of colour in the soft October light. Eight o'clock was striking
at the church of Saint-Roch; not many people were about, only a few
clerks on their way to business, and housewives doing their morning
shopping. Before the door, two shopmen, mounted on a step-ladder,
were hanging up some woollen goods, whilst in a window in the Rue
Neuve-Saint-Augustin another young man, kneeling with his back to the
pavement, was delicately plaiting a piece of blue silk. In the shop,
where there were as yet no customers, there was a buzz as of a swarm of
bees at work.

“By Jove!” said Jean, “this beats Valognes. Yours wasn't such a fine
shop.”

Denise shook her head. She had spent two years there, at Cornaille's,
the principal draper's in the town, and this shop, encountered so
suddenly--this, to her, enormous place, made her heart swell, and kept
her excited, interested, and oblivious of everything else. The high
plate-glass door, facing the Place Gaillon, reached the first storey,
amidst a complication of ornaments covered with gilding. Two allegorical
figures, representing two laughing, bare-breasted women, unrolled the
scroll bearing the sign, “The Ladies' Paradise.” The establishment
extended along the Rue de la Michodière and the Rue Neuve-Saint
Augustin, and comprised, beside the corner house, four others--two on
the right and two on the left, bought and fitted up recently. It seemed
to her an endless extension, with its display on the ground floor, and
the plate-glass windows, through which could be seen the whole length of
the counters. Upstairs a young lady, dressed all in silk, was sharpening
a pencil, while two others, beside her, were unfolding some velvet
mantles.

“The Ladies' Paradise,” read Jean, with the tender laugh of a handsome
youth who had already had an adventure with a woman. “That must draw the
customers--eh?”

But Denise was absorbed by the display at the principal entrance. There
she saw, in the open street, on the very pavement, a mountain of cheap
goods--bargains, placed there to tempt the passers-by, and attract
attention. Hanging from above were pieces of woollen and cloth goods,
merinoes, cheviots, and tweeds, floating like flags; the neutral, slate,
navy-blue, and olive-green tints being relieved by the large white
price-tickets. Close by, round the doorway, were hanging strips of fur,
narrow bands for dress trimmings, fine Siberian squirrel-skin, spotless
snowy swansdown, rabbit-skin imitation ermine and imitation sable.
Below, on shelves and on tables, amidst a pile of remnants, appeared an
immense quantity of hosiery almost given away; knitted woollen gloves,
neckerchiefs, women's hoods, waistcoats, a winter show in all colours,
striped, dyed, and variegated, with here and there a flaming patch of
red. Denise saw some tartan at nine sous, some strips of American vison
at a franc, and some mittens at five sous. There appeared to be an
immense clearance sale going on; the establishment seemed bursting with
goods, blocking up the pavement with the surplus.

Uncle Baudu was forgotten. Pépé himself, clinging tightly to his
sister's hand, opened his big eyes in wonder. A vehicle coming
up, forced them to quit the road-way, and they turned up the Rue
Neuve-Saint-Augustin mechanically, following the shop windows and
stopping at each fresh display. At first they were captivated by a
complicated arrangement: above, a number of umbrellas, laid obliquely,
seemed to form a rustic roof; beneath these a quantity of silk
stockings, hung on rods, showed the roundness of the calves, some
covered with rosebuds, others of all colours, black open-worked, red
with embroidered corners, and flesh colour, the silky grain of which
made them look as soft as a fair woman's skin; and at the bottom of
all, a symmetrical array of gloves, with their taper fingers and narrow
palms, and that rigid virgin grace which characterises such feminine
articles before they are worn. But the last window especially attracted
their attention. It was an exhibition of silks, satins, and velvets,
arranged so as to produce, by a skilful artistic arrangement of colours,
the most delicious shades imaginable. At the top were the velvets,
from a deep black to a milky white: lower down, the satins--pink, blue,
fading away into shades of a wondrous delicacy; still lower down were
the silks, of all the colours of the rainbow, pieces set up in the form
of shells, others folded as if round a pretty figure, arranged in a
life-like natural manner by the clever fingers of the window dressers.
Between each motive, between each coloured phrase of the display, ran a
discreet accompaniment, a slight puffy ring of cream-coloured silk. At
each end were piled up enormous bales of the silk of which the house
had made a specialty, the “Paris Paradise” and the “Golden Grain,” two
exceptional articles destined to work a revolution in that branch of
commerce.

“Oh, that silk at five francs twelve sous!” murmured Denise, astonished
at the “Paris Paradise.”

Jean began to get tired. He stopped a passer-by. “Which is the Rue de la
Michodiere, please, sir?”

On hearing that it was the first on the right they all turned back,
making the tour of the establishment. But just as she was entering the
street, Denise was attracted by a window in which ladies' dresses were
displayed. At Cornaille's that was her department, but she had
never seen anything like this, and remained rooted to the spot with
admiration. At the back a large sash of Bruges lace, of considerable
value, was spread out like an altar-veil, with its two white wings
extended; there were flounces of Alençon point, grouped in garlands;
then from the top to the bottom fluttered, like a fall of snow, a cloud
of lace of every description--Malines, Honiton, Valenciennes, Brussels,
and Venetian-point. On each side the heavy columns were draped with
cloth, making the background appear still more distant And the dresses
were in this sort of chapel raised to the worship of woman's beauty and
grace. Occupying the centre was a magnificent article, a velvet mantle,
trimmed with silver fox; on one side a silk cape lined with miniver, on
the other a cloth cloak edged with cocks' plumes; and last of all,
opera cloaks in white cashmere and white silk trimmed with swansdown or
chenille. There was something for all tastes, from the opera cloaks at
twenty-nine francs to the velvet mantle marked up at eighteen hundred.
The well-rounded neck and graceful figures of the dummies exaggerated
the slimness of the waist, the absent head being replaced by a large
price-ticket pinned on the neck; whilst the mirrors, cleverly arranged
on each side of the window, reflected and multiplied the forms without
end, peopling the street with these beautiful women for sale, each
bearing a price in big figures in the place of a head.

“How stunning they are!” murmured Jean, finding no other words to
express his emotion.

This time he himself had become motionless, his mouth open. All this
female luxury turned him rosy with pleasure. He had a girl's beauty--a
beauty he seemed to have stolen from his sister--a lovely skin, curly
hair, lips and eyes overflowing with tenderness. By his side Denise, in
her astonishment, appeared thinner still, with her rather long face and
large mouth, fading complexion, and light hair. Pépé, also fair, in the
way of most children, clung closer to her, as if wanting to be caressed,
troubled and delighted at the sight of the beautiful ladies in the
window. They looked so strange, so charming, on the pavement, those
three fair ones, poorly dressed in black--the sad-looking young girl
between the pretty child and the handsome youth--that the passers-by
looked back smilingly.

For several minutes a stout man with grey hair and a large yellow
face, standing at a shop-door on the other side of the street, had
been looking at them. He was standing there with bloodshot eyes and
contracted mouth, beside himself with rage at the display made by The
Ladies' Paradise, when the sight of the young girl and her brothers
completed his exasperation. What were those three simpletons doing
there, gaping in front of the cheap-jack's parade?

“What about uncle?” asked Denise, suddenly, as if just waking up.

“We are in the Rue de la Michodière,” said Jean. “He must live somewhere
about here.”

They raised their heads and looked round. Just in front of them, above
the stout man, they perceived a green sign-board bearing in yellow
letters, discoloured by the rain: “The Old Elbeuf. Cloths, Flannels.
Baudu, late Hauchecorne.” The house, coated with an ancient rusty
white-wash, quite flat and unadorned, amidst the mansions in the Louis
XIV. style which surrounded it, had only three front windows, and these
windows, square, without shutters, were simply ornamented by a handrail
and two iron bars in the form of a cross. But amidst all this nudity,
what struck Denise the most, her eyes full of the light airy windows at
The Ladies' Paradise, was the ground-floor shop, crushed by the ceiling,
surmounted by a very low storey with half-moon windows, of a prison-like
appearance. The wainscoting, of a bottle-green hue, which time had
tinted with ochre and bitumen, encircled, right and left, two deep
windows, black and dusty, in which the heaped-up goods could hardly be
seen. The open door seemed to lead into the darkness and dampness of a
cellar.

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“That's the house,” said Jean.

“Well, we must go in,” declared Denise. “Come on, Pepé.”

They appeared, however, somewhat troubled, as if seized with fear. When
their father died, carried off by the same fever which had, a month
previous, killed their mother, their uncle Baudu, in the emotion which
followed this double mourning, had written to Denise, assuring her there
would always be a place for her in his house whenever she would like to
come to Paris. But this was nearly a year ago, and the young girl was
now sorry to have left Valognes in a moment of temper without informing
her uncle. The latter did not know them, never having set foot in
Valognes since the day he left, as a boy, to enter as junior in the
drapery establishment kept by Hauchecorne, whose daughter he afterwards
married.

“Monsieur Baudu?” asked Denise, deciding at last to speak to the stout
man who was still eyeing them, surprised at their appearance.

“That's me,” replied he.

Denise blushed and stammered out: “Oh, I'm so pleased! I am Denise. This
is Jean, and this is Pépé. You see we have come, uncle.”

Baudu seemed amazed. His big eyes rolled in his yellow face; he spoke
slowly and with difficulty. He was evidently far from thinking of this
family which suddenly dropped down on him.

“What--what, you here?” repeated he several times. “But you were at
Valognes. Why aren't you at Valognes?”

With her sweet but rather faltering voice she then explained that since
the death of her father, who had spent everything in his dye-works, she
had acted as a mother to the two children, but the little she earned at
Cornaille's did not suffice to keep the three of them. Jeàn worked at
a cabinetmaker's, a repairer of old furniture, but didn't earn a sou.
However, he had got to like the business, and had learned to carve
in wood very well. One day, having found a piece of ivory, he amused
himself by carving a head, which a gentleman staying in the town had
seen and admired, and it was this gentleman who had persuaded them to
leave Valognes, promising to find a place in Paris for Jean with an
ivory-carver.

“So you see, uncle,” continued Denise, “Jean will commence his
apprenticeship at his new master's to-morrow. They ask no premium, and
will board and lodge him. I felt sure Pépé and I could manage very well.
We can't be worse off than we were at Valognes.”

She said nothing about Jean's love affair, of certain letters written to
the daughter of a nobleman living in the town, of kisses exchanged over
a wall--in fact, quite a scandal which had determined her leaving. And
she was especially anxious to be in Paris, to be able to look after
her brother, feeling quite a mother's tender anxiety for this gay and
handsome youth, whom all the women adored. Uncle Baudu couldn't get over
it, and continued his questions. However, when he heard her speaking of
her brothers in this way he became much kinder.

“So your father has left you nothing,” said he. “I certainly thought
there was still something left. Ah! how many times did I write advising
him not to take that dye-work! A good-hearted fellow, but no head for
business! And you've been obliged to keep and look after these two
youngsters since?”

His bilious face had become clearer, his eyes were not so bloodshot as
when he was glaring at The Ladies' Paradise. Suddenly he noticed that he
was blocking up the doorway.

“Well,” said he, “come in, now you're here. Come in, no use hanging
about gaping at a parcel of rubbish.”

And after having darted a last look of anger at The Ladies' Paradise, he
made way for the children by entering the shop and calling his wife and
daughter..

“Elizabeth, Geneviève, come down; here's company for you!”

But Denise and the two boys hesitated before the darkness of the shop.
Blinded by the clear light of the street, they could hardly see. Feeling
their way with their feet with an instinctive fear of encountering some
treacherous step, and clinging still closer together from this vague
fear, the child continuing to hold the young girl's skirts, and the big
boy behind, they made their entry with a smiling, anxious grace.
The clear morning light described the dark profile of their mourning
clothes; an oblique ray of sunshine gilded their fair hair.

“Come in, come in,” repeated Baudu.

In a few brief sentences he explained the matter to his wife and
daughter. The first was a little woman, eaten up with anaemia, quite
white--white hair, white eyes, white lips. Geneviève, in whom her
mother's degenerateness appeared stronger still, had the debilitated,
colourless appearance of a plant reared in the shade. However, her
magnificent black hair, thick and heavy, marvellously vigorous for such
a weak, poor soil, gave her a sad charm.

“Come in,” said both the women in their turn; “you are welcome.”

And they made Denise sit down behind a counter. Pépé immediately jumped
up on his sister's lap, whilst Jean leant against some wood-work beside
her. Looking round the shop the new-comers began to take courage, their
eyes getting used to the obscurity. Now they could see it, with its low
and smoky ceiling, oaken counters bright with use, and old-fashioned
drawers with strong iron fittings. Bales of goods reached to the
beams above; the smell of linen and dyed stuffs--a sharp chemical
smell--seemed intensified by the humidity of the floor. At the further
end two young men and a young woman were putting away pieces of white
flannel.

“Perhaps this young gentleman would like to take something?” said Madame
Baudu, smiling at Pépé.

“No, thanks,” replied Denise, “we had a cup of milk in a café opposite
the station.” And as Geneviève looked at the small parcel she had laid
down, she added: “I left our box there too.”

She blushed, feeling that she ought not to have dropped down on her
friends in this way. Even as she was leaving Valognes, she had been full
of regrets and fears; that was why she had left the box, and given the
children their breakfast.

“Come, come,” said Baudu suddenly, “let's come to an understanding.
'Tis true I wrote to you, but that's a year ago, and since then
business hasn't been flourishing, I can assure you, my girl.”

He stopped, choked with an emotion he did not wish to show. Madame Baudu
and Geneviève, with a resigned look, had cast their eyes down.

“Oh,” continued he, “it's a crisis which will pass, no doubt, but I have
reduced my staff; there are only three here now, and this is not the
moment to engage a fourth. In short, my dear girl, I cannot take you as
I promised.”

Denise listened, and turned very pale. He dwelt upon the subject,
adding: “It would do no good, either to you or to me.

“All right, uncle,” replied she with a painful effort, “I'll try and
manage all the same.”

The Baudus were not bad sort of people. But they complained of never
having had any luck. When their business was flourishing, they had had