The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (10 page)

‘You know very well that we’ll stand by you to the end,’ said Bourdoncle finally.

Then, before going down into the shop for their usual look round, the two men settled certain other details. They examined a sample copy of a little counterfoil book which Mouret had just invented for sales invoices. Having noticed that the larger the commission an assistant received, the faster obsolete goods and junk were snapped up, he had based a new sales method on this observation. In future he was going to give his salesmen an interest in the sale of all goods; he would give them a percentage on the smallest bit of material, the smallest article they sold: a system which had caused a revolution in the drapery trade by creating among the assistants a struggle for survival from which the employers reaped the benefit. This struggle, moreover, had become his favourite method, a principle of organization he constantly applied. He unleashed passions, brought different forces into conflict, let the strong devour the weak, and grew fat on this battle of interests. The sample counterfoil book was
approved: at the top, on the counterfoil and on the piece to be torn off, the name of the department and the assistant’s number were printed; then, also on both sides, there were columns for the measurement, a description of the goods, and the price; the salesman merely signed the bill before handing it to the cashier. In this way, checking was extremely simple: the bills given by the cash-desk to the counting-house simply had to be compared with the counterfoils kept by the assistants. Each week the latter would get their percentage and their commission, without any possible error.

‘We shan’t be robbed so much,’ observed Bourdoncle with satisfaction. ‘That was an excellent idea of yours.’

‘And I thought of something else last night,’ Mouret explained. ‘Yes, my dear fellow, last night at that supper … I’d like to give the counting-house staff a small bonus for every mistake they find in the sales counterfoils, when they check them … You see, we’ll be certain then that they won’t overlook a single error; they’ll be more likely to invent them.’

He began to laugh, while his companion looked at him in admiration. This new way of applying the struggle for survival enchanted him; he had a genius for administrative systems, and dreamed of organizing the shop in such a way as to exploit other people’s appetites for the complete and quiet satisfaction of his own. He often said that to make people work their hardest, and even get a bit of honesty out of them, it was necessary to bring them up against their own needs first.

‘Well, let’s go down,’ Mouret resumed. ‘We must deal with this sale … The silk arrived yesterday, didn’t it? Bouthemont must be getting it in now.’

Bourdoncle followed him. The receiving department was in the basement, on the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin side. There, level with the pavement, was a kind of glazed cage where the lorries discharged the goods. They were weighed, then tipped down a steep chute; the oak and ironwork of this shone, polished by the friction of bales and cases. Everything entered through this yawning trap; things were being swallowed up all the time, a continual cascade of materials falling with the roar of a river. During big sales especially, the chute would discharge an endless flow into the basement, silks from Lyons, woollens from
England, linens from Flanders, calicoes from Alsace, prints from Rouen; and sometimes the lorries had to queue up. The parcels, as they flowed down, made a dull sound at the bottom of the hole, like a stone thrown into deep water.

As he was passing, Mouret stopped for a moment in front of the chute. It was in full activity: rows of packing-cases were going down on their own, the men whose hands were pushing them down from above being invisible; and they seemed to be rushing along by themselves, streaming like rain from some spring higher up. Then some bales appeared, turning round and round like rolled pebbles. Mouret watched without saying a word. But this deluge of goods falling into his shop, this flood releasing thousands of francs a minute, lit a brief light in his limpid eyes. Never before had he been so clearly aware of the battle he was engaged in. His task was to launch this deluge of goods all over Paris. He didn’t say a word, but went on with his tour of inspection.

In the grey light which was coming through the broad ventilators a gang of men was receiving consignments, while others were un-nailing packing-cases and opening bales in the presence of the managers of the various departments. The depths of this cellar, this basement where cast-iron pillars held up the arches and the bare walls were cemented, were filled with the bustle of a shipyard.

‘Have you got it all, Bouthemont?’ asked Mouret, going up to a young man with broad shoulders who was checking the contents of a packing-case.

‘Yes, I think it’s all there,’ he replied. ‘But it will take me all morning to count it.’

The department-manager ran his eye over an invoice; he was standing before a large counter on which one of his salesmen was placing the lengths of silk he was taking out of the packing-case one by one. Behind them were further rows of counters, also littered with goods which a small army of assistants was examining. There was a general unpacking, an apparent confusion of materials as they were examined, turned over, ticketed, in the midst of a buzz of voices.
*

Bouthemont, who was becoming a celebrity in the trade, had a round, jolly face, an inky black beard, and fine brown eyes. A
native of Montpellier, noisy and fun-loving, he was a poor salesman; but as a buyer he had no equal. He had been sent to Paris by his father, who had a draper’s shop in Montpellier, and when the old man thought that his son had learned enough to succeed him in the business, he had absolutely refused to go back home. From then on a rivalry had developed between father and son, the former entirely absorbed in his small provincial trade, indignant at seeing a mere assistant earning three times as much as he did himself, and the latter joking about the old man’s routine, boasting about his earnings, and turning the shop upside-down every time he went there. Like the other department-managers he earned, apart from his three thousand francs fixed salary, a commission on sales. Montpellier, surprised and impressed, gave it out that the Bouthemont boy had, in the preceding year, pocketed nearly fifteen thousand francs—and this was only a beginning; people predicted to his exasperated father that this figure would increase even more.

Meanwhile, Bourdoncle had picked up one of the lengths of silk, and was examining its texture with the attentive air of a man who knows his business. It was a piece of faille with a blue and silver selvage, the famous Paris-Paradise with which Mouret hoped to strike a decisive blow.

‘It really is very good,’ murmured his colleague.

‘But above all it looks so striking,’ said Bouthemont. ‘Dumonteil is the only one who can make it for us … On my last trip, when I had my argument with Gaujean, he said he was willing to use a hundred looms to make this pattern, but he insisted on twenty-five centimes more per metre.’

Nearly every month Bouthemont would visit the factories, spending days in Lyons, staying at the best hotels, and with instructions that money was no object when negotiating with manufacturers. Moreover, he enjoyed absolute freedom, and bought as he thought fit, providing that each year he increased the turnover of his department by a ratio agreed in advance; and it was, in fact, on this increase that his commission was based. In short, his position at the Ladies’ Paradise, like that of all his fellow section-managers, was that of a specialized merchant in a group of different trades, a kind of vast city of commerce.

‘So, it’s decided then,’ he went on. ‘We’ll price it at five francs sixty … You know that that scarcely covers the purchase price.’

‘Yes, yes, five francs sixty,’ said Mouret briskly, ‘and if I was on my own, I’d sell it at a loss.’

The section-manager laughed heartily.

‘Oh! That would suit me perfectly. It would triple sales, and as my only concern is to get big takings …’

But Bourdoncle remained serious and tight-lipped. His commission was based on the total profits, and it was not in his interest to lower the prices. His task as a supervisor consisted precisely in keeping an eye on the price tickets to see that Bouthemont did not simply indulge his desire to increase sales, and sell at too small a profit. Besides, he was once more filled with his old misgivings when faced with publicity schemes which he did not understand. He ventured to show his distaste by saying:

‘If we sell at five francs sixty it’s just as if we were selling it at a loss, because our expenses must be deducted, and they’re considerable … Anywhere else they’d sell it at seven francs.’

At that Mouret lost his temper. He banged the flat of his hand on the silk, and shouted irritably:

‘Yes, I know, and that’s just why I want to give it away to our customers … Really, my dear fellow, you’ll never understand women. Can’t you see they’ll go mad over this silk?’

‘No doubt,’ interrupted his associate, obstinately, ‘and the more they buy, the more we’ll lose.’

‘We’ll lose a few centimes on these goods, I’ll grant you. But so what? It won’t be such a disaster if it enables us to attract all the women here and hold them at our mercy, their heads turned at the sight of our piles of goods, emptying their purses without counting! The main thing, my dear fellow, is to excite their interest, and for that you must have an article that delights them—which causes a sensation. After that you can sell the other goods at prices as high as anywhere else, and they’ll still think yours are the cheapest. For example, our Cuir-d’Or, that taffeta at seven francs fifty, which is on sale everywhere at that price, will seem an extraordinary bargain, and will be sufficient to make up for the loss on the Paris-. You’ll see, you’ll see.’

He was becoming quite eloquent.

‘Don’t you understand? I want the Paris-Paradise to revolutionize the market in a week. It’s our master-stroke, it’s what’s going to save us and make our name. People won’t talk about anything else, the blue and silver selvage will be known from one end of France to the other … And you’ll hear the groan of fury from our competitors. The small traders will lose some more of their feathers over it. They’re done for, all those old clothes dealers dying of rheumatism in their cellars!’

The assistants who were checking the goods stood round their employer, listening and smiling. He liked talking in this way without contradiction. Once more, Bourdoncle gave in. In the mean time the packing-case had been emptied, and two men were un-nailing another one.

‘It’s the manufacturers who aren’t pleased!’ said Bouthemont. ‘They’re furious with you in Lyons; they claim that your cheap sales are ruining them. You know that Gaujean has definitely declared war against me. Yes, he’s sworn to give the small shops long credit rather than accept my prices.’

Mouret shrugged his shoulders.

‘If Gaujean isn’t reasonable,’ he replied, ‘Gaujean will be left high and dry … What have they got to complain about? We pay them immediately, we take everything they make, the least they can do is work for less … Besides, the public gets the benefit, that’s the main thing.’

The assistant was emptying the second packing-case, while Bouthemont had gone back to checking the pieces of material against the invoice. Another assistant, at the end of the counter, was marking the price on them and, the checking finished, the invoice signed by the section-manager had to be sent up to the central counting-house. For a moment longer Mouret continued looking at this work, all the activity surrounding the unpacking of the goods, which were piling up and threatening to swamp the basement; then, without saying another word, he went away with the air of a captain satisfied with his troops, followed by Bourdoncle.

They went slowly through the basement. The ventilators placed at intervals shed a pale light; and in the depths of dark corners, along the narrow corridors, gas jets were continually
burning. Leading off these corridors were the stock-rooms, vaults shut off with wooden boards, where the different departments stowed away their surplus goods. As he passed, Mouret glanced at the heating installation, which was to be lit on Monday for the first time, and at the small firemen’s post which was guarding a giant gas meter enclosed in an iron cage. The kitchen and the canteens, old cellars turned into small rooms, were on the left, near the corner of the Place Gaillon. Finally, at the other end of the basement, he came to the dispatch department. The parcels which customers did not take away themselves were sent down there, sorted on tables, and put into pigeon-holes which represented the different districts of Paris; then they were sent up a large staircase which came out just opposite the Vieil Elbeuf, and put into vans parked near the pavement. In the mechanical working of the Ladies’ Paradise, the staircase in the Rue de la Michodière constantly disgorged the goods which had been swallowed up by the chute in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, after they had passed through the mechanism of the various departments upstairs.

‘Campion,’ said Mouret to the delivery manager, a thin-faced ex-sergeant, ‘why were six pairs of sheets which a lady bought yesterday at about two o’clock not delivered in the evening?’

‘Where does the lady live?’ asked the employee.

‘In the Rue de Rivoli, at the corner of the Rue d’Alger … Madame Desforges.’

At this early hour the sorting tables were bare, and the pigeon-holes contained only a few parcels left over from the day before. While Campion, after consulting a list, was rummaging among these parcels, Bourdoncle watched Mouret, thinking that this devil of a man knew everything, attended to everything, even while sitting at the supper tables of restaurants and in his mistresses’ bedrooms. Finally, Campion discovered the error: the cash-desk had given a wrong number, and the parcel had come back.

‘Which cash-desk dealt with it?’ asked Mouret. ‘What? No. 10, you say …?’

And turning to his lieutenant, he said:

‘Cash-desk 10, that’s Albert, isn’t it? … We’ll go and have a word with him.’

But before going round the shop, he wanted to go upstairs to the mail-order department, which occupied several rooms on the second floor. It was there that all the provincial and foreign orders arrived; and every morning he went there to look at the correspondence. For two years this correspondence had been growing daily. The department had at first kept about ten clerks busy, but now already needed more than thirty. Some opened the letters, others read them, sitting at both sides of the same table; still others sorted them, giving each one a serial number which was repeated on a pigeon-hole; then, when the letters had been distributed to the different departments and the departments had sent up the articles, the articles were put into the pigeon-holes according to the serial number. It remained only to check them and pack them up in a neighbouring room, where a team of workmen nailed and tied things up from morning till night.