The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (15 page)

‘This way, my dear Baron,’ Madame Desforges was saying. ‘May I introduce Monsieur Octave Mouret, who’s longing to tell you how much he admires you.’

And, turning towards Octave, she added:

‘Baron Hartmann.’

A smile played subtly on the old man’s lips. He was a short, vigorous-looking man, with the large head typical of people from Alsace, and a heavy face which would light up with a flash of intelligence at the slightest curl of his mouth, the lightest flicker of his eyelids. For a fortnight he had been resisting Henriette’s wish that he should consent to this interview; it was not that he felt particularly jealous for, being a man of the world, he was resigned to playing a father’s part; but this was the third of Henriette’s men friends she had introduced to him and he was rather afraid, in the long run, of appearing ridiculous. Therefore, as he approached Octave, he wore the discreet smile of a rich protector who, though willing to be charming, is not prepared to be duped.

‘Oh! sir,’ said Mouret, with his Provençal enthusiasm, ‘the Crédit Immobilier’s last deal was really remarkable! You can’t imagine how happy and proud I am to shake your hand.’

‘Too kind, sir, too kind,’ the Baron repeated, still smiling.

Henriette, quite unembarrassed, was watching them with her clear eyes. She stood between the two of them, raising her pretty head, looking from one to the other. She wore a lace dress which exposed her slender wrists and neck; and she seemed delighted that they were getting on so well.

‘Gentlemen,’ she said at last, ‘I’ll leave you to talk.’

Then, turning towards Paul, who had risen to his feet, she added:

‘Would you like a cup of tea, Monsieur de Vallagnosc?’

‘With pleasure, madam.’

And they both went back to the drawing-room.

When Mouret had resumed his place on the sofa beside Baron Hartmann, he showered fresh praise on the Crédit Immobilier’s operations. Then he broached a subject which was close to his heart; he spoke of the new thoroughfare, the extension of the Rue Réaumur, of which a section, under the name of the Rue du Dix-Décembre, was about to be opened between the Place de la Bourse and the Place de l’Opéra. It had been declared available for public purposes eighteen months ago; the expropriation
committee had just been appointed, and the whole neighbourhood was very excited about this enormous space, anxiously waiting for the construction work to begin and taking an interest in the condemned houses. Mouret had been waiting almost three years for this work, first because he could see that business would be brisker as a result, and secondly because he had ambitions to expand which he dared not admit openly, so far did his dreams extend. As the Rue du Dix-Décembre was to cut across the Rue de Choiseul and the Rue de la Michodière, he visualized the Ladies’ Paradise taking over the whole block of houses surrounded by these streets and the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, and he already imagined it with a palatial façade on the new thoroughfare, dominating and ruling the conquered city. From this had sprung his keen desire to meet Baron Hartmann, for he had heard that the Crédit Immobilier had signed a contract with the authorities to open up and build the Rue du Dix-Décembre, on condition that it was granted ownership of the land bordering the new street.
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‘Really,’ he repeated, trying to put on an ingenuous air, ‘you’re handing over a ready-made street to them, with drains, pavements, and gaslights? And the land bordering it is enough to compensate you? Oh! that’s odd, very odd!’

Finally he came to the delicate point. He had found out that the Crédit Immobilier was secretly buying up houses in the same block as the Ladies’ Paradise, not only those which were to fall under the pickaxes of the demolition gangs, but others too, those which were to remain standing. And, suspecting in this a plan for some future building scheme, he was very worried about the expansion he dreamed of, filled with fear at the idea of one day coming up against a powerful company owning property which it would never sell. It was precisely this fear which had made him decide to establish a bond between the Baron and himself as soon as possible, the agreeable bond of a woman, which can be such a close one between men of a passionate nature. No doubt he could have seen the financier in his office, and discussed at leisure the big deal he wanted to propose to him. But he felt more confident in Henriette’s house; he knew how much the possession of a mistress in common brings men together and softens them. For them both to be in her house, within the beloved perfume of her
presence, to have her near to win them over with a smile, seemed to him a guarantee of success.

‘Haven’t you bought what used to be the Hôtel Duvillard, that old building next to my shop?’ he finally asked bluntly.

Baron Hartmann hesitated for a moment, and then denied it. But looking him straight in the eye, Mouret began to laugh; and from then on he played the part of a good-natured young man, his heart on his sleeve and straightforward in business.

‘Look here, Baron, since I’ve had the unexpected honour of meeting you, I must make a confession … Oh! I’m not asking you to tell me your secrets, but I’m going to confide mine to you, because I’m sure I couldn’t put them in wiser hands … Besides, I need your advice, I’ve wanted to call and see you for a long time, but I never dared to.’

He did make his confession, he described his start in business; he did not even hide the financial crisis through which he was passing in the midst of his triumph. He covered everything, the successive expansions, the profits continually ploughed back into the business, the sums contributed by his employees, the shop risking its very existence with each new sale, in which the whole capital was staked, as it were, on a single throw of the dice. However, it was not money he wanted, for he had a fanatical faith in his customers. His ambition ran higher; he proposed to the Baron a partnership in which the Crédit Immobilier would provide the colossal palace of his dreams, while he, for his part, would give his genius and the business already created. The extent of each party’s contribution could be valued; he thought nothing could be easier to do.

‘What are you going to do with your building sites and land?’ he asked insistently. ‘You must have an idea. But I’m quite certain it isn’t as good as mine … Just think about it. We’ll build a shopping arcade on the sites, we’ll demolish or convert the houses, and we’ll open the most enormous shops in Paris, a bazaar which will make millions.’

Then he allowed this heartfelt cry to escape him:

‘Oh! If only I could manage without you! But you hold the aces now. In any case, I’d never get the necessary loans … We really must come to an agreement; it would be a crime not to.’

‘You do get carried away, my dear sir,’ Baron Hartmann contented himself with replying. ‘What imagination!’

He shook his head, and continued to smile, determined not to repay confidences with confidences. The Crédit Immobilier’s plan was to create in the Rue du Dix-Décembre a rival to the Grand Hotel,
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a luxurious establishment whose central position would attract foreigners. In any case, since the hotel would only occupy the sites bordering the street, the Baron might very well have welcomed Mouret’s idea, and negotiated for the remaining block of houses, which was still a vast area. But he had financed two of Henriette’s friends already, and he was getting rather tired of playing the part of complacent protector. Besides, despite his passion for activity, which made him open his purse to every intelligent and courageous young man, Mouret’s commercial genius surprised him more than it attracted him. Wasn’t it a fantastic, rash speculation, this gigantic shop? Wouldn’t he risk certain ruin in wishing to expand the drapery trade beyond all bounds? In short, he didn’t believe in it; he refused.

‘No doubt the idea’s attractive,’ he said, ‘but it’s the idea of a poet… Where would you find the customers to fill a cathedral like that?’

Mouret looked at him for a moment in silence, as if stunned by his refusal. Was it possible? A man of such flair, who could smell money at any level! And suddenly, with a gesture of great eloquence, he pointed to the ladies in the drawing-room, exclaiming:

‘There are the customers!’

The sun was fading, the reddish-gold dust had become nothing but a pale light, dying away in a farewell gleam on the silk of the hangings and the panels of the furniture. With the approach of dusk a sense of intimacy filled the large room with a mellow warmth. While Monsieur de Boves and Paul de Vallagnosc were chatting at one of the windows, gazing far into the distance of the garden, the ladies had drawn closer together, forming a tight circle of skirts in the middle of the room, from which laughter was ascending, and whispered remarks, eager questions and answers, all the passion felt by women for spending and for clothes. They were discussing fashions; Madame de Boves was describing a costume she had seen at a ball.

‘First of all, a mauve silk underskirt, and then, over it, flounces of old Alençon lace, thirty centimetres deep …’

‘Oh! Really!’ Madame Marty interrupted. ‘Some women have all the luck!’

Baron Hartmann, who had followed Mouret’s gesture, was looking at the ladies through the open door. He was only half listening to them, for the younger man, inflamed with the desire to convince him, was talking away, explaining how the new type of drapery business worked. It was now based on the rapid and continuous turnover of capital, which had to be converted into goods as many times as possible within twelve months. Thus, in the present year, his initial capital of only five hundred thousand francs had been turned over four times and had produced business worth two million francs. And that was a mere trifle, which could be increased tenfold, for he felt sure that in some departments he could eventually turn his capital over fifteen or twenty times.

‘You see, that’s the essence of it. It’s very simple, once you’ve thought of it. We don’t need a large amount of working capital. All we want is to get rid of our stock very quickly, in order to replace it and make the capital earn interest each time. In this way we can be content with a small profit; as our general expenses reach the enormous figure of sixteen per cent and we seldom deduct more than twenty per cent profit on stock, it means there’s a net profit of four per cent at most; but if we operate with a large stock and continually renew it we’ll end up making millions … Do you follow me? It’s quite obvious.’

The Baron shook his head again. He, who had in his time welcomed the most audacious schemes, and whose boldness at the time when gas lighting was a novelty was still talked about, remained apprehensive and obstinate.

‘I quite understand,’ he replied. ‘You sell cheaply in order to sell a lot and you sell a lot in order to sell cheaply … But you must sell, and I repeat my question: whom will you sell to? How do you hope to keep up such colossal sales?’

A sudden burst of voices coming from the drawing-room cut short Mouret’s explanations. Madame Guibal was saying she would have preferred the flounces of old Alençon lace at the front of the dress only.

‘But, my dear,’ Madame de Boves was saying, ‘the front was covered with it as well. I’ve never seen anything finer.’

‘You’ve given me an idea!’ Madame Desforges went on. ‘I’ve got a few metres of Alençon somewhere … I must look for some more to make a trimming.’

And the voices dropped again, becoming only a murmur. Prices were quoted, a regular haggling was going on and was arousing desires, the ladies were buying lace by the handful.

‘Ah!’ said Mouret, when he could speak, ‘you can sell as much as you like when you know how to sell! There lies our success.’

Then, with his Provençal zest, he described the new kind of business at work in warm, glowing phrases which conjured up whole pictures. First, its strength was multiplied tenfold by accumulation, by all the goods being gathered together at one point, supporting and boosting each other; there was never a slack period, seasonal goods were always available; and, as she went from counter to counter, the customer found herself snared, buying some material here, some thread further on, a coat somewhere else; she bought a whole set of clothes, then got caught by unforeseen attractions, yielding to the need for all that is useless and pretty. He then extolled the system of marked prices. The great revolution in drapery had started from this new idea. If the old-fashioned small shops were in their death throes, it was because they could not keep up in the struggle to offer low prices, which had been set in motion by the system of marking prices on goods. Now competition was taking place before the public’s very eyes, people had only to walk past the shop-windows to ascertain the prices, and every shop was reducing them, content with the smallest possible profit; there was no cheating, no attempts planned well in advance at making money on a material sold at double its value, there was just continuous business, a regular profit of so much per cent on all goods, a fortune put into the smooth running of a sale, which was all the larger because it took place in full view of the public. Wasn’t this an astonishing creation? It was revolutionizing the market, it was transforming Paris, for it was based on the flesh and blood of Woman.

‘I’ve got the women, I don’t care about anything else!’ he said, in a brutal admission wrung from him by passion.

Baron Hartmann seemed moved by this exclamation. His smile lost its touch of irony, and as he looked at the young man, gradually won over by his confidence, he began to feel growing affection for him.

‘Shh!’ he murmured paternally, ‘they’ll hear you.’

But the ladies were now all talking at once, so excited that they were no longer even listening to each other. Madame de Boves was concluding her description of the evening dress: a mauve silk tunic, draped and caught back by bows of lace; the bodice cut very low, with more bows of lace on the shoulders.

‘You’ll see,’ she was saying, ‘I’m having a bodice like that made with a satin …’

‘And I,’ Madame Bourdelais interrupted, ‘I wanted some velvet. Oh! it was such a bargain!’

Madame Marty was asking:

‘Well, how much was the silk?’