The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (60 page)

In the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs Denise caught sight of Madame Robineau in the distance, standing in the doorway of the silk-shop. This gave her an excuse to stop, and she chatted for a moment, trying to think of a way of breaking the terrible news gently. The shop’s appearance revealed the disorder and abandon of the final struggles of a dying business. This was the expected outcome of the battle of the two rival silks; the Paris-Paradise had crushed all competition with a further reduction of five centimes: it was now selling at only four francs ninety-five, and Gaujean’s silk had met its Waterloo. For the last two months Robineau, reduced to all sorts of expedients, had been leading a terrible life trying to prevent himself being declared bankrupt.

‘I just saw your husband in the Place Gaillon,’ murmured Denise, who’d finally stepped inside the shop.

‘Ah! Just now? I’m expecting him; he should be back by now. Monsieur Gaujean came this morning, and they went out together.’

She was as charming as ever, delicate and cheerful; but her pregnancy, already well advanced, made her feel tired, and she was becoming more agitated, more at sea in business than ever, for her nature made it difficult for her to understand, and now it was all going badly. As she often said, what was the point of it all? Wouldn’t it be nicer to live quietly and modestly in some little house somewhere?

‘My dear,’ she went on, her smile growing sad, ‘we’ve nothing to hide from you … Things aren’t going well; my poor darling doesn’t sleep any more because of it. Today Gaujean tormented him again about some overdue bills … I thought I’d die of worry, all on my own here.’

She was moving back to the door when Denise stopped her. The latter had just heard the noise of the crowd in the distance. She imagined the stretcher they were bringing, and the stream of onlookers who were bent on following every stage of the accident. And then, her throat dry, unable to think of the consoling words she wanted, she was forced to tell her.

‘You mustn’t worry, there’s no immediate danger … Yes, I saw Monsieur Robineau, he’s had an accident… They’re bringing him; don’t worry, please.’

The young woman listened to her, as white as a sheet, without yet clearly understanding. The street was full of people, drivers of cabs were swearing, and the men had set down the stretcher outside the shop in order to open the double glass doors.

‘It was an accident,’ continued Denise, determined to conceal the attempt at suicide. ‘He was on the pavement, and he slipped under the wheels of an omnibus. His feet got caught. They’ve sent for a doctor. You mustn’t worry.’

A great shudder shook Madame Robineau. She made two or three inarticulate cries; then, no longer speaking, she ran to the stretcher and drew back the curtains with trembling hands. The men who had been carrying it were waiting outside the house in order to carry it away when a doctor had been found. They no longer dared touch Robineau, who had regained consciousness, and whose sufferings at the slightest movement were agonizing.
When he saw his wife, two huge tears ran down his cheeks. She kissed him, and wept as she knelt looking at him. There was still a crowd in the street, and faces were packed together as if at some show, their eyes shining; some girls who had left their workroom were in danger of breaking the glass of the shop-windows in their attempt to get a better view. In order to escape from this fever of curiosity, and thinking in any case that it was not advisable to leave the shop open, Denise had the idea of lowering the metal shutters. She went to turn the crank-handle, the gearwheels made a plaintive cry, and the iron plates slowly descended, like the heavy drapery of a theatre curtain coming down at the end of a play. When she came in again and had closed the little round door in the shutters, she found Madame Robineau still clasping her husband in her arms, in the sinister half-light coming from two stars cut in the metal. The ruined shop seemed to be sliding into the void; the two stars alone shone on this sudden, brutal catastrophe of the streets of Paris.

At last Madame Robineau found her voice again.

‘Oh! My darling … Oh! My darling … Oh! My darling …’

This was all she could say, and, seeing her kneeling before him, her stomach pressed against the stretcher, he could bear it no longer and, in an attack of remorse, confessed. When he did not move he could only feel the burning leaden weight of his legs.

‘Forgive me, I must have been mad … When the solicitor told me in front of Gaujean that the notices would be served tomorrow, I seemed to see flames dancing as if the walls were burning … After that I don’t remember any more; I was walking down the Rue de la Michodière, I thought the people in the Paradise were making fun of me, that great bitch of a shop was crushing me … Then, when the omnibus turned round I thought about Lhomme and his arm, and threw myself under it …’

Slowly, in horror at this confession, Madame Robineau sank down and sat on the floor. He had wanted to die! She grasped Denise’s hand, for the girl had leaned towards her, deeply moved by the scene. The injured man, whose emotion was exhausting him, lost consciousness again. And still the doctor did not come!
Two men had already scoured the neighbourhood, and now the concierge had gone off in his turn.

‘You mustn’t worry,’ Denise repeated mechanically, and she too was sobbing.

Then Madame Robineau, sitting on the floor, her head on the stretcher, her cheek against the webbing on which her husband was lying, unburdened her heart.

‘Oh! I could tell you … It’s for me that he wanted to die. He was always saying: “I’ve robbed you, it was your money.” And at night he used to dream about those sixty thousand francs, he used to wake up in a sweat, saying he was useless and that if you didn’t have a head for business, you shouldn’t risk other people’s money … You know he’s always been a terrible worrier. In the end he used to see things that frightened me, he’d see me in the street in rags, begging, me whom he loved so much, whom he wanted to see rich and happy.’

But, turning her head, she saw that his eyes were open again; and she went on in a trembling voice:

‘Oh! My darling, why did you do it? Did you really think I was so concerned about the money? I don’t care if we’re ruined, believe me. As long as we’re together, we’ll never be unhappy … Let them take everything. Let’s go somewhere where you won’t hear any more about them. You’ll be able to work, you’ll see how good everything can be.’

Her forehead had dropped down close to her husband’s pale face, and both were silent in their distress. The shop seemed to be sleeping, numbed by the pale dusk which was flooding it; while behind the thin shutters, the din of the street could be heard—life passing by in the daylight, the rumbling of vehicles and the crowd bustling along the pavements. Finally Denise, who kept going to glance through the little hall door, came back crying:

‘The doctor’s here!’

The concierge showed him in. He was a young man with bright eyes. He preferred to examine Robineau before they put him to bed. Only one leg, the left one, turned out to be broken above the ankle. It was a simple fracture; there appeared to be no danger of complications. They were preparing to carry the
stretcher into the bedroom, at the back, when Gaujean appeared. He was coming to report a final attempt he had made to avert the bankruptcy, but it had failed: the declaration of bankruptcy was now inevitable.

‘What’s this?’ he murmured. ‘What’s happened?’

In a few words, Denise told him, and he became embarrassed. Robineau said to him in a feeble voice:

‘I don’t hold it against you, but all this is partly your fault.’

‘Well, my dear fellow,’ Gaujean replied, ‘it needed stronger men than us … You know that I’m no better off than you are!’

They lifted the stretcher. Robineau found enough strength to say:

‘No, no, stronger men would have fallen by the wayside as well… I can understand obstinate old men like Bourras and Baudu staying on; but you and I, who are young, and accepted the new ways of doing business! No, you know, Gaujean, it’s the end of a world.’

They carried him away. Madame Robineau kissed Denise with an energy in which there was almost joy at being rid at last of the worries of their business affairs. As Gaujean was leaving with the girl, he confessed to her that that poor devil Robineau was right. It was idiotic to try to compete with the Ladies’ Paradise. He knew that he himself was finished unless he could get into their good graces again. The day before he had secretly approached Hutin, who was about to leave for Lyons. But he was beginning to despair, and he tried to arouse Denise’s interest, having no doubt heard about her influence.

‘My word!’ he was repeating. ‘It’s too bad for the manufacturers. People would laugh at me if I ruined myself fighting for other people’s interests, when these fellows are quarrelling over who will manufacture at the cheapest rate … My goodness! As you used to say in the past, the manufacturers only need to keep up with progress by better organization and new methods. Everything will be all right, as long as the public’s satisfied.’

‘Just go and say that to Monsieur Mouret himself… He’ll be pleased to see you; he’s not a man to bear a grudge if you offer him even a centime’s profit per metre.’

On a bright, sunny afternoon in January Madame Baudu died. For a fortnight she had no longer been able to go down into the
shop, which a charwoman was looking after. She was sitting in the middle of her bed, propped up by pillows. In her white face only her eyes were still alive; and, her head erect, she gazed fixedly through the little curtains on the windows at the Ladies’ Paradise opposite. Baudu, made ill himself by this obsession, by the despairing fixity of her gaze, would sometimes try to draw the big curtains. But, with an imploring gesture, she would stop him, determined to see it until her last breath. The monster had now taken everything from her, both her shop and her daughter; she herself had been gradually fading away with the Vieil Elbeuf, losing her life as it lost its customers; the day on which it was gasping its last breath, so too was she. When she felt she was dying, she still had enough strength to insist on her husband opening both windows. It was mild; a stream of bright sunshine was gilding the Paradise, whereas the bedroom of their old house shivered in the shade. Madame Baudu kept her gaze fixed on the Paradise, filled with the vision of the triumphant building, the clear glass behind which millions of francs were endlessly circulating. Slowly, her eyes grew dim, invaded by darkness, and when they were extinguished in death they remained wide open, still gazing, drowned in tears.

Once more all the ruined small shopkeepers of the neighbourhood walked in the funeral procession. The Vanpouille brothers were there, pale from their December bills, paid by a supreme effort which they would not be able to repeat. Bédoré, with his sister, was leaning on a cane, so full of worry and anxiety that his stomach trouble was getting worse. Deslignières had had a stroke; Piot and Rivoire were walking in silence, with downcast eyes, like men without hope. And no one dared ask about those who had disappeared, Quinette, Mademoiselle Tatin, and others who, from morning till night, were going under, being knocked over and swept away on the tide of disaster, to say nothing of Robineau lying in bed with his broken leg. But they were quick to point out to each other, with an air of special interest, the new shopkeepers stricken by the plague: Grognet the perfumer, Madame Chadeuil the milliner, Lacassagne the florist, and Naud the shoemaker, still on their feet, but filled with anxiety by the disease which would sweep them away in their turn. Baudu walked along behind the hearse with the same slow, heavy gait as
when he had accompanied his daughter; while in the depths of the first mourning-carriage Bourras’s glittering eyes could be seen under his bushy eyebrows and his thatch of snow-white hair.

Denise was in great trouble. For a fortnight she had been worn out with anxiety and fatigue. She had been forced to put Pépé in a school, and had had all sorts of trouble with Jean, who was so much in love with the pastry-cook’s niece that he had begged his sister to ask for her hand in marriage. The death of her aunt had followed, and these repeated catastrophes had completely overwhelmed the girl. Mouret had once more offered his assistance, giving her permission to do whatever she wished for her uncle and the others. One morning, upon hearing that Bourras had been thrown into the street and Baudu was going to shut up shop, she had another interview with Mouret. Then after lunch she went out, in the hope of being of some help at least to them.

Bourras was standing in the Rue de la Michodière, on the pavement opposite his house, from which he had been expelled the day before following a fine trick, an idea the solicitor had thought up; as Mouret held some bills, he had easily had the umbrella dealer declared bankrupt and had then paid five hundred francs for the lease at the official receiver’s sale; thus the obstinate old man had lost for five hundred francs what he had refused to part with for a hundred thousand. Furthermore, when the architect arrived with his demolition gang, he had had to call the police to get Bourras out. The goods were sold and the furniture removed from the rooms; but he stubbornly remained in the corner where he slept, from which, moved to pity at last, they did not dare drive him out. The demolition workers even attacked the roof over his head. They had removed the rotten slates, the ceilings were falling in, the walls were cracking, and there he remained, beneath the ancient beams which had been stripped bare, surrounded by the ruins of his shop. Finally, when the police came, he had left. But the very next morning he had reappeared on the pavement opposite, after spending the night in a nearby hotel.

‘Monsieur Bourras,’ said Denise gently.

He did not hear her; his blazing eyes were fixed on the demolition workers, who were attacking the front of his hovel with
their pickaxes. Now, through the empty window-frames, the interior could be seen, the miserable rooms and the dark staircase where the sun had not penetrated for two hundred years.

‘Ah! It’s you,’ he replied at last, when he recognized her. ‘They’re making a good job of it, aren’t they, the robbers!’