And with a trembling hand she again took up the water bottle. Her cousin tried to prevent her drinking.
“No, I'm so thirsty, let me drink.”
They could hear Baudu talking in a loud voice. Then yielding to an inspiration of her tender heart, Denise knelt down before Geneviève, throwing her arms round her neck, kissing her, and assuring her that everything would turn out all right, that she would marry Colomban, that she would get well, and live happily. But she got up quickly, her uncle was calling her.
“Jean is here. Come along.”
It was indeed Jean, looking rather scared, who had come to dinner. When they told him it was striking eight, he looked amazed. Impossible! He had only just left his master's. They chaffed him. No doubt he had come by way of the Bois de Vincennes. But as soon as he could get near his sister, he whispered to her: “It's a little laundry-girl who was taking back some linen. I've got a cab outside by the hour. Give me five francs.”
He went out a minute, and then returned to dinner, for Madame Baudu would not hear of his going away without taking, at least, a plate of soup. Geneviève had reappeared in her usual silent and retiring manner. Colomban was half asleep behind the counter. The evening passed away, slow and melancholy, only animated by Baudu's step, as he walked from one end of the empty shop to the other. A single gas-burner was alight—the shadow of the low ceiling fell in large masses, like black earth from a ditch.
Several months passed away. Denise came in nearly every evening to cheer up Geneviève a bit, but the house became more melancholy than ever. The works opposite were a continual torment, which intensified their bad luck. Even when they had an hour of hope—some unexpected joy—the falling of a tumbrel-load of bricks, the sound of the saw of a stonecutter, or the simple call of a mason, sufficed at once to mar their pleasure. In fact, the whole neighbourhood felt the shock. From the boarded enclosure, running along and blocking up the three streets, there issued a movement of feverish activity. Although the architect used the existing buildings, he altered them in various ways to adapt them to their new uses; and right in the centre at the opening caused by the court-yards, he was building a central gallery as big as a church, which was to terminate with a grand entrance in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin right in the middle of the frontage. They had, at first, experienced great difficulty in laying the foundations, for they had come on to some sewer deposits and loose earth, full of human bones. Besides that, the boring of the well had made the neighbours very anxious—a well three hundred feet deep, destined to give two hundred gallons a minute. They had now got the walls up to the first storey; the entire block was surrounded by scaffolding, regular towers of timber work. There was an incessant noise from the grinding of the windlasses hoisting up the stone, the abrupt discharge of iron bars, the clamour of this army of workmen, accompanied by the noise of picks and hammers. But above all, what deafened the people was the sound of the machinery. Everything went by steam, screeching whistles rent the air; whilst, at the slightest gust of wind, clouds of plaster flew about and covered the neighbouring roofs like a fall of snow. The Baudus in despair looked on at this implacable dust penetrating everywhere—getting through the closest woodwork, soiling the goods in their shop, even gliding into their beds; and the idea that they must continue to breathe it—that it would finish by killing them—empoisoned their existence.
The situation, however, was destined to become worse still, for in September, the architect, afraid of not being ready, decided to carry on the work at night also. Powerful electric lamps were established, and the uproar became continuous. Gangs of men relieved each other; the hammers never stopped, the engines whistled night and day; the everlasting clamour seemed to raise and scatter the white dust The Baudus now had to give up the idea of sleeping even; they were shaken in their beds; the noises changed into nightmare as soon as they fell off to sleep. Then, if they got up to calm their fever, and went, with bare feet, to look out of the window, they were frightened by the vision of The Ladies' Paradise flaring in the darkness like a colossal forge, where their ruin was being forged. Along the half-built walls, dotted with open bays, the electric lamps threw a large blue flood of light, of a blinding intensity. Two o'clock struck—then three, then four; and during the painful sleep of the neighbourhood, the works, increased by this lunar brightness, became colossal and fantastic, swarming with black shadows, noisy workmen, whose profiles gesticulated on the crude whiteness of the new plastering.
Baudu was quite right. The small traders in the neighbouring streets were receiving another mortal blow. Every time The Ladies' Paradise created new departments there were fresh failures among the shopkeepers of the district The disaster spread, one could hear the cracking of the oldest houses. Mademoiselle Tatin, at the under-linen shop in the Passage Choiseul, had just been declared bankrupt; Quinette, the glover, could hardly hold out another six months; the furriers, Vanpouille, were obliged to sub-let a part of their premises; and if the Bédorés, brother and sister, the hosiers, still kept on in the Rue Gaillon, they were evidently living on money saved formerly. And now more smashes were going to be added to those long since foreseen; the department for fancy goods threatened a toy-shopkeeper in the Rue Saint-Roch, Deslignières, a big, full-blooded man; whilst the furniture department attacked Messrs. Piot and Rivoire, whose shops were sleeping in the shadow of the Passage Sainte-Anne. It was even feared that an attack of apoplexy would carry off the toyman, who had gone into a terrible rage on seeing The Ladies' Paradise mark up purses at thirty per cent, reduction. The furniture dealers, who were much calmer, affected to joke at these counter-jumpers who wanted to meddle with such articles as chairs and tables; but customers were already leaving them, the success of the department had every appearance of being a formidable one. It was all over, they were obliged to bow their heads. After these others would be swept off, and there was no reason why every business should not be driven away. One day The Ladies' Paradise alone would cover the neighbourhood with its roof.
At present, morning and evening, when the thousand employees went in and came out, they formed such a long procession in the Place Gaillon that people stopped to look at them as they would at a passing regiment. For ten minutes they blocked up all the streets; and the shopkeepers at their doors thought bitterly of their single assistant, whom they hardly knew how to find food for. The last balance-sheet of the big shop, the forty millions turned over, had also caused a revolution in the neighbourhood. The figure passed from house to house amid cries of surprise and anger. Forty millions! Think of that! No doubt the net profit did not exceed more than four per cent., with their heavy general expenses, and system of low prices; but sixteen hundred thousand francs was a jolly sum, one could be satisfied with four per cent., when one operated on such a scale as that. It was said that Mouret's starting capital of five hundred thousand francs, augmented each year by the total profits, a capital which must at that moment have amounted to four millions, had thus passed ten times over the counters in the form of goods. Robineau, when he made this calculation before Denise, after dinner, was overcome for a moment, his eyes fixed on his empty plate. She was right, it was this incessant renewal of the capital that constituted the invincible force of the new system of business. Bourras alone denied the facts, refusing to understand, superb and stupid as a mile-stone. A pack of thieves and nothing more! A lying set! Cheap-jacks who would be picked up out of the gutter one fine morning!