“It's quite unnecessary, Mademoiselle Denise will have the kindness to conduct this lady.”
Denise, quite confused, at once took charge of the parcel and the debit-note. She could never meet this young man face to face without experiencing a feeling of shame, as if he reminded her of a former fault; and yet she had only sinned in her dreams.
“But, tell me,” said Madame Desforges, in a low tone, to Bouthemont, “isn't it this awkward girl? He has taken her back, then? But it is she, the heroine of the adventure!”
“Perhaps,” replied the head of department, still smiling, and fully decided not to tell the truth.
Madame Desforges then slowly ascended the staircase, preceded by Denise; but she had to stop every two or three steps to avoid being carried away by the descending crowd. In the living vibration of the whole building, the iron supports seemed to stagger beneath the weight, as if continually trembling from the breath of the crowd On each stair was a dummy, strongly fixed, displaying some garment: a costume, cloak, or dressing-gown; and it was like a double row of soldiers for some triumphal march-past, with the little wooden arm like the handle of a poniard, stuck into the red swan-skin, which gave a bloody appearance to the stump of a neck crowning the whole.
Madame Desforges was at last reaching the first storey, when a still greater surging of the crowd forced her to stop once more. She had now, beneath her, the departments on the ground-floor, with the press of customers she had just passed through. It was a new spectacle, a sea of heads fore-shortened, concealing the bodices, swarming with a busy agitation. The white price tickets now appeared but so many thin lines, the promontory of flannels cut through the gallery like a narrow wall; whilst the carpets and the embroidered silks which decked the balustrades hung at her feet like processional banners suspended from the gallery of a church. In the distance, she could perceive the angles of the lateral galleries, as from the top of a steeple one perceives the corners of the neighbouring streets, with the black spots of the passers-by moving about. But what surprised her above all, in the fatigue of her eyes blinded by the brilliant pell mell of colours, was, when she lowered her lids, to feel the crowd more than its dull noise like the rising tide, and the human warmth that it exhaled. A fine dust rose from the floor, laden with the odour of woman, the odour of her linen and her bust, of her skirts and her hair, an invading, penetrating odour, which seemed to be the incense of this temple raised for the worship of her body.
Meanwhile Mouret, still standing up before the reading-room with De Vallagnosc, was inhaling this odour, intoxicating himself with it, and repeating: “They are quite at home. I know some who spend the whole day here, eating cakes and writing their letters. There's only one thing more to do, and that is, to find them beds.”
This joke made Paul smile, he who, in the ennui of his pessimism, continued to think the crowd stupid in thus running after a lot of gew-gaws. Whenever he came to give his old comrade a look up, he went away almost vexed to see him so full of life amidst his people of coquettes. Would not one of them, with shallow brain and empty heart, teach him one day the stupidity and uselessness of existence? That very day Octave seemed to lose some of his admirable equilibrium; he who generally inspired his customers with a fever, with the tranquil grace of an operator, was as though seized by the passion with which the establishment was gradually burning. Since he had caught sight of Denise and Madame Desforges coming up the grand staircase, he had been talking louder, gesticulating against his will; and, whilst affecting not to turn his face towards them, he became more and more animated as he felt them drawing nearer. His face got redder, his eyes had a little of that rapture with which the eyes of his customers ultimately vacillated.
“You must be robbed fearfully,” murmured De Vallagnosc, who thought the crowd looked very criminal.
Mouret threw his arms out “My dear fellow, it's beyond all imagination.”