Inside the building, inundated with sun through the large open bays, the cooped-up staff had just commenced the stocktaking. They had closed the doors; people stopped on the pavement, looking through the windows, astonished at this shutting-up when an extraordinary activity was going on inside. There was, from one end of the galleries to the other, from the top floor to the bottom, a continual movement of employees, their arms in the air, and parcels flying about above their heads; and all this amidst a tempest of cries and a calling out of prices, the confusion of which ascended and became a deafening roar. Each of the thirty-nine departments did its work apart, without troubling about its neighbour. At this early hour the shelves had hardly been touched, there were only a few bales of goods on the floors; the machine would have to get up more steam if they were to finish that evening.
“Why have you come down?” asked Marguerite of Denise, good-naturedly. “You'll only make yourself worse, and we are quite enough to do the work.”
“That's what I told her,” declared Madame Aurélie, “but she insisted on coming down to help us.”
All the young ladies flocked round Denise. The work was interrupted even for a time. They complimented her, listening with various exclamations to the story of her sprained ankle. At last Madame Aurélie made her sit down at a table; and it was understood that she should merely write down the articles as they were called out. On such a day as this they requisitioned any employee capable of holding a pen: the inspectors, the cashiers, the clerks, even down to the shop messengers; and the various departments divided amongst themselves these assistants of a day to get the work over quicker. It was thus that Denise found herself installed near Lhomme the cashier and Joseph the messenger, both bending over large sheets of paper.
“Five mantles, cloth, fur trimming, third size, at two hundred and forty francs!” cried Marguerite. “Four ditto, first size, at two hundred and twenty!”
The work once more commenced. Behind Marguerite three saleswomen were emptying the cupboards, classifying the articles, giving them to her in bundles; and, when she had called them out, she threw them on the table, where they were gradually heaping up in enormous piles. Lhomme wrote down the articles, Joseph kept another list for the clearinghouse. Whilst this was going on, Madame Aurélie herself, assisted by three other saleswomen, was counting the silk garments, which Denise entered on the sheets. Clara was employed in looking after the heaps, to arrange them in such a manner that they should occupy the least space possible on the tables. But she was not paying much attention to her work, for the heaps were already tumbling down.
“I say,” asked she of a little saleswoman who had joined that winter, “are they going to give you a rise? You know the second-hand is to have two thousand francs, which, with her commission, will bring her in nearly seven thousand.”
The little saleswoman, without ceasing to pass some cloaks down, replied that if they didn't give her eight hundred francs she would take her hook. The rises were always given the day after the stock-taking; it was also the epoch at which, the amount of business done during the year being known, the managers of the departments drew their commission on the increase of this figure, compared with that of the preceding year. Thus, notwithstanding the bustle and uproar of the work, the impassioned gossiping went on everywhere. Between two articles called out, they talked of nothing but money. The rumour ran that Madame Aurélie would exceed twenty-five thousand francs; and this immense sum greatly excited the young ladies. Marguerite, the best saleswoman after Denise, had made four thousand five hundred francs, fifteen hundred francs salary, and about three thousand francs commission; whilst Clara had not made two thousand five hundred francs altogether.
“I don't care a button for their rises!” resumed the latter, still talking to the little saleswoman. “If papa were dead, I would jolly soon clear out of this! But what exasperates me is to see seven thousand francs given to that strip of a girl! What do you say?”
Madame Aurélie violently interrupted the conversation, turning round with her imperial air. “Be quiet, young ladies! We can't hear ourselves speak, my word of honour!”