“But it is, though,” replied Denise.
Marguerite was listening. Since her marriage had been decided on, she had marched about with her putty-looking face, assuming more disdainful airs than ever. She came up saying: “You are quite right. Self-respect above everything, I say. Allow me to bid you adieu, my dear.”
Some customers arriving at that moment, Madame Aurélie requested her, in a harsh voice, to attend to business. Then, as Denise was taking the cloak to effect the “return” herself, she protested, and called an auxiliary. This, again, was an innovation suggested to Mouret by the young girl—persons charged with carrying the articles, which relieved the saleswomen of a great burden.
“Go with Mademoiselle Denise,” said the first-hand, giving her the cloak. Then, returning to Denise: “Pray consider well. We are all heart-broken at your leaving.”
Jean and Pépé, who were waiting, smiling amidst this overflowing crowd of women, followed their sister. They now had to go to the underlinen department, to get four chemises like the half-dozen that Thérèse had bought on the Saturday. But there, where the exhibition of white goods was snowing down from every shelf, they were almost stifled, and found it very difficult to get past.
In the first place, at the stay counter a little scene was causing a crowd to collect. Madame Boutarel, who had arrived in Paris this time with her husband and daughter, had been wandering all about the shop since the morning collecting an outfit for the young lady, who was about to be married. The father was consulted every moment, and they never appeared likely to finish. At last the family had just stranded here; and whilst the young lady was absorbed in a profound study of some drawers, the mother had disappeared, having cast her coquettish eyes on a delicious pair of stays. When Monsieur Boutarel, a big, full-blooded man, left his daughter, bewildered, to go and look for his wife, he at last found her in a fitting-room, at the door of which he was politely invited to take a seat. These rooms were like narrow cells, glazed with ground glass, where the men, and even the husbands, were not allowed to enter, by an exaggerated sentiment of propriety on the part of the directors. Saleswomen came out and went in again quickly, allowing those outside to divine, by the rapid closing of the door, visions of ladies in their petticoats, with bare arms and shoulders—stout women with white flesh, and thin ones with flesh the colour of old ivory. A row of men were waiting outside, seated on arm-chairs, and looking very weary. Monsieur Boutarel, when he understood, got really angry, crying out that he wanted his wife, that he insisted on knowing what was going on inside, that he certainly would not allow her to undress without him. It was in vain that they tried to calm him; he seemed to think there were some very queer things going on inside. Madame Boutarel was obliged to come out, to the delight of the crowd, who were discussing and laughing over the affair.
Denise and her brothers were at last able to get past. Every article of female linen, all those white under-things that are usually concealed, were here displayed, in a suite of rooms, classed in various departments. The corsets and dress-improvers occupied one counter, there were the stitched corsets, the Duchesse, the cuirass, and, above all, the white silk corsets, dove-tailed with colours, forming for this day a special display; an army of dummies without heads or legs, nothing but the bust, dolls' breasts flattened under the silk, and close by, on other dummies, were horse-hair and other dress improvers, prolonging these broomsticks into enormous, distended croups, of which the profile assumed a ludicrous unbecomingness. But afterwards commenced the gallant dishabille, a dishabille which strewed the vast rooms, as if an army of lovely girls had undressed themselves from department to department, down to the very satin of their skin. Here were articles of fine linen, white cuffs and cravats, white fichus and collars, an infinite variety of light gewgaws, a white froth which escaped from the drawers and ascended like so much snow. There were jackets, little bodices, morning dresses and peignoirs, linen, nansouck, long white garments, roomy and thin, which spoke of the lounging in a lazy morning after a night of tenderness. Then appeared the under-garments, falling one by one; the white petticoats of all lengths, the petticoat that clings to the knees, and the long petticoat with which the gay ladies sweep the pavement, a rising sea of petticoats, in which the legs were drowned; cotton, linen, and cambric drawers, large white drawers in which a man could dance; lastly, the chemises, buttoned at the neck for the night, or displaying the bosom in the day, simply supported by narrow shoulder-straps; chemises in all materials, common calico, Irish linen, cambric, the last white veil slipping from the panting bosom and hips.
And, at the outfitting counter, there was an indiscreet unpacking, women turned round and viewed on all sides, from the small housewife with her common calicoes, to the rich lady drowned in laces, an alcove publicly open, of which the concealed luxury, the plaitings, the embroideries, the Valenciennes lace, became a sort of sexual depravation, as it developed into costly fantasies. Woman was dressing herself again, the white wave of this fall of linen was returning again to the shivering mystery of the petticoats, the chemise stiffened by the fingers of the workwomen, the frigid drawers retaining the creases of the box, all this cambric and muslin, dead, scattered over the counters, thrown about, heaped up, was going to become living, with the life of the flesh, odorous and warm with the odour of love, a white cloud become sacred, bathed in night, and of which the least flutter, the pink of a knee disclosed through the whiteness, ravaged the world. Then there was another room devoted to the baby linen, where the voluptuous snowy whiteness of woman's clothing developed into the chaste whiteness of the infant: an innocence, a joy, the young wife become a mother, flannel garments, chemises and caps large as doll's things, baptismal dresses, cashmere pelisses, the white down of birth, like a fine shower of white feathers.
“They are embroidered chemises,” said Jean, who was delighted with this display, this rising tide of feminine attire into which he was plunging.
Pauline ran up at once, when she perceived Denise; and before even asking what she wanted, began to talk in a low tone, stirred up by the rumours circulating in the shop. In her department, two saleswomen had even got quarrelling, one affirming and the other denying her departure.