“You'll stay with us, I'll stake my life. What would become of me?” And as Denise replied that she intended to leave the next day. “No, no, you think so, but I know better. You must appoint me second-hand, now that I've got a baby. Baugé is reckoning on it, my dear.”
Pauline smiled with an air of conviction. She then gave the six chemises; and, Jean having said that he was now going to the handkerchief counter, she called an auxiliary to carry the chemises and the jacket left by the auxiliary from the readymade department The girl who happened to answer was Mademoiselle de Fontenailles, recently married to Joseph. She had just obtained this menial situation as a great favour, and she wore a long black blouse, marked on the shoulder with a number in yellow wool.
“Follow this young lady,” said Pauline. Then returning, and again lowering her voice: “It's understood that I am to be appointed second-hand, eh?”
Denise, troubled, defended herself; but at last promised, with a laugh, joking in her turn. And she went away, going down with Jean and Pépé, and followed by the auxiliary. On the ground-floor, they fell into the woollen department, a corner of a gallery entirely hung with white swanskin cloth and white flannel. Liénard, whom his father had vainly recalled to Angers, was talking to the handsome Mignot, now a traveller, and who had boldly reappeared at The Ladies' Paradise. No doubt they were speaking of Denise, for they both stopped talking to bow to her with a ceremonious air. In fact, as she went along through the departments the salesmen appeared full of emotion and bent their heads before her, uncertain of what she might be the next day. They whispered, thought she looked triumphant, and the betting was again altered; they began to risk bottles of wine, etc., over the event. She had gone through the linen-gallery, in order to get to the handkerchief counter, which was at the further end. They saw nothing but white goods: cottons, madapolams, muslins, etc.; then came the linen, in enormous piles, ranged in alternate pieces like blocks of stone, stout linen, fine linen, of all sizes, white and unbleached, pure flax, whitened in the sun; then the same thing commenced once more, there were departments for each sort of linen: house linen, table linen, kitchen linen, a continual fall of white goods, sheets, pillow-cases, innumerable styles of napkins, aprons, and dusters. And the bowing continued, they made way for Denise to pass, Baugé had rushed out to smile on her, as the good fairy of the house. At last, after crossing the counterpane department, a room hung with white banners, she arrived at the handkerchief counter, the ingenious decoration of which delighted the crowd; there were nothing but white columns, white pyramids, white castles, a complicated architecture, solely composed of handkerchiefs, cambric, Irish linen, China silk, marked, embroidered by hand, trimmed with lace, hemstitched, and woven with vignettes, an entire city, built of white bricks, of infinite variety, standing out in a mirage against an Eastern sky, warmed to a white heat.
“You say another dozen?” asked Denise of her brother.
“Yes, like this one,” replied he, showing a handkerchief in his parcel.
Jean and Pépé had not quitted her side, clinging to her, as they had done formerly, on arriving in Paris, knocked up by the journey. This vast shop, in which she was quite at home, seemed to trouble them, and they sheltered themselves in her shadow, placing themselves under the protection of their second mother by an instinctive awakening of their infancy. People watched them as they passed, smiling at the two big fellows following in the footsteps of this grave thin girl; Jean frightened with his beard, Pépé bewildered in his tunic, all three of the same fair complexion, a fairness which caused the whisper from one end of the counters to the other: “They are her brothers! They are her brothers!”
But whilst Denise was looking for a saleswoman there was a meeting. Mouret and Bourdoncle entered the gallery; and as the former again stopped in front of the young girl, without, however, speaking to her, Madame Desforges and Madame Guibal passed by. Henriette suppressed the shiver which had invaded her whole being; she looked at Mouret and then at Denise. They had also looked at her, and it was a sort of mute catastrophe, the common end of these great dramas of the heart, a glance exchanged in the crush of a crowd. Mouret had already gone off, whilst Denise lost herself in the depths of the department, accompanied by her brothers, still in search of a disengaged salesman. But Henriette having recognised Mademoiselle de Fontenailles, in the auxiliary following Denise, with a yellow number on her shoulder, and her coarse, cadaverous, servant's-looking face, relieved herself by saying to Madame Guibal, in a trembling voice:
“Just see what he's doing with that unfortunate girl. Isn't it shameful? A marchioness! And he makes her follow like a dog the creatures picked up by him in the street!” She tried to calm herself, adding, with an affected air of indifference: “Let's go and see their display of silks.”
The silk department was like a great chamber of love, hung with white by the caprice of some snowy maiden wishing to show off her spotless whiteness. All the milky tones of an adored person were there, from the velvet of the hips, to the fine silk of the thighs and the shining satin of the bosom. Pieces of velvet hung from the columns, silk and satins stood out, on this white creamy ground, in draperies of a metallic and porcelain-like whiteness: and falling in arches were also poult and gros grain silks, light foulards, and surahs, which varied from the heavy white of a Norwegian blonde to the transparent white, warmed by the sun, of an Italian or a Spanish beauty.