“In the Rue de Rivoli, at the corner of the Rue d'Alger—Madame Desforges.”
At this early hour the sorting tables were bare, the compartment only contained a few parcels left over night Whilst Campion was searching amongst these packets, after having consulted a list, Bourdoncle was looking at Mouret, thinking that this wonderful fellow knew everything, thought of everything, even when at the supper-tables of restaurants or in the alcoves of his mistresses. At last Campion discovered the error; the cashier's department had given a wrong number, and the parcel had come back.
“What is the number of the pay-desk that debited that?” asked Mouret: “No. 10, you say?” And turning towards his lieutenant, he added: “No. 10; that's Albert, isn't it? We'll just say two words to him.”
But before starting on their tour round the shops, he wanted to go up to the postal order department, which occupied several rooms on the second floor. It was there that all the provincial and foreign orders arrived; and he went up every morning to see the correspondence. For two years this correspondence had been increasing daily. At first occupying only about ten clerks, it now required more than thirty. Some opened the letters, others read them, seated at both sides of the same table; others again classed them, giving each one a running number, which was repeated on a pigeon-hole. Then when the letters had been distributed to the different departments and the latter had delivered the articles, these articles were put in the pigeon-holes as they arrived, according to the running numbers. There was then nothing to do but to check and tie them up, which was done in a neighbouring room by a squad of workmen who were nailing and tying up from morning to night.
Mouret put his usual question: “How many letters this morning, Levasseur?”
“Five hundred and thirty-four, sir,” replied the chief clerk. “After the commencement of Monday's sale, I'm afraid we sha'n't have enough hands. Yesterday we were driven very hard.”
Bourdoncle expressed his satisfaction by a nod of the head. He had not reckoned on five hundred and thirty-four letters on a Tuesday. Round the table, the clerks continued opening and reading the letters amidst a noise of rustling paper, whilst the going and coming of the various articles commenced before the pigeon-holes. It was one of the most complicated and important departments of the establishment, one in which there was a continual rush, for, strictly speaking, all the orders received in the morning ought to be sent off the same evening.
“You shall have more hands if you want them,” replied Mouret, who had seen at a glance that the work was well done. “You know that when there's work to be done we never refuse the men.”
Up above, under the roof, were the small bedrooms for the saleswomen. But he went downstairs again and entered the chief cashier's office, which was near his own. It was a room with a glazed wicket, and contained an enormous safe, fixed in the wall. Two cashiers there centralised the receipts which Lhomme, the chief cashier at the counters, brought in every evening; they also settled the current expenses, paid the manufacturers, the staff, all the crowd of people who lived by the house. The cashiers' office communicated with another, full of green cardboard boxes, where ten clerks checked the invoices. Then came another office, the clearing-house: six young men bending over black desks, having behind them quite a collection of registers, were getting up the discount accounts of the salesmen, by checking the debit notes. This work, which was new to them, did not get on very well.
Mouret and Bourdoncle had crossed the cashiers' office and the invoice room. When they passed through the other office the young men, who were laughing and joking, started up in surprise. Mouret, without reprimanding them, explained the system of the little bonus he thought of giving them for each error discovered in the debit notes; and when he went out the clerks left off laughing, as if they had been whipped, and commenced working in earnest, looking up the errors.