“Those chaps over there seem to be doing very well,” remarked Favier, speaking of the salesmen in the hosiery and haberdashery departments.
But Hutin, who was looking all round the place, suddenly asked: “Do you know Madame Desforges, the governor's sweetheart? Look! that dark woman in the glove department, who is having some gloves tried on by Mignot.” He stopped, then resumed in a low tone, as if speaking to Mignot, on whom he continued to keep his eyes: “Oh, go on, old man, you may pull her fingers about as much as you like, that won't do you any good! We know your conquests!”
There was a rivalry between himself and the glove-man, the rivalry of two handsome fellows, who both affected to flirt with the lady-customers. As a matter of fact they had neither had any real conquests to boast about. Mignot lived on the legend of a police superintendent's wife who had fallen in love with him, whilst Hutin had really conquered a lace-maker who had got tired of wandering about in the doubtful hotels in the neighbourhood; but they invented a lot of mysterious adventures, leading people to believe in all sorts of appointments made by titled ladies, between two purchases.
“You should get hold of her,” said Favier, in his sly, artful way.
“That's a good idea!” exclaimed Hutin. “If she comes here I'll let her in for something extensive; I want a five-franc piece!”
In the glove department quite a row of ladies were seated before the narrow counter covered with green velvet and edged with nickel silver; and the smiling shopmen were heaping up before them the flat boxes of a bright red, taken out of the counter itself, and resembling the ticketed drawers of a secrétaire. Mignot especially was bending his pretty doll-like face over his customer, his thick Parisian voice full of tender inflections. He had already sold Madame Desforges a dozen pairs of kid gloves, the Paradise gloves, one of the specialities of the house. She then took three pairs of Swedish, and was now trying on some Saxon gloves, for fear the size should not be exact.
“Oh! quite perfect, madame!” repeated Mignot. “Six and a quarter would be too large for a hand like yours.”
Half lying on the counter, he was holding her hand, taking the fingers one by one, slipping the glove on with a long, renewed, and persistently caressing air, looking at her as if he expected to see in her face the signs of a voluptuous joy. But she, with her elbow on the velvet counter, her wrist raised, gave him her fingers with the unconcerned air with which she gave her foot to her maid to allow her to button her boot. For her he was not a man; she employed him for such private work with the familiar disdain she showed for the people in her service, without looking at him even.
“I don't hurt you, madame?”
She replied “No,” with a shake of the head. The smell of the Saxon gloves—that savage smell as of sugared musk—troubled her as a rule; and she sometimes laughed about it, confessing her taste for this equivocal perfume, in which there is a suspicion of the wild beast fallen into some girl's powder-box. But seated at this commonplace counter she did not notice the smell of the gloves, it raised no sensual feeling between her and this salesman doing his work.