“And what next, madame?”
“Nothing, thanks. Be good enough to carry the parcel to the pay-desk No. 10, for Madame Desforges.”
Being a constant customer, she gave her name at a pay-desk, and had each purchase sent there without wanting a shopman to follow her. When she had gone away, Mignot turned towards his neighbour and winked, and would have liked him to believe that wonderful things had just taken place. “By Jove! I'd like to dress her all over!” said he, coarsely. Meanwhile, Madame Desforges continued her purchases. She turned to the left, stopping in the linen department to procure some dusters; then she walked round the shop, going as far as the woollen department at the further end of the gallery. As she was satisfied with her cook, she wanted to make her a present of a dress. The woollen department overflowed with a compact crowd, all the lower middle-class women were there, feeling the stuff, absorbed in mute calculations; and she was obliged to sit down for a moment. The shelves were piled up with great rolls of stuff which the salesmen were taking down one by one, with a sudden pull. They were beginning to get confused with these encumbered counters, on which the stuffs were mixing up and tumbling over each other. It was a rising tide of neutral tints, heavy woollen tones, iron-greys, and blue-greys, with here and there a Scotch tartan, and a blood-red ground of flannel breaking out. And the white tickets on the pieces were like a shower of rare white flakes falling on a black December soil.
Behind a pile of poplin, Liénard was joking with a tall girl without hat or bonnet, a work-girl, sent by her mistress to match some merino. He detested these big-sale days, which tired him to death, and he endeavoured to shirk his work, getting plenty of money from his father, not caring a fig about the business, doing just enough to avoid being dismissed.
“Listen to me, Mademoiselle Fanny,” he was saying; “you are always in a hurry. Did the striped vicugna do the other day? I shall come and see you, and ask for my commission.” But the girl escaped, laughing, and Liénard found himself before Madame Desforges, whom he could not help asking: “What can I serve you with, madame?”
She wanted a dress, not too dear but yet strong. Liénard, with the view of sparing his arms, which was his principal care, manoeuvred to make her take one of the stuffs already unfolded on the counter. There were cashmeres, serges, vicugnas, and he declared that there was nothing better to be had, they never wore out. But none of these seemed to satisfy her. On one of the shelves she had observed a blue serge, which she wished to see. He made up his mind at last, and took down the roll, but she thought it too rough. Then he showed her a cheviot, some diagonal, some greys, every sort of woollens, which she felt out of curiosity, for the pleasure of doing so, decided at heart to take no matter what. The young man was thus obliged to empty the highest shelves; his shoulders cracked, the counter had disappeared under the silky grain of the cashmeres and poplins, the rough nap of the cheviot, and the tufty down of the vicugna; there were samples of every material and every tint. Though she had not the least wish to buy any, she asked to see some grenadine and some Chambéry gauze. Then, when she had seen enough, she said:
“Oh! after all, the first is the best; it's for my cook. Yes, the serge, the one at two francs.” And when Liénard had measured it, pale with suppressed anger, she added: “Have the goodness to carry that to pay-desk No. 10, for Madame Desforges.” Just as she was going away, she recognised Madame Marty close to her, accompanied by her daughter Valentine, a tall girl of fourteen, thin and bold, who was already casting a woman's covetous looks on the goods.
“Ah! it's you, dear madame?”
“Yes, dear madame; what a crowd—eh?”
“Oh! don't speak of it, it's stifling. And such a success! Have you seen the oriental saloon?”