"You've heard the news?" the umbrella dealer said to her one evening on her return from business.
"No, Monsieur Bourras."
"Well! the scoundrels have bought the Hôtel Duvillard. I'm hemmed in on all sides!" He was waving his long arms about, in a burst of fury which made his white mane stand up on end. "A regular underhand affair," he resumed. "But it seems that the hotel belonged to the Crédit Immobilier, whose president, Baron Hartmann, has just sold it to our famous Mouret. And now they've got me on the right, on the left, and at the back, just in the way that I'm holding the knob of this stick in my hand!"
It was true, the sale must have been concluded on the previous day. Bourras's small house, hemmed in between The Ladies' Paradise and the Hôtel Duvillard, clinging there like a swallow's nest in a crack of a wall, seemed certain to be crushed, as soon as the shop galleries should invade the hôtel. And the time had now arrived, the colossus had outflanked the feeble obstacle, and was investing it with its piles of goods, threatening to swallow it up, absorb it by the sole force of its giant aspiratory powers. Bourras could well feel the close embrace which was making his shop creak. He thought he could see the place getting smaller; he was afraid of being absorbed himself, of being carried off into kingdom come with his sticks and umbrellas, so loudly was the terrible machine now roaring.
"Do you hear them?" he asked. "One would think they were eating the very walls! And in my cellar and in the attic, everywhere, there's the same noise—like that of a saw cutting through the plaster. But never mind! They won't flatten me as easily as they might a sheet of paper. I shall stick here, even if they blow up my roof, and the rain falls in bucketfuls on my bed!"
It was just at this moment that Mouret caused fresh proposals to be made to Bourras; they would increase the figure of their offer, they would give him fifty thousand francs for his good-will and the remainder of his lease. But this offer redoubled the old man's anger; he refused in an insulting manner. How those scoundrels must rob people to be able to pay fifty thousand francs for a thing which wasn't worth ten thousand! And he defended his shop as a young girl defends her virtue, for honour's sake.
Denise noticed that Bourras was pre-occupied during the next fortnight. He wandered about in a feverish manner, measuring the walls of his house, surveying it from the middle of the street with the air of an architect. Then one morning some workmen arrived. This was the decisive blow. He had conceived the bold idea of beating The Ladies' Paradise on its own ground by making certain concessions to modern luxury. Customers, who had often reproached him for the darkness of his shop, would certainly come back to it again, when they saw it all bright and new. In the first place, the workmen stopped up the crevices and whitewashed the frontage, then they painted the woodwork a light green, and even carried the splendour so far as to gild the sign-board. A sum of three thousand francs, held in reserve by Bourras as a last resource, was swallowed up in this way. Moreover, the whole neighbourhood was revolutionized by it all, people came to look at him losing his head amid all these riches, and no longer able to find the things he was accustomed to. He did not seem to be at home in that bright frame, that tender setting; he looked quite scared, with his long beard and white hair. On the opposite side of the street passers-by lingered in astonishment at seeing him waving his arms about while he carved his handles. And he was in a state of fever, perpetually afraid of dirtying his shop, more and more at sea amidst this luxury which he did not at all understand.
Meantime, as at Robineau's, so at Bourras's was the campaign against The Ladies' Paradise carried on. Bourras had just brought out his invention, the automatic umbrella, which later on was to become popular. But The Paradise people immediately improved on the invention, and a struggle of prices began. Bourras had an article at one franc and nineteen sous, in zanella, with a steel mounting, an everlasting article said the ticket. But he was especially anxious to vanquish his competitors with his handles of bamboo, dogwood, olive, myrtle, rattan, indeed every imaginable sort of handle. The Paradise people, less artistic, paid more attention to the material, extolling their alpacas and mohairs, twills and sarcenets. And they came out victorious. Bourras, in despair, repeated that art was done for, that he was reduced to carving his handles for the pleasure of doing so, without any hope of selling them.
"It's my fault!" he cried to Denise. "I never ought to have kept a lot of rotten articles, at one franc nineteen sous! That's where these new notions lead one to. I wanted to follow the example of those brigands; so much the better if I'm ruined by it!"
The month of July proved very warm, and Denise suffered greatly in her tiny room under the roof. So, after leaving the shop, she sometimes went to fetch Pépé, and instead of going up-stairs at once, took a stroll in the Tuileries Gardens until the gates closed. One evening as she was walking towards the chestnut-trees she suddenly stopped short with surprise: for a few yards off, coming straight towards her, she fancied she recognised Hutin. But her heart commenced to beat violently. It was Mouret, who had dined on the other side of the river and was hurrying along on foot to call on Madame Desforges. At the abrupt movement which she made to escape him, he caught sight of her. The night was coming on, but still he recognised her clearly.