"Bah!" resumed Baudu, to give himself courage; "we shan't die of it, after all. For one customer lost we shall find two others. You hear, Denise, I've got over seventy thousand francs there, which will certainly make your Mouret spend some sleepless nights. Come, come, you others, don't look so glum!"
But he could not enliven them. He himself relapsed into a pale consternation; and they all remained with their eyes fixed on the monster, attracted, possessed, glutting themselves with thoughts of their misfortune. The work was now nearly finished, the scaffoldings had been removed from the front, a whole side of the colossal edifice appeared, with its white walls and large light windows. Beside the footway, where traffic had at last been resumed, stood eight delivery vans which the messengers were loading one after the other outside the parcels-office. In the sunshine, a ray of which enfiladed the street, the vehicles' green panels, picked out with red and yellow, sparkled like so many mirrors, and cast blinding reflections even into the depths of The Old Elbeuf. The drivers, clad in black and dignified in manner, held the horses well in—superb horses they were, champing silvered bits. And each time a van was loaded, there came a sonorous roll over the paving stones which made all the little neighbouring shops tremble. And then in presence of this triumphal procession, the sight of which they must needs endure twice a day, the Baudus' hearts broke. The father half fainted away, asking himself where this continual stream of goods could go to; whilst the mother, sickening at thought of her daughter's torture, continued gazing blankly into the street, her eyes blurred by big tears.
[CHAPTER IX.]
It was on a Monday, the 14th of March, that The Ladies' Paradise inaugurated its new buildings by a great exhibition of summer novelties, which was to last three days. Outside, a sharp north wind was blowing and the passers-by, surprised by this return of winter, hurried along buttoning up their overcoats. In the neighbouring shops, however, all was fermentation; and against the windows one could see the pale faces of the petty tradesmen, counting the first carriages which stopped before the new grand entrance in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin. This doorway, lofty and deep like a church porch, and surmounted by an emblematical group of Industry and Commerce hand-in-hand amidst a variety of symbols—was sheltered by a vast glazed marquise, the fresh gilding of which seemed to light up the pavement with a ray of sunshine. To the right and left the shop fronts, of a blinding whiteness, stretched along the Rue Monsigny and the Rue de la Michodière, occupying the whole block, except on the Rue du Dix-Décembre side, where the Crédit Immobilier intended to build. And along these barrack-like frontages, the petty tradesmen, whenever they raised their heads, could see the piles of goods through the large plate-glass windows which, from the ground floor to the second storey, opened the house to the light of day. And this enormous cube, this colossal bazaar which concealed the sky from them, seemed in some degree the cause of the cold which made them shiver behind their frozen counters.
As early as six o'clock, Mouret was on the spot, giving his final orders. In the centre, starting from the grand entrance, a large gallery ran from end to end, flanked right and left by two narrower ones, the Monsigny Gallery and the Michodière Gallery. Glass roofings covered the court-yards turned into huge halls, iron staircases ascended from the ground floor, on both upper floors iron bridges were thrown from one end to the other of the establishment. The architect, who happened to be a young man of talent, with modern ideas, had only used stone for the basement and corner work, employing iron for all the rest of the huge carcass—columns upholding all the assemblage of beams and joists. The vaulting of the ceilings, like the partitions, was of brick. Space had been gained everywhere; light and air entered freely, and the public circulated with the greatest ease under the bold flights of the far-stretching girders. It was the cathedral of modern commerce, light but strong, the very thing for a nation of customers. Below, in the central gallery, after the door bargains, came the cravat, glove, and silk departments; the Monsigny Gallery was occupied by the linen and Rouen goods; and the Michodière Gallery by the mercery, hosiery, drapery, and woollens. Then, on the first floor came the mantle, under-linen, shawl, lace, and various new departments, whilst the bedding, the carpets, the furnishing materials, all the cumbersome articles difficult to handle, had been relegated to the second floor. In all there were now thirty-nine departments with eighteen hundred employees, two hundred of whom were women. Quite a little world abode there, amidst the sonorous life of the high metallic naves.
Mouret's unique passion was to conquer woman. He wished her to be queen in his house, and had built this temple that he might there hold her completely at his mercy. His sole aim was to intoxicate her with gallant attentions, traffic on her desires, profit by her fever. Night and day he racked his brain to invent fresh attractions. He had already introduced two velvet-padded lifts, in order to spare delicate ladies the trouble of climbing the stairs to the upper floors. Then, too, he had just opened a bar where the customers could find gratuitous light refreshments, syrups and biscuits, and a reading-room, a monumental gallery decorated with excessive luxury, in which he had even ventured on an exhibition of pictures. But his deepest scheme was to conquer the mother through her child, when unable to do so through her own coquetry; and to attain this object there was no means that he neglected. He speculated on every sentiment, created special departments for little boys and girls, and waylaid the passing mothers with distributions of chromo-lithographs and air-balls for the children. There was real genius in his idea of presenting each buyer with a red air-ball made of fine gutta-percha and bearing in large letters the name of the establishment. Held by a string it floated in the air and sailed along every street like a living advertisement.
But the greatest power of all was the advertising. Mouret now spent three hundred thousand francs a year in catalogues, advertisements, and bills.[1] For his summer sale he had launched forth two hundred thousand catalogues, fifty thousand of which went abroad, translated into every language. He now had them illustrated with engravings, and embellished with samples, gummed to the leaves. There was an overflowing display; the name of The Ladies' Paradise met the eye all over the world, it invaded the walls and hoardings, the newspapers, and even the curtains of the theatres. He claimed that woman was powerless against advertising, that she was bound to be attracted by uproar. Analyzing her moreover like a great moralist he laid still more enticing traps for her. Thus he had discovered that she could not resist a bargain, that she bought without necessity whenever she thought she saw a thing cheap, and on this observation he based his system of reductions, progressively lowering the price of unsold articles, and preferring to sell them at a loss rather than keep them by him, given his principle of constantly renewing his goods. And he had penetrated still further into the heart of woman, and had just planned the system of "returns", a masterpiece of Jesuitical seduction. "Take whatever you like, madame; you can return it if you find you don't like it." And the woman who hesitated, herein found a last excuse, the possibility of repairing an act of folly were it deemed too extravagant: she took the article with an easy conscience. And now the returns and reduction of prices system formed part of the everyday working of the new style of business.
[1] After all, this is only £12,000 or about a quarter of the amount which a single English firm of soap-manufacturers spends in advertising every year.
But where Mouret revealed himself as an unrivalled master was in the interior arrangement of his shops. He laid it down as a law that not a corner of The Ladies' Paradise ought to remain deserted; he required a noise, a crowd, evidence of life everywhere; for life, said he, attracts life, increases and multiplies it. And this principle he applied in a variety of ways. In the first place, there ought always to be a crush at the entrance, so that the people in the street should mistake it for a riot; and he obtained this crush by placing a lot of bargains at the doors, shelves and baskets overflowing with low-priced articles; and so the common people crowded there, stopping up the doorway and making the shop look as if it were crammed with customers, when it was often only half full. Then, in the galleries, he found a means of concealing the departments where business occasionally became slack; for instance, he surrounded the shawl department in summer, and the printed calico department in winter, with other busy departments, steeping them in continual uproar. It was he alone who had thought of reserving the second-floor for the carpet and furniture galleries; for customers were less numerous in such departments which if placed on the ground floor would have often presented a chilly void. If he could only have managed it, he would have let the street run through his shop.