"Why, it's superb!" said Mouret, enchanted. "My good Lhomme, put it down there, and take a rest, for you look quite done up. I'll have the money taken to the central cashier's office. Yes, yes, put it all on my table, I want to see the heap."
He was full of a childish gaiety. The cashier and his son rid themselves of their burdens. The leather bag gave out a clear, golden ring, two of the other bags in bursting let a torrent of silver and copper escape, whilst from the note-case peeped the corners of bank notes. One end of the large table was entirely covered; it was like the tumbling of a fortune picked up in ten hours.
When Lhomme and Albert had retired, mopping their faces, Mouret remained for a moment motionless, dreamy, his eyes fixed on the money. But on raising his head, he perceived Denise, who had drawn back. Then he began to smile again, forced her to come forward, and finished by saying that he would make her a present of all the money she could take in her hand; and there was a sort of love bargain beneath his playfulness.
"Look! out of the bag. I bet it would be less than a thousand francs, your hand is so small!"
But she drew back again. He loved her, then? Suddenly she understood everything; she felt the growing flame of desire with which he had enveloped her ever since her return to the shop. What overcame her more than anything else was to feel her heart beating violently. Why did he wound her with the offer of all that money, when she was overflowing with gratitude? He was stepping nearer to her still, continuing to joke, when, to his great annoyance, Bourdoncle came in under the pretence of informing him of the enormous number of entries—no fewer than seventy thousand customers had entered The Ladies' Paradise that day. And thereupon Denise hastened off, after again expressing her thanks.
[CHAPTER X.]
On the first Sunday in August, the stock-taking, which had to be finished by the evening, took place. Early in the morning all the employees were at their posts, as on a week-day, and the work began with closed doors, not a customer was admitted.
Denise, however, had not come down with the other young ladies at eight o'clock. Confined to her room since the previous Thursday through having sprained her ankle whilst on her way up to the work-rooms, she was now much better; but, as Madame Aurélie treated her indulgently, she did not hurry down. Still after a deal of trouble she managed to put her boots on, having resolved that she would show herself in the department. The young ladies' bed-rooms now occupied the entire fifth storey of the new buildings in the Rue Monsigny; there were sixty of them, on either side of a corridor, and they were much more comfortable than formerly, although still furnished simply with an iron bedstead, large wardrobe, and little mahogany toilet-table. The private life of the saleswomen was now becoming more refined and elegant; they displayed a taste for scented soap and fine linen, quite a natural ascent towards middle-class ways as their positions improved, although high words and banging doors were still sometimes heard amidst the hotel-like gust that carried them away, morning and evening. Denise, being second-hand in her department, had one of the largest rooms with two attic windows looking into the street. Being now in much better circumstances she indulged in sundry little luxuries, a red eider-down bed quilt, covered with guipure, a small carpet in front of her wardrobe, a couple of blue-glass vases containing a few fading roses on her toilet table.
When she had succeeded in getting her boots on she tried to walk across the room; but was obliged to lean against the furniture, being still rather lame. However that would soon come right again, she thought. At the same time, she had been quite right in refusing an invitation to dine at uncle Baudu's that evening, and in asking her aunt to take Pépé out for a walk, for she had placed him with Madame Gras again. Jean, who had been to see her on the previous day, was also to dine at his uncle's. She was still slowly trying to walk, resolving, however, to go to bed early, in order to rest her ankle, when Madame Cabin, the housekeeper, knocked and gave her a letter, with an air of mystery.