The whole family was becoming affected; and after a spell of silence Geneviève ventured to make a remark:
"Our customers know and like us, papa," said she. "We mustn't lose heart. Madame Desforges and Madame de Boves have been to-day, and I am expecting Madame Marty for some flannel."
"For my part," declared Colomban, "I took an order from Madame Bourdelais yesterday. 'Tis true she spoke of an English cheviot marked up opposite ten sous cheaper than ours, and the same stuff, it appears."
"Fancy," murmured Madame Baudu in her weak voice, "we knew that house when it was scarcely larger than a handkerchief! Yes, my dear Denise, when the Deleuzes started it, it had only one window in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin; and such a tiny one, there was barely room for a couple of pieces of print and two or three pieces of calico. There was no room to turn round in the shop, it was so small. At that time The Old Elbeuf, after sixty years' trading, was already such as you see it now. Ah! all has greatly changed, greatly changed!"
She shook her head; the drama of her whole life was expressed in those few words. Born in the old house, she loved each of its damp stones, living only for it and by it; and, formerly so proud of that house, the finest, the best patronised in the neighbourhood, she had had the daily grief of seeing the rival establishment gradually growing in importance, at first disdained, then equal to her own and finally towering above it, and threatening all. This was to her an ever-open sore; she was slowly dying from sheer grief at seeing The Old Elbeuf humiliated; if she still lived it was, as in the case of the shop itself, solely by the effect of impulsion; but she well realised that the death of the shop would be hers as well, and that she would pass away on the day when it should close.
Silence fell. Baudu began softly beating a tattoo with his fingers on the American cloth on the table. He experienced a sort of lassitude, almost a regret at having once more relieved his feelings in this way. The whole family shared his despondency, and with dreamy eyes chewed the cud of his bitter story. They never had had any luck. The children had been brought up and fortune had seemed at hand, when suddenly this competition had arisen and ruined all their hopes. And there was, also, that house at Rambouillet, that country house to which the draper had been dreaming of retiring for the last ten years—a bargain, he had thought when he acquired it, but it had proved a sorry old building, always in want of repairs, and he had let it to people who never paid any rent. His last profits were swallowed up by this place—the only folly he had been guilty of in his honest, upright career as a tradesman stubbornly attached to the old ways.
"Come, come!" he suddenly exclaimed, "we must make room for the others. That's enough of this useless talk!"
It was like an awakening. The gas was hissing in the lifeless, stifling air of the tiny room. They all jumped up, breaking the melancholy silence. Pépé, however, was sleeping so soundly that they decided to lay him on some bales of cloth. Jean had already returned to the street door yawning.
"In short," repeated Baudu to his niece, "you can do as you like. We have explained the matter to you, that's all. You know your own business best."
He gave her an urgent glance, waiting for a decisive answer. But Denise, whom these stories had inspired with a still greater longing to enter The Ladies' Paradise, instead of turning her from it, retained her quiet gentle demeanour beneath which lurked a genuine Norman obstinacy. And she simply replied: "We'll see, uncle."