Denise had involuntarily raised her eyes towards Madame Hédouin's portrait; that lady so sensible and so beautiful, whose blood, they said, had brought good fortune to the house. Mouret followed the glance with a start, for he thought he could hear his dead wife pronounce that phrase, one of her own sayings which he recognised. And it was like a resurrection, he discovered in Denise the good sense, the mental equilibrium of her whom he had lost, even down to her gentle voice, sparing of useless words. He was struck by the resemblance, and it rendered him sadder still.
"You know I am yours," he murmured in conclusion. "Do what you like with me."
Then she resumed gaily: "That is right, sir. The advice of a woman, however humble she may be, is always worth listening to when she has a little intelligence. If you put yourself in my hands, you may be sure I'll make nothing but a good man of you!"
She smiled, with that simple unassuming air which possessed such a charm. He also smiled in a feeble way, and escorted her as far as the door, as he might have done with a lady.
The next day Denise was appointed first-hand. The dress and costume department was divided; the management creating especially for her benefit a children's costume department, which was installed near that of the cloaks and mantles. Ever since her son's dismissal, Madame Aurélie had been trembling, for she found the directors cooling towards her, and also observed the young woman's power increasing daily. Would they not shortly take advantage of some pretext or other and sacrifice her in favour of Denise? Her imperial countenance, puffed up with fat, seemed to have grown thinner from the shame which now stained the Lhomme dynasty; and she made a show of going away every evening on her husband's arm, for they had been brought nearer together by misfortune, and vaguely felt that the evil came from the disorder of their home; whilst the poor old man, more affected than her, a prey as he was to a sickly fear that he might himself be suspected of robbery, would count the receipts twice over with a great deal of noise, performing miracles the while with his injured arm. Accordingly when Madame Aurélie saw Denise appointed first-hand of the children's costume department, she experienced such delight that she paraded the most affectionate feeling towards her, being indeed really grateful to her for not having taken her own place. And so she overwhelmed her with attentions, treating her as an equal, often going to talk to her in the neighbouring department, with a stately air, like a queen-mother paying a visit to a young queen.
In fact, Denise was now at the summit. Her appointment as first-hand had destroyed the last resistance. If some still babbled, from that itching of the tongue which infects every assemblage of men and women, all nevertheless bowed very low before her face. Marguerite, now second-hand, was full of praise for her. Clara, herself, inspired with a secret respect for this good fortune, which she felt herself incapable of achieving, bowed her head. But Denise's victory was still more complete over the gentlemen; over Jouve, who now almost bent double whenever he addressed her; over Hutin, seized with anxiety on feeling his position giving way under him; and over Bourdoncle, at last reduced to powerlessness. When the latter saw her come out of the director's office, smiling, with her quiet air; and when on the morrow Mouret had insisted on the board creating the new department, he had yielded, vanquished by his terror of woman. He had always thus given in to Mouret, recognising him to be the master, notwithstanding his escapades and idiotic love affairs. This time the woman had proved the stronger, and he was expecting to be swept away by the disaster.
Yet Denise bore her triumph in a quiet, charming manner, touched by these marks of consideration, and desirous of interpreting them as sympathy for the miseries of her débuts and the final success of her patient courage. Thus it was with laughing joy that she received the slightest tokens of friendship, and this caused her to be really loved by some: she was so kind, sympathetic, and full of affection. The only person for whom she still showed an invincible repugnance was Clara, for she had learned that this girl had amused herself by leading Colomban astray, even as she had said she would do, for a joke; and he, carried away by his passion, was now becoming more dissipated every day, whilst poor Geneviève was slowly dying. The affair was talked of at The Ladies' Paradise, and thought very droll there.
But this trouble, the only one she had outside, did not in any way change Denise's equable temper. It was especially in her department that she was seen at her best, in the midst of her little world of babies of all ages. She was passionately fond of children, and could not have been placed in a better position. Sometimes there were fully fifty little girls and as many boys there, quite a turbulent school, all agog with the desires of budding coquetry. The mothers completely lost their heads. She, conciliatory and smiling, had the little ones placed in a row, on chairs; and when among the number there happened to be a rosy-cheeked little angel, whose pretty face tempted her, she would insist on serving her herself, bringing the dress and trying it on the child's dimpled shoulders, with the tender precaution of an elder sister. Bursts of clear laughter rang out, faint cries of ecstasy were raised amidst the scolding voices of the mothers. Sometimes a little girl, nine or ten years old, already a grand lady in her own estimation, would when trying on a cloth jacket stand studying it before a glass, now and again turning round with an absorbed air, while her eyes sparkled with the desire to please. The counters were littered with unpacked goods, dresses in pink and blue Eastern cotton for children of from one to five years old; sailor costumes in blue "zephyr" with plaited skirts and blouses trimmed with cambric; Louis XV. costumes, mantles, jackets; a medley of little garments, stiff in their infantile grace, something like the contents of the cloak-room of a band of big dolls, taken out of the wardrobes and given over to pillage. Denise always had a few sweets in her pockets to appease the tears of some youngster in despair at not being able to carry off a pair of red breeches; and she lived there amongst these little ones as in her own family, feeling quite young again herself from the contact of all the innocence and freshness incessantly renewed around her skirts.
She now at times had long friendly talks with Mouret. Whenever she went to the office to take orders or furnish information, he would keep her chatting, enjoying the sound of her voice. It was what she laughingly called "making a good man of him." In her prudent, cautious Norman brain there sprang up all sorts of projects, ideas about the new style of business at which she had already ventured to hint when at Robineau's, and some of which she had expressed on the evening of their charming walk in the Tuileries gardens. She could not be occupied in any matter or see any work going on, without being moved by a desire to introduce some improvement into the mechanism. Thus, since her entry into The Ladies' Paradise, she had been particularly pained by the precarious position of the employees; the sudden dismissals shocked her, she thought them iniquitous and stupid, hurtful to all, to the house as much as the staff. Her former sufferings were still fresh in her mind, and her heart filled with pity every time she saw a new-comer with feet bruised and eyes dim with tears, dragging her misery along in her silk dress, amidst the spiteful persecution of the older hands. This dog's life made the best of them bad; and the sad work of destruction commenced: they were all devoured by the business before the age of forty, often disappearing, falling into unknown depths, a great many dying in harness, some of consumption and exhaustion, others of fatigue and bad air, whilst a few were thrown on the street, and the happiest married and buried themselves in some little provincial shop. Was this frightful consumption of human life for which the big shops were responsible every year, right and just? And she pleaded the cause of the colossal machine's gearing not from sentimental reasons, but by arguments appealing to the very interests of the employers. To make a machine solid and strong, it is necessary to use good iron; if the iron breaks or is broken, a stoppage of work, repeated expenses of restarting, quite a loss of power, ensue.
Sometimes she would become quite animated, and picture an immense ideal bazaar, the phalansterium of modern commerce, in which each would secure his exact share of profits, according to his merits, with a certainty of the future, assured to him by contract. Mouret would make merry over this, notwithstanding his fever. He accused her of socialism, embarrassed her by pointing out the difficulties of carrying out these schemes; for she spoke in the simplicity of her soul, bravely trusting in the future, whenever she perceived a dangerous gap underlying her tender-hearted plans. Nevertheless he was shaken, captivated by her young voice which still quivered at the thought of the hardships she had undergone, and was so instinct with earnestness as she pointed out reforms which would tend to consolidate the house; and even while joking with her he listened. Thus the salesmen's positions were gradually improved, the wholesale dismissals were replaced by a system of holidays granted during the dead seasons, and it was decided to found a sort of benefit club which would protect the employees against slack times and ensure them a pension. It was the embryo of the vast trades' unions of the twentieth century.