There was a vast development of bright, fresh polychromatic architecture enriched with gilding, symbolical of the tumult and sparkle of the business inside, and attracting attention like a gigantic window-display flaming with the liveliest colours. In order not to bedim the show of goods, the ground-floor decoration was of a sober description; the base of sea-green marble; the corner piers and bearing pillars covered with black marble, the severity of which was brightened by gilded modillions; and all the rest was plate-glass, in iron sashes, nothing but glass, which seemed to throw the depths of the halls and galleries open to the full light of day. However, as the floors ascended, the hues became brighter. The frieze above the ground-floor was formed of a series of mosaics, a garland of red and blue flowers, alternating with marble slabs on which was cut an infinity of names of goods, encircling the colossus. Then the base of the first floor, of enamelled brickwork, supported large windows, above which came another frieze formed of gilded escutcheons emblazoned with the arms of the chief towns of France, and designs in terra-cotta, in whose enamel one again found the light coloured tints of the base. Then, right at the top, the entablature blossomed forth like an ardent florescence of the entire façade, mosaics and faience reappeared with yet warmer colourings, the zinc of the eaves was cut and gilded, while along the acroteria ran a nation of statues, emblematical of the great industrial and manufacturing cities, their delicate silhouettes profiled against the sky. The spectators were especially astonished by the central entrance which was also decorated with a profusion of mosaics, faience, and terra-cotta, and surmounted by a freshly gilt allegorical group, which glittered in the sun: Woman garmented and kissed by a flight of laughing cupids.
About two o'clock a special squad of police was obliged to make the crowd move on, and to regulate the waiting carriages. The palace was built, the temple raised to the extravagant folly of fashion. It dominated everything, covering a whole district with its shadows. The scar left on its flank by the demolition of Bourras's hovel had already been so skilfully cicatrized that it would now have been impossible to find the former place of that old wart.
In their superb isolation the four frontages now ran along the four streets, without a break. Since Baudu's retirement into a home, The Old Elbeuf, on the other side of the way, had been closed, walled up like a tomb, behind the shutters that were never now taken down; little by little cab-wheels had splashed them, while posters—a rising tide of advertisements, which seemed like the last shovelful of earth thrown over old-fashioned commerce—covered them up and pasted them together; and, in the middle of this dead frontage, dirtied by the mud from the street, and streaked with tatters of Parisian puffery, a huge clean yellow poster, announcing in letters two feet high the great sale at The Ladies' Paradise, was displayed like a flag planted on a conquered empire.
It was as if the colossus, after each enlargement, full of shame and repugnance for the dingy district in which it had modestly sprung up, and which it had subsequently slaughtered, had just turned its back to it, leaving the mud of the narrow streets behind, and presenting its upstart face to the noisy, sunny thoroughfares of new Paris. As now represented in the engravings of its advertisements, it had grown bigger and bigger, like the ogre of the legend, whose shoulders threatened to pierce the clouds. In the first place, in the foreground of one engraving, were the Rue du Dix-Décembre, the Rue de la Michodière, and the Rue Monsigny, filled with little black figures, and endowed with wondrous breadth, as if to make room for the customers of the whole world. Then came a bird's eye view of the buildings themselves, of exaggerated immensity, with the roofs of the covered galleries, the glazed courtyards in which the halls could be divined, all the infinitude of that lake of glass and zinc shining in the sun. Beyond, stretched Paris, but a Paris dwarfed, eaten away by the monster: the houses, of cottage-like humbleness in the immediate neighbourhood, faded into a cloud of indistinct chimneys; the public buildings seemed to melt into nothingness, on the left two dashes sufficed for Notre-Dame, to the right a circumflex accent represented the Invalides, in the background the Panthéon looked no larger than a lentil. The horizon crumbled into powder, became no more than a contemptible frame-work extending past the heights of Châtillon, out into the open country, whose blurred expanses indicated how far extended the state of slavery.
Ever since the morning the crowd had been increasing. No establishment had ever yet stirred up the city with such an uproarious profusion of advertisements. The Ladies' Paradise now spent nearly six hundred thousand francs a year in posters, advertisements, and appeals of all sorts; four hundred thousand catalogues were sent away, more than a hundred thousand francs' worth of material was cut up for patterns. It was a complete invasion of the newspapers, the walls, and the ears of the public, as if some monstrous brass trumpet were being blown incessantly, carrying the tumult of the great sales to the four corners of the earth. And, for the future, this façade, before which people were now crowding, became a living advertisement with its motley, gilded magnificence, its windows large enough for the display of the entire poem of woman's dress and its profusion of inscriptions painted, engraved and cut in stone, from the marble slabs of the ground-floor to the sheets of iron rounded off in semicircles above the roofs and unfolding gilded streamers on which the name of the house could be read in letters bright as the sun, against the azure blue of the sky.
Trophies and flags had been added in honour of the inauguration; each storey was gay with banners and standards bearing the arms of the principal towns of France; and right at the top, the flags of foreign nations, run up on masts, fluttered in the breeze. Down below the show of white goods in the windows flashed with blinding intensity. There was nothing but white; on the left a complete trousseau and a mountain of sheets, on the right some curtains draped to imitate a chapel, and numerous pyramids of handkerchiefs fatigued the eyes; while between the hung goods at the door—pieces of cotton, calico, and muslin, falling and spreading out like snow from a mountain summit—were placed some dressed prints, sheets of bluish cardboard, on which a young bride and a lady in ball costume, both life-size and attired in real lace and silk, smiled with their coloured faces. A group of idlers was constantly forming there, and desire arose from the admiration of the throng.
Moreover the curiosity around The Ladies' Paradise was increased by a catastrophe of which all Paris was talking, the burning down of The Four Seasons, the big establishment which Bouthemont had opened near the Opera-house, hardly three weeks before. The newspapers were full of details—the fire breaking out through an explosion of gas during the night, the hurried flight of the frightened saleswomen in their night-dresses, and the heroic conduct of Bouthemont, who had carried five of them out on his shoulders. The enormous losses were covered by insurances and people had already begun to shrug their shoulders, saying what a splendid advertisement it was. But for the time being attention again flowed back to The Ladies' Paradise, excited by all the stories which were flying about, occupied to a wonderful extent by these colossal establishments which by their importance were taking up such a large place in public life. How wonderfully lucky that Mouret was! Paris saluted her star, and crowded to see him still standing erect since the very flames now undertook to sweep all competition from before him; and the profits of his season were already being calculated, people had begun to estimate the increase of custom which would be brought to his doors by the forced closing of the rival house. For a moment he had been anxious, troubled at feeling a jealous woman against him, that Madame Desforges to whom he owed some part of his fortune. Baron Hartmann's financial dilettantism in putting money into both concerns, annoyed him also. Then he was above all exasperated at having missed a genial idea which had occurred to Bouthemont, who had prevailed on the vicar of the Madeleine to bless his establishment, followed by all his clergy; an astonishing ceremony, a religious pomp paraded from the silk department to the glove department, and so on throughout the building. True, this ceremony had not prevented everything from being destroyed, but it had done as much good as a million francs worth of advertisements, so great an impression had it produced on the fashionable world. From that day, Mouret dreamed of securing the services of the archbishop.
The clock over the door was striking three, and the afternoon crush had commenced, nearly a hundred thousand customers struggling in the various galleries and halls. Outside, the vehicles were stationed from one to the other end of the Rue du Dix-Décembre, and over against the Opera-house another compact mass of conveyances occupied the cul-de-sac where the future Avenue de l'Opéra was to commence. Public cabs mixed with private broughams, the drivers waiting about the wheels and the horses neighing and shaking their curb-chains which sparkled in the sun. The lines were incessantly reforming amidst the calls of the messengers and the pushing of the animals, which closed in of their own accord, whilst fresh vehicles kept on arriving and taking their places with the rest. The pedestrians flew on to the refuges in frightened bands, the foot pavements appeared black with people in the receding perspective of the broad straight thoroughfare. And a clamour rose up between the white houses, a mighty caressing breath swept along, as though Paris were opening her soul.
Madame de Boves, accompanied by her daughter Blanche and Madame Guibal, was standing at a window, looking at a display of costumes composed of made-up skirts with the necessary material for bodices.
"Oh! do look," said she, "at those print costumes at nineteen francs fifteen sous!"