"Dear me! yes, I wanted to have a look round. It's better to see for one's self, isn't it? Oh! we are still good friends with Monsieur Mouret, though he is said to be furious since I interested myself in that rival establishment. Personally, there is only one thing I cannot forgive him, and that is, to have urged on the marriage of my protégée, Mademoiselle de Fontenailles, with that Joseph——"
"What! it's done?" interrupted Madame de Boves. "What a horror!"
"Yes, my dear, and solely to annoy us. I know him; he wished to intimate that the daughters of our great families are only fit to marry his shop messengers."
She was getting quite animated. They had all four remained on the pavement, amidst the crush at the entrance. Little by little, however, they were caught by the stream and only had to yield to the current to pass the door without being conscious of it, talking louder the while in order to make themselves heard. They were now asking each other about Madame Marty; it was said that poor Monsieur Marty, after some violent scenes at home, had gone quite mad, believing himself endowed with unexhaustible wealth. He was ever diving into the treasures of the earth, exhausting mines of gold and loading tumbrils with diamonds and precious stones.
"Poor old fellow!" said Madame Guibal, "he who was always so shabby, with his teacher's humility! And the wife?"
"She's ruining an uncle, now," replied Henriette, "a worthy old man who has gone to live with her, since losing his wife. But she must be here, we shall see her."
Surprise, however, made the ladies stop short. Before them extended "the largest shops in the world," as the advertisements said. The grand central gallery now ran from end to end, opening on to both the Rue du Dix-Décembre and the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin; whilst to the right and the left, similar to the aisles of a church, the narrower Monsigny and Michodière Galleries, extended along the two side streets without a break. Here and there the halls formed open spaces amidst the metallic framework of the spiral staircases and hanging bridges. The inside arrangements had been all changed: the bargains were now placed on the Rue du Dix-Décembre side, the silk department was in the centre, the glove department occupied the Saint-Augustin Hall at the far end; and, from the new grand vestibule, you beheld, on looking up, the bedding department which had been moved from one to the other end of the second floor. The number of departments now amounted to the enormous total of fifty; several, quite fresh, were being inaugurated that very day; others, which had become too important, had simply been divided, in order to facilitate the sales; and, owing to the continual increase of business, the staff had been increased to three thousand and forty-five employees for the new season.
What caused the ladies to stop was the prodigious spectacle presented by the grand exhibition of white goods. In the first place, there was the vestibule, a hall with bright mirrors, and paved with mosaics, where the low-priced goods detained the voracious crowd. Then the galleries opened displaying a glittering blaze of white, a borealistic vista, a country of snow, with endless steppes hung with ermine, and an accumulation of glaciers shimmering in the sun. You here again found the whiteness of the show windows, but vivified, and burning from one end of the enormous building to the other with the white flame of a fire in full swing. There was nothing but white goods, all the white articles from each department, a riot of white, a white constellation whose fixed radiance was at first blinding, so that details could not be distinguished. However, the eye soon became accustomed to this unique whiteness; to the left, in the Monsigny Gallery, white promontories of cotton and calico jutted out, with white rocks formed of sheets, napkins, and handkerchiefs; whilst to the right, in the Michodière Gallery, occupied by the mercery, the hosiery, and the woollen goods, were erections of mother of pearl buttons, a grand decoration composed of white socks and one whole room covered with white swanskin illumined by a stream of light from the distance. But the greatest radiance of this nucleus of light came from the central gallery, from amidst the ribbons and the neckerchiefs, the gloves and the silks. The counters disappeared beneath the whiteness of the silks, the ribbons, the gloves and the neckerchiefs.
Round the iron columns climbed "puffings" of white muslin, secured now and again with white silk handkerchiefs. The staircases were decorated with white draperies, quiltings and dimities alternating along the balustrades and encircling the halls as high as the second storey; and all this ascending whiteness assumed wings, hurried off and wandered away, like a flight of swans. And more white hung from the arches, a fall of down, a sheet of large snowy flakes; white counterpanes, white coverlets hovered in the air, like banners in a church; long jets of guipure lace hung across, suggestive of swarms of white motionless butterflies; other laces fluttered on all sides, floating like gossamer in a summer sky, filling the air with their white breath. And the marvel, the altar of this religion of white was a tent formed of white curtains, which hung from the glazed roof above the silk counter, in the great hall. The muslin, the gauze, the art-guipures flowed in light ripples, whilst very richly embroidered tulles, and pieces of oriental silver-worked silk served as a background to this giant decoration, which partook both of the tabernacle and the alcove. It was like a broad white bed, awaiting with its virginal immensity, as in the legend, the coming of the white princess, she who was to appear some day, all powerful in her white bridal veil.
"Oh! extraordinary!" repeated the ladies. "Wonderful!"