"And that Kurdestan! Just look, a real Delacroix!"
The crowd was thinning. The bell, at an hour's interval, had already announced the first two dinners; the third was about to be served, and in the departments there now only remained a few lingering customers, whose fever for spending money had made them forget the time. Outside nothing was heard but the rolling of the last cabs breaking upon the husky voice of Paris, a snort like that of a satiated ogre digesting all the linens and cloths, silks and laces with which he had been gorged since the morning. Within, beneath the flaming gas-jets, which, burning in the twilight, had illumined the last supreme efforts of the sale, everything looked like a field of battle still warm with the massacre of the materials. The salesmen, harassed and fatigued, camped amidst the contents of their shelves and counters, which appeared to have been thrown into confusion by the furious blast of a hurricane. It was with difficulty that you traversed the galleries on the ground floor, obstructed by straggling chairs. In the glove department it was necessary to step over a pile of cases heaped up around Mignot; through the woollens there was no means of passing at all, Liénard was dozing on an ocean of bales, in which certain pieces standing on end, though half destroyed, seemed like houses which an overflowing river was carrying away; and, further on, the linen department appeared like a heavy fall of snow, and you stumbled against icebergs of napkins, and walked through flakes of handkerchiefs.
The same disorder prevailed upstairs, in the departments of the first floor: the furs were scattered over the flooring, the mantles were heaped up like the great-coats of soldiers hors-de-combat, the laces and the under-linen, unfolded, crumpled, thrown about everywhere, made you think of a nation of women who had disrobed themselves there; whilst down below, in the depths of the establishment, the delivery department, now in full activity, was still and ever disgorging the parcels which filled it to suffocation and which were carried off by the vans, in a last effort of the overheated machine. But it was on the silk department especially that the customers had flung themselves with the greatest ardour. There they had cleared off everything, there was abundant room to pass, the hall was bare; the whole of the colossal stock of Paris Delight had been cut up and carried away, as if by a swarm of devouring locusts. And in the midst of this great void, Hutin and Favier were running through the counterfoils of their debit-notes, calculating their commission, and still short of breath from the struggle. Favier, it turned out, had made fifteen francs while Hutin had only managed to make thirteen; he had been thoroughly beaten that day, and was enraged at his bad luck. The eyes of both sparkled with the passion for gain. And all around them other shopmen were likewise adding up figures, glowing with the same fever, in the brutal gaiety which follows victorious carnage.
"Well, Bourdoncle!" cried out Mouret, "are you trembling still?"
He had returned to his favourite position against the balustrade, at the top of the stairs, and, in presence of the massacre of stuffs spread out below him, he indulged in a victorious laugh. His fears of the morning, that moment of unpardonable weakness which nobody would ever know of, inspired him with a greater desire to triumph. The battle was definitely won, the small tradespeople of the neighbourhood were done for, and Baron Hartmann was conquered, with his millions and his building sites. Whilst Mouret gazed at the cashiers bending over their ledgers, adding up long columns of figures, whilst he listened to the sound of the gold, falling from their fingers into the metal bowls, he already beheld The Ladies' Paradise growing and growing, enlarging its hall and prolonging its galleries as far as the Rue du Dix-Décembre.
"And now," he resumed, "are you not convinced, Bourdoncle, that the house is really too small? We could have sold twice as much."
Bourdoncle humbled himself, enraptured, moreover, to find himself in the wrong. But another spectacle rendered them grave. As was the custom every evening, Lhomme, the chief sales' cashier, had just collected the receipts from each pay-desk; and after adding them up, he wrote the total amount on a paper which he displayed by hanging it on the iron claw with which the stump of his mutilated arm, severed at the elbow, was provided. And then he took the receipts up to the chief cash office, some in a leather case and some in bags, according to the nature of the specie. On this occasion the gold and silver predominated, and he slowly walked upstairs carrying three enormous bags, which he clasped with his one arm against his breast, holding one of them with his chin in order to prevent it from slipping. His heavy breathing could be heard at a distance as he passed along, staggering and superb, amidst the respectful shopmen.
"How much, Lhomme?" asked Mouret.
"Eighty thousand seven hundred and forty-two francs ten centimes," replied the cashier.
A joyous laugh stirred up The Ladies' Paradise. The amount ran through the establishment. It was the highest figure ever attained in one day's sales by a draper's shop.