The Ladies' Paradise. Эмиль Золя
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through the doorway which was wide open. And he continued listening to them with one ear, whilst the young man, inflamed by his desire to convince him, went yet deeper into the question, explaining the mechanism of the new style of drapery business. This branch of commerce was now based on a rapid and continual turning over of capital, which it was necessary to convert into goods as often as possible in the same year. For instance, that year his capital, which only amounted to five hundred thousand francs, had been turned over four times, and had thus produced business to the amount of two millions. But this was a mere trifle, which could be increased tenfold, for later on, in certain departments, he certainly hoped to turn the capital over fifteen or twenty times in the course of the twelvemonth.
"You understand, baron, the whole system lies in that. It is very simple, but it had to be found out. We don't need an enormous working capital; the sole effort we have to make is to get rid of the stock we buy as quickly as possible so as to replace it by other stock which each time will make our capital return interest. In this way we can content ourselves with a very small profit; as our general expenses amount to as much as sixteen per cent., and as we seldom make more than twenty per cent. on our goods, there is only a net profit of four per cent. at the utmost; only this will finish by representing millions when we can operate on large quantities of goods incessantly renewed. You follow me, don't you? nothing can be clearer."
The baron again shook his head doubtfully. He who had entertained the boldest schemes and whose daring at the time of the introduction of gas-lighting was still spoken of, remained in the present instance uneasy and obstinate.
"I quite understand," said he; "you sell cheap in order to sell a quantity, and you sell a quantity in order to sell cheap. But you must sell, and I repeat my former question: Whom will you sell to? How do you hope to keep up such a colossal sale?"
A loud exclamation, coming from the drawing-room, interrupted Mouret just as he began to reply. It was Madame Guibal declaring that she would have preferred the flounces of old Alençon simply round the upper skirt of the dress.
"But, my dear," said Madame de Boves, "the upper skirt was covered with it as well. I never saw anything richer."
"Ah, that's a good idea," resumed Madame Desforges, "I've got several yards of Alençon somewhere; I must look them up for a trimming."
Then the voices fell again, sinking into a murmur. Prices were quoted, a feverish desire to buy and bargain stirred all the ladies; they were purchasing lace by the mile.
"Why?" declared Mouret, when he could at last speak, "one can sell what one likes when one knows how to sell! Therein lies our triumph."
And then with his southern enthusiasm, he pictured the new business at work in warm, glowing phrases which brought everything vividly before the eyes. First came the wonderful power resulting from the assemblage of goods, all accumulated on one point and sustaining and facilitating the sale of one another. There was never any stand-still, the article of the season was always on hand; and from counter to counter the customer found herself caught and subjugated, at one buying the material for a gown; at another cotton and trimming, elsewhere a mantle, in fact everything necessary to complete her costume; while in addition there were all the unforeseen purchases, chases, a surrender to a longing for the useless and the pretty. Next he began to sing the praises of the plain figure system. The great revolution in the business sprang from this fortunate inspiration. If the old-fashioned small shops were dying out it was because they could not struggle against the low prices which the tickets guaranteed. Competition now went on under the very eyes of the public; a look in the windows enabled people to contrast the prices of different establishments; and each shop in turn was lowering its rates, contenting itself with the smallest possible profit. There could be no deceit, no long prepared stroke of fortune by selling an article at double its value; there were simply current operations, a regular percentage levied on all goods, and success depended solely on the skilful working of the sales which became the larger from the very circumstance that they were carried on openly and honestly. Was it not altogether an astonishing development? And it was already revolutionizing the markets and transforming Paris, for it was made of woman's flesh and blood.
"I have the women, I don't care a hang for the rest!" exclaimed Mouret, with a brutal frankness born of his passion.
At this cry Baron Hartmann appeared somewhat moved. His smile lost its touch of irony and he glanced at the young man, gradually won over by the confidence he displayed and feeling a growing friendship for him.
"Hush!" he murmured, paternally, "they will hear you."
But the ladies were now all speaking at once, so excited that they did not even listen to each other. Madame de Boves was finishing the description of an evening-dress; a mauve silk tunic, draped and caught up by bows of lace; the bodice cut very low, with similar bows of lace on the shoulders.
"You'll see," said she. "I am having a bodice made like it, with some satin——"
"For my part," interrupted Madame Bourdelais, "I was bent on buying some velvet. Oh! such a bargain!"
Then suddenly Madame Marty asked: "How much did the silk cost?"
And off they started again, all together. Madame Guibal, Henriette, and Blanche were measuring, cutting out, and making up. It was a pillage of material, a ransacking of all the shops, an appetite for luxury seeking satisfaction in toilettes envied and dreamed of—with such happiness at finding themselves in an atmosphere of finery, that they buried themselves in it, as in warm air necessary to their existence.
Mouret had glanced towards the larger drawing-room, and in a few phrases, whispered in the baron's ear, as if he were confiding to him one of those amorous secrets which men sometimes venture to reveal among themselves, he finished explaining the mechanism of modern commerce. And, above all that he had already spoken of, dominating everything else, appeared the exploitation of woman to which everything conduced, the capital incessantly renewed, the system of assembling goods together, the attraction of cheapness and the tranquillizing effect of the marking in plain figures. It was for woman that all the establishments were struggling in wild competition; it was woman whom they were continually catching in the snares of their bargains, after bewildering her with their displays. They had awakened new desires in her flesh; they constituted an immense temptation, before which she fatally succumbed, yielding at first to reasonable purchases of articles needed in the household, then tempted by her coquetry, and finally subjugated and devoured. By increasing their business tenfold and popularizing luxury, they—the drapers—became a terrible instrument of prodigality, ravaging households, and preparing mad freaks of fashion which proved ever more and more costly. And if woman reigned in their shops like a queen, cajoled, flattered and overwhelmed with attentions, she was one on whom her subjects traffic, and who pays for each fresh caprice, with a drop of her blood. From beneath the very gracefulness of his gallantry, Mouret thus allowed the baron to divine the brutality of a Jew who sells woman by the pound weight. He raised a temple to her, caused her to be steeped in incense by a legion of shopmen, prepared the ritual of a new cultus, thinking of nothing but woman and ever seeking to imagine more powerful fascinations. But, behind her back, when he had emptied her purse and shattered her nerves, he remained full of the secret scorn of a man to whom a woman has been foolish enough to yield.
"Once have the women on your side," he whispered to the baron, laughing boldly, "and you could sell the very world."
Now the baron understood. A few sentences had sufficed, he guessed the rest, and such a gallant exploitation inflamed him, stirring up the memories of his past life of pleasure. His eyes twinkled in a knowing way, and he ended by looking with an air of admiration at the inventor of this machine for devouring the female sex. It was really clever. And then he made precisely the same remark as Bourdoncle, a remark suggested to him by his long experience: "They'll make you suffer for it, by and by, you know," said he.
But Mouret shrugged his shoulders with an air of overwhelming disdain. They all belonged to him, they were his property, and he belonged to none of them. After deriving his fortune and his pleasures from them he intended to throw them all over for those who might still find their account in them. It was the rational, cold disdain of a Southerner and a speculator.