The laces shivered, then dropped again, concealing the depths of the shop with an exciting air of mystery; even the lengths of cloth, thick and square, were breathing, exuding a tempting odor, while the overcoats were throwing back their shoulders still more on the dummies, which were acquiring souls, and the huge velvet coat was billowing out, supple and warm, as if on the shoulders of flesh and blood, with a heaving breast and quivering hips.
“Has anyone ever seen such a thing? A draper’s shop which sold everything! Just a big bazaar! And a fine staff too: a lot of dandies who pushed things about like porters at a railway station, who treated the goods and the customers like parcels, dropping their employer or being dropped by him at a moment’s notice. No affection, no manners, no art!”
“You know, they’ll have their revenge.”
“Who will?”
“The women, of course.”
[…] With a shrug of his shoulders [Mouret] seemed to declare that he would throw them all away like empty sacks on the day when they had finished helping him make his fortune.
He would give [his salesmen] a percentage on […] the smallest article they sold: a system which had caused a revolution in the drapery trade by creating among the assistants a struggle for survival from which the employers reaped the benefit. […] [Mouret] unleashed passions, brought different forces into conflict, let the strong devour the weak, and grew fat on this battle of interests.
Of supreme importance […] was the exploitation of Woman. Everything else led up to it, the ceaseless renewal of capital, the system of piling up goods, the low prices which attracted people, the marked prices which reassured them. It was Woman the shops were competing for so fiercely, it was Woman they were continually snaring with their bargains, after dazing her with their displays. They had awoken new desires in her weak flesh.
It was a secret war, in which the girls themselves participated with as much ferocity as [the men] did; and, in their common fatigue, always on their feet as they were, dead tired, differences of sex disappeared and nothing remained but opposing interests inflamed by the fever of business.
Furs littered the floor, ready-made clothes were heaped up like the greatcoats of disabled soldiers, the lace and underclothes, unfolded, crumpled, thrown about everywhere, gave the impression that an army of women had undressed there haphazardly in a wave of desire.
They were all nothing but cogs, caught up in the workings of the machine, surrendering their personalities, merely adding their strength to the mighty common whole of the phalanstery.
It was easy; they said everyone did it in the end because in Paris a woman could not live on what she earned. But her whole being revolted against it; she felt no indignation against others for giving in, but simply an aversion to anything dirty or senseless. She considered life a matter of logic, good conduct, and courage.
The manufacturers could no longer exist without the big shops, for as soon as one of them lost their custom, bankruptcy became inevitable; in short, it was a natural development of business, it was impossible to stop things going the way they ought to, when everyone was working for it whether they liked it or not.
It was true, it was stealing everything from them: from the father, his money; from the mother, her dying child; from the daughter, a husband for whom she had waited ten years.
By this time, there were thirty-nine departments and eighteen hundred employees, of whom two hundred were women. A whole world was springing up amidst the life echoing beneath the high metal naves.
Mouret’s sole passion was the conquest of Woman. He wanted her to be queen in his shop; he had built this temple for her in order to hold her at his mercy. His tactics were to intoxicate her with amorous attentions, to trade on her desires, and to exploit her excitement.
In this final hour, in the midst of the overheated air, the women reigned supreme. They had taken the shop by storm, camping in it as in conquered territory, like an invading horde which had settled among the devastation of the goods. The salesmen, deafened and exhausted, had become their slaves, whom they treated with sovereign tyranny.
She was deeply disturbed: it was strange that a moment ago she had found the strength to repulse a man whom she adored, whereas in the past she had felt such weakness in the presence of that wretched boy, whose love she had only dreamed about!
There were all sorts, hussies as well as decent girls. What is more, their moral standard was rising. In the past they had had nothing but the dregs of the trade, poor distracted girls who just drifted into the drapery business; […] in short, when they wanted to behave properly, they could; […] The worst thing of all was their neutral, ill-defined position, somewhere between shopkeepers and ladies. Plunged into the midst of luxury, often without any previous education, they formed an anonymous class apart.
“I want her, and I’ll get her! And if she escapes me, you’ll see what a place I’ll build to cure myself. It’ll be quite superb! You don’t understand this language, old fellow: otherwise, you’d know that action contains its own reward. To act, to create, to fight against facts, to overcome them or be overcome by them—the whole human health and happiness is made up of that!”
His master’s business faculties must surely founder, he thought, in the midst of such idiotic love: what had been won through women would be lost through this woman.
His obsession pursued him everywhere, and as his power unfolded before him, as the mechanism of the departments and the army of employees passed before his gaze, he felt the indignity of his powerlessness more keenly than ever. Orders from the whole of Europe were flowing in […] and yet she said no, she still said no.
Was it humane or right, this appalling consumption of human flesh every year by the big shops? She would plead the cause of the cogs in this great machine, but with arguments based on the employers’ own interests. When one wants a sound machine, one uses good metal; if the metal breaks or is broken there’s a stoppage of work, repeated expense in getting it started again, a considerable wastage of energy.
She seemed to hear the trampling of a herd of cattle being led to the slaughterhouse, the destruction of the shops of a whole district, the small traders squelching along in their down-at-heel shoes, trailing ruin through the black mud of Paris.
What tortures! Weeping families, old men thrown out into the street, all the poignant dramas associated with ruin! And she could not save anyone; she was even aware that it was a good thing: this manure of distress was necessary to the health of the Paris of the future.
Why should her small hand suddenly become such a powerful part of the monster’s work? And the force which was carrying everything before it was carrying her away too, she whose coming was to be a revenge. Mouret had invented this mechanism for crushing people, and its brutal operation shocked her. He had strewn the neighborhood with ruins, he had despoiled some and killed others; yet she loved him for the grandeur of his achievement.
Faced with Paris devoured and Woman conquered, he experienced a sudden weakness, a failure of his will by which he was being overthrown in his turn as if by a superior force. In his victory he felt an irrational need to be conquered; it was the irrationality of a warrior yielding on the morrow of his conquest to the whim of a child.
“Listen, we were stupid to have that superstition that marriage would ruin us. After all, isn’t it the health necessary to life, its very strength and order?”
