Free The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) by Emile Zola, Brian Nelson

manners, no art! And suddenly he cited Colomban as an example of a good tradesman: of course, he, Colomban, brought up in the old school, knew the slow, sure way one learned the real subtleties, the real tricks of the trade. The art was not to sell a lot, but to sell at a high price. And Colomban could say, too, how he had been treated, how he had become a member of the family, nursed when he was ill, his things laundered and mended, looked after paternally—loved, in fact!
    ‘Of course!’ Colomban repeated after every statement shouted out by his employer.
    ‘You’re the last, my boy,’ declared Baudu with emotion. ‘After you there’ll be none left… You’re my only consolation; if that mad scrambling over there is what they call business nowadays, I give up; I’d rather clear out.’
    Geneviève, her head on one side, as if her thick black hair was too heavy for her pale forehead, was watching the smiling shop assistant; and in her look there was a suspicion, a desire to see if Colomban would not blush at all this praise. But, as if he wasused to the old tradesman’s act, he maintained his quiet manner, his bland air, and the wily pucker on his lips.
    However, Baudu went on, louder than ever, accusing the bazaar opposite, those savages who were massacring each other in their struggle for existence, destroying all family ties in the process. He quoted as an example their neighbours in the country, the Lhommes, mother, father, and son, all three now employed in that infernal shop, people with no home life, always out, only eating at home on Sundays, nothing but a hotel and restaurant life! To be sure, his own dining-room was not large, and it could have done with a bit more light and air; but at least he had lived his life there, surrounded by the love of his family. As he spoke his eyes travelled round the little room; and he began to tremble at the idea, which he refused to acknowledge, that the savages might one day, if they succeeded in killing his business, dislodge him from this niche where, with his wife and daughter by his side, he felt so comfortable. In spite of the assurance with which he foretold the final crash, in his heart he was terrified; he really did feel that the neighbourhood was being gradually overrun and devoured.
    ‘I don’t want to put you off,’ he resumed, trying to be calm. ‘If it’s in your interest to get a job there, I’ll be the first to say: “Go.”’
    ‘I’m sure you will, Uncle,’ murmured Denise, bewildered; all this emotion made her want more and more to be at the Ladies’ Paradise.
    He had put his elbows on the table, and was staring at her so hard that she felt quite uncomfortable.
    ‘Look, you’ve been in the trade, do you think it’s right that a simple draper’s shop should start selling everything under the sun? In the old days, when trade was trade, drapery meant materials, and nothing else. Nowadays their only aim is to expand their business at the expense of their neighbours and to eat everything up … That’s what the neighbourhood’s complaining about, the little shops are beginning to suffer terribly. That man Mouret is ruining them … Bédoré and his sister, who keep the hosiery shop in the Rue Gaillon, have already lost half their customers. At Mademoiselle Tatin’s, the lingerie shop in the Passage Choiseul, they’ve been forced to lower their prices inorder to compete. And the effect of this scourge, this plague, is felt as far as the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, where I venture to say that the Vanpouille brothers, the furriers, can’t hold out. Drapers who sell furs, it’s absurd! Another of Mouret’s ideas!’
    ‘And the gloves,’ said Madame Baudu, ‘isn’t it incredible? He’s had the nerve to create a glove department! Yesterday, as I was going along the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, Quinette was standing at his door looking so depressed that I didn’t dare ask him if business was good.’
    ‘And umbrellas,’ Baudu went on.