Denise noticed that Bourras was pre-occupied during the next fortnight. He wandered about in a feverish manner, measuring the walls of his house, surveying it from the middle of the street with the air of an architect. Then one morning some workmen arrived. This was the decisive blow. He had conceived the bold idea of beating The Ladies' Paradise on its own ground by making certain concessions to modern luxury. Customers, who had often reproached him for the darkness of his shop, would certainly come back to it again, when they saw it all bright and new. In the first place, the workmen stopped up the crevices and whitewashed the frontage, then they painted the woodwork a light green, and even carried the splendour so far as to gild the sign-board. A sum of three thousand francs, held in reserve by Bourras as a last resource, was swallowed up in this way. Moreover, the whole neighbourhood was revolutionized by it all, people came to look at him losing his head amid all these riches, and no longer able to find the things he was accustomed to. He did not seem to be at home in that bright frame, that tender setting; he looked quite scared, with his long beard and white hair. On the opposite side of the street passers-by lingered in astonishment at seeing him waving his arms about while he carved his handles. And he was in a state of fever, perpetually afraid of dirtying his shop, more and more at sea amidst this luxury which he did not at all understand. Meantime, as at Robineau's, so at Bourras's was the campaign against The Ladies' Paradise carried on. Bourras had just brought out his invention, the automatic umbrella, which later on was to become popular. But The Paradise people immediately improved on the invention, and a struggle of prices began. Bourras had an article at one franc and nineteen sous, in zanella, with a steel mounting, an everlasting article said the ticket. But he was especially anxious to vanquish his competitors with his handles of bamboo, dogwood, olive, myrtle, rattan, indeed every imaginable sort of handle. The Paradise people, less artistic, paid more attention to the material, extolling their alpacas and mohairs, twills and sarcenets. And they came out victorious. Bourras, in despair, repeated that art was done for, that he was reduced to carving his handles for the pleasure of doing so, without any hope of selling them. "It's my fault!" he cried to Denise. "I never ought to have kept a lot of rotten articles, at one franc nineteen sous! That's where these new notions lead one to. I wanted to follow the example of those brigands; so much the better if I'm ruined by it!"