French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – Money – Contents
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Chapter X
THE BATTLE OF MILLIONS
That day, the last of the year, the day of the December settlement, the great hall of the Bourse was already full at half-past twelve o’clock, and the agitation as displayed by voice and gesture was extraordinary. For several weeks the effervescence had been increasing, and now came this last day of struggle with its feverish mob, through whose ranks the growl of conflict already sped, the growl of the decisive battle which was on the point of being fought. Out of doors there was a terrible frost; but the oblique rays of a clear winter’s sun penetrated through the high windows, brightening the whole of one side of the bare hall with its severe-looking pillars and dreary arched roof, the cold aspect of which was increased by the grey allegorical paintings that decorated it. And from end to end of the arcades were the apertures of the air-stoves, disseminating warm breath amid the cold currents of air which were admitted by the grated doors ever and ever on the swing.
‘Bear’ Moser, looking even more anxious and yellow than usual, chanced to run against ‘Bull’ Pillerault, who stood in the hall, arrogantly planted on his long, heron-like legs. ‘You know what they say,’ began Moser. But he had to raise his voice in order to make himself heard amid the growing hubbub of conversation, a regular, monotonous rolling sound, like the clamour of overflowing water running on without cessation. ‘They say that we shall have war in April. With all these formidable armaments matters cannot end otherwise. Germany won’t leave us time to carry out the new Army Law which the Chamber is about to vote. And besides, Bismarck——’
Pillerault burst into a laugh. ‘Oh, go to Jericho with your Bismarck! I myself had five minutes’ conversation with him whilst he was here during the summer. He seemed a very pleasant fellow. If you are not satisfied with the crushing success of the Exhibition, what is it that you want? Why, my dear fellow, Europe is ours!’
Moser shook his head despondently, and again began venting his fears in sentences which were interrupted every second by the jostling of the crowd. The market might seem to be prosperous, but its prosperity was of a plethoric nature, of no more use than the surplus fat of those who are over-stout. Owing to the Exhibition, too many enterprises had sprouted up, people had become infatuated, and they were now reaching the pure madness of gambling. Take Universals, for instance; was it not madness to have run them up to such a price as three thousand and thirty francs?
‘Ah, that’s what you don’t like!’ exclaimed Pillerault; and, drawing nearer and emphasising every syllable, he continued: ‘My dear fellow, we shall close this afternoon at three thousand and sixty. Mark my word, you fellows will all be knocked into a cocked hat.’
Although extremely impressionable, Moser indulged in a slight whistle of defiance. And to emphasise his pretended ease of mind he gazed up into the air, momentarily scrutinising a few women who, leaning over the railing of the gallery near the telegraph office, appeared greatly astonished by the aspect of this hall which they were not allowed to enter. Above them were scutcheons bearing the names of towns, and capitals and columns stretching away in pale perspective, which the infiltration of rain water had here and there stained yellow.
‘What, is it you?’ resumed Moser as, lowering his head, he recognised Salmon, who was standing before him, smiling his deep, eternal smile.
Then, quite disturbed, interpreting this smile as an approval of Pillerault’s predictions, he resumed: ‘Well, if you know anything, out with it. My reasoning is simple. I am with Gundermann because Gundermann, eh? is—Gundermann. Things always end well with him.’
‘But how do you know that Gundermann is playing for a fall?’ asked Pillerault with a sneer.
So scared was Moser by this question that his eyes dilated and started from his head. For months past it had been current gossip at the Bourse that Gundermann was watching Saccard, that he was fostering a fall in Universals pending the moment when, at the approach of some settling day, he would suddenly decide to strangle it by overwhelming the market with the weight of his millions. And so, if that last day of the year threatened to be so warm, it was because everybody believed and repeated that the battle was now at hand, one of those merciless battles in which one of the contending armies is left prostrate on the field, annihilated. However, can one ever be certain of anything in that sphere of falsehood and strategy? The surest things, the things prophesied with the most certainty, became, at the slightest breath, subjects of distressful doubt.
‘You deny the evidence?’ murmured Moser. ‘To be sure, I haven’t seen the orders, and one can assert nothing positively. What do you say, Salmon? Surely Gundermann cannot let go now!’
And he no longer knew what to believe at sight of the silent smile of Salmon, which seemed to him to grow keener and keener until it expressed extreme cunning.
‘Ah!’ he continued, protruding his chin in the direction of a stout man who was passing, ‘if he would only speak, I should have no worry. He sees things clearly.’
It was the celebrated Amadieu, who still lived upon his success in the affair of the Selsis mines, the shares in which he had purchased at fifteen francs apiece in a fit of imbecile obstinacy, selling them later on at a profit of fifteen millions, the whole venture succeeding through pure luck without there having been either foresight or calculation on his part. He was nevertheless venerated for his great financial capacity; a whole court followed him, trying to catch his slightest words, and playing in the sense which they seemed to indicate.
‘Bah!’ exclaimed Pillerault, swayed by his favourite theory of recklessness, ‘the best way, after all, is to follow one’s idea, come what may. There is nothing but luck. A man is either lucky or unlucky. Well, then, he should not reflect. Every time that I have reflected, I have been nearly ruined. Look here! as long as I see that gentleman yonder at his post, looking as though he wants to devour everything, I shall go on buying.’
With a gesture, he had pointed to Saccard, who had just arrived and stationed himself in his usual place, against the pillar of the first arch on the left. In this wise, as was the case with all the managers of important establishments, his whereabouts was known. Clerks and customers knew for certain where to find him as soon as the Bourse opened. Gundermann, alone of all the chief financiers, affected never to set foot in the great hall; he did not even send an official representative thither; but one could divine the presence of an army which obeyed his command, so that, although absent, he nevertheless reigned as sovereign master, exercising authority through the legion of remisiers and brokers who brought his orders, to say nothing of his creatures, who were so numerous that you could never tell who might not be one of his mysterious soldiers. And it was against this indiscernible but ever active army that Saccard in person openly contended.
There was a bench behind him in the corner by the pillar, but he never sat down; treating fatigue with scorn, he remained standing during the two hours which the market lasted. In moments of unconstraint he would at the most rest his elbow against the stone-work, which, up to a height of five or six feet, had been darkened and polished by repeated rubbing; and, indeed, this was a characteristic feature of the dull, bare building, for on all sides, across the doors, along the walls and up the staircases, you perceived the same broad band of shiny dirt, a filthy ‘dado’ as it were, the accumulated sweat of generations of gamblers and thieves. And amidst these black-edged walls Saccard, in broadcloth and dazzling linen, scrupulously elegant, like all the boursiers, displayed the amiable, tranquil expression of a man who has no worry.
‘You know,’ said Moser, lowering his voice, ‘it’s said that he keeps up the rise by large purchases of stock. If the Universal gambles in its own shares, it is lost.’
Pillerault began protesting. ‘More tittle-tattle!’ said he. ‘Can anybody say exactly who sells and who buys? As for Saccard, he’s here for the customers of his Bank, which is only natural. And he’s here, too, on his own private account, for I’ve no doubt he gambles with his own money.’
Moser did not insist. Nobody at the Bourse would, as yet, have ventured to say for certain what terrible game it was that Saccard was playing—the large purchases which he was making on behalf of the Bank under cover of men of straw, Sabatani, Jantrou and others, particularly employees of his establishment. Nothing but a rumour was current; a rumour whispered from ear to ear, contradicted of course, but ever reviving, though it was impossible to prove its accuracy. At first Saccard had only supported the quotations in a prudent way, as soon as possible reselling the stock which he purchased, so as to avoid tying-up too much capital and filling his coffers with shares. But now he was carried away by the struggle, and he had foreseen that it would be necessary to make very large purchases on this occasion if he wished to remain master of the battle-field. His orders were given, and he affected the smiling calmness of ordinary days, in spite both of his uncertainty as to the final result and of the worry which he felt at thus proceeding farther and farther along a path which he knew to be frightfully dangerous.
All at once Moser, who had gone to prowl about behind the celebrated Amadieu, who was conferring with a little man with a hangdog look, came back very much excited, stammering: ‘I have heard—heard with my own ears. He said that Gundermann’s orders to sell exceeded ten millions. Oh, I shall sell, sell! I would sell even my shirt!’
‘Ten millions! the devil!’ murmured Pillerault, in a somewhat shaky voice. ‘Then it is really war to the knife.’
And in the rolling clamour ever on the increase, swollen by all the private chats, there was nothing but talk of this ferocious duel between Gundermann and Saccard. The words were not to be distinguished, but the noise was made up of it; it was that alone that was growling so loud—talk of the calm, logical obstinacy which the one displayed in selling, of the feverish passion for buying of which the other was suspected. The contradictory rumours which were circulating, whispered at first, ended in trumpet-blasts. As soon as some opened their mouths, they shouted to make themselves heard amid the uproar; while others, full of mystery, leaned forward and whispered in the ears of their companions, even when they had nothing to say.
‘Well, all the same, I shall keep to my arrangements and play for a rise!’ resumed Pillerault, already strengthened in his opinions. ‘With such a bright sunshine as this everything is bound to go up.’
‘Come down, you mean,’ retorted Moser with his doleful obstinacy. ‘The rain isn’t far off; I had an attack of my complaint last night.’
However, there was now so much sharpness about the smile of Salmon, who was listening to them in turn, that they both remained distrustful and annoyed. Could that devil of a fellow, so wonderfully smart, so deep, and so discreet, have discovered yet a third way of playing, something quite apart from either bulling or bearing?
Stationed in front of his pillar, Saccard meanwhile beheld the crowd of his flatterers and customers increasing around him. Hands were constantly being stretched out towards him, and he shook them all with the same felicitous readiness, each grasp of his fingers being instinct with a promise of triumph. Some people hastened up, exchanged a word with him, and then went off delighted. Many, however, persisted in staying, clung to him like leeches, quite vain that they should belong to his group. He often expended his amiability on persons whose names he could not remember. Thus he did not recognise Maugendre until Captain Chave had told him who he was. The Captain, now reconciled to his brother-in-law, was urging him to sell, but the pressure of Saccard’s hand sufficed to inflame Maugendre with unlimited hope. Then there was Sédille, the member of the board, the great silk merchant who wanted a minute’s private chat. His business was in jeopardy; his fortune was now so linked to the destinies of the Universal that if the quotations should start falling, as was possible, he would be ruined. And so, extremely anxious, devoured by his passion, having other worries, moreover, in connection with his son Gustave, who was not doing himself much good at Mazaud’s, he felt the need of being reassured and encouraged. He spoke to Saccard, and the latter with a tap on the shoulder sent him off full of faith and ardour.
Then quite a procession set in—Kolb the banker, who had realised long since, but wished to remain friends with fortune; the Marquis de Bohain, who, with the haughty condescension of a grand seigneur, pretended that he frequented the Bourse out of mere curiosity and want of occupation; Huret, too, who had come to see if there were no more pickings to be made, for it was contrary to his nature to remain on bad terms with those who still breasted the current; he was far too supple to be otherwise than friendly with people, so long as they had not been swallowed up.
However, Daigremont put in an appearance, and thereupon all the others stepped aside. He was very powerful, and people noticed his amiability, the way in which he joked with Saccard with an air of trusting comradeship. The bulls were radiant, for he had the reputation of being an adroit man, who knew how to escape from houses as soon as the floorings began to crack; and this made it certain that the Universal was not yet cracking. And, finally, others moved to and fro, simply exchanging glances with Saccard—men in his service, the employees who were charged with giving orders, and who bought also on their own account, in the rage for gambling which, like an epidemic, was decimating the staff in the Rue de Londres, now always on the watch, with ears at every key-hole, on the hunt for tips.
In this wise Sabatani twice passed by, bearing himself with the effeminate grace of his semi-Oriental, semi-Italian nature, and pretending not even to see his patron; whilst a few steps away, Jantrou, standing motionless, with his back turned, seemed absorbed in reading the despatches from foreign money markets, posted there in grated frames. The remisier Massias, who, always on the run, jostled the group around Saccard, gave the latter a nod, as an answer doubtless respecting some commission which he had quickly executed. And as the opening hour approached, the endless tramping of the crowd, crossing the hall in either sense, filled it with the deep agitation and roar of a rising tide.
All were waiting for the first quotation.
Leaving the brokers’ room, Mazaud and Jacoby had just come to the corbeille side by side, with an air of correct confraternity. Yet they knew each other to be adversaries in the merciless struggle which had been going on for weeks past, and which might end in the ruin of either one or the other of them. Mazaud, good-looking, short and slight of build, showed a gay vivacity, born of the good luck which had hitherto attended him, the luck by which he had inherited the business of his uncle at the early age of thirty-two; whilst Jacoby, a former managing clerk who had become a broker after long service, thanks to some customers who had financed him, had a huge belly and the heavy gait of a man of sixty. Tall, bald, and grizzled, he displayed the broad face of a good-natured fellow extremely fond of pleasure. And he and Mazaud, both with their note-books in their hands, began talking of the fine weather as though they had not held on the leaves of those books the millions with which they were going to attack each other in the destructive conflict between offer and demand.
‘A fine frost, eh?’
‘Yes, it was so delightful that I came on foot.’
Upon reaching the corbeille, the vast circular basin as yet unlittered by waste paper, they paused for a moment, leaning against the red velvet balustrade which encircled it, and continuing to exchange disjointed, commonplace remarks whilst darting stealthy glances around them.
Starting from the corbeille were four railed passages, so disposed that the whole formed a cross, or rather a four-pointed star of which the corbeille was the centre. These passages were sacred spots, to which the public was not admitted. In the spaces between them, in front of the corbeille, you perceived on one hand a compartment where the employees dealing with cash transactions were installed just under the three ‘quoters,’ who were perched upon high chairs behind huge registers; whilst, on the other hand, an open compartment, known from its shape, no doubt, as the ‘Guitar,’ enabled speculators and employees to place themselves in direct communication with the brokers. Behind the corbeille, in the space between the rear points of the star, was the crowded Rente market, where, as in the Cash department, each broker was represented by a special clerk; for the brokers themselves, disposed around the corbeille, were entirely absorbed by the great, savage business of gambling, and gave their personal attention to ‘account’ transactions exclusively.
Mazaud, however, seeing his authorised clerk Berthier making signs to him in the railed-off passage on his left hand, went to exchange a few words with him in a whisper. The authorised clerks alone had the privilege of entering these passages, and even then they had to keep at a respectful distance from the red velvet balustrade of the corbeille, which no profane hand was allowed to touch. Every day, on repairing to the Bourse, Mazaud was accompanied by Berthier and his Cash and Rente clerks, to whom the clearing-house clerk was often adjoined; to say nothing of the telegram clerk, Flory, whose beard was now overrunning his face to such a degree that little of his features excepting his soft lustrous eyes could be seen. Since winning ten thousand francs on the day after Sadowa, Flory, maddened by the demands of Mademoiselle Chuchu, who had become capricious and ravenous, had gambled wildly on his own account, calculating nothing himself, but ever watching Saccard’s play, which he followed with blind faith. His acquaintance with the orders and telegrams which passed through his hands sufficed to guide him. And at this moment, having just run down from the telegraph office on the first floor, with both hands full of telegrams, he sent an attendant to call Mazaud, who left Berthier to come to the ‘Guitar.’
‘Am I to run through them and classify them to-day, monsieur,’ asked Flory.
‘Undoubtedly, if they are coming thus en masse. What are all those?’
‘Oh, Universals—orders to buy, almost all.’
The broker, with a practised hand, turned the telegrams over, and was evidently well pleased. Very much involved with Saccard, whom he had long been carrying over for considerable sums, and from whom that very morning he had received orders to buy on a very large scale indeed, he had finally become the Universal’s authorized broker. And, although so far not a prey to any great anxiety, he nevertheless felt relieved at noticing how persistent was the infatuation of the public, how obstinately people went on buying Universals in spite of the extravagance of the rise. One name particularly struck him, among those appended to the telegrams, that of Fayeux, the dividend-collector at Vendôme, who must have secured a vast number of petty buyers among the farmers, devotees, and priests of his province, for not a week passed but he thus sent orders after orders.
‘Give those to the Cash-clerk,’ said Mazaud to Flory. ‘And don’t wait for the telegrams to be brought down to you. Go up and wait, and bring them down yourself.’
Going at once to the Cash department, Flory leant over the balustrade, shouting, ‘Mazaud! Mazaud!’ at the top of his voice.
It was Gustave Sédille who approached, for employees lose their own names at the Bourse and take those of the brokers whom they represent. In this wise Flory himself was called Mazaud by the others. For two years Gustave Sédille had been out of the office, but he had lately returned to it in the hope of thereby inducing his father to pay his debts; and that afternoon, owing to the absence of the principal clerk, he found himself entrusted with the Cash-work, which amused him. Flory leant over to whisper in his ear, and they agreed between them that they would only effect the purchases for Fayeux at the last quotation, after using his orders for a private gamble of their own, first buying and then selling in the name of their usual man of straw, so as to pocket the difference, for a rise seemed to them to be certain.
Meantime Mazaud went back towards the corbeille. But at every step an attendant handed him a fiche on which an order had been scribbled in pencil by some customer who had been unable to approach. For these fiches each broker had his own special colour—red, yellow, blue or green—so that he might easily recognise them. Mazaud’s were green, the colour of hope; and the little slips kept on accumulating between his fingers as the attendants continually went to and fro, taking them, at the end of the railed passages, from the employees and speculators who, in order to save time, were each provided with a supply of the little cards.
As Mazaud halted once more in front of the velvet-topped balustrade he again came upon Jacoby, who also carried a handful of fiches, red ones, the hue of freshly shed blood. These undoubtedly were orders from Gundermann and his followers, for everybody was aware that in the massacre now being prepared Jacoby would be the broker of the ‘bears,’ the executioner-in-chief of the Israelite banking world. He was at present listening to another broker, his brother-in-law, Delarocque, a Christian who had married a Jewess, a very bald, stout, thick-set, florid man, partial to clubland and known to receive the orders of Daigremont, who had lately fallen out with Jacoby as he had formerly fallen out with Mazaud. The story which Delarocque was telling—a story of equivocal character—lighted up his little blinking eyes, while he waved, in passionate pantomime, his memorandum-book, from which protruded his package of fiches, which were blue, the soft blue of an April sky.
‘Monsieur Massias is asking for you,’ an attendant came to say to Mazaud.
The latter quickly returned to the end of the railed passage. The remisier, now completely in the pay of the Universal, had brought Mazaud news from the coulisse, which had already begun business under the peristyle in spite of the terrible cold. A few speculators ventured to show themselves there, but went to warm themselves in the hall every now and then; whereas the coulissiers, wrapped in heavy overcoats, with their fur collars turned up, bravely kept their places in a circle, as usual, underneath the clock, and growing so animated, shouting and gesticulating so vehemently that they did not feel the cold. And one of the most active was little Nathansohn, now in a fair way to become a man of importance, for luck had favoured him since the day when, resigning his position as a mere petty clerk at the Crédit Mobilier, he had had the idea of renting a room and opening a wicket.
Speaking rapidly, Massias explained to Mazaud that, as prices seemed to have a downward tendency under the weight of the shares with which the ‘bears’ were overwhelming the market, Saccard had just had the idea of operating at the coulisse, in order to influence the official opening quotation at the corbeille. Universals had closed the day before at three thousand and thirty francs; and he had given an order to Nathansohn to buy a hundred shares, which another coulissier was to offer at three thousand and thirty-five. This would be a rise of five francs.
‘All right! the quotation will reach us;’ said Mazaud.
And he came back to the groups of brokers, who had now mustered in full force. There were sixty of them all told, and, in spite of the regulations, they were already doing business among themselves, at the mean quotation of the day before, whilst waiting for the ringing of the bell. Orders given at a predetermined fixed rate did not influence the market, since it was necessary to wait until this rate should be quoted; it was the orders to buy or sell on the best terms available, the execution of which was left to the broker’s judgment, that provoked the continual oscillations in one or the other sense. A good broker should be possessed of shrewdness and foresight, a quick head, and agile muscles—for rapidity often ensures success—to say nothing of the necessity of having a good connection in the banking world, of securing information from all parts, and particularly of being the first to receive telegrams from the provincial and foreign money markets. And in addition to all this, a strong voice is needed, in order to be able to shout loudly.
One o’clock struck, however; the peal of the bell passed like a gust of wind over the surging sea of heads, and the last vibration had not died away when Jacoby, with both hands resting on the velvet-covered handrail, shouted in a roaring voice, the loudest of the whole corporation of stockbrokers: ‘I have Universals! I have Universals!’
He did not name any price, but waited to be interrogated. The sixty brokers had drawn near and formed a circle around the corbeille, where a few fiches, just thrown away, had already set spots of bright colour. Face to face, the brokers, like duellists at the outset of a fray, scrutinised one another, eager to see the first quotation established.
‘I have Universals!’ repeated Jacoby in his deep, thundering voice: ‘I have Universals!’
‘What price Universals?’ asked Mazaud, in a voice which, albeit thin, was so shrill that it dominated his colleague’s in the same way as the strain of a flute rises above a violoncello accompaniment.
Delarocque proposed the last quotation of the previous day. ‘At three thousand and thirty I take Universals!’ he bawled.
But another broker at once intervened with a higher bid: ‘At three thousand and thirty-five deliver Universals!’
This was the coulisse price, just coming in and preventing the deal which Delarocque had doubtless intended to make: a purchase at the corbeille and a prompt sale at the coulisse, so as to secure the five francs’ rise.
Accordingly, Mazaud, feeling certain that Saccard would approve of it, made up his mind to carry matters further. ‘At three thousand and forty I take! Deliver Universals at three thousand and forty!’
‘How many?’ asked Jacoby.
‘Three hundred.’
Both wrote a line in their memorandum-books, and the bargain was concluded; the first official quotation was established, with a rise of ten francs over the quotation of the day before. Mazaud stepped aside, to give the figure to the quoter who had the Universal on his register. Then, for twenty minutes, there was a perfect flood-gate opened: the quotations of other stocks were likewise established; all the business which the brokers had in hand was transacted without any great variations in prices. And meanwhile the quoters, perched aloft, between the uproar of the corbeille and that of the Cash market, which was also feverishly busy, were scarce able to make entries of all the new figures thrown at them by the brokers and the clerks. In the rear, the Rente market was simply raging. Since the opening of the market there was no longer the mere roar of the crowd, similar to the continuous sound of flowing waters, for above all this formidable rumbling there now rose the discordant cries of offer and demand, a characteristic yelping, which rose, and fell, and paused, to begin again in unequal, grating accents, like the cries of birds of pillage in a tempest.
With a smile on his face, Saccard still stood near his pillar. His court had grown yet larger; the rise of ten francs in Universals had just filled the Bourse with excitement, for it had long been predicted that on settling day there would be a crash. Huret had approached with Sédille and Kolb, pretending to regret his prudence, which had led him to sell his shares at the price of twenty-five hundred francs; while Daigremont, wearing an air of unconcern, as he walked about arm-in-arm with the Marquis de Bohain, gaily explained to him why it was that his stable had been defeated at the autumn races. But, above all, Maugendre triumphed, and sought to overwhelm Captain Chave, who persisted nevertheless in his pessimism, saying it was necessary to await the end, which he still believed would be disaster. A similar scene was enacted by the boastful Pillerault and the melancholy Moser, the former radiant over this insane rise, the latter clenching his fists and talking of this stubborn, foolish rise as of some mad animal which, whatever its efforts might be, was certain to be slaughtered eventually.
An hour went by, the quotations remaining much the same; transactions went on at the corbeille in proportion as fresh orders were given or fresh telegrams arrived. Business was less brisk, however, than at the outset. Towards the middle of each day’s Bourse there is a similar lull in the transactions, a spell of calmness prior to the decisive struggle over the last quotations. Nevertheless, Jacoby’s roar and Mazaud’s shrill notes were always to be heard, both brokers being very busy with ‘options.’
‘I have Universals at three thousand and forty, of which fifteen!’ shouted one.
‘I take Universals at three thousand and forty, of which ten,’ replied the other.
‘How many?’
‘Twenty-five—deliver!’
Mazaud was doubtless now executing some of the orders received from Fayeux. Many provincial gamblers, with a view to limiting their losses, buy and sell on option before venturing to launch out into obligatory transactions. However, all at once a rumour spread and spasmodic shouts arose. There had just been a fall of five francs in Universals, and then in swift succession came another and another drop, so that the price became three thousand and twenty-five.
Jantrou, who had just come back after a short absence, was just then whispering to Saccard that the Baroness Sandorff was in her brougham in the Rue Brongniart, and desired to know whether she ought to sell. Coming at the very moment of the fall, this question fairly exasperated Saccard. In his mind’s eye he could see the coachman perched motionless upon his box, whilst inside the carriage, the windows of which were closed, sat the Baroness, consulting her memorandum-book as though at home.
‘Let her go to Jericho!’ he answered; ‘and if she sells, I’ll strangle her!’
He had scarcely spoken when, at the announcement of the fall of fifteen francs, Massias came running up as if in response to an alarm-bell, feeling that his services would certainly be required. And indeed Saccard, who had prepared a skilful move for forcing up the last quotations—a telegram which was to be sent from the Lyons Bourse, where a rise was certain—had begun to feel rather anxious at the telegram’s non-arrival, for this precipitate drop of fifteen francs might bring about a disaster.
Like a shrewd fellow, Massias did not stop in front of him, but nudged his elbow as he passed, and, eagerly lending ear, at once received his orders: ‘Quick, to Nathansohn; four hundred, five hundred, whatever may be necessary!’
This was all managed so swiftly that Pillerault and Moser were the only ones to notice it. They started after Massias, in order to find out his intentions. Now that he was in the pay of the Universal, the remisier had acquired great importance. People tried to ‘pump’ him, to read over his shoulder the orders which he received. And he himself now made superb profits. This smiling, good-natured, unlucky fellow, whom fortune had previously treated so harshly, was astonished by his present success, and declared that this dog’s life at the Bourse was endurable after all. He no longer said that a man must needs be a Jew in order to make his way.
At the coulisse, in the freezing air which swept through the peristyle, and which the pale afternoon sun did little to warm, Universals had fallen less rapidly than at the corbeille. And Nathansohn, warned by his acolytes, had just executed the deal which Delarocque had been unable to effect at the opening: buying in the hall at three thousand and twenty-five, he had sold again under the colonnade at three thousand and thirty-five. This did not take three minutes, and he made sixty thousand francs by the stroke. The purchase at the corbeille had already sent the shares up again to three thousand and thirty, by that balancing effect which the authorized and tolerated markets have one upon another. From the hall to the peristyle there was an incessant gallop of clerks, elbowing their way through the crowd with orders. Nevertheless, prices were about to weaken at the coulisse, when the order which Massias brought Nathansohn sustained them at three thousand and thirty-five, and even raised them to three thousand and forty; the consequence being that at the corbeille the stock again rose to the opening quotation. However, it was difficult to maintain that figure; for evidently enough the tactics of Jacoby and the other ‘bear’ brokers were to reserve the large sales until the last half-hour, when, amid the confusion, they hoped to overwhelm the market with them and precipitate a collapse.
Saccard understood the danger so clearly that he made a preconcerted sign to Sabatani, who was standing a few steps away, smoking a cigarette with the unconcerned, languid air of a ladies’ man. And on observing his patron’s signal he at once slipped through the crowd, with all the suppleness of a snake, and made his way to the ‘Guitar,’ whence, with his ears on the alert, ever attentive to the quotations, he did not cease sending Mazaud orders inscribed upon green fiches, of which he held a large supply. None the less, however, so determined was the attack of the ‘bears’ that Universals again fell five francs.
The third quarter of the hour struck. Another fifteen minutes and the closing bell would ring out. The throng was now whirling and shrieking as if scourged by some hellish torment. Grating, discordant sounds, as though a quantity of copper-ware was being broken up, rang out from the snarling, howling corbeille. And at that moment occurred the incident so anxiously awaited by Saccard.
Little Flory, who ever since the opening of the Bourse had been coming down from the telegraph-office every ten minutes with his hands full of telegrams, once more reappeared, forcing his way through the mob, and this time reading a telegram which seemed to delight him.
‘Mazaud! Mazaud!’ called a voice; and Flory naturally turned his head, as if answering to his own name. It was Jantrou, who wanted to know the news. The clerk was in too great a hurry, however, and at once pushed him aside, full of delight at the thought that Universals would end with a rise; for the telegram announced that the shares were going up at the Lyons Bourse, where the purchases were so large that the effect would necessarily be felt on the Bourse of Paris. And, indeed, other telegrams were now arriving; a large number of brokers were receiving orders. This produced an immediate and important result.
‘At three thousand and forty I take Universals!’ repeated Mazaud, in his shrill, angry voice.
Thereupon Delarocque, overwhelmed with orders, made a higher bid. ‘At three thousand and forty-five I take!’
‘I hold at three thousand and forty-five!’ bellowed Jacoby. ‘Two hundred at three thousand and forty-five!’
‘Deliver!’
Then Mazaud himself made a higher offer: ‘I take at three thousand and fifty!’
‘How many?’
‘Five hundred. Deliver!’
However, the frightful hubbub had reached such a pitch, amidst so much epileptical gesticulation, that the brokers themselves could no longer hear each other. And, since the cavernous bass voices of some of them miscarried, while the fluty notes of others thinned out into nothingness, they continued in their professional fury to do business by gestures. Huge mouths were seen to open, from which no distinct sound apparently came, and hands alone spoke—a gesture from the person implying an offer, another gesture towards the person signifying acceptance; whilst raised fingers indicated the quantities, and yes and no were expressed by a nod or shake of the head. Intelligible only to the initiated, this sign-making seemed like one of those attacks of madness which fall upon crowds. In the gallery of the telegraph-office up above women were leaning over, in astonishment and fear at the extraordinary spectacle. One might have thought that a brawl was in progress at the Rente market, where a central group seemed to be furiously resorting to fisticuffs; while the other groups, ever being displaced by the public traversing this part of the hall in either direction, kept on breaking up and forming again in continual eddies. Between the Cash market and the corbeille, above the wild tempestuous sea of heads, one now only saw the three quoters, perched on their high chairs, floating on the billows like waifs, with their great white registers before them, and thrown now to left, now to right, by the rapid fluctuations of the quotations hurled at them. Inside the Cash market, where the scramble was at its height, you beheld a compact mass of hairy heads; no faces were to be seen; there was nothing but a dark swarming, relieved only by the small white leaves of the memorandum-books waved in the air. And at the corbeille, around the basin which the crumpled fiches now filled with a blossoming of divers colours, men’s hair was turning gray, bald pates were glistening, you could distinguish the pallor of shaken faces and of hands feverishly outstretched—all the jerky pantomime of speculators, seemingly ready to devour each other if the balustrade had not restrained them. This rage of the last minutes had, moreover, gained the public; men crushed against each other in the hall; there was an incessant sonorous tramping, all the helter-skelter of a huge mob let loose in too narrow a passage; and above the undefined mass of frock-coats, silk hats were shining in the diffused light that fell from the high windows.
But all at once the peal of a bell pierced through the tumult. Everything became quiet; gestures were arrested, voices hushed at the Cash market, the Rente market, the corbeille. There remained only the muffled rumbling of the mob, sounding like the continuous voice of a torrent returning to its bed and again following its course. And amidst this persistent if subdued agitation, the last quotations circulated. Universals had reached three thousand and sixty, a rise of thirty francs above the quotation of the day before. The rout of the ‘bears’ was complete; once more the settlement would prove a disastrous one for them, for large sums would be required to pay the fortnight’s differences.
For a moment, Saccard, before leaving the hall, straightened himself to his full height, as if the better to survey the crowd around him. He had really grown so magnified by his triumph that all his little person expanded, lengthened, became enormous. And the man whom he seemed to be thus seeking over the heads of the crowd was the absent Gundermann—Gundermann, whom he would have liked to have seen struck down, grimacing, asking pardon; and he was determined at least that all the Jew’s unknown creatures, all the vile Israelites who were there, morose and spiteful, should see him transfigured in the glory of his success. It was his grand day, the day which people still speak of, as they speak of Austerlitz and Marengo. His customers, his friends, had darted towards him. The Marquis de Bohain, Sédille, Kolb, Huret, shook both his hands; while Daigremont, with the false smile of his worldly amiability, proceeded to compliment him, albeit well aware that one is ofttimes killed by such victories at the Bourse. Maugendre could have kissed him on both cheeks, such was his exultation, an exultation tinged with anger, however, when he saw Captain Chave continue to shrug his shoulders. But the perfect, religious adoration was that of Dejoie, who, coming from the newspaper office on the run, in order to ascertain the last quotation at the earliest moment, was standing a few steps away, motionless, rooted to the spot by affection and admiration, his eyes glittering with tears. Jantrou had disappeared, undoubtedly to carry the news to the Baroness Sandorff. Massias and Sabatani were panting, radiant, as on the triumphal evening of a great battle.
‘Well, what did I tell you?’ cried Pillerault, delighted.
Pulling a very long face, Moser growled out some sullen threats.
‘Yes, yes,’ said he; ‘don’t holloa till you are out of the wood. There’s the Mexican bill to pay; there are the affairs of Rome, which have become still more entangled since Mentana; and then one of these fine mornings Germany will fall on us. Yes, yes, and to think that those imbeciles keep going up and up, in order, no doubt, that they may fall from a greater height! Ah! it is all over, you’ll soon see!’
Then, as Salmon, who was looking at him, remained grave this time, he added: ‘Such is your opinion, too, is it not? When things go too well a crash is generally at hand.’
Meanwhile the hall was emptying; there would soon be nothing left in the air but the cigar-smoke, a bluish cloud, thickened and yellowed by all the flying dust. Mazaud and Jacoby, resuming their prim deportment, had gone back into the brokers’ room together, the latter more worried by his secret private losses than by the defeat of his customers; while the former, who did not gamble, was filled with delight at the gallant way in which the last quotation had been carried. They talked for a few minutes with Delarocque in order to exchange engagements, still holding their memorandum-books, full of notes, which their settlement clerks would classify that afternoon, in order to debit or credit the various customers with the transactions that had been effected. Meantime, in the clerks’ hall—a low, pillared hall, looking not unlike an ill-kept school-room, with its rows of desks and a cloak-room at the farther end—Flory and Gustave Sédille, who had gone there to get their hats, began noisily rejoicing while waiting to know the mean quotation, which the employees of the syndicate, taking the highest and lowest quotations, were now calculating at one of the desks. Towards half-past three, when the placard had been posted on a pillar, Flory and Gustave neighed, and clucked, and crowed, in their satisfaction with the fine result of their deal in Fayeux’ orders to purchase. This meant a pair of solitaires for Chuchu, who was now tyrannising Flory with her demands, and six months’ allowance in advance for Gustave’s inamorata. Meantime the uproar continued in the clerks’ hall, what with a succession of silly farces, a massacre of hats, and jostling such as that of school-boys just released from their lessons. And, on the other side, under the peristyle, the coulisse completed various transactions; while Nathansohn, delighted with his deal, wended his way down the steps through the ranks of the last speculators, who were still hanging about in spite of the cold, which had become terrible. By six o’clock all these gamblers, brokers, coulissiers, and remisiers, after calculating their gain or loss, or preparing their brokerage bills, had gone home to dress, in order to wind up the day with relaxation in restaurants, theatres, fashionable drawing-rooms, or cosy boudoirs.
That evening, the one subject of conversation among those Parisians who sit up and amuse themselves was the formidable duel upon which Gundermann and Saccard had entered. The women, whom passion and fashion had entirely given over to gambling, made a show of using such technical terms as settlement, options, carry over, and close—without always understanding them. They talked especially of the critical position of the ‘bears,’ who, for many months, had been paying larger and larger differences at each settlement in proportion as Universals went up and up beyond all reasonable limits. Certainly, many were gambling without cover, getting their brokers to carry them over, as they were altogether unable to deliver; and they kept on at it, still and ever playing for a fall, in the hope that the collapse of the shares was near at hand; but, in spite of all the carrying over—the charges for which increased as money became more and more scarce—it seemed as if the already exhausted ‘bears’ would be annihilated if the rise continued much longer. The situation of Gundermann, who was reputed to be their chief, was different, since he had his milliard in his cellars—an inexhaustible supply of money which he could keep on sending to the massacre, however long and murderous the campaign might be. That was the invincible force: the power to keep on selling, with the certainty of being always able to pay his differences, until the day of the inevitable fall came and brought him victory.
People talked and calculated the considerable sums which he must have already parted with, the sacks of gold which he had had to bring to the front on the fifteenth and thirtieth of each month, and which had melted away in the fire of speculation like ranks of soldiers swept away by bullets. Never before had he sustained at the Bourse such a severe attack upon his power, which he wished to be sovereign, indisputable; for if, as he was fond of repeating, he was a simple money merchant, and not a gambler, he was on the other hand fully conscious that, to remain this merchant, the first of the world, disposing of public fortune, he must also be absolute master of the market; and he was fighting, not for immediate profit, but for his royalty itself, for his life. Hence the cold obstinacy, the grim grandeur of the struggle. He was to be met upon the Boulevards and in the Rue Vivienne, walking with the step of an exhausted old man, his face pale and impassive, nothing in him betraying the slightest anxiety. He believed only in logic. Madness had set in when Universals had risen above two thousand francs; to quote them at three thousand was sheer insanity; they were bound to fall, even as the stone thrown into the air inevitably falls to the ground; and so he waited. Would he go on with the game even to the end of his milliard? People trembled with admiration around him, with the desire also to see him devoured at last; while Saccard, who excited a more tumultuous enthusiasm, on his side had the women, the drawing-rooms, the whole fashionable world of gamblers, who had pocketed such handsome sums since they had begun coining money with their faith, trafficking with Mount Carmel and Jerusalem. The approaching ruin of the big Jew bankers was decreed; Catholicism was about to acquire the empire of money, as it had acquired that of souls. Only, although his troops were winning heavily, Saccard himself was getting to the end of his cash, emptying his vaults for his continual purchases. Of the two hundred millions at his disposal nearly two-thirds had thus been tied up, so that his triumph was an asphyxiating one, a triumph which suffocates. Every company that seeks to become mistress at the Bourse, in order to sustain the price of its shares, is doomed. For that reason he had only intervened with prudence in the earlier stages. But he had always been a man of imagination, seeing things on too grand a scale, transforming his shady dealings as an adventurer into poems; and this time, with this really colossal and prosperous enterprise, he had been carried off into extravagant dreams of conquest, to so crazy, so vast an idea, that he did not even clearly formulate it to himself. Ah! if he had only had millions, endless millions, like those dirty Jews! The worst was that he already saw his troops coming to an end; he had but a few more millions for the massacre. Then, if the fall should come, it would be his turn to pay differences; and he would be obliged to get someone to carry him over. Despite his victory, the smallest bit of gravel must upset his vast machine. There was a secret consciousness of this, even among the faithful, those who believed in the rise as in the Divinity. And Paris was impassioned the more by this, by the confusion and doubt amid which it tossed, in this duel between Saccard and Gundermann—this duel in which the conqueror would lose all his blood, this hand-to-hand struggle between two superhuman monsters, who crushed between them the poor devils who risked following their game, and seemed likely to strangle one another at last on the heap of ruins which they were accumulating.
All at once, on January 3, on the very morrow of the day when the accounts of the last settlement had been balanced, there was a drop of fifty francs in Universals. This caused great excitement. In truth, everything had gone down; the market, so long over-taxed, inflated beyond measure, was giving way in every direction; two or three rotten enterprises had collapsed with a bang, and, moreover, people ought to have been accustomed to these violent fluctuations, since prices sometimes varied several hundred francs in the same day’s Bourse, shifting wildly like the needle of the compass in the midst of a storm. In the great quiver which passed, however, all felt the beginning of the crash. Universals were going down; the cry rose and spread with a clamour, made up of astonishment, hope, and fear.
The next day Saccard, firm and smiling at his post, sent the price up thirty francs by means of large purchases. But on the 5th, despite his efforts, the fall was forty francs. Universals stood merely at three thousand. And from that time each day brought its battle. On the 6th Universals went up again; on the 7th and 8th they again dropped. An irresistible movement was dragging them, little by little, into a slow fall. The Bank was about to be made the scapegoat, offered up in atonement for the folly of all, for the misdeeds of less prominent ventures, all that swarm of shady enterprises, ripened by puffery, raised like monstrous mushrooms in the fermenting compost of the reign. But Saccard, who no longer slept, who every afternoon took up his post of combat, near his pillar, lived in the hallucination of always possible victory. Like the commander of an army who is convinced of the excellence of his plans, he yielded his ground only step by step, sacrificing his last soldiers, emptying the Bank’s coffers of their last sacks of money, to obstruct the progress of the assailants.
On the 9th he again won a signal advantage, and the ‘bears’ trembled and recoiled. Would the settlement of the 15th, like so many before it, be effected at their expense? And he, already without resources, reduced to launching paper into circulation, now dared, like those starving wretches who, in the delirium of their hunger, see immense feasts spread out before them, dared confess to himself the prodigious and impossible object towards which he was tending, the giant idea of repurchasing all the Bank’s shares in order to hold all vendors bound hand and foot at his mercy. This had just been done in the case of a little railway company; the Bank which had issued its stock having cleared the market, so that vendors, being unable to deliver, had been forced to surrender as slaves and humbly offer their fortunes and their persons. Ah! if he could only have hunted down Gundermann to such a point as to hold him powerless, unable to sell since he could not deliver! If he could only have seen the Jew bringing him his milliard one morning, and begging him not to take the whole of it, but to leave him enough to buy the half franc’s worth of milk which constituted his daily nourishment. But from seven to eight hundred millions would be necessary for such a feat as that. He had already cast two hundred into the abyss; and if he was to succeed, five or six hundred more must be marshalled in battle array. Yes, with six hundred millions he would sweep away the Jews, become the gold king, the master of the world. What a dream! And it seemed so simple; his fever had reached such a degree of intensity that it all appeared a mere question of moving some pawns on a chess-board. During his sleepless nights he raised this army of six hundred millions, and, after sending it forth to fight and be destroyed for his glory, at last found himself victorious, environed by general disaster, and erect upon the ruins of everything.
Unfortunately, on the 10th, Saccard had a terrible day. He was always superbly gay and calm at the Bourse; and yet never had there been such a war of silent ferocity, of hourly slaughter, of ambuscades upon every side. In these secret, cowardly money battles, in which the weak are ripped up in silence, the combatants are influenced by no ties, whether of relationship or friendship. The atrocious law of might prevails, and men devour those around them for fear lest they should themselves be devoured. And thus Saccard felt that he was absolutely alone, with no other support than that of his insatiable appetite, which still kept him erect and ever ravenous.
He especially dreaded the afternoon of the 14th, when the answers on the options would come in. However, he still found money enough for the three preceding days, and instead of bringing a smash-up the 14th strengthened Universals, so that on the morrow, the 15th, which was settling day, they were quoted at two thousand nine hundred and sixty francs, or only a hundred francs below the quotation of December 31. Saccard had feared a perfect disaster, and he pretended to construe this as a victory. In reality, success for the first time rested with the ‘bears,’ who now received differences after paying them during several months; and, the situation being reversed, Saccard had to get Mazaud to carry him over. From that time the broker found himself heavily involved. The second fortnight of January threatened to prove decisive.
Since he had been struggling in this way amid these daily ups and downs, now falling into the abyss and again rising from it, Saccard had every evening felt an uncontrollable desire for diversion, something which should enable him to shake off his worries, forget the precarious nature of his position. He could not remain alone, but dined out and showed himself everywhere, making the round of the theatres and swell supper-rooms, and affecting the extravagance of a man who has more money than he can spend. He avoided Madame Caroline, whose remonstrances embarrassed him, and who, besides always speaking of the anxious letters which she received from her brother, was herself in despair at the game he was playing, thinking it frightfully dangerous. And he now more frequently saw the Baroness Sandorff at a little place he had taken in the Rue Caumartin, in this wise obtaining the hour of forgetfulness which was necessary for the relaxation of his tired, overworked brain. Sometimes, also, he took refuge there to examine certain papers and reflect upon certain affairs, happy in the thought that no one would come to disturb him. And then sleep would overtake him there; he would doze off for an hour or two, and then the Baroness would not scruple to search his pockets and read the letters in his pocket-book; for he had become completely dumb, she could no longer extract the smallest piece of useful information from him, and, moreover, even when she did contrive to wring a word or two from him, she felt so convinced that he was lying to her that she did not dare to play in accordance with his indications. And while thus stealing his secrets she discovered the pecuniary embarrassment in which the Universal was now beginning to struggle—a vast system of kite-flying, of raising the wind by means of accommodation paper, which it was cautiously getting discounted abroad. One evening, however, Saccard, waking up too soon, had caught her in the act of searching his pocket-book, and had then and there boxed her ears. And subsequently in his moments of worry he took to beating her, by way of relieving his feelings.
However, after the settlement of January 15, in which she had lost ten thousand francs, the Baroness began to nurse a project of treachery. It grew upon her, and at last she went to consult Jantrou about it.
‘Well,’ the latter answered, ‘I believe that you are right; it is time to pass over to Gundermann. So go and see him, and tell him of the matter, since he promised that, on the day when you should bring him some good counsel, he would give you some in exchange.’
On the morning when the Baroness presented herself in the Rue de Provence, Gundermann was as surly as a bear. Only the day before Universals had gone up again. Would he never end, then, with that voracious beast, which had devoured so much of his gold and so obstinately clung to life? That wretched Bank was capable of recovering its position, and its shares would perhaps be on the rise again at the end of the month. He growled at himself for having entered upon this disastrous rivalry, when perhaps he would have done better to have taken a share in the new establishment at the start. Shaken in his ordinary tactics, losing his faith in the inevitable triumph of logic, he would at that moment have resigned himself to a retreat, if he could have effected it without loss. These moments of discouragement, which even the greatest captains at times experience on the very eve of victory, when men and things are really plotting their success, were very rare with Gundermann. If his powerful perceptive powers, usually so clear, were thus disturbed, it was due to the fog that at times envelopes the mysterious operations of the Bourse, which one can never with absolute certainty ascribe to any particular person. Certainly Saccard was buying, gambling; but was he acting for serious customers or for the Bank itself? Upon this point Gundermann could not make up his mind amid all the contradictory gossip which was brought to him. So he was in a rage, and that morning the doors of his spacious office kept slamming, all his employees trembled, and he received the remisiers so brutally that their customary procession was turned into a galloping rout.
‘Ah! it is you!’ he said to the Baroness, without any pretence at politeness. ‘I have no time to lose with women to-day.’
She was so disconcerted that she dropped all the preliminaries which she had devised, and then and there blurted out the news she had to impart. ‘And if I could prove to you,’ said she, ‘that the Universal is at the end of its cash, after all the large purchases which it has made, and that it is reduced to the point of getting accommodation paper discounted abroad in order to continue the campaign?’
The Jew had suppressed a start of joy. His eyes remained lifeless, and he answered in the same grumbling voice: ‘It isn’t true.’
‘What! not true? Why, I have heard it with my own ears, seen it with my own eyes.’
And she sought to convince him by explaining that she had held in her hands the notes signed by men of straw. She named the latter, and also gave the names of the bankers who had discounted the paper at Vienna, Frankfort, and Berlin. His correspondents could enlighten him; he would see that it was no mere gossip which she was retailing. And she further asserted that the Bank had been buying and buying on its own account, for the sole purpose of keeping up the rise, and that two hundred millions of francs had already been swallowed up.
Whilst he listened to her with his dismal air Gundermann was already planning his campaign of the morrow, so quick at all mental work that in a few seconds he had distributed his orders and determined upon the amounts. He was now certain of victory, for he well knew from what miry depths this information had come to him, and felt full of contempt for that pleasure-loving Saccard, who was so stupid as to trust a woman and allow himself to be sold.
When she had finished, he raised his head, and, looking at her out of his large dim eyes, exclaimed: ‘Well, why should I be interested in what you say? How does it concern me?’
She was profoundly astonished, so unconcerned and calm did he appear. ‘But,’ said she, ‘it seems to me that your position as a “bear”——’
‘I! Who told you that I was a “bear”? I never go to the Bourse; I never speculate. All this is a matter of indifference to me.’
And there was such an innocent ring in his voice that the Baroness, doubting and frightened, would in the end have believed him but for certain inflections of too bantering a naïveté. He was evidently laughing at her, in his absolute disdain for woman, now that his blood was old and cold.
‘So, my good friend,’ he added, ‘as I am very busy, if you have nothing more interesting to say to me——’
He was evidently about to dismiss her; and she in her fury sought to rebel. ‘I have had confidence in you,’ she said. ‘I spoke first. It is a real trap. You promised me that, if I should be useful to you, you in your turn would be useful to me, and give me some good advice——’
Rising from his chair, he interrupted her. He, who never laughed, gave a slight chuckle, so amusing did he find it to dupe a young and pretty woman in this brutal way. ‘Good advice! Why, I do not refuse it, my good friend; listen to me. Don’t gamble, don’t ever gamble. It will spoil your face; a woman who gambles is not at all nice.’
However, when she had gone off quite beside herself, he shut himself up with his two sons and his son-in-law and distributed the rôles, sending at once for Jacoby and other brokers to prepare the grand stroke of the morrow. His plan was simple: to do that which, in his ignorance of the real situation of the Universal, prudence had hitherto prevented him from risking—that is, to crush the market under the weight of enormous sales now that he knew the Universal to be at the end of its resources and incapable of sustaining the quotations. Like a general who wishes to end matters, and whose spies have fully acquainted him with the enemy’s weak point, he was going to bring the formidable reserves of his milliard into line. Logic would triumph; all securities which rise above the real value which they represent are doomed.
That very same day, towards five o’clock, Saccard, warned of the danger by his keen scent, called upon Daigremont. He was feverish; he felt that the hour had come to strike a blow at the ‘bears,’ if he did not wish to be definitively beaten by them. And his giant idea tormented him, that idea of the colossal army of six hundred millions, which must yet be raised in order to conquer the world. Daigremont received him with his usual amiability, in his princely mansion, amid his costly pictures and all the dazzling luxury which his fortnightly profits at the Bourse provided for; no one really knowing whether there was anything solid behind all this show, which seemed ever liable to be swept away by some caprice of chance. So far Daigremont had not betrayed the Universal, but had refused to sell, affecting absolute confidence, happy in thus comporting himself like a good gambler playing for a rise, from which by the way he reaped large profits; and it had even pleased him not to flinch after the unfavourable settlement of the 16th, feeling convinced, as he said everywhere, that the rise would begin afresh. Still he was constantly on the watch, and quite ready to pass over to the enemy at the first grave symptom.
Saccard’s visit, the extraordinary energy of which the little man gave proof, the vast idea which he unfolded of buying up every share in the market, struck Daigremont with real admiration. It was madness, but are not the great men of war and finance often only madmen who succeed? At all events, Daigremont formally promised to come to Saccard’s aid at the Bourse the next day; he had already taken up strong positions, he said, but he would go to Delarocque, his broker, and extend them; to say nothing of his friends, whom he would also go to see—a complete syndicate, as it were, which he would bring up as reinforcements. In his opinion, they could estimate this new army corps at a hundred millions, for immediate use. That would suffice. Thereupon Saccard, radiant, feeling certain of conquering, decided on his plan of battle—a flank movement of rare boldness, borrowed from the tactics of the most illustrious captains: in the first place, at the opening of the Bourse, a simple skirmish to attract the ‘bears’ and give them confidence; then, when the ‘bears’ should have obtained a first success and prices should be falling, Daigremont and his friends would arrive with their heavy artillery, all those unexpected millions, emerging from ambush, assailing the ‘bears’ in the rear and overwhelming them; they would be crushed to pieces—massacred. Such was the plan, and when it had been agreed upon Saccard and Daigremont separated, shaking hands and laughing triumphantly.
An hour later, just as Daigremont, who was dining out that evening, was about to dress, he received another visit, from the Baroness Sandorff. In her bewilderment she had been seized with the idea of consulting him. She told her fears, and whilst lying as to the feverish spirit of treachery that had prompted her, narrated her visit to Gundermann and repeated the latter’s reply. Daigremont, becoming very merry, amused himself by frightening her still more, assuming an air of doubt, as though almost believing that Gundermann had told the truth in swearing that he was not a ‘bear.’ And, indeed, can one ever tell? ‘The Bourse is a real forest, a forest on a dark night through which one has to grope one’s way. In such darkness, if you are so ill-advised as to listen to all the silly contradictory stories that are invented, you are certain to come to grief.’
‘Then I ought not to sell?’ she asked anxiously.
‘Sell, why? It would be madness! To-morrow we shall be the masters; Universals will go up again to three thousand one hundred. So stand firm, whatever happens: you will be pleased with the last quotation. I cannot tell you more.’
The Baroness had gone, and Daigremont had at last begun to dress, when a ring at the bell announced a third visit. Ah! this time, no; he would not see the person, whoever it might be. However, when Delarocque’s card had been handed to him, he at once exclaimed that the broker was to be shown up. Delarocque came in looking unusually agitated, and Daigremont, seeing that he was unwilling to speak in presence of the valet, sent the latter away, and tied his white cravat himself in front of a high mirror.
‘My dear fellow,’ said Delarocque with the familiarity of a man belonging to the same club as the person he was addressing, ‘this is what brings me. I trust to your friendship, because it is rather a delicate matter. The fact is, Jacoby, my brother-in-law, has just had the kindness to warn me of an assault that is being prepared. Gundermann and the others have decided to give the finishing stroke to the Universal at to-morrow’s Bourse. They are going to throw the whole pile upon the market. Jacoby already has orders. Gundermann sent for him.’
‘The devil!’ ejaculated Daigremont, turning pale.
‘You understand, I have customers of mine who are playing for a rise to a very big tune indeed. Yes! I hold orders to the amount of fifteen millions, enough to knock a man into a cocked hat in the case of disaster. So, you see, I jumped into a cab, and am making the round of my leading clients. It is not correct, but the intention is good.’
‘The devil!’ repeated the other.
‘In short, my good friend, as you are playing uncovered, I have come to ask you either to secure me or to abandon your position.’
‘Abandon, abandon it, my dear fellow,’ cried Daigremont. ‘Oh! I don’t remain in falling houses; that is useless heroism. Don’t buy; sell! My orders with you are for nearly three millions; sell, sell everything!’ Then, as Delarocque turned to go, saying that he had other customers to see, Daigremont took his hands and shook them energetically. ‘Thank you; I shall never forget. Sell, sell everything!’
As soon as he was alone he recalled his valet, in order to have his hair and beard arranged. Ah, what a blunder! He had this time almost let himself be robbed like a child. That was what came of associating with a madman!
The panic began that same evening, at the Petite Bourse of eight o’clock, which was then held upon the footway of the Boulevard des Italiens, at the entrance of the Passage de l’Opéra; and here only the coulissiers operated amid an unprepossessing crowd of brokers, remisiers, and shady speculators. Street hawkers moved up and down and gatherers of cigar-stumps crawled on all fours through the tramping groups. The Boulevard was quite obstructed by this obstinate mob, for, although the stream of promenaders occasionally carried it away and dispersed it, it always formed again. That evening nearly two thousand persons remained collected there, thanks to the mildness of the weather, which, with the misty, lowering sky, betokened rain after the terrible cold. The market was very active; Universals were offered on all sides, and the quotations fell rapidly. Rumours soon became current, and anxiety set in. What had happened, then? In an undertone, folks named the probable vendors, according to the remisier who gave the order or the coulissier who executed it. If the big-wigs were selling in this way, something serious was preparing, surely. And so from eight o’clock until ten there was no end of jostling and scrambling; all the keen-scented gamblers abandoned their positions; there were even some who had time to change sides and become ‘bears’ instead of ‘bulls.’ And all went to bed in a fever of uneasiness, as on the eve of great battles.
The weather was execrable on the following day. It had rained all night; a fine, cold rain drenched the city, which the thaw changed into a cloaca of yellow liquid mud. Already, at half-past twelve o’clock, the Bourse began clamouring in this downpour. Everyone having taken refuge under the peristyle and in the hall, the crowd was enormous; and by the dripping from the wet umbrellas the hall itself was soon changed into an immense puddle of muddy, water. Dampness oozed from the black filth of the walls, whilst from the glass roof there fell but a dim, ruddy light, desperately melancholy.
Amid the many evil reports in circulation, the extraordinary stories which were turning people’s heads, one and all, on entering, began to look for Saccard and scrutinize him. He was at his post, erect, near the accustomed pillar; and he had the air of other days, the days of triumph, an air of brave gaiety and absolute confidence. He was not ignorant of the fact that Universals had fallen three hundred francs at the Petite Bourse the night before; he scented immense danger. He expected a furious assault on the part of the ‘bears;’ but his plan of battle seemed to him invincible; Daigremont’s flank movement, the unexpected arrival of an army of fresh millions, would sweep everything before it, and once more assure him the victory. Henceforth he himself was without resources; the coffers of the Universal were empty, he had scraped even the centimes out of them; yet he did not despair, Mazaud was carrying him over, and he had so completely won the broker’s confidence by acquainting him with the promised support of Daigremont’s syndicate, that he had accepted without security further orders for purchase to the amount of several millions. The tactics agreed upon between them were not to let the quotations fall too low at the opening of the Bourse, but to sustain them and wage war pending the arrival of the reinforcements. The excitement was so great that Massias and Sabatani, abandoning useless strategy now that the real situation was the subject of all gossip, came and spoke openly with Saccard, and then ran to carry his last orders, the one to Nathansohn under the peristyle, and the other to Mazaud, who was still in the brokers’ room.
It was ten minutes to one o’clock, and Moser, who arrived looking quite pale from the effects of one of his liver attacks, the pain of which had kept him from closing his eyes all the night, remarked to Pillerault that everybody appeared yellow and ill that afternoon. Pillerault, who in the approach of disaster straightened himself up in the swaggering attitude of a knight-errant, burst out laughing. ‘Why, it is you, my dear fellow, who have the colic,’ said he. ‘Everybody else is very gay. We are going to give you one of those thrashings which folks remember as long as they live.’
The truth was, however, that in the general anxiety the hall remained very gloomy under the reddish light, and this was particularly evident from the subdued rumble of the conversation. You no longer heard the feverish outbursts of the days when everything was rising, the agitation, the roar of a tide, streaming from all sides like a conqueror. The Boursiers no longer ran, they no longer shouted; they glided, they talked in low tones, as in a sick room. Although the crowd was very great, and one could not circulate without stifling, only a distressful murmur arose, the whispering of the current fears, of all the deplorable news which folks exchanged in one another’s ears. Many remained silent, with livid, contracted faces and dilated eyes, which questioned other faces despairingly.
‘And have you nothing to say, Salmon?’ asked Pillerault, full of aggressive irony.
‘Of course not,’ muttered Moser; ‘he’s like the rest: he has nothing to say; he is frightened.’
Indeed, that day Salmon’s silence disturbed no one, such was the deep, mute expectancy of one and all.
It was around Saccard, however, that a stream of customers especially crowded, trembling with uncertainty and eager for an encouraging word. It was afterwards remembered that Daigremont did not show himself that day any more than Deputy Huret, who had doubtless been warned, and was once more Rougon’s faithful dog. Kolb, amid a group of bankers, pretended to be absorbed in a big arbitrage affair. The Marquis de Bohain, above the vicissitudes of fortune, quietly promenaded his little pale aristocratic head, certain of winning whatever happened, since he had given Jacoby orders to sell as many Universals as he had charged Mazaud to buy. And Saccard, besieged by the multitude of the others, the believers and the simpletons, displayed a particularly amiable and tranquillizing manner towards Sédille and Maugendre, who, with trembling lips and moist, supplicating eyes, came in search of the hope of triumph. He vigorously pressed their hands, putting into his grasp the absolute promise of victory, and then, like a man who is ever happy, beyond the reach of all danger, he began lamenting over a trifle.
‘I am very worried,’ said he. ‘A camellia was forgotten in my yard during the very cold weather, and it has died.’
The remark ran through the hall, and everybody began deploring the fate of the camellia. What a man that Saccard was, with his impassable assurance, his ever-smiling face! for one could never tell if it were not some mask, concealing frightful anxieties which would have tortured any other.
‘The brute! how fine he is!’ murmured Jantrou, in the ear of Massias, who was coming back.
Just then Saccard called Jantrou, a sudden recollection coming to him at this supreme moment—a recollection of the afternoon when, in Jantrou’s company, he had seen the Baroness Sandorff’s brougham drawn up in the Rue Brongniart. Was it again there on this day of crisis? Was the high-perched coachman maintaining his stony immobility in that pelting rain, while the Baroness, behind the closed windows, awaited the quotations?
‘Certainly, she is there,’ answered Jantrou, in an undertone, ‘and heartily with you, thoroughly determined not to retreat a step. We are all here, solid, at our posts.’
Saccard felt happy at this proof of fidelity, although he doubted the disinterestedness of the lady and the others. However, in the blindness of his fever, he believed that he was still marching on to conquest, with his whole nation of shareholders behind him—that infatuated, fanaticised people of the humble and the fashionable worlds, in which pretty women of good position mingled with servant girls in the same impulse of faith.
At last the bell sounded, passing like the wail of a tocsin over the wild sea of heads. And Mazaud, who was giving orders to Flory, hurried back to the corbeille, while the young clerk rushed to the telegraph office, greatly agitated on his own account; for, having been losing for some time, through his obstinacy in following the fortunes of the Universal, he had that day risked a decisive stroke, on the strength of the story of Daigremont’s intervention, which he had overheard in the office, behind a door. The corbeille was quite as anxious as the hall; ever since the last settlement the brokers had plainly felt the ground trembling beneath them, amidst such serious symptoms that their experience took alarm. There had already been some partial collapses; the market, too heavily burdened, exhausted, was cracking in every direction. Was there going to be, then, one of those great cataclysms, such as occur every ten or fifteen years, one of those crises which supervene when gambling has reached an acutely feverish stage, and which decimate the Bourse and sweep it clean like a wind of death? The shouts in the Rente and Cash markets drowned one another, the jostling was rougher than ever, while on high were the tall black silhouettes of the quoters, who were waiting, pen in hand. And Mazaud, standing at his post, with his hands grasping the red-velvet balustrade of the corbeille, at once heard Jacoby, on the other side of the circular basin, shouting in his deep bass voice: ‘I have Universals! At two thousand eight hundred, I have Universals!’
This was the last quotation of the Petite Bourse of the night before; and, in order to put a stop to the fall at once, Mazaud thought it prudent to take at this price. His shrill voice arose above all the others: ‘At two thousand eight hundred I take! Three hundred Universals, deliver!’
Thus was the first quotation fixed. But it was impossible to maintain it. Offers flowed in from all sides. Mazaud struggled desperately for half an hour, but with no other result than that of slackening the rapidity of the fall. What surprised him was that he was no longer sustained by the coulisse. What game was being played by Nathansohn, whose orders to purchase he was expecting? And not until afterwards did he learn the shrewd tactics of the coulissier who, whilst buying for Saccard, was selling on his own account, having been warned of the real situation by his keen Jew scent. Massias, heavily involved himself as a buyer, ran up, out of breath, to report the rout of the coulisse to Mazaud, who lost his head and burned his last cartridges, at once letting fly the orders which he had hitherto been keeping back, in view of executing them by degrees pending the arrival of the reinforcements. This sent the price up a little; from twenty-five hundred it rose to twenty-six hundred and fifty, with the sudden leaps peculiar to tempestuous days; and again for a moment did boundless hope buoy up the hearts of Mazaud, Saccard, all who were in the secret of the plan of battle. Since the quotations were so soon going up again, the day was won, and the victory would be overwhelming when the reserves should fall upon the ‘bears’ flank, changing their defeat into a frightful rout. There was a movement of profound joy; Sédille and Maugendre could have kissed Saccard’s hand, Kolb drew nearer, while Jantrou disappeared, running off to carry the good news to the Baroness Sandorff. And at this moment little Flory, quite radiant, was seen hunting everywhere for Sabatani, now his intermediary, to give him a fresh order to buy.
But it had just struck two, and Mazaud, who bore the brunt of the attack, again weakened, his surprise now increasing at the delay of the reinforcements in taking the field. It was high time for them to turn up; what were they waiting for? Why did they not relieve him from the untenable position in which he was exhausting himself?
Although, through professional pride, he displayed an impassive countenance, a keen chill was rising to his cheeks, and he feared that he was turning pale. Jacoby, in a thundering voice, continued hurling his offers at him, in methodical instalments, but Mazaud ceased accepting them. And it was no longer at Jacoby that he was looking; his eyes were turned towards Delarocque, Daigremont’s broker, whose silence he could not understand. Stout and thickset, with a reddish beard, and the smiling beatific air of a man who has amused himself the night before, Delarocque retained a very quiet, peaceable air whilst waiting in this inexplicable fashion. Was he not going to catch at all these offers, however, and save everything, by means of the orders to buy, which must cover the fiches in his hand?
Suddenly in his guttural, slightly hoarse voice, he threw himself into the struggle: ‘I have Universals! I have Universals!’ he called.
And in a few minutes he had offered several millions’ worth. Voices answered him, and the quotations collapsed.
‘I have at two thousand four hundred!’ ‘I have at two thousand three hundred!’
‘How many?’
‘Five hundred, six hundred!’
‘Deliver!’
What was he saying? What was taking place? Instead of the expected succour, was this a fresh hostile army emerging from the neighbouring woods? As at Waterloo, Grouchy failed to come up, and it was treason that completed the rout. Under the onslaught of those deep, fresh masses of offers hastening to the attack at the double quick, a frightful panic set in.
Mazaud at that moment felt death pass over his face. He had carried Saccard over for far too large a sum, and he was fully conscious that the Universal was breaking his back in its fall. But his handsome dark face, with small moustaches, remained impenetrable and brave. Exhausting the orders which he had received, he still went on buying in his piercing cockerel-like voice, as shrill as in the hours of success. And opposite him, his counterparts, the roaring Jacoby and the apoplectic Delarocque, despite their efforts at indifference, showed more anxiety than he, for they realised that he was now in great danger, and would he pay them should he fail? Their hands grasped the velvet balustrade, their voices continued shouting as though mechanically, from mere habit, while their fixed glances expressed all the frightful anguish of this tragedy of money.
Then, during the last half-hour, came the smash-up, the rout growing worse and worse, carrying the mob away in a disorderly gallop. After extreme confidence, blind infatuation, came the reaction of fear, and one and all rushed forward to sell, if there was still time. A perfect hail of orders to sell fell upon the corbeille: there was nothing to be seen but a rain of fiches; and the enormous parcels of shares, thus imprudently thrown upon the market, accelerated the decline, turned it into a veritable collapse. The quotations, from fall to fall, dropped to one thousand five hundred, one thousand two hundred, nine hundred francs. There were no more buyers; none were left standing; the ground was strewn with corpses. Above the dark swarming of frock-coats, the three quoters looked like clerks registering deaths. By a singular effect of the blast of disaster which swept through the hall, the agitation congealed there as it were, the uproar died away as in the stupor of a great catastrophe. A frightful silence prevailed when, after the stroke of the closing bell, the final quotation of eight hundred and thirty francs became known. And meantime the obstinate rain still streamed upon the windows, through which only a doubtful twilight filtered. What with the dripping of the umbrellas and the tramping of the crowd, the hall had become a cloaca, muddy like an ill-kept stable, and littered with all sorts of torn papers; while in the corbeille shone the variegated fiches, green, red, and blue, scattered there by the handful, and so abundant that afternoon that the vast basin overflowed.
Mazaud had re-entered the brokers’ room at the same time as Jacoby and Delarocque. Consumed by an ardent thirst, he approached the buffet, and drank a glass of beer. Then he looked at the immense room, with its long central table, around which were ranged the arm-chairs of the sixty brokers, its red velvet hangings, all its commonplace faded luxury, which lent it the appearance of a first-class waiting-room in a large railway station; he looked at it with the astonished air of a man who had never had a good view of it before. Then, as he was going off, he silently shook hands with Jacoby and Delarocque, exchanging the accustomed grasp with them; and although they all three preserved their every-day correct deportment, they could not help turning pale. Mazaud had told Flory to wait for him at the door; and there he found him, in company with Gustave, who had definitively left the office the week before, and had come there simply as a spectator, always smiling and leading a gay life, without ever asking himself whether his father would, on the morrow, still be able to pay his debts; while Flory, with pale cheeks and an idiotic sneer on his lips, endeavoured to talk, though crushed by the frightful loss of a hundred thousand francs which had just fallen upon him, and the first sou of which he did not know where to get. However, Mazaud and his clerk disappeared in the rain.
In the hall the panic had especially raged around Saccard; it was there that the war had made its ravages. At the first moment he had not understood what was happening; then, bravely facing the peril, he had beheld the rout. What was that noise? Was it not Daigremont’s troops arriving? Then, when he had heard the quotations collapse, though he failed to comprehend the cause of the disaster, he stiffened himself up, in order to die standing. An icy chill rose from the ground to his skull; he had a feeling that the irreparable was taking place—this was his defeat for ever; but base regret for money, wrath for lost enjoyment, did not enter into his grief; his heart simply bled with humiliation at the thought that he was conquered, and that this was the splendid, absolute victory of Gundermann, the victory which once more consolidated the omnipotence of that king of gold. At that moment Saccard was really superb, with his slight figure erect as though braving destiny, his eyes never blinking, his face stubbornly set as he stood there alone with the flood of despair and resentment, which he already felt rising against him. The entire hall seethed and surged towards his pillar; fists were clenched, mouths stammered evil words, yet he retained upon his lips an unconscious smile, which might have been taken for a challenge.
At first, through a sort of mist, he distinguished Maugendre, looking deadly pale as Captain Chave led him away on his arm, and, with the cruelty of a petty gambler delighted to see big speculators come to grief, repeated to him that he had prophesied it all. Then Sédille, with contracted face and the crazy air of a merchant whose business is collapsing, came like a good-natured fellow to give him an unsteady shake of the hand, as though to say that he bore him no grudge. At the first shock the Marquis de Bohain had drawn aside, passing over to the triumphant army of ‘bears,’ and telling Kolb, who also prudently held aloof, what disagreeable doubts he had entertained of that man Saccard ever since the last shareholders’ meeting. Jantrou, bewildered, had disappeared again, going off on the run to carry the last quotation to the Baroness Sandorff, who would surely have an hysterical attack in her brougham, as was the case on the days when she lost heavily. And facing the ever silent and enigmatical Salmon, stood ‘bear’ Moser and ‘bull’ Pillerault, the latter with a provoking, proud mien, despite his ruin; the other, who had made a fortune, marring his victory with remote anxieties. ‘You see, we shall have war with Germany in the spring. All this doesn’t smell nice, and Bismarck is watching us.’
‘Oh, be quiet, do!’ replied Pillerault. ‘I again made the mistake of reflecting too much. So much the worse! I must begin over again; all will go well.’
So far Saccard had not weakened. But behind him he heard someone mention the name of Fayeux, the dividend-collector of Vendôme, with whom he had dealings on behalf of numerous petty shareholders, and this name brought him a feeling of uneasiness, reminding him as it did of the vast mass of wretched little capitalists who would be crushed beneath the ruins of the Universal. And suddenly the sight of Dejoie, with a livid, distorted face, acutely intensified this uneasiness, for all the humble folks now so lamentably mixed seemed personified in this poor man whom he knew. At the same time, by a sort of hallucination, there rose before him the pale, desolate faces of the Countess de Beauvilliers and her daughter, who gazed at him in despair out of their large tearful eyes. And at that moment, Saccard, the corsair whose heart was tanned by twenty years of brigandage—Saccard, whose pride it was that he had never felt a trembling in his legs, that he had never once sat down upon the bench, against the pillar behind him—Saccard felt a sudden weakness, and had to drop for a moment upon that bench. The crowd still surged, threatening to stifle him. He raised his head, feeling a need of air, and in a moment he was on his feet again; for up above, looking down upon the hall from the telegraph gallery, he recognised La Méchain, her huge fat person dominating the ghastly battle-field. On the stone baluster beside her lay her old black leather bag. Pending the arrival of the time when she might fill it to overflowing with the worthless shares, she was watching the dead, like a voracious raven that follows armies until the day of massacre.
Then, with a firm step, Saccard walked away, bearing himself erect by an extraordinary effort of will. His whole being seemed empty to him, however; his senses were blunted, so to say; he no longer felt the flagstones, but thought he was walking on a soft woollen carpet. Similarly, a mist obscured his eyes, and a buzzing filled his ears. He no longer recognised people as he left the Bourse and descended the steps; it seemed to him that he was surrounded by floating phantoms, vague forms, dying sounds. Did he not see Busch’s broad, grimacing face pass him? Had he not stopped for a moment to speak to Nathansohn, who appeared quite at his ease, and whose voice, weakened by much shouting, seemed to come from a long way off? Did not Sabatani and Massias accompany him amidst the general consternation? He fancied he could see himself surrounded by a numerous group, again Sédille and Maugendre perhaps, all sorts of faces which faded away, became transformed. And as he was on the point of going off into the rain and liquid mud which were submerging Paris, he made his freedom of mind his last boast, and repeated in a shrill voice to all that phantom throng: ‘Ah, how worried I am about that camellia of mine which was forgotten in the yard and has been killed by the cold!’
< < < Chapter IX
Chapter XI > > >
French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – Money – Contents
Copyright holders – Public Domain Book
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