French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – Money – Contents
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Chapter IX
EXCELSIOR!
Once again Madame Caroline found herself alone. Hamelin had remained in Paris until the early days of November on account of the formalities connected with the final constitution of the company, with its capital of one hundred and fifty millions of francs; and he it was who by Saccard’s desire went to Maître Lelorrain’s, in the Rue Sainte-Anne, to make the fresh declarations which the law required, alleging that all the shares had been subscribed and the capital paid in, which was not true. Then he started for Rome, where he was to spend a couple of months, having some important matters which he did not speak of to study there—doubtless that famous visionary scheme of installing the Pope at Jerusalem, as well as a more weighty and practical idea, that of transforming the Universal into a Catholic bank, based on the interests of all Christendom, a vast machine which would crush the Jew bankers and sweep them off the face of the earth. And from Rome he meant to betake himself to the East again, having to return thither to attend to the railway line from Broussa to Beyrout. He went off delighted with the rapid prosperity of the Universal, and feeling absolutely convinced that it was firmly established, though at the same time he experienced some secret anxiety at its amazing success. In a conversation which he had with his sister on the day before his departure he only laid stress upon one point, which was that she must resist the general infatuation and sell their shares should the quotations ever exceed two thousand two hundred francs; for he wished to protest personally against a higher rise, deeming it both foolish and dangerous.
As soon as she was alone again, Madame Caroline felt yet more disturbed by the burning atmosphere in which she lived. The shares reached the price of two thousand two hundred francs during the first week in November; and all around her she found rapture, thanksgiving, and unlimited hope. Dejoie was brimming over with gratitude, and the Beauvilliers ladies now treated her as an equal, for was she not the friend of the demigod who was about to restore their ancient house? A chorus of benedictions went up from the happy multitude of speculators both great and small, for daughters were at last supplied with dowries, the poor were suddenly enriched, ensured of incomes in their old age, whilst the wealthy burned with insatiable delight at becoming more wealthy still. ‘Twas an unique moment that followed the close of that Exhibition in Paris, now so thoroughly intoxicated with pleasure and power, a moment of faith in happiness, of conviction in endless good luck. All stocks and shares had gone up in price, the most valueless found credulous purchasers; a plethora of equivocal concerns inflated the market, congested it to the point of apoplexy; whilst, underneath, all sounded hollow, revealed the real exhaustion of a régime which had indulged in much enjoyment, which had spent milliards upon great public works, and had fattened many huge financial institutions whose gaping coffers were discharging their contents in all directions. Amid such general vertigo a smash up was bound to follow at the first crack, and Madame Caroline doubtless had some such anxious presentiment when she felt her heart pain her at each fresh leap in the price of Universals. No bad rumour as yet circulated; you detected but a slight quivering among the astonished, subdued ‘bears.’ Still she was perfectly conscious of a feeling of uneasiness, of something which was already undermining the edifice. What it was could not be told, as nothing precise manifested itself, and so she was forced to wait, face to face with the splendour of the triumph which was still increasing despite those slight shocks, those signs of instability portending a catastrophe.
Moreover, she now had another worry. The officials of the Institute of Work were at last satisfied with Victor, who had become silent and crafty; and if she had not yet told everything to Saccard it was from a singular feeling of embarrassment, which made her suffer from the shame that he would feel when she should tell her story, and caused her to postpone its narration from day to day. On the other hand, Maxime, to whom out of her own pocket she about this time refunded the two thousand francs which he had lent her, waxed merry over the balance of four thousand, for which Busch and La Méchain were ever clamouring. They were robbing her, said he, and his father would be furious. Accordingly, from that time forward she turned a deaf ear to the repeated demands of Busch, who insisted on being paid the remainder of the promised sum. After numerous applications he finally became angry, especially as his old idea of blackmailing Saccard had come back to him since the financier’s rise to a position of wealth and influence, a position which placed him, Busch believed, at his mercy, as he must now necessarily fear scandal. So one day, exasperated at deriving nothing from such a fine affair, he resolved to apply to him direct, and wrote him a letter, asking him to be good enough to come to his office, to look into some old papers which had been found in a house in the Rue de la Harpe. He gave the number of the house and made so clear an allusion to the old story that he felt sure Saccard would be seized with anxiety and hasten to obey the summons. This letter, however, was forwarded to the Rue Saint-Lazare, and fell into the hands of Madame Caroline, who recognised the writing on the envelope. She trembled, and wondered for a moment whether she ought not to run to Busch’s office and try to buy him off. Then she reflected that he had perhaps written to Saccard about something else, and that at any rate this would be a way of ending the matter. In her emotion she was even pleased to think that the task of revealing the affair should fall upon another. In the evening, however, when Saccard returned home and opened the letter in her presence she simply saw a grave expression come over his face, and thought that the letter must refer to some money complication. In reality he had experienced profound surprise, and his throat had contracted at the thought of falling into such filthy hands, which he could guess must be plotting some baseness. Still, he put the letter into his pocket with an easy gesture, and decided to call upon Busch as he was requested to do.
Several days passed, however, the second fortnight of November arrived, and each morning Saccard postponed his visit, more and more bewildered by the torrent which was bearing him along. The quotation of two thousand three hundred francs had just been reached and he was delighted, albeit feeling that resistance was being offered at the Bourse, and indeed becoming more and more pronounced as the rise continued. Evidently some group of ‘bears’ was taking up position, entering upon the struggle timidly as yet, venturing as a rule on mere outpost skirmishes, although on two occasions he found himself obliged to give orders to buy under cover of borrowed names, so that there might be no pause in the upward march of the quotations. The system of making the Bank buy up its own shares, speculate with them, and thus devour itself, was at last being put into practice.
One evening, thoroughly stirred by his passionate fever, Saccard could not help speaking of the matter to Madame Caroline. ‘I fancy that things will soon be getting warm,’ said he; ‘we have become too strong, and they find us in their way. I can scent Gundermann. I know his tactics: he will begin selling regularly, so much to-day, so much to-morrow, increasing the amount until he succeeds in shaking us.’
Interrupting him, she said gravely: ‘If he has any Universals he does right to sell.’
‘What! he does right to sell!’
‘No doubt, my brother told you so. All quotations above two thousand francs are absurd.’
He looked at her, and, quite beside himself, gave vent to an angry outburst: ‘Sell them! Dare to sell your own shares! Yes, play against me, since you want me to be defeated!’
She blushed slightly, for, truth to tell, she had only the day before sold a thousand of her shares in obedience to her brother’s orders; and this sale, like some tardy act of honesty, had eased her feelings. As Saccard did not put any direct questions to her, she did not confess the matter to him, but her embarrassment increased when he added: ‘For instance, there were some defections yesterday, I am sure of it. Quite a large parcel of shares came into the market, and quotations would certainly have fallen if I hadn’t intervened. It wasn’t Gundermann who made such a stroke as that. His system is a slower one, though the result in the long run is more crushing. Ah! my dear, I am quite confident, but still I can’t help trembling, for it’s nothing to defend one’s life in comparison with having to defend one’s money and that of others.’
And indeed from that moment Saccard ceased to be his own master. He belonged to the millions which he was making, still triumphing, yet ever on the verge of defeat. He no longer even found time to see the Baroness Sandorff, who felt that he was breaking away from her and relapsed into her former ignorance and doubts. Since their intimacy had begun she had gambled with almost a certainty of winning and had made much money, but she now clearly saw that he was unwilling to answer her, and even feared that he might be lying to her. Either because her luck had turned, or he had indeed been amusing himself by starting her on a false scent, a day came when she lost by following his advice. Her faith was then badly shaken. If he thus misled her, who would guide her? And the worst was that the secret hostility to the Universal at the Bourse, so slight at first, was now growing day by day. There were still only rumours; no precise statement was made; no genuine fact impaired the Bank’s credit. Only it was tacitly allowed that there must be something the matter, that the worm was in the fruit, though this did not prevent the rise of the stock from continuing, from becoming more and more formidable every day.
However, after a deal in Italians which proved disastrous, the Baroness, decidedly anxious, resolved to call at the office of ‘L’Espérance’ to try to make Jantrou talk.
‘Come, what’s the matter?’ she said to him. ‘You must know. Universals have just gone up another twenty francs and yet there are rumours afloat—no one can tell me exactly what, but at all events nothing very good.’
Jantrou’s perplexity was, however, as great as her own. Placed at the fountain-head of information, in case of need manufacturing reports himself, he jokingly compared his position to that of a clock-maker who lives among hundreds of clocks and yet never knows the correct time. Thanks to his advertising agency, he was in everybody’s confidence, but the result of this was that he could never form a firm opinion, for the information which he received on one hand was generally contradicted, reduced to nought, by that which he received on another.
‘I know nothing,’ he replied, ‘nothing at all.’
‘You mean that you don’t want to tell me.’
‘No, upon my word, I really know nothing. Why, I was even thinking of calling on you to question you! Has Saccard ceased to be obliging, then?’
She made a gesture which confirmed him in his suspicion; and, still looking at her, he went on talking, venting his thoughts aloud: ‘Yes, it’s annoying, for I relied on you. For, you see, if there is to be a catastrophe, one ought to be forewarned of it, so as to have time to turn round. Oh! I don’t think there need be any hurry; the Bank still stands firm as yet. Only such queer things happen sometimes.’ As he thus gazed at her and chattered, a plan suddenly took shape in his head, and all at once he resumed: ‘I say, since Saccard drops you, you ought to cultivate Gundermann’s acquaintance.’
Such was her surprise that for a moment she remained without speaking. ‘Why Gundermann?’ she asked at last. ‘I know him a little; I’ve met him at the De Roivilles’ and the Kellers’.’
‘So much the better if you know him. Go to see him on some pretext or other, talk to him, and try to get on friendly terms with him. Just think of it—to become Gundermann’s confidante and rule the world!’
‘But why Gundermann?’ she repeated.
Thereupon he explained that Gundermann was certainly at the head of the group of ‘bears’ who were beginning to manœuvre against the Universal. This he knew; he had proof of it. So, as Saccard was no longer obliging, would it not be simple prudence to make friends with his enemy, without, however, breaking with him? With a foot in each camp, she would be sure of being in the conqueror’s company on the day of battle. And he suggested this treachery to her with an amiable air, like a good adviser. With a woman at work for him, he felt that he would be able to sleep in peace. ‘Come, what do you say?’ he added; ‘let us make a bargain. We will warn each other, we will tell each other everything we hear.’
Thereupon he grasped her hand, which she relinquished to him, already losing her contempt for him, forgetting the lackey that he had been, no longer realising into what low debauchery he had fallen, his face bloated, his handsome beard reeking of absinthe, his new coat soiled with spots, his shiny hat damaged by the plaster of some disreputable stairway.
She called upon Gundermann the very next day. Since Universals had reached the figure of two thousand francs he had indeed been leading a bear movement, but with the utmost discretion, never going to the Bourse, nor sending even an official representative thither. His argument was that a share in any company is in the first place worth its price of issue, and secondly the interest which it may yield, this depending upon the prosperity of the company, the success attending its enterprises. There is therefore a maximum value which cannot be reasonably increased. As soon as that value is exceeded through popular infatuation, the prudent course is to play for a fall in the certainty that it must come. Still, despite his convictions, despite his absolute belief in logic, he was surprised by Saccard’s rapid conquests, surprised to find that he had become such a power all at once, and was already beginning to frighten the big Jew bankers. It was necessary to lay this dangerous rival low as soon as possible, not only in order to regain the eight millions lost on the morrow of Sadowa, but especially in order to avoid having to share the sovereignty of the market with such a terrible adventurer, whose reckless strokes seemed to succeed in defiance of all common sense, as if by miracle. And so, full of contempt for passion, Gundermann, mathematical gambler, man-numeral that he was, carried his phlegm, his frigid obstinacy still further, ever and ever selling Universals despite their continuous rise, and losing larger and larger sums at each successive settlement, with the fine sense of security of a wise man who simply puts his money into a savings’ bank.
When the Baroness at last managed to enter the banker’s room amid the scramble of employees and remisiers, the hail of papers which had to be signed and of telegrams which had to be read, she found Gundermann suffering from a fearful cough which seemed to be tearing his throat away. Nevertheless he had been there since six o’clock in the morning—coughing and spitting, worn out with fatigue, it is true, but steadfast all the same. That day, as a foreign loan was to be issued on the morrow, the spacious room was invaded by an even more eager crowd than usual, and two of the banker’s sons and one of his sons-in-law had been deputed to receive this whirlwind; whilst on the floor, near the narrow table which he had reserved for himself in the embrasure of a window, three of his grandchildren, two girls and a boy, were quarrelling with shrill cries over a doll, an arm and a leg of which had already been torn off and lay there beside them.
The Baroness at once brought forward the pretext which she had devised to explain her visit. ‘Cher monsieur,’ said she, ‘I have come to pester you, which needs a deal of courage. It is with reference to a charity lottery——’
He did not allow her to finish, for he was very charitable, and always bought two tickets, especially when ladies whom he had met in society thus took the trouble to bring them to him. However, he had to keep her waiting for a moment, for an employee came to submit some papers to him. They spoke of vast sums of money in hurried words.
‘Fifty-two millions, you say? And the credit was?’
‘Sixty millions, monsieur.’
‘Well, carry it to seventy-five millions.’
Then he was returning to the Baroness, when he overheard a word or two of a conversation between his son-in-law and a remisier, and this started him off again. ‘Not at all,’ he interrupted. ‘At the rate of five hundred and eighty-seven fifty, that makes ten sous less per share.’
‘Oh! monsieur,’ said the remisier, humbly, ‘it would only make forty-three francs less!’
‘What, forty-three francs! Why, it is enormous! Do you think that I steal money? Every one his due; I know no rule but that!’
At last, so that they might talk at their ease, he decided to take the Baroness into the dining-room, where the table was already laid for breakfast. He was not deceived by that pretext of a lottery, for, thanks to obsequious spies, who kept him informed, he knew how intimate she was with Saccard, and strongly suspected that she had come on some matter of serious interest. Consequently he did not stand on ceremony. ‘Come now!’ he exclaimed, ‘tell me what you have to say.’
But she pretended surprise. She had nothing to say to him; she simply wished to thank him for his kindness.
‘Then you have not been charged with a commission for me?’ he asked, seemingly disappointed, as if he had thought for a moment that she had come with a secret mission from Saccard, some invention or other of that madman.
Now that they were alone, she looked at him with a smile, with that deceptive, ardent air of hers by which so many men had been caught. ‘No,’ she said, ‘no, I have nothing to say to you, and since you are so very kind, I would rather ask something of you.’ And then, leaning forward, she made her confession, spoke of her deplorable marriage to a foreigner, who had understood neither her nature nor her needs; and explained how she had been obliged to have recourse to gambling in order to keep up her position. And finally, she expatiated on her solitude, on the necessity of being advised and guided through the quicksands of the Bourse, where so heavy a penalty attends each false step. ‘But I thought,’ he interrupted, ‘that you were already advised by somebody.’
‘Oh, somebody!’ she murmured with a gesture of profound disdain. ‘No, nobody—I have nobody. It is your advice that I should like to have, the advice of the master. And it really would not cost you anything to be my friend, just to say a word to me, merely one word every now and then. If you only knew how happy you would make me, how grateful I should be to you!’
Speaking in this wise, she sought to fascinate him by glance and gesture, but all to no avail. He remained cold, impassive, like one who has no passions. And whilst he listened to her he took some grapes, one by one, from a fruit-stand on the table, and ate them in a languid, mechanical way. This was the only excess which he allowed himself, the indulgence of his most sensual moments, the penalty for which was days of suffering, for his digestive organs were so impaired that a rigorous milk diet had been prescribed for him. Looking at the Baroness, he gave her the cunning smile of a man who knows that he is invincible; and without wasting further time, coming straight to the point, he said: ‘Well, you are very charming, and I should really like to oblige you. So on the day, my beautiful friend, when you bring me some good advice, I promise to give you some in return. Come and tell me what others are doing, and I’ll tell you what I shall do. It is understood, eh?’
He had risen, and she was obliged to return with him into the adjoining room. She had perfectly understood the bargain which he proposed, the spying and treachery which he required of her. But she was unwilling to answer, and made a pretence of reverting to the subject of the lottery; whilst he, with a shake of his head, seemed to be adding that he did not really need any help, since the logical, inevitable dénouement would come just the same, though perhaps not quite so fast. And when she at last went off his attention was immediately turned to other important matters, amid all the extraordinary tumult prevailing in that market of capital, what with the procession of Boursiers, the gallop of his employees, and the play of his grandchildren, who had just torn the doll’s head off with shouts of triumph. Seated at his narrow table, he became absorbed in the study of a sudden idea, and heard nothing more.
The Baroness Sandorff returned twice to the office of ‘L’Espérance’ to acquaint Jantrou with what she had done, but she did not find him there. At last Dejoie admitted her one day when his daughter Nathalie sat talking with Madame Jordan on a bench in the passage. A diluvian rain had been falling since the day before; and in the wet gray weather the old building, overlooking a dark well-like courtyard, seemed frightfully melancholy. Such was the darkness that the gas had been lighted, and Marcelle, waiting for Jordan, who had gone in search of some money, to pay a new instalment to Busch, listened sadly to Nathalie as the latter chatted away like a vain magpie, with the dry voice and sharp gestures of a precocious Parisian girl.
‘You understand, madame, papa won’t sell. There is a lady who is urging him to do so, trying to frighten him. I do not give her name, because surely it is hardly her place to frighten people. It is I who am now preventing papa from selling. Sell indeed! when the price is still going up! To do that one would need to be a regular simpleton, don’t you think so?’
‘No doubt!’ Marcelle simply answered.
‘The price, you know, has now got to two thousand five hundred francs,’ continued Nathalie. ‘I keep the accounts because papa scarcely knows how to write. And so our eight shares represent twenty thousand francs already. That’s nice, is it not? First of all, papa wanted to stop at eighteen thousand, that was his figure—six thousand for my dowry, and twelve thousand for himself, enough for a little income of six hundred francs a year, which he would have well earned with all these emotions. But is it not lucky that he didn’t sell, since we have already got two thousand francs more? And now we want more still, we want enough to give papa an income of a thousand francs at the very least. And we shall get it; Monsieur Saccard has told us so. He is so nice, is Monsieur Saccard!’
Marcelle could not help smiling. ‘Then you no longer intend to marry?’ she said.
‘Yes, yes, when the rise comes to an end. We were in a hurry, Theodore’s father especially, on account of his business. But it would be silly, wouldn’t it, to stop up the source when the money keeps pouring out of it? Oh! Theodore understands it all very well, especially as the larger papa’s income gets, the more capital there will be for us by-and-by. That’s worth considering—and so we are all waiting. We have had the six thousand francs for months, and I might have married, but we prefer to let them increase and multiply. Do you read the articles in the newspapers about the shares?’
Without waiting for a reply, she went on: ‘Papa brings me the papers and I read them every evening. He has already seen them and I have to read them over to him again. One could never tire of them, they make such beautiful promises! I have my head so full of them when I go to bed that I dream about them all night. Papa tells me, too, that he sees things in his sleep which are very good signs. The night before last we had the same dream, of five-franc pieces which we were picking up by the shovelful in the street. It was very amusing.’
Again she paused in her cackle to ask: ‘How many shares have you got?’
‘We, not one!’ answered Marcelle.
Nathalie’s fair little face, crowned with light wavy hair, assumed an expression of intense compassion. Ah! the poor people who had no shares! And her father having called her to ask her to carry some proofs to a contributor, on her way back to the Batignolles, she went off, affecting the importance of a capitalist, who now came to the office almost every day in order to ascertain the Bourse quotations at the earliest possible moment.
Left alone on her bench, Marcelle fell back into a melancholy reverie, she who was usually so gay and brave. Mon Dieu! how dark it was, what a gloomy day it was! and to think that her poor husband was running about the streets in that diluvian rain! He had such contempt for money, felt such uneasiness at the very idea of occupying himself with it, that it cost him a great effort to ask it even of those who owed it to him! Then becoming absorbed, hearing nothing, she recalled her experiences since waking in the morning; while all around her feverish work went on in connection with the paper—contributors rushing past, ‘copy’ coming and going, doors slamming and bells ringing incessantly.
To her it had been an evil day. In the first place she had scarcely washed and was still in her morning wrap when at nine o’clock, just as Jordan had gone out to investigate an accident which he was to report, she was astounded to see Busch make his appearance, accompanied by two very dirty-looking men, perhaps process servers, perhaps bandits, she never could tell exactly which. That abominable fellow Busch, undoubtedly taking advantage of the fact that there was only a woman to contend with, declared that they meant to seize everything if she did not pay him on the spot. And she argued the matter in vain, being unacquainted with any of the legal formalities. He affirmed so stoutly that judgment had been signified and the placard posted that she was left in bewilderment, believing at last in the possibility of these things happening without one knowing of them. However, she did not surrender, but explained that her husband would not return even to lunch, and that she would allow nothing to be touched until he should come back. Then, between these three shady personages and this young woman with her hair hanging over her shoulders, there ensued a most painful scene, the men already making an inventory of the goods, and she locking the cupboards, and placing herself in front of the door as though to prevent them from taking anything away. To think of it! Her poor little home which she was so proud of, those few sticks of furniture which she was ever dusting and polishing, those hangings in the bedroom which she had put up herself! As she shouted to them with warlike bravery, they would have to pass over her body if they wished to take those things away. And she called Busch rogue and thief to his very face. Yes! a thief who wasn’t ashamed to demand seven hundred and thirty francs and fifteen centimes, without counting the fresh costs, for a claim which he had picked out of some heap of rags and old iron bought for a hundred sous! To think that they had already paid the thief four hundred francs in instalments and that he talked of carrying off their furniture to pay himself the other three hundred and odd francs which he wished to rob them of! Yet he knew perfectly well that they were honest people and would have paid him at once had they only possessed the sum. And he profited by the circumstance that she was alone, unable to answer, ignorant of legal matters, to come there and frighten her and make her weep. He was a rogue, a thief, a thief! Quite infuriated, Busch shouted even louder than she did, slapping his chest and asking: Was he not an honest man? Had he not paid sterling money for the claim? He had fulfilled all the formalities of the law and meant to make an end of the matter. However, when one of the two dirty men began opening the chest of drawers in search of the linen, Marcelle’s demeanour became so terrific, she threatened so stoutly to bring everyone in the house and in the street to the spot, that the Jew slightly calmed down; and at last after another half-hour’s wild discussion he consented to wait until the morrow, furiously swearing, however, that he would then remove everything if she did not keep her promise to him. Oh! what burning shame it had been, a shame from which she still suffered—those horrid men in her rooms, wounding all her feelings, even her modesty, searching her very bed, and quite infecting the happy chamber, whose window she had been obliged to leave wide open after their departure.
But another and a deeper sorrow awaited Marcelle that day. The idea had occurred to her of at once hastening to her parents to borrow the needed sum of them: in this way, when her husband came back at night, she would not have to fill him with despair, but would be able to make him laugh by telling him of the scene of the morning. She already saw herself describing the great battle, the ferocious assault made upon their household, the heroic way in which she had repulsed the attack. Her heart beat very fast as she entered the little residence in the Rue Legendre, that comfortable house in which she had grown up, and where it now seemed to her she would find only strangers, so different, so icy was the atmosphere. As her parents were sitting down to table, she accepted their invitation to breakfast, in order to put them in better humour. Throughout the meal the conversation ran upon the rise in Universals, the price of which had gone up another twenty francs only the day before; and Marcelle was astonished to find her mother more feverish, more greedy even than her father, she who at the outset had trembled at the very idea of speculation; whereas now, with the violence of a conquered woman, it was she who chided him for his timidity, in her anxious eagerness for great strokes of luck. They had scarcely begun eating, when she flew into a tantrum: she was astounded at hearing him talk of selling their seventy-five shares at the unhoped-for figure of two thousand five hundred and twenty francs, which would have yielded them a hundred and eighty-nine thousand francs, in truth a pretty profit, more than a hundred thousand francs above the price at which they bought the stock. Yet this did not satisfy her. ‘Sell!’ said she, ‘when the “Côte Financière” promised the figure of three thousand francs!’ Had he gone mad? For the ‘Côte Financière’ was known for its old-time honesty; he himself often repeated that with this newspaper as a guide one could sleep soundly. Oh! no, indeed, she would not let him sell! She would sooner sell their house to buy more shares. And Marcelle, silent, with her heart compressed at hearing them so passionately bandy these big figures, wondered how she might venture to ask for a loan of five hundred francs in this house which gambling had invaded, and where little by little she had seen rise the flood of financial newspapers that now submerged it, enveloped it with the intoxicating glamour of their puffs.
At last, at dessert, she ventured to speak out. She and her husband were in need of five hundred francs, they were on the point of being sold up, and surely her parents would not abandon them in such disaster. Her father at once lowered his head and darted a glance of embarrassment at her mother. But the latter was already refusing the request in a firm voice. Five hundred francs, indeed! where did she expect them to find them? All their capital was invested in their operations; and besides, she reverted to her old-time diatribes. When a girl has married a pauper, a man who writes books and articles, she must put up with the consequence of her folly, and not fall back for support upon her parents. No! she—the mother—had not a copper for idlers, who with their pretended contempt for money only dreamed of living on that of other people. And thereupon she allowed her daughter to depart; and Marcelle went off in despair, her heart bleeding at the great change that had taken place in her mother, formerly so reasonable and so kind.
Once in the street Marcelle had walked along in an almost unconscious state, her eyes fixed on the ground as though she hoped to find the money there. Then the idea of applying to Uncle Chave suddenly occurred to her, and she immediately betook herself to his little lodging in the Rue Nollet, so as to catch him before he went off to the Bourse. She found him smoking his pipe all alone; and on hearing of her trouble he became greatly distressed and even angry with himself, exclaiming that he never had a hundred francs before him, for he no sooner won a trifle at the Bourse than like a dirty pig he went and spent it. Then, on hearing of the Maugendres’ refusal, he began to thunder against them, horrid beasts that they were! He no longer associated with them, said he, since the rise of their shares had driven them crazy. Hadn’t his sister contemptuously called him a higgler by way of ridiculing his prudent system of operations, and this simply because he had advised her in a friendly spirit to sell and realise? Ah! well, she would get no pity from him when the fall came and she found herself in a pickle!
Once more in the street, with her pocket still empty, Marcelle had to resign herself to the unpleasant course of calling at the newspaper office to acquaint her husband with what had occurred that morning. It was absolutely necessary that Busch should be paid. Having heard her story, Jordan, whose book had not yet been accepted by any publisher, had started off to hunt for money, through the streets of muddy Paris in that rainy weather—not knowing where to apply—at friends’ houses or at the offices of the newspapers he wrote for, but vaguely relying upon some chance meeting. Although he had begged her to go home again, she was so anxious that she had preferred to remain waiting for him on that bench.
Dejoie, seeing her alone after his daughter’s departure, ventured to bring her a newspaper. ‘If Madame would like to read this,’ said he, ‘just to while away the time.’
But she refused the offer with a wave of the hand; and, as Saccard arrived at that moment, she assumed a brave air, and gaily explained that she had sent her husband on a bothersome errand in the neighbourhood which she had not cared to undertake herself. Saccard, who had a feeling of friendship for the young couple, insisted that she should go into his office, where she could wait more comfortably. But she declined the offer, saying that she was very well where she was. And he ceased to press the matter, in the surprise he experienced at suddenly finding himself face to face with the Baroness Sandorff, who was leaving Jantrou’s office. However, they both smiled, with an air of amiable understanding, like people who merely exchange a bow, in order not to parade their intimacy.
Jantrou had just told the Baroness that he no longer dared to give her any advice. His perplexity was increasing, since the Universal still stood firm in spite of the growing efforts of the ‘bears.’ Undoubtedly Gundermann would eventually win, but Saccard might last a long time, and perhaps there was yet a lot of money to be made by clinging to him. He, Jantrou, had decided to postpone any rupture and to keep on good terms with both sides. The best plan for her to adopt, he said, was to try to retain Saccard’s confidence, and either keep the secrets which he might confide to her for herself, or else sell them to Gundermann, should it be to her advantage to do so. And Jantrou offered this advice in a jesting sort of way, without affecting any of the mysteriousness of a conspirator; whilst she, on her side, laughed and promised to give him a share in the affair.
‘So now she is trying her fascinations on you!’ exclaimed Saccard in his brutal way as he entered Jantrou’s office.
The editor feigned astonishment. ‘Whom are you talking about? Oh, the Baroness! But, my dear master, she adores you. She was telling me so just now!’
Saccard shrugged his shoulders. Love matters were of no interest to him just then. Walking to and fro, pausing at times in front of the window to watch the fall of that seemingly endless rain, he vented all his nervous delight. Yes, Universals had risen another twenty francs on the previous day. But how the deuce was it that people still persisted in selling? There would have been a rise of thirty francs but for a heap of shares which had fallen on the market soon after business began. He could not explain it, ignorant as he was that Madame Caroline, fighting against that senseless rise, in obedience to the orders left with her by her brother, had again sold a thousand shares. However, with success still increasing, Saccard ought not to have complained; and yet an inward trembling, produced by secret fear and anger, disturbed him. The dirty Jews had sworn to ruin him, he exclaimed; that rogue Gundermann had just put himself at the head of a syndicate of ‘bears’ in order to crush him. He had been told so at the Bourse, where folks declared that the syndicate disposed of three hundred millions of francs. Ah, the brigands! And there were other reports—reports which he did not venture to repeat aloud, but which were each day growing more precise, allegations with regard to the stability of the Universal, and predictions of approaching difficulties, though as yet the blind confidence of the public had not been shaken.
However, the door opened, and Huret with his air of feigned simplicity came in.
‘Ah! so here you are, Judas!’ said Saccard.
Having learnt that Rougon had decided to abandon his brother, Huret had become reconciled to the minister; for he was convinced that as soon as Saccard should have Rougon against him, a catastrophe would be inevitable. To earn his pardon, he had now re-entered the great man’s service, again doing his errands and exposing himself to kicks and insults in order to please him. ‘Judas!’ he repeated, with the shrewd smile that sometimes lighted up his heavy peasant face; ‘at any rate, a good-natured Judas, who comes to give some disinterested advice to the master whom he has betrayed.’
But Saccard, as if unwilling to hear him, shouted by way of affirming his triumph: ‘Two thousand five hundred and twenty yesterday, two thousand five hundred and twenty-five to-day! Those are the last quotations, eh?’
‘I know; I have just sold.’
At this blow the wrath which Saccard had been concealing under a jesting air burst forth. ‘What! you have sold? So it’s perfect then! You drop me for Rougon, and you go over to Gundermann!’
The Deputy looked at him in amazement. ‘To Gundermann, why so? I simply look after my interests. I’m not a dare-devil, you know. I prefer to realise as soon as there is a decent profit. And that is perhaps the reason why I have never lost.’
He smiled again like a prudent, cautious Norman farmer, garnering his crop in a cool collected way.
‘To think of it! A director of the Bank!’ continued Saccard violently. ‘Whom can we expect to have confidence? What must folks think on seeing you sell in that fashion when the shares are still rising? I am no longer surprised that people should assert that our prosperity is artificial, and that the day of the downfall is at hand. These gentlemen, the directors, sell, so let us all sell. That spells panic!’
Huret made a vague gesture. In point of fact, he did not care a button what might happen henceforth; he had made sure of his own pile, and all that remained for him to do now was to fulfil the mission entrusted to him by Rougon with as little unpleasantness for himself as possible. ‘I told you, my dear fellow,’ said he, ‘that I had come to give you a piece of disinterested advice. Here it is. Be careful; your brother is furious, and he will leave you altogether in the lurch if you allow yourself to be beaten.’
Restraining his anger, Saccard asked impassively: ‘Did he send you to tell me that?’
After hesitating for a moment, the Deputy thought it best to confess that it was so. ‘Well, yes, he did. Oh! you cannot suppose that the attacks made upon him in “L’Espérance” have anything to do with his irritation. He is above such personal considerations. Still, it is none the less true that the Catholic campaign in your paper is, as you yourself must realise, of a nature to embarrass him in his present policy. Since the beginning of all these unfortunate complications with regard to Rome he has had the entire clergy on his back. He has just been obliged to have another bishop censured by the Council of State for issuing an aggressive pastoral letter. And you choose for your attacks the very moment when he has so much difficulty to prevent himself from being swamped by the Liberal evolution brought about by the reforms of January 19—reforms which, as folks say, he has only decided to carry out in order that he may prudently circumscribe them. Come, you are his brother, and can you imagine that your conduct pleases him?’
‘Of course,’ answered Saccard sneeringly, ‘it is very wrong on my part. Here is this poor brother of mine, who, in his rage to remain a Minister, governs in the name of the principles which he fought against yesterday, and lays all the blame upon me because he can no longer keep his balance between the Right, which is angry at having been betrayed, and the Third Estate, which longs for power. To quiet the Catholics, he only the other day launched his famous “Never!” swearing that never would France allow Italy to take Rome from the Pope. And now, in his terror of the Liberals, he would like very much to give them a guarantee also, and thinks of ruining me to satisfy them. A week ago Émile Ollivier gave him a fine shaking in the Chamber.’
‘Oh,’ interrupted Huret, ‘he still has the confidence of the Tuileries; the Emperor has sent him the star of the Legion of Honour in diamonds.’
But, with an energetic gesture, Saccard retorted that he was not to be duped. ‘The Universal is growing too powerful, that is the worry, is it not? A Catholic bank, which threatens to conquer the world by money as it was formerly conquered by faith, can that be tolerated? All the Freethinkers, all the Freemasons, ambitious to become Ministers, shiver at the thought. Perhaps, too, there is some loan which they want to work with Gundermann. What would become of a Government that did not allow itself to be preyed upon by those dirty Jews? And so my fool of a brother, in order to retain power six months longer, is going to throw me as food to the dirty Jews, to the Liberals, to the entire riff-raff, in the hope that he will be left in peace while they are devouring me. Well, go back and tell him that I don’t care a fig for him.’
He straightened up his short figure, his passion prevailing over his irony, in a trumpet-flourish of battle. ‘Do you understand? I don’t care a fig for him! That is my answer; I wish him to know it.’
Huret slightly stooped. As soon as folks lost their tempers in matters of business he had nothing more to say. And after all, in this particular affair, he was only a messenger. ‘All right, all right,’ he said, ‘he shall be told. You will get your back broken, but that is your own look-out!’
An interval of silence followed. Jantrou, who had remained perfectly silent, pretending to be entirely absorbed in correcting some proofs, raised his eyes to admire Saccard. How fine the bandit was in his passion! These rascals of genius triumph at times when they reach this state of recklessness, and are carried along by the intoxication of success. And at this moment Jantrou was on Saccard’s side, firmly believing in his star.
‘Ah, I was forgetting,’ resumed Huret; ‘it seems that Delcambre, the Public Prosecutor, hates you. Well, you probably do not yet know it, but the Emperor this morning appointed him Minister of Justice.’
Saccard, who had been pacing up and down the room, stopped short. With darkened face he at last exclaimed:
‘Another nice piece of goods! So they have made a Minister of that thing! But why should I care about it?’
‘Well,’ rejoined Huret, exaggerating his expression of feigned simplicity, ‘if any misfortune should happen to you, as may happen to anybody in business, your brother does not wish you to rely upon him to defend you against Delcambre.’
‘But, d—— it all!’ shrieked Saccard, ‘I tell you that I don’t care a button for the whole gang, either for Rougon, or for Delcambre, or for you either!’
At that moment, fortunately, Daigremont entered the room. He had never before called at the newspaper office, so that his appearance was a surprise to them all and averted further violence. Studiously polite, he shook hands all round, smiling upon one and the other with the wheedling affability of a man of the world. His wife was going to give a soirée at which she intended to sing, and, in order to secure a good article, he had come to invite Jantrou in person. However, Saccard’s presence seemed to delight him.
‘How goes it, my great man?’ he asked.
Instead of answering, Saccard inquired: ‘You haven’t sold, have you?’
‘Sold! Oh no, not yet.’ And there was a ring of sincerity in his laughter. He was made of firmer stuff than that.
‘One ought never to sell in our position!’ cried Saccard.
‘Never. That is what I meant to say. We all of us have the same interests, and you know very well that you can rely on me.’
His eyelids had drooped, and he gave a side glance while referring to the other directors, Sédille, Kolb and the Marquis de Bohain, answering for them as for himself. Their enterprise was prospering so well, he said, that it was a real pleasure to be all of one mind in furthering the most extraordinary success which the Bourse had witnessed for the last half century. Then he found some flattering remark for each of them, Saccard, Huret, and Jantrou, and went off repeating that he should expect to see them all three at his soirée; Mounier, the tenor at the Opera, would, he said, give his wife her cue. Oh, the performance would be a very effective one!
‘So that’s all the answer you have to give me?’ asked Huret, in his turn preparing to leave.
‘Quite so,’ replied Saccard in a curt, dry voice. And to emphasise his decision he made a point of not going down with Huret as he usually did.
Then, finding himself alone again with the editor, he exclaimed: ‘This means war, my brave fellow! There is no occasion to spare anybody any further; belabour the whole gang! Ah, at last, then, I shall be able to fight the battle according to my own ideas!’
‘All the same, it is rather stiff!’ concluded Jantrou, whose perplexities were beginning again.
Meantime, on the bench in the passage, Marcelle was still waiting. It was hardly four o’clock, and Dejoie had already lighted the lamps, so early had it grown dark amid the grey, obstinate downpour. Every time that the good fellow passed her he found some little remark with which to entertain her. Moreover, the comings and goings of contributors were becoming more frequent; loud voices rang out in an adjoining room; there was all the growing fever which attends the making up of a newspaper.
After a time, suddenly raising her eyes, Marcelle saw Jordan in front of her. He was drenched, and looked overwhelmed, with that trembling of the lips, that slightly crazy expression which one notices in those who have long been pursuing some hope without attaining it. Marcelle realised that he had been unsuccessful.
‘You could get nothing, eh?’ she asked, turning pale.
‘Nothing, my darling, nothing at all—nowhere, it wasn’t possible.’
She uttered only a low lament, but it was instinct with all her agony of heart: ‘Oh, my God!’
Just then Saccard came out of Jantrou’s office and was astonished to find her still there. ‘What, madame, has your truant husband only just come back? Ah! I told you that it would be better for you to wait in my office.’
She looked at him fixedly, and a sudden inspiration dawned in her large desolate eyes. She did not pause to reflect, but yielded to that reckless bravery which throws women forward in moments of passion. ‘Monsieur Saccard,’ said she, ‘I have something to ask you. If you are willing, we will now go to your room.’
‘Why, certainly, madame.’
Jordan, who feared that he could divine her purpose, tried to hold her back, stammering ‘No, no,’ in the sickly anguish which always came upon him when pecuniary matters were in question. However, she released herself, and he had to follow her.
‘Monsieur Saccard,’ she resumed as soon as the door was closed, ‘for the last two hours my husband has been vainly running about, trying to find five hundred francs, and he doesn’t dare to apply to you. So it is I who have come to ask you for them——’
And then, in a spirited way, with the amusing air of a gay, resolute little woman, she described the scene which had taken place in the morning—the brutal entrance of Busch, the invasion of her home by the three horrid men, the manner in which she had managed to repel the assault, and the promise which she had made to pay the money that very day. Ah! those pecuniary sores so common among the humble, those great sorrows caused by shame and powerlessness—the very existence of human beings continually put in question through the lack of a few paltry pieces of silver!
‘Busch!’ repeated Saccard. ‘So it’s that old swindler Busch, is it, who holds you in his clutches?’
Then, with affable good-nature, turning to Jordan, who remained silent and pale, feeling supremely uncomfortable, he said: ‘Well, I will advance you the five hundred francs. You ought to have asked me for them in the first place.’
He had seated himself at his table to sign a cheque, when he stopped to reflect. He remembered the letter which he had received from Busch, the visit which he had to make to him, and which he had been postponing from day to day in his annoyance over the nasty affair that he scented. Why should he not at once go to the Rue Feydeau, taking advantage of the opportunity now that he had a pretext for going there?
‘Listen,’ said he, ‘I know this rascal through and through. It is better that I should go to pay him in person, to see if I can’t get your notes back at half price.’
Marcelle’s eyes now sparkled with gratitude. ‘Oh, Monsieur Saccard, how kind you are!’ she exclaimed. And, addressing her husband, she added: ‘You see, you big silly, that Monsieur Saccard has not eaten us!’
Yielding to an irresistible impulse, he threw his arms round her neck and kissed her, as though to thank her for being more energetic and skilful than himself in these material difficulties which paralysed his energy.
‘No, no!’ said Saccard, when the young man finally pressed his hand, ‘the pleasure is mine; it is very pleasant to see you love one another so much. Go home, and be easy.’
In a couple of minutes his brougham, which was waiting for him, conveyed him to the Rue Feydeau, through muddy Paris, amid the jostling of umbrellas and splashing of puddles. But once upstairs he rang in vain at the dirty old door, on which was a plate bearing the inscription ‘Disputed Claims‘ in big letters. It did not open, there was no sound within, and he was on the point of going away, when, in his keen vexation, he shook it violently with his fist. Then a halting step was heard, and at last Sigismond appeared.
‘What! it is you! I thought that it was my brother, who had come up again and forgotten his key. I never answer the door myself. Oh, he won’t be long, and you can wait for him if you wish to see him.’
With the same painful, unsteady step he returned, followed by Saccard, into the room which he occupied overlooking the Place de la Bourse. It was still quite light at that height above the mist, whence the rain was pouring into the streets. The room was frigidly bare with its little iron bedstead, its table and two chairs, and its few shelves of books. A small stove stood in front of the chimney-piece, and the fire, carelessly looked after, forgotten, had just gone out.
‘Sit down, monsieur,’ said Sigismond, ‘my brother told me that he was only going out for a moment.’
Saccard declined the proffered chair, however, and stood looking at him, struck by the progress which consumption had made in this tall, pale fellow with child-like eyes—eyes with a dim, dreamy expression, passing strange under a forehead which seemed typical of energy and obstinacy. His long wavy hair fell on either side of his face, which had become extremely sunken and emaciated, elongated too and drawn, as it were, towards the grave.
‘You have been ill?’ remarked Saccard, at a loss what else to say.
Sigismond made a gesture of complete indifference. ‘Oh, as usual,’ he replied. ‘This last week hasn’t been a good one on account of the wretched weather. But I get on very well all the same. I no longer sleep, you know, so I can work, and if I have a little fever, why, it keeps me warm. Ah, there is so much to be done!’
He had again seated himself at his table, on which a book in the German language was lying open. ‘I must apologise for sitting down,’ said he; ‘I remained up all night in order to read this book, which I received yesterday. A masterpiece, yes, the fruit of ten years’ labour, ten years of the life of my master, Karl Marx. It is the treatise on Capital which he promised us so long ago. So now we here have our Bible.’
Saccard took a step forward to glance inquisitively at the book, but the sight of the Gothic characters at once repelled him. ‘I shall wait until it is translated!’ he exclaimed, laughing.
The young man shook his head as though to say that even when translated the book would be understood by few excepting the initiated. It was not a work of propaganda. But how wonderfully logical it was, with what a victorious abundance of proofs it showed that existing society, based upon the capitalistic system, would inevitably be destroyed! The ground clear, they would be able to rebuild.
‘Then this is the sweep of the broom?’ asked Saccard, still jesting.
‘In theory, yes,’ answered Sigismond. ‘All that I one day explained to you, the whole evolution, is in these pages. It only remains for us to carry it out. And you are blind if you do not see the progress which the idea is already making every hour. Thus you, who, with your Universal, have stirred up and centralized hundreds of millions during the last three years, you really don’t seem to suspect that you are leading us straight to Collectivism. I have followed your enterprise with passionate interest; yes, from this quiet out-of-the-way room I have studied its development day by day, and I know it as well as you do, and I say that you are giving us a famous lesson; for the collectivist State will only have to do what you are doing, expropriate you in bulk when you have expropriated the smaller capitalists in detail. And in this wise will be realised the ambition of your huge dream, which is, I understand, to absorb all the capital in the world, to become the one bank, the one general warehouse of public wealth. Oh, I admire you very much; I would let you go on if I were the master, because you are beginning our work, like a forerunner of genius!’
Thereupon he smiled, with the pale smile of an invalid, as he noticed the attention of his questioner, who was very surprised to find him so familiar with the affairs of the day, and also very flattered by his intelligent praise. ‘Only,’ continued Sigismond, ‘on the day when we expropriate you in the name of the nation, substituting for your private interests the interests of all, and transforming your great machine for sucking the blood of others into the regulator of social wealth, we shall begin by abolishing this.’
He had found a sou among the papers on his table and was holding it up between two fingers.
‘Money!’ exclaimed Saccard, ‘abolish money! What fantastic madness!’
‘We shall abolish coined money. Remember that metallic money will have no place, no raison d’être in a collectivist State. For purposes of remuneration we shall replace it by our labour notes, and if you look upon it as a measure of value we have another which will fulfil the same purpose, that which we shall obtain by determining the average day’s labour in our workshops. This money, which masks and favours the exploitation of the workman, which enables people to rob him, by reducing his salary to the minimum sum which he must secure to avoid dying of hunger—this money must be destroyed. Is it not something frightful, this possession of money which creates a multitude of private fortunes, which prevents free and fruitful circulation, which begets scandalous sovereignties, makes a few men masters of both the financial market and social production? Each of our crises, all the anarchy of the time, come from that source. Money must be killed—yes, killed.’
Saccard grew angry, however. What! no more money, no more gold, no more of those shining stars which had illumined his life! In his eyes wealth had always taken the shape of bright new coins, raining like a spring shower amid the sunbeams, falling like hail upon the ground, and strewing it with heaps of silver, heaps of gold which were stirred with a shovel in order that one might have the pleasure of seeing them shine and hearing them jingle. And that gaiety, that incentive to effort and life, was to be abolished!
‘It’s idiotic, that is,’ said he; ‘yes, idiotic. It will never be done, you hear me.’
‘Why never? Why idiotic? Do we use money in family life? In family economy you only find common effort and exchange. So of what use will money be when society shall have become one large family, governing itself?’
‘I tell you that it is madness! Destroy money! Why, money is life itself! There would be nothing left, nothing!’
He was walking up and down, beside himself. And in this fit of passion, as he passed the window, he gave a glance outside as though to make sure that the Bourse was still there, for perhaps this terrible fellow had blown it down with a breath. But yes, it was still there, though very vague and dim in the depths of the twilight, looking, in fact, as if it were melting away under the rain, like a pale phantom Bourse on the point of vanishing into grey mist.
‘However, it is stupid of me to discuss such a thing,’ resumed Saccard. ‘It is impossible. Abolish money! I should like to see you do it.’
‘Bah!’ murmured Sigismond, ‘everything undergoes transformation and disappears. We already saw the form of wealth change when the value of land declined, and real estate, fields and forests became as nothing by the side of funded property, investments in State securities and industrial stocks and shares. And now this form of wealth is smitten with premature decay. Money was long considered to be worth its five per cent. per annum, but such is no longer the case; its value is steadily falling, so why should it not at last disappear, why should not a new form of wealth govern social relations? It is this wealth of to-morrow that our labour notes will bring.’
He had become absorbed in the contemplation of that sou, as if he dreamt that he held in his hand the last sou of the past ages, a sou that had outlived the defunct old time society. How many joys and how many tears had worn away the humble coin!
Then, growing sad as he thought of the seeming eternity of human desires, he resumed in a gentle voice: ‘After all, you are right: we ourselves shall not see these things. It will take years and years. Can we even know whether the love of others will ever have sufficient vigour to take the place of egotism in the social organisation? Yet I had hoped for a nearer triumph. Ah, I should so much have liked to witness the dawn of justice!’
For a moment the bitterness born of the disease from which he suffered broke his voice. He who, in his denial of death, treated it as if it were not, made a gesture as if to brush it aside. And yet he was already resigned.
‘I have performed my task,’ said he; ‘I shall, at all events, leave my notes, if I have not time to prepare the complete scheme of reconstruction which I dreamed of. The society of to-morrow must be the ripe fruit of civilisation, for if we do not retain the good features of emulation and control all will collapse. Ah, how clearly I can see that society even now, complete, such as I have managed to construct it after labouring through so many nights! All contingencies are foreseen; everything is solved; sovereign justice, absolute happiness, are ensured at last. It is all there—on paper, mathematical, final——’
His long, emaciated hands were straying among the papers on his table, and he grew quite excited, dreaming of the many milliards reconquered for humanity and equitably divided among all; of the joy and health which with a stroke of the pen he restored to suffering mankind, he who no longer ate, who no longer slept, but, without a want, was slowly dying in that bare room.
A harsh voice, however, suddenly made Saccard start. ‘What are you doing here?’
It was Busch, who had just come back, and who in his perpetual fear that his brother might be sent into a fit of coughing by being made to talk too much was darting at his visitor the oblique glances of a jealous lover. However, he did not wait for Saccard’s reply, but in a maternal, almost despairing fashion began to scold. ‘What! you have let your fire go out again. Is there any sense in it, on such a cold damp day as this!’
And, already bending on his knees, despite the weight of his huge frame, he began breaking up some small wood and relighting the fire. Then he went to fetch a broom, swept up the litter, and saw to the medicine which his brother had to take every two hours. And it was only when he had prevailed on him to lie down on the bed to rest that he again became tranquil.
‘If you will step into my office, Monsieur Saccard,’ said he.
Madame Méchain was now there, seated on the only chair there was. She and Busch had just been down to make an important call, with the complete success of which they were delighted. At last, after a delay which had well-nigh driven them to despair, one of the affairs which they had most at heart had been set afoot again. For three years, indeed, La Méchain had been tramping the pavements in search of Léonie Cron, that girl in whose favour the late Count de Beauvilliers had signed an acknowledgment of ten thousand francs, payable on the day when she should attain her majority. Vainly had La Méchain applied to her cousin Fayeux, the dividend-collector at Vendôme, who had bought this acknowledgment for Busch in a lot of old debts belonging to the estate of a certain Charpier, a grain merchant and occasional usurer. Fayeux knew nothing, and simply wrote that Léonie Cron must be in the employ of a process-server in Paris; at all events, she had left Vendôme more than ten years before and had never returned, and it was impossible to obtain any information from any of her relatives, as they were all dead. La Méchain had managed to discover the process-server, and had even succeeded in tracing Léonie to a butcher’s house, next to a fast woman’s, and next to a dentist’s; but then the thread abruptly broke, the scent was lost. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack. How can one hope to find a girl who has fallen, disappeared amid the mire of a great city like Paris? In vain had she tried the servants’ agencies, visited the low lodging-houses, ransacked the haunts of vice, always on the watch, turning her head and questioning as soon as the name of Léonie fell upon her ears. And this girl, for whom she had searched so far, she had that very day, by chance, discovered in the Rue Feydeau itself, in a disreputable house, where she had called to hunt up an old tenant of the Cité de Naples who owed her three francs. A stroke of genius had led her to recognise the wench under the distinguished name of Léonide, and Busch, being notified, had at once returned with her to the house to negotiate. Stout, with coarse black hair falling to her eyebrows, and with a flat, flabby face, Léonie had at first surprised him; then, with a feeling of delight that she had fallen so low, he had offered her a thousand francs if she would relinquish to his hands her rights in the matter. She had accepted the offer with childish delight, like the simpleton she was; and by this means they would at last be able to carry out their scheme of hunting down the Countess de Beauvilliers. The long-searched-for weapon was in their grasp, a weapon hideous and shameful beyond their wildest hopes.
‘I was expecting you, Monsieur Saccard,’ said Busch. ‘We have to talk. You received my letter, of course.’
Meantime La Méchain, motionless and silent, did not stir from the only chair in that little room, which was littered with papers and lighted by a smoky lamp. And Saccard, who had to remain standing and did not wish it to be supposed that he had come there in response to any threat, at once entered upon the Jordan matter in a stern, contemptuous voice.
‘Excuse me,’ said he, ‘I came up to settle the debt of one of my contributors—little Jordan, a very nice fellow, whom you are pursuing with red-hot shot, indeed with really revolting ferocity. This very morning, it seems, you behaved towards his wife in a way in which no man of good breeding, would behave.’
Astonished at being attacked in this fashion when he was on the point of assuming offensive tactics himself, Busch lost his balance, forgot the other matter, and became irritated on account of this one. ‘The Jordans!’ said he; ‘you have come on account of the Jordans. There is no question of any wife or any good breeding in matters of business. When people owe, they ought to pay, that is my rule. Scamps, who have been humbugging me for years past, from whom I have had the utmost trouble to extract four hundred francs, copper by copper! Ah! thunder, yes! I will sell them up! I will throw them into the street to-morrow morning, if I don’t have the three hundred and thirty francs and fifteen centimes which they still owe me upon my desk to-night!’
Thereupon, Saccard, in order to drive him quite wild, declared that he had already been paid his money forty times over, for the debt had certainly not cost him ten francs. These tactics succeeded, for Busch almost choked with anger. ‘There it goes again! That is the only thing that any of you can find to say!’ he exclaimed; ‘and what about the costs, pray? This debt of three hundred francs which has increased to more than seven hundred? However, that does not concern me. When folks don’t pay me, I prosecute. So much the worse if justice is expensive; it is their fault! But according to you, when I have bought a debt for ten francs, I ought to receive ten francs and no more! And what about my risks, pray, and all the running about that I have to perform, and my brain-work—yes, my intelligence? For instance, in this Jordan matter you can consult Madame, who is here. She has been attending to it. Ah, the journeys and the applications which she has made! She has worn out no end of shoe-leather in climbing the stairs of newspaper offices, where folks showed her the door as if she were a beggar, without ever giving her the address she wanted. Why, we have been nursing this affair for months, we have dreamed about it, we have been working on it as one of our masterpieces; it has cost me a tremendous sum, even if I only calculate the time spent over it at ten sous an hour!’
He was becoming excited, and with a sweeping gesture pointed to the papers that filled the room. ‘I have here more than twenty millions of debts, of all ages, owed by people in all stations of life—some very small amounts, others very large ones. Will you pay a million for them? If so, I will willingly let you have them. When one thinks that there are some debtors whom I have been hunting for a quarter of a century! To obtain a few paltry hundred francs, and sometimes even less from them, I wait in patience for years until they become successful or inherit property. The others, the unknown and most numerous, sleep there—look! in that corner, where that huge heap is. That is chaos, or rather raw material, from which I must extract life—I mean my life, and Heaven alone knows after what an entanglement of search and worry! And when I at last catch one of these folks in a solvent condition, you expect me not to bleed him? But, come, you would think me a fool if I didn’t do so; you would not be so stupid yourself!’
Without waiting to discuss the question any further, Saccard took out his pocket-book. ‘I am going to give you two hundred francs,’ said he, ‘and you will give me the Jordan papers, with a receipt in full.’
Busch’s exasperation made him start. ‘Two hundred francs! Not if I know it! The amount is three hundred and thirty francs and fifteen centimes, and I want the centimes!’
But with the tranquil assurance of a man who knows the power which money has when it is spread out before one, Saccard, in a voice which neither rose nor fell, repeated: ‘I am going to give you two hundred francs.’
Three times he spoke these words, and the Jew, convinced at heart that it would be sensible to compromise, ended by accepting the offer, but with a cry of rage and with tears starting from his eyes. ‘I am too weak. What a wretched trade! Upon my word I am plundered, robbed. Go on while you are about it, don’t restrain yourself, take some others too—yes, pick some out of the heap, for your two hundred francs.’
Then having signed a receipt and written a line to the process-server, for the papers were no longer at the office in the Rue Feydeau, Busch remained for a moment panting at his desk, so upset that he would have let Saccard then and there go off had it not been for La Méchain, who so far had neither made a gesture nor spoken a word.
‘And the affair?’ said she.
He suddenly remembered. He was going to take his revenge. But all that he had prepared, his narrative, his questions, the skilfully planned moves which were to make the interview take the course he desired, were swept away, forgotten in his haste to come to the brutal fact.
‘The affair, true—I wrote to you, Monsieur Saccard. We now have an old account to settle together.’
He stretched out his hand to take the wrapper containing the Sicardot notes, and laid it open in front of him.
‘In 1852,’ he said, ‘you stayed at a lodging-house in the Rue de la Harpe; you there signed twelve promissory notes of fifty francs each in favour of a girl of sixteen, Octavie Chavaille, whom you had ruined. Those notes are here. You have never paid a single one of them, for you went away without leaving any address before the first one matured. And the worst of it is you signed them with a false name, Sicardot, the name of your first wife.’
Very pale, Saccard listened and looked at him. In utter consternation he once more beheld the past, and it seemed as though some huge, shadowy, but crushing mass were falling upon him. In the fear of the first moment he quite lost his head, and stammered, ‘How is it you know that? How did you get hold of those notes?’
Then, with trembling hands, he hastened to take out his pocket-book again, with the one thought of paying and regaining possession of those annoying papers. ‘There are no costs, are there?’ said he. ‘It is six hundred francs. Oh! a good deal might be said, but I prefer to pay without discussion.’
And thereupon he tendered six bank-notes.
‘By-and-by!’ cried Busch, pushing back the money. ‘I have not finished. Madame, whom you see there, is Octavie’s cousin, and these papers are hers; it is in her name that I seek payment. That poor Octavie became a cripple, and had many misfortunes before she at last died at Madame’s house in frightful poverty. If Madame chose, she could tell you things——’
‘Terrible things!’ emphasised La Méchain in her piping voice, breaking silence at last.
Saccard, quite scared, having forgotten her, turned and saw her sitting there all of a heap, like a half-empty wineskin. Bird of prey that she was with her shady trade in worthless securities, she had always made him feel uneasy, and now he found her mixed up in this unpleasant story.
‘Undoubtedly, poor creature, it is very sad,’ he murmured.
‘But if she is dead, I really do not see——Here, at any rate, are the six hundred francs.’
A second time Busch refused to take the sum.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘you do not know all yet; she had a child. Yes, a child who is now in his fourteenth year—a child who so resembles you that you cannot deny him.’
‘A child, a child!’ Saccard repeated several times, quite thunderstruck.
Then, suddenly replacing the six bank-notes in his pocket-book, recovering his self-possession and becoming quite merry, he continued:
‘But, I say, are you having a game with me? If there is a child, I shan’t give you a copper! The little one is his mother’s heir. He shall have the money and whatever more he wants besides. A child, indeed! Why, it makes me feel quite young again. Where is he? I must go to see him. Why didn’t you bring him to me at once?’
In his turn stupefied, Busch now thought of how long he had hesitated and of the infinite pains that Madame Caroline had taken to hide Victor’s existence from his father. And, quite nonplussed, he burst into complicated explanations, revealing everything—the six thousand francs claimed by La Méchain for keep and money lent, the two thousand which Madame Caroline had paid on account, the frightful instincts which Victor had displayed, and his removal to the Institute of Work. And at each fresh revelation Saccard gave a violent start. What! Six thousand francs, indeed! How was he to know, on the contrary, that they had not despoiled the little fellow? Two thousand francs on account! They had had the audacity to extort two thousand francs from a lady friend of his! Why, it was robbery, abuse of confidence! The little one, of course, had been brought up badly, and now he, Saccard, was expected to pay those who were responsible for his evil education! Did they take him to be a fool, then?
‘Not a copper!’ he cried. ‘You hear me. You need not expect to get a copper from me!’
With a pale face, Busch rose and took his stand in front of his table. ‘Well, we will see,’ he exclaimed; ‘I will drag you into court!’
‘Don’t talk nonsense. You know very well that the courts don’t deal with such matters. And if you hope to blackmail me you deceive yourself, for I don’t care one rap for anything you may say or do. A child! Why, I tell you it makes me feel quite proud!’ Then, as La Méchain blocked up the doorway, he had to hustle her, climb over her in fact, in order to get out. She was suffocating, but managed to call to him in her flute-like voice as he went down the stairs, ‘You rascal! You heartless wretch!’
‘You shall hear from us,’ howled Busch, shutting the door with a bang.
Such was Saccard’s excitement that he gave his coachman orders to drive to the Rue Saint-Lazare at once. He was in a hurry to see Madame Caroline, whom he accosted without the slightest sign of embarrassment, at once scolding her for having given the two thousand francs. ‘Why, my dear friend, one should never part with money in that fashion. Why did you act without consulting me?’
She, scared at finding that he knew the story at last, remained silent. It was really Busch’s handwriting that she had recognised on that envelope, and now she had nothing more to hide, since another had just relieved her of the secret. Nevertheless, she still hesitated, in confusion for this man who questioned her so much at his ease.
‘I wanted to spare you a chagrin,’ she began. ‘The poor child was in such a terrible state. I should have told you all long ago, but for a feeling——’
‘What feeling? I confess that I do not understand you.’
She did not try to explain herself, to further excuse herself, invaded as she was by a feeling of sadness, of weariness with everything—she whom life usually found so courageous; while he, delighted, really rejuvenated, continued chattering.
‘The poor little fellow! I shall be very fond of him, I assure you. You did quite right to take him to the Institute of Work, so that they might clean him up a little. But we will remove him from there and give him teachers. To-morrow I will go to see him—yes, to-morrow, if I am not too busy.’
The next day, however, there was a board meeting, and two days passed, and then a week, during which Saccard was unable to find a spare minute. He often spoke of the child, but kept on postponing his visit, always yielding to the overflowing river that carried him along.
In the early days of December, amidst the extraordinary fever to which the Bourse was still a prey, Universals had reached the price of two thousand seven hundred francs. Unfortunately, the alarming reports went on growing and spreading, and though the rise continued there was an intolerable feeling of uneasiness. The inevitable catastrophe was indeed openly predicted, and if the shares still went up—went up incessantly—it was by the force of one of those prodigious, obstinate infatuations which refuse to surrender to evidence. And Saccard now lived amid the glamour of his spurious triumph, with a halo around him as it were—a halo emanating from that shower of gold which he caused to rain upon Paris. Still, he was shrewd enough to feel that the soil beneath him was undermined, cracking, threatening to sink under his feet and swallow him up. And so, although he remained victorious after each settlement, he felt perfectly enraged with the ‘bears,’ whose losses must already be very heavy. What possessed those dirty Jews that they should fight on so tenaciously? Would he not soon annihilate them? And he was especially exasperated by the fact that, apart from Gundermann, who was playing his usual game, he could scent other sellers—soldiers of the Universal perhaps, traitors who, losing confidence, were going over to the enemy, all eagerness to realise their gains.
One day when Saccard was thus venting his displeasure in presence of Madame Caroline, she thought it her duty to tell him everything. ‘You know, my friend,’ said she, ‘that I also have sold. Yes, I have just parted with our last thousand shares at the rate of two thousand seven hundred francs.’
He was overcome, as though confronted by the blackest of treasons. ‘You have sold, you! you, my God!’ he gasped.
She had taken hold of his hands and was pressing them, really grieved for him, but reminding him that she and her brother had long since warned him of their intention. Moreover, Hamelin, who was still at Rome, kept on writing to her in the most anxious strain about this exaggerated rise, which he could not understand, and which must be stopped, said he, even under penalty of tumbling into an abyss. Only the day before she had received a letter from him, giving her formal orders to sell. And so she had sold.
‘You, you!’ repeated Saccard; ‘so it was you who were fighting me, you whom I felt in the dark! It is your shares that I have been obliged to buy up!’
He did not fly into a passion, as he usually did, and she suffered the more from his utter despondency; she would have liked to reason with him, to induce him to abandon that merciless struggle, which nothing but a massacre could terminate.
‘Listen to me, my friend,’ she said. ‘Reflect that our three thousand shares have brought us more than seven millions and a half. Is not that an unhoped-for, an extravagant profit? Indeed, all this money frightens me, I cannot believe that it belongs to me. However, it is not our personal interest that is in question. Think of the interests of all those who have entrusted their fortunes in your hands, of all the millions which you are risking in the game. Why sustain that senseless rise? why stimulate it further? I hear people say on every hand that a catastrophe lies inevitably at the end of it all. You cannot keep on rising for ever; there is no shame in allowing the shares to revert to their real value, and, with the enterprise firm and stable, that will mean salvation.’
But he had already sprung to his feet.
‘I mean that the quotations shall reach three thousand francs!’ he cried. ‘I have bought, and I will buy again, even if it kills me. Yes! may I burst and all burst with me, if I do not reach the figure of three thousand francs, and keep to it!’
After the settlement of December 15, Universals rose to two thousand eight hundred, and then to two thousand nine hundred francs. And on the 21st the quotation of three thousand and twenty francs was proclaimed at the Bourse, amid the uproar of an insane multitude. There was no longer any truth or logic in it all; the idea of value was perverted to the point of losing all real significance. A report was current that Gundermann, contrary to his prudent habits, had involved himself in frightful risks. For months he had been nursing a fall; and so each fortnight his losses had increased by leaps and bounds in proportion to the rise Indeed, people were beginning to whisper that his back might be broken after all. All brains were topsy-turvy; prodigies were expected.
And at that supreme moment, when Saccard, at the summit, felt the earth trembling under him, and secretly feared that he might fall, he was king. When his carriage reached the Rue de Londres, and drew up outside the triumphal palace of the Universal, a valet hastened down and spread out a carpet, which rolled across the footway from the vestibule steps to the gutter; and then Saccard condescended to alight from his brougham, and made his entrance into the Bank, like a sovereign, spared from treading on the common pavement of the streets.
< < < Chapter VIII
Chapter X > > >
French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – Money – Contents
Copyright holders – Public Domain Book
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