by Emile Zola
Some time back, during the land speculation on the Monceau plain, Saccard had had some disagreements, and even quite a quarrel, with Gundermann. They were incapable of getting on, the one a gambler full of passion, the other cold, sober, and logical. So the former, already angry and exasperated by this triumphant entrance, was leaving when the other called out to him:
‘Tell me, my dear friend, is it true? You’re leaving the world of business… Upon my soul, you’re doing the right thing. It’s just as well…’
Saccard received this like the lash of a whip across his face. He drew up his slight frame and replied in a voice as sharp as steel:
‘I am setting up a banking house with a capital of twenty-five million, and I expect to be calling on you soon.’
And he went out, leaving behind him the agitated hubbub of the room, where they were all jostling one another in their anxiety not to miss the opening of the Bourse. Oh! to be successful at last, and stamp on these people who were turning their backs on him, to engage in a struggle for power with this king of gold, and maybe one day bring him down! He hadn’t really made up his mind about launching his grand plan, and he was still surprised at the declaration which his need to respond had drawn from him. But would he be able to try his luck elsewhere, now that his brother was abandoning him, now that men and even things seemed to be wounding him and throwing him back into the fight, like the bull that is led back, bleeding, into the ring?
For a moment he stood tremulously on the edge of the pavement. It was the busy time when all the life of Paris seems to pour into this central square between the Rue Montmartre and the Rue Richelieu, the two congested arteries carrying the crowds. From each of the four junctions at the four corners of the square flowed a constant, uninterrupted stream of vehicles, weaving their way along the road through the bustling mass of pedestrians. The two lines of cabs at the cab-stand along the railings kept breaking up and then re-forming; whilst on the Rue Vivienne the dealers’ victorias* stretched out in a close-packed line, with the coachmen on top, reins in hand, ready to whip the horses forward at the first command. The steps and the peristyle of the Bourse were overrun with swarming black overcoats; and from the kerb market, already set up and at work beneath the clock, came the clamour of buying and selling, the tidal surge of speculation, rising above the noisy rumble of the city. Passers-by turned their heads, impelled by both desire and fear of what was going on there, in that mysterious world of financial dealings into which French brains but rarely penetrate, a world of ruin and bankruptcy and sudden inexplicable fortunes, in the midst of all that barbaric shouting and gesticulation. And Saccard, on the edge of the stream, deafened by the distant voices and elbowed by the jostling bustle of the crowd, was dreaming once more of the royalty of gold in this home of every feverish passion, with the Bourse at its centre, beating, from one o’clock until three, like an enormous heart.
But since his downfall he had not dared to go back into the Bourse, and even now a feeling of wounded vanity, the certainty of being greeted as a failure, still prevented him from climbing the steps. Like a lover driven from the boudoir of a mistress whom he desires all the more, even while telling himself he detests her, he kept coming back irresistibly, making a tour of the colonnade on various pretexts, crossing the garden as if taking a leisurely walk in the shade of the chestnut trees. In this sort of dusty square with neither grass nor flowers, on the benches among the urinals and the newspaper stands, swarmed a mixed crowd of shady speculators and bareheaded local women suckling their babies; here he affected a nonchalant saunter but kept looking up, watching, furiously imagining he was laying siege to the monument, surrounding it in an ever tighter circle, to re-enter it one day, in triumph.
He went over to the corner on the right, under the trees that face the Rue de la Banque, and immediately came upon the Little Bourse, trading in downgraded shares: the ‘Wet Feet’,* as these bric-à-brac dealers are ironically and contemptuously known, who trade in the shares of dead companies in the open air, out in the wind and, on rainy days, in the mud. Here was a tumultuous group of unclean Jewry, with fat shiny faces, and the desiccated profiles of predatory birds, an extraordinary gathering of typically Jewish noses, huddled together as if fighting fiercely over their prey with guttural cries, ready to devour each other. As he went by he noticed a big man standing a little to one side looking at a ruby in the sunlight, delicately lifting it up in the air with huge and dirty fingers.
‘Ah, Busch!… Seeing you reminds me, I was intending to call on you.’
Busch, who had an office in the Rue Feydeau, on the corner of the Rue Vivienne, had on several occasions been very useful to Saccard in difficult circumstances. He was standing there in ecstasy, examining the purity of the gem, his broad, rather featureless face thrown back, his big grey eyes seeming dulled by the brightness of the light; one could see the white cravat he always wore, rolled into a string; while his secondhand overcoat, once superb, now extraordinarily shabby and stained, reached right up into his colourless hair, which straggled from his bare skull in rare, rebellious strands. His hat, yellowed by the sun and washed by the rain, was now of indeterminate age.
At last, he decided to come back down to earth.
‘Ah, Monsieur Saccard, so you’re taking a little walk round here…’
‘Yes, it’s about a letter in Russian, a letter from a Russian banker based in Constantinople. So I thought of your brother, to translate it for me.’
Busch, still unconsciously rolling the ruby tenderly in his right hand, extended his left hand, saying the translation would be sent that very evening. But Saccard explained that it was only a matter of ten lines.
‘I’ll come up, and your brother will read it for me straight away…’
He was now interrupted by the arrival of an enormous woman, Madame Méchain, well known to the regulars at the Bourse, one of those rabid and wretched speculators whose greasy hands are always poking into all sorts of dubious activities. Her moon face, red and puffy, with narrow blue eyes, an almost invisible little nose, and a small mouth from which emerged a child-like fluting voice, seemed to spill out from under her old mauve hat, tied on lopsidedly with red ribbons; and her enormous bosom and dropsical belly seemed to stretch to the limit her mud-bespattered poplin dress, once green, now turning yellow. She carried on her arm a huge old black-leather bag, as deep as a suitcase; this she was never without. That day the bag, full to bursting, was pulling her over to the right, like a bent tree.
‘Ah, there you are,’ said Busch, who must have been waiting for her.
‘Yes, and I’ve received the Vendôme papers, I have them with me.’
‘Good, let’s go to my office; there’s nothing to be done here today.’
Saccard’s eye flickered over the huge leather bag. He knew that this was where downgraded stocks would inevitably end up, along with the shares of bankrupt companies in which the ‘Wet Feet’ go on trading: five-hundred-franc shares fought over for twenty sous, or even ten, in the vague hope of an unlikely recovery, or more practically as criminal merchandise, passed on at a profit to bankers needing to inflate their losses. In the murderous battles of the financial world La Méchain was the crow following the marching armies; no company and no bank could be founded without her appearing with her bag, sniffing the air, waiting for the corpses, even in the prosperous times of successful share-issues; for she well knew that failure was inevitable, that the day of massacre would come, the day when there would be dead bodies to devour and shares to pick up for nothing from the mud and blood. And as Saccard turned over in his head his grand banking project, he gave a slight shiver, feeling a premonition as he looked at that bag, that charnel-house of devalued stock, into which went all the dirty paper swept up from the Bourse.
As Busch was leading the old woman away, Saccard stopped him.
‘Shall I go up then, can I be sure of finding your brother?’
The eyes of the Jew softened, expressing a worried surprise.
&n
bsp; ‘My brother? But of course! Where else would he be?’
‘Very well, I’ll see you later!’
And Saccard, letting them go, resumed his slow walk by the trees, towards the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. This side of the square is one of the busiest, full of small businesses and minor workshops, with their gilded signs blazing in the sun. Blinds flapped on the balconies, and a whole family, up from the provinces, stood gaping from the window of a hotel room. Without thinking, he had raised his head and looked at these people, whose amazement made him smile, comforting him with the thought that there would always be shareholders somewhere in the provinces. Behind him the clamour of the Bourse, the roar of the distant flood-tide, was still there, nagging at him, following him, as if threatening to swallow him up.
Just then another encounter made him pause.
‘What’s this, Jordan, you at the Bourse?’ he shouted, shaking the hand of a tall, dark young man with a small moustache and a resolute, determined air.
The son of a Marseilles banker who had committed suicide a while ago after some disastrous speculation, Jordan had been tramping the streets of Paris for ten years, madly devoted to literature, and struggling bravely against dire poverty. One of his cousins, who lived in Plassans* and knew the Saccard family, had recommended him to Saccard back when the latter was entertaining all of Paris at his Parc Monceau mansion.
‘Oh no, not at the Bourse, never!’ the young man replied, with a violent gesture, as if he were driving away the tragic memory of his father.
Then, starting to smile again:
‘You know of course that I got married… Yes, to a childhood sweetheart. Our engagement was arranged when I was still rich, but she insisted she still wanted the poor devil I’ve become.’
‘Yes indeed, I received the announcement,’ said Saccard. ‘And do you know, I was in touch with your father-in-law, Monsieur Maugendre, some time ago, when he had his tarpaulin factory in La Villette. He must have made a pretty penny out of that.’
They were having this conversation near a bench, and Jordan broke off to introduce Saccard to a short, fat, military-looking gentleman who was sitting there, and with whom he had been chatting when Saccard came along.
‘This is Captain Chave, an uncle of my wife’s… Madame Maugendre, my mother-in-law, is a Chave from Marseilles.’
The captain rose and Saccard shook his hand. He knew by sight this apoplectic face, with a neck stiff from wearing the military collar, one of those petty-cash speculators who could always be seen around here from one o’clock until three. They played for tiny but almost certain winnings of fifteen to twenty francs, which had to be realized within one session of the Bourse.
Jordan had added, with a pleasant laugh, to explain his presence there:
‘A ferocious speculator, my uncle, I just come along from time to time to shake his hand as I go by.’
‘My word,’ said the captain, ‘I have to gamble; on the government pension I’d starve.’
Then Saccard, who took an interest in this young man on account of his robust attitude to life, asked him how things were going on the literary front. And Jordan, brightening up, told him that his needy family was now installed on the fifth floor in the Avenue de Clichy, for the Maugendres, distrustful of a poet and feeling they had done more than enough just by consenting to the marriage, had given them nothing, on the pretext that after their death, their daughter would have their whole fortune, untouched and fattened by savings. No, literature did not feed a man, but he had in mind an idea for a novel, which he didn’t have time to write, so he had had to go into journalism where he dashed off anything he could get, from writing a column to doing the law reports or even little news items.
‘Oh well,’ said Saccard, ‘if I get my grand plan going I shall perhaps have a job for you. So come and see me.’
After saying goodbye, he turned to go round the back of the Bourse. Here at last the distant clamour, the barking of the stock-market, was no more than a vague hum, lost in the roaring traffic of the square. On this side the steps were just as crowded with people, but the stockbrokers’ offices, whose red curtains could be seen through the tall windows, insulated the colonnade from the din of the trading hall, and here various speculators, the rich and fastidious, were sitting comfortably in the shade, some alone and some in little groups, transforming the huge portico, open to the sky, into a sort of private club. The rear of the building was rather like the wrong side of a theatre, or the stage-door, with this seedy, relatively quiet street, the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, entirely occupied by wine-merchants, cafés, brasseries, and taverns swarming with a particular, strangely mixed set of customers. The shop-signs too clearly indicated the sort of noxious vegetation that had grown up on the edge of the huge cesspit nearby: disreputable insurance companies, crooked financial journals, company offices, banks, agencies, moneylenders, a whole range of small-time gambling-joints established in shops or on mezzanines the size of a pocket-handkerchief. Everywhere, on the pavements and in the middle of the road, men were prowling about, loitering as if in some dark alley.
Saccard had stopped just inside the railings and was looking up at the door leading to the stockbrokers’ offices, with the piercing gaze of an army chief inspecting from every angle the place he intends to attack, when a tall fellow, coming out of a tavern, crossed the street and made him a very low bow.
‘Ah, Monsieur Saccard, don’t you have anything for me? I have now at last left the Crédit Mobilier* and I’m looking for a job.’
Jantrou was a former professor, come to Paris from Bordeaux after some shady affair. He had had to leave the university, had lost his place in the world, but was still a good-looking chap, with his ample black beard and his precocious baldness, well-read too, intelligent and amiable; he had started off at the Bourse when he was about twenty-eight, and had trailed around getting his hands dirty for ten years as a jobber, earning scarcely enough money to keep him in his vices. And today, completely bald and complaining like a whore whose wrinkles threaten her livelihood, he was still waiting for the opportunity that would launch him into success and fortune.
Seeing him so humble, Saccard remembered with some bitterness the greeting of Sabatani at Champeaux’s: clearly all he had left now was the flawed and the failed. But he was not without esteem for this man’s lively intelligence, and he well knew that desperate men make the bravest and most daring troops, having nothing to lose and everything to gain. So he made himself agreeable.
‘A job,’ he repeated. ‘Well, that might be possible. Come and see me.’
‘It’s Rue Saint-Lazare now, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Rue Saint-Lazare. In the morning.’
They chatted. Jantrou had plenty to say against the Bourse, insisting, with all the rancour of an unsuccessful scoundrel, that you had to be a scoundrel to succeed in it. That was all over now, he wanted to try something else, and he felt that, given his university background and his knowledge of the world, he would be able to find a good position in management. Saccard nodded approvingly. And as they were now outside the railings, walking along the pavement up to the Rue Brongniart, the attention of both men was caught by a dark coupé,* very well turned-out, which was standing in that street with the horse facing the Rue Montmartre. They had noticed that while the back of the coachman, perched on his high seat, was as still as if made of stone, a woman’s head on two occasions appeared at the carriage door then quickly vanished. Suddenly the head leaned out and remained there, casting a long, impatient look back towards the Bourse.
‘Baroness Sandorff,’ murmured Saccard.
It was a very strange, dark head, with black eyes burning beneath bruised eyelids, a face of passion, with blood-red mouth, a face marred only by an overlong nose. She seemed very pretty, and unusually mature for her twenty-five years, with the look of a Bacchante,* dressed by the great dress-designers of the age.
‘Yes, the Baroness,’ echoed Jantrou, ‘I met her when she was a girl living with h
er father, Count de Ladricourt. Oh! a crazy speculator and a man of appalling brutality! I used to go to get his orders every morning, and one day he came close to beating me. I shed no tears for him when he died of apoplexy, ruined after a series of terrible losses on the market… So the girl had to resign herself to marrying Baron Sandorff, Counsellor at the Austrian Embassy, thirty-five years her senior, whom she had quite driven mad with her fiery eyes.’
Saccard just said: ‘I know.’
Once more the head of the Baroness had disappeared inside the coupé. But almost immediately it reappeared, her face more ardent and her neck straining to see over the square, in the distance.
‘She plays the market, doesn’t she?’
‘Oh, like one demented! Every time there’s a crisis you can see her here, in her carriage, watching the market quotations, feverishly taking notes in her notebook and placing orders… And look! It was Massias she was waiting for, and here he comes to join her.’
Indeed, Massias was running as fast as his short legs would carry him, his list of market-rates in his hand, and they saw him leaning over the carriage door, he too now plunging his head inside, deep in discussion with the Baroness. Then, as they were moving off a little to avoid being caught spying, and the broker had started back, still running, they called out to him. First he glanced sideways to make sure he was hidden by the corner of the street; then he stopped, breathless, his florid face all puffed up but still cheerful, and his big blue eyes as limpid as a child’s.