by Emile Zola
‘Whatever is the matter with them!’ he exclaimed. ‘Now it’s Suez collapsing. And they’re talking of a war with England. A piece of news that is totally upsetting everyone, and no one knows where it came from… I ask you, war! Who can possibly have invented that? Unless it just invented itself… Honestly, a bolt from the blue!’
Jantrou gave a wink.
‘The lady’s still at it?’
‘Oh! like a madwoman! I’m taking her orders over to Nathansohn.’
Saccard, who was listening, reflected aloud:
‘Oh yes! indeed, I’d been told that Nathansohn had entered the kerb market.’
‘A very nice young chap, Nathansohn,’ said Jantrou, ‘he deserves to be successful. We were together at the Crédit Mobilier… But he’ll get on all right, since he’s a Jew. His father is an Austrian, living in Besançon, a watchmaker I believe… You know, one day, there at the Crédit, seeing how it all worked, he got the idea. He decided it wasn’t all that clever; all you needed was a room with a railed-off counter such as bank-cashiers have, so he opened a counter… And you, Massias, are you doing well?’
‘Doing well? Oh, you’ve been through it, you’re right to say you have to be a Jew; without that, no good trying to understand, one doesn’t have the flair, it’s just filthy luck… What a rotten job! But once in it, one stays in it. Besides, I still have good strong legs, so I keep hoping.’
And off he ran with a laugh. He was said to be the son of a disgraced magistrate from Lyons, who, after his father disappeared, decided not to go on with his law studies and ended up in the Bourse.
Saccard and Jantrou, walking slowly, came back towards the Rue Brongniart; there they again saw the coupé of the Baroness; but the windows were raised and the mysterious vehicle seemed quite empty, while the coachman seemed even more still than before, in his long wait that often lasted until the close of the market.
‘She is devilishly exciting,’ Saccard brusquely remarked, ‘I can understand the old Baron.’
Jantrou gave an odd smile.
‘Oh! The Baron had enough some time ago, I believe. And he’s very miserly, they say… So do you know who she’s taken up with, to pay her bills—since she never makes enough on the market?’
‘No.’
‘Delcambre.’
‘Delcambre, the Public Prosecutor, that dry stick of a man, so jaundiced and stiff!… Oh, I’d really like to see those two together!’
At this the two men, highly amused and titillated, went their separate ways with a vigorous handshake, one reminding the other that he would take the liberty of calling on him shortly.
As soon as he was alone again Saccard was once more overtaken by the loud voice of the Bourse, breaking over his head with the insistence of a flood-tide on the turn. He had gone round the corner now, and was walking back towards the Rue Vivienne, along that side of the square which, lacking any cafés, looks rather severe. He carried on past the Chamber of Commerce, the post-office, and the large advertising agencies, getting more and more deafened and feverish as he came back in front of the main façade; and when he managed to cast a sideways glance over the portico he paused anew, as if not yet ready to complete the tour of the colonnade and end this sort of passionate siege in which he was enfolding it. Here, on this wider part of the pavement, life was in full swing, even bursting out: a flood of customers filled the cafés, the patisserie was permanently crowded; the window displays were bringing the crowds flocking, especially the goldsmith’s, ablaze with large pieces of silverware. And at the four corners, the four intersections, the flow of cabs and pedestrians grew ever more intense, in an inextricable tangle, while the omnibus office added to the congestion and the jobbers’ carriages stood in line, blocking the pavement from one end of the railings to the other. But Saccard’s eyes were glued to the top of the steps, where the frock-coats followed one another in the sunshine. Then his gaze went back up towards the columns, into the compact mass, a swarming blackness brightened only by the pale patches of faces. Everyone was standing, the chairs were not visible, and the circle of the kerb market, sitting under the clock, could only be guessed at from a sort of bubbling, a frenzy of words and gestures that had set the air a-tremble. Over on the left the group of bankers engaged in arbitrage, foreign-currency operations, and English cheques* was quieter than the rest, though a queue of people kept passing through to get to the telegraph office. Even the side galleries were crammed with a crush of speculators; and between the columns, leaning against the metal handrails, some were showing their backs or bellies, seeming quite at ease, as if leaning on the velvet of a box at the theatre. The vibration and rumbling, like an engine getting up steam, grew ever louder, making the whole of the Bourse shake like the flickering of a flame. Suddenly he saw the jobber Massias racing down the steps and leaping into his carriage, whereupon the coachman immediately set the horse off at a gallop.
Then Saccard felt his fists clenching. Violently tearing himself away, he turned into the Rue Vivienne, crossing the road to reach the corner of the Rue Feydeau, where Busch lived. He had just remembered the Russian letter that he needed to get translated. But as he entered, he was greeted by a young man standing by the stationer’s on the ground floor, and he recognized Gustave Sédille, the son of a silk manufacturer in the Rue des Jeûneurs; his father had placed him with Mazaud to study the workings of the world of finance. He smiled paternally at the tall, elegant lad, readily guessing what he was up to, waiting there. Conin’s stationery shop had been supplying notebooks to the whole of the Bourse ever since little Madame Conin had begun helping her husband, big Monsieur Conin, who never came out from the back of the shop; he attended to the manufacturing, while she was forever coming and going, serving at the counter and running errands outside. She was plump and blonde and pink, a real little curly lamb with her pale, silky hair, very pleasant and affectionate and always in good spirits. She was fond of her husband, it was said, but this didn’t stop her from a bit of dalliance when one of the broker customers took her fancy; but not for money, only for pleasure, and once only, in a friend’s house nearby, or so it was said. In any case, the favoured ones must have been both discreet and grateful, for she was still adored and made a fuss of, with no ugly rumours about her. And the stationer’s continued to prosper, it was a real little nest of happiness. As he passed by, Saccard saw Madame Conin smiling at Gustave through the window. Such a pretty little lamb! He felt a delicious sensation like a caress. Then he went up the stairs.
For twenty years now Busch had occupied a cramped lodging right at the top, on the fifth floor, just two bedrooms and a kitchen. Born in Nancy, of German parents, he had ended up here after leaving his home town, and had gradually widened his extraordinarily complicated business circle, without feeling the need for a larger office, leaving the room on the street side to his brother Sigismond and keeping for himself only the little room overlooking the interior yard, and there the heaps of paper, the files and packages of all sorts, were piled up to such an extent that there was only room for one single chair beside the desk. One of his main concerns was trading in collapsed stocks; he collected them together and acted as intermediary between the Little Bourse of the ‘Wet Feet’ and the bankrupts with holes to account for in their books; so he followed the market rates closely, occasionally buying directly, but mainly being supplied from stocks that were brought to him. Besides moneylending and a covert traffic in jewels and precious stones, he particularly occupied himself with buying up debts. That was what filled his office to bursting-point and sent him to the four corners of Paris, sniffing and watching, with inside contacts in every level of society. As soon as he learned of a bankruptcy he would rush along, prowling around the receiver, eventually buying up everything that offered no immediate profit to anyone. He kept an eye on solicitors’ offices, waiting for the opening of difficult inheritance cases and attending the auctioning of hopeless debts. He also advertised, attracting impatient creditors who preferred to get a few sous at once
rather than run the risk of taking their debtors to court. From these multiple sources came paper by the basketful, constantly adding to the heap of this ragpicker of debts—unpaid promissory notes, failed agreements, fruitless acknowledgements of liability, commitments unfulfilled. Then came the sorting, the picking through these seedy remains, and this required a special and very delicate flair. In this ocean of disappeared or insolvent debtors choices had to be made to avoid waste of effort. Busch maintained as a general principle that any debt, however seemingly hopeless, might prove to be of value, and he had a series of admirably classified files, with a corresponding index of names, which he read over from time to time to refresh his memory. But among the insolvents he naturally followed most closely those he felt might perhaps come into money one day; his investigations stripped people bare, delved into family secrets, took note of wealthy relatives, of any resources people had, and especially of any new employment which would allow him to sequester payments. Often he would allow a man to ‘ripen’ over several years, only to strangle him at his first success. As for debtors who had disappeared, they excited his passions even more, throwing him into a fever of search after search, scanning the business signboards and every name printed in the newspapers, seeking out addresses like a dog hunting game. Once he had his hands on them, the insolvent and the disappeared, he became ferocious, devouring them with all sorts of charges, bleeding them dry, getting a hundred francs for what had cost him ten sous, with brutal explanations of the risks involved in his operations, which meant he had to recoup from those he caught all that he claimed to lose on the ones who slipped through his fingers like smoke.
In this hunt for debtors La Méchain was one of the helpers he most liked to use, for though he had to have a little troupe of hunting-assistants working for him, he was always distrustful of that disreputable and hungry gang; La Méchain, on the other hand, had her own property, a sort of housing estate behind the Butte Montmartre called the Cité de Naples, a vast acreage covered with rickety sheds that she leased by the month: a place of appalling poverty, with starvelings living on top of each other in the filth, fighting over holes fit for pigs from which she would ruthlessly sweep them, along with their rubbish, the minute they ceased to pay. What was eating her up and swallowing the profits of her ‘estate’ was her unfortunate passion for speculation. She also had a taste for financial disasters, ruins and fires from which one can steal melted jewels. When Busch set her to seeking some information or unearthing a debtor, she threw herself into it for sheer pleasure, even using some of her own money. She described herself as a widow, but no one had ever met her husband. She came from who knows where, seemed always to have been fifty and hugely fat, with the reedy voice of a little girl.
On this occasion, as soon as La Méchain was seated on the only chair, the office was full, as if bunged up by the arrival of this last packet of flesh. Busch, imprisoned at his desk, seemed quite buried, with only his square head rising above the sea of files.
‘Here,’ she said, emptying her old bag of the enormous pile of papers with which it bulged, ‘here’s what Fayeux sent me from Vendôme… He bought everything for you in that Charpier bankruptcy you asked me to point out to him… One hundred and ten francs.’
Fayeux, whom she called her cousin, had just set up an office there as a collector of revenues.* His ostensible business was receiving the bonds of the small investors of the region; and as the agent for these bonds and money he speculated wildly.
‘The provinces are not much use,’ muttered Busch, ‘but there are still some finds to be made.’
He sniffed at the papers, sorting them already with an expert hand, classifying them roughly at a first estimate, according to their smell. His flat face darkened, and showed disappointment.
‘Hmm, not much here, nothing to get one’s teeth into. Fortunately, this didn’t cost much… Here are some promissory notes… More notes… If these fellows are young, and if they’ve come to Paris, we may perhaps catch up with them…’
But then, he gave a slight exclamation of surprise.
‘Hold on. What’s this?’
He had just seen, at the bottom of a sheet of stamped paper,* the signature of the Count de Beauvilliers, and there were only three lines on the page, written in a large, senile hand: ‘I undertake to pay the sum of ten thousand francs to Mademoiselle Léonie Cron, upon her coming of age.’
‘Count de Beauvilliers,’ he repeated slowly, thinking aloud, ‘oh yes, he had farms and an entire estate, near Vendôme… He died in a hunting accident, and left a wife and two children in straitened circumstances. I had some promissory notes of his some time ago, which they had some trouble paying… A buffoon, a good-for-nothing…’
Then suddenly he burst into a loud laugh, as he reconstructed the story.
‘Ah! the old rogue! He must have got the girl into trouble… she was unwilling, but he must have persuaded her with this scrap of paper, which was of no legal value. Then he died… Let’s see, it’s dated 1854, just ten years ago. The girl must be of age by now! How did this statement of debt get into Charpier’s hands?… A seed-merchant, this Charpier, and a short-term moneylender. The girl no doubt left him this as a deposit for a few écus; or perhaps he had undertaken to collect the debt…’
‘But,’ La Méchain broke in, ‘that’s really good, that, a real stroke of luck!’
Busch shrugged his shoulders disdainfully.
‘Oh no, let me tell you, this isn’t worth anything in law… If I present this to his heirs they can send me packing, because I’d have to prove that the money is actually owing… However, if we find the girl I hope I could persuade them to be generous and come to some agreement, to avoid an unpleasant scandal… You understand? Look for this Léonie Cron, write to Fayeux asking him to dig her out over there. Then we can have some fun.’
He had put the papers into two piles, which he promised himself he’d examine thoroughly once he was alone, and he stayed quite still, with his hands open, one on each pile.
After a silence, La Méchain said:
‘I’ve looked into the Jordan notes… I really thought I’d found our man. He had a job somewhere, and now he’s writing for the newspapers. But the newspaper offices are so unhelpful; they refuse to give out addresses. And anyway, I don’t think he signs his articles with his real name.’
Without a word, Busch had stretched out his arm to take the Jordan file out of its alphabetical niche. There were six fifty-franc promissory notes, already five years old, and spread out over several months, a total of three hundred francs that the young man had signed to a tailor when he was hard up. Not paid when presented, the notes had accumulated huge charges, and the whole file was over-flowing with papers of legal proceedings. At this time the debt had reached seven hundred and thirty francs and fifteen centimes.
‘If the lad has any future,’ murmured Busch, ‘we’ll catch him yet.’
Then, doubtless following an association of ideas, he cried out:
‘Now tell me, what about the Sicardot affair? Are we giving up on it?’
La Méchain raised her fat arms heavenwards, in a mournful gesture. A shudder of despair shook her whole monstrous person.
‘Oh! Dear Lord!’ she moaned in her fluting voice, ‘it’ll be the death of me!’
The Sicardot affair was a quite novelettish story that she loved to tell. A cousin of hers, Rosalie Chavaille, a daughter born late in life to one of her father’s sisters, had, one evening when she was sixteen, been taken on a staircase in a house on the Rue de la Harpe, where she and her mother occupied a small lodging on the sixth floor. The worst of it was that the gentleman, a married man who had come with his wife, barely a week before, to a room sub-let by a lady on the second floor, had proved so amorous that poor Rosalie, pushed back too eagerly against the edge of one of the steps, had suffered a dislocated shoulder. Thereupon came justifiable rage from her mother, almost leading to a frightful scene, in spite of the tears of the girl who admitted she had been
quite willing, that it was just an accident, and she would be too miserable if the gentleman was sent to prison. At this the mother quietened down and contented herself with demanding from him the sum of six hundred francs, to be paid in twelve notes of hand, at fifty francs a month for a year, and there had been no ugly haggling; indeed the demand was even rather modest, since the daughter, just completing her apprenticeship as a dressmaker, now had no earnings, lying ill in bed, costing a lot, and getting such poor treatment that the muscles in her arm had shrunk, leaving her disabled. Before the end of the first month the gentleman had disappeared, leaving no address. And misfortunes continued, falling thick as hail: Rosalie gave birth to a boy, lost her mother, and fell into a life of wretchedness and dire poverty. Ending up at her cousin’s Cité de Naples, she had trailed around the streets until she was twenty-six, sometimes selling lemons at Les Halles, and disappearing for weeks with various men, to return drunk and bruised black and blue. At last, just a year ago, she had had the good fortune to die, as a result of an even more thorough beating than usual. And La Méchain had been left looking after the baby, Victor; all that remained of this adventure were the twelve unpaid notes, signed Sicardot. Nothing more had ever been discovered about him: the gentleman’s name was Sicardot.
Reaching out again, Busch took down the Sicardot file, a slim folder of grey paper. No costs had been added, all it contained were the twelve promissory notes.
‘If Victor were at least a nice child,’ lamented the old woman. ‘But honestly, he’s simply dreadful… Oh! It’s hard getting that sort of inheritance, a kid who’ll end up on the scaffold, and these bits of paper I’ll never make anything out of!’
Busch kept his big, pale eyes stubbornly fixed on the notes. So many times he had studied them like this, always hoping to find a clue in some overlooked detail, the shape of the letters or the grain of the stamped paper. He maintained that this fine, pointed handwriting could not be quite unknown to him.