by Emile Zola
‘Anyway, in that Caracas affair,’ Mazaud went on, giving way to resentment in spite of all his scruples, ‘it’s certain that Daigremont betrayed them and scooped the profits… He’s a very dangerous man.’
Then, after a pause:
‘But why don’t you go to Gundermann?’
‘Never!’ cried Saccard, with real passion.
Just then Berthier, the manager, came in and whispered a few words in the broker’s ear. It was Baroness Sandorff, who had come to settle her account and was raising all sorts of quibbles to try and get her bill reduced. Normally Mazaud would hurry out in person to greet the Baroness, but when she had lost he avoided her like the plague, knowing she would make too severe an assault on his gallantry. There are no worse clients than women, nor any more absolutely untrustworthy when it comes to paying.
‘No, no, say I’m not in,’ he replied with annoyance. ‘And don’t let her off a single centime, do you hear!’
And when Berthier had left, seeing from Saccard’s smile that he had overheard:
‘It’s true, my dear chap, she’s very nice of course, but you’ve no idea how rapacious she can be… Ah! these clients, how they would love us if only they always won! And the richer they are, the higher on the social scale, God forgive me! the less I trust them, the more I fear I won’t be paid… Yes, there are days when, apart from the big companies, I’d rather do business only with provincials.’
The door had opened again, and a clerk handed him a file he had asked for that morning then went away.
‘Well, well! That’s good timing. Here we have a collector of revenues based in Vendôme, a certain Monsieur Fayeux… I tell you, you wouldn’t believe the number of orders I receive from this correspondent. Admittedly, the orders are fairly insignificant, coming from the lower middle classes, small tradesmen and farmers. But there are so many of them… In fact, the best part, the very foundation of our companies is made up of the modest speculators, the great anonymous crowd that plays the market.’
By an association of ideas, Saccard remembered Sabatani at the cash office.
‘So Sabatani is with you now?’ he asked.
‘Yes, for a year now, I think,’ replied the broker with an air of amiable indifference. ‘He’s a nice lad, isn’t he? He’s made a modest start, he’s very sensible and he’ll get on.’
What he didn’t say, what he no longer even remembered, was that Sabatani had made an original covering deposit of only two thousand francs. Hence his starting with only very moderate speculation. The Levantine was no doubt waiting, like so many others, for the paucity of his guarantee to be forgotten; and he was demonstrating prudence, raising the level of his orders only gradually, until the day when, toppling into a big settlement order, he would just disappear. How could one show any distrust towards a charming young man who has become a friend? How could one doubt his solvency when one saw him looking happy and apparently rich, with that elegance of dress that is indispensable to—indeed, almost the uniform of—larceny on the Stock Exchange.
‘Very nice, very intelligent,’ Saccard repeated, making a mental note to think of Sabatani when he needed to find a chap both discreet and unscrupulous. Then, getting to his feet and taking his leave:
‘Well, goodbye now!… When our shares are ready I’ll come and see you again, before I try to get them listed.’
And Mazaud, shaking his hand at the door of his office, said:
‘You’re wrong, you really should see Gundermann about your syndicate.’
‘Never!’ Saccard shouted once more, looking furious.
He was at last leaving when he recognized Moser and Pillerault at the cash desk: the former, looking very sad, was pocketing his fortnight’s gains, seven or eight thousand-franc notes; while the latter, who had lost, was paying out ten-or-so thousand francs, shouting loudly and looking very aggressive and arrogant as if after a victory. It was nearly time for lunch and the opening of the Bourse, so the office was soon going to be almost empty; and as the door of the accounts room was half-open, laughter could be heard from within, as Gustave told Flory abut a boating expedition in which the helmswoman had fallen into the Seine and lost everything, down to her stockings.
Out in the street Saccard glanced at his watch. Eleven o’clock, what a lot of time wasted! No, he would not go and see Daigremont; and although he had been enraged by the very mention of Gundermann’s name, he suddenly decided to call on him. Besides, hadn’t he said he would be paying him a visit when he announced his grand project at Champeaux’s, just to put a stop to that mocking laugh of his? He even gave himself the excuse that he didn’t want to get anything out of it, merely wanted to face up to him and triumph over him, this man who affected to treat him like a little boy. And as a fresh downpour sent torrents of water beating down on the pavement, he jumped into a cab and called out the address, Rue de Provence, to the driver.
This was where Gundermann occupied a huge mansion, which was only just big enough for his very numerous family. He had five daughters and four sons, three of the daughters and three of the sons were married and had already given him fourteen grandchildren. When they were all gathered together for the evening meal they were thirty-one at table, including his wife and himself. And apart from two of his sons-in-law who didn’t live in the mansion, they all had their own apartments there, in the east and west wings, which opened on to the gardens, while the central block was entirely taken up by the vast offices of the bank. In less than a century a monstrous fortune of a billion francs had been born, had grown, and had overflowed into this family, through thrift and with the help of favourable events. It seemed like predestination, aided by keen intelligence, relentless work, and prudent, invincible effort, continually striving towards the same goal. All the rivers of gold now flowed into this sea; more and more millions disappeared into these millions, in a swallowing-up of public wealth into the depths of the ever-increasing wealth of one individual; and Gundermann was the real master, the all-powerful king, feared and obeyed by Paris and the world.
As Saccard climbed the wide stone staircase, its steps worn by the continual coming and going of crowds of people, more deeply worn already than the thresholds of ancient churches, he felt the surge of an inextinguishable hatred for this man. Ah, the Jews! Saccard had that ancient racial resentment of the Jews that is found especially in the south of France. It was a sort of revolt of his very flesh, a revulsion of his skin, which, at the idea of the slightest contact, filled him with uncontrollable disgust and violence beyond all reason. But the curious thing was that Saccard, this tremendous business tycoon, this financial thug with his far-from-clean hands, lost all self-awareness as soon as a Jew was involved, and he spoke of Jews with harshness and vengeful indignation as if he were a respectable man who lived by the sweat of his brow, innocent of any dealings in usury. He had a list of grievances against this race, this accursed race which has no homeland or prince of its own, but lives like a parasite on other nations, pretending to recognize their laws but in reality obeying only its own God of theft, blood, and wrath; and he would describe it as everywhere fulfilling the mission of ferocious conquest entrusted to it by this same God, establishing itself in every nation like a spider at the centre of its web, awaiting its prey, sucking everyone’s blood, and growing fat on the life of others. Had anyone ever seen a Jew using his own two hands to earn a living? Are there any Jewish peasants, Jewish workers? No, work is dishonourable for them, their religion practically forbids it, it exalts only the exploitation of the labour of others! The scoundrels! Saccard’s rage seemed all the greater for the fact that he admired them, envied their prodigious financial abilities, their innate understanding of numbers, their natural ease in the most complicated of calculations, that flair and that luck which mean success in everything they undertake. In this game of thieves, he would say, Christians are not up to it, they always go under in the end; but take a Jew who doesn’t even know how to keep books, throw him into the troubled waters of some murky busi
ness, and he’ll get out safely, carrying all the profits with him. It’s a gift of the race, its reason for existing amid all the nationalities that come and go. And he would angrily prophesy the final conquest of every nation by the Jews, once they got their hands on the entire wealth of the globe, and that time was not far off, for they were every day allowed to extend their kingdom without any restraint, and already, in Paris, you could see a Gundermann reigning on a throne more solid and respected than that of the Emperor.
Upstairs, just as he was about to enter the vast antechamber, Saccard paused, seeing it full of jobbers and all sorts of petitioners, men and women, a whole tumultuous, seething crowd. The jobbers especially were fighting over who would get there first, with the unlikely hope of leaving with an order; for the great banker had his own brokers, but it was an honour and a recommendation just to be received, and each of them wanted to be able to boast of it. So the wait was never a long one, the two office-boys served only to organize the procession, the never-ending procession, a veritable gallop through the swinging doors. And in spite of the crowd, Saccard almost immediately went in, joining the flow.
Gundermann’s office was an immense room, in which he occupied only a small corner at the far end near the most distant window. Sitting at a simple mahogany desk, he had his back to the light so his face was completely in shadow. Up at five o’clock, he was already at work while Paris still slept; and when, towards nine o’clock, the crush of greedy appetites began to rush past him at the gallop, his day was already done. In the middle of the office, at larger desks, two of his sons and one of his sons-in-law were helping him, rarely sitting down, moving about amid the comings and goings of a multitude of clerks. But this was the inner mechanism of the bank. The streets outside seemed to come in across the room, going only to him, the master, in his modest corner; and for hours on end, until lunchtime, with an impassive and gloomy air, he would receive people, often with a gesture, sometimes with a word if he wished to be particularly agreeable.
As soon as Gundermann caught sight of Saccard his face lit up with a faintly mocking smile.
‘Ah! It’s you, my good friend… Sit down for a moment, if you have something to say to me. I’ll be with you shortly.’
He then affected to forget him. Saccard, however, was not impatient, fascinated by the procession of jobbers coming in hot on each other’s heels, all entering with the same deep bow and drawing from their irreproachable frock-coats the same little card, their quotes, with the prices on the Bourse, which they presented to the banker with the same gesture of entreaty and respect. Ten went past, then twenty. Each time, the banker would take the card, glance at it, and hand it back; and the only thing to equal his patience was his utter indifference beneath this hail of offers.
But Massias appeared, with his cheerful, anxious air, like a deserving dogsbody. Sometimes he was received so poorly he could have wept. That day, no doubt, he had run short of humility, for he allowed himself to be unexpectedly insistent.
‘Look, Monsieur, Mobiliers are very low… How many should I buy for you?’
Gundermann, not taking his quote, raised his glaucous eyes upon this young man who was being so familiar. Then, brusquely, he said:
‘Tell me, my friend, do you think I enjoy receiving you?’
‘My word, Monsieur,’ Massias began, now quite pale, ‘I enjoy even less coming here every morning for nothing, for the past three months.’
‘Well then, don’t come back.’
The jobber bowed and withdrew, after exchanging with Saccard the furious and desolate glance of a young man who had just realized that he would never make his fortune.
Saccard was indeed beginning to ask himself what interest Gundermann could possibly have in receiving all these people. He obviously had a special ability to cut himself off, he retreated into himself and went on thinking; besides, this must also be a discipline, his way of undertaking every morning a review of the market, in the course of which he could always find some profit to be made, however minimal. He very brutally deducted eighty francs from a dealer to whom he had given an order the previous day, and who was anyway robbing him. Then a dealer in curios arrived, with an enamelled gold box from the last century, an object that had been partially restored, and the banker immediately detected the fraud. Next were two ladies, one old, with a nose like the beak of a predatory bird, and one young, dark-haired and very beautiful, who wanted to show him a Louis-Quinze chest of drawers they had at home and which he refused outright to go and see. Then came a jeweller with some rubies, two inventors, a few Englishmen, some Germans and Italians, every language and every sex. And the procession of jobbers still continued in between the other visits, endlessly repeating the same gesture, the mechanical presentation of the quote; and as the opening hour of the Bourse drew near, the stream of clerks coming through grew ever larger, bringing dispatches and coming for signatures.
But the commotion reached new heights when a little boy of five or six burst into the office, riding on a stick and blowing a trumpet, and following him came two more children, two little girls, one aged three and the other eight; they besieged their grandfather’s chair, tugged on his arms and hung around his neck, all of which he placidly allowed, kissing them back with that Jewish passion for the family, the long line of descendants which gives strength and must be defended.
All at once he seemed to remember Saccard.
‘Ah! My good friend, please excuse me, as you see, I don’t have a minute to myself… You’re going to tell me about your business.’
And he was just beginning to listen when a clerk who had shown in a tall, blond gentleman came and whispered a name in his ear, and he stood up at once, though quite unhurriedly, and went to confer with the gentleman in front of another window while one of his sons carried on receiving the jobbers and dealers in his stead.
In spite of his suppressed irritation Saccard was beginning to feel a certain respect. He had recognized the blond gentleman, a representative of one of the Great Powers, full of arrogance at the Tuileries but here with head slightly bowed, smiling and seeking a favour. Top public-service officials, even ministers of the Emperor, would quite frequently be received like that, standing up, in this room which was as public as any square in the city and filled with the noise of children. And all this confirmed the universal sovereignty of this man, who had his own ambassadors in every court in the world, consuls in every province, agencies in every city, and vessels on every sea. He was no speculator, no master adventurer handling other people’s millions and dreaming, like Saccard, of heroic battles in which he would be victorious and win some colossal booty thanks to the help of gold, that mercenary enlisted in his service; he was, as he would often good-humouredly say, a simple money-trader, but the cleverest and keenest there could be. But to establish his power he had to dominate the Bourse; so each settlement was a new battle in which victory was unfailingly his, thanks to the decisive power of his big battalions. Watching him, Saccard was for a moment overwhelmed by the thought that all the money that Gundermann was moving around was his own, and that he had, in his vaults, an inexhaustible merchandise, that he bought and sold like a wise and wily trader and absolute master, obeyed at a glance, and determined to hear, see, and do everything for himself. A billion of one’s own, handled in this way, is an impregnable force.
‘We shan’t have a minute to ourselves, my friend,’ Gundermann came back to say. ‘Look, I’m going to have lunch now, come with me into the next room. Perhaps we’ll get a bit of peace.’
It was the small dining-room of the mansion, the one used in the morning when the family was never present all at the same time. That day there were only nineteen at the table, of whom eight were children. The banker sat in the middle, with just a bowl of milk before him.
He sat for a moment with his eyes closed, drained with fatigue, his face very pale and drawn, for he had a malady of the liver and kidneys; then, when he had, with trembling hands, carried the bowl to his lips and
drunk a mouthful, he sighed:
‘Oh! I’m worn out today!’
‘Why don’t you rest?’ asked Saccard.
Gundermann turned to him with an astonished expression, and simply answered:
‘But I can’t!’
And indeed, he wasn’t even allowed to drink his milk in peace, for the reception of jobbers had resumed and now came galloping through the dining-room, while the men and women of the family, used to all this rushing about, laughed and tucked in to the cold meats and pastries, while the children, excited by a mouthful of undiluted wine, were making a deafening row.
And Saccard, still watching him, marvelled to see him swallow his milk in slow gulps, with such an effort that it seemed he would never reach the bottom of the bowl. He had been put on a diet of milk, he couldn’t touch meat or cake anymore. So what good was a billion? Nor had he ever been tempted by women; for forty years he had remained strictly faithful to his wife, and now his good behaviour was compulsory, definitive and irrevocable. So why get up at five in the morning, do this abominable job, be crushed by this immense fatigue, and lead the life of a galley-slave, a life that no beggarman would accept, his memory stuffed with numbers and his skull bursting with a multitude of worries? Why add more useless gold to so much gold, when you can’t even buy a pound of cherries to eat in the street or take some passing girl to a dance-hall by the river, or enjoy any of the things that can be bought, like idleness and freedom? And Saccard who, for all his terrible appetites, still recognized the disinterested love of money for the power it gives, felt seized by a kind of sacred terror at seeing this figure before him, not the classic miser hoarding his gold, but the blameless worker with no physical needs, an almost abstract figure in his ailing old age, obstinately continuing to build his tower of millions, with the sole dream of leaving it to his descendants so that they could make it even bigger, until it would dominate the earth.