by Emile Zola
‘Oh Lord!’ Dejoie went on, stammering. ‘She didn’t have much fun at home, it’s true, and it’s annoying for a nice girl to be wasting her youth, getting bored… But even so, she has been very hard. Just think of it! Not even saying goodbye to me, not a scrap of a letter, not the tiniest promise to come back and see me now and then… She just shut the door and that was that. You see, my hands are trembling, I’ve been like a wounded animal ever since. It’s too much for me, I keep on looking for her in the house. After so many years, dear Lord, how is it possible that I don’t have her with me any more, and never shall again, my poor little child!’
He had stopped crying, and his bewildered grief was so distressing that Madame Caroline seized hold of both his hands, finding no other comfort for him than to keep repeating:
‘My poor Dejoie, my poor Dejoie…’
Then, to distract him, she went back to the failure of the Universal. She blamed herself for having let him buy shares, and severely criticized Saccard, without naming him. But suddenly the former office-boy became animated. Bitten by the gambling bug, he was still passionate about it.
‘Ah, Monsieur Saccard, he was so right to stop me selling. It was a splendid business, and we’d have beaten them all, but for the traitors who let us down… Ah, Madame, if Monsieur Saccard were here, things would be different. It was death for us when they put him in prison. And it’s only he who could save us… I told the judge: “Monsieur, give him back to us, and I’ll trust him again with my fortune and my life, because, you see, that man, he’s like God himself! He can do whatever he wants.”’
Madame Caroline gazed at him, quite stupefied. What! Not a word of anger or reproach? This was the ardent faith of a believer. What powerful influence could Saccard have had on the whole flock, to keep them under such a yoke of credulity?
‘In fact, Madame, I came here just to tell you that, and you must forgive me if I told you about my own troubles, because I’m not very steady in my head just now… When you see Monsieur Saccard, please tell him we are still with him.’
He went away with faltering steps, and for a moment she felt a horror of life. That unhappy man had broken her heart. Against the other man, the one she didn’t name, she felt a fresh surge of anger, the force of which she rammed down inside herself. Besides, visitors were now arriving, she had hordes of them that morning.
Among the flow of people, the Jordans especially upset her again. They had come, Paul and Marcelle, like a loving couple who always acted together in serious matters, to ask whether there was really nothing more their parents, the Maugendres, could get out of their shares in the Universal. On that side the disaster was irreparable. Before the great battles of the last two settlements, the former tarpaulin-manufacturer already held seventy-five shares, which had cost him about eighty thousand francs—a splendid deal, since at one moment, with the price at three thousand francs, the shares represented two hundred and twenty-five thousand. But the awful thing was that in the passion of the fight, he had gambled without cover, believing in the genius of Saccard, and had gone on buying, with the result that the frightful differences he had to pay, more than two hundred thousand francs, had just swept away the last remnants of his fortune, that income of fifteen thousand francs, that he had earned with thirty years of hard work. Now he had nothing, he would hardly be able to clear all his debt, even after selling his little house in the Rue Legendre, of which he had been so proud. And in this disaster, Madame Maugendre had certainly been more guilty than he.
‘Ah, Madame,’ Marcelle explained, with her sweet face, even in the midst of catastrophe, still fresh and smiling, ‘you can’t imagine how Mama changed! She, so prudent, so thrifty, the terror of the servants, always at their heels picking over their accounts, she had taken to speaking only in terms of hundreds of thousands; she kept urging Papa on—oh! he was much less brave, deep down, and would have listened to Uncle Chave if she hadn’t driven him mad with her dream of winning the big prize, the million… They got caught up in speculation at the start through reading the financial papers, and it was Papa who first got enthusiastic about it; indeed, to begin with he used to hide what he was doing; then once Mama went into it too, despite having for so long professed a good housekeeper’s hatred of all gambling, it all blazed up, it didn’t take long. How is it possible that the passion for winning can change decent people to such an extent!’
Jordan broke in, amused by the recollection of the face of Uncle Chave, evoked by his wife’s mention of him.
‘And if you had only seen Uncle’s serenity in the midst of these catastrophes! It was just what he had predicted, he was triumphant in his tight military collar. Not one day was he absent from the Bourse, not one day did he fail to make his tiny gamble on the cash market, content every evening to carry off his fifteen- or twenty-franc coin, like a good worker who has resolutely done his day’s work. All around him millions were crumbling on every side, gigantic fortunes were being made and unmade in the space of two hours, gold was raining down in bucketfuls amid flashes of lightning, and he went on calmly making his little living, his little gains for his little vices… He is the cleverest of the clever, and the pretty girls of the Rue Nollet have continued to get their cakes and sweets.’
This allusion, made with great good humour, to the pranks of the Captain, succeeded in amusing the two ladies. But right away, the sadness of the situation returned to their minds.
‘Alas, no, declared Madame Caroline, ‘I don’t think your parents will get anything out of their shares. It seems to me it’s all over. The shares are at thirty francs now, and they’ll fall down to twenty francs or even a hundred sous… Oh Lord! Poor old folk, at their age, and so used to comfort, what will become of them?’
‘Well,’ Jordan replied with simplicity, ‘they will need to be looked after… We are not exactly rich yet, but things are beginning to get better, and we shan’t be leaving them out on the street.’
He had just had a stroke of luck. After so many years of thankless work, his first novel, issued first as a newspaper serial, then taken up by a publisher,* suddenly looked like being a great success, and he was now rich to the tune of several thousand francs, with every door opening for him, and he longed to get back to work, certain of achieving fortune and glory.
‘If we can’t take them in, we shall rent a little apartment for them. We’ll manage to sort it out!’
Marcelle, gazing at him with boundless tenderness, was shaken by a slight tremor:
‘Oh! Paul, Paul, how good you are!’ And she began to sob.
‘Calm yourself, my dear, I beg you,’ said Madame Caroline, over and over, concerned and astonished. ‘You mustn’t grieve so.’
‘No, let me be, I’m not grieving… But, honestly, this is all so stupid! I just ask you, when I married Paul, shouldn’t Mama and Papa have given me the dowry they had always promised? But on the pretext that Paul no longer had any money, and that I was stupid to insist on keeping my promise to him, they didn’t give us a centime… Ah, much good has it done them! They could have had it back now, my dowry! That at least would not have been swallowed up by the Bourse!’
Madame Caroline and Jordan couldn’t help laughing. But that did not comfort Marcelle, who went on crying all the harder.
‘And anyway, that’s not all… When Paul suddenly became poor, I had a dream of my own. Yes! I dreamed I was a princess, like the ones in fairy-tales, and one day I would bring my ruined prince heaps and heaps of money, to help him to be a great poet… And now he has no need of me, now I am nothing but a burden, along with my family! It’s he who will have all the trouble, and he who will be giving all the gifts… Ah, it really breaks my heart!’
Paul had quickly caught her up in his arms.
‘What are you saying, my silly goose! Does a wife need to bring anything? You bring yourself, your youth, your love, your good humour, and there’s not a princess in the world who could bring more!’
This at once calmed her, happy to be loved so
much, and feeling it was indeed silly to be crying. Jordan went on:
‘If your mother and father are willing, we’ll find them a place in Clichy, where I’ve seen some ground-floor apartments with gardens, that were not too dear… Our apartment, our little nest, filled as it is by our few sticks of furniture, is very nice, but it’s too small; all the more so since we’re going to need a bit more room…’
And smiling again, turning towards Madame Caroline, who was very touched by this family scene, he added:
‘Ah yes! We are going to be three, no reason not to admit it, now I’m at last earning a living!… So you see, Madame, yet another gift she’s giving me, she who’s been weeping over bringing me nothing!’
Madame Caroline, in the incurable despair of her sterility, looked at the slightly blushing Marcelle, whose increased girth she had not previously noticed. And now it was her own eyes that were full of tears.
‘Ah, my dear children, love one another, you are the only sensible ones, the only happy ones!’
Then, before taking his leave, Jordan related some details about the newspaper, L’Espérance. With his instinctive horror of business matters, he spoke of the office of L’Espérance as a sort of extraordinary cavern, echoing with the hammers of speculation. The entire staff were gamblers, from the manager to the office-boy, and he alone—he added with a laugh—had not engaged in speculation, so was out of favour, and treated with contempt by all. Anyway, the collapse of the Universal, and especially the arrest of Saccard, had just killed the newspaper dead. The contributors had taken flight, while Jantrou, in dire straits, held on stubbornly, hanging on to this bit of debris, still trying to live off what was left of the shipwreck. It was all over for him, his three years of prosperity had totally ruined him, with his monstrous over-indulgence in everything that can be bought, like those starvelings who die of indigestion when at last they sit down to a meal. And the curious thing, though logical enough, was the final downfall of Baroness Sandorff, who had become the mistress of this man, as she tried in her desperation to get her money back in the confusion of the catastrophe.
On hearing the name of the Baroness, Madame Caroline turned slightly pale, while Jordan, who knew nothing of the rivalry of the two women, went on with his story.
‘I don’t know why she gave herself to him. Perhaps she thought he would supply her with information, thanks to his connections as a publicity agent. Perhaps she simply rolled down to him by the laws of gravity, falling ever lower and lower. In the passion for gambling there is a sort of destructive ferment I’ve often observed, that corrodes and rots everything, and changes even the proudest and most well-brought-up person into a mere rag of humanity, a scrap of rubbish that gets swept into the gutter… In any case, if that old scoundrel Jantrou had always bitterly remembered the kicks on the backside he is said to have received from the Baroness’s father, when he went long ago to ask for orders, he has had his vengeance now; for when I went back to the newspaper to get paid, I pushed a door open too suddenly, and came upon an altercation, and with my own eyes I saw Jantrou giving Sandorff a resounding slap in the face… Oh! A drunkard like that, sunk in alcohol and vice, striking that society lady with such loutish brutality!’
With a gesture of pain, Madame Caroline silenced him. It seemed to her as if these excesses of degradation were bespattering her too.
Marcelle, very lovingly, had taken her hand before leaving.
‘At least, don’t think, dear Madame Caroline, that we came here to bother you. Paul, in fact, vigorously defends Monsieur Saccard.’
‘Why certainly!’ the young man replied. ‘He has always been good to me. I shall never forget the way he rid us of that terrible Busch. And anyway, he is a very considerable person… When you see him, Madame, tell him that our little family is still deeply grateful to him.’
When the Jordans had left, Madame Caroline made a gesture of silent anger. Grateful? Why? For the ruin of the Maugendres! These Jordans were like Dejoie, going away with the same words of excuse and good wishes. And yet these people did know! He was no ignoramus, this writer who had travelled through the world of finance, full of so fine a contempt for money. Her own rebellion continued, and grew stronger. No! There was no possible pardon, there was too much mud. Jantrou’s slapping of the Baroness did not avenge her. It was Saccard who had corrupted everything.
That same day, Madame Caroline was to go and see Mazaud about some documents she wanted to add to her brother’s file. She also wanted to know what his attitude would be, if the defence should call him as a witness. The appointment was not until four o’clock, after the Bourse; and being alone at last, she spent more than an hour and a half sorting out the information she had already obtained. She was beginning to see more clearly into this heap of ruins; in the same way as on the day after a fire, when the smoke has cleared and the embers have ceased to glow, one sorts through whatever’s left, still hoping to find the gold of melted jewels.
At first she had wondered where the money could have gone. In that swallowing-up of two hundred million, if some pockets had been emptied, it followed that other pockets must have been filled. However, it seemed certain that the ‘bears’ had not raked in the whole sum, a terrible leakage had carried away at least a third. On days of catastrophe at the Bourse, it seems the very ground drinks up money, some wanders away, and a little of it sticks to every finger. Gundermann alone must have pocketed about fifty million. Next came Daigremont, with twelve or fifteen. The Marquis de Bohain was also cited, having once again been successful with his classic coup; having played for a rise with Mazaud he refused to pay up, while he had gained almost two million with Jacoby, with whom he had been playing for a fall; but this time, even knowing that the Marquis had, like any common crook, put all his possessions in his wife’s name, Mazaud, in despair over his losses, was talking of taking legal action against him. Almost all the directors of the Universal had cut themselves a handsome slice of the profits, some, like Huret and Kolb, by realizing at the top price before the collapse, and others, like the Marquis and Daigremont, by treacherously going over to the ‘bears’; and besides, in one of its last meetings, when the company was already in serious trouble, the board had had each of its members credited with more than a hundred thousand francs. Indeed, on the trading-floor Delarocque, and especially Jacoby, were thought to have made huge personal profits, which had already been swallowed up into the two gaping and unfillable chasms created, in the case of the former, by his appetite for women, and in the latter by his passion for gambling. It was also rumoured that Nathansohn had become one of the kings of the kerb market, thanks to a gain of three million that he had made by playing on his own account for a fall, while playing for a rise for Saccard; and his extraordinary stroke of luck was that, committed as he was to large purchases in the name of the Universal, which was no longer paying, he would certainly have been ruined if there had not been a forced clearing of debts, making the whole kerb market, now declared insolvent, a gift of the more than a hundred million francs it owed. Such a lucky and clever fellow, that little Nathansohn! And what a happy turn of events—it made you smile—by which you keep all your profits, without paying for any of the losses.
But the figures were still vague, and Madame Caroline could not arrive at a correct estimation of the profits, for the transactions of the Bourse are carried on with a great deal of mystery, and professional secrecy is strictly observed by the brokers. Nothing could have been learned even from the order-books, for they contain no names. She tried in vain to discover how much had been carried off by Sabatani, who had mysteriously disappeared after the last settlement. That was yet another ruinous blow hitting Mazaud hard. It was the usual story: the shady client, accepted at first with misgivings, who deposits a small security of two or three thousand francs and gambles only modestly for the first few months, then, when the meagreness of the cover has been forgotten, and he has become a friend of the broker, he absconds after some act of banditry. Mazaud was talking of �
��posting’* Sabatani, as he had formerly ‘posted’ Schlosser, a crook out of the same stable, part of that endless band of robbers who make use of the market to cover their activities in the same way that bandits once used the woods. And the Levantine, that mixture of Italian and Oriental, with his velvety eyes, and endowed, it was said, with a phenomenon that women inquisitively whispered about, had gone off to skim some other stock market—Berlin, some said—waiting until the Paris Bourse had forgotten him, and he could return to be accepted once more, ready, given the general tolerance, to perform the same trick.
The next list Madame Caroline had drawn up was of the disasters. The crash of the Universal had been one of those terrible shocks that shake the foundations of a whole city. Nothing had remained steady and solid; cracks were appearing in neighbouring institutions, and every day brought new collapses. The banks were crumbling one after another, with a sudden clatter like stretches of wall still standing after a fire. People listened in silent dismay to this noise of things falling, and wondered where the ruins would stop. What struck Madame Caroline to the heart was not so much the bankers, the companies, the financiers and financial establishments destroyed and carried away in the storm, as all the poor people, the shareholders, and even speculators, whom she had known and loved, and who were among the victims. After the defeat, she was counting her dead. And it wasn’t just her poor Dejoie, the incredibly stupid and lamentable Maugendres, or the sad Beauvilliers ladies. Another drama that had greatly upset her was the bankruptcy of Sédille the silk manufacturer, which had been declared the day before. Having seen him at work as a director, the only one, she said, that she would have trusted with ten sous, she declared him to be the most honest man in the world. What a frightening thing, this passion for gambling! A man who had spent thirty years establishing, with his work and integrity, one of the soundest businesses in Paris, and who now, in less than three years, had so damaged it, so undermined it, that in one stroke it had crumbled into dust! What bitter regrets he must have for the laborious days of yesteryear, when he still believed in fortune being made by long effort, before one first lucky gain had made him scorn all that, consumed by the dream of acquiring in one hour on the stock market the million that takes the whole lifetime of an honest tradesman! And the Bourse had taken everything, leaving the wretched man struck down, disgraced, incapable and unworthy of taking up business again, and with a son whom penury would perhaps turn into a swindler—Gustave, that soul of joy and festivity, living on the basis of forty to fifty thousand francs of debt, and already compromised in an ugly story of promissory notes made out to Germaine Coeur. Another poor devil who distressed Madame Caroline was Massias the jobber, though, heaven knows, she was not often disposed to be sentimental about those gobetweens serving deception and theft! But she had known him too, with his big, laughing eyes, and that look of his, like a good dog unjustly whipped, as he raced around Paris to snatch up a few meagre orders. If he too had for a moment imagined himself one of the masters of the market, after making a conquest of fortune, following in Saccard’s footsteps, what a dreadful awakening he had had from his dream, finding himself quite knocked down, a broken man! He had debts of seventy thousand francs, and he had paid, when he might have claimed gambling-exemption* as so many others had done; but by borrowing from friends and pledging his entire life, he had been sublimely and uselessly stupid enough to pay—uselessly, in so far as nobody showed any gratitude, and some even shrugged their shoulders at him behind his back. His rancour was directed only against the Bourse; he had returned to his former disgust with his sordid job, insisting that you had to be a Jew to succeed in it, but resigning himself to carrying on, since he was already in it, and still had the stubborn hope of making his fortune after all, as long as he still had his keen eye and good legs. But the unknown dead, the victims with no name and no history, especially filled Madame Caroline’s heart with infinite pity. They were legion, scattered in remote thickets and overgrown ditches, dead or wounded bodies breathing their last in anguish, behind every tree-trunk. What fearful, silent dramas there were, in this host of unfortunate people of modest means, timid shareholders who had put all their savings into one stock; retired concierges, pale spinster ladies living with their cats, provincial pensioners with their obsessively regulated lives, country priests impoverished by their charitable giving, all these little people with a budget of a few sous—so much for milk, so much for bread—a budget so precise and restricted that even two sous less meant disaster! And suddenly, nothing left, life cut short and swept away; old, trembling hands, bewildered and groping in the dark, incapable of work; all these humble, quiet existences thrown at one stroke into the horror of want! A hundred desperate letters had arrived from Vendôme, where Fayeux, the collector of revenues, had aggravated the disaster by taking flight. Holding money and shares for the clients on whose behalf he operated at the Bourse, he had begun a terrible gambling spree for himself; and having lost, but not intending to pay, he had disappeared with the few hundred thousand francs he had still kept his hands on. All around Vendôme, in farms far from anywhere, he had left destitution and tears. The crash had reached everywhere, even the humblest cottages. As after great epidemics, were they not always the most pitiable victims, these ordinary people, neither rich nor poor, people with limited savings? Savings that would be replaced only after years of hard work by their sons.