Complete Works of Emile Zola (1106 page)

And, at that moment, catching sight of the huge, worn leather bag which never left her, he felt a shudder pass through him. To think of it, on a day when everything had gone off so well, when he had at last felt so happy at beholding the long-desired birth of that great financial establishment, this woman came to him. Would she, rascally old creature that she was, prove to be the wicked fairy, the fairy who in the familiar tales throws a spell over princesses in their cradles? That bag which she had been carrying through the offices of his nascent bank was — he realised — full of depreciated securities, stock that had ceased to be quoted. And he understood, so he fancied, that she meant to wait as long as might be necessary in order to bury his own shares in it, when the fall of his enterprise should come. Her reply was like the cry of the raven that starts with the army when it sets out on the march, that follows it until the night of the carnage, then hovers and swoops down, knowing there must be dead to eat.

‘Au revoir, monsieur,’ added La Méchain, as she retired panting and very polite.

CHAPTER V

THE LITTLE MONSTER

A MONTH later, in the early days of November, the installation of the Universal Bank was not yet finished. Carpenters were still putting up wainscotings, and painters were applying putty to the enormous glass roof with which the courtyard had been covered.

This delay was due to Saccard, who, dissatisfied with the smallness of the quarters, prolonged the work for the sake of adding unreasonable luxuries to it; and, not being able to set back the walls in order to realise his continual dream of the enormous, he had at last become angry, and thrown upon Madame Caroline the duty of finally dismissing the contractors. She it was, therefore, who superintended the placing of the last wickets. There was an extraordinary number of these. The courtyard, transformed into a central hall, was surrounded by them; grated wickets they were, severe and dignified, surmounted by beautiful brass plates, bearing inscriptions in black letters. In short, the installation, although effected in rather limited quarters, was a very happy one. On the ground floor were the departments which were to be in constant relation with the public, the different cash, issue, and other offices, where every current banking operation went on; and upstairs was the inner mechanism, so to speak, of the establishment, the managing, correspondence, and accountant’s offices — that for disputed claims, and that of the staff. Altogether more than two hundred employees moved about in this restricted space. And what struck one as soon as one entered, even amidst the bustle of the workmen driving in their last nails while the gold jingled in the wooden bowls, was an air of severity, of ancient probity, vaguely suggestive of a sacristy, and due undoubtedly to the premises — to that old, dark, damp mansion, standing silent in the shadow of the trees of the neighbouring garden. It seemed to you, indeed, as though you were entering a house of piety.

One afternoon, on returning from the Bourse, Saccard himself experienced this sensation, which surprised him. It consoled him, however, for the absence of gilding, and he expressed his satisfaction to Madame Caroline. ‘Well, all the same, for a beginning it is very nice,’ said he. ‘It has a family air; it’s a real little chapel. Later on we shall see. Thank you, my beautiful friend, for all the trouble you have taken in your brother’s absence.’

And as he made it a principle to utilize unexpected circumstances, he thenceforward exercised his ingenuity in developing the austere appearance of the house. He imposed upon his employees the manners of young priests; they spoke only in measured tones; they received and paid out money with quite priestly discretion.

Never had Saccard in his tumultuous life so actively expended his energy. In the morning at seven o’clock in advance of all the clerks, and before the office porter had even lighted his fire, he was already at his desk, opening his correspondence, and answering the most pressing letters. Then, until eleven o’clock, there was an interminable gallop — the principal friends and customers of the house, brokers, remisiers, the whole host of the financial world, to say nothing of the procession of heads of departments, coming for orders. He himself, as soon as he had a minute’s rest, rose and made a rapid inspection of the various offices, where the employees lived in terror of his sudden appearances, which never occurred at the same hours two days running. At eleven o’clock he went up to breakfast with Madame Caroline, ate heartily and drank heartily, with the ease of a thin man whom food does not inconvenience; and the full hour which he spent there was not wasted, for that was the time when, as he put it, he confessed his beautiful friend — that is, asked her for her opinion about men and things, although as a rule he did not know how to profit by her great good sense. At noon he went off to the Bourse, wishing to be one of the first to arrive there, in order to see and talk. However, he did not gamble openly, but repaired to the spot as to a natural place of appointment, where he was certain to meet the customers of his bank.

Moreover, his influence was already felt at the Bourse; he had re-entered the building as a conqueror, a substantial man, supported henceforth by real millions; and the shrewd ones talked in low tones as they looked at him, whispering extraordinary rumours, and predicting his approaching sovereignty. Towards half-past three he was always back at the bank again, settling down to the irksome task of signing, and so trained in this mechanical movement of the hand that, his head free and speaking at his ease, he summoned employees, gave answers, and decided important matters without once ceasing to sign. Then, until six o’clock, he again received visitors, finished the work of the day, and prepared that of the morrow. And when he went up again to Madame Caroline, it was for a more copious meal than that at eleven o’clock — delicate fish and particularly game, with caprices in the matter of wine that led him to dine on one evening with Burgundy, on another with Bordeaux, and on another with Champagne, according to the fortune that had attended him that day.

‘Dare to say that I am not well-behaved!’ he cried sometimes, with a smile. ‘Instead of frequenting clubs and theatres, I live here, like a good bourgeois, beside you. You must write that to your brother to reassure him.’

He was not as well-behaved as he pretended, having about that time taken a fancy to a little singer at the Bouffes; but he lived in such a desire, such an anxiety, for success, that all other appetites were bound to remain diminished and paralysed until he should feel himself triumphant, fortune’s undisputed master.

‘Bah!’ Madame Caroline would answer, ‘my brother has always been so staid that staidness is to him a natural condition, and not a merit, I wrote to him yesterday that I had induced you not to re-gild the board-room. That will please him much more.’

It was about this time, one very cold afternoon in the early days of November, at the moment when Madame Caroline was giving the head painter an order to merely clean the paint in the board-room, that a servant brought her a card, saying that the person who had delivered it strongly insisted upon seeing her. The card, a dirty one, bore the name of Busch, coarsely printed. She did not know the name; still she gave orders for the person to be shown up to her brother’s room, where she usually received.

If for six long months Busch had remained patient, and had not utilised the extraordinary discovery which he had made of Saccard’s natural son, it was in the first place for the reasons that he had originally advanced — the comparatively trifling result that there would be in simply obtaining payment of the six hundred francs, which the notes given to the mother represented, and the extreme difficulty of blackmailing Saccard in order to obtain more, that is, a reasonable sum of a few thousand francs or so. A widower, free from all ‘incumbrances,’ and but little afraid of scandal — how could one terrorise him, how make him pay a stiff price for that ugly present, a natural child, who had grown up in the mud, and was fated possibly to become a brute and an assassin? La Méchain had certainly made out a long bill of expenses, about six thousand francs: first small sums lent to Rosalie Chavaille, her cousin, the little one’s mother; then what the poor woman’s sickness had cost her, her burial, the care of her grave, and finally what had been spent for Victor himself, since he had fallen to her charge, in the way of food, clothing, and a multitude of other things. But if Saccard should not prove an affectionate father, was it not likely that he would send them about their business? For there was nothing in the world to prove that he was the father except the resemblance between himself and the child; and at most they might merely get from him the amount represented by the notes, provided always that he did not contend that they were barred by the statute of limitation.

Another reason why Busch had delayed action so long was that he had just spent several weeks of frightful anxiety by the side of his brother Sigismond, who was in bed stretched low by consumption. For a fortnight especially, this terrible ‘stirabout’ had neglected everything, forgotten the thousand and one complicated skeins which he was unravelling, no more appearing at the Bourse, and no longer pursuing a single debtor — never indeed leaving the bedside of his patient, but watching over him, caring for him, and changing his linen like a mother. Becoming prodigal, he who was so stingy, he summoned the best doctors of Paris, and would have paid an enhanced price for drugs if by this means they could only have been rendered more efficacious; and, as the doctors had forbidden all work, and Sigismond in this respect was obstinate, he carefully hid all the young fellow’s papers and books. A war of ruses was then carried on between them. As soon as his nurse, overcome by fatigue, fell asleep, the young man, drenched with perspiration and devoured by fever, would manage to find a bit of pencil, and on the margin of a newspaper would again begin making his calculations, distributing wealth according to his dream of justice, and assuring to one and all a due share of happiness and life. And Busch, on waking, was irritated to find him worse, and felt heartbroken at the thought that he thus bestowed on his chimera the little life that was left him. He allowed him to play with these stupid theories, as he called them, just as one allows a child to play with jumping-jacks, when he was in good health; but to kill himself with such mad, impracticable ideas, really it was imbecile! At last, however, having consented to be prudent through affection for his elder brother, Sigismond had recovered some strength and was beginning to get up.

Then it was that Busch, going back to his work, declared that it was time to settle the Saccard matter, especially as Saccard had re-entered the Bourse as a conqueror, and had again become a personage of indisputable solvency. The report which Busch had received from La Méchain, whom he had sent to the Rue Saint Lazare, was excellent. Nevertheless, he still hesitated to attack his man in front, and was delaying matters in the hope of discovering some method by which he might conquer him, when a word dropped by La Méchain with regard to Madame Caroline, the lady who kept the house, and of whom all the shopkeepers in the neighbourhood had spoken to her, started him on a new plan of campaign. Was this lady perchance the real mistress, the one who held the keys of the cupboards and of the heart? He frequently obeyed what he called the stroke of inspiration, yielding to sudden divination, starting upon the chase with a mere indication due to his scent, and then collecting facts which would bring him certainty, and enable him to form a resolution. Thus it was that he betook himself to the Rue Saint Lazare to see Madame Caroline.

Upstairs in the work-room, she stopped short in surprise at sight of this stout, ill-shaven man, with a flat dirty face, greasy frock-coat, and white cravat. He, on the other hand, searched her very soul, finding her such as he desired her to be, so tall and healthy-looking, with her wonderful white hair, which, so to say, illumined her young face with gaiety and gentleness; and he was especially struck by the expression of her rather large mouth, such an expression of kindliness that he at once made up his mind.

‘Madame,’ said he, ‘I wished to see Monsieur Saccard, but they just told me he was not in.’

He lied; he had not even asked for Saccard, for he knew very well that he was not in, having watched his departure for the Bourse.

‘And so,’ he resumed, ‘I ventured to apply to you, really preferring this, for I am not ignorant who it is that I address. It is a question of a communication so serious and so delicate—’

Madame Caroline, who had so far not asked him to sit down, pointed out a chair with anxious alacrity.

‘Speak, monsieur, I am listening.’

Carefully lifting the skirts of his coat, which he seemed to be afraid of soiling, Busch settled in his own mind that this woman must be Saccard’s mistress.

‘You see, madame,’ said he, ‘it is not an easy thing to say, and I confess to you that at the last moment I ask myself if I really ought to confide such a matter to you. I hope that you will see in the step I am taking nothing but a desire to enable Monsieur Saccard to repair old wrongs.’

With a gesture she put him at his ease, having, in her turn, understood with what sort of personage she had to deal, and desiring to curtail all useless protests. For the rest, he did not insist, but began to tell the old story in great detail — , the seduction of Rosalie in the Rue de la Harpe, the birth of a child after Saccard’s disappearance, the death of the mother in poverty and debauchery, and the fate of Victor left in the charge of a cousin too busy to watch him, and growing up in the midst of abomination. She listened to him, astonished at first by this romance which she had not expected, for she had imagined that it was a question of some shady financial transaction; and afterwards she visibly softened, moved by the mother’s sad fate and the abandonment of the child, deeply stirred in the maternal instinct which was so strong within her, childless though she was.

‘But,’ said she, ‘are you certain, monsieur, of the things that you tell me? Very strong proofs are needed, absolute proofs, in support of such stories.’