Complete Works of Emile Zola (1128 page)

He was becoming excited, and with a sweeping gesture pointed to the papers that filled the room. ‘I have here more than twenty millions of debts, of all ages, owed by people in all stations of life — some very small amounts, others very large ones. Will you pay a million for them? If so, I will willingly let you have them. When one thinks that there are some debtors whom I have been hunting for a quarter of a century! To obtain a few paltry hundred francs, and sometimes even less from them, I wait in patience for years until they become successful or inherit property. The others, the unknown and most numerous, sleep there — look! in that corner, where that huge heap is. That is chaos, or rather raw material, from which I must extract life — I mean my life, and Heaven alone knows after what an entanglement of search and worry! And when I at last catch one of these folks in a solvent condition, you expect me not to bleed him? But, come, you would think me a fool if I didn’t do so; you would not be so stupid yourself!’

Without waiting to discuss the question any further, Saccard took out his pocket-book. ‘I am going to give you two hundred francs,’ said he, ‘and you will give me the Jordan papers, with a receipt in full.’

Busch’s exasperation made him start. ‘Two hundred francs! Not if I know it! The amount is three hundred and thirty francs and fifteen centimes, and I want the centimes!’

But with the tranquil assurance of a man who knows the power which money has when it is spread out before one, Saccard, in a voice which neither rose nor fell, repeated: ‘I am going to give you two hundred francs.’

Three times he spoke these words, and the Jew, convinced at heart that it would be sensible to compromise, ended by accepting the offer, but with a cry of rage and with tears starting from his eyes. ‘I am too weak. What a wretched trade! Upon my word I am plundered, robbed. Go on while you are about it, don’t restrain yourself, take some others too — yes, pick some out of the heap, for your two hundred francs.’

Then having signed a receipt and written a line to the process-server, for the papers were no longer at the office in the Rue Feydeau, Busch remained for a moment panting at his desk, so upset that he would have let Saccard then and there go off had it not been for La Méchain, who so far had neither made a gesture nor spoken a word.

‘And the affair?’ said she.

He suddenly remembered. He was going to take his revenge. But all that he had prepared, his narrative, his questions, the skilfully planned moves which were to make the interview take the course he desired, were swept away, forgotten in his haste to come to the brutal fact.

‘The affair, true — I wrote to you, Monsieur Saccard. We now have an old account to settle together.’

He stretched out his hand to take the wrapper containing the Sicardot notes, and laid it open in front of him.

‘In 1852,’ he said, ‘you stayed at a lodging-house in the Rue de la Harpe; you there signed twelve promissory notes of fifty francs each in favour of a girl of sixteen, Octavie Chavaille, whom you had ruined. Those notes are here. You have never paid a single one of them, for you went away without leaving any address before the first one matured. And the worst of it is you signed them with a false name, Sicardot, the name of your first wife.’

Very pale, Saccard listened and looked at him. In utter consternation he once more beheld the past, and it seemed as though some huge, shadowy, but crushing mass were falling upon him. In the fear of the first moment he quite lost his head, and stammered, ‘How is it you know that? How did you get hold of those notes?’

Then, with trembling hands, he hastened to take out his pocket-book again, with the one thought of paying and regaining possession of those annoying papers. ‘There are no costs, are there?’ said he. ‘It is six hundred francs. Oh! a good deal might be said, but I prefer to pay without discussion.’

And thereupon he tendered six bank-notes.

‘By-and-by!’ cried Busch, pushing back the money. ‘I have not finished. Madame, whom you see there, is Octavie’s cousin, and these papers are hers; it is in her name that I seek payment. That poor Octavie became a cripple, and had many misfortunes before she at last died at Madame’s house in frightful poverty. If Madame chose, she could tell you things—’

‘Terrible things!’ emphasised La Méchain in her piping voice, breaking silence at last.

Saccard, quite scared, having forgotten her, turned and saw her sitting there all of a heap, like a half-empty wineskin. Bird of prey that she was with her shady trade in worthless securities, she had always made him feel uneasy, and now he found her mixed up in this unpleasant story.

‘Undoubtedly, poor creature, it is very sad,’ he murmured.

‘But if she is dead, I really do not see — Here, at any rate, are the six hundred francs.’

A second time Busch refused to take the sum.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘you do not know all yet; she had a child. Yes, a child who is now in his fourteenth year — a child who so resembles you that you cannot deny him.’

‘A child, a child!’ Saccard repeated several times, quite thunderstruck.

Then, suddenly replacing the six bank-notes in his pocketbook, recovering his self-possession and becoming quite merry, he continued:

‘But, I say, are you having a game with me? If there is a child, I shan’t give you a copper! The little one is his mother’s heir. He shall have the money and whatever more he wants besides. A child, indeed! Why, it makes me feel quite young again. Where is he? I must go to see him. Why didn’t you bring him to me at once?’

In his turn stupefied, Busch now thought of how long he had hesitated and of the infinite pains that Madame Caroline had taken to hide Victor’s existence from his father. And, quite nonplussed, he burst into complicated explanations, revealing everything — the six thousand francs claimed by La Méchain for keep and money lent, the two thousand which Madame Caroline had paid on account, the frightful instincts which Victor had displayed, and his removal to the Institute of Work.

And at each fresh revelation Saccard gave a violent start. What! Six thousand francs, indeed! How was he to know, on the contrary, that they had not despoiled the little fellow? Two thousand francs on account! They had had the audacity to extort two thousand francs from a lady friend of his! Why, it was robbery, abuse of confidence! The little one, of course, had been brought up badly, and now he, Saccard, was expected to pay those who were responsible for his evil education! Did they take him to be a fool, then?

‘Not a copper!’ he cried. ‘You hear me. You need not expect to get a copper from me!’

With a pale face, Busch rose and took his stand in front of his table. ‘Well, we will see,’ he exclaimed; ‘I will drag you into court!’

‘Don’t talk nonsense. You know very well that the courts don’t deal with such matters. And if you hope to blackmail me you deceive yourself, for I don’t care one rap for anything you may say or do. A child! Why, I tell you it makes me feel quite proud!’ Then, as La Méchain blocked up the doorway, he had to hustle her, climb over her in fact, in order to get out. She was suffocating, but managed to call to him in her flute-like voice as he went down the stairs, ‘You rascal! You heartless wretch!’

‘You shall hear from us,’ howled Busch, shutting the door with a bang.

Such was Saccard’s excitement that he gave his coachman orders to drive to the Rue Saint-Lazare at once. He was in a hurry to see Madame Caroline, whom he accosted without the slightest sign of embarrassment, at once scolding her for having given the two thousand francs. ‘Why, my dear friend, one should never part with money in that fashion. Why did you act without consulting me?’

She, scared at finding that he knew the story at last, remained silent. It was really Busch’s handwriting that she had recognised on that envelope, and now she had nothing more to hide, since another had just relieved her of the secret. Nevertheless, she still hesitated, in confusion for this man who questioned her so much at his ease.

‘I wanted to spare you a chagrin,’ she began. ‘The poor child was in such a terrible state. I should have told you all long ago, but for a feeling—’

‘What feeling? I confess that I do not understand you.’

She did not try to explain herself, to further excuse herself, invaded as she was by a feeling of sadness, of weariness with everything — she whom life usually found so courageous; while he, delighted, really rejuvenated, continued chattering.

‘The poor little fellow! I shall be very fond of him, I assure you. You did quite right to take him to the Institute of Work, so that they might clean him up a little. But we will remove him from there and give him teachers. To-morrow I will go to see him — yes, to-morrow, if I am not too busy.’

The next day, however, there was a board meeting, and two days passed, and then a week, during which Saccard was unable to find a spare minute. He often spoke of the child, but kept on postponing his visit, always yielding to the overflowing river that carried him along.

In the early days of December, amidst the extraordinary fever to which the Bourse was still a prey, Universals had reached the price of two thousand seven hundred francs. Unfortunately, the alarming reports went on growing and spreading, and though the rise continued there was an intolerable feeling of uneasiness. The inevitable catastrophe was indeed openly predicted, and if the shares still went up — went up incessantly — it was by the force of one of those prodigious, obstinate infatuations which refuse to surrender to evidence. And Saccard now lived amid the glamour of his spurious triumph, with a halo around him as it were — a halo emanating from that shower of gold which he caused to rain upon Paris. Still, he was shrewd enough to feel that the soil beneath him was undermined, cracking, threatening to sink under his feet and swallow him up. And so, although he remained victorious after each settlement, he felt perfectly enraged with the ‘bears,’ whose losses must already be very heavy. What possessed those dirty Jews that they should fight on so tenaciously? Would he not soon annihilate them? And he was especially exasperated by the fact that, apart from Gundermann, who was playing his usual game, he could scent other sellers — soldiers of the Universal perhaps, traitors who, losing confidence, were going over to the enemy, all eagerness to realise their gains.

One day when Saccard was thus venting his displeasure in presence of Madame Caroline, she thought it her duty to tell him everything. ‘You know, my friend,’ said she, ‘that I also have sold. Yes, I have just parted with our last thousand shares at the rate of two thousand seven hundred francs.’

He was overcome, as though confronted by the blackest of treasons. ‘You have sold, you! you, my God!’ he gasped.

She had taken hold of his hands and was pressing them, really grieved for him, but reminding him that she and her brother had long since warned him of their intention. Moreover, Hamelin, who was still at Rome, kept on writing to her in the most anxious strain about this exaggerated rise, which he could not understand, and which must be stopped, said he, even under penalty of tumbling into an abyss. Only the day before she had received a letter from him, giving her formal orders to sell. And so she had sold.

‘You, you!’ repeated Saccard; ‘so it was you who were fighting me, you whom I felt in the dark! It is your shares that I have been obliged to buy up!’

He did not fly into a passion, as he usually did, and she suffered the more from his utter despondency; she would have liked to reason with him, to induce him to abandon that merciless struggle, which nothing but a massacre could terminate.

‘Listen to me, my friend,’ she said. ‘Reflect that our three thousand shares have brought us more than seven millions and a half. Is not that an unhoped-for, an extravagant profit? Indeed, all this money frightens me, I cannot believe that it belongs to me. However, it is not our personal interest that is in question. Think of the interests of all those who have entrusted their fortunes in your hands, of all the millions which you are risking in the game. Why sustain that senseless rise? why stimulate it further? I hear people say on every hand that a catastrophe lies inevitably at the end of it all. You cannot keep on rising for ever; there is no shame in allowing the shares to revert to their real value, and, with the enterprise firm and stable, that will mean salvation.’

But he had already sprung to his feet.

‘I mean that the quotations shall reach three thousand francs!’ he cried. ‘I have bought, and I will buy again, even if it kills me. Yes! may I burst and all burst with me, if I do not reach the figure of three thousand francs, and keep to it!’

After the settlement of December 15, Universals rose to two thousand eight hundred, and then to two thousand nine hundred francs. And on the 21st the quotation of three thousand and twenty francs was proclaimed at the Bourse, amid the uproar of an insane multitude. There was no longer any truth or logic in it all; the idea of value was perverted to the point of losing all real significance. A report was current that Gundermann, contrary to his prudent habits, had involved himself in frightful risks. For months he had been nursing a fall; and so each fortnight his losses had increased by leaps and bounds in proportion to the rise indeed, people were beginning to whisper that his back might be broken after all. All brains were topsy-turvy; prodigies were expected.

And at that supreme moment, when Saccard, at the summit, felt the earth trembling under him, and secretly feared that he might fall, he was king. When his carriage reached the Rue de Londres, and drew up outside the triumphal palace of the Universal, a valet hastened down and spread out a carpet, which rolled across the footway from the vestibule steps to the gutter; and then Saccard condescended to alight from his brougham, and made his entrance into the Bank, like a sovereign, spared from treading on the common pavement of the streets.

CHAPTER X

THE BATTLE OF MILLIONS

THAT day, the last of the year, the day of the December settlement, the great hall of the Bourse was already full at half-past twelve o’clock, and the agitation as displayed by voice and gesture was extraordinary. For several weeks the effervescence had been increasing, and now came this last day of struggle with its feverish mob, through whose ranks the growl of conflict already sped, the growl of the decisive battle which was on the point of being fought. Out of doors there was a terrible frost; but the oblique rays of a clear winter’s sun penetrated through the high windows, brightening the whole of one side of the bare hall with its severe-looking pillars and dreary arched roof, the cold aspect of which was increased by the grey allegorical paintings that decorated it. And from end to end of the arcades were the apertures of the air-stoves, disseminating warm breath amid the cold currents of air which were admitted by the grated doors ever and ever on the swing.