Complete Works of Emile Zola (1130 page)

‘A fine frost, eh?’

‘Yes, it was so delightful that I came on foot.’

Upon reaching the corbeille, the vast circular basin as yet unlittered by waste paper, they paused for a moment, leaning against the red velvet balustrade which encircled it, and continuing to exchange disjointed, commonplace remarks whilst darting stealthy glances around them.

Starting from the corbeille were four railed passages, so disposed that the whole formed a cross, or rather a four-pointed star of which the corbeille was the centre. These passages were sacred spots, to which the public was not admitted. In the spaces between them, in front of the corbeille, you perceived on one hand a compartment where the employees dealing with cash transactions were installed just under the three ‘quoters,’ who were perched upon high chairs behind huge registers; whilst, on the other hand, an open compartment, known from its shape, no doubt, as the ‘Guitar,’ enabled speculators and employees to place themselves in direct communication with the brokers. Behind the corbeille, in the space between the rear points of the star, was the crowded Rente market, where, as in the Cash department, each broker was represented by a special clerk; for the brokers themselves, disposed around the corbeille, were entirely absorbed by the great, savage business of gambling, and gave their personal attention to ‘account’ transactions exclusively.

Mazaud, however, seeing his authorised clerk Berthier making signs to him in the railed-off passage on his left hand, went to exchange a few words with him in a whisper. The authorised clerks alone had the privilege of entering these passages, and even then they had to keep at a respectful distance from the red velvet balustrade of the corbeille, which no profane hand was allowed to touch. Every day, on repairing to the Bourse, Mazaud was accompanied by Berthier and his Cash and Rente clerks, to whom the clearing-house clerk was often adjoined; to say nothing of the telegram clerk, Flory, whose beard was now overrunning his face to such a degree that little of his features excepting his soft lustrous eyes could be seen. Since winning ten thousand francs on the day after Sadowa, Flory, maddened by the demands of Mademoiselle Chuchu, who had become capricious and ravenous, had gambled wildly on his own account, calculating nothing himself, but ever watching Saccard’s play, which he followed with blind faith. His acquaintance with the orders and telegrams which passed through his hands sufficed to guide him. And at this moment, having just run down from the telegraph office on the first floor, with both hands full of telegrams, he sent an attendant to call Mazaud, who left Berthier to come to the ‘Guitar.’

‘Am I to run through them and classify them to-day, monsieur,’ asked Flory.

‘Undoubtedly, if they are coming thus en masse. What are all those?’

‘Oh, Universals — orders to buy, almost all.’

The broker, with a practised hand, turned the telegrams over, and was evidently well pleased. Very much involved with Saccard, whom he had long been carrying over for considerable sums, and from whom that very morning he had received orders to buy on a very large scale indeed, he had finally become the Universal’s authorized broker. And, although so far not a prey to any great anxiety, he nevertheless felt relieved at noticing how persistent was the infatuation of the public, how obstinately people went on buying Universals in spite of the extravagance of the rise. One name particularly struck him, among those appended to the telegrams, that of Fayeux, the dividend-collector at Vendôme, who must have secured a vast number of petty buyers among the farmers, devotees, and priests of his province, for not a week passed but he thus sent orders after orders.

‘Give those to the Cash-clerk,’ said Mazaud to Flory. ‘And don’t wait for the telegrams to be brought down to you. Go up and wait, and bring them down yourself.’

Going at once to the Cash department, Flory leant over the balustrade, shouting, ‘Mazaud! Mazaud!’ at the top of his voice.

It was Gustave Sédille who approached, for employees lose their own names at the Bourse and take those of the brokers whom they represent. In this wise Flory himself was called Mazaud by the others. For two years Gustave Sédille had been out of the office, but he had lately returned to it in the hope of thereby inducing his father to pay his debts; and that afternoon, owing to the absence of the principal clerk, he found himself entrusted with the Cash-work, which amused him. Flory leant over to whisper in his ear, and they agreed between them that they would only effect the purchases for Fayeux at the last quotation, after using his orders for a private gamble of their own, first buying and then selling in the name of their usual man of straw, so as to pocket the difference, for a rise seemed to them to be certain.

Meantime Mazaud went back towards the corbeille. But at every step an attendant handed him a fiche on which an order had been scribbled in pencil by some customer who had been unable to approach. For these fiches each broker had his own special colour — red, yellow, blue or green — so that he might easily recognise them. Mazaud’s were green, the colour of hope; and the little slips kept on accumulating between his fingers as the attendants continually went to and fro, taking them, at the end of the railed passages, from the employees and speculators who, in order to save time, were each provided with a supply of the little cards.

As Mazaud halted once more in front of the velvet-topped balustrade he again came upon Jacoby, who also carried a handful of fiches, red ones, the hue of freshly shed blood. These undoubtedly were orders from Gundermann and his followers, for everybody was aware that in the massacre now being prepared Jacoby would be the broker of the ‘bears,’ the executioner-in-chief of the Israelite banking world. He was at present listening to another broker, his brother-in-law, Delarocque, a Christian who had married a Jewess, a very bald, stout, thick-set, florid man, partial to clubland and known to receive the orders of Daigremont, who had lately fallen out with Jacoby as he had formerly fallen out with Mazaud. The story which Delarocque was telling — a story of equivocal character — lighted up his little blinking eyes, while he waved, in passionate pantomime, his memorandum-book, from which protruded his package of fiches, which were blue, the soft blue of an April sky.

‘Monsieur Massias is asking for you,’ an attendant came to say to Mazaud.

The latter quickly returned to the end of the railed passage. The remisier, now completely in the pay of the Universal, had brought Mazaud news from the coulisse, which had already begun business under the peristyle in spite of the terrible cold. A few speculators ventured to show themselves there, but went to warm themselves in the hall every now and then; whereas the coulissiers, wrapped in heavy overcoats, with their fur collars turned up, bravely kept their places in a circle, as usual, underneath the clock, and growing so animated, shouting and gesticulating so vehemently that they did not feel the cold. And one of the most active was little Nathansohn, now in a fair way to become a man of importance, for luck had favoured him since the day when, resigning his position as a mere petty clerk at the Crédit Mobilier, he had had the idea of renting a room and opening a wicket.

Speaking rapidly, Massias explained to Mazaud that, as prices seemed to have a downward tendency under the weight of the shares with which the ‘bears’ were overwhelming the market, Saccard had just had the idea of operating at the coulisse, in order to influence the official opening quotation at the corbeille. Universals had closed the day before at three thousand and thirty francs; and he had given an order to Nathansohn to buy a hundred shares, which another coulissier was to offer at three thousand and thirty-five. This would be a rise of five francs.

‘All right! the quotation will reach us,’ said Mazaud.

And he came back to the groups of brokers, who had now mustered in full force. There were sixty of them all told, and, in spite of the regulations, they were already doing business among themselves, at the mean quotation of the day before, whilst waiting for the ringing of the bell. Orders given at a predetermined fixed rate did not influence the market, since it was necessary to wait until this rate should be quoted; it was the orders to buy or sell on the best terms available, the execution of which was left to the broker’s judgment, that provoked the continual oscillations in one or the other sense. A good broker should be possessed of shrewdness and foresight, a quick head, and agile muscles — for rapidity often, ensures success — to say nothing of the necessity of having a good connection in the banking world, of securing information from all parts, and particularly of being the first to receive telegrams from the provincial and foreign money markets. And in addition to all this, a strong voice is needed, in order to be able to shout loudly.

One o’clock struck, however; the peal of the bell passed like a gust of wind over the surging sea of heads, and the last vibration had not died away when Jacoby, with both hands resting on the velvet-covered handrail, shouted in a roaring voice, the loudest of the whole corporation of stockbrokers: ‘I have Universals! I have Universals!’

He did not name any price, but waited to be interrogated. The sixty brokers had drawn near and formed a circle around the corbeille, where a few fiches, just thrown away, had already set spots of bright colour. Face to face, the brokers, like duellists at the outset of a fray, scrutinised one another, eager to see the first quotation established.

‘I have Universals!’ repeated Jacoby. in his deep, thundering voice: ‘I have Universals!’

‘What price Universals?’ asked Mazaud, in a voice which, albeit thin, was so shrill that it dominated his colleague’s in the same way as the strain of a flute rises above a violoncello accompaniment.

Delarocque proposed the last quotation of the previous day. ‘At three thousand and thirty I take Universals!’ he bawled.

But another broker at once intervened with a higher bid: ‘At three thousand and thirty-five deliver Universals!’

This was the coulisse price, just coming in and preventing the deal which Delarocque had doubtless intended to make: a purchase at the corbeille and a prompt sale at the coulisse, so as to secure the five francs’ rise.

Accordingly, Mazaud, feeling certain that Saccard would approve of it, made up his mind to carry matters further. ‘At three thousand and forty I take! Deliver Universals at three thousand and forty!’

‘How many?’ asked Jacoby.

‘Three hundred.’

Both wrote a line in their memorandum-books, and the bargain was concluded; the first official quotation was established, with a rise of ten francs over the quotation of the day before. Mazaud stepped aside, to give the figure to the quoter who had the Universal on his register. Then, for twenty minutes, there was a perfect flood-gate opened: the quotations of other stocks were likewise established; all the business which the brokers had in hand was transacted without any great variations in prices. And meanwhile the quoters, perched aloft, between the uproar of the corbeille and that of the Cash market, which was also feverishly busy, were scarce able to make entries of all the new figures thrown at them by the brokers and the clerks. In the rear, the Rente market was simply raging. Since the opening of the market there was no longer the mere roar of the crowd, similar to the continuous sound of flowing waters, for above all this formidable rumbling there now rose the discordant cries of offer and demand, a characteristic yelping, which rose, and fell, and paused, to begin again in unequal, grating accents, like the cries of birds of pillage in a tempest.

With a smile on his face, Saccard still stood near his pillar. His court had grown yet larger; the rise of ten francs in Universals had just filled the Bourse with excitement, for it had long been predicted that on settling day there would be a crash. Huret had approached with Sédille and Kolb, pretending to regret his prudence, which had led him to sell his shares at the price of twenty-five hundred francs; while Daigremont, wearing an air of unconcern, as he walked about arm-in-arm with the Marquis de Bohain, gaily explained to him why it was that his stable had been defeated at the autumn races. But, above all, Maugendre triumphed, and sought to overwhelm Captain Chave, who persisted nevertheless in his pessimism, saying it was necessary to await the end, which he still believed would be disaster. A similar scene was enacted by the boastful Pillerault and the melancholy Moser, the former radiant over this insane rise, the latter clenching his fists and talking of this stubborn, foolish rise as of some mad animal which, whatever its efforts might be, was certain to be slaughtered eventually.

An hour went by, the quotations remaining much the same; transactions went on at the corbeille in proportion as fresh orders were given or fresh telegrams arrived. Business was less brisk, however, than at the outset. Towards the middle of each day’s Bourse there is a similar lull in the transactions, a spell of calmness prior to the decisive struggle over the last quotations. Nevertheless, Jacoby’s roar and Mazaud’s shrill notes were always to be heard, both brokers being very busy with ‘options.’

‘I have Universals at three thousand and forty, of which fifteen!’ shouted one.

‘I take Universals at three thousand and forty, of which ten,’ replied the other.

‘How many?’

‘Twenty-five — deliver!’

Mazaud was doubtless now executing some of the orders received from Fayeux. Many provincial gamblers, with a view to limiting their losses, buy and sell on option before venturing to launch out into obligatory transactions. However, all at once a rumour spread and spasmodic shouts arose. There had just been a fall of five francs in Universals, and then in swift succession came another and another drop, so that the price became three thousand and twenty-five.

Jantrou, who had just come back after a short absence, was just then whispering to Saccard that the Baroness Sandorff was in her brougham in the Rue Brongniart, and desired to know whether she ought to sell. Coming at the very moment of the fall, this question fairly exasperated Saccard. In his mind’s eye he could see the coachman perched motionless upon his box, whilst inside the carriage, the windows of which were closed, sat the Baroness, consulting her memorandum-book as though at home.