Complete Works of Emile Zola (61 page)

It was as though Marius was speaking to an insensible and motionless statue. The notary’s calm increased the young man’s anger.

“I have not to judge your crimes,” he continued, louder still; “but I have to ask you for an explanation of your unworthy conduct towards myself. What! you intended light-heartedly to mix me up in your dirty business; you would have compromised me, while professing to be my friend and knowing my position as a humble worker. I have the right, have I not? to tell you that you are a scoundrel!”

The notary did not wince.

“And just now,” resumed Marius, “there were priests here blessing you. Ah! you played your part admirably. I alone in Marseille know what you are, and were I to state in public the enormity of your crime, I should very likely be stoned, you have so skilfully duped everyone. Who would believe that the notary Douglas, that man esteemed by all, that frugal, religious individual, is shamelessly working in the dark the ruin of his numerous clients! I, myself, would still doubt, if doubt were possible, at seeing you seated so calm before me, in your humble and pious attitude of a monk at prayer. But say something, defend yourself, if you can!”

Douglas had taken up a paper knife, and was playing with it, as though indifferent to all Marius was saying to him.

“What would you have me tell you?” he replied at last. “You judge me as a child. I’ve let you have your say. Perhaps now you’ll listen to me without interrupting.”

CHAPTER VIII

THE NOTARY’S SPECULATIONS

WHEN Marius heard Douglas accuse him of judging like a child, he was indignant, and opened his lips to tell him that he judged as an honest man would.

This forger thought it childish that he should be reproached with his forgeries, and he assumed the attitude of a misunderstood individual.

As the young man was on the point of protesting, the notary interrupted him with a movement of impatience.

“If you’re always talking,” he said, “you’ll always be in the right. I let you insult me to your heart’s content, so allow me to defend myself without interruption. I certainly would rather you had not become acquainted with my system. But as you have discovered a part of the truth, I prefer to tell you all. I know you are intelligent, and you will understand me better than any other. Moreover, I am worn-out, I have not been successful in the application of my theory, and I know very well that I am a lost man. That’s why I consent to unbosom myself entirely to you. You will see that I never wished for anyone’s ruin, and that it was with good faith that I offered, as a friend, to put you in the way of earning a little money. Anyhow, you will judge me, and I trust that after hearing my explanation, you will simply look upon me as an unfortunate speculator. Please listen to what I have to say.”

Marius almost fancied he was dreaming. He looked at Douglas as one would look at a madman talking reason. The peaceful tone of the man, his want of remorse, his self-satisfied manner, made him resemble some honest inventor sadly explaining, without cause for shame, why his invention has not succeeded.

“There’s no need to go into details,” he resumed, “and let us put aside the Authier and Mouttet matters, which are but of slight importance. The thing to see and judge is the whole vast and complicated machine that I had succeeded in establishing. You are surprised at my complaisance. Well, I tell you again I am a lost man, I can speak without fear of compromising myself. In fact, I experience a sort of pleasure in explaining my invention to you.”

He took up the position, before Marius, of a man who has an interesting story to tell, and was still toying with the paper-knife.

“First of all,” he said, “I recognise, with you, that I have betrayed my trust and that I am a great criminal if considered as a notary. But I have always looked upon myself as a banker, a money-dealer. In a word, please behold in me nothing more than a speculator. When I succeeded my former employer the practice was a very small one.

“My first efforts were directed towards making that practice the medium of a vast business connection. I was obliged to satisfy all requirements, lend to whosoever needed money, borrow of those who wanted to invest, sell to those who wished to buy, purchase of those who desired to sell. I was like the bird-catchers who make use of decoy-birds to call the wild ones; I invented some forty imaginary persons, in whose names I was able to embark in all kinds of transactions. Authier, I admit, was one of them. I was thus enabled to purchase a large number of buildings which I paid for by means of loans contracted by the fictitious purchasers, and by granting mortgages on these buildings. By these means I created a capital, a considerable turn-over, a much more extended practice, which served as a foundation to my credit.”

Douglas was speaking in a clear tone of voice. He continued after a short silence:

“You must know that when one speculates on money one is at times brought face to face with terrible exigencies. I should have been forced to stop at the very outset of my speculations, if, my buildings being mortgaged, I had not been able to procure, by some means, the funds necessary for the other operations I was contemplating. I did what seemed to me the simplest and most convenient thing to do. When the mortgages had reached the full value of the properties, I released the latter by false discharges and then offered them as security for fresh loans.”

“What you are telling me is infamous!” exclaimed Marius.

“I begged you not to interrupt me,” Douglas retorted abruptly. “I will defend myself later on, at present I am merely stating the facts. I soon had to enlarge my system. My forty personages no longer sufficed, so I then had recourse to extreme measures which from their very audacity, succeeded perfectly. I caused well-known landowners and merchants to contract loans, mortgaged their properties and forged their signatures; afterwards each fresh mortgage was wiped out by the aid of a false discharge, which shielded me from all uneasiness. You understand? it’s very simple.”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” murmured Marius, who was beginning to think the notary was mad.

“Besides,” Douglas went on, “I raised money no matter how, when it was necessary. I wished to go straight to my goal, and I have ever marched steadily on without troubling myself about obstacles, and accepting freely the consequences of my theory. For instance, I sometimes created both the borrower and the building in the same transaction; I have taken mortgages on a property which did not exist or which did not belong to the pretended borrower. At other times, when I have been in urgent need of money to meet some unforeseen exigency, I have drawn bills payable to order and signed by the leading merchants of Marseille, and which I have put into circulation at a loss after accepting them in my own name. You see that I am hiding nothing from you and that I am accusing myself. I am laying myself bare before you, because I wish to justify myself, and also because, in future, I must give over applying my system.”

Marius was utterly terrified. He entered tremblingly the recesses of this man’s mind. He felt that he was in the presence of a moral phenomenon, and he submitted to this strange confession like one submits to a nightmare. It seemed to him that he was in the thick of the roar and smoke of some machine, surrounded by the revolving gear.

“So,” Douglas resumed, “you quite understand what my system was. In principle, I wished to be a banker to turn to account the funds that passed through my hands. I acquired on my own account properties which I fancied I could resell at a profit. My system of fictitious names answered all requirements: by the aid of these names I was able to deal with all who applied to me; I have been, according to the opportunity, lender, borrower, purchaser, and seller. Whenever the funds raised by my personal credit or the credit I had procured for the fictitious individuals did not suffice for my needs, I obtained others by negotiating supposed loans on behalf of no matter who, relative, friend, or client, being careful later on to release that person’s property, the same as I had mortgaged it, unbeknown to himself. In a word, my office became a banking establishment.”

“A thieving establishment,” exclaimed Marius, “a forger’s den!”

Douglas shrugged his shoulders.

“You ought by now to understand me,” he said, “and to see that I never sought to rob a single one of my clients. I have a hope that you will do me justice by and by. I have now to tell you about my finest invention. To administer the properties acquired and turn the borrowed monies to good account, I conceived the idea of establishing agents acting under power of attorney, who would represent in all matters my forty imaginary personages; and to fill these posts I selected honourable young men, who became my unconscious accomplices. I had faith in my system; and I should most certainly have enriched those who assisted me if unfortunate circumstances had not marred my success. When I proposed to you to represent Authier, I desired solely, as I have already told you, to come to your assistance and give you a share in the profits of a speculation which I considered an excellent one.”

These last words exasperated Marius. He could bear it no longer, and felt he would go mad if he continued to follow Douglas’ strange talk.

“I have listened to you patiently,” he said, shaking with indignation. “The rascalities you have been telling me of, with such cool impudence, prove to my mind that you are either a fool or a rogue.”

“Not at all!” interrupted the notary, striking the table with his fist. “You have certainly not understood me. I have told you four or five times, I’m a banker. Listen to me, for goodness sake.”

Douglas rose and placed himself before Marius. There was nothing in his attitude to indicate either fear or shame.

“You have called me a rogue and a thief,” said he softly, “and I let you insult me, for you were accusing me in the name of society, speaking as the crown attorney would speak when judging my conduct from the legal stand-point. You must look at it from another point of view, if you would understand me. Let us reason a bit. A thief is he who steals another’s property and makes off when his pockets are full, is he not? I have never for a moment thought of stealing. I have been applying my system during six years, and I am poorer now than when I first began; my operations have not succeeded, I have even lost some thousands of francs which were my own. You know what my life has been: I have lived on bread and water; I have led the existence of an austere and indefatigable worker. The only luxury I have allowed myself has been to give a little in charity. A strange thief, indeed, who has lived in his office as in a cloister and who has handled enormous sums of money without even being tempted to steal a copper! Admit that if I were really a thief, I should long ago have got together what funds I could and have bolted.”

Marius felt surprised and embarrassed. He had not looked at the matter in that light. The man was evidently right: he could not be accused of robbery.

“What shocks and incenses you,” resumed Douglas, “is my system itself. It has failed, and I shall be considered a great criminal; if it had succeeded, I should have realized a large fortune without doing the slightest injury to anyone. I should have been immensely rich and the world would have esteemed me. Yes, crime has been my base of operation, I have speculated on forgery, I have followed a new and bold line. But to my mind success was certain. I had faith in my activity, it never occurred to me that I might drag another down in my fall. That is wherein I was blind. You see my course of proceeding: I took mortgages on property which did not exist or which had already been mortgaged, but I paid the interest on the money invested; I put forged bills into circulation, but I took them up at maturity; my imaginary personages were, so to say, nothing more than borrowed names to cover myself, and I made use of them simply to increase my speculations. Understand me well: I wished above all to procure funds and turn them to account; what matter the fictitious securities I emitted, the forged documents, the different means I employed to extend my credit and the sphere of my business. In speculation, the only reality is the profit one is able to draw, more or less skilfully, from a given capital. Take the Stock Exchange, for instance, there one trades on mere suppositions. Admit for a moment that by buying and selling properties, by means of other people’s money, I had succeeded in doubling the capital I had illegally procured: I should have refunded that capital in full, have robbed nobody, destroyed the forged documents, and have retired with a fortune won by my labour and intelligence. That’s my system in its entirety. Having no fortune of my own, I was obliged to borrow of my clients the principal necessary for carrying on my operations. It was no theft, but a mere loan.”

On hearing Douglas’ clear and logical reasoning, a kind of terror crept over Marius. The notary grew terribly in his eyes. For a moment, he looked upon him as some misguided genius who had employed his rare faculties of and daring in the cause of evil. Had the man had large means of action he might perhaps have accomplished great things. There are some superior qualities residing in all criminals of Douglas’ calibre. Marius was above all surprised by the simple and natural manner in which the notary spoke of the forgeries he had committed. His mind was undoubtedly disordered. The man was ill, the fever of speculation which devoured him had brought him little by little to look upon crime as an excellent medium, provided the crime remained concealed and unpunished. He had said it himself: though he had forged, he still considered himself an honest man, so long as he caused no one to lose anything. After a pause, Douglas went on, shaking his head the while:

“Systems are always splendid, practice alone opens your eyes to their defects. In theory, I should have won an immense fortune. I don’t know how it has happened, but I am now overwhelmed with debt, and I can see very well that all hope is gone. My unfortunate operations have swallowed up over a million, and my clients are ruined.”

The notary’s voice had grown feebler, and emotion was filling his eyes with tears. He walked feverishly up and down, and, as he did so, continued: