Complete Works of Emile Zola (1134 page)

Thus was the first quotation fixed. But it was impossible to maintain it. Offers flowed in from all sides. Mazaud struggled desperately for half an hour, but with no other result than that of slackening the rapidity of the fall. What surprised him was that he was no longer sustained by the coulisse. What game was being played by Nathansohn, whose orders to purchase he was expecting? And not until afterwards did he learn the shrewd tactics of the coulissier who, whilst buying for Saccard, was selling on his own account, having been warned of the real situation by his keen Jew scent. Massias, heavily involved himself as a buyer, ran up, out of breath, to report the rout of the coulisse to Mazaud, who lost his head and burned his last cartridges, at once letting fly the orders which he had hitherto been keeping back, in view of executing them by degrees pending the arrival of the reinforcements. This sent the price up a little; from twenty-five hundred it rose to twenty-six hundred and fifty, with the sudden leaps peculiar to tempestuous days; and again for a moment did boundless hope buoy up the hearts of Mazaud, Saccard, all who were in the secret of the plan of battle. Since the quotations were so soon going up again, the day was won, and the victory would be overwhelming when the reserves should fall upon the ‘bears’’ flank, changing their defeat into a frightful rout. There was a movement of profound joy; Sédille and Maugendre could have kissed Saccard’s hand, Kolb drew nearer, while Jantrou disappeared, running off to carry the good news to the Baroness Sandorff. And at this moment little Flory, quite radiant, was seen hunting everywhere for Sabatani, now his intermediary, to give him a fresh order to buy.

But it had just struck two, and Mazaud, who bore the brunt of the attack, again weakened, his surprise now increasing at the delay of the reinforcements in taking the field. It was high time for them to turn up; what were they waiting for? Why did they not relieve him from the untenable position in which he was exhausting himself?

Although, through professional pride, he displayed an impassive countenance, a keen chill was rising to his cheeks, and he feared that he was turning pale. Jacoby, in a thundering voice, continued hurling his offers at him, in methodical instalments, but Mazaud ceased accepting them. And it was no longer at Jacoby that he was looking; his eyes were turned towards Delarocque, Daigremont’s broker, whose silence he could not understand. Stout and thickset, with a reddish beard, and the smiling beatific air of a man who has amused himself the night before, Delarocque retained a very quiet, peaceable air whilst waiting in this inexplicable fashion. Was he not going to catch at all these offers, however, and save everything, by means of the orders to buy, which must cover the fiches in his hand?

Suddenly in his guttural, slightly hoarse voice, he threw himself into the struggle: ‘I have Universals! I have Universals!’ he called.

And in a few minutes he had offered several millions’ worth. Voices answered him, and the quotations collapsed.

‘I have at two thousand four hundred!’ – ‘I have at two thousand three hundred!’

‘How many?’

‘Five hundred, six hundred!’

‘Deliver!’

What was he saying? What was taking place? Instead of the expected succour, was this a fresh hostile army emerging from the neighbouring woods? As at Waterloo, Grouchy failed to come up, and it was treason that completed the rout. Under the onslaught of those deep, fresh masses of offers hastening to the attack at the double quick, a frightful panic set in.

Mazaud at that moment felt death pass over his face. He had carried Saccard over for far too large a sum, and he was fully conscious that the Universal was breaking his back in its fall. But his handsome dark face, with small moustaches, remained impenetrable and brave. Exhausting the orders which he had received, he still went on buying in his piercing cockerel-like voice, as shrill as in the hours of success. And opposite him, his counterparts, the roaring Jacoby and the apoplectic Delarocque, despite their efforts at indifference, showed more anxiety than he, for they realised that he was now in great danger, and would he pay them should he fail? Their hands grasped the velvet balustrade, their voices continued shouting as though mechanically, from mere habit, while their fixed glances expressed all the frightful anguish of this tragedy of money.

Then, during the last half-hour, came the smash-up, the rout growing worse and worse, carrying the mob away in a disorderly gallop. After extreme confidence, blind infatuation, came the reaction of fear, and one and all rushed forward to sell, if there was still time. A perfect hail of orders to sell fell upon the corbeille: there was nothing to be seen but a rain of fiches; and the enormous parcels of shares, thus imprudently thrown upon the market, accelerated the decline, turned it into a veritable collapse. The quotations, from fall to fall, dropped to one thousand five hundred, one thousand two hundred, nine hundred francs. There were no more buyers; none were left standing; the ground was strewn with corpses. Above the dark swarming of frock-coats, the three quoters looked like clerks registering deaths. By a singular effect of the blast of disaster which swept through the hall, the agitation congealed there as it were, the uproar died away as in the stupor of a great catastrophe. A frightful silence prevailed when, after the stroke of the closing bell, the final quotation of eight hundred and thirty francs became known. And meantime the obstinate rain still streamed upon the windows, through which only a doubtful twilight filtered. What with the dripping of the umbrellas and the tramping of the crowd, the hall had become a cloaca, muddy like an ill-kept stable, and littered with all sorts of torn papers; while in the corbeille shone the variegated fiches, green, red, and blue, scattered there by the handful, and so abundant that afternoon that the vast basin overflowed.

Mazaud had re-entered the brokers’ room at the same time as Jacoby and Delarocque. Consumed by an ardent thirst, he approached the buffet, and drank a glass of beer.

Then he looked at the immense room, with its long central table, around which were ranged the arm-chairs of the sixty brokers, its red velvet hangings, all its commonplace faded luxury, which lent it the appearance of a first-class waiting-room in a large railway station; he looked at it with the astonished air of a man who had never had a good view of it before. Then, as he was going off, he silently shook hands with Jacoby and Delarocque, exchanging the accustomed grasp with them; and although they all three preserved their every-day correct deportment, they could not help turning pale. Mazaud had told Flory to wait for him at the door; and there he found him, in company with Gustave, who had definitively left the office the week before, and had come there simply as a spectator, always smiling and leading a gay life, without ever asking himself whether his father would, on the morrow, still be able to pay his debts; while Flory, with pale cheeks and an idiotic sneer on his lips, endeavoured to talk, though crushed by the frightful loss of a hundred thousand francs which had just fallen upon him, and the first sou of which he did not know where to get. However, Mazaud and his clerk disappeared in the rain.

In the hall the panic had especially raged around Saccard; it was there that the war had made its ravages. At the first moment he had not understood what was happening; then, bravely facing the peril, he had beheld the rout. What was that noise? Was it not Daigremont’s troops arriving? Then, when he had heard the quotations collapse, though he failed to comprehend the cause of the disaster, he stiffened himself up, in order to die standing. An icy chill rose from the ground to his skull; he had a feeling that the irreparable was taking place — this was his defeat for ever; but base regret for money, wrath for lost enjoyment, did not enter into his grief; his heart simply bled with humiliation at the thought that he was conquered, and that this was the splendid, absolute victory of Gundermann, the victory which once more consolidated the omnipotence of that king of gold. At that moment Saccard was really superb, with his slight figure erect as though braving destiny, his eyes never blinking, his face stubbornly set as he stood there alone with the flood of despair and resentment, which he already felt rising against him. The entire hall seethed and surged towards his pillar; fists were clenched, mouths stammered evil words, yet he retained upon his lips an unconscious smile, which might have been taken for a challenge.

At first, through a sort of mist, he distinguished Maugendre, looking deadly pale as Captain Chave led him away on his arm, and, with the cruelty of a potty gambler delighted to see big speculators come to grief, repeated to him that he had prophesied it all. Then Sédille, with contracted face and the crazy air of a merchant whose business is collapsing, came like a good-natured fellow to give him an unsteady shake of the hand, as though to say that he bore him no grudge. At the first shock the Marquis de Bohain had drawn aside, passing over to the triumphant army of ‘bears,’ and telling Kolb, who also prudently held aloof, what disagreeable doubts he had entertained of that man Saccard ever since the last shareholders’ meeting. Jantrou, bewildered, had disappeared again, going off on the run to carry the last quotation to the Baroness Sandorff, who would surely have an hysterical attack in her brougham, as was the case on the days when she lost heavily. And facing the ever silent and enigmatical Salmon, stood ‘bear’ Moser and ‘bull’ Pillerault, the latter with a provoking, proud mien, despite his ruin; the other, who had made a fortune, marring his victory with remote anxieties. ‘You see, we shall have war with Germany in the spring. All this doesn’t smell nice, and Bismarck is watching us.’

‘Oh, be quiet, do!’ replied Pillerault. ‘I again made the mistake of reflecting too much. So much the worse! I must begin over again; all will go well.’

So far Saccard had not weakened. But behind him he heard someone mention the name of Fayeux, the dividend-collector of Vendôme, with whom he had dealings on behalf of numerous petty shareholders, and this name brought him a feeling of uneasiness, reminding him as it did of the vast mass of wretched little capitalists who would be crushed beneath the ruins of the Universal. And suddenly the sight of Dejoie, with a livid, distorted face, acutely intensified this uneasiness, for all the humble folks now so lamentably mixed seemed personified in this poor man whom he knew. At the same time, by a sort of hallucination, there rose before him the pale, desolate faces of the Countess de Beauvilliers and her daughter, who gazed at him in despair out of their large tearful eyes. And at that moment, Saccard, the corsair whose heart was tanned by twenty years of brigandage — Saccard, whose pride it was that he had never felt a trembling in his legs, that he had never once sat down upon the bench, against the pillar behind him — Saccard felt a sudden weakness, and had to drop for a moment upon that bench. The crowd still surged, threatening to stifle him. He raised his head, feeling a need of air, and in a moment he was on his feet again; for up above, looking down upon the hall from the telegraph gallery, he recognised La Méchain, her huge fat person dominating the ghastly battle-field. On the stone baluster beside her lay her old black leather bag. Pending the arrival of the time when she might fill it to overflowing with the worthless shares, she was watching the dead, like a voracious raven that follows armies until the day of massacre.

Then, with a firm step, Saccard walked away, bearing himself erect by an extraordinary effort of will. His whole being seemed empty to him, however; his senses were blunted, so to say; he no longer felt the flagstones, but thought he was walking on a soft woollen carpet. Similarly, a mist obscured his eyes, and a buzzing filled his ears. He no longer recognised people as he left the Bourse and descended the steps; it seemed to him that he was surrounded by floating phantoms vague forms, dying sounds. Did he not see Busch’s broad, grimacing face pass him? Had he not stopped for a moment to speak to Nathansohn, who appeared quite at his ease, and whose voice, weakened by much shouting, seemed to come from a long way off? Did not Sabatani and Massias accompany him amidst the general consternation? He fancied he could see himself surrounded by a numerous group, again Sédille and Maugendre perhaps, all sorts of faces which faded away, became transformed. And as he was on the point of going off into the rain and liquid mud which were submerging Paris, he made his freedom of mind his last boast, and repeated in a shrill voice to all that phantom throng: ‘Ah, how worried I am about that camellia of mine which was forgotten in the yard and has been killed by the cold!’

CHAPTER XI

RUIN

THAT same evening Madame Caroline, in her fright, telegraphed to her brother, who was to have remained at Rome another week; and three days later, hastening to the scene of danger, Hamelin arrived in Paris.

There was a violent explanation between Saccard and the engineer in that work-room in the Rue Saint-Lazare, where, in other days, the enterprise had been discussed and decided upon with so much enthusiasm. During the three days which had just elapsed the smash-up at the Bourse had become more and more complete. Fall following fall in rapid succession, Universals had now dropped to four hundred and thirty francs — seventy francs below par; and the decline was continuing; the whole fabric was fast cracking and crumbling away.

Whilst her brother and Saccard talked, Madame Caroline listened in silence, resolved not to intervene. She was full of remorse, for she accused herself of complicity, since it was she who, after promising to watch, had let everything go on. Instead of contenting herself with simply selling her shares in order to combat the rise, ought she not to have taken some other course — warned people, acted energetically? Worshipping her brother as she did, her heart bled at seeing him compromised in this fashion, with all his great enterprises shaken, the whole work of his life again in question; and she suffered the more since she did not feel herself free to judge Saccard; for had she not loved him, was she not his, linked to him by that secret bond, the shame of which she now felt more than ever? Placed between these two men, a combat raged within her and rent her heart. On the evening of the catastrophe, in a fine outburst of frankness, she had heaped her wrath upon Saccard, emptying her heart of all the reproaches and fears which had so long been swelling it. However, on seeing him smile, still tenacious, still unconquered despite everything, she had reflected that, after her own weakness with him, she had no right to finish him off, to strike him now that he was down. She thought, too, of the strength which he would need to set himself erect again, and so, taking refuge in silence, her demeanour alone giving expression to her blame, she resolved that she would henceforward be nothing but a witness.