Complete Works of Emile Zola (233 page)

He was in a genial mood that morning. He ended by smiling and murmuring with a wink:

“We speculators, my dear, are like pretty women, we have our little artifices…. Keep your aigrette and necklace, I beg, for love of me.”

He could not tell the story, a very pretty one but a little risky. It was after supper one night that Saccard and Laure d’Aurigny had entered into an alliance. Laure was over head and ears in debt, and her one thought was to find a good young man who would elope with her and take her to London. Saccard on his side felt the ground crumbling beneath his feet; his imagination, driven to bay, sought an expedient which would display him to the public sprawling on a bed of gold and bank-notes. The courtesan and the speculator had come to an understanding amid the semi-intoxication of dessert. He hit upon the idea of that sale of diamonds which set all Paris agog; and there, with a deal of fuss, he bought jewels for his wife. Then with the product of the sale, about four hundred thousand francs, he managed to satisfy Laure’s creditors, to whom she owed nearly twice as much. It is even to be presumed that he recouped part of his sixty-five thousand francs. When he was seen settling the d’Aurigny affairs, he was looked upon as her lover, and believed to be paying her debts in full and committing extravagances for her. Every hand was stretched out to him, his credit revived formidably. And on the Bourse he was chaffed about his passion, with smiles and insinuations that entranced him. Meanwhile Laure d’Aurigny, brought into prominence by this hubbub, although he had never spent a single night with her, pretended to deceive him with nine or ten idiots enticed by the notion of stealing her from a man of such colossal wealth. In one month she had two sets of furniture and more diamonds than she had sold. Saccard had got into the way of going to smoke a cigar with her in the afternoon on leaving the Bourse; he often caught sight of coat-tails flying through the doorways in terror. When they were alone, they could not look at one another without laughing. He kissed her on the forehead as though she were a wayward wench whose roguery delighted him. He did not give her a sou, and on one occasion she even lent him money to pay a gambling debt.

Renée tried to insist, and spoke of at least pawning the diamonds; but her husband gave her to understand that that was not possible, that all Paris expected to see her wear them on the morrow. Then Renée, who was much worried about Worms’s bill, sought another way out of the difficulty.

“But,” she suddenly exclaimed, “my Charonne property is going on all right, is it not? You were telling me only the other day that the profit would be superb…. Perhaps Larsonneau would advance me a hundred and thirty-six thousand francs?”

Saccard had for a moment forgotten the tongs between his legs. He now hastily seized them again, leant forward, and almost disappeared in the fire-place, whence the young woman indistinctly heard his voice muttering:

“Yes, yes, Larsonneau might perhaps….”

She was at last coming of her own accord to the point to which he had been gently leading her since the beginning of the conversation. He had already for two years been preparing his masterstroke in the Charonne district. His wife had never consented to part with Aunt Elisabeth’s estate; she had promised her to keep it intact, so as to leave it to her child if she became a mother. In the presence of this obstinacy, the speculator’s imagination had set to work, and ended by building up quite a poem. It was a work of exquisite villainy, a colossal piece of cheating, of which the Municipality, the State, his wife, and even Larsonneau were to be the victims. He no longer spoke of selling the building-plots; only every day he deplored the folly of leaving them unproductive and contenting one’s self with a return of two per cent. Renée, who was always in urgent need of money, ended by entertaining the idea of a speculation of some kind. He based his operations on the certainty of an expropriation for the cutting of the Boulevard du Prince-Eugène, the direction of which was not yet clearly resolved upon. And it was then that he brought forward his old accomplice Larsonneau as a partner, who made an agreement with his wife on the following basis: she brought the building-plots, representing a value of five hundred thousand francs; Larsonneau on the other hand agreed to spend an equal sum on building upon this ground a music-hall with a large garden attached, where games of all kinds, swings, skittle-alleys and bowling-greens would be set up. The profits were naturally to be divided, as the losses would be borne in equal shares. In the event of one of the two partners wishing to withdraw, he could do so and claim his share, which would be fixed by a valuation. Renée seemed surprised at the large figure of five hundred thousand francs, when the ground was worth three hundred thousand at the utmost. But he explained to her that it was an ingenious plan for tying Larsonneau’s hands later on, as his buildings would never represent such an amount as that.

Larsonneau had developed into an elegant man-about-town, well-gloved, with dazzling linen and astounding cravats. To go on his errands he had a tilbury as light as a piece of clockwork, with a very high seat, which he drove himself. His offices in the Rue de Rivoli were a sumptuous suite of rooms in which there was not a bundle of papers, not a business document to be seen. His clerks worked at tables of stained pear-wood, inlaid with marquetry and adorned with chased brass. He called himself an expropriation-agent, a new calling which the works of Paris had brought into being. His connection with the Hotel de Ville caused him to receive early information of the cutting of any new thoroughfare. When he had succeeded in learning the line of route of a boulevard from one of the surveyors of roads, he went and offered his services to the threatened landlords. And he turned his little plan for increasing the compensation to account by acting before the decree of public utility was issued. So soon as a landlord accepted his proposals, he took all the expenses on himself, drew up a plan of the property, wrote out a memorandum, followed up the case before the court and paid an advocate, all for a percentage on the difference between the offer of the Municipality and the compensation awarded by the jury. But to this almost justifiable branch of business he added a number of others. He more especially lent out money at interest. He was not the usurer of the old school, ragged and dirty, with eyes pale and expressionless as five-franc pieces, and lips white and drawn together like the strings of a purse. He was a radiant person, had a charming way of ogling, got his clothes at Dusautoy’s, went and lunched at Brébant’s with his victim, whom he called “old man,” and offered him Havannahs at dessert. In reality, beneath his waistcoats tightly buckled round his waist, Larsonneau was a terrible gentleman, who would have insisted on the payment of a note of hand until he had driven the acceptor to suicide, and this without losing a grain of amiability.

Saccard would gladly have looked for another partner. But he was always anxious on the subject of the false inventory, which Larsonneau preciously preserved. He preferred to take him into the affair, hoping to avail himself of some circumstance to regain possession of that compromising document. Larsonneau built the music-hall, an edifice of planks and plaster surmounted by little tin turrets, which were painted bright red and yellow. The garden and the games proved successful in the populous district of Charonne. In two years the speculation looked prosperous, although the profits in reality were very slight. Saccard had so far always spoken enthusiastically to his wife of the prospects of this fine idea.

Renée, seeing that her husband would not make up his mind to come out of the fire-place, where his voice was becoming more and more inaudible, said:

“I will go and see Larsonneau to-day. It is my only chance.”

Then he let go the log with which he was struggling.

“The errand’s done, my dear,” he replied, smiling. “Don’t I forestall all your wishes?… I saw Larsonneau last night.”

“And he promised you the hundred and thirty-six thousand francs?” she enquired anxiously.

He was building up between the two flaming logs a little mountain of embers, picking up daintily with the tongs the smallest fragments of burnt wood, looking with a satisfied air at the progress of the eminence which he was constructing with infinite art.

“Oh! how you rattle on!…” he murmured. “A hundred and thirty-six thousand francs is a large sum…. Larsonneau is a good fellow, but his means are still limited. He is quite ready to oblige you….”

He paused, blinking his eyes and rebuilding a corner of the eminence which had fallen through. This pastime began to confuse Renée’s ideas. In spite of herself she followed the work of her husband, whose awkwardness increased. She felt tempted to advise him. Forgetting Worms, the bill, her need of money, she ended by saying:

“Put that big piece at the bottom; then the others will keep up.”

Her husband obeyed her submissively, and added:

“All he can find is fifty thousand francs. That will at least be a nice bit on account…. Only he does not want to mix this up with the Charonne affair. He is only a go-between, do you understand, my dear? The person who lends the money asks an enormous interest. He wants a note of hand for eighty thousand francs at six months’ date.”

And having crowned the edifice with a pointed cinder, he crossed his hands over the tongs and looked fixedly at his wife.

“Eighty thousand francs!” she cried. “But that’s sheer robbery!… Do you advise me to commit this folly?”

“No,” he replied shortly. “But if you absolutely want the money, I won’t forbid it.”

He rose as though to go. Renée, in a state of cruel indecision, looked at her husband and at the bill which he left on the mantel. At last she took her poor head between her hands, murmuring:

“Oh, these business matters!… My head is splitting this morning…. Well, I must sign this note for eighty thousand francs. If I didn’t I should become altogether ill. I know myself, I should spend the day in a frightful struggle…. I prefer to do something stupid at once. That relieves me.”

And she spoke of ringing to send for a bill-stamp. But he insisted on rendering her this service in person. No doubt he had the bill stamp in his pocket, for he was absent for hardly two minutes. While she was writing at a little table he had pushed towards the fire, he examined her with eyes in which arose an astonished light of desire. The room was still full of the warmth of the bed she had quitted and of the fragrance of her first toilet. While talking she had allowed the folds of the peignoir in which she was wrapped to slip down, and the eyes of her husband, as he stood before her, glided over her bent head, through the gold of her hair, and very low down, into the whiteness of her neck and bosom. He wore a curious smile; the glowing fire, which had burnt his face, the close room, whose heavy atmosphere retained an odour of love, the yellow hair and white skin, which tempted him with a sort of conjugal scornfulness, set him dreaming, widened the scope of the drama in which he had just played a scene, and prompted some secret voluptuous calculation in his brutal jobber’s flesh.

When his wife handed him the acceptance, begging him to finish the matter for her, he took it without removing his eyes from her.

“You are bewitchingly beautiful….” he murmured.

And as she bent forward to push away the table, he kissed her rudely on the neck. She gave a little cry. Then she rose, quivering, trying to laugh, thinking, in spite of herself, of the other’s kisses of the night before. But he seemed to regret this unmannerly kiss. He left her, with a friendly pressure of the hand, and promised her that she should have the fifty thousand francs that same evening.

Renée dozed all day before the fire. At critical periods she had the languor of a Creole. All her turbulent nature would then become indolent, numbed, chill. She shivered with cold, she needed blazing fires, a stifling heat that brought little drops of perspiration to her forehead and lulled her. In this burning atmosphere, in this bath of flames, she almost ceased to suffer; her pain became as a light dream, a vague oppression, whose very uncertainty ended by becoming voluptuous. Thus she lulled till the evening the remorse of yesterday, in the red glow of the firelight, in front of a terrible fire, that made the furniture crack around her, and that at moments deprived her of the consciousness of her existence. She was able to think of Maxime as of a flaming enjoyment whose rays burnt her; she had a nightmare of strange passions amid flaring logs on white-hot beds. Céleste moved to and fro through the room, with her calm face, the face of a cold-blooded waiting-maid. She had orders to admit no one, she even sent away the inseparables, Adeline d’Espanet and Suzanne Haffner, who called after breakfasting together in a summer-house they rented at Saint-Germain. However, when, towards the evening, Céleste came to tell her mistress that Madame Sidonie, monsieur’s sister, asked to see her, she received orders to show her up.

Madame Sidonie as a rule did not call till dusk. Her brother had nevertheless prevailed upon her to wear silk gowns. But, no one knew why, for all that the silk she wore came fresh from the shop, it never looked new; it was shabby, lost its sheen, looked a rag. She had also consented to leave off bringing her basket to the Saccards. By way of retaliation, her pockets bulged over with papers. She took an interest in Renée, of whom she was unable to make a reasonable client, resigned to the necessities of life. She called on her regularly, with the discreet smiles of a physician who does not care to frighten his patient by telling her the name of her complaint. She commiserated with her in her little worries, treating them as little aches and pains which she could cure in a minute if Renée wished it. The latter, who was in one of those moments when one feels the need of pity, received her only to tell her that she had intolerable pains in her head.

“Why, my beautiful pet,” murmured Mme. Sidonie as she glided through the shade of the room, “but you’re stifling here!… Still your neuralgic pains, is it? It comes from worry. You take life too much to heart.”

“Yes, I have a heap of anxiety,” replied Renée, languishingly.