Money (Oxford World’s Classics) (20 page)

At the promise of appointment to the board Huret looked him straight in the eye.

‘All right then, what is it you want of me? What response do you want me to get from Rougon?’

‘My word!’ said Saccard. ‘For myself, I would happily have done without my brother. But it’s Daigremont who insists that I make my peace with him. Maybe he’s right… So I think you should simply tell the terrible fellow about our business, and obtain, if not his help, then at least a promise that he won’t be against us.’

Huret, with half-closed eyes, still could not decide.

‘Look! If you bring back a kind word, just a kind word, do you understand? Then Daigremont will be satisfied and the three of us will get it all sewn up this evening.’

‘Well then, I’ll try,’ the deputy declared roughly, affecting a peasant’s bluntness. ‘But just as well it’s for you, because he’s not an easy man, oh no, especially when he’s being teased by the Left … Five o’clock, then!’

‘Five o’clock!’

Saccard stayed on for nearly an hour, very worried by the rumours going round about a struggle. He heard one of the great Opposition orators announce that he was going to speak. On hearing this he wanted for a moment to get back to Huret, to ask him if it wouldn’t be wiser to put off the meeting with Rougon until the next day. Then, fatalistic and believing in chance, he trembled at the idea of everything being compromised if he altered what had been decided. Perhaps, in all the commotion, his brother would more easily let slip the word they hoped for. And to allow things to sort themselves out, he left, got back in his cab, and was already on the way back to the Pont de la Concorde when he remembered the wish that Daigremont had expressed.

‘Driver, Rue de Babylone.’

The Rue de Babylone was where the Marquis de Bohain lived. He occupied the former outbuildings of a grand mansion, a building which had once housed the stable staff and which had been made into a very comfortable modern house. The furnishings were luxurious, with a fine air of chic aristocracy. His wife was never seen, being unwell, said the Marquis, and kept to her apartment by infirmity. However, the house and furniture were hers, and he merely lodged there in a furnished apartment, owning only his personal effects, in a trunk he could have carried away in a cab; they had been legally separated ever since he started living on speculation. There had been two catastrophes already, in which he had blankly refused to pay what he owed and the official receiver, having taken stock of the situation, had not even bothered to send him an official document. The slate was simply wiped clean. As long as he won, he pocketed the money. Then, when he lost, he didn’t pay: everyone knew it and everyone was resigned to it. He had an illustrious name, he made an excellent ornament for boards of directors; so new companies, looking for golden mastheads, fought over him: he was never unemployed. At the
Bourse he had his own chair on the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires side, the side of the rich speculators who pretended to take no interest in the petty rumours of the day. He was respected, and much-consulted. He had often had an influence on the market. In short, he was a real personage.

Saccard knew him well, but was nevertheless impressed by the extreme courtesy of the reception he received from this handsome old man of sixty, his very small head set on the body of a colossus, and his pale face, framed by a dark wig, looking extremely grand.

‘Monsieur le Marquis, I’ve come to seek your help…’

He explained the reason for his visit, without at first going into details. Besides, from his very first words the Marquis stopped him.

‘No, no, my time is all taken up, I already have ten proposals that I shall have to refuse.’

Then, when Saccard smiled and added: ‘It was Daigremont who sent me, it was he who thought of you…’, he at once cried:

‘Ah! you have Daigremont in with you… Fine! Fine! If Daigremont is involved then so am I. You can count on me.’

And when the visitor tried to provide him with at least a bit of information to let him know what sort of business he was getting into, he silenced him with the amiable nonchalance of a great lord who doesn’t go into such details and has a natural confidence in the honesty of people.

‘Please, don’t say another word… I do not wish to know. You need my name, I lend it to you, and I am very happy to do so, that’s all… Just tell Daigremont to arrange things as he thinks best.’

As he got back in his cab Saccard, greatly cheered, laughed to himself.

‘He’ll be expensive, that fellow,’ he thought, ‘but he really is very charming.’

Then, aloud, he said:

‘Driver, Rue des Jeûneurs.’

That was where Sédille had his warehouses and offices, which occupied the whole of the vast ground floor at the far end of a courtyard. After thirty years of work, Sédille, who came from Lyons, where he still had some workshops, had at last succeeded in making his silk business one of the best-known and most solid in Paris when, after some chance incident, a passion for speculation had manifested itself and spread right through him with the violent destructiveness of a fire. Two considerable wins, one after another, made him lose his head.
What was the point of giving thirty years of one’s life to earning a paltry million, when one could pocket that much in one hour with a simple transaction on the Bourse? From that moment on he had gradually lost all interest in his business, which carried on under its own momentum; but he now lived entirely in the hope of some financial coup on the market; and since bad luck had come his way, and persisted, he had begun to swallow up in his gambling all the profits from his business. The worst of this fever is that one loses the taste for legitimate earnings, and ends up having no clear idea at all about money. And ruin inevitably lay ahead if the workshops in Lyons earned him two hundred thousand francs while he lost three hundred thousand on the stock-market.

Saccard found Sédille looking agitated and worried, for, as a speculator, he was neither stoical nor philosophical. He lived in a state of constant guilt, always hopeful, always disappointed, and sick with uncertainty, for he remained an honest man at heart. The settlement at the end of April had just proved disastrous for him. However, his plump face with thick blond sideburns took on some colour at Saccard’s first words.

‘Ah, my dear chap, if it’s luck you’re bringing me then you’re very welcome!’

Then, however, he took fright.

‘No, no! Don’t tempt me. I’d do better to lock myself in with my lengths of silk, and not budge from my counter.’

To help him calm down, Saccard talked to him about his son Gustave, mentioning that he’d seen him that morning at Mazaud’s. But this was yet another source of grief for the merchant, for he had dreamed of handing over his business to his son, who, however, despised trade; he was a creature made for joy and festivities, with the white teeth that the sons of parvenus have, teeth only good for crunching up ready-made fortunes. His father had placed him with Mazaud to see if he might get his teeth into financial matters.

‘Ever since his poor mother died,’ he murmured, ‘he’s given me little enough cause for satisfaction. Anyway, perhaps there, in that office, he may learn things that will be useful to me.’

‘Well then!’ said Saccard briskly, ‘are you with us? Daigremont told me to come and tell you that he was in it.’

Sédille raised his trembling arms to the sky. And, in a voice marked by both desire and fear:

‘But yes, of course I am! You know very well I can’t do otherwise than join in! If I refused and your venture flourished, I’d be sick with regret… Tell Daigremont I’m in.’

Once back in the street, Saccard took out his watch and saw it was barely four o’clock. With plenty of time ahead of him, an impulse to walk for a while prompted him to let his cab go. He regretted this almost immediately, for he had not even reached the Boulevard when a new shower, a deluge of rain and hail, forced him to seek refuge in a doorway. What filthy weather for conquering Paris! After watching the rain falling for a quarter of an hour, impatience overcame him and he hailed an empty cab that was passing. It was a victoria, and try as he might to pull the leather apron over his legs, he arrived at the Rue La Rochefoucauld soaked through and a full half-hour early.

In the smoking-room where the valet left him, saying that Monsieur had not yet returned, Saccard walked around slowly, looking at the pictures. But a superb female voice, a contralto of deep and melancholy power, rose up from within the silence of the house, and he went over to the open window to listen: it was Madame at the piano, rehearsing a piece she would no doubt be singing that evening at some reception. Then, lulled by the music, he began to recall the extraordinary stories told about Daigremont: especially the tale of the Hadamantine company, that loan of fifty million francs in which he had kept back the entire stock, getting it sold and resold five times over using his own dealers, until he had created a market for it and established a price; then, when serious selling began, came the inevitable fall from three hundred to fifteen francs, and enormous profits were made out of a little group of simple souls who were all instantly ruined. Ah! He was good at it, quite terrible! The voice of Madame continued, sending forth a lament of despairing love, of tragic depth; meanwhile Saccard, getting back into the middle of the room, paused in front of a Meissonier,
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which he guessed to be worth a hundred thousand francs.

But someone came in, and he was surprised to see that it was Huret.

‘What! You’re here already? It’s not yet five… Is the session finished then?’

‘Ah yes! Finished… they’re still squabbling.’

And he explained that as the Opposition member was still talking, Rougon would certainly be unable to deliver his response
until tomorrow. So when he realized this he had risked pestering the minister again, very hurriedly, during a brief pause in the session.

‘And?’ Saccard asked irritably, ‘What did my illustrious brother say?’

Huret didn’t answer straight away.

‘Oh! He was in an absolutely foul mood… I must admit, I was counting on the state of exasperation he was in, hoping he’d simply send me packing… So I told him about your affair, and said you didn’t want to undertake anything without his approval.’

‘So?’

‘So then he seized me by both arms, shook me, and yelled into my face: “Let him go and get himself hanged!” And then he left me standing there.’

Saccard, suddenly very pale, gave a forced laugh.

‘That’s good of him.’

‘I’ll say! Yes, it is good,’ Huret carried on, in a tone of conviction. ‘I wasn’t expecting as much… With that, we can get on with things.’

And as he heard in the next room the footsteps of Daigremont returning home, he added quietly:

‘Leave it to me.’

Of course, Huret was very keen to see the Universal Bank founded and to be in on it. He had no doubt already worked out what part he might play. So, as soon as he had shaken hands with Daigremont he took on a radiant expression and waved his arms in the air.

‘Victory!’ he cried. ‘Victory!’

‘Ah! Really. Tell me all about it.’

‘My word! The great man was all that he was meant to be. He replied, “May my brother succeed!”’

At this Daigremont was utterly delighted, and thought the remark quite charming. ‘May he succeed!’ That said it all: if he’s stupid enough to fail I’ll abandon him, but so long as he succeeds I’ll help him. Truly exquisite!

‘And my dear Saccard, we shall succeed, have no fear… We shall do everything required to that end.’

Then, when the three men were sitting down to decide on the main points, Daigremont got up and closed the window; for Madame’s voice, gradually getting louder, was tearing out such a sob of infinite despair that they could not hear each other speak. And even with the window shut, that banished lamentation still accompanied them
while they settled on the creation of a lending-house, the Universal Bank, with a capital of twenty-five million francs divided into fifty thousand shares of five hundred francs each. It was further agreed that Daigremont, Huret, Sédille, the Marquis de Bohain and a few of their friends would form a syndicate which would in advance take up and share between them four-fifths of the stock, in other words forty thousand shares; in this way, the success of the share-issue was guaranteed, and later on, holding on to the securities and making them scarce on the market, they could make their value rise at will. But everything almost came adrift when Daigremont demanded a bonus of four hundred thousand francs spread across the forty thousand shares, that is, ten francs per share. Saccard protested, declaring that it was unreasonable to make the cow moo even before they milked her.
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Things would be difficult enough at the beginning, so why complicate the situation further? He had to give in, however, faced with the attitude of Huret, who calmly said he found it quite natural and that was how it was always done.

They were going their separate ways, having agreed a meeting for the next day, a meeting at which the engineer Hamelin was to be present, when Daigremont suddenly struck his brow with an expression of despair.

‘I was forgetting Kolb! Oh! he’d never forgive me, he must be in on this… Saccard, dear boy, would you be so kind as to go to him straight away? It’s not yet six o’clock, you’d still find him at home… Yes, you yourself, and now, this evening, not tomorrow, because that will make a good impression on him and he can be useful to us.’

Saccard obediently set off once more, conscious that lucky days don’t come around twice. But he had yet again dismissed his cab, hoping to return home only a few yards away; and as the rain seemed at last to be stopping he went on foot, happy to feel beneath his heels these Paris streets he was reconquering. In the Rue Montmartre a few drops of rain made him decide to go by way of the covered passages.
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He went through the Passage Verdeau and the Passage Jouffroy, then, in the Passage des Panoramas, as he was taking a short-cut to the Rue Vivienne through a side arcade, he was surprised to see Gustave Sédille coming out of a dark alley and disappearing without turning round. Saccard too had stopped and was looking at the house, a discreet establishment of furnished rooms, when a small, blonde woman, wearing a veil, also came out, and he clearly recognized Madame
Conin, the pretty stationer’s wife. So this was where she brought her one-day lovers when she had a fancy for love, while that great, jolly fellow of a husband of hers thought she was out chasing up bills! This secluded spot, right in the middle of the district, was very nicely chosen, and it was the merest chance that had revealed its secret. Saccard smiled, quite cheered up, envying Gustave: Germaine Coeur in the morning, Madame Conin in the afternoon, that young man was getting double helpings! And he looked twice more at the door so he could remember it, much tempted to be in on the act himself.