Money (Oxford World’s Classics) (6 page)

MONEY

T
HE
clock on the Bourse
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had just struck eleven when Saccard walked into Champeaux’s,
*
into the white and gold dining-room, with its two tall windows looking out over the square. He cast his eye over the rows of little tables, where busy customers were huddled elbow to elbow, and he seemed surprised not to see the face he was looking for.

As a waiter went bustling by, loaded with dishes, he asked:

‘Tell me, hasn’t Monsieur Huret come in?’

‘No sir, not yet.’

So Saccard made up his mind and sat down at a window-table that a customer was just leaving. He thought he was probably late, and while the tablecloth was being changed, he started to look outside, peering at the passers-by on the pavement. Even when the table had been relaid for him, he didn’t order straight away, but waited a while, gazing out at the square, so pretty on this bright sunny day in early May.
*
At this time of day, when everybody was having lunch, it was almost deserted. Under the fresh green of the chestnut trees the benches were all empty, and along the railings where the carriages pull up, a line of cabs stretched from one end to the other, and the Bastille omnibus stopped at the kiosk on the corner of the garden without a single passenger getting on or off. The sun was beating down and the great monument of the Bourse was bathed in sunshine, with its colonnade, its two statues and its imposing flight of steps, at the top of which there was, as yet, just an army of chairs, drawn up in neat ranks.

But turning round, Saccard recognized Mazaud, the stockbroker,
*
at the table next to his. He held out his hand:

‘Ah! it’s you, Mazaud! Good-day!’

‘Good-day,’ Mazaud replied, with a perfunctory handshake.

Small, dark, and very lively, he was a good-looking man, who, at only thirty-two, had just inherited the business of one of his uncles. He seemed totally engrossed in the guest facing him across the table, a large gentleman with a florid, clean-shaven face, the celebrated Amadieu, revered by the Bourse ever since his famous coup on the Selsis Mines. When the Selsis shares had fallen to fifteen francs,
*
and only a madman would have been buying, he had put his entire fortune into
them, two hundred thousand francs, quite haphazardly, with neither calculation nor flair, but only the pig-headedness of a lucky brute. Now that the discovery of real and substantial seams had raised the share-price to over a thousand francs, he had made about fifteen million francs, and his idiotic venture, for which he could have been locked up as a lunatic, now caused him to be regarded as one of the great financial masterminds. He was admired and, above all, consulted. Besides, he no longer did any buying, content now to sit enthroned upon his sole and legendary stroke of genius. Mazaud must be longing to acquire him as a client.

Saccard, having failed to get so much as a smile from Amadieu, greeted the table opposite where three speculators of his acquaintance were gathered, Pillerault, Moser, and Salmon.

‘Good-day! Everything going well?’

‘Yes, not bad… Good-day!’

He sensed a certain coldness, almost hostility, in these men too. Pillerault, however, very tall, thin, jerky in his movements, and with a razor-sharp nose in a bony face like that of a medieval knight, usually had the familiar air of a gambler who made a principle of recklessness, swearing that when he tried any serious thinking he just tumbled into disaster. He had the exuberant nature of a bull trader,
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always expecting victory, whereas Moser, by contrast, short with a yellowish complexion, ravaged by a liver complaint, was always moaning, forever prey to fears of disaster. Salmon, a very handsome man, looking decidedly younger than his fifty years, and displaying a fine inky-black beard, was regarded as an extraordinarily clever fellow. He never spoke, he replied only with smiles. You couldn’t tell what he was speculating in, or even if he was speculating at all, and his manner of listening made such an impression on Moser that after telling him something, disconcerted by his silence, he would often go dashing off to change an order.

Meeting with so much indifference, Saccard continued his tour of the room with fiery, challenging eyes. And the only person with whom he exchanged a nod was a tall young man sitting three tables away, the handsome Sabatani, a Levantine with a long, brown face, lit up by magnificent, dark eyes and marred only by a poor and rather disturbing mouth. The friendliness of this young man further exasperated Saccard: he was a defaulter from some foreign Stock Exchange, one of those mysterious fellows that women love. He had
made an appearance on the market the previous autumn, and Saccard had already seen him acting as frontman in some banking disaster, but he was gradually winning the trust of both the trading-floor and the kerb market
*
by his studied correctness and untiring graciousness even towards the most disreputable.

A waiter was now standing over Saccard:

‘What can I get for Monsieur?’

‘Ah, yes… Whatever’s going, a cutlet, some asparagus.’

Then he called the waiter back:

‘You’re quite sure Monsieur Huret didn’t come in before me, and then leave?’

‘Oh, absolutely sure.’

So that’s how things now stood, since the disaster last October when he had once again been forced into liquidation and had to sell his mansion in the Parc Monceau
*
and rent an apartment. Now only people like Sabatani would greet him; his arrival in a restaurant where he had once ruled the roost no longer made every head turn and every hand stretch out towards him. He was a good loser and felt no resentment over that last scandalous and disastrous land-deal,
*
in which he had only just managed to save his skin, but a fever of revenge was awakening within him. The absence of Huret, who had solemnly promised to be there at eleven to let him know the result of the approach he’d undertaken to make on Saccard’s behalf to his brother Rougon, now the powerful government minister,
*
made him furious above all with the latter. Huret, a docile member of Parliament,
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a mere creature of the great man, was but an emissary. But Rougon, with all that power, could he really just abandon him? He had never been a good brother. It was quite understandable that he’d been angry over the disaster, and had broken with him to avoid being compromised himself; but after six months shouldn’t he secretly have come to his aid? And would he now have the heart to refuse this last bit of support that he was having to seek through an intermediary, not daring to see him in person for fear of an explosion of rage? Rougon had only to say the word and he could set him back on his feet again, with the whole of great, cowardly Paris under his heel.

‘What wine for Monsieur?’ asked the wine-waiter.

‘The house Bordeaux.’

Lost in thought, and not at all hungry, Saccard was letting his cutlet get cold, but he looked up when a shadow fell across the table.
It was Massias, a big, ruddy-faced chap, a jobber,
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who when Saccard first met him had been poor and needy; he was sliding around the tables with his list of share-prices in his hand. Saccard felt sickened to see him glide past without stopping, then go on to show the list to Pillerault and Moser. Involved in their discussion, they paid no attention to him and scarcely glanced at the list. No, they had no orders for him, perhaps some other time. Massias, not daring to approach the celebrated Amadieu, who was bent over his lobster salad and talking quietly to Mazaud, went back to Salmon, who took the list and studied it at length before handing it back without a word. The dining-room was getting busier as more jobbers came in, keeping the doors constantly swinging. Shouts were being exchanged across the room, and business was growing more and more feverish as the hour advanced. Saccard, with his eyes constantly returning to look outside, could see the Place de la Bourse gradually filling up as carriages and pedestrians flowed in; on the steps of the Bourse, now dazzlingly bright in the sun, men were already appearing one by one, like so many black specks.

‘I tell you again,’ said Moser in his lugubrious voice, ‘these March by-elections are an extremely worrying sign… Indeed, it means the whole of Paris gained for the Opposition.’
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Pillerault just shrugged. Carnot and Garnier-Pagès added to the benches of the Left, what did it matter?

‘It’s like the Duchies question,’
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Moser went on, ‘it’s really fraught with complications… No, really, it’s no laughing matter. I’m not saying we had to go to war with Prussia to stop it getting fat at Denmark’s expense; but there were some possibilities for action… Yes, indeed, when big fish start eating the little fish you can’t tell where it will all end
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… And as for Mexico…’
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Pillerault, who was enjoying one of his days of total contentment, interrupted him with a roar of laughter:

‘Oh, no, my dear chap, don’t bother us any more with your terrors over Mexico; that will be the most glorious page in the history of the reign…
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Where the devil do you get the idea that the Empire is sick? Didn’t the three hundred million loan get covered more than fifteen times over, back in January?
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An overwhelming success!… Anyway, let’s talk again in ’67, yes, in three years’ time, when they’ll be opening the Universal Exhibition the Emperor has just announced.’

‘Things are really bad, I tell you,’ Moser insisted in desperation.

‘Oh, give it a rest, everything’s fine.’

Salmon looked from one to the other, smiling with his air of profundity. And Saccard, who had been listening to them, began to connect the difficulties of his own personal situation with the crisis the Empire seemed to be heading for. He had been brought down once again: and this Empire that had created him, was that too going to tumble, suddenly crumbling from the highest down to the most wretched of destinies? Ah, for twelve years now he had loved and defended this regime, feeling himself living and growing, and swelling with sap, like a tree with its roots plunged deep in the nourishing earth. But if his brother intended to uproot him, if he was to be cut off from those who enjoyed the fruits of that rich soil, then let it all be swept away in the final grand debacle that marks the end of nights of festivity.

Now he was just waiting for his asparagus, quite detached from this room with its ever-increasing bustle, lost in his memories. In a big mirror on the opposite wall he had just seen his reflection, and it had surprised him. Age didn’t seem to have made any impression on his slight figure; at fifty he looked no more than thirty-eight, still as slim and lively as any young man. Indeed, with the years his dark and hollowed marionette face, with its pointed nose and narrow, gleaming eyes, seemed to have taken on the charm of this persistent youthfulness, so supple, so active, his hair still thick, with no trace of grey. And inevitably he recalled his arrival in Paris, immediately after the
coup d’état
,
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that winter evening when he had found himself out on the street, with empty pockets, ravenously hungry, and tormented by all sorts of raging appetites. Oh! that first race through the streets when, even before unpacking his trunk, he had had to launch himself upon the city, in his worn-out boots and greasy overcoat, eager to conquer it! Since that evening he had risen in the world many times, and a river of millions of francs had flowed through his hands, but he had never been able to make fortune his slave, like a personal possession, at his disposal, alive, real, and kept under lock and key. His coffers had always been full of lies and fictions, with mysterious holes that seemed to drain away their gold. And now here he was back on the street again, just as he started out long ago, just as young, just as hungry, never satisfied, and still tortured by the same need for pleasures and conquests. He had tasted everything without ever satisfying his appetite, never, he thought, having had the time and opportunity to bite deeply enough into people and things. Now he felt quite wretched, a
good deal worse off than a mere beginner, who would have hope and illusion to sustain him. He was seized by a frenzied desire to start all over again, to conquer once more, to rise even higher than before and at last plant his foot firmly on the conquered city. No longer with the façade of mendacious wealth but the solid edifice of fortune, the true royalty of gold, reigning over well-filled bags of wealth.

Then the voice of Moser was heard once more, harsh and very sharp, drawing Saccard out of his reflections.

‘The Mexico expedition is costing fourteen million a month, that’s been proved by Thiers
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… and you’d have to be blind not to see that the majority in the Chamber has been shaken. There are more than thirty now on the Left. The Emperor himself has seen that absolute power has become impossible, since he now presents himself as the champion of liberty.’
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Pillerault had ceased to respond, now just sneering contemptuously.

‘Yes, I know, the market seems solid enough to you, and business is good. But wait for the end… You’ll see there’s been altogether too much demolition and rebuilding in Paris! These great public works have exhausted our savings. As for the powerful financial houses that seem so prosperous, just wait until one of them goes down and you’ll see them all collapsing one after another… Not to mention the fact that the people are restive. This International Workingmen’s Association
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which has just been founded to improve conditions for the workers, that really frightens me. There’s a protest movement, a revolutionary movement here in France, and it’s growing stronger every day… I tell you, the worm is in the fruit. Everything is going to go bust.’

This provoked a roar of protest. That blasted Moser was decidedly liverish. But even while he spoke, Moser’s eyes never left the table at which Mazaud and Amadieu, in spite of all the noise, were still talking quietly. Gradually the whole room began to be concerned about this very long, confidential chat. What could they have to say that needed all that whispering? Amadieu, no doubt, must be placing orders, preparing some financial coup. Over the last three days disturbing rumours had been circulating about the Suez project.
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Moser narrowed his eyes, and he too lowered his voice to say: