Money (Oxford World’s Classics) (64 page)

‘Ah! What new activities, the whole of humanity at work, the hands of every living being improving the world!… No more barren moors, no more marshes, no more wastelands. Inlets are filled up, obstructive mountains disappear, deserts change into fertile valleys, with water springing out everywhere. No marvel is unrealizable, the great works of old call forth a smile, so timid and childish do they appear. The whole earth at last is habitable… And the whole man is now developed, fully grown, enjoying his full appetites, now the true master. Schools and workshops are open, and each child chooses his occupation according to his abilities. Years have already gone by, and selection has been made, thanks to rigorous examinations. It is no longer enough to be able to pay for instruction, it is necessary to profit by it. So all find themselves, with their education finished at the right level for their intelligence, set to work, which means posts in the public service are equitably distributed, following the indications of Nature herself. Each for all, according to his strengths… Ah! Active and joyful city, ideal city of healthy, human effort, where the old prejudice against manual work no longer exists and one sees great poets who are carpenters, and locksmiths great scholars! Ah! Happy city, triumphant city, toward which mankind has been marching for so many centuries, city whose white walls are shining out there… Out there in the land of happiness, in the blinding sunlight…’

His eyes grew pale and the last words emerged indistinctly, in a little gasp; and his head fell back, still with that ecstatic smile on his lips. He was dead.

Overcome with pity and tenderness, Madame Caroline was gazing at him when she felt something like a storm bursting in behind her.
It was Busch, coming back without the doctor, panting and ravaged with anguish, while La Méchain, close on his heels, was explaining why she had not yet managed to make the tisane, because the water had boiled over. But he had seen his brother, his little child, as he called him, lying on his back, motionless, with his mouth open and his eyes in a fixed stare; he understood at once, and let out a shriek like a slaughtered animal. In one bound, he had thrown himself onto the body, lifting him up in his two strong arms, as if to breathe life into him. This terrible consumer of money, who would have killed a man for ten sous, and who for so long had skimmed off the filth of Paris, now screamed with atrocious suffering. His little child, oh God! He had put him to bed and pampered him like a mother! He would have him no more, his little child! And in a spasm of raging despair, he gathered up the papers scattered on the bed, and tore them, crushing them, as if he wanted utterly to destroy all that mad labour he had so resented, the labour which had killed his brother.

Madame Caroline then felt her heart melting. Poor, wretched man! He now filled her only with a divine pity. But where had she heard such screaming before? Only once had the howl of human pain pierced her with such a shudder. And she remembered: it was at Mazaud’s house, the screams of the mother and the little ones, facing the father’s dead body. As if unable to withdraw from this suffering, she stayed a moment more and gave what help she could. Then, as she was leaving, finding herself alone with La Méchain in the little business office, she remembered that she had come to ask about Victor. And she questioned her. Ah well, Victor was far away, if he was still running! La Méchain had tramped all over Paris for three months without discovering any trace of him. She had given up, there would be time enough to find that scoundrel one day, on the scaffold. Madame Caroline listened to her, silent and chilled. Yes, it was all over, the monster had been abandoned by everybody, left to the future, the unknown, like a beast, jaws foaming with the hereditary virus, which would spread evil with every bite.

Outside, on the pavement of the Rue Vivienne, Madame Caroline was surprised at the softness of the air. It was five o’clock, the sun was setting in a sky of tender purity, turning to gold the signs far off, hanging high above the Boulevard. This April, so delightful in its new youthfulness, was like a caress for her whole physical being, right down to her heart. She breathed in deeply, comforted, and happier
already, with the feeling of invincible hope returning to her and growing. It was no doubt the beautiful death of that dreamer, giving his last breath to his chimera of justice and love that moved her in this way, a dream she also had dreamed, of a humanity purged of the execrable evil of money; and it was also the screams of that other one, the tormented and bleeding love of that terrible jackal,
*
whom she had thought heartless and incapable of tears. But no! She had not come away with the consoling impression of so much human goodness in the midst of so much grief; on the contrary, she had come away finally despairing of that little monster, let loose, and galloping away, sowing along his path that ferment of rottenness of which the world would never be cured. So why this renewal of cheerfulness, filling her whole being?

When she reached the Boulevard, Madame Caroline turned left, and slowed down in the midst of the busy crowd. She stopped for a moment by a little cart full of bunches of lilies and wallflowers, and their strong scent wrapped her in a waft of springtime. And now, as she continued her walk, the wave of joy mounted within her as if from a bubbling spring, impossible to stop or smother, however hard you tried. She had understood, but unwillingly. No, no, the awful catastrophes were too recent, she could not be gay, could not abandon herself to this uplifting surge of endless life. She strove to maintain her grieving, she called herself back to despair, with so many cruel memories. What! Could she still laugh, after the collapse of everything, after such a frightening mass of miseries! Was she forgetting that she had been complicit? And she recited the facts to herself, this fact, that one, and that other, that she should have spent the rest of her life weeping over. But in between her fingers clenched over her heart, that bubbling up of sap gathered strength, and the spring of life overflowed, pushing away all obstacles, tossing all debris aside, to flow freely, clear and triumphant in the sunlight.

From that moment Madame Caroline gave in and simply abandoned herself to the irresistible force of continual rejuvenation. As she often said with a laugh, she was unable to be sad. This proved it; she had touched the very depths of despair, yet hope was springing to life again, broken and bloody, but still alive, and growing by the minute. Certainly she had no illusions left, life was decidedly unjust and squalid, like Nature itself. So why this madness of loving it, wanting it, and still—like a child who has been promised a constantly deferred
pleasure—counting on the distant and unknown goal towards which it is leading us? Then, when she turned into the Rue de la Chausséed’Antin, she stopped trying to reason it out; the philosopher in her, the scholar and the woman of letters, had abdicated, weary of the useless search for causes; she was simply a creature happy at the blue sky and the gentle air, enjoying the sole pleasure of being in good health and hearing her little feet firmly tapping the pavement. Ah, the joy of being alive, is there really any other joy than this? Life, just as it is, however abominable it may be, with all its power and its eternal hope!

Back in the Rue Saint-Lazare, in the apartment she was to leave the next day, Madame Caroline finished her packing, and as she made a tour of the now empty workroom, she saw on the walls the maps and watercolours she’d promised herself she would tie up in a roll at the last minute. But at every sheet of paper, before taking out the four tacks at each corner, she fell into a dream. She was reliving those faroff days in the Orient, that beloved land, whose brilliant light she seemed to have kept inside her; she relived the five years she had just spent in Paris, with a crisis every day, and that crazy activity, that monstrous hurricane of millions that had run its devastating path through her life; and from those ruins, still warm, she could already sense the growth of a great blossoming opening out in the sun. Even if the Turkish National Bank had collapsed after the collapse of the Universal, the United Steamship Company was still standing, and prospering. She saw once more the enchanted coast of Beirut where, among huge warehouses, administrative buildings were rising, the plans for which she was just dusting down: Marseilles a gateway to Asia Minor, the Mediterranean conquered, nations brought together, to live in peace perhaps. And the Carmel Gorge, this watercolour she was taking down, didn’t she know from a recent letter that a whole population had grown up there? The village, at first of five hundred inhabitants, clustering round the workings of the mine, was at present a city of several thousand souls, a whole civilization, with roads, factories, and schools, creating life in this dead and savage place. Then there were the planned routes, the land-surveys, and the outlines for the railway line from Brussa to Beirut via Angora and Aleppo, a series of large sheets that she rolled up one by one; no doubt years would go by before the Taurus passes were crossed at full steam;
*
but already life was flowing in from everywhere, the soil of the ancient cradle of
humanity had just been sown with a new crop of men, the progress of tomorrow would grow there, a vegetation of extraordinary vigour, in that wonderful climate under that perpetual sun. And wasn’t this the awakening of a world, with an expanded and happier humanity?

Madame Caroline now tied up the bundle of plans with some stout string. Her brother, who was waiting for her in Rome, where the two were going to start their lives all over again, had urged her to pack them carefully; and as she tied the knots, her thoughts went to Saccard now in Holland, once again launched on a colossal enterprise, the draining of vast marshes, a little kingdom to be won from the sea, thanks to a complicated system of canals. He was right: money was always the manure in which the humanity of tomorrow was growing; money, poisonous and destructive, became the ferment of all social growth, the compost necessary for the great works that made life easier. This time, was she at last seeing clearly? Did her invincible hope spring from her belief in the usefulness of effort? Heavens! Over and above the stirring of so much mud, and the crushing of so many victims, out of all that abominable suffering that humanity has to pay for every step forward, is there not an obscure and distant goal, something superior, something good, just and definitive, toward which we move without knowing it, but which fills our hearts with the obstinate need to live, and hope?

And Madame Caroline, with her face ever young beneath its crown of white hair, was joyful in spite of everything, as if she were rejuvenated every April, in the old age of the earth. And at the shameful memory she had of her relationship with Saccard, she thought of the terrible filth with which love too has been soiled. Why then blame money for the dirt and crimes it causes? Is love any less sullied, love, the creator of life?

Bourse
: Napoleon Bonaparte laid the first stone of the Bourse (now the Palais Brongniart) in 1808. Home of the Paris Stock Exchange, the building was designed in the Corinthian style by the architect Alexandre Théodore Brongniart, and after his death in 1813 completed by Éloi Labarre in 1825. Officially opened on 4 November 1826, under the Restoration, it became the hub of financial activity in France throughout the nineteenth century. The introduction of an electronic trading system in 1987 led to the re-siting of the Bourse (now Euronext, Paris) and the designation of the Palais Brongniart as a historical monument.

Champeaux
: restaurant on the Place de la Bourse, founded by Champeaux in 1800. Much frequented by financial traders, it carried on until 1905.

May
: May 1864.

stockbroker
: Mazaud is one of about sixty official stockbrokers (
agents de change
), each of whom had to be a French citizen, approved by the Minister of Finance. The
agents de change
were strictly brokers, not allowed to trade for themselves nor to stand in for others dealing in securities. They received a legally regulated commission for acting as intermediary.

fifteen francs
: 1 franc = 20 sous or 100 centimes. As a general guide to the value of the franc at that time, an average worker in Paris in 1860 would have earned 3 to 4 francs a day, a litre of wine would cost about 80 centimes, a pound of beef 1 to 2 francs, a dozen eggs 1 franc 50 centimes. In the course of the novel the Jordans plan to eat in a modest restaurant for 35 sous each for two courses with wine and bread, and Marcelle buys an almond cake for 20 sous; rent for the Cité de Naples is 2 francs a week.

bull trader
: an investor who thinks the market or a particular stock will rise and buys securities hoping to sell them later at a higher price. His opposite is a ‘bear’ or short-seller, who believes the market or a particular stock will go down and hopes to profit from a decline in prices.

kerb market
: known in French as ‘la coulisse’, getting its name from a wooden partition once introduced to keep visitors away from the main trading-floor, rather like the ‘coulisse’ or ‘wings’ of a theatre. This secondary market, though not officially authorized until 1885, was accepted by tradition and accounted for about three-fifths of all transactions; being unrecognized it did not incur the Bourse tax. It continued to operate until the mid-twentieth century.

mansion in the Parc Monceau
: Saccard’s highly ornate mansion is in what was then one of the most fashionable areas of Paris.

land-deal
: from 1853 to 1870 Baron Haussmann, Napoleon III’s Prefect of the Seine, was transforming Paris, clearing away buildings and creating the wide boulevards for which the modern city is so admired. During this
‘Haussmannization’, speculation on land was rife. Saccard’s illegal activities and subsequent ruin are related in the second novel of the Rougon-Macquart series,
The Kill
(
La Curée
).

minister
: the sixth Rougon-Macquart novel,
His Excellency Eugène Rougon
, is devoted to the career of Saccard’s brother Eugene, modelled on Eugène Rouher (1818–84), a powerful politician in the Second Empire who at various times acted as minister, vice-president of the Council of State, and president of the Senate.