‘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,* 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.* 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.* 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.
In the Rue Vivienne, just as he was going into Kolb’s house, Saccard gave a start and again came to a halt. A light, crystalline music, coming up from the ground like the voice of the fairies of legend, wrapped itself around him, and he recognized the music of gold, the constant tinkling of this district of trade and speculation, the sound he had already heard that morning. The end of the day seemed to be linking up with the beginning. He basked in the caressing sound of that voice, as if it were confirming his good omens.
Kolb was in fact downstairs, in the smelting workshop; and as a friend of the family, Saccard went down to join him. In the bareness of the basement, eternally lit by large gas-flames, the two smelters were using spades to empty the zinc-lined chests, today full of Spanish coins which they were throwing into the crucible on the big, square furnace. The heat was fierce, one had to talk loudly to be heard amid the harmonica-like ringing, which resounded under the low vaulted ceiling. Newly forged ingots, slabs of gold with the vivid brilliance of new metal, were lined up along the table of the assayer, who fixed their values. And since that morning more than six million had gone through, giving the banker a profit of scarcely three or four hundred francs; for the arbitrage on gold, on the difference realized between two currency markets, is of the slightest, counted in thousandths, so very substantial quantities of molten metal are needed to yield any profit. Hence this tinkling of gold, this stream of gold from morning to night, from one year’s end to the next, down in this cellar where gold arrived in minted coins and left in gold ingots, only to return as coins and leave again as ingots, indefinitely, with the sole object of leaving in the hands of the dealer a few particles of gold.
Kolb was a small, very dark man, whose nose, like an eagle’s beak, emerging from a dense beard, gave away his Jewish origins, and as soon as he had understood what Saccard was offering, even through the rattling hail of gold, he accepted.
‘Perfect!’ he cried. ‘Glad to be in on it, if Daigremont is in on it! And thank you for going to so much trouble!’
But they could scarcely hear each other, and both fell silent, standing there for a moment longer, blissfully dazed by that clear and furious ringing which made their flesh quiver, like too high a note on a violin, held for so long that it makes one shudder.
Outside, in spite of the return of good weather and a limpid May evening, Saccard, desperately tired, called another cab to take him home. A hard day, but well spent!
CHAPTER IV
SOME difficulties arose, the affair dragged on, and five months went by before anything could be finalized. September was already coming to an end, and Saccard was exasperated to see that, in spite of his zealous efforts, obstacles kept springing up and a whole series of minor matters had to be settled if they were going to create something serious and substantial. Such was his impatience that at one point he almost sent the whole syndicate packing, suddenly captivated and enchanted by the idea of doing the whole thing with the Princess d’Orviedo alone. She had the millions needed for the initial launching, why shouldn’t she put them into this superb venture? They could always let in smaller clients for the later increases of capital he already had in mind. He was utterly sincere, convinced he would be bringing her an investment that would multiply her fortune, the fortune of the poor, ten times over, so she could give it away even more generously.
So one morning Saccard went up to see the Princess, and in his dual role as friend and business associate explained to her the intentions behind, and the mechanisms of, the bank he wanted to create. He told her everything, outlining the contents of Hamelin’s portfolio, omitting not one of the Eastern enterprises. Giving in to that tendency of his to become intoxicated with his own enthusiasm, and even arriving at religious faith through his burning desire for success, he revealed the mad dream of the Papacy in Jerusalem, and spoke of the definitive triumph of Catholicism, the Pope reigning over the Holy Land and dominating the world, supported by a budget fit for a king, thanks to the creation of the Treasury of the Holy Sepulchre. The Princess, who was fervently devout, was hardly affected at all except by this ultimate project, the pinnacle of the whole structure, whose fabulous grandeur appealed to that unbalanced imagination of hers that made her throw away her millions on good works of colossal and useless opulence. In fact, the French Catholics had just been dismayed and angered by the agreement the Emperor had concluded with the King of Italy, by which he undertook, under certain guaranteed conditions, to withdraw the detachment of French troops now occupying Rome.* This surely meant a Rome surrendered to Italy, and they could already imagine the Pope being driven out, dependent on charity, wandering from city to city with a beggar’s staff; and what a prodigiously happy ending it would be for the Pope to find himself instead, pontiff and king in Jerusalem, established there and supported by a bank in which Christians the world over would consider it an honour to hold shares! It was so splendid that the Princess declared it the greatest idea of the century, worthy of inspiring passion in any well-born religious person. She thought it was bound to be a thundering success. Her esteem for Hamelin the engineer, whom she had been treating with great consideration ever since discovering he was a practising Catholic, grew even greater as a result. But she totally refused to be part of the enterprise, intent on being true to the vow she had made to give all her millions back to the poor, without ever again earning a single cent, wanting all the money gained from speculation to be lost, to be drained away by poverty, like poisoned water which had to disappear. The argument that the poor would profit from the speculation failed to touch her, even irritated her. No! No! That accursed spring would be dried up, that was her sole mission.
Disconcerted, all Saccard could do was take advantage of her sympathy to obtain her permission for something he had previously requested in vain. He had had the idea—or rather, it was Madame Caroline who had suggested it—of installing the Universal Bank, once it was set up, in the mansion itself; he himself had rather grander ideas, he would have liked a palace straight away. They would simply make a glass roof for the courtyard to serve as the main hall, and convert the whole of the ground floor, stables, and outbuildings into offices; on the first floor he would give up his reception-room to serve as boardroom, while his dining-room and six other rooms would provide more offices, and he would keep only a bedroom and bathroom for himself, since he could mainly live on the upper floor with the Hamelins, eating with them and spending his evenings there; so, with little expenditure the bank would be installed, in a slightly cramped but very respectable style. As owner of the building the Princess, with her hatred of any kind of financial dealing, had at first refused: never would such an abomination find shelter under her roof. Then, that day, with religion involved in the affair, she was moved by the grandeur of the aim and gave her consent. It was a very big concession, for it was with a shudder that she thought of allowing that infernal machine of a lending-house, that house of stock-markets and interest-rates, into her building, with all its machinery of death and ruin.
At last, a week after this abortive attempt, Saccard had the joy of seeing the project so long beset by obstacles suddenly come together in a few days. One morning Daigremont came to tell him that he had all the signatures and they could get things started. They then went over the proposed statutes one last time, and drew up the formal instrument of association. Nor was it a moment too soon for the Hamelins, whose life was beginning to get difficult again. For years Hamelin’s one dream had been to work as consulta
nt engineer for a big lending-house: he would undertake, as he put it, to bring the water to the mill. Little by little he had caught Saccard’s fever, so he now burned with the same zeal and impatience. Madame Caroline, on the contrary, after being fired by enthusiasm at the idea of all the fine and useful things they were going to accomplish, seemed rather more cold and pensive now that they were getting into the troublesome and thorny details of its execution. Her sound common sense and upright nature could anticipate all sorts of dark and dirty pitfalls lying ahead; above all she trembled for her beloved brother, whom she sometimes laughingly called a ‘big ninny’ in spite of all his learning; not that she had the slightest doubt about the absolute honesty of their friend, who was so evidently devoted to making their fortune; but she had a strange sensation of the ground shifting beneath her feet, a fear of falling and being swallowed up if they so much as put a foot wrong.
That morning, when Daigremont had gone, a beaming Saccard came up to the workroom.
‘At last it’s done!’ he cried.
Hamelin, quite amazed and with tears in his eyes, went to shake his hands, almost crushing them in his fervour. And since Madame Caroline had merely turned towards him, looking rather pale, Saccard added:
‘Well then, what about you? Is that all you have to say? Doesn’t it make you any happier than that?’
Then she gave a pleasant smile.
‘But I assure you, of course I’m happy, very happy.’
When he had given her brother some details about the syndicate, now in its final form, she intervened in her quiet way:
‘So that’s allowed then, is it? For several people to get together and divide the shares of a bank between them, even before the shares have been issued?’