Complete Works of Emile Zola (1101 page)

‘Well,’ resumed Saccard abruptly, ‘are you with us? Daigremont told me to come and tell you that he was going in.’

Sédille raised his trembling arms to heaven, and, in a voice expressive both of desire and fear, replied: ‘Why, yes, I am with you. You know very well that I can’t do otherwise than go in with you! If I should refuse and your enterprise should prosper, I should fall ill with regret. Tell Daigremont that I will go in.’

When Saccard found himself in the street again, he pulled out his watch, and saw that it was scarcely four o’clock. The time that he had before him, and the desire that he felt to walk a little, induced him to dismiss his cab. He repented of it almost immediately, however, for he had not reached the boulevard when a fresh shower, a deluge of water mingled with hail, again forced him to take refuge in a doorway. What cursed weather, when one had to scour Paris! After watching the rain fall for a quarter of an hour, he grew impatient again, and hailed an empty cab which was passing. It was a Victoria, and in vain did he tuck the leather apron about his legs, for he was quite drenched when he reached the Rue Larochefoucauld, a good half-hour before his time.

The valet stated that his master had not yet returned, but conducted him to the smoking-room, where with slow short steps he paced up and down looking at the pictures. Then as a superb female voice, a contralto of deep and melancholy power, suddenly broke the silence of the mansion, he approached the open window to listen: it was Madame Daigremont rehearsing at her piano a composition which she doubtless meant to sing that evening in some salon. Lulled by the music, Saccard began thinking of the extraordinary stories that had been told him of Daigremont: the story of the Adamantine Company especially, that loan of fifty millions, all the securities of which he had kept in hand, selling them and re-selling them five times in succession, through agents of his own, until he had created a market, established a price for them. Then had come the genuine sale, followed by the inevitable fall from three hundred to fifteen francs, enormous profits being made out of a little world of simpletons, who were ruined at one blow. Ah! Daigremont was indeed a strong, a terrible man. Meantime his wife’s voice still rang out, exhaling a wild, loving plaint of tragic intensity; while Saccard, stepping back to the middle of the room, halted before a Meissonier, which he valued at a hundred thousand francs.

Just then, however, some one came in, and on turning he was surprised to recognise Huret. ‘What! here already? It is not yet five o’clock. Is the sitting over, then?’

‘Over! what an idea! They are still squabbling.’

And thereupon he explained that, as the deputy of the Opposition was still speaking, Rougon would certainly not be able to answer until the next day. On realising that, he had ventured to tackle the minister, during a short adjournment, between two doors.

‘Well,’ asked Saccard nervously, ‘and what did my illustrious brother say?’

Huret did not answer immediately. ‘Oh! he was as surly as a bear. I will own that I relied on the exasperation in which I found him, for I hoped that he would simply tell me to be off. Well, I told him of your affair, and said that you did not wish to undertake anything without his approval.’

‘And then?’

‘Then he seized me by both arms, and shook me, shouting in my face: “Let him go and get hanged!” and there he planted me.’

Saccard, who had turned pale, gave a forced laugh. ‘That was pleasant,’ said he.

‘Why yes, pleasant indeed,’ answered the deputy, in a tone of conviction. ‘I did not ask for so much; with that we can go ahead.’ Then as in the next room he heard the footfall of Daigremont, who had just returned, he added in a low voice: ‘Let me arrange it all.’

It was becoming evident that Huret greatly desired to see the Universal Bank established, and to become connected with it. No doubt he had already satisfied himself as to what kind of part he might play in the affair. Consequently, as soon as he had shaken hands with Daigremont, he put on a radiant expression, and waved his arm in the air. ‘Victory!’ he exclaimed, ‘victory!’

‘Ah! really. Tell me about it.’

‘Well! the great man did as he was bound to do. He answered me, “Let my brother succeed!”’

Daigremont was in an ecstasy, so charming did he find the phrase ‘Let him succeed!’ It implied everything: ‘If he is so stupid as not to succeed, I shall drop him; but let him succeed, and I will assist him.’ Really it was quite exquisite!

‘And, my dear Saccard, we shall succeed,’ said Daigremont.

‘Be easy on that point. We are going to do everything that is necessary to that end.’

Then, the three men having sat down, in order to decide upon the principal points, Daigremont rose up and went to close the window; for his wife’s voice, gradually swelling in volume, was giving vent to a sob of infinite despair, which prevented them from hearing one another. And even with the window closed, the stifled lamentation resounded like an accompaniment while they decided upon founding a financial establishment to be called the Universal Bank, with a capital of twenty-five millions of 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, should form a syndicate to take four-fifths of the stock in advance, and divide it among themselves, so that in the first place the success of the issue would be assured, whilst later on, keeping the shares in their possession, they would be able to create a scarcity in the market, and send the price up at will. However, everything nearly fell through when Daigremont demanded a premium of four hundred thousand francs to be divided among the forty thousand shares of the syndicate, at the rate of ten francs a share. Saccard protested, declaring that it was not reasonable to make the cow bellow before milking her. Matters were bound to be difficult at the outset; why make the situation any worse? Nevertheless he had to yield, in view of the attitude of Huret, who quietly regarded the matter as quite natural, saying that it was always done.

They were separating, having fixed an appointment for the next day, an appointment at which Hamelin the engineer was to be present, when Daigremont suddenly clapped his hand to his forehead with an air of despair. ‘And Kolb, whom I was forgetting!’ he said. ‘Oh! he would never forgive me; he must be one of us. My little Saccard, if you want to oblige me, you will go to his place directly. It isn’t six o’clock yet; you will still find him there. Yes, go yourself and not to-morrow, but to-night, because that will have an effect on him, and he may be useful to us.’

With all docility Saccard started off again, knowing that lucky days do not come twice over. Bat he had again dismissed his cab, having hoped to go home — a distance of a few steps — on leaving Daigremont’s; and so, as the rain seemed to have stopped at last, he descended the street on foot, happy to feel under his heels the pavement of Paris, which he was reconquering. In the Faubourg Montmartre a few drops of rain made him take to the covered passages, the Passage Verdeau, the Passage Jouffroy and the Passage des Panoramas, which last brought him out again into the Rue Vivienne.

Here at the moment when he was about to enter Kolb’s he once more started and stopped. A soft, crystalline music, coming as it were from the bowels of the earth, like the voices of legendary fairies, enveloped him; and he recognised the musical voice of gold, the continual jingle which pervaded this neighbourhood of trade and speculation, and which he had already heard in the morning. The end of the day was like its beginning; and the caressing sound of this voice made him radiant, it seemed like the confirmation of a good omen.

Kolb happened to be downstairs in the casting shop, and, as a friend of the house, Saccard went down to join him there. In the bare basement, ever lighted by large flaming gas-jets, the two founders were emptying by the shovelful several zinc lined boxes, filled that day with Spanish coins which they threw into the melting-pot on the great square furnace. The heat was intense; they had to shout to make themselves heard amid this harmonica-like music vibrating under the low vaulted ceiling. Freshly cast ingots, golden paving-stones, having all the glittering brilliancy of new metal, stood in rows upon the table of the assayer, who determined the standard. And since morning more than six millions of francs had passed through the founders’ hands, assuring the banker a profit of no more than three or four hundred francs; for the difference realised between two quotations is of the smallest, being measured by thousandths, so that in gold arbitrage, as the traffic is called, a profit only accrues when large quantities of metal are dealt with. Hence this tinkling of gold, this streaming of gold, from morning till night, from year’s end to year’s end, in the depths of that cellar, whither the gold came in coins, and whence it went away in ingots, to come back again in coins and go away again in ingots indefinitely, with the sole object of leaving in the trader’s hands a few particles of the precious metal.

As soon as Kolb — a little man with a very dark complexion, whose nose, shaped like an eagle’s beak, and emerging from a thick beard, proclaimed his Jewish origin — had understood Saccard’s offer, which the gold almost drowned with a sound of hail, he accepted it. ‘Certainly,’ he cried. ‘I am very glad to be in it, if Daigremont is! And thank you for having put yourself out on my account.’

However, they scarcely heard each other, and relapsed into silence, lingering there a moment longer, deafened, but experiencing a sensation of beatitude amid that clear provoking jingling, which made their flesh quiver, like some altissimo note prolonged upon the strings of violins to the point of provoking spasm.

Outside, although the fine weather had returned, although it was now a clear May evening, Saccard, worn out with fatigue, once more took a cab to go home. It had been a hard, but a well-filled day.

CHAPTER IV

THE BANK IS FOUNDED

DIFFICULTIES arose, the affair dragged along, and in fact five months rolled by without anything being settled. The latter days of September had already been reached, and it enraged Saccard to find fresh obstacles continually arising, a whole series of secondary questions, which it was necessary to solve beforehand, if they wished to establish anything serious and substantial. His impatience became so great, that at one moment he was on the point of renouncing the idea of a syndicate, haunted and seduced by the sudden thought of carrying out the affair with the Princess d’Orviedo alone. She had the millions necessary for the first launching; why should she not put them into this superb affair, leaving the smaller investors to come in later on, at the time of the future increase of capital which he had already in view? He thought of this in all good faith, convinced that he was offering her an investment in which she could increase her fortune tenfold — that fortune of the poor, which she was scattering in charities ever on a more extensive scale.

So one morning he went up to the Princess’s rooms, and, like a friend who is also a man of business, he explained to her the motive and the mechanism of the bank which he dreamed of. He told her everything, spread the contents of Hamelin’s portfolio before her, did not omit one of the many Oriental enterprises. Yielding to the faculty he possessed of becoming intoxicated by his own enthusiasm, and of acquiring faith by his burning desire to succeed, he even revealed the mad dream of the Papacy established at Jerusalem, spoke of the final triumph of Catholicism, the Pope enthroning himself in the Holy Land, dominating the world, and assured of a royal budget, thanks to the creation of the Treasury of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Princess, an ardent devotee, was solely struck by this supreme project, this crowning of the edifice, the chimerical grandeur of which was in keeping with the disorderly imagination which prompted her to throw away her millions in good works of colossal and useless luxury. The French Catholics had just been startled and irritated by the treaty which the Emperor had concluded with the King of Italy, and by which he pledged himself, under certain conditions, to withdraw the French troops from Borné. It was very certain that this meant the abandonment of Rome to Italy; and the Catholics already saw the Pope driven away, reduced to soliciting alms, and wandering through the cities of Europe leaning on a beggar’s staff. But what a prodigious dénouement that would be: the Pope again finding himself Pontiff and King at Jerusalem, installed and sustained there by a bank in which the Catholics of the whole universe would regard it an honour to become shareholders! It was so beautiful a conception that the Princess declared it the grandest idea of the century, worthy to incite the enthusiasm of any well-born person possessed of faith. Success seemed to her absolutely certain, and her esteem for the engineer Hamelin, whom she treated with consideration, knowing him to be a constant worshipper, increased. Nevertheless, she flatly refused to go into the affair; she intended to remain faithful to her oath to restore her millions to the poor, without ever deriving from them a single copper of interest, for she desired that this money, the fruit of gambling, should be lost, drunk up by poverty, like some poisoned water that must disappear. The argument that the poor would profit by the speculation did not touch her; it even irritated her. No, no! the accursed source must be dried up, exhausted; she had undertaken no other mission.

Disconcerted, Saccard could only profit by her sympathy to obtain from her an authorisation which he had hitherto vainly solicited. It had been his idea to instal the Universal Bank in the mansion itself; or, at least, Madame Caroline had suggested this idea to him; for he himself saw things on a grander scale, and would have liked a palace forthwith. However, they might content themselves with roofing the courtyard with glass and transforming it into a central hall; whilst the entire ground floor, the stables, and coach-houses might be fitted up as offices. Then on the first floor he would give up his salon, which would do duty as a board-room, whilst his dining-room and six other rooms could be turned into additional offices. For himself, he should merely retain a bedchamber and dressing-room, taking his meals and passing his evenings upstairs with the Hamelins; so that at small expense they would provide the Bank with somewhat limited but very respectable quarters. The Princess, as proprietor, had at first refused her consent, through her hatred of all traffic in money. Never, said she, should her roof shelter such abomination. But when she found that religion entered into the matter, she was moved by the grandeur of the purpose, and consented. It was an extreme concession, and she felt a little shudder pass through her at the thought of that infernal machine, a financial establishment, a house of speculation and jobbery, with its machinery of ruin and death, being set up underneath her.