Complete Works of Emile Zola (1121 page)

‘Yes, a stroke of genius,’ he repeated; ‘the expression is none too strong.’

Hamelin, somewhat dazed, turned over the pages of Saccard’s memoir on the subject, examining the figures. ‘I hardly like this premature balance-sheet,’ he said at last. ‘These are real dividends that you will be giving your shareholders, since you will release their shares; and one must be certain that the amounts are really earned, for otherwise we might be rightly accused of distributing fictitious dividends.’

Saccard grew excited. ‘What! But I am below the estimates! Just look and you will see if I have been reasonable; won’t the steamers, the Carmel mine, and the Turkish bank yield larger profits than those which I have put down? You have brought me bulletins of victory from over yonder; everything is marching on, everything is prosperous, and yet you cavil about the certainty of success!’

Hamelin smiled, and calmed him with a gesture. Yes, yes! he had faith in the future. Only he preferred that things should take their regular course.

‘And indeed,’ said Madame Caroline, gently, ‘why should you hurry? Could not we wait till April for this increase of capital? Or, since you need twenty-five millions more, why not issue the stock at a thousand or twelve hundred francs at once, for in that way you would not require to anticipate the profits of the current year?’

Saccard looked at her momentarily nonplussed, astonished that that this idea should have occurred to her.

‘No doubt,’ said he, ‘if the shares were issued at eleven hundred francs, instead of at eight hundred and fifty, we should then have exactly the twenty-five millions we want.’

‘Then settle things in that way,’ she resumed: ‘you can hardly fear that the shareholders will kick at it. They will pay eleven hundred francs as readily as eight hundred and fifty.’

‘Oh yes, that is certain,’ said Saccard. ‘They’ll pay whatever we like, and they’ll even fight together to decide who shall pay most. They have quite lost their heads and would storm the building to bring us their money.’

All at once, however, he recovered his self-possession, and with a violent start of protest exclaimed: ‘But come, what are you talking about? I don’t want to ask them eleven hundred francs on any account. It would really be too foolish and too simple. Understand that in these financial matters it is always necessary to strike the imagination. The grand idea is to take money out of people’s pockets before it has even got into them. They at once imagine that they are not parting with it. They fancy even that a present is being made to them. And besides, can’t you see what a colossal effect will be produced by the newspapers notifying these anticipated profits, announcing with a flourish of trumpets these thirty-six millions gained in advance? Why, the whole Bourse will take fire; our shares will be quoted at over two thousand francs, and will keep on rising and rising till there will be no stopping them.’

He gesticulated as he spoke, erect, and stretching his little legs till he really became taller, his arms waving among the stars, like the inspired bard of Money, whose poetic flight, no failure, no ruin had ever been able to check. To urge on his enterprises, to keep them at a feverish gallop — that was his instinctive system, the course into which he dashed, both heart and soul. He had compelled success, kindled every greed by that lightning march of the Universal — three issues of shares in three years, the capital leaping from five and twenty to fifty, one hundred, and one hundred and fifty millions with a speed which seemed to denote miraculous prosperity. And the dividends also had increased by leaps and bounds — nothing the first year, then ten francs, then thirty-three francs per share, and now thirty-six millions to be apportioned amongst the entire stock and release it. And all this had been achieved amidst the deceptive overheating of the machine, the fictitious subscription of shares and their retention by the Bank, in order to make people believe that they had really been taken up. Yes, it had been achieved thanks to the impulse imparted by speculation at the Bourse, where each fresh increase of capital had determined such an exaggerated rise in the quotations.

Still deep in his examination of Saccard’s scheme, Hamelin had not supported his sister in her remarks.

Shaking his head, he now reverted to questions of detail.

‘None the less, I don’t approve of your anticipated balance-sheet, since the profits have not actually been made. I am not now referring to our enterprises, although, like all human affairs, they may meet with accidents. But I see here the Sabatani account, three thousand and odd shares, representing more than two millions of francs. Now you place these to our credit, whereas we ought to be debited with them, for Sabatani is only our man of straw. We can say these things between ourselves, can we not? And stay! I also see here the names of several of our employees, even some of our directors, all of them prête-noms — oh! I can guess it easily enough, you need not tell me. It makes me tremble to see that we are keeping such a large number of our shares. We not only do not take in the cash which they represent, but we bring ourselves to a standstill so far as they are concerned, and we shall end by devouring ourselves some day.’

Madame Caroline gave him an encouraging look, for he was at last giving voice to her hidden fears; he was putting his finger on the cause of the secret uneasiness which had grown up within her as success increased. ‘Oh! gambling! gambling!’ she murmured.

‘But we do not gamble,’ cried Saccard. ‘Only it is surely allowable for us to keep up the price of our stock, and we should be fools if we did not prevent Gundermann and others from bringing it down by playing against us for a fall. Although they have not quite dared to do so yet, it may come all the same. That is why I am rather glad we have a certain number of our shares in hand, and I warn you, if they force me to it, I am even ready to buy some of those in the market — yes, I’ll even buy rather than see the quotations fall by a single centime.’

He spoke these last words with extraordinary vehemence, as if he were swearing that he would die rather than suffer defeat. However, by dint of effort he afterwards calmed himself, and began to laugh, though not without some peevishness. ‘So distrust is coming back again, is it?’ he said. ‘I thought we had had an explanation once for all about all these matters. You consented to place yourselves in my hands, so let me go ahead. I seek nothing but your fortune, a great, great fortune.’ He paused and lowered his voice as though frightened himself by the enormity of his desire. ‘Do you know what I want?’ he whispered. ‘Why, I want the shares to be quoted at three thousand francs!’

He waved his hand, as though over yonder, in space, he could behold that triumphant quotation blazing in figures of fire which set the horizon of the Bourse all aglow and ascended to the heavens like stars.

‘It is madness!’ said Madame Caroline.

‘As soon as prices exceed two thousand francs,’ Hamelin declared, ‘each fresh rise will constitute a danger; and for my own part I warn you that I shall sell my shares so as not to take part in such lunacy.’

By way of reply Saccard began to hum a tune. People always talk of selling and yet do not sell. He would enrich them, despite themselves. Then again he began to smile in a very affectionate, though somewhat mocking way. ‘Trust me,’ said he. ‘It seems to me that I haven’t managed your affairs so badly until now. Sadowa brought you a million.’

This was true; the Hamelins had forgotten it. Yet they had accepted that million fished out of the troubled waters of the Bourse. For a moment they remained silent, turning pale, with the heart-pang felt by those who are still honest but are no longer certain whether they have acted rightly. Had the leprosy of gambling seized upon them also? Were they, too, rotting in that maddening atmosphere of Money in which circumstances compelled them to live?

‘No doubt that is so,’ the engineer at last muttered; ‘but if I had been here—’

Saccard would not let him finish. ‘Nonsense,’ said he. ‘You need feel no remorse; it was only so much money regained from those dirty Jews!’

At this all three began to laugh; and Madame Caroline, having seated herself, made a gesture of tolerance and resignation. Could one let oneself be devoured and not devour others? It was life. To do otherwise would require virtues of too sublime a character, or else the solitude of a cloister, far from all temptation.

‘Come, come!’ Saccard continued gaily. ‘Do not appear to spit upon money: in the first place, it would be idiotic to do so; and secondly, it is only the powerless who disdain power. It would be illogical to kill yourselves in labouring to enrich others without cutting off the share you are legitimately entitled to. Otherwise, you might just as well go to bed and sleep!’ He dominated them and would not permit them to say another word. ‘Do you know that you will soon have a pretty sum in your pockets?’ he exclaimed. ‘Wait a moment.’ And then, with a school-boy’s petulance, he rushed to Madame Caroline’s table, and, taking a pencil and a sheet of paper, began covering the latter with figures. ‘Wait!’ he said again. ‘I am going to draw up your account. Oh! I know it. At the outset you had five hundred shares, doubled a first time and then doubled again, so that you now hold two thousand. And you will have three thousand after our next issue.’

Hamelin tried to interrupt him.

‘No, no!’ said he. ‘I know that you have the money to pay for them, what with the three hundred thousand francs that you inherited on the one hand, and your Sadowa million on the other. See! your first two thousand shares have cost you four hundred and thirty-five thousand francs, the other thousand will cost you eight hundred and fifty thousand francs, in all twelve hundred and eighty-five thousand francs. So you will still have fifteen thousand francs left you for pocket money, to say nothing of your salary, now thirty thousand francs a year, but which we shall raise to sixty thousand.’

Bewildered by his flow of words, they listened, and at last began to take an acute interest in these figures.

‘You can see very well that you are honest,’ he continued—’that you pay for what you take. But those matters are mere bagatelles. This is what I wanted to get at!’

So saying he sprang to his feet again and flourished his sheet of paper with an air of triumph. ‘At three thousand francs apiece your three thousand shares will yield you nine millions,’ he said.

‘Three thousand francs apiece!’ they exclaimed, protesting with a gesture against his mad obstinacy.

‘Yes, of course!’ said he. ‘I forbid you to sell until that price is reached. I shall know how to prevent you — oh! by force if necessary, by the right a man has to prevent his friends from acting foolishly. Three thousand francs, that is the quotation I must have, and I will have it!’

What answer could they give to that terrible fellow, whose strident voice sounded like the crow of a cock proclaiming his triumph? They again laughed and affected to shrug their shoulders. Their minds were quite easy, they declared, for that wonderful price would never be reached. He, however, had again seated himself at the table, and was making fresh calculations, drawing up his own account. Had he paid for his three thousand shares? would he pay for them? That point remained obscure. It was even probable that he possessed a still larger number of shares; but the matter could not be easily elucidated, for he also served as one of the Bank’s prête-noms, and how was one to distinguish the shares which really belonged to him among all those that were entered in his name? His pencil continued jotting down line after line of figures. Then all at once, with a rapid zigzag stroke, he effaced everything and crumpled up the paper. The amount he had noted on it, with the two millions which he had picked up amid the blood and mire of Sadowa, constituted his share of the spoil.

‘I must leave you, I have an appointment,’ he said, taking up his hat. ‘But it’s agreed, isn’t it? In a week’s time we’ll have the board meeting, and immediately afterwards the shareholders’ meeting to vote on the new scheme.’

When Madame Caroline and Hamelin, bewildered and weary, again found themselves alone, they remained silent for a moment, seated opposite each other.

‘What would you have?’ at last said the engineer, responding to his sister’s secret thoughts. ‘We are in it and must remain in it. He is right in saying that it would be stupid of us to refuse this fortune. I have always looked on myself as a mere man of science who brings water to the mill; and I have brought it, I think, clear and abundant in the shape of excellent affairs, to which the Bank owes its rapid prosperity. And so, since no reproach can fall upon me, let us keep free from discouragement, let us work.’

She had risen from her chair, staggering and stammering: ‘Oh, all that money! all that money!’ And, choking with invincible emotion at the thought of those millions which were about to fall upon them, she hung upon his neck and wept. It was with joy undoubtedly, with happiness at seeing him at last worthily rewarded for his intelligence and labour; but with pain also, a pain of which she could not have told the exact cause, but in which there was a commingling of shame and fear. He began to make fun of her, and they once more affected cheerfulness; yet a feeling of uneasiness remained within them, a secret dissatisfaction with themselves, unconfessed remorse at being forced into this soiling complicity.

‘After all, he is right,’ repeated Madame Caroline; ‘everybody does it. Such is life.’

The board meeting was held in the new room in the sumptuous building of the Rue de Londres. Here, there was no damp reception-room to which the pale reflections from a neighbouring garden imparted a greenish hue, but a vast apartment, lighted by four windows, overlooking the street, an apartment with a lofty ceiling and majestic walls, decorated with large paintings and streaming with gold. The chairman’s arm-chair was a veritable throne, dominating the other arm-chairs, which, superb and grave, were ranged as if for a meeting of Cabinet Ministers around an immense table, covered with red velvet. And, above the monumental white marble chimney-piece, where trunks of trees blazed in winter time, there stood a bust of the Pope,1 a shrewd amiable face which seemed to be smiling maliciously at the idea of finding itself in such a place.