Money (Oxford World’s Classics) (52 page)

Suddenly, on 3 January, on the morrow of the day when the accounts of the last settlement had been paid, Universals went down by fifty francs. This caused some commotion. In fact everything had gone down; the market, driven too hard for so long, and impossibly inflated, was now cracking all over; the collapse of two or three crooked companies had made quite a din; anyway, people should have been used to these violent fluctuations, for prices sometimes varied by several hundreds of francs even in the course of one day’s Bourse, going crazy, like the needle of a compass in a storm. But in the great shudder that ensued, everyone sensed the beginning of the debacle. Universals were going down, the cry went around, spreading into a great clamour made of astonishment, hope, and fear.

The very next day Saccard, firmly at his post and smiling, raised the price by thirty francs by means of substantial purchases. But on
the 5th, despite his efforts, the fall was forty francs. Universals were now down to three thousand. And from then on, every day brought another battle. On the 6th, Universals went up again. On the 7th and 8th they went down once more. There was an irresistible movement, dragging them gradually into a slow fall. The bank was to be the scapegoat, it was to pay for the folly of all, for the crimes of other less prominent enterprises, for the proliferation of shady ventures, overheated by advertising, springing up like monstrous mushrooms in the putrefied compost of the reign. But Saccard, who now couldn’t sleep, and who every afternoon took up his battle-post beside the pillar, was living as if hallucinated by a still-possible victory. Like an army commander convinced of the excellence of his plan, he yielded ground only inch by inch, sacrificing his last soldiers and emptying the bank’s coffers of their last bags of gold to bar the way to his assailants. On the 9th, he still won a signal advantage: the bears trembled and retreated, would the settlement of the 15th once again be fattened by their losses? And Saccard, already without resources, reduced to launching paper into circulation, now dared, like those starving people who in the delirium of their hunger see huge feasts before them, to acknowledge to himself the prodigious and impossible goal he was aiming at, the gigantic idea of buying back every one of his shares, to hold the short-sellers, bound hand and foot, at his mercy. That had just been done for a minor railway company, when the issuing bank had gathered up the entire market; and the vendors, unable to deliver, had surrendered like slaves, forced to offer up their fortune and their person. Ah! If only he had been able to hunt down and frighten Gundermann to the point where he could hold him, powerless and unable to sell! If only he had seen him one morning bringing his billion, and begging him not to take it all, but to leave him ten sous for the daily milk on which he lived! But for that to happen, seven to eight hundred millions were needed. Saccard had already cast two hundred million into the abyss, and he needed to line up five or six hundred more. With six hundred million he could sweep away the Jews, he could become the king of gold, the master of the world. What a dream! And it was so simple, any idea of the value of money was totally abolished at this level of fever, it was merely a matter of moving pawns about on the chessboard. During his sleepless nights, he raised the army of six hundred millions and had them all killed for his glory, so he stood victorious at last in the midst of disasters, on the ruins of everything.

Unfortunately, on the 10th Saccard had a terrible day. At the Bourse he remained splendidly light-hearted and calm. But never had there been a war of such silent ferocity, with every hour bringing new slaughter, and ambushes on every side. In these covert and cowardly financial battles, in which the weak are quietly disembowelled, there are no more bonds of any sort, no kinship, no friendship, only the atrocious law of the strong, those who eat so as not to be eaten. So Saccard felt absolutely alone, with no other support than his own insatiable appetite which kept him on his feet, ceaselessly devouring. He particularly dreaded the afternoon of the 14th, when the replies on the options would come in. But he still managed to find enough money for the three days before, and the 14th, instead of bringing a crash, strengthened Universals, which, on the settlement day of the 15th, closed at two thousand eight hundred and sixty francs, only one hundred francs down on the last quotation of December. Having feared a disaster, Saccard now affected to believe this was a victory. In reality it was the bears who, for the first time, were winning, at last receiving the differences instead of paying them, as they had done for months; and in this reversed situation, Saccard had to get Mazaud to carry him over, and from then on, Mazaud found himself heavily involved. The second fortnight of January would be decisive.

Ever since he had been fighting like this, with daily shocks casting him down into the abyss, then up again, Saccard had felt, every evening, a frantic need for mind-numbing entertainment. He could not be alone; he dined out, and ended his nights beside some woman. Never before had he burned up his life in this way, turning up everywhere, doing the rounds of the theatres and nightclubs, spending ostentatiously, with the extravagance of a man with too much money. He avoided Madame Caroline, who embarrassed him with her reproaches, always telling him about the anxious letters she was receiving from her brother, and herself despairing about his bullish campaign, so alarmingly dangerous. He was seeing more of Baroness Sandorff, as if this cold perversion in the new little ground-floor apartment in the Rue Caumartin could provide a sufficient change of scenery to allow him the hour or so of forgetfulness necessary for the relaxation of his overtaxed, exhausted brain. Sometimes he hid out there to examine some papers, or reflect on certain matters, glad to be able to assure himself that there no one would disturb him. Sleep would often overtake him, and he would nod off for an hour or two,
the only delicious hours of unconsciousness he had; and the Baroness then had no hesitation about going through his pockets and reading the letters in his wallet; for he had become totally silent with her, not a single useful tip could she get out of him, and when she did get a word out of him, she was convinced he was lying, so she no longer dared to follow his suggestions in her speculation. It was by stealing his secrets in this way that she had acquired certainty about the financial problems with which the Universal Bank was now struggling, with a whole vast system of kite-flying, raising money on credit, with accommodation bills
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that the bank was discreetly discounting abroad. One evening Saccard, waking too soon, caught her in the act of going through his wallet and slapped her as one might a prostitute caught filching money from the waistcoat of her clients; and since that time he had taken to beating her, which enraged them and wrecked them, then calmed both of them down.

However, after the settlement of 15 January, which had cost her about ten thousand francs, the Baroness began to nurture a plan. She became obsessed with it, and eventually went and asked Jantrou’s advice.

‘My word, I think you’re right,’ he replied, ‘it’s time to go over to Gundermann… Go and see him then and tell him, since he promised that the day you gave him a useful piece of advice, he would give you one in return.’

On the morning when the Baroness turned up, Gundermann was in a filthy humour. Just the day before, Universals had risen again. Would he never be rid of it, this voracious beast that had swallowed so much of his gold, and still refused to die! It could even go up again, once more closing on a rise on the 31st of the month, and he was reproaching himself for ever having entered this disastrous conflict, when he might perhaps have done better just to get on with the new bank from the start. Shaken in his usual strategy, and losing faith in the inevitable triumph of logic, he would, at that instant, have resigned himself to beating a retreat if he could have done so without losing everything. Such moments of discouragement were rare for him, though even the greatest captains have experienced them, even on the eve of victory, when men and things seem to be willing them to succeed. This disturbance of his normal, powerful clear-sightedness resulted from the fog that eventually arises from those mysterious operations of the Bourse, which it is never possible to lay at the door
of anyone in particular. Certainly Saccard was buying, was speculating. But was he doing it for real clients? Or was it for the company itself? In the end Gundermann couldn’t tell, surrounded as he was by all the different bits of gossip he was getting from everywhere. The doors of his huge office were being slammed, all his staff were trembling at his rage, and he greeted the jobbers so brutally that their usual procession turned into a gallop of disarray.

‘Ah, it’s you!’ said Gundermann to the Baroness, without the slightest touch of courtesy. ‘I don’t have time to waste with women today.’

She was so disconcerted that she abandoned everything she had prepared to say, and just blurted out the news she was bringing.

‘What if it could be proved to you that the Universal has run out of money after the huge purchases it has made, and that it has been reduced to discounting its accommodation bills abroad, in order to continue its campaign?’

The Jew suppressed a shiver of joy. His eyes remained lifeless, and he replied in the same growling tones:

‘That’s not true.’

‘What do you mean, not true? I have heard with my own ears, seen with my own eyes.’

She decided to convince him by explaining that she had held in her hands the notes signed by frontmen. She named them, and named also the bankers who, in Vienna, Frankfurt, and Berlin, had discounted the bills of credit.
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Gundermann’s correspondents would be able to inform him, and he would see she wasn’t bringing him any airy gossip. She further maintained that the company had bought its own shares, with the sole aim of keeping the price rising, and that two hundred millions had already been swallowed up.

Listening to her with his gloomy air, Gundermann was already planning the next day’s campaign, working with such quick intelligence that in a few seconds he had distributed his orders and calculated the amounts. Now he was certain of victory, knowing full well from what filth this information came, and full of contempt for the pleasure-loving Saccard, who was stupid enough to trust himself to a woman and allow himself to be betrayed.

When she had finished, he raised his head and looked at her with his big, lifeless eyes:

‘Well now, why should what you’re telling me be of any concern to me?’

She was quite astonished, so calm and unconcerned did he seem.

‘But I thought, as you were short-selling…’

‘I? Who told you I was short-selling? I never go to the Bourse, I don’t speculate… None of that is of any interest to me!’

And his voice was so guileless that the Baroness, shaken and alarmed as she was, would have ended up believing him, had it not been for certain inflections of irony in the naivety of his response. Clearly he was laughing at her, in his absolute disdain as a man totally free of desire, with no more use for women.

‘So, my good friend, as I am very busy, if you don’t have anything more interesting to tell me…’

He was showing her the door. Furious now, she turned on him:

‘I trusted you, I spoke first… and fell into a trap… You promised me, if I was helpful to you, you would in turn help me, and give me some advice…’

He stood up, interrupting her. He, who never laughed, gave a little snigger, so thoroughly was he enjoying this brutal fooling of a young and pretty woman.

‘Some advice, well, I don’t refuse that, my good friend… Listen to me carefully. Don’t gamble, don’t ever gamble. It will make you ugly, a gambling woman is not a pretty sight.’

And when she had left, beside herself with rage, he shut himself up with his two sons and his son-in-law, allocated the roles they would play, and sent messages to Jacoby and other brokers, to prepare the great coup of the following day. His plan was simple: to do what, in his ignorance of the actual situation of the Universal, prudence had prevented him from daring until now; to crush the market under enormous sales, now he knew the Universal was at the end of its resources and incapable of holding the price up. He was going to bring forward the formidable reserves of his billion, like a general who wants to get the battle over, and has learned the weak point of the enemy from spies. Logic would triumph, all securities that rise above the real value they represent are doomed.

Indeed, that very day, Saccard, sensing danger with his natural flair, went to see Daigremont. He was in a fever, he felt that this must surely be the time for striking hard at the bears, if he didn’t want to be definitively beaten by them. And his gigantic idea was tormenting him, that colossal army of six hundred million still to be raised in order to conquer the world. Daigremont greeted him with his usual
amiability, in his princely mansion, surrounded by valuable pictures, and all the dazzling luxury paid for by his fortnightly profits from the Bourse, though no one really knew what actual substance lay behind the lavish decor, always liable to be whisked away by some whim of fortune. So far, Daigremont had not betrayed the Universal, refusing to sell and affecting an air of absolute confidence, enjoying his stance as a good gambler, betting on a rise, out of which he was anyway making a considerable profit; and he had been pleased with himself for not flinching, even after the bad settlement of the 15th, convinced, as he kept telling everyone, that the rise would restart, but keeping his eyes open, ready to go over to the enemy at the first serious sign of trouble. Saccard’s visit, the extraordinary energy he displayed, and the enormous idea he outlined, of scooping up everything on the market, filled him with real admiration. It was mad, but then the great men in war and finance, aren’t they often just madmen who succeed? And Daigremont formally promised to come to his aid the very next day at the Bourse. He had already taken up strong positions, and he would see his agent Delarocque, to take up some more; not to mention the friends he would visit, a whole syndicate, as it were, that he would bring in as reinforcements. This new army corps could be estimated, he thought, at about a hundred million, immediately available. That would be enough. Saccard, radiant, certain of victory, at once drew up the battle plan, a flanking movement of rare audacity, a strategy borrowed from the most celebrated captains; first, at the opening of the Bourse, a simple skirmish to attract the short-sellers and give them confidence; then, when they had obtained a first success and the prices were falling, Daigremont and his friends would arrive with their heavy artillery, all those unexpected millions suddenly appearing from behind a ridge, attacking the short-sellers in the rear and overwhelming them. They would be crushed, massacred. The two men left each other after much handshaking and triumphant laughter.