House of All Nations (90 page)

The judge had finished picking his teeth and the lines of his face had firmed. ‘Do you agree with this story?' asked he, of the plaintiffs.

Mr. Alphendéry has related facts,' said Maître Lallant. ‘The coloring is his own.'

‘That's all right,' said the judge, turning to Alphendéry with more warmth than before. ‘Mr. Alphendéry, what happened after that?'

Maître Lallant was about to protest, bit his lip, and said nothing. Alphendéry went on, ‘The contract was drawn up by Mr. Bertillon and these gentlemen and me, presented to them by me, and signed by them and me.'

‘This was where the misrepresentation occurred,' said Guildenstern.

‘What misrepresentation?' asked Alphendéry angrily. ‘Are these gentlemen children in arms? They signed with me. The paper has the bank's letterhead: I work in the bank. They had service from the bank. No rubber stamp or typewritten indication of status followed my name nor theirs. They appealed to me as an individual. I used my power to get them the bank's help: they got it. What was the misrepresentation? They have a paper … it is before you. I am given no designation; they are able to read.'

‘You have no property in France,' cried Guildenstern, suddenly outraged. ‘We made commercial inquiries about Bertillon and the bank, which were none too good but we decided to risk it, but about you none—only later, when it was too late. I assure you if we had known what we knew later, we would have signed nothing.'

The judge had now taken sides; he waved his hand with negligence towards Guildenstern, ‘Calm yourself, Monsieur. You will speak later. Meanwhile, it seems to me, as an observer, that you had made inquiries about the bank and had decided to take a
risk
.'

Guildenstern was furious at the false step. He cried, ‘This man has no property in France that can be seized. Does that look like a responsible personage, a personage who intends to pay his debts and constitute a proper commercial responsibility?'

Alphendéry looked at the plaintiffs. ‘You made inquiries as to whether the Bertillons and the bank had property that could be seized?'

‘Certainly: we found that there were bank deposits—and so forth—'

‘Does that look like good faith?' inquired Alphendéry of the judge.

‘An ordinary commercial proceeding,' said Lallant. ‘My clients simply do not express themselves in routine language.'

‘Exceptional language expresses exceptional intention,' said Alphendéry hotly. ‘I contend that Messieurs Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern came into this business,
because
they had picked up rumors about us, heard of the scandal being made by a person that need not be named, a person who uses his influence unduly to persecute Mr. Bertillon. I contend that these men approached us with the insistence that characterizes all their relations with us, because they thought they could utilize the reputed idiosyncrasies of the bank and its owner for their own purposes, that they designed us as a victim, they conceived a plot and they intended to hold the bank up, cut its purse, take its clients and by holding it up, I mean they intended to hold it up by legal means, in the first legal trap they could catch it in. Their admission that they first found out what the bank had that could be seized is a very fair testimony on my side.'

‘This is not pleading, this is abracadabra,' said Lallant hastily, for he saw his clients, Rosenkrantz especially, were raging.

‘Ah, ah,' said the judge, tapping happily on his desk. ‘There is much that is curious in this case,
Maître
. I am not prejudiced; I wish to hear the full story of this witness.'

‘Detective story—' said the
maître
with composure.

‘Repeat what you said,
Maître
,' said the judge.

‘I said, Invective has no force.' The
maître
was sober again: he continued, ‘This witness has no evidence whatever for what he says. It is pure fantasy. He is a very imaginative man.' He smiled at Alphendéry, like an appreciative opponent in a simulacrum-boxing contest, though. Alphendéry ignored this marking of the thrust. He nodded his head, appealing to the judge.

‘
Monsieur le Juge
, Maître Lallant represents also Monsieur Parouart, a sinister person without visible means of support, who sued the bank for fraud and whose case was thrown out of court for want of evidence,' he said in a louder voice, throwing his defiance into Maître Lallant's face. ‘Maître Lallant represents Messieurs Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, suing the bank on a dubious contract; he appears in court on other cases for Dr. Jacques Carrière, who, incidentally, is conducting a campaign against the bank and Mr. Bertillon in particular. I only suggest that it is unlikely that Maître Lallant's imagination would go so far as to take our side, if we had all the proofs and the purity of newborn babes.'

‘I work for who pays me,' said Lallant, unruffled.

‘As to
their
good faith,' said Alphendéry, ‘if they had not been accumulating complaints against us from the first, what is the explanation of one aspect of their behavior, which I am about to relate? Every time we had a private conversation in a café, at dinner, over the telephone, or informally at the bank, these German exiles ‘confirmed' (as they said) the conversation, by a précis or summary report of all that was said, in their own terms of course, by
pneumatique
or registered letter. Even the first conversation I reported to you, and in which they made an appeal to me on the basis of brotherhood and common faith, was ‘confirmed' to me by registered letter! Why were they laying a foundation for injury for themselves, why trying to trip us from the beginning?'

‘Have you these confirmations?' asked the judge.

‘Yes.'

‘Let me see them.'

The bank lawyer, Maître Lemaître, who was in attendance, passed them over.

‘We naturally took no such measures with them. We laughed at these registered letters and regarded them as freaks. In the second place,
Monsieur le Juge
, as soon as we had begun business with them, they made friends with me, Rosenkrantz especially, and plied me with questions, asking me, as a Jew, to communicate to them as Jews, private information about the status of the bank, its financial position, its balance sheet, and the rest, blithely supposing that I had a stronger fidelity to them than to the man who gave me my living and paid my salary. When I avoided or sidetracked their questions, they went to Mr. Bertillon and to subordinates in the bank, to find out my position in the bank, tried to confirm all that I had said by the mouths of others, asked Mr. Bertillon the same questions, and put their questions in such a way that he would think I had been babbling; they pried into my private affairs, gossiped about me to the other employees, complained about me to the two brothers Bertillon and to the twins Bertillon, in the hope of getting some advantage to themselves. I know all this, because, as we are a most united society at the bank, these things were immediately told back to me. But my private annoyances do not count.

‘Our contract was for nine months. As the seventh month passed and the eighth month was entered, they became more exigent, irritating our employees, till the whole business downstairs seemed upside down: it began to seem as if we were living for them. I need not say, that we had other things to occupy our minds and that the bond with these two brokers galled very much. Finally, in the middle of the eighth month, our manager, Mr. Manray, who has to see to the execution of clients' orders and keep their daily accounts straight, became so angry with them that he came to Mr. Bertillon and said he would rather resign than answer them again on the telephone.

‘We received a blue paper from them within thirty-six hours: they did not attempt mediation, compromise, or a parley. Like a man who at last sees that he holds the winning number in a lottery, they threw themselves on what they considered their prize—damages.

‘Shall I proceed to further points?'

‘What is all this?' asked Guildenstern rudely. ‘We have a contract which was not fulfilled; we have been damaged and we want reparations: the rest is beside the point. You could have sued us; you did not. We are the plaintiffs.'

‘We do not sue for a living,' said Alphendéry sharply. Rosenkrantz grinned derisively. ‘I should like to know what you do for a living. Eh? You are known.'

‘If you thought that our business, you'd try to imitate it,' said Alphendéry. ‘You might make some money; you wouldn't be forced to chicane.'

When they left, Maître Lemaître, who had not intervened at all during the hearing, said with some feeling, ‘You made an appeal I could not have. Before you began he was our enemy: he thought of you as swindlers, and after you finished he thought of our gentlemen as conspirators. You will see: I know my judges. You will hear no more of this. You cleverly reduced it to the size of a family quarrel—and the nationalist line—'

‘Oh, it was a low brawl,' said Alphendéry with discouragement. ‘Those fellows put things on such a plane.'

‘It's all right,' laughed Lemaître. ‘I am satisfied. Technically, of course, they can still claim damages; but I know my men: they will actually never get them. I think we can count—three down for the count.'

‘Three! Parouart? The landlords?'

‘Yes,' the lawyer turned to him smiling. ‘Perhaps luck is favoring the most careless man in the universe, Mr. Jules Bertillon! If it were not so, Mr. Bertillon would be even now selling his wife's ring to pay his blackmailers. What a man, what an erratic genius! Frankly I still can't believe that such a bank exists. I know it does; I have the papers. I plead for it. But— Tell me frankly, why doesn't he take at least one lawyer into his service and let him advise him?'

‘Jules would rather go to jail than tell the whole truth to anyone on earth: that's his foible.'

‘Ah, in that case,' said Lemaître, displeased.

‘Don't desert him,
Maître
; he is a splendid fellow; he is worth your defenses: it is a question of temperament! He has never been any different since he was born.'

‘Nevertheless, it is for your sake that I take the trouble,' said the lawyer, not entirely appeased: ‘I regard you as a friend, although our views on life and politics are at opposite poles. As a friend, if I might be allowed to say a word as a friend, I would advise you to leave Bertillon. He will wreck himself and you, too.'

‘I want to leave him but I can't when he is ill and harassed …'

‘In that case, I can only hope to help you by giving you legal advice,' said the lawyer, with a gallant smile. ‘No man can be dissuaded from his—' he softened the rest with an affectionate glance, ‘—his mistaken loyalties. Being a conformist, and having passed the age of vanity, my meaning is that there is no loyalty but to yourself in the world we live in. I count no other.'

They parted. By the next morning's mail, Michel Alphendéry received a booklet:
Modifications in the Assumptions of International Law since 1914
: by Marcel Lemaître, Doctor of Jurisprudence, Professor at the Sorbonne. He took it in, showed it to William. ‘Our bigwig is a learned fellow.'

‘Ah,' shrugged William: ‘I always knew he was some sort of a pedagogue: no wonder we get nowhere with our cases.'

They heard no more of the Rosenkrantz affair. It was their first piece of good luck, and the whole thing had been managed honestly.

* * *

Scene Seventy-six: Markets Down

A
ristide Raccamond was much torn between two ideas—the idea of worming himself into Jules's confidence and making a career for himself through the bank, backed by his wife's family; and the idea of supporting Carrière on his new-shining path to a ministry.

In France, once a minister, always a minister; and if Carrière reached power at an early age, and Aristide was his sucker-on, Aristide could count on the support of him and his party from then on: Aristide's fortune would be made, and he would have to worry no more. Aristide's life was not a happy one. Not only that once again, as at every other turning point in his career, he could not make up his mind between two tempting paths (or two chutes of disgrace), but he was worried by the very campaign of Carrière, which made it difficult for him to get clients for the bank, and to answer the complaints, doubts, and questions of the clients he had.

The markets all over the world were poor, and Aristide was forced to advise his clients not to buy—advice contrary to his ambitious nature. The future of markets was uncertain and Aristide, himself a heavy gambler, fretted all his waking hours over his own future. Apart from family troubles, he had others of his own. He was an officer of reserve, he was within the age limit, healthy, with no claims on him, and the news from Germany was depressing. Some people clamored for France to declare war on Germany straightaway before the latter threaded her way out of the present impasse, before she had time to restore Wilhelm II or acclaim his son or a dictator, before an
Anschluss
. Others declared that the German people were too socialist and too commonsensical to put up with any dictator of fake socialism of the Nazi variety; others said the Red movement would rise in Germany and there would be another union of soviets over the Rhine. In this case, too, France would be obliged to fight her to prevent the virus spreading: others urged her to fight
before
it got to that stage.

‘Germany is unprepared,' said some, ‘fight her now; march into Berlin and let her give up all hope of revenge: that is the only way to treat the Boches.' Whatever happened, these hopes, threats, and plans tugged poor Aristide this way and that by the ear.