Money (Oxford World’s Classics) (25 page)

‘Oh what a fuss about nothing! Five hundred shares, an initial outlay of sixty-two thousand five hundred francs! If he can’t pay that back within six months out of the first profits then we might as well go and jump in the Seine right now, and not bother with any sort of venture… No, you can rest assured, only the inept are destroyed by speculation.’

She remained stern, in the growing darkness of the room. But two lamps were brought in, casting a bright light over the walls, with the vast maps and vivid watercolours that so often made her dream of those far-off lands. The plain still lay bare, the mountains still barred the horizon, and she called to mind the distress of that ancient world, slumbering over its treasures, a land that science was about to awaken
from its filth and ignorance. What fine, great things were waiting to be achieved! Gradually she began to visualize new generations and a stronger, happier humanity springing from the ancient soil, once more beneath the plough of progress.

‘Speculation, speculation,’ she repeated mechanically, struggling with doubt. ‘Ah! It fills my troubled heart with anguish.’

Saccard, who was well acquainted with her thoughts on the subject, had seen on her face the reflection of her hope for the future.

‘Yes, speculation, why does the word frighten you?… Speculation is the very spur of life itself, the everlasting desire to struggle and go on living… If I dared to make a comparison, I could convince you…’

He laughed again, seized by scruples of delicacy. Then he dared after all, always ready to be brutal with women.

‘Let’s see now, do you think that without… how shall I put it?—that without lust there would be many children?… Out of every hundred children that might have been, barely one is actually produced. It’s excess that produces what is necessary, isn’t it?’

‘Certainly,’ she replied with embarrassment.

‘Well, without speculation there would be no business, dear friend… Why the devil do you think I would put out my money and risk my fortune, if I didn’t have the promise of some extraordinary pleasure, some sudden happiness that offers me heaven?… With the lawful and mediocre rewards of work, the prudent balance of day-to-day transactions, life is just a desert of extreme platitude, a swamp in which all energies lie dormant and stagnant; while if you forcefully set a dream ablaze on the horizon, promising that with one sou a hundred will be gained, then invite all those who lie asleep to get up and hunt for the impossible, for millions won in two hours, amid the most frightful dangers—now the race begins at once with ten times the energy, and there is such a scramble that even while sweating solely for their own pleasure, people sometimes manage to produce children, that is, living things, great and splendid things… Ah, my word! There is a lot of useless filth, but the world would end without it.’

Madame Caroline decided to laugh too; for there was no prudishness about her.

‘So,’ she said, ‘your conclusion is that we must resign ourselves to it because it’s all part of nature’s plan… You’re right, life isn’t clean.’

She had acquired real courage at the thought that every new step forward had been made through blood and mire. You had to have the
will for it. She kept her eyes fixed on the maps and drawings all around the walls, and the future took shape for her, ports, canals, roads and railways, the countryside with vast farms equipped like factories, and new towns, full of health and intelligence, where people would live to be very old and very well-educated.

‘Oh, all right,’ she continued gaily, ‘I have to give in, as always… Let’s just do some good, so that we can be forgiven.’

Her brother, who had been keeping quiet, came over and kissed her. She wagged a finger at him.

‘Oh! You’re a real coaxer, as I know too well… Tomorrow, when you’ve left us, you won’t be worrying much about what’s happening here; and once you’ve arrived and got stuck into your work everything will be fine, you’ll be dreaming of triumph, while back here everything might be cracking up under our feet.’

‘Ah, but’, Saccard exclaimed jokingly, ‘it’s been decided that he’s leaving you here beside me as a constable, ready to nab me if I misbehave!’

All three burst out laughing.

‘And I would nab you too, you can count on it! Remember what you’ve promised, to us of course, and to so many others, dear old Dejoie for instance, whom I recommended to you… Ah, and our neighbours too, these poor Beauvilliers ladies whom I saw today overseeing the washing of some clothes by their cook, no doubt to reduce their laundry bills.’

For a moment all three stayed chatting very amicably, and final arrangements were made for Hamelin’s departure.

As Saccard was going back down to his office his valet told him a woman was insisting on waiting for him, even though he had told her there was a meeting and Monsieur would doubtless be unable to see her. As he was tired Saccard’s first reaction was anger, and he ordered the valet to send her away; then, feeling he owed a debt to his success and fearful of changing his luck if he closed his door, he thought better of it. The flow of callers was growing every day, and this crowd of people was intoxicating.

The office was lit by a single lamp and he could not see his visitor clearly.

‘I’ve been sent by Monsieur Busch, Monsieur…’

Anger kept Saccard on his feet, and he didn’t ask her to sit down. In that reedy voice, in that impossibly huge body, he had recognized
Madame Méchain. Some shareholder this, a woman who bought securities by the pound!

She calmly explained that Busch had sent her to get information about the share-issue of the Universal Bank. Were any shares still available? Would it be possible to get some, along with the bonus for members of the syndicate? But all that, surely, was just a pretext, a way of getting in to see the house, to find out what was happening here and see how he himself was doing; for her narrow eyes, like holes drilled in the fat of her face, were ferreting about everywhere then turning their gaze back on him, probing him down to his very soul. Busch, after waiting patiently for quite a while, giving the great affair of the abandoned child plenty of time to mature, was now ready to act and had sent her to spy out the land.

‘There are none left,’ Saccard replied brutally.

She realized she would learn nothing more from him, and it would be unwise to try anything. So that day, without giving him time to push her out, she moved to the door herself.

‘Why don’t you ask me for some shares for yourself?’ Saccard went on, intending to be offensive.

In her lisping voice, her shrill voice, with its mocking tone, she replied:

‘Oh, that’s not my style of business… I just wait.’

At that moment he caught sight of the huge, worn leather bag she always had with her and shuddered. On a day when everything had gone like clockwork, a day when he had been so happy to see the birth of the bank so long desired, was this rascally old woman to be the wicked fairy, the sort that casts spells on princesses in their cradles? He felt that bag of hers to be full of depreciated shares and unbankable bonds, that bag she had brought right into the offices of his newborn bank; and he somehow understood that she was threatening him, that she would wait as long as it took to bury his own shares in it when the bank collapsed. She was the crow, cawing as it sets off with the marching army and follows it to the evening of carnage, then hovers and swoops down, knowing there will be plenty of dead to eat.

‘Au revoir, Monsieur,’ said La Méchain as she left, breathless and perfectly polite.

A
MONTH
later, in early November, the installation of the Universal Bank was not yet completed. Carpenters were still busy on the woodwork, and painters were finishing the puttying of the enormous glass roof with which the courtyard was now covered.

The cause of the delay was Saccard, forever dissatisfied with the meanness of the establishment, and prolonging the work with his demands for luxury. Unable to push back the walls to satisfy his perpetual dream of hugeness, he had ended up losing his temper, leaving Madame Caroline with the task of getting rid of the contractors. So it was she who was supervising the placing of the last cash desks, of which there was an extraordinary number. The courtyard, now transformed into the central hall, was surrounded by cash desks: each had its own grille, severe and imposing, with its own brass plate inscribed in black. In short, the conversion, even if carried out in a rather limited space, was very well done: on the ground floor were those departments that needed to be in constant contact with the public, the various cash desks, issuing offices, all the day-to-day operations of the bank; and on the upper floor the bank’s internal mechanisms, management, correspondence, accounts, offices for staff and some for dealing with disputes. In all, within that limited space more than two hundred employees were at work. And what was striking, from the moment one entered, even in all the commotion of workmen hammering in the last of the nails, while gold tinkled in the tills, was that air of severity, an air of antique probity, vaguely reminiscent of a sacristy, that no doubt derived from the premises, from this old, dark, and silent house in the shadow of the trees of the next-door garden. It felt as if one were entering a house of religion.

One afternoon, coming back from the Bourse, Saccard himself felt this, much to his surprise. That consoled him for the lack of decorative gilding. He told Madame Caroline of his satisfaction:

‘Ah well, after all, for a beginning it’s quite nice. It has a homely feeling, it’s a real little chapel. Later on we’ll see… Thank you, my lovely friend, for all the trouble you’re taking while your brother’s away.’

And as it was a principle of his to make use of all unforeseen circumstances, he now devoted himself to developing the austere appearance of the establishment, demanding that his employees conduct themselves like young priests; they spoke only in measured tones, and received and paid out money with a quite clerical discretion.

In all his tumultuous life Saccard had never thrown himself so heartily into so much activity. From seven o’clock in the morning, before all his employees, even before the office-boy had lit the fire, he was in his office going through the mail, answering the most urgent letters. Then, until eleven o’clock it was one long gallop—of friends and important clients, stockbrokers, kerb traders, jobbers, a whole horde of financial agents, not to mention the procession of various department heads coming for orders. Saccard himself, as soon as he had a minute of respite, would get up and make a rapid inspection of the various offices, where employees lived in terror of these sudden appearances, which always happened at different times of the day. At eleven o’clock he went up to have lunch with Madame Caroline, ate heartily and drank similarly, with the ease of a thin man who could do so without any problem, and the full hour he spent there was not wasted, for this was the time when he, as he put it, quizzed his beautiful friend, that is, asked her opinion on men and on things, though he was rarely ready to profit by her great good sense. At midday he went out to the Bourse, as he liked to be one of the first there, to see people and chat. But he did not openly speculate, he was just there as if at a natural meeting-place, where he was certain to encounter clients of his bank. However, his influence was already perceptible, he had returned to the Bourse victorious, a man of substance, supported now by real millions; and those in the know spoke quietly to each other while looking in his direction, whispering outlandish rumours and predicting his imminent sovereignty. Towards half-past three he was always back at the bank, attending to the tiresome chore of signing, so practised now in this mechanical movement of his hand that his mind was left free, and he could talk as he wished, send for employees, give answers, and settle deals without ceasing to sign. Until six o’clock he went on receiving visitors, then finished off the day’s work and prepared that of the morrow. When he went back up to Madame Caroline it was for a meal more copious than the one at eleven o’clock, delicate fish and especially game, and his whims about the wine meant he dined with
burgundy, bordeaux, or champagne in accordance with the fortunes of the day.

‘Just dare to say I’m not behaving myself!’ he would cry sometimes, with a smile. ‘Instead of chasing women and going to clubs and theatres, I live here at your side, like a good bourgeois… you must write and tell your brother, to reassure him.’

He was not quite as well-behaved as he claimed, since he had recently taken a fancy to a little singer at the Bouffes,
*
and he had even had his turn with Germaine Coeur who, however, had given him no satisfaction. The truth was that by the evening he was half-dead with fatigue. Anyway, he was living in such a state of desire and anxiety for success that his other appetites would remain diminished and paralysed until he could feel triumphant at having indisputably mastered fortune.

‘Bah!’ Madame Caroline would cheerfully answer. ‘My brother has always been so well-behaved that good behaviour for him is more a natural condition than a merit… I wrote to him yesterday that I had persuaded you not to regild the boardroom. That will please him more.’

It was on a very cold afternoon in the early days of November, when Madame Caroline was just giving the head painter the order simply to clean the paintwork of the boardroom, that a servant brought her a card, saying that the person concerned was very insistent on seeing her. The rather grubby card bore the crudely printed name of Busch. The name was unknown to her, but she gave the order for the visitor to be sent up to her brother’s study where she received callers.

If Busch had been patient for nearly six months, not using the extraordinary discovery he had made of Saccard’s natural son, it was mainly for the reasons he had foreseen, the rather poor result it would be to get only the six hundred francs from the notes given to the mother, and the extreme difficulty of blackmailing Saccard to get more, say a reasonable sum of some thousands of francs. A widower, with no encumbrances, no fear of scandal—how could one terrorize him? How make him pay dearly for this ugly gift of a natural child, raised in the midst of filth, and who could turn out to be a pimp or murderer? Of course La Méchain had laboriously drawn up a long list of expenses, amounting to about six thousand francs, consisting of several loans of twenty sous to her cousin Rosalie Chavaille, the
boy’s mother, then the cost of the unfortunate mother’s illness, her burial, the care of her grave, and finally what she herself had spent on Victor since he had become her charge, his food and clothing, all sorts of things. But if Saccard turned out to be unsentimental about his fatherhood, wasn’t it likely that he would just send them packing? Nothing on earth could actually prove his paternity, except the child’s resemblance to his father; and all they would get from him then would be the money for the notes—and that only if he failed to declare them nullified by the lapse of time.