Money (Oxford World’s Classics) (15 page)

So, her interest aroused, Madame Caroline had been watching her neighbours with a tender sympathy, without any unpleasant curiosity, and gradually, looking out over the garden, she began to see into their life, the life they hid with such jealous care from the street. There was still a horse in the stable and a carriage in the outhouse, tended by an old servant who was valet, coachman, and concierge all in one. Similarly there was a cook who also acted as housemaid; but though the carriage still went out from the main entrance with the horse properly harnessed, carrying these ladies on their errands, and though the table still showed a certain luxury in the winter, for the fortnightly dinners for a few friends, through what lengthy fasting and with what sordid and constant economies had that mendacious appearance of wealth been bought! In a small shed, safe from all eyes, there was perpetual washing to reduce the laundress’s bill, poor old garments worn out from soaping, mended thread by thread, and just
four vegetables peeled for the evening meal, bread left on a board to go stale so they would eat less; all sorts of miserly practices, petty and touching; the old coachman sewing up the holes in Mademoiselle’s boots, the cook using ink to cover up the ends of Madame’s too shabby gloves. And the mother’s dresses passed on to the daughter after ingenious alterations, and the hats that lasted for years, thanks to changes of flowers and ribbons. When no visitor was expected the reception-rooms on the ground floor were carefully locked up, along with the large rooms on the first floor; for in all this vast house the two women now occupied only one small room, which served as their dining-room and boudoir. When the window was half-open the Countess could be seen mending her linen, like a needy little bourgeois housewife, while the daughter, in between her piano-playing and watercolours, knitted stockings and mittens for her mother. One day when there was a big storm both women were seen going down to the garden to gather up the sand the ferocious rain was washing off the path.

By now Madame Caroline knew their history. The Countess de Beauvilliers had suffered a great deal because of her husband, a profligate about whom she had never complained. One evening he had been carried back to her in Vendôme dying, with a bullet-hole in his body. There was talk of a hunting accident, a shot fired by a jealous gamekeeper whose wife or daughter he must have seduced. And the worst of it was that there disappeared with him the once-colossal fortune of the Beauvilliers, based on huge areas of land and royal domains; the Revolution had already reduced it, and he and his father had finished it off. Of all those vast possessions only one farm remained, Les Aublets, a few leagues from Vendôme, bringing in about fifteen thousand francs a year, the sole source of income for the widow and her two children. The mansion on the Rue de Grenelle had been sold long since, and the one on the Rue Saint-Lazare, mortgaged to the hilt, ate up the greater part of the fifteen thousand francs from the farm, and was also in danger of being sold if the interest wasn’t paid; there remained scarcely more than six or seven thousand francs for the maintenance of four people and the lifestyle of this noble family which refused to renounce its status. Eight years ago, when she had become a widow with a boy of twenty and a girl of seventeen, even as her house collapsed around her, the Countess had stiffened in her aristocratic pride, vowing she would live on bread and
water rather than lower her standards. From that time on she had had but one thought—to maintain her status, marry her daughter to a man of equal rank, and make a soldier of her son. Ferdinand had at first caused her mortal anguish as a result of some youthful follies and debts that had had to be paid; but after being warned about their situation in a solemn interview he had never done that again, being a tender soul at heart but idle and useless, cut off from any kind of work and with no possible place in contemporary society. Now he was a soldier of the Pope he was still a cause of secret anxiety for her, for his health was poor and beneath his proud appearance he was delicate, his blood impoverished and thin, which made the Roman climate dangerous for him. As for the marriage of Alice, it was so slow in coming that the sad mother’s eyes would fill with tears as she looked at her, seeing her already ageing, withering away in the long wait. For all her appearance of melancholy and insignificance Alice was not stupid, and she longed ardently for life, for a man who would love her, for happiness; but not wishing to sadden the household further she pretended she had renounced everything, joking about marriage and saying she had a vocation for spinsterhood; and at night she sobbed into her pillow, thinking she would die of the grief of being alone. The Countess, however, through her miserly miracles, had managed to save twenty thousand francs, which was Alice’s entire dowry; she had also saved from the wreckage some jewellery, a bracelet, some rings, some earrings, which might be worth about ten thousand francs; a very meagre dowry, a package of wedding gifts of which she did not even dare to speak, hardly enough indeed to face the immediate expenses if the long-awaited husband should appear. And yet she would not give up hope, but went on struggling, not surrendering any of the privileges of her birth, always just as haughty and pretending to an appropriate fortune, incapable of going out on foot or cutting back one side-dish from an evening reception, but penny-pinching in her hidden life, condemning herself to weeks of plain potatoes with no butter, to add fifty francs to the eternally insufficient dowry for her daughter. It was a painful and puerile daily heroism, while with each day the house crumbled a little more about their heads.

So far Madame Caroline had not had the opportunity to speak to the Countess and her daughter. She had ended up knowing the most intimate details of their life, even the things they thought they had
kept hidden from the whole world, yet they had done no more than exchange glances, but glances of the sort that leave behind a sudden sensation of close sympathy. It was the Princess d’Orviedo who was to bring them together. She had had the idea of creating, for her Work Foundation, a sort of supervisory committee composed of ten ladies who met twice a month, made careful inspections of the Foundation, and checked on all the services. As she had reserved for herself the choice of these ladies, among the first she had selected was Madame de Beauvilliers, one of her great friends in former times, though simply a neighbour now that she had withdrawn from the world. And as the supervisory committee had suddenly lost their secretary, Saccard, who was still in charge of the administration of the institution, had thought of recommending Madame Caroline as a model secretary whose like could not be found; in fact the job was quite demanding; there was a great deal of paperwork, and even some physical tasks that these ladies found rather repugnant; and from the start Madame Caroline had shown herself to be an admirable charity-worker, for her unsatisfied maternal longings and her desperate love of children fired her with an active tenderness for all these poor beings that they were trying to save from the gutters of Paris. So, at the most recent meeting of the committee she had met the Countess de Beauvilliers, who, however, only greeted her rather coldly to hide her secret embarrassment, feeling, no doubt, that here was one who knew of her dire poverty. Both now exchanged a greeting every time their eyes met and it would have been grossly rude to pretend not to know each other.

One day, in the big workroom, while Hamelin was making corrections to a map in accordance with some new calculations and Saccard was standing watching him work, Madame Caroline, at the window as usual, was gazing at the Countess and her daughter making their tour of the garden. That morning she could see they were wearing shoes that a rag-picker would not have gathered up from the road.

‘Oh, those poor women!’ she murmured. ‘How terrible it must be, all that charade of wealth they feel they must perform.’

And she drew back, hiding behind the window-curtain for fear the mother might see her and suffer even more from being watched. For herself, she had become more tranquil during the three weeks in which she had lingered each morning at this window; the great pain of her abandonment was no longer so sharp; it seemed as if the sight
of other people’s disasters gave her more courage to accept her own, that disaster she had thought was the ruin of her whole life. To her surprise she found herself laughing again.

For just a moment more she followed the women in the mossy green of the garden, with the air of one deep in thought. Then, turning to Saccard, she quickly said:

‘Just tell me why I can’t be sad… No, it just doesn’t last, it has never lasted, I can’t be sad, no matter what happens to me… Is it egoism? Really, I don’t think so. That would be too awful, and besides, no matter how cheerful I am, I still break my heart at the sight of the slightest suffering. Make sense of that if you can—I am cheerful, yet I’d weep over all the unhappy souls I see if I didn’t restrain myself, knowing that the smallest bit of bread would do them much more good than my useless tears.’

As she said this she laughed with her splendidly robust laugh, that of a valiant soul who preferred action to garrulous expressions of pity.

‘God knows, however,’ she continued, ‘if I haven’t had cause enough to despair of everything. Oh, luck has not been over-favourable to me thus far… After my marriage, that hell I fell into, insulted and beaten, I thought the only thing left was to drown myself. But I didn’t; and just a fortnight later I was throbbing with joyfulness and filled with immense hope, when I set off with my brother for the East… And when we came back to Paris, when we were without almost everything, I had some appalling nights, in which I could see us dying of hunger over our lovely plans. We didn’t die, and I began once more to dream of amazing things, happy things that sometimes made me laugh even on my own… And recently, when I was dealt that blow I don’t yet dare to speak of, it seemed as if my heart had been torn out; yes, I definitely felt that it had stopped beating; I thought it was all over, I thought I was finished, quite destroyed. And then, not at all! Life picks me up again, and today I’m laughing and tomorrow I shall have hope, I shall want to go on living, want to live forever… Isn’t it extraordinary, to be unable to be sad for long!’

Saccard, who was now laughing himself, shrugged his shoulders.

‘Bah! You’re just like everybody else. That’s how life is.’

‘Do you think so?’ she cried in astonishment. ‘It seems to me that there are some people who are so sad, never cheerful, and who make life impossible for themselves, painting everything so black… Oh, it’s not that I have illusions about the sweetness and beauty life offers.
It has been too harsh with me, I have seen it up close, everywhere and abundantly. It is execrable, when it isn’t vile. But there you are! I love it. Why? I don’t know. Everything around me can topple and collapse, but the next day there I am, still cheerful and confident among the ruins… I’ve often thought that my case is, in microcosm, the case of all humanity, living in the midst of terrible wretchedness, yes, but always cheered by the youthfulness of the next generation. After each one of these crises that knock me down there comes a sort of new youth, a springtime, whose promises of new life revive me and lift up my heart. All of that is so true that after some great sorrow, if I go out into the street in the sun, I immediately begin once more to love, to hope, and be happy. And age has no influence on me, I am naive enough to grow old without noticing… You see, I’ve read far too much for a woman, I don’t know at all where I’m going, any more indeed than this great world does. Only, in spite of myself, it seems to me that I’m going, that we’re all going, to something very nice and perfectly happy.’

She ended up making a joke of it, though very moved and trying to hide the emotion attached to her hopes; while her brother, who had looked up, was gazing at her with an adoration full of gratitude.

‘Oh, you,’ he cried, ‘you’re just made for catastrophes, you really embody the love of life!’

In these daily morning conversations an excitement had gradually become evident, and if Madame Caroline was getting back to that natural joyfulness that was part of her very health, this derived from the courage Saccard brought to them with his active fervour for great ventures. The matter was almost decided, they would exploit the famous portfolio. Under the outbursts of his shrill voice, everything came to life and became extravagant. First they would get their hands on the Mediterranean, they would conquer it with the General United Steamboat Company; and he listed the ports of all the countries along the coast where they would set up stations, mixing some faded classical memories into his enthusiasm as a speculator, celebrating this sea, the only sea the ancient world had known, this blue sea around which civilization had flourished, its waves lapping the ancient cities: Athens, Rome, Tyre, Alexandria, Carthage, Marseilles, the cities that created Europe. Then, once this vast path to the Orient had been secured, they would start over there in Syria with the little venture of the Carmel Silver Mines Company, just a few millions to
pick up along the way, but an excellent launching-pad, for the idea of a silver mine, of silver found in the earth and collected by the shovelful, this was always powerfully attractive to the public, especially when you could attach to it a prestigious and resonant name like Carmel.
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There were coal mines there too, coal lying close to the surface that would be worth its weight in gold when once the country was covered with factories; not to mention some other smaller ventures which would serve as interludes: the founding of banks, syndicates for the flourishing businesses, exploitation of the vast forests of Lebanon, whose giant trees were simply rotting on the spot for lack of roads. Then at last he came to the big one, the Oriental Railway Company, and at this point he began to talk wildly, for this railway system, cast like a net across Asia Minor from one end to the other, this, for him, was speculation, this was the life of money, taking hold of that old world in one fell swoop like a new prey, still intact, a prey of incalculable wealth, hidden under the ignorance and dirt of centuries. He could smell treasure, and seemed to whinny like a warhorse at the scent of battle.