Money (Oxford World’s Classics) (21 page)

In the Rue Vivienne, just as he was going into Kolb’s house, Saccard gave a start and again came to a halt. A light, crystalline music, coming up from the ground like the voice of the fairies of legend, wrapped itself around him, and he recognized the music of gold, the constant tinkling of this district of trade and speculation, the sound he had already heard that morning. The end of the day seemed to be linking up with the beginning. He basked in the caressing sound of that voice, as if it were confirming his good omens.

Kolb was in fact downstairs, in the smelting workshop; and as a friend of the family, Saccard went down to join him. In the bareness of the basement, eternally lit by large gas-flames, the two smelters were using spades to empty the zinc-lined chests, today full of Spanish coins which they were throwing into the crucible on the big, square furnace. The heat was fierce, one had to talk loudly to be heard amid the harmonica-like ringing, which resounded under the low vaulted ceiling. Newly forged ingots, slabs of gold with the vivid brilliance of new metal, were lined up along the table of the assayer, who fixed their values. And since that morning more than six million had gone through, giving the banker a profit of scarcely three or four hundred francs; for the arbitrage on gold, on the difference realized between two currency markets, is of the slightest, counted in thousandths, so very substantial quantities of molten metal are needed to yield any profit. Hence this tinkling of gold, this stream of gold from morning to night, from one year’s end to the next, down in this cellar where gold arrived in minted coins and left in gold ingots, only to return as coins and leave again as ingots, indefinitely, with the sole object of leaving in the hands of the dealer a few particles of gold.

Kolb was a small, very dark man, whose nose, like an eagle’s beak, emerging from a dense beard, gave away his Jewish origins, and as
soon as he had understood what Saccard was offering, even through the rattling hail of gold, he accepted.

‘Perfect!’ he cried. ‘Glad to be in on it, if Daigremont is in on it! And thank you for going to so much trouble!’

But they could scarcely hear each other, and both fell silent, standing there for a moment longer, blissfully dazed by that clear and furious ringing which made their flesh quiver, like too high a note on a violin, held for so long that it makes one shudder.

Outside, in spite of the return of good weather and a limpid May evening, Saccard, desperately tired, called another cab to take him home. A hard day, but well spent!

S
OME
difficulties arose, the affair dragged on, and five months went by before anything could be finalized. September was already coming to an end, and Saccard was exasperated to see that, in spite of his zealous efforts, obstacles kept springing up and a whole series of minor matters had to be settled if they were going to create something serious and substantial. Such was his impatience that at one point he almost sent the whole syndicate packing, suddenly captivated and enchanted by the idea of doing the whole thing with the Princess d’Orviedo alone. She had the millions needed for the initial launching, why shouldn’t she put them into this superb venture? They could always let in smaller clients for the later increases of capital he already had in mind. He was utterly sincere, convinced he would be bringing her an investment that would multiply her fortune, the fortune of the poor, ten times over, so she could give it away even more generously.

So one morning Saccard went up to see the Princess, and in his dual role as friend and business associate explained to her the intentions behind, and the mechanisms of, the bank he wanted to create. He told her everything, outlining the contents of Hamelin’s portfolio, omitting not one of the Eastern enterprises. Giving in to that tendency of his to become intoxicated with his own enthusiasm, and even arriving at religious faith through his burning desire for success, he revealed the mad dream of the Papacy in Jerusalem, and spoke of the definitive triumph of Catholicism, the Pope reigning over the Holy Land and dominating the world, supported by a budget fit for a king, thanks to the creation of the Treasury of the Holy Sepulchre. The Princess, who was fervently devout, was hardly affected at all except by this ultimate project, the pinnacle of the whole structure, whose fabulous grandeur appealed to that unbalanced imagination of hers that made her throw away her millions on good works of colossal and useless opulence. In fact, the French Catholics had just been dismayed and angered by the agreement the Emperor had concluded with the King of Italy, by which he undertook, under certain guaranteed conditions, to withdraw the detachment of French troops now occupying Rome.
*
This surely meant a Rome surrendered to Italy, and they could already imagine the Pope being driven out, dependent on charity,
wandering from city to city with a beggar’s staff; and what a prodigiously happy ending it would be for the Pope to find himself instead, pontiff and king in Jerusalem, established there and supported by a bank in which Christians the world over would consider it an honour to hold shares! It was so splendid that the Princess declared it the greatest idea of the century, worthy of inspiring passion in any well-born religious person. She thought it was bound to be a thundering success. Her esteem for Hamelin the engineer, whom she had been treating with great consideration ever since discovering he was a practising Catholic, grew even greater as a result. But she totally refused to be part of the enterprise, intent on being true to the vow she had made to give all her millions back to the poor, without ever again earning a single cent, wanting all the money gained from speculation to be lost, to be drained away by poverty, like poisoned water which had to disappear. The argument that the poor would profit from the speculation failed to touch her, even irritated her. No! No! That accursed spring would be dried up, that was her sole mission.

Disconcerted, all Saccard could do was take advantage of her sympathy to obtain her permission for something he had previously requested in vain. He had had the idea—or rather, it was Madame Caroline who had suggested it—of installing the Universal Bank, once it was set up, in the mansion itself; he himself had rather grander ideas, he would have liked a palace straight away. They would simply make a glass roof for the courtyard to serve as the main hall, and convert the whole of the ground floor, stables, and outbuildings into offices; on the first floor he would give up his reception-room to serve as boardroom, while his dining-room and six other rooms would provide more offices, and he would keep only a bedroom and bathroom for himself, since he could mainly live on the upper floor with the Hamelins, eating with them and spending his evenings there; so, with little expenditure the bank would be installed, in a slightly cramped but very respectable style. As owner of the building the Princess, with her hatred of any kind of financial dealing, had at first refused: never would such an abomination find shelter under her roof. Then, that day, with religion involved in the affair, she was moved by the grandeur of the aim and gave her consent. It was a very big concession, for it was with a shudder that she thought of allowing that infernal machine of a lending-house, that house of stock-markets and interest-rates, into her building, with all its machinery of death and ruin.

At last, a week after this abortive attempt, Saccard had the joy of seeing the project so long beset by obstacles suddenly come together in a few days. One morning Daigremont came to tell him that he had all the signatures and they could get things started. They then went over the proposed statutes one last time, and drew up the formal instrument of association. Nor was it a moment too soon for the Hamelins, whose life was beginning to get difficult again. For years Hamelin’s one dream had been to work as consultant engineer for a big lending-house: he would undertake, as he put it, to bring the water to the mill. Little by little he had caught Saccard’s fever, so he now burned with the same zeal and impatience. Madame Caroline, on the contrary, after being fired by enthusiasm at the idea of all the fine and useful things they were going to accomplish, seemed rather more cold and pensive now that they were getting into the troublesome and thorny details of its execution. Her sound common sense and upright nature could anticipate all sorts of dark and dirty pitfalls lying ahead; above all she trembled for her beloved brother, whom she sometimes laughingly called a ‘big ninny’ in spite of all his learning; not that she had the slightest doubt about the absolute honesty of their friend, who was so evidently devoted to making their fortune; but she had a strange sensation of the ground shifting beneath her feet, a fear of falling and being swallowed up if they so much as put a foot wrong.

That morning, when Daigremont had gone, a beaming Saccard came up to the workroom.

‘At last it’s done!’ he cried.

Hamelin, quite amazed and with tears in his eyes, went to shake his hands, almost crushing them in his fervour. And since Madame Caroline had merely turned towards him, looking rather pale, Saccard added:

‘Well then, what about you? Is that all you have to say? Doesn’t it make you any happier than that?’

Then she gave a pleasant smile.

‘But I assure you, of course I’m happy, very happy.’

When he had given her brother some details about the syndicate, now in its final form, she intervened in her quiet way:

‘So that’s allowed then, is it? For several people to get together and divide the shares of a bank between them, even before the shares have been issued?’

He made an emphatic gesture of affirmation.

‘But of course it’s allowed!… Do you think we’d be stupid enough to risk failure? Not to mention the fact that we need to have solid people, people who can influence the market if things are difficult at the beginning… That means four-fifths of our shares are in safe hands. Now we can go to the notary and sign the deed of association.’

She was bold enough to stand her ground.

‘I thought the law required subscription of the whole of the share capital.’

This time, really surprised, he looked her straight in the eye.

‘You’ve been reading the Code?’
*

She blushed slightly, for he had guessed right: the evening before, giving in to her uneasiness, that vague fear with no precise cause, she had done some reading on company law. For a moment she was tempted to lie. Then, with a laugh, she admitted it:

‘It’s true, I read the Code yesterday. I came out of it doubting my own honesty and everyone else’s, in the same way one emerges from medical books with every one of the ailments.’

But he was really annoyed, for the fact that she had tried to get information showed her to be distrustful and ready to keep watch over him with those woman’s eyes of hers, so inquisitive and intelligent.

‘Ah!’ he continued, brushing aside such vain scruples with a wave of his hand, ‘if you think we’re going to comply with all the fiddling complications of the Code! We’d never get anywhere that way, we’d be shackled at every step, while others, all our competitors, would be striding ahead right past us! No, no, I’m certainly not going to wait until all the capital has been subscribed; anyway, I prefer to hold back some shares, and I shall find a man we can trust, a frontman in short, for whom I can open an account.’

‘That’s not allowed,’ she declared simply but gravely with her splendid voice.

‘You’re right, it’s not allowed, but every company does it.’

‘Well they shouldn’t, because it’s wrong.’

Keeping his temper by an effort of will, Saccard thought it best to turn to Hamelin, who was listening with some embarrassment but keeping out of it.

‘My dear friend, I hope you don’t have any doubts about me… I’m an old campaigner with plenty of experience, you can place yourself in my hands for the financial side of things. Bring me good ideas and
I’ll undertake to make them as profitable as we could wish, at the least possible risk. I believe a practical man can’t say better than that.’

The engineer, with his invincible timidity and weakness, turned the matter into a joke to avoid making a direct reply:

‘Oh, Caroline will keep you in order; she’s a born schoolmistress.’

‘And I’ll be very happy to be in her classroom,’ Saccard gallantly declared.

Even Madame Caroline had started to laugh again. And the conversation continued in a familiar, good-natured manner.

‘The thing is, I’m very fond of my brother, and I’m very fond of you too, more so than you think, and it would really hurt me to see you getting involved in shady dealings, which in the end lead to nothing but disaster and sorrow… And look, while we’re on the subject, I have a real terror of speculation and playing the stock-market. When you had me copy out the proposed statutes I was so pleased when I read Article 8, stating that the company was strictly forbidden to deal in futures. That meant, no speculation, didn’t it? And then you disabused me, making fun of me, explaining that the article was simply cosmetic, a stylistic formula that all companies are honour-bound to include but not one of them observes… Do you know what I would like, if it were up to me? I would like it if, instead of these shares, these fifty thousand shares that you’re launching, you only issued bonds. Oh, you see how knowledgeable I’ve become since reading the Code! I now know that one cannot speculate in bonds, and that a bondholder is simply a lender who earns a certain percentage on his loan without having any part of the profits, while a shareholder is an associate who runs the risk of profit and loss… Tell me, why can’t we have bonds instead?—That would greatly reassure me and I’d be so happy!’

She jokingly exaggerated the tone of supplication in her request, to mask her real anxiety. And Saccard replied in the same vein, with a comic show of anger.

‘Bonds, bonds! Never!… What the devil do you want with bonds, I ask you? That’s just dead stuff… What you have to understand is that speculation, playing the market, is the central motor, the very heart of a vast affair such as ours. Yes! It brings new blood into the system, it takes small streams of it from all over the place then collects it together and sends it out in rivers, in all directions, creating an enormous circulation of money which is the very lifeblood of great
enterprises. Without it major movements of capital, and the great civilizing works that result, are fundamentally impossible… It’s the same for limited-liability companies—what an outcry there was against them! Weren’t we told, over and over, that they were disreputable and dangerous? The truth is that without them we wouldn’t have railways or any of the great new enterprises that have modernized the world; no single fortune would have been sufficient to carry them to success, just as no single individual, nor even any group of individuals, would have been willing to take the risks. Risk, that’s the essential, that and the grandeur of the aim too. There has to be a vast project, a project big enough to capture the imagination; there has to be hope of substantial gain, of winning a jackpot that will give ten times the initial outlay, unless of course it gets swept away instead; that’s what provokes passions, so life floods in, everyone brings his money, and the world can be reshaped. What evil do you see in that? The risks are taken voluntarily and spread over an infinite number of people, unevenly and in line with the size of each person’s wealth and audacity. You can lose but you can also win, you hope for a lucky number but you have to be ready for an unlucky one, and mankind has no more stubborn nor more ardent dream than trying one’s luck and winning everything through a whim of fortune, becoming a king, or a god!’