Money (Oxford World’s Classics) (40 page)

In the morning, in his luxurious Louis-Quatorze office, Saccard now had to defend his door, when he wanted to work, for there was an assault upon it, a procession like that of a court attending a king’s levée, a procession of courtiers, businessmen, supplicants of all sorts, clustering around his omnipotence in a frenzied mixture of adoration and begging. One morning during the first days of July, he was especially merciless, giving orders that nobody should be allowed in. While the antechamber was crammed with people, a crowd which, in spite of the usher, insisted on waiting, hoping against hope, Saccard had shut himself in with two department heads to finish planning the new share-issue. After looking at several suggestions, he had just decided on an arrangement which, thanks to the new issue of a hundred thousand shares, would allow the complete release of the two hundred thousand old shares, on each of which only one hundred and fifty francs had been paid; to reach this end, the share-issue reserved for shareholders only, at the rate of one new share for two
old ones, would be priced at eight hundred and fifty francs, to be paid immediately, that is, five hundred francs for the capital, and a premium of three hundred and fifty francs for the proposed release.
*
But complications arose, for there was still a big hole to be filled, a fact that made Saccard very edgy. The noise of the voices in the antechamber irritated him. This Paris, grovelling at his feet, all this homage that he normally received with a despot’s amiable informality, on that day simply filled him with contempt. And when Dejoie, who sometimes acted as usher in the morning, took it upon himself to walk round, and appear at a little door from the passageway, he greeted him with fury.

‘What? I told you nobody, nobody, d’you hear?… Here, take my walking-stick, plant it at my door and let them kiss that!’

Quite unmoved, Dejoie ventured to insist.

‘I beg your pardon, Monsieur, it’s the Countess de Beauvilliers. She begged me, and as I know Monsieur likes to be nice to her…’

‘Ah!’ cried Saccard in fury. ‘She can go to the devil along with all the rest!’

But then he thought better of it, and with a gesture of suppressed anger, said:

‘Let her in, since I’m fated not to get any peace!… Through this little side-door, so the whole herd doesn’t come in with her.’

Saccard greeted the Countess with the prickliness of a man still rather annoyed. Even the sight of Alice, who accompanied her mother, and her air of quiet seriousness, did not calm him. He had sent the heads of department away, and was thinking only of when he could call them back and get on with his work.

‘I beg you, please be quick, Madame, I am dreadfully busy.’

The Countess, always slow to speak, with her air of sadness as of a fallen queen, stopped short in surprise.

‘But Monsieur, if I’m disturbing you…’

He had to ask them to be seated, and the girl, the braver one, was the first to sit down with a resolute air, while her mother went on:

‘Monsieur, I’ve come for some advice… I am in the most painful state of indecision, and I feel I shall never be able to make up my mind by myself…’

She reminded him that when the bank was founded, she had taken a hundred shares, which had been doubled at the first increase of capital, and doubled again at the second increase, which now meant
four hundred shares on which, including the premiums, she had paid eighty-seven thousand francs. To pay this sum, above and beyond her savings of twenty thousand francs, she had had to borrow seventy thousand francs on her farm, Les Aublets.

‘And now’, she continued, ‘I have a buyer for Les Aublets… so, if there is indeed going to be a new share-issue, I could place our entire fortune in your bank.’

Saccard was calming down now, flattered to see these two poor ladies, the last of a great and ancient race, standing before him, so anxious and trusting. He rapidly told them all about it, with facts and figures.

‘Yes, quite right, a new share-issue, I’m just dealing with it… The share-price will be eight hundred and fifty francs, with the premium… Well now, we’re saying you have four hundred shares, so you’ll be allocated two hundred new ones, for which you’ll need to pay one hundred and seventy thousand francs. But all your shares will be released, and you will have six hundred shares totally your own, with nothing further owing.’

They didn’t understand, so he had to explain how the premium would release the shares, and they remained rather pale, faced by these big numbers, and discomfited at the thought of the boldness of the risk they would be taking.

‘In terms of money,’ the mother eventually murmured, ‘that would be all right… I am being offered two hundred and forty thousand francs for Les Aublets, which was formerly worth four hundred thousand, so when the money already borrowed is paid back, we would have just enough to make the investment… But oh! what a terrifying thing, to see this fortune moved around like this, and our whole existence put at risk!’

Her hands were trembling, and there was a silence, during which she reflected on the chain of events that had taken first her savings, then the seventy thousand francs she had borrowed, and was now threatening to take her entire farm. Her innate respect for landed property, for ploughed fields, grasslands, and forests, and her repugnance for trafficking in money, that base Jewish activity, unworthy of her race, came back to her, filling her with anguish at this moment of decision, when everything was about to be concluded. Her daughter gazed at her in silence, with pure and ardent eyes.

Saccard gave her an encouraging smile.

‘Indeed, it’s clear you will need to have confidence in us… but the
figures are there. Just examine them and there’s no more room for hesitation… Let’s say you go ahead, you’ll then have six hundred shares, which, when released, will have cost you a total of two hundred and fifty-seven thousand francs. In fact, they are quoted today at an average of thirteen hundred francs, which makes a total for you of seven hundred and eighty thousand francs. You have already more than tripled your money… And that will go on, you’ll see how the price will rise after the flotation! I promise you a million before the end of the year.’

‘Oh, Mama!’ said Alice with a sigh, as if in spite of herself.

A million!—The house in the Rue Saint-Lazare freed of its mortgages, cleansed of the grime of poverty! The household set back on a proper footing, delivered from the nightmare of keeping a carriage but not having enough to eat! The daughter married, with a respectable dowry, able at last to have a husband and children, that joy granted to the lowliest poor woman of the streets. And the son, who was being killed by the climate of Rome, released from all that, able once more to maintain his rank while waiting to serve that grand cause which now made so little use of him. The mother re-established in her high position, able to pay her coachman, not needing to worry about adding an extra dish to her Tuesday dinners, no longer having to condemn herself to fasting for the rest of the week! That million blazed before them; it was salvation, it was their dream.

The Countess, quite won over, turned towards her daughter, to share in the decision.

‘Well, what do you think?’

But the daughter said nothing more, slowly closing her eyelids to dim the shining of her eyes.

‘Yes, I know,’ her mother went on, smiling in her turn, ‘I was forgetting that you want me to be absolute mistress in this matter… But I know how courageous you are, and everything you hope for…’

Then, turning to Saccard:

‘Ah, Monsieur, people speak so highly of you!… We can’t go anywhere without someone telling us some lovely and very touching stories about you. It’s not only the Princess d’Orviedo but all my friends, who are full of enthusiasm for your work. Many of them envy me for being one of your first shareholders, and if people listened to the advice of those friends, they’d sell their very beds to buy your shares!’

Pleasantly joking, she added:

‘I find them a little mad, yes indeed, a little bit mad! It’s no doubt because I’m no longer young enough… My daughter is one of your admirers. She believes in your mission, and campaigns for it in all the salons we visit.’

Saccard, quite charmed, looked at Alice, and at that moment she was so animated, so vibrant with her faith that she seemed to him really pretty, in spite of her sallow complexion and her rather skinny, already withered neck. So he felt himself to be great and good, thinking he had made the happiness of this poor creature, who became pretty at the mere hope of a husband. Then in a low and faraway voice, she said:

‘Oh, it’s so splendid, that far-off conquest… Yes, it’s a new era, with the cross shining forth…’

It was the mystery, it was what remained unspoken, and her voice sank lower still, fading into a gasp of rapture. Saccard, in any case, was silencing her with a friendly gesture, for he would not allow anyone to speak in his presence of the grand affair, the supreme and hidden goal. His gesture indicated that one must always aim towards it, but never speak of it. In the sanctuary, the censers were swinging in the hands of the few initiates.

After a moment of tender silence, the Countess at last stood up.

‘Ah well, Monsieur, I am convinced, I shall write to my lawyer to say I accept the offer for Les Aublets… May God forgive me if I do wrong!’

Saccard, also standing now, declared in a voice of deeply felt gravity:

‘It is God himself who inspires you, Madame, be assured of it.’

As he was accompanying the ladies to the passageway, to avoid the still-overcrowded antechamber, he met Dejoie, who was hovering about with an embarrassed air.

‘What is it? Not another person, I trust?’

‘No, no, Monsieur… If I dare ask Monsieur’s advice… It’s for myself…’

And he manoeuvred so skilfully that Saccard found himself back in his study, while the other remained very deferentially in the doorway.

‘For you?… Ah yes, of course you too are a shareholder… Well, my lad, take the new shares which will be reserved for you, even if you have to sell the shirt off your back to buy them. That’s the advice I give all my friends.’

‘Oh, Monsieur, it’s all too much for me, my daughter and I don’t aim that high… At the start, I bought eight shares with the four thousand francs of savings my poor wife left us; and I still have just those eight, because—d’you see?—when it came to the other share-issues, in which the capital was doubled twice over, we didn’t have the money to take the shares we were allocated… No, no, that’s not the point, one must not be greedy!—I just wanted to ask Monsieur, without offence, if Monsieur thinks I should sell.’

‘What! That you should sell?’

Then Dejoie, with all sorts of anxious and respectful circumlocutions, explained his situation. At the rate of thirteen hundred francs, his eight shares represented a sum of ten thousand four hundred francs. He was therefore well able to give Nathalie the six thousand francs needed for the cardboard manufacturer. But after seeing the continual rise of the shares, he had acquired an appetite for money, then came the idea, vague at first, then overwhelming, of having his own share in it, to get a little income of six hundred francs, which would allow him to retire. But a capital of twelve thousand francs, added to his daughter’s six thousand francs, made the enormous sum of eighteen thousand francs, and he despaired of ever reaching that figure, for he had worked out that to do that, he would have to wait for the rate to reach two thousand three hundred francs.

‘You understand, Monsieur, that if it’s not going to rise any more, I’d rather sell, because Nathalie’s happiness must come first, mustn’t it?… On the other hand, if it all goes up again, what a heartbreak it will be if I’ve sold…’

Saccard exploded.

‘Ah! You really are stupid, my lad!… Do you think we’re going to stop at thirteen hundred? Am I selling?… You’ll have your eighteen thousand francs, I can assure you. And now get going! And get rid of all those people in there; tell them I’ve gone out.’

When he was alone again, Saccard was able to call back the two department heads and finish his work in peace.

It was decided that an Extraordinary General Meeting should be held in August to vote the new increase in capital. Hamelin, who was to chair it, landed in Marseilles in the last days of July. For two months, his sister, in each of her letters, had been urging him more and more insistently, to come back. In the midst of the bank’s emphatic success, more apparent day by day, she had the sense of a
lurking danger, an irrational fear she dared not even mention; and she wanted her brother to be there, to take account of things for himself, for she was beginning to doubt her own judgement, fearing she would have no strength against Saccard, would let herself be blinded to such a point as to let down the brother she loved so much. Shouldn’t she have confessed her affair to him, the affair that he was very far from suspecting, in his innocence as a man of faith and science, moving through the world like a sleepwalker? This idea was extremely painful for her, and she let herself drift into cowardly compromises; she was arguing with duty, which very clearly commanded her to tell all, now that she knew Saccard and his past, so that her brother might be on his guard. In her hours of strength, she promised herself she would get things sorted out once and for all, and not abandon the unfettered management of such large sums of money to criminal hands in whose grip so many millions had already cracked and crumbled away, bringing ruin to so many people. It was the only possible sound and honest course worthy of her. Then her clarity of mind faded and she weakened and temporized, now finding that the only grounds for complaint were irregularities common—so Saccard affirmed—to all banking houses. Perhaps he was right to tell her with a laugh that the monster that frightened her was success, that resounding Parisian success that strikes like a thunderbolt, and which left her trembling as if from the shock and anguish of a catastrophe. She didn’t know where she stood any more, there were times when, full of that infinite affection she still felt for Saccard, she admired him even more, even though she could no longer esteem him. Never would she have believed her heart could be so complicated, she felt herself to be very much a woman, and feared she might lose the power to act. That was why she was so pleased at her brother’s return.