Money (Oxford World’s Classics) (50 page)

They were waiting for the first price to be announced.

Mazaud and Jacoby had just come out from the brokers’ room on to the trading-floor side by side, with an air of conventional confraternity. Yet they knew they were adversaries in the merciless struggle which had been going on for weeks, and which could end with the ruin of one of them. Mazaud, short, with the slim figure of a handsome man, had a bright vivacity in keeping with his good luck thus far—luck that had led to his inheriting his uncle’s business at the age of only thirty-two, while Jacoby, a former manager, had only become a broker by virtue of seniority, thanks to clients who supported him, and had the stout belly and heavy gait of his sixty years—a tall man, bald and grizzled, he had the broad face of a cheery, pleasure-loving fellow. And both of them, with their notebooks in their hands, were
chatting about the fine weather as if they were not holding, on those pages, the millions they would be exchanging like gunshots in the murderous fight between offer and demand.

‘A fine frost, eh?’

‘Oh indeed, it was so pretty I even came on foot!’

When they reached the trading-floor, its vast circular basin as yet free of the cast-off papers and cards that get thrown down there, they paused a moment, leaning on the red-velvet balustrade that goes around it, continuing to exchange banal and inconsequential remarks, while also keeping an eye on their surroundings.

The four gated aisles formed a cross, a sort of four-branched star with the trading-floor at its centre; this was the sacrosanct area closed to the public; and between the branches, at the front, there was, on one side, another section for the clerks dealing in cash, overlooked by the three quoters
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perched on high chairs in front of their huge registers; on the other side, a smaller open section, known as the ‘guitar’, no doubt on account of its shape, allowed employees and speculators to have direct contact with the brokers. Behind, in the angle formed by two other branches, in the midst of the crowd was the market for government stocks, where each broker was represented, as in the cash market, by a special clerk, each with his own distinctive notebook; for the brokers around the trading-floor are concerned exclusively with forward trading, totally given over to the great, frenetic task of speculation.

But Mazaud, seeing Berthier, his authorized clerk, trying to get his attention in the left-hand aisle, went over to exchange a few quiet words with him, the authorized clerks being allowed only in the aisles, at a respectful distance from the red-velvet balustrade which was not be touched by any profane hand. Every day Mazaud came to the Bourse with Berthier and his two clerks, one for cash deals and one for government stock, usually accompanied by the settlement clerk as well as the telegraph clerk, the latter always being little Flory, whose face was disappearing more and more under his bushy beard, leaving only the tender sparkle of his eyes. Since gaining ten thousand francs in the aftermath of Sadowa, Flory, driven to distraction by the demands of Chuchu, who was now both capricious and rapacious, was speculating wildly on his own account, without any calculation, just copying the moves of Saccard, which he followed with blind faith. The orders he knew about and the telegrams that passed through his
hands were a sufficient guide for him. And now, as he was running down from the telegraph office on the first floor, both hands full of telegrams, he had to send one of the attendants to call Mazaud, who left Berthier and came over to the guitar.

‘Monsieur, do I need to go through them and classify them today?’

‘Yes of course, if they’re arriving en masse like this… What’s all that?’

‘Oh, Universals, purchase orders, almost all of them.’

The broker, with a practised hand, flicked through the telegrams, obviously pleased. Very much involved with Saccard, whom he had been carrying over
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for some time for considerable sums of money, and having that very morning received from him huge orders to buy, he had ended up as the official broker for the Universal. Although not greatly worried thus far, he still found it reassuring to see the continuing infatuation of the public and the obstinate buying, in spite of the extravagant rise in the price. One name stood out for him in the signatories of the telegrams: that of Fayeux, the revenue-collector of Vendôme, who must have acquired an extremely large clientele of small buyers among the farmers, pious ladies and priests of his province, for not a week went by without his sending telegram after telegram like this.

‘Give all that to the cash-clerk,’ Mazaud told Flory, ‘and don’t wait for the telegrams to be brought down to you, eh? Stay up there and take them yourself.’

Flory went and leaned over the balustrade of the cash section, shouting loudly: ‘Mazaud! Mazaud!’

It was Gustave Sédille who came, for in the Bourse employees lose their own names, using only the name of the broker they represent. Flory, too, was called Mazaud. After leaving the office for nearly two years, Gustave had just gone back to it, to try to persuade his father to pay his debts, and that day, in the absence of the head clerk, he found himself in charge of the cash section, which greatly amused him. Flory leant over to whisper in his ear, and both agreed to buy for Fayeux only on the last quotation, after using his orders for their own speculation, buying and selling in the name of their usual frontman so as to pocket the difference, since a further rise seemed certain.

Meanwhile, Mazaud came back to the trading-floor. But at every step, an attendant passed him a card with an order scribbled in pencil on it, from some client who had not been able to reach him. Each broker had his own card, of a special colour—red, yellow, blue or
green—so it could be easily recognized. Mazaud’s were green, the colour of hope, and the little green slips kept on accumulating between his fingers, as the attendants went to and fro, taking the cards at the end of the aisles, from the hands of clerks and speculators, all of them having a ready stock of these cards in order to save time. As he paused once more by the velvet balustrade, he again found Jacoby, who was also holding a constantly growing fistful of cards, red cards, the bright red of spilt blood; orders, no doubt, from Gundermann and his followers, for everyone knew that in the massacre being prepared Jacoby was the agent for the bears, the chief operator for the Jewish banks. He was now chatting with another broker, Delarocque, his brother-in-law, a Christian married to a Jewish woman, a big, stocky, ruddy-faced man, now very bald, a frequenter of clubland, and known to be the receiver of the orders of Daigremont, who had recently fallen out with Jacoby, as he had previously done with Mazaud. The story Delarocque was telling, a rather coarse story about a woman who had returned home to her husband in a state of undress, made his little eyes twinkle and blink, while in excited mimicry he waved his notebook about, bulging with cards, blue ones, the tender blue of an April sky.

An attendant came to tell Mazaud: ‘Monsieur Massias is asking for you.’

Mazaud at once returned to the end of the aisle. Massias, the jobber, wholly in the pay of the Universal, was bringing him news from the kerb market, which was already operating under the peristyle despite the terrible cold. Some speculators were venturing out anyway, going back into the hall from time to time to get warm; while the kerb-market dealers, huddled in thick overcoats, with their fur collars turned up, stayed at their posts, in a circle as usual, beneath the clock, so animated, shouting and gesticulating so much that they didn’t feel the cold. And little Nathansohn was one of the most active, well on the way to becoming an important person, favoured by good luck ever since the day when, resigning his post as a petty employee of the Crédit Mobilier, he had had the idea of renting a room and opening a trading-desk.

Speaking quickly, Massias explained that as prices had seemed to waver under the impact of the load of shares with which the bears were pounding the market, Saccard had just decided to operate in the kerb market, in order to influence the first official quotation on the
trading-floor. Universals had closed the previous evening on three thousand and thirty francs; and he had given Nathansohn an order for a hundred shares that another of the kerb market brokers was to offer at three thousand and thirty-five francs. This would give an increase of five francs.

‘Good! That price will reach us,’ said Mazaud.

And he came back to the group of brokers, all of whom were now present. All sixty were there
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already, doing business among themselves in spite of the regulations, at the average price of the day before while waiting for the official bell. Orders given at a prearranged price had no influence on the market, since they had to wait until that price was quoted, while ‘best price’ orders, whose execution was freely left to the judgement of the broker, determined the constant up or down movements of the quotations. A good broker needed to be both shrewd and prescient, with a quick brain and agile muscles, for speed was often the key to success; and in addition he needed to be very well connected in the banking world, gathering information from just about everywhere, and seeing telegrams from the French and foreign stock exchanges before anyone else. And he also had to have a strong voice, to be able to shout loudly.

But then one o’clock struck, the peal of the bell passing like a gust of wind over the surging sea of heads; and the last vibration had not died away before Jacoby, his two hands pressed down upon the velvet, was bellowing in the loudest voice of them all:

‘I have Universals! I have Universals!’

He named no price, waiting to be asked. The sixty had drawn near and formed a circle round the trading-floor, on which a few discarded slips already made splashes of bright colour. Face to face, they stared at each other, feeling each other out like duellists before the fight, very eager to see the first quotation established.

‘I have Universals!’ repeated Jacoby’s thundering bass voice. ‘I have Universals!’

‘What price Universals?’ asked Mazaud, in a voice not strong but so high-pitched that it rose above that of his colleague, just as the sound of the flute is heard above a cello accompaniment. And Delarocque proposed the quotation of the day before.

‘At three thousand and thirty, I take Universals.’

But immediately another broker went higher:

‘At three thousand and thirty-five, send me Universals.’

It was the kerb-market price arriving, preventing the deal that Delarocque must have had in mind: a purchase on the trading-floor and a quick sale at the kerb market to pocket the rise of five francs. So Mazaud made his decision, certain of Saccard’s approval:

‘At three thousand and forty, I take…! Deliver Universals at three thousand and forty!’

‘How many?’ asked Jacoby.

‘Three hundred.’

Both wrote a line in their notebooks and the deal was done, the first quotation fixed, with a rise of ten francs on the price of the previous day. Mazaud moved away, to give the figure to the quoter who had the Universal on his books. Then, for twenty minutes, the floodgates were open; quotations for the other stocks had also been fixed, and the whole assorted heap of business brought in by the brokers was being transacted, without much variation in prices. And meanwhile the quoters, perched on high, caught between the din of the trading-floor and that of the cash market, which was also feverishly busy, could scarcely manage to enter all the new quotations the brokers and clerks were constantly throwing at them. Further back, the market for government stocks was also furiously busy. Now the market was open, it was no longer simply a matter of the crowd roaring with the unremitting noise of rushing water; above that tremendous rumbling there now rose the strident shouts of offers and demands, a characteristic yapping that rose and fell, and paused only to start again in tormented shrieks of varying strength, like the cries of thieving birds caught in a storm.

Saccard, standing beside his pillar, was smiling. His court had grown even bigger; the rise of ten francs on Universals had set the whole Bourse in a flutter, for a crash on settlement day had long been forecast. Huret had drawn near, along with Sédille and Kolb, loudly claiming to regret his prudence, which had made him sell his shares once the price reached two thousand five hundred; while Daigremont, looking quite detached, with the Marquis de Bohain on his arm, was cheerily telling him why his stable had been defeated in the autumn races. But above all, Maugendre was triumphantly pouring scorn on Captain Chave, who was still obstinately pessimistic, saying they had better wait to see how it would all end. And the same scene was being played out between the boastful Pillerault and the woeful Moser, the one radiant about this mad rise, the other clenching his fists and talking of
this obstinate, idiotic rise, as if it were some mad animal that in the end would have to be put down.

An hour went by, the quotations remained much the same, and business continued on the trading-floor, as new orders and telegrams came in, but less intensely than before. About half way through each session of the Bourse, there would be this sort of slowing-down, a calmer spell of ordinary business before the decisive battle over the final quotations. But Jacoby’s bellowing could still be heard, interspersed with Mazaud’s shrill cries, both of them hard at work on options. ‘I have Universals at three thousand and forty, of which fifteen… I take Universals at three thousand and forty, of which ten… How many? Twenty-five… deliver!’ These were no doubt the orders from Fayeux that Mazaud was carrying out, for in order to limit their losses, many provincial speculators bought and sold options before finally committing themselves. Then suddenly a rumour went around, and spasmodic shouts were heard: Universals had just dropped five francs; then, in swift succession, they dropped ten francs, then fifteen francs, and fell down to three thousand and twenty-five.

Just then Jantrou, who had come back after a brief absence, told Saccard that Baroness Sandorff was there in her coupé in the Rue Brongniart, and was asking him if she should sell. Coming just at the moment when the price was wobbling, this question exasperated Saccard. In his mind’s eye he could see again the motionless coachman perched on his box, and the Baroness studying her notebook behind the closed windows, as if she were at home. And he replied: