The shrub behind which she stood half-concealed was a deadly plant, a tanghin from Madagascar, with broad, boxy leaves and whitish stems whose smallest veins distilled a milky poison. When Louise and Maxime, bathed in the yellow glow, the sunset, of the small salon, chanced to laugh a little louder than before, Renée, her mind awry, her mouth parched and irritated, took a dangling sprig of tanghin between her lips and bit down on one of its bitter leaves.
2
Aristide Saccard swooped down on Paris immediately after the Second of December1 with the keen instincts of a bird of prey capable of smelling a battlefield from a long way off. He came from Plassans, a small subprefecture in the south, where his father, fishing in the troubled waters of the times, had at last succeeded in landing a long-coveted prize: a nomination as tax collector. The son, still a young man, had foolishly compromised himself without reaping either glory or profit and had to count himself lucky to have come through the ruckus safely. He rushed off to Paris in a rage at having mistaken his true course, cursing the provinces while talking of the capital in terms that called to mind a ravenous wolf, and swearing that “he would never again be so stupid.” The bitter smile that accompanied these words took on a horrible significance on his thin lips.
He arrived in the very first days of 1852. With him he brought his wife Angèle, a drab blonde, whom he set up in a cramped apartment on the rue Saint-Jacques, like a bothersome piece of furniture he was in a hurry to get rid of. The young woman had refused to be separated from her daughter, little Clotilde, a child of four, whom her father would have been happy to leave in the care of his family. He had given in to Angèle’s wishes, however, only on condition that she agree to allow their son Maxime to remain in school in Plassans, where the boy’s grandmother could keep an eye on the troublesome eleven-year-old. Aristide did not want to be tied down. A wife and a daughter were already burden enough for a man out either to take the capital by storm or ruin himself and his reputation trying.
On his very first night in Paris, while Angèle unpacked their trunks, he felt a keen need to explore the city, to be out in his backwoods boots pounding the burning pavement from which he hoped to extract millions of francs. He took possession of the town—nothing less. He walked for the sake of walking, patrolling the sidewalks as if in conquered territory. He had a very clear vision of the battle he had come to wage and did not shrink from comparing himself to a skilled lock picker who is about to help himself to a portion of the common wealth that has hitherto been denied him out of spite. Had he felt the need of an excuse, he would have invoked the desires he had stifled for the past ten years, his miserable provincial existence, and above all his blunders, which he blamed on society at large. At that moment, however, feeling the emotions of a gambler who has at last set ardent hands down on green felt, he was overcome with joy, with a joy all his own in which the satisfactions of envy mingled with the hopes of a rogue who has somehow eluded punishment. The air of Paris intoxicated him, and amid the din of carriage wheels he thought he heard the voices from Macbeth2 shouting to him, “Thou shalt be rich!” For nearly two hours he wandered the streets like this, savoring the pleasures of a man who has given in to his vice. He had not been back to Paris since spending a happy year in the capital as a student. Night was falling; his dream grew prodigiously in the bright light cast upon the sidewalks by cafés and shops. He had no idea where he was.
When he looked up, he found himself in the middle of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré.3 One of his brothers, Eugène Rougon, lived nearby on the rue de Penthièvre. In coming to Paris, Aristide had counted above all on Eugène, who had been one of the most active agents of the coup d’état and had become an occult power, an insignificant attorney transformed into an important politician. With the superstition of a gambler, however, he hesitated to knock that night on his brother’s door. Slowly he made his way back to the rue Saint-Jacques, feeling silently envious of Eugène as he took note of his shabby clothes still covered with dust from his journey, yet consoling himself with renewed dreams of the riches that would one day be his. Then the dream itself turned bitter. Having left the house at the prompting of his expansive ambitions and found joy in the bustling shops of Paris, he returned home vexed by the good fortune that seemed to fill the streets and, enraged by what he had seen, pictured himself locked in pitched battles in which he would take pleasure in besting and cheating the hordes with whom he had rubbed elbows in the streets. Never before had he felt such enormous appetites, such an immediate and burning need of satisfaction.
The next day he turned up at his brother’s door. Eugène lived in two chilly rooms, barely furnished, which made Aristide’s blood run cold. He had expected to find his brother living in the lap of luxury. Eugène was at work behind a small black desk. He smiled and, speaking slowly as always, said only, “Oh, it’s you. I was expecting you.”
Aristide betrayed a deep bitterness. He accused Eugène of having allowed him to vegetate, of not having sent him so much as a word of advice back when he was still floundering about in the provinces. He would never forgive himself for having remained a republican right up to the day of the coup: this was his open wound, a source of eternal embarrassment. Eugène, meanwhile, had quietly returned to his writing. When Aristide finished speaking, he said, “Bah! Mistakes can always be fixed. You have a bright future ahead of you.”
He spoke these words in such a clear voice, accompanied by such a penetrating gaze, that Aristide bowed his head, sensing that his brother had plumbed the very depths of his being. Eugène continued in a friendly but blunt manner: “You’ve come to me because you expect me to find you a position, have you not? I’ve already given some thought to the matter but haven’t yet come up with anything. Not just any post will do, you see. You’ll need a job where you can do your business without danger to you or to me. . . . Save your protests. We’re alone. We can speak frankly.”
Aristide thought it best to laugh.
“I know you’re intelligent,” Eugène continued, “and that you wouldn’t do anything foolish without a good reason. The moment the right opportunity arises, I’ll get you your place. Between now and then, if you find yourself in need of twenty francs, come and see me.”
They conversed briefly about the insurrection in the south, which had enabled their father to land the tax collector’s job. While they talked, Eugène dressed. In the street below he detained his brother a moment before parting company and said, in a lowered voice, “I would be much obliged if you would refrain from idling about and wait quietly at home for the job I’ve promised you. . . . It would be disagreeable for me to see my brother spending his days in someone’s outer office.”
Aristide respected Eugène, who struck him as a man of unparalleled vigor. Yet he found his suspicious nature and rather brusque candor unforgivable. Nevertheless, he docilely returned home and shut himself up in the apartment on the rue Saint-Jacques. He had arrived in Paris with 500 francs borrowed from his father-in-law. After paying all his traveling expenses, he was left with 300 francs, which he managed to stretch for a month. Angèle was a big eater. And she just had to spruce up her party dress with mauve ribbons. To Aristide the month of waiting seemed interminable. He burned with impatience. When he stood at the window and sensed the gigantic labor of Paris below, he was seized by a mad impulse to leap into the forge, to knead the gold with his own feverish hands, like soft wax. He breathed in the still-indistinct air of the great city, the air of nascent empire, already redolent of the fragrances of the alcove, of financial chicanery, and of steamy pleasures. The faint aromas that wafted his way told him that he was on the right track, that his quarry was on the run ahead of him, that the great imperial hunt—for adventure, for women, for millions—was at last getting under way. His nostrils quivered. With the instincts of a hungry animal, he had a marvelous ability to detect the slightest sign of the voracious gorging on hot spoils that the city was about to witness.
Twice he called on his brother to urge him to pres
s his inquiries a little harder. Eugène greeted him brusquely and repeated that he had not forgotten his promise but that it would be necessary to wait. At last Aristide received a letter inviting him to the apartment on the rue de Penthièvre. He went, his heart pounding as though he were on his way to a romantic assignation. He found Eugène seated at the same small black writing table in the large, chilly room that served as his office. No sooner did the attorney catch sight of his brother than he handed him a piece of paper. “Here, I received your assignment yesterday. You’ve been appointed assistant surveyor of roads at the Hôtel de Ville. Your compensation will be 2,400 francs.”
Aristide had remained standing. He blanched and did not take the document, thinking that his brother must be mocking him. He had hoped for a post that paid at least 6,000 francs. Eugène, divining his thoughts, wheeled his chair around and folded his arms. “Are you a fool after all?” he asked with considerable heat. “Your dreams are those of a whore, aren’t they? You’d like to live in a fine apartment, have servants, eat well, sleep in silk, and take your pleasure in the arms of the first person to happen by, in a boudoir furnished in a couple of hours. . . . If we let you and your kind have your way, you’d empty the coffers before there was anything in them. So be patient, for heaven’s sake! Look how I live, and take the trouble to lower yourself a little if you want to come away with a fortune.”
He spoke with deep contempt for his brother’s adolescent impatience. In his gruff speech one sensed higher ambitions, a desire for pure power. Aristide’s naïve appetite for money must have struck him as bourgeois and puerile. Speaking in a gentler voice and smiling a sly smile, he went on: “Of course your attitude is excellent, and I’ll be careful not to stand in your way. Men like you are precious. We intend to choose our good friends carefully from the ranks of the most famished. And rest assured, we shall keep an open table, and the biggest appetites will eat their fill. No one has yet found a better way to rule. . . . But please, do me a favor, wait until the table has been laid, and if you want my advice, take the trouble to fetch your own silver from the kitchen.”
Aristide remained somber. His brother’s amiable metaphors failed to elicit a smile. Eugène again gave vent to his wrath. “Damn!” he exclaimed. “I was right in the first place: you are a fool. . . . So what were you hoping for? What did you think I was going to come up with for an illustrious personage like yourself ? You lacked the stomach even to finish your law degree, you hid out for ten years in a wretched clerical post in a subprefecture, and you come to me with a detestable reputation as a republican who waited until the coup to convert. . . . Do you think you’ve got the makings of a minister, with a record like that? Don’t tell me, I already know: what you’ve got going for you is your fierce desire to succeed by any and all means. And that, I grant you, is a great virtue and is precisely what I had in mind when I got you the job at city hall.”
He then got up, walked over to Aristide, and placed the nomination in his hand. “Take it,” he went on. “Someday you’ll thank me. I chose the post personally, so I know what can be got out of it. . . . All you have to do is keep your eyes and ears open. If you’re intelligent, you’ll understand, and you’ll act. . . . Now listen carefully to the rest of what I have to say. The time is coming when anyone will be able to make a fortune. Make piles of money: I give you my permission. But nothing stupid, and no unseemly scandals, or I’ll get rid of you.”
This threat had the effect that Eugène’s promises had failed to achieve. The thought of the fortune that Aristide heard his brother describe rekindled all his fever. At last, he felt, he had been sent into the fray with permission to slit people’s throats, but legally, without provoking too much of an outcry. Eugène gave him 200 francs to last until the end of the month and then lapsed into silent thought.
At length he said, “I’m thinking of changing my name. You ought to do the same. . . . We’d be less in each other’s way.”
“As you wish,” Aristide answered quietly.
“You won’t have to do anything. I’ll take care of all the formalities. . . . Do you want to be known as Sicardot, your wife’s family name?”
Aristide looked up at the ceiling, repeating the syllables, listening to their music: “Sicardot . . . Aristide Sicardot. . . . Heavens, no. It’s imbecilic and reeks of failure.”
“Think of something else,” said Eugène.
“I’d prefer just plain Sicard,” his brother replied after pondering the matter in silence. “Aristide Sicard. . . . Not bad, eh? . . . Perhaps a bit cheery.”
He mused a while longer, then crowed, “I’ve got it. . . . Saccard, Aristide Saccard. . . . With two c’s. . . . Eh? There’s money in a name like that. It sounds like the chink of coins being counted.”
Eugène had a savage sense of humor. As he dismissed his brother, he smiled and said, “Yes, a name like that can either land you in prison or make you millions.”
A few days later, Aristide Saccard went down to city hall. He learned that his brother had had to call in a good many chits to get him the job without the usual examinations.
Thus began, for Saccard and his wife, the monotonous life of the minor bureaucrat. The couple reverted to the routine they had adopted in Plassans, only now they were putting aside their dreams of sudden fortune, and their shabby life seemed more oppressive because they saw it as an ordeal whose duration could not be predicted. To be poor in Paris is to be poor twice over. Angèle accepted misery with the passivity of the anemic woman she was. She spent her days either in the kitchen or lying on the floor playing with her daughter, not feeling sorry for herself until the last franc was gone from the kitty. But Aristide quivered with rage over this poverty, this cramped existence, in which he prowled endlessly like a caged beast. For him it was a time of unspeakable suffering. His pride bled, his unassuaged ardor lashed him furiously. His brother managed to get himself elected to the Corps Législatif 4 as deputy for the Plassans district, and Aristide suffered even more. He was too keenly aware of Eugène’s superiority to feel anything as foolish as jealousy, but he accused his brother of not doing as much for him as he might have done. Need forced him more than once to knock on Eugène’s door in search of a loan. Eugène lent him the money but also berated him roundly for lacking courage and will. This immediately stiffened Aristide’s resolve. He swore that he would never again ask anyone for a cent, and he kept his word. The last week of every month, Angèle ate dry bread and sighed. This apprenticeship completed Saccard’s appalling education. His lips grew thinner. He was no longer so foolish as to dream of his millions out loud. His meager person stood mute, henceforth expressing but a single will, a single idée fixe—one cherished thought that filled every hour. When he hurried from the rue Saint-Jacques to the Hôtel de Ville, his worn heels struck the sidewalk with a sharp sound, and he buttoned himself into his frayed overcoat as into an asylum of hatred, while his weasel’s snout sniffed the air of the streets. The figure he cut was an angular one of envious misery prowling the Paris pavement with a plan for amassing a fortune and a dream of successfully carrying it off.
Early in 1853, Aristide Saccard was promoted to surveyor of roads. He now earned 4,500 francs a month. This raise came just in time. Angèle was wasting away; little Clotilde was deathly pale. He kept his cramped two-room apartment, with its dining room furnished in walnut and its bedroom in mahogany, and continued to lead a life of rigid discipline, avoiding debt and refusing to dip into other people’s money until he was able to plunge his arms in up to the elbows. In so doing he went against his instincts, turning up his nose at the few extra sous that came his way and maintaining his vigilance. Angèle was perfectly content. She bought herself some old clothes and put a roast on the spit daily. Her husband’s silent rages surpassed her understanding, as did the somber look he sometimes wore of a man searching for the solution to some intractable problem.
Aristide followed Eugène’s advice: he kept his eyes and ears open. When he went to thank his brother for the p
romotion, Eugène immediately grasped the change that had come over him and complimented him on what he called his “correct attire.” Though envy had stiffened his backbone, outwardly the clerk had become more pliable and ingratiating. Within the space of a few months he had become a prodigious actor. All his southern verve was now aroused, and he had developed his art to such a high pitch that his comrades at city hall looked upon him as a fine fellow destined for an important position on account of his close relationship to a deputy. That same relationship also put him in the good graces of his superiors. Hence he enjoyed greater authority than his position indicated, and this allowed him to open certain doors and poke his nose into certain boxes of files without his indiscretions seeming culpable. For two years he prowled all the corridors, lingered in all the chambers, and rose twenty times a day to chat with a coworker or deliver an order or make the rounds of the offices. Because he was perpetually in motion, his colleagues said, “That devil of a Provençal! He can’t sit still. He has quicksilver in his legs.” Those closest to him mistook him for lazy, and the worthy fellow laughed when they accused him of wanting nothing more than to steal a few minutes from his administrative chores. Never once did he commit the blunder of listening at keyholes, but he had a forthright way of opening doors and walking across rooms with a piece of paper in his hand and an abstracted look, yet at a pace so slow and deliberate that he never missed a word of what was being said. The tactic proved ingenious, because eventually people stopped interrupting themselves when this very busy clerk, apparently so preoccupied with his work, glided through the shadowy recesses of their offices. He had another method as well: he was extremely helpful, always offering to assist his fellow workers whenever they fell behind in their work and then studying with rapt attention whatever ledgers and documents were set before him. But one of his foibles was his penchant for befriending office boys. He went so far as to shake their hands and spent hour after hour with them in private conversation, stifling laughs, telling them stories, and encouraging them to open up to him. These fine lads adored him: “That fellow there isn’t stuck-up like the rest of them,” they said when he passed by. Whenever a scandal erupted, he was the first to learn about it. So after two years, the Hôtel de Ville no longer held any mysteries for him. He knew the personnel down to the lowliest factotum and the paperwork down to the laundry bills.