Then, in the midst of all this glory, it seemed as if the star of Saccard was also rising to its greatest brilliance. At last he had achieved what he had sought for so many years, he had fortune as his slave, a thing of his own to dispose of as he would, to keep under lock and key, a living reality! So many times his coffers had been full of lies, so many millions had flowed through them, leaking out through all sorts of unseen holes! No, this was no longer the deceptive façade of wealth, this was the genuine royalty of gold, solid and enthroned on sacks full of gold; and he had this royalty of his, not thanks to the economies of a long line of bankers, like a Gundermann; he flattered himself proudly that he had conquered it for himself, like a soldier of fortune who seizes a kingdom at one stroke. In the time of the land-deals in the Europe district* of Paris, he had often risen very high, but never had he felt Paris so thoroughly conquered, so humble at his feet. And he recalled that day when, eating at Champeaux’s, ruined once again, and no longer believing in his star, he had cast hungry eyes upon the Bourse, suddenly in a fever to start everything all over again, to conquer again, in a fury of revenge. So, now he was once again the master, what an appetite he had for enjoyment! First, as soon as he felt all-powerful, he dismissed Huret, and ordered Jantrou to launch an article against Rougon, in which the minister would find himself unambiguously accused, in the name of the Catholics, of playing a double game on the Roman question.* This was a definitive declaration of war between the brothers. Ever since the September Convention of 1864,* and especially after Sadowa, the clerical party had decided to show intense anxiety over the position of the Pope; and from now on L’Espérance, resuming its former Ultramontane political stance, violently attacked the liberalization of the Empire, begun with the decrees of 19 January. One of Saccard’s comments went around the Chamber: he had said that despite his profound affection for the Emperor, he would resign himself to Henri V,* rather than allow the revolutionary spirit to lead France into catastrophe. Then, his victories making him ever more audacious, he no longer concealed his plan of attacking the big Jewish banks in the person of Gundermann, whose billion he meant to pound and batter until a final assault and capture. The Universal had grown so miraculously that supported as it was by the whole of Christendom, why should it not become, in a few more years, the undisputed mistress of the Bourse? And with a warlike swagger Saccard presented himself as a rival, as a neighbouring king of equal power; while Gundermann phlegmatically went on watching and waiting, with not so much as an ironic smile, seeming simply interested in the continual rise of the shares, as a man whose entire strength lies in patience and logic.
It was his passion that took Saccard so high, and his passion that would cast him down. In order to satisfy his appetites, he would like to have discovered a sixth sense to indulge. Madame Caroline had reached the point of being able to go on smiling, even when her heart was bleeding, and she remained a friend, who listened to him with a sort of wifely deference. Baroness Sandorff, whose bruised eyelids and red lips were so deceptive, was beginning to lose her charm for him, with her icy coldness even in the midst of his perverse experiments. And besides, he had himself never known any grand passion, he was too busy, in his world of money, using his nerves in other ways, and paying for love by the month. So when, on the heap of his new millions, he thought of women at all, he thought only of buying himself an expensive one, to show her off to the whole of Paris, just as he might have bought himself, simply out of vanity, a very large diamond pin for his cravat. Then, wouldn’t it be an excellent bit of publicity? When a man can pay a lot for a woman, doesn’t that mean he must have a considerable fortune? His choice at once fell on Madame de Jeumont, at whose house he had dined two or three times with Maxime. She was still very beautiful at thirty-six, with a regular, grave and Junoesque beauty, and she had a great reputation due to the fact that the Emperor, for one night with her, had paid a hundred thousand francs, not to mention a decoration for her husband, a man of propriety who had no other role in life than to be his wife’s spouse. The two lived a life of ease and were received everywhere, in the ministries and at court, keeping themselves afloat with a few rare and select deals, restricting themselves to no more than three or four nights a year. Everyone knew how hideously expensive it was and how extremely distinguished the clientele. Saccard, who was particularly excited by the thought of having a taste of the Emperor’s morsel, bid as high as two hundred thousand francs, since the husband had at first pulled a face at this shady former financier, finding him too slight a personage and of compromising immorality.
It was around this time that little Madame Conin flatly refused to take her pleasure with Saccard. He often went to the stationery shop in the Rue Feydeau, always needing to buy order-books and very attracted by this adorable blonde, all pink and plump, with her pale, silky hair, so fluffy, a little curly lamb, graceful, beguiling, and always cheerful.
‘No, I don’t want to. Never with you!’
When once she had said ‘never’, that was it, nothing ever made her change her mind over a refusal.
‘But why? I saw you with someone else coming out of the house in the Passage des Panoramas…’
She blushed, but went on looking him straight in the eye. That house, kept by an old lady who was a friend of hers, was indeed the place she used for her rendezvous, when some whim made her give in to a gentleman from the Bourse, at those hours when her good soul of a husband was pasting up his registers, and she was out and about in Paris, always on stationery business.
‘You know perfectly well, that young man Gustave Sédille is your lover.’
With a pretty gesture, she protested. No, no, she had no lover. No man could boast of having had her more than once. What sort of person did he think she was? Once, yes, from time to time, for pleasure, without its being of the slightest significance! And they all remained her friends, very grateful, and very discreet.
‘Is it because I’m no longer young?’
But with a new gesture, and still with a laugh, she seemed to say that for her, being young was of no importance at all! She had yielded to men less young than he, less good-looking too, often indeed to some wretched poor devils.
‘Why then? Just tell me why!’
‘My word, it’s simply… that I don’t fancy you. With you, never!
She was still just as amiable, and sorry to have to refuse.
‘Come on,’ he went on, brutally, ‘it can be as much as you want… do you want a thousand, two thousand francs, for just one time?’
Each time he raised his offer, she shook her head gently.
‘Do you want… Come now, do you want ten thousand? Do you want twenty thousand?’
Gently, she interrupted him, placing her little hand on his.
‘Not ten, not fifty, not a hundred thousand! You could go on and on like that, but it would still be no, always no… You can see I don’t wear any jewels. Oh, I’ve been offered them, I’ve been offered lots of things, money, all sorts of things! But I don’t want anything, isn’t it enough in itself, when it gives pleasure?… But just understand that my husband loves me with all his heart, and I too am very fond of him. He’s a very decent man, my husband. So, I’m certainly not going to kill him by causing him pain… What do you expect me to do with your money, since I can’t give it to my husband? We are not badly off, we shall retire one day with a tidy sum; and if those gentlemen are all so well disposed as to continue to buy their supplies from us, that I gladly accept… Oh, I’m not pretending to be more disinterested than I really am. If I were single I’d think about it. But one more thing, you can’t imagine that my husband would take your hundred thousand francs after I had slept with you… No! No! Not for a million!’
And she dug in her heels. Saccard, exasperated by this unexpected resistance, went on badgering her for nearly a month. She bowled him over, with her laughing face and her big eyes full of tenderness and compassion. What! So money could not buy everything! This woman others had enjoyed for nothing, an
d he could not have her, even at a crazy price! She said no, and she meant it. In all his triumph, he suffered cruelly over this, as if it cast a doubt over his power, a secret disillusion about the power of money, which until then he had thought absolute and sovereign.
But one evening his vanity experienced the most intense enjoyment. It was the high point of his existence. There was a ball at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and he had chosen this event, celebrating the Exhibition, to make known to the public his good fortune of one night spent with Madame de Jeumont; for it was always agreed, in the deals of this beautiful person, that the buyer would have the right, just once, to exhibit his good luck in such a way that the affair could have all the publicity desired. So towards midnight, in the rooms where bare shoulders were crushed among the men’s black evening-jackets, under the blazing light of the chandeliers, Saccard made his entrance with Madame de Jeumont on his arm, and her husband following. When they appeared, groups broke up to make way for this two hundred thousand-franc whim on display, this scandal of uncontrolled appetite and lunatic extravagance. There were smiles and whispers, amusement, and no indignation, in the intoxicating scent of the corsages and the distant lulling of the orchestra. But at the end of one of the rooms, a quite different group was gathered inquisitively around a colossus, dressed in the dazzling and superb white uniform of a cuirassier.* It was Count von Bismarck, his tall figure towering above the heads of all, laughing heartily, with his big eyes, prominent nose, and powerful jaw, adorned by the moustaches of a barbarian conqueror. After Sadowa, he had given Germany to Prussia; the treaties of alliance* against France, denied for so long, had been signed months before, and the war which had almost broken out in May over Luxembourg* was now inevitable. When the triumphant Saccard went through the room, with Madame de Jeumont on his arm, and her husband following, Count von Bismarck stopped laughing for a moment to watch them passing, with the curiosity and ironic amusement of a kindly giant.
CHAPTER IX
MADAME CAROLINE found herself alone once more. Hamelin had stayed in Paris until the beginning of November for the formalities required for the definitive constitution of the company, with a capital of one hundred and fifty millions; it was he, too, who went, at Saccard’s request, to make the legal declarations stating that all the shares had been subscribed and the capital paid, which was not true. Then he left for Rome where he was to spend two months, having some important matters to study there, matters he kept to himself—doubtless his great dream of the Pope in Jerusalem, as well as another, more substantial and practical project, the transformation of the Universal into a Catholic Bank supported by the interests of the whole of Christendom, a simply enormous machine intended to crush the Jewish banks and sweep them out of the universe; from there he meant to turn back to the Orient again, to deal with the work on the railway from Broussa to Beirut. He went away happy about the rapid success of the bank, convinced of its unshakeable solidity and with only a vague anxiety about its excessive success. So on the eve of his departure, in conversation with his sister, he firmly recommended just one thing: that she should resist the general infatuation and sell their shares if the price went beyond two thousand two hundred francs, since he intended to make a personal protest against the continual rise, which he judged to be foolish and dangerous.
Once she was on her own, Madame Caroline felt even more troubled by the hothouse atmosphere in which she was living. Towards the first week of November, the price of two thousand two hundred was reached, and all around her there was rapture, with cries of thankfulness and unlimited hope. Dejoie was brimming over with gratitude; the Beauvilliers ladies now treated her as an equal, as a friend of the god who was going to restore their ancient house. A concert of benedictions arose from the happy crowd of investors, great and small alike, daughters with dowries at last, the poor suddenly rich, their retirement secure, and the rich burning with the insatiable joy of being even richer. With the Exhibition over and Paris intoxicated with pleasure and power, it was a unique moment, a moment of belief in happiness, a conviction of endless good luck. All the stocks and shares had risen, even the weakest found credulous takers, and the market was flooded with a plethora of highly dubious companies, choking it almost to the point of apoplexy, while underneath lay a resounding emptiness, the real exhaustion of a reign that had greatly enjoyed itself and spent billions on public works, fattening in the process huge financial houses, whose gaping coffers were splitting open on all sides. In this giddy whirl the first sign of any cracking meant disaster. And it was doubtless an anxious foreboding of this sort that made Madame Caroline so alarmed at each new leap in the price of Universals. No bad rumours were going round, only a slight ripple of movement from the astonished and daunted short-sellers. And yet she was definitely uneasy, something seemed already to be undermining the whole edifice; but what? Nothing showed up clearly, and she was obliged to wait, in the dazzle of the ever-growing triumph, in spite of those minor rumbles of disturbance that precede catastrophes.
Besides, Madame Caroline now had another worry. At the Work Foundation they were at last satisfied with Victor, who had become silent and sly; and if she had not already told Saccard of the whole affair it was because of an odd feeling of embarrassment, that made her put off telling him from day to day, suffering over the shame he would feel. On the other hand, Maxime, to whom, at around this time, she returned the two thousand francs out of her own pocket, was greatly amused by the fact that Busch and La Méchain were still demanding their four thousand: these people were robbing her, he said, and his father would be furious. After that she turned a deaf ear to the repeated demands of Busch, who was insisting on being paid the full amount of the promised sum. After innumerable vain efforts he at last grew angry, especially since his old idea of blackmailing Saccard had come back to him, given Saccard’s new situation, that elevated situation in which Busch thought the fear of scandal placed him at his mercy. So one day, exasperated at getting nothing out of such a promising affair, he decided to contact Saccard directly, and wrote asking him to drop into his office to take a look at some old papers found in a house on the Rue de la Harpe. He mentioned the number of the house, and made such clear reference to the events of the past that Saccard, gripped by anxiety, could not fail to obey the summons. But in fact the letter was delivered to the Rue Saint-Lazare and fell into the hands of Madame Caroline, who recognized the writing. Trembling, she briefly wondered whether to run straight away to see Busch and persuade him to give up. Then she told herself that he was perhaps writing on some other matter entirely, and in any case this was one way to get it over with, and she was even glad, perturbed as she was, that someone else should have to tell the story. But in the evening, when Saccard came home and opened the letter in her presence, she saw him simply take on a serious expression and thought it must be some financial problem. However, Saccard had in fact experienced a considerable shock and a tightening of the throat at the thought of falling into such filthy hands, sensing some vile machination. He calmly put the letter in his pocket and decided he would go to the suggested meeting.
Some days went by, it was the second fortnight in November, and every morning Saccard put off the visit, dazed by the torrent of events carrying him along. The rate of two thousand three hundred francs had just been passed and he was delighted, but still felt that at the Bourse some resistance was forming and growing, as the mad rise continued; clearly some short-sellers were taking up a position, engaging in the battle, timidly thus far, in mere preliminary skirmishes. On two occasions he had felt obliged to give orders to buy, using frontmen, so that the steady rise of the market rates would not be interrupted. The practice of the bank buying its own shares, gambling on them and thus devouring itself, was getting under way.
One evening, stirred up by his passion, Saccard could not help talking to Madame Caroline about it.
‘I really think things are hotting up. We are proving too strong, getting in their way too much… I can scent Gundermann, th
is is his strategy: he’ll keep on selling at regular intervals, so much today, so much tomorrow, gradually increasing the amount until he makes an impact on us…’