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* 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:
‘Tell her to stop bothering me! And if she sells, I’ll strangle her!’
Massias came rushing up at the announcement of the fall of fifteen francs as if answering an alarm-call, feeling he would be needed. Indeed, Saccard, who had prepared a stratagem to make sure of the last quotation—a telegram that was to be sent from the Lyons Stock Exchange, where a rise was certain—was beginning to grow anxious at the non-arrival of the telegram; and this unexpected fall of fifteen francs could bring disaster.
Massias, astutely, did not stop in front of Saccard but nudged him with his elbow and inclined his ear to receive the order:
‘Quick, to Nathansohn, four hundred, five hundred, whatever it takes.’
This was all done so quickly that only Pillerault and Moser noticed. T
hey at once rushed after Massias to find out what was happening. Since he had been in the pay of the Universal, Massias had acquired enormous importance. People would attempt to sound him out and try to read over his shoulder the orders he was carrying. And he was himself now making splendid gains. With his smiling affability, this unlucky fellow, ill-used by fortune as he had been until now, was quite astonished; he now declared that this dog’s life at the Bourse was after all quite bearable, and he no longer said one had to be a Jew to get on.
At the kerb market, in the freezing air of the peristyle that the pale mid-afternoon sun did little to warm, Universals had fallen less rapidly than on the trading-floor. And Nathansohn, forewarned by his brokers, had just effected the deal that Delarocque had failed to make: buying in the main hall at three thousand and twenty-five, he had sold again under the colonnade for three thousand and thirty-five. This had taken less than three minutes, and he had made sixty thousand francs. The purchase had already made the price rise in the hall to three thousand and thirty, thanks to the levelling effect that the two markets, the official one and the tolerated one, have on each other. There was an endless gallop of clerks, elbowing their way through the throng, from the hall to the peristyle. However, the price in the kerb market was just about to drop, when the order that Massias brought to Nathansohn maintained it at three thousand and thirty-five then raised it to three thousand and forty-five; while in consequence, the stocks on the trading-floor came back to the first quotation. But it was difficult to keep it there, for the strategy of Jacoby and the other agents acting for the bears was to save the really big sales until the end of the session, so that they could use them to crush the market and bring about a collapse in the disarray of the last half-hour. Saccard so clearly understood the danger that with a prearranged signal he alerted Sabatani, standing just a few steps away, smoking a cigarette with the unconcerned and languid air of a ladies’ man; he at once, with serpentine suppleness, made his way to the guitar, where, while listening intently to all the prices, he went on sending orders to Mazaud on the green cards of which he had a considerable stock. In spite of all this, the attack by the bears was so fierce that Universals once again went down five francs.
The clock struck the third quarter; there was only a quarter of an hour left before the closing bell. The crowd was now whirling about and screaming as if lashed by some hellish torment; the trading-floor was snarling and howling, with a harsh clanging like the smashing of pots and pans, and it was just then that the incident so anxiously awaited by Saccard occurred.
Little Flory, who, since the opening of the Bourse, had been running down from the telegraph office every ten minutes with his hands full of telegrams, reappeared once more, pushing his way through the throng, this time reading a telegram with which he seemed highly pleased.
‘Mazaud! Mazaud!’ called a voice.
And Flory, naturally, turned his head, as if he were responding to his own name. It was Jantrou who wanted to hear the news. But the clerk, in too great a hurry, pushed past him, full of delight at the thought that the Universal would finish with a rise; for the telegram announced that the share-price was rising at the Lyons Stock Exchange, where purchases of such importance had been made that the effect was bound to be felt on the Paris Bourse. Indeed, other telegrams were already arriving, a large number of brokers were receiving orders. The result was immediate and considerable.
‘At three thousand and forty, I take Universals,’ Mazaud was repeating in his shrill, birdlike voice.
And Delarocque, overwhelmed with orders, raised the bid by five francs more.
‘At three thousand and forty-five, I take…’
‘I hold, at three thousand and forty-five,’ bellowed Jacoby. Two hundred, at three thousand and forty-five.’
‘Deliver!’
Then Mazaud himself went higher.
‘I take at three thousand and fifty.’
‘How many?’
‘Five hundred. Deliver!’
But the din was now so dreadful, with all this epileptic gesticulating, that the brokers themselves could no longer hear each other. And caught up in the professional frenzy that possessed them, they continued their work by gestures, since the resonant bass of some voices did not carry, while the fluting of others thinned into nothingness. Enormous mouths could be seen opening, without any distinct sound coming out of them; all the talking was being done by hands alone; an outward gesture meant an offer, and an inward gesture acceptance; fingers raised indicated quantities, and a nod or a shake of the head said yes or no. It was like one of those fits of madness that can seize a crowd, and was intelligible only to the initiated. Up above, women were leaning their heads over the telegraph gallery, stupefied and horrified at this extraordinary spectacle. In the government-stocks market, it was almost like a brawl, with a furious central group resorting to fisticuffs, while the public, crossing this side of the room in both directions, pushed into the groups that were constantly breaking up and forming again in a continual turmoil. Between the cash market and the main trading-floor, above the tempest-tossed sea of heads, there were now only the three quoters, sitting on their high chairs, floating above the waves like wreckage, with the big white patch of their registers, while they were tugged hither and thither by the rapid fluctuation of the prices being thrown at them. In the cash section especially, the jostling was at its worst, it was a solid mass of heads of hair, without faces, like a dark swarm, lightened only by the little white pages of the notebooks waving about in the air. And on the trading-floor around the basin, now filled with a multicoloured floral display of crumpled cards, one could see the grey of hair, the glistening of bald heads, the pallor of agitated faces, and hands feverishly outstretched, a whole dancing pantomime of bodies moving more freely, all seeming ready to devour each other if the balustrade had not held them back. This last-minute madness had also reached the public, people were being crushed in the hall, in a huge shuffling of feet, like the stampede of a great herd let loose in too narrow a passage; and in the great blur of frock-coats, only the silk hats gleamed, under the diffused light from the high windows.
Then suddenly the sound of a bell rang out through the tumult. Everything calmed down, gestures stopped in mid-air, voices fell silent in the cash market, the government-stock market, and on the trading-floor. There remained only the dull roar of the crowd, like the even voice of a torrent returning to its bed and its normal flow. And in the last of the agitation, the last quotations were circulating; Universals had risen to three thousand and sixty a rise of thirty francs over the previous day. The defeat of the bears was complete; the settlement was once again going to be disastrous for them, for the differences of the fortnight would cost a substantial amount.
For a moment, before leaving the hall, Saccard stretched up as though the better to take in the crowd around him in one glance. He was really bigger, so uplifted by his triumph that the whole of his little figure swelled and grew longer, became enormous. The person he seemed to be looking for over the heads of the crowd was the absent Gundermann, the Gundermann he would like to have seen defeated, grimacing and begging for mercy; and he was determined that at least all those unknown agents of the Jew, all the filthy Jews who were there, full of resentment, should see him thus transfigured, in the glory of his success. This was his great day, the day people still talk about, as they do about Austerlitz and Marengo.* His clients and his friends had rushed to him. The Marquis de Bohain, Sédille, Kolb, and Huret were shaking his hand, while Daigremont, with the false smile of his worldly affability, was congratulating him, knowing that at the Bourse death often follows such victories as these. Maugendre would have kissed him on both cheeks in his excitement, though exasperated to see Captain Chave just shrugging his shoulders. But the most complete, even religious, adoration came from Dejoie, who had run from the newspaper office to learn what the last quotation had been, and now stood quite still, a few steps away, rooted to the spot by tenderness and admiration, his eyes gliste
ning with tears. Jantrou had disappeared, no doubt gone to take the news to Baroness Sandorff. Massias and Sabatani were panting and beaming, as if on the triumphant evening of a great battle.
‘Well, what did I tell you?’ cried the delighted Pillerault. Moser, with a long face, made vague, threatening noises.
‘Yes, yes, but he laughs longest who laughs last… Mexico will have to be paid for; affairs in Rome are even more confused since Mentana,* and Germany is going to fall upon us one of these fine mornings… Yes, yes, and these fools, the higher they go, the further they’ll fall. Ah, it’s all up now, you’ll see!’
Then, as Salmon this time continued to look at him gravely, he added:
‘That’s your view, isn’t it? When everything’s going too well, it means everything’s going to crash.’
But now the hall was emptying, and soon the only thing left would be the cigar-smoke in the air, a bluish cloud, thickened and yellowed by all the dust flying about. Mazaud and Jacoby, now restored to normality, had returned together to the brokers’ office, the latter more upset at his own losses than by the defeat of his clients; while the former, who didn’t speculate, was full of delight at the last quotation, so valiantly fought for. They talked to Delarocque for a few minutes, exchanging their engagements, holding in their hands their little books full of notes, notes that their settlement clerks would go through that very evening to process the deals that had been made. Meanwhile, in the clerks’ office, a low room with big pillars, rather like a badly kept classroom, with rows of desks and a cloakroom at the far end, Flory and Gustave Sédille, who had gone there to get their hats, were noisily engaged in merry chatter while waiting to find out the average quotation, which was calculated by the clerks of the syndicate, according to the lowest and highest of the quotations. Towards half-past three, when the poster had been put up on one of the pillars, they both neighed like horses, clucked like hens, and crowed like roosters, in their satisfaction at the splendid result they had achieved with their manoeuvres on Fayeux’s orders to sell. It meant a pair of diamond earrings for Chuchu, who was now tyrannizing Flory with her demands, and six months payment in advance for Germaine Coeur, whom Gustave had been foolish enough to entice definitively away from Jacoby, who had just taken up with a horsewoman from the Hippodrome on a monthly basis. The noise continued unabated in the clerks’ room, with all sorts of silly tricks and throwing about of hats, like the romping of schoolboys in the playground. And on the other side, under the peristyle, the kerb market was hastily finishing its business, and Nathansohn, delighted with his dealings, was making his way down the steps through the last of the speculators, who were still lingering there in spite of the now intense cold. By six o’clock, this whole world of gamblers, brokers, dealers and jobbers, once they had calculated their gains or losses, and others had prepared their brokerage bills, would all get dressed up and, with their distorted view of money, complete the dizziness of the day in restaurants and theatres, fashionable soirées, and mistresses’ boudoirs.