More calmness prevailed on the left, among a group of bankers, who were engaged either in arbitrage operations, in fixing the foreign exchange rates, or in negotiating English cheques, and whose ranks were continually being traversed by people on their way to the telegraph office. Speculators overflowed even from the side galleries, crowding and crushing together; and, leaning on the balustrades between the columns, there were some who presented belly or back, as if they were at home, or at a theatre, lolling against the velvet-upholstered front of a private box. The quivering and rumbling, like that of a steam-engine at work, was ever increasing, agitating the entire Bourse—subsiding only for a second to burst forth yet louder, in the same way as a flame may flicker and then flare high again. And gazing on it all, Saccard suddenly recognised the remisier Massias, who descended the steps at full speed and leaped into his carriage, the driver of which forthwith lashed his horse into a gallop.
Then Saccard felt his fists clench, and, violently tearing himself away, turned into the Rue Vivienne, which he crossed in order to reach the corner of the Rue Feydeau, where Busch's office was situated. He had just remembered the Russian letter which he had to get translated. As he was entering the house, however, a young man, standing in front of the stationer's shop on the ground floor, bowed to him, and he recognised Gustave Sédille, son of a silk manufacturer in the Rue des Jeûneurs, whom his father had placed with Mazaud, to study the mechanism of finance. Saccard smiled paternally upon this tall, elegant young fellow, strongly suspecting why he was mounting guard there. Conin's stationery shop had been supplying note-books to the entire Bourse since little Madame Conin had begun to help her husband—fat Conin, as he was called—who never left his back shop, there attending to the manufacturing part of his business, whilst she continually came and went, serving at the counter and doing errands outside. She was plump, blonde, and pink, a real curly-haired little sheep, with light silky hair, a pleasing, coaxing manner, and imperturbable gaiety. She was very fond of her husband, it was said, but this certainly did not prevent her from flirting with the gentlemen of the Bourse. As he passed, Saccard saw her smiling at Gustave through the window. What a pretty little sheep she was! The sight gave him a delightful sensation, akin to that of a caress. Then he at last went upstairs.
For twenty years Busch had occupied a small logement, comprising two chambers and a kitchen, high up, on the fifth floor. Born at Nancy, of German parents, he had come here from his native town, and had gradually extended the circle of his business, which was wonderfully complicated, without feeling the need of a larger office. Relinquishing the room overlooking the street to his brother Sigismond, he contented himself with a little chamber on this side of the courtyard of the house—a little chamber in which old papers, batches of documents, packages of all kinds were so piled up, that there was no room left except for a single chair beside the desk. One of his principal lines of business was a traffic in depreciated shares and debentures, thousands of which he collected together, serving as an intermediary between the Little Bourse of the 'Wet Feet' and the bankrupts embarrassed to account for their real or imaginary losses. He accordingly followed the market, at times buying direct, but more frequently supplied with batches of stock that were brought to him. In addition also to usury and a secret traffic in jewels and precious stones, he particularly occupied himself with the purchase of 'bad debts.' This it was that filled his office with old paper to overflowing, this it was that sent him forth to the four corners of Paris, sniffing and watching, with connections in all circles of society. As soon as he heard of a failure, he hurried off, prowled around the liquidator, and ended by buying up everything which could not immediately be realised. He kept a watch on the notaries' offices, looked out for inheritances difficult of settlement, and attended the sales of hopeless claims. He himself published advertisements, in this wise attracting impatient creditors who preferred to get a few coppers down rather than run the risk of prosecuting their debtors. And from all these manifold sources this chiffonnier of bad debts derived supply upon supply of paper, huge basketfuls, an ever-increasing pile of unpaid notes of hand, unfulfilled agreements, unredeemed acknowledgments of liability, unkept engagements of every kind. Then a sorting-out became necessary, a fork had to be thrust into this mess of broken victuals, a special and very delicate scent being required in the operation. To avoid waste of effort, it was necessary to make a choice in this ocean of debtors, who were either insolvent or had disappeared. In principle, Busch asserted that every claim, even the most seemingly hopeless, may some day become valuable again; and he had a series of portfolios, admirably classified, to which corresponded an index of names, which he read over from time to time to refresh his memory. However, naturally enough, among the insolvent ones, he more closely followed those who seemed to him to have near chances of fortune. Prosecuting his inquiries, he stripped people bare, discovered what means they possessed, penetrated family secrets, took note of all rich relatives, and especially of such newly-acquired situations as allowed of an attachment of salary. He thus often allowed a man to ripen for years, in order to strangle him at his first success. As for the debtors who disappeared, these stimulated him to yet greater energy, threw him into a fever of continual search, with his eyes on every signboard as he scoured the streets, and on every name printed in the newspapers. He hunted for addresses as a dog hunts for game, and as soon as he held the vanished and insolvent ones in his clutches, he became ferocious, clearing their pockets with bills of costs, sucking them dry, getting a hundred francs for what had cost him ten sous, brutally explaining the while what risks he ran as a speculator, forced to extort from those whom he caught all that he pretended to lose by those who slipped like smoke through his fingers.
In hunting for debtors, La Méchain was one of the helpers whom Busch was fondest of employing; for although he was obliged to have a little band of 'game-beaters' in his service, he lived in distrust of these disreputable, famishing assistants; whereas La Méchain had property of her own—an entire cité behind the Butte Montmartre, the Cité de Naples, as it was called, a vast tract of land covered with tumble-down shanties, which she let out by the month, a nook of frightful poverty, where starvelings were heaped together in filth, a crowd of pigsties which the wretched fought for, and whence she pitilessly swept away her tenants and their dung-heaps as soon as ever they ceased to pay her. However, her unfortunate passion for speculation consumed her, ate up all the profits of her cité. And she had also a taste for financial losses, ruins, and fires, amid which melted jewels can be stolen. When Busch charged her with obtaining some information, or ferreting out a debtor, she would sometimes even spend money out of her own pocket in view of furthering her researches, such was the pleasure she took in them. She called herself a widow, but no one had ever known her husband. She came, too, no one knew whence, and seemed always to have been about fifty years old, and monstrously fat, with the piping voice of a little girl.
On this occasion, as soon as La Méchain had taken her seat on the single chair in Busch's office, the room became full, blocked up by her mass of flesh. Busch stood like a prisoner at his desk, buried, as it were, with only his square head showing above the ocean of papers. 'Here,' said she, removing from her old bag the huge pile of papers that distended it, 'here is what Fayeux has sent me from Vendôme. He bought everything for you at that sale in connection with the Charpier failure, which you told me to call to his attention—one hundred and ten francs.'
Fayeux, whom she called her cousin, had just established an office down there as a collector of dividends. His ostensible business was to cash the coupons of the petty bondholders of the district; and, as the depositary of these coupons and the cash they yielded, he speculated in the most frenzied manner.
'The country isn't worth much,' muttered Busch, 'but there are discoveries to be made there all the same.'
He sniffed the papers, and began sorting them out with an expert hand, roughly classifying them in accordance with a first appraisement, in which he seemed to be guided by their mere smell. As he proceeded, his flat face grew dark, and he paused at last with an expression of disappointment.
'Humph! there is no fat here, nothing to bite. Fortunately it did not cost much. Here are some notes, and here some more. If they are signed by young people, who have come to Paris, we shall perhaps catch them.' Then, with a slight exclamation of surprise, he added: 'Hallo, what's this?'
At the bottom of a sheet of stamped paper he had just found the signature of the Count de Beauvilliers, and the sheet contained only three lines of large handwriting, evidently traced by an old man: 'I promise to pay the sum of ten thousand francs to Mademoiselle Léonie Cron on the day she attains her majority.
'The Count de Beauvilliers,' he slowly continued, thinking aloud; 'yes, he had several farms, quite a large estate, in the vicinity of Vendôme. He died of a hunting accident, leaving a wife and two children in straitened circumstances. I held some of his notes formerly, which with difficulty I got them to pay—he was a wild droll, not good for much——'
Suddenly he burst into a loud laugh, reconstructing in his mind the story attaching to the note.
'Ah! the old sharper, he played the little one a nice trick with this bit of paper, which is legally valueless. Then he died. Let me see, this is dated 1854, ten years ago. The girl must be of age now. But how could this acknowledgment have got into Charpier's hands? He was a grain merchant, who lent money by the week. No doubt the girl left this on deposit with him in order to get a few crowns, or perhaps he had undertaken to collect it.'
'But this is very good,' interrupted La Méchain—'a real stroke of luck.'
Busch shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. 'Oh no, I tell you that it is legally worth nothing. If I should present it to the heirs, they may send me about my business, for it would be necessary to prove that the money is really due. Only, if we find the girl, I may induce them to be reasonable, and come to an understanding with us, in order to avoid a disagreeable scandal. You understand? Look for this Léonie Cron; write to Fayeux, and tell him to hunt her up down there. That done, we may perhaps have a laugh.'
He had made two piles of the papers, with the intention of thoroughly examining them when he should be alone, and now sat motionless, with his hands open, one resting on each pile.
A spell of silence followed; then La Méchain resumed: 'I have been attending to the Jordan notes. I really thought that I had found our man again. He has been employed somewhere, and now he is writing for the newspapers. But they receive you so badly at the newspaper offices; they refuse to give you addresses. And besides, I think that he does not sign his articles with his real name.'
Without a word, Busch had stretched out his arm to take the Jordan portfolio from its place. It contained six notes of hand of fifty francs each, dated five years back and maturing monthly—a total sum of three hundred francs—which the young man had undertaken to pay to a tailor in days of poverty. Unpaid on presentation, however, the capital sum had been swollen by enormous costs, and the portfolio fairly overflowed with formidable legal documents. At the present time the debt had increased to the sum of seven hundred and thirty francs and fifteen centimes. 'If he has a future before him,' muttered Busch, 'we shall catch him one of these days.' Then, some sequence of ideas undoubtedly forming in his mind, he exclaimed: 'And that Sicardot affair, are we going to abandon it?'
La Méchain lifted her fat arms to heaven with a gesture of anguish. A ripple of despair seemed to course through her monstrous person. 'Oh, Lord!' she wailed, with her piping voice, 'it will cost me my very skin.'
This Sicardot affair was a very romantic story which she delighted to tell. A cousin of hers, Rosalie Chavaille, a daughter of her father's sister, living with her mother in a small lodging on the sixth floor of a house in the Rue de la Harpe, had fallen a victim to a married man, who occupied with his wife a room sublet to him on the second floor. There were some abominable circumstances in connection with the affair, but the girl's mother, consenting to silence, had merely required that the evil-doer should pay her the sum of six hundred francs, divided into twelve notes of fifty francs each, payable monthly. Before the first month was at an end, however, the man—an individual of gentlemanly appearance—had disappeared, and all trace of him was lost, whilst misfortunes continued falling thick as hail. Rosalie gave birth to a boy, lost her mother, and fell into a life of vice and abject poverty. Stranded in the Cité de Naples, her cousin's property, she had dragged about the streets till the age of twenty-six; but at last, during the previous year, she had been lucky enough to die, leaving behind her her son Victor, whom La Méchain had to keep; and of the whole adventure there only remained the twelve unpaid notes of hand. They had never been able to learn more of the individual who had signed them than that he called himself Sicardot.
With a fresh gesture, Busch took down the Sicardot papers, contained in a thin grey paper wrapper. No costs had accumulated, so there were merely the twelve notes.
'If Victor were only a nice child!' explained the old woman in a sorrowful voice. 'But he's dreadful! Ah! it is hard to be encumbered with such inheritances—an urchin who will end on the scaffold, and those bits of paper which will never bring me anything!'
Busch kept his big pale eyes obstinately fixed upon the notes. How many times already had he thus studied them, hoping that some hitherto unnoticed detail, something in the form of the letters, or in the grain of the stamped paper, would supply him with a clue! He asserted at times that that fine, pointed handwriting was not altogether unknown to him. 'It is curious,' he repeated once more, 'I am certain that I have somewhere already seen such a's and o's as these, so elongated that they resemble i's.'
Just then there came a knock; and he asked La Méchain to stretch out her hand to open the door, for the room communicated direct with the staircase. You had to cross it in order to reach the second chamber, the one that overlooked the street. As for the kitchen, this was a stifling hole on the other side of the landing.
'Come in, monsieur,' said La Méchain, and Saccard entered. He was smiling, inwardly amused by the copper plate screwed upon the door, and bearing in large letters the words: 'Disputed Claims.'
'Oh yes, Monsieur Saccard, you have come for that translation—my brother is there in the other room. Come in, pray come in.'
La Méchain, however, absolutely barred the passage, and scrutinised the new-comer with an air of increasing surprise. No end of manœuvring was necessary for Saccard to effect an entrance; he had to retreat to the stairs again whilst she stepped out, and drew back on the landing, so that he might pass in and finally reach the adjoining room, into which he disappeared. During these complicated movements, La Méchain had not once taken her eyes off him.
'Oh!' she faintly gasped, like one sorely oppressed, 'this Monsieur Saccard, I never had so near a view of him before. Victor is the perfect image of him.'
Busch looked at her, at first failing to understand; then a sudden light dawned upon his mind, and in a stifled voice he swore: 'Thunder! that's it; I knew very well that I had seen that handwriting somewhere.'
And this time he rose, rummaged among his batches of papers, and at last found a letter that Saccard had written him during the previous year to ask him for an extension of time in favour of an insolvent lady. He quickly compared the handwriting of the notes with that of this letter. The a's and the o's were clearly the same, though they had grown yet more pointed with the lapse of time; and there was also a marked similarity between the capital letters.
'It is he, it is he,' he repeated. 'Only, let me see, why Sicardot? Why not Saccard?'
In his mind, however, there awoke a confused recollection of some story of Saccard's past—a story which an agent, named Larsonneau, now a millionaire, had once told him: Saccard tumbling into Paris on the day after the coup d'état, coming there to exploit the rising power of his brother Rougon; then, first of all, his poverty in the dingy streets of the old Latin Quarter; next, his rapidly acquired fortune, under cover of a disreputable marriage, when he had been lucky enough to lose his first wife. It was at the time of those difficult beginnings that he had changed his name from Rougon to Saccard, by simply transforming his first wife's name, which was Sicardot.
'Yes, yes, Sicardot; I remember perfectly,' muttered Busch. 'He had the effrontery to sign notes with his wife's name. No doubt the family assumed that name when they came to the Rue de la Harpe. And then the rascal took all sorts of precautions, ready to move at the slightest alarm. Ah! so he was not only hunting for money; well, well, one of these days his doings will cost him dear.'
'Hush! hush!' resumed La Méchain. 'We have him now, and well may one say that there is indeed a Providence. At last, then, I am to be rewarded for all that I have done for that poor little Victor, whom I dearly love all the same, in spite of the fact that there is nothing to be done with him.'
She was radiant; her little eyes sparkled amid all the melting, puffy flesh of her face.
Busch, however, after the momentary fever attending this long-sought-for solution, brought to him by chance, grew cold again as he reflected, and shook his head. Undoubtedly. Saccard, although ruined for the moment, was still good to shear. One might have fallen upon a less desirable father. Only he would not allow himself to be annoyed; he had terrible teeth. And besides, he was certainly unaware that he had an illegitimate son; he might deny it, in spite of the extraordinary resemblance that had so astounded La Méchain. Moreover, he was now for the second time a widower, free, under no obligation to account for his past to anyone, so that, even if he should acknowledge the child, there was no threat that could be utilised against him. As for merely realising the six hundred francs which the notes represented, that would be really too paltry a stroke; the miraculous help which chance had brought must be turned to better account than that. He must reflect, nurse the affair, find a way of cutting the crop at harvest time, and not before. 'We mustn't be in a hurry,' he concluded. 'Besides, he is down; let us give him time to get up again.'
And, before dismissing La Méchain, he finished dealing with the little matters with which she was charged—a young woman who had pawned her jewels for her lover; a son-in-law whose debt would be paid by his mother-in-law, if they could find a way to work it; in short, some of the most delicate varieties of the complex and difficult business of collecting bad debts.
Saccard, on entering the adjoining room, had stood for a second dazzled by the bright light that streamed in through the sunny window panes, unhindered by any curtain. This room, with its walls covered with paper bearing a design of blue flowrets on a light background, was almost bare; there was merely a little iron bedstead in one corner, a deal table in the middle, and two straw-bottomed chairs. Along the partition on the left, some planks, scarcely planed, served as a bookcase, loaded with volumes, pamphlets, journals, and papers of all sorts. But the broad sunlight at this height imparted to all the bareness a sort of youthful gaiety, a smile of artless freshness. And Busch's brother, Sigismond, a beardless fellow of five and thirty, with long, scanty, chestnut hair, was sitting at the table, his broad, bumpy forehead buried in his thin hand, so absorbed in his perusal of a manuscript that he did not turn his head, not having heard the door open.
He was an intelligent man was this Sigismond, educated in the German universities, and speaking not only French, his mother tongue, but German, English, and Russian. He had made the acquaintance of Karl Marx at Cologne in 1849, and had become the most highly prized of the contributors to the 'New Rhenish Gazette.' From that moment his religion had been fixed; he professed Socialism with an ardent faith, giving his entire being to the idea of an approaching social renovation, which would assure the happiness of the poor and humble. Since his master, banished from Germany, and forced to leave Paris after the days of June, had been living in London, writing and trying to organise the party, Sigismond, on his side, had vegetated in his dreams, so careless as to his material life that he would surely have perished of hunger had his brother not taken him to live with him in the Rue Feydeau, near the Bourse, with the idea that he might utilise his knowledge of languages as a professional translator. This elder brother adored his junior with a maternal passion. Ferocious wolf though he was towards debtors, quite capable of wading through blood that he might steal half a franc, he was straightway moved to tears and evinced all the passionate, minute tenderness of a woman whenever this tall, absent-minded fellow, who had remained a child, was in question. He had given him the fine room overlooking the street, he served him as a domestic, and took entire charge of their strange household, sweeping the floors, making the beds, and ordering the food which a little restaurant in the neighbourhood sent up twice a day. Moreover, he so active, with his head full of a thousand business matters, not merely suffered his brother to remain idle—for, thwarted by private writing, very few translations were made—but he even forbade him to work, anxious as he was concerning an ominous little cough. And in spite of his stern love of money, his murderous greed, which converted money-making into the sole motive of life, he smiled indulgently at the theories of this revolutionist, relinquishing capital to him like a toy to a child, at the risk of seeing him break it.
On his side, Sigismond did not even know what his brother did in the next room. He was utterly ignorant of all that frightful traffic in depreciated stock, and of the purchase of bad debts; he lived in a loftier region, in a sovereign dream of justice. The idea of charity wounded his feelings, made him angry: charity was alms, inequality consecrated by kindness, and he admitted nought but justice, the rights of each individual man regained and adopted as the unchangeable principles of the new social organisation. And thus, following the example of Karl Marx, with whom he was in constant correspondence, he spent his days in studying this organisation, incessantly modifying and improving upon paper the society of to-morrow, covering immense pages with figures, building up on the basis of science the whole complicated scaffolding of universal happiness. He took capital from some, to distribute it among all the others; he moved billions, displaced the wealth of the world with a stroke of his pen; and this he did in that bare room, without any other passion than his dream, without any desire of enjoyment to satisfy, so frugal that his brother had to get angry in order to make him drink wine and eat meat. He desired that the labour of every man, measured according to his strength, should assure the satisfaction of his appetites; but, for his own part, he was killing himself with work, and living upon nothing—a real sage, exalted in his studious occupations, disengaged from material life, very gentle and very pure. Since the previous autumn, however, he had been coughing more and more; consumption was seizing hold of him, but he did not even condescend to notice it and nurse himself.
Saccard having made a movement, Sigismond at last raised his large vague eyes, and was astonished, although he knew the visitor.
'I have come to get a letter translated.'
The young man's surprise increased, for he had done all he could to discourage his customers, the bankers, speculators, and brokers, all that circle of the Bourse who receive, especially from England and Germany, so many communications on financial matters, company prospectuses and statutes, circulars, and so forth.
'Yes, a letter in Russian. Oh! only ten lines long.'
Thereupon Sigismond stretched out his hand, Russian having remained his speciality, he alone translating it rapidly among all the other translators of the neighbourhood, who mainly lived by German and English. The rarity of Russian documents in the Paris market explained his long periods of idleness.
He read the letter aloud in French. It was, in three sentences, a favourable reply from a Constantinople banker, a simple yes as to a matter of business.
'Ah! thank you,' exclaimed Saccard, who seemed delighted; and he asked Sigismond to write the few lines of translation on the back of the letter. But Sigismond was seized with a terrible fit of coughing, which he stifled in his handkerchief, in order not to disturb his brother, who always ran in whenever he heard him cough in that way. Then, the attack over, he rose and went to open the window wide, for he was stifling, and wished to breathe the air. Saccard, who had followed him, gave a glance outside, and raised a slight exclamation: 'Oh! so you see the Bourse? How queer it looks from here!'
Never in fact had he seen it under such a singular aspect, in a bird's-eye view, with the four vast zinc slopes of its roof extraordinarily developed and bristling with a forest of pipes. The lightning-rods rose erect like gigantic lances threatening the sky. And the edifice itself was nothing but a cube of stone, streaked with columns at regular intervals, a bare, ugly cube of a dirty gray hue, surmounted by a ragged flag. But, above all else, the steps and the peristyle astonished him, covered with black ants, a swarm of ants in revolution, all agog, in a state of wonderful commotion, which was not to be explained from such a height, and prompted a feeling of pity.
'How small they all look!' continued Saccard; 'it seems as if one could take the whole of them in the hand, with one grip.' Then, knowing his companion's ideas, he added with a laugh: 'When are you going to sweep all that away with a kick?'
Sigismond shrugged his shoulders. 'What is the use? You are demolishing yourselves fast enough.'
Then, little by little, he became animated, overflowing with the subject he was full of. A proselytising spirit launched him, at the slightest word, into an exposition of his system. 'Yes, yes, you are working for us without suspecting it,' said he. 'You are a few usurpers, who expropriate the mass of the people, and when you have gorged yourselves we shall only have to expropriate you in our turn. Every monopoly, every phase of centralisation, leads to collectivism. You are setting us a practical example, in the same way as the large estates absorbing the small patches of land, the large producers devouring the petty home industries, the great financial establishments and great stores killing all competition, and battening on the ruin of the little banks and the little shops, are slowly but surely leading towards the new social state. We are waiting for everything to crack, for the existing method of production to end in the intolerable disorder which will be its ultimate consequence. Then the bourgeois and the peasants themselves will aid us.'
Saccard, feeling interested, looked at him with a vague anxiety, although he took him for a madman. 'But come, explain to me, what is this collectivism of yours?'
'Collectivism is the transformation of private capital, living by the struggle of competition, into a unitary social capital, exploited by the labour of all. Imagine a society in which the instruments of production will be the property of all, in which everybody will work according to his intelligence and strength, and in which the products of this social co-operation will be distributed to each in proportion to his effort! There can be nothing more simple, eh? Common production in the factories, yards, and workshops of the nation! Then an exchange, a payment in kind! If there should be over-production, the surplus will be lodged in public warehouses, from which it will be taken to fill up any deficits that may arise. One will have to strike a balance. And this, like one blow of an axe, will fell the rotten tree. No more competition, no more private capital, and, therefore, no more "business" of any kind—neither commerce, nor markets, nor Bourses. The idea of profit will thenceforth have no meaning. The sources of speculation, of incomes acquired without work, will be dried up.'
'Oh! oh!' interrupted Saccard, 'that would change many people's habits, and no mistake! But what would you do with those who have incomes to-day? Gundermann, for instance, would you take away his milliard?'
'Not at all; we are not robbers. We should redeem his milliard, all his shares, debentures, and State bonds, with certificates of enjoyment, divided into annuities. And just imagine this immense capital thus replaced by an overwhelming wealth of articles of consumption: in less than a century your Gundermann's descendants would, like other citizens, be reduced to personal labour; for the annuities would finally become exhausted, and they would not have been able to capitalise their forced economies, the overplus of their overwhelming supply of articles of consumption, even admitting that the right of inheritance should be left untouched. I tell you that this would at one stroke sweep away, not only individual enterprises, companies, syndicates, and so forth, but also all the indirect sources of income, all systems of credit, loans, rentals, and so on. Nothing but labour would be left as a measure of value. Wages would naturally be suppressed, for in the present capitalistic system they are never equivalent to the exact product of labour; but at the utmost represent no more than is strictly necessary for the labourer's daily maintenance.[9] And it must be admitted that the existing system alone is guilty in the matter, that the most honest employer is clearly forced to follow the stern law of competition, to exploit his workmen, if he himself wishes to live. We have to destroy our entire social system. Ah! just think of it, Gundermann stifling under the burden of his certificates of enjoyment, his heirs unable to consume everything, obliged to give to others, and to take up the pick or the chisel, like other comrades!'
Thereupon Sigismond burst into a good-natured laugh, like a child at play, still standing by the window, with his eyes fixed on the Bourse, where swarmed the black ant-hill of speculation. A burning flush was rising to his cheeks; he had no other amusement than to picture in this wise the comical ironies of to-morrow's justice.
Saccard's uneasiness had increased. Suppose this wide-awake dreamer were after all speaking the truth. Suppose he had divined the future. He explained things that seemed very clear and sensible. 'Bah!' muttered Saccard, as though to reassure himself, 'all that won't happen next year.'
'Certainly not,' rejoined the young man, again becoming serious and weary. 'We are in the transition period, the period of agitation. There will perhaps be revolutionary violences; they are often inevitable. But the exaggerations and outbursts are temporary. Oh! I do not conceal the great immediate difficulties. All this future that I dream of seems impossible. It is difficult to give people a reasonable idea of this future society, the society of just labour, whose morals will be so different to ours. It is like another world in another planet. And then, it must be confessed, the scheme of reorganisation is not ready; we are still hunting for it. I, who now scarcely sleep at all, exhaust my nights in searching. For instance, it is certain that our adversaries can say to us: "If things are as they are, it is because the logic of human actions has made them so." Hence, what a task to take the river back to its source, and direct it into another valley! The existing social system certainly owes its centuries of prosperity to the individualist principle, which emulation and personal interest endow with a fertility of production that is ever being renewed. Will collectivism ever attain to such fertility, and by what means are we to stimulate the productive functions of the workman when the idea of profit shall have been destroyed? There, to my mind, lies the doubt, the anguish, the weak point over which we must fight, if we wish the victory of Socialism to be some day won. But we shall conquer, because we are Justice. There! you see that building in front of you? You see it?'
'The Bourse?' said Saccard. 'Why, yes, of course I see it.'
'Well, it would be stupid to blow it up, because it would be rebuilt. Only I predict to you that it will go up of itself when the State shall have expropriated it, and have become the sole universal bank of the nation; and, who knows? perhaps it will then serve as a public warehouse for our surplus wealth, as one of the store-houses where our grandchildren will find the necessary supply of luxury for their days of festivity.'
Thus, with a sweeping comprehensive gesture, did Sigismond reveal this future of universal average happiness. And he had become so excited that a fresh fit of coughing shook him, and sent him back to his table, with his elbows among his papers and his head in his hands, striving to stifle the harsh rattle in his throat. But this time he did not succeed in stopping it. The door suddenly opened, and Busch, having dismissed La Méchain, ran in with a bewildered air, suffering himself at the sound of that abominable cough. He at once leaned over, and took his brother in his long arms, as one takes hold of a child to soothe its pain.
'Come, youngster,' said he, 'what is the matter with you, that you are stifling like this? You know I wish you to send for a doctor. This isn't reasonable. You surely must have talked too much.'
And thereupon he darted a side glance at Saccard, who had remained in the middle of the room, quite upset by what he had just heard from the lips of that tall fellow, so passionate and so ill, who from his window on high doubtless cast a spell over the Bourse with all his stories of sweeping everything away, in order to build up everything afresh.
'Thanks; I leave you,' said the visitor, in a hurry to get outside again. 'Send me my letter, with the ten lines of translation. I expect some others, and we will settle for them all together.'
The attack being over, however, Busch detained him a moment longer. 'By the way,' said he, 'the lady who was here just now used to know you—oh! a long time ago.'
'Ah! where was that?'
'In the Rue de la Harpe, in '52.'
Despite his usual perfect mastery over himself, Saccard turned pale. A nervous twitch distorted his mouth. Not that he, at that minute, remembered the girl whom he had wronged; he had never even known of her becoming a mother, he was ignorant of the existence of the child. But he always greatly disliked being reminded of the wretched years of his début in life.
'Rue de la Harpe! Oh! I only lived there a week, at the time of my arrival in Paris, just long enough to look for rooms. Au revoir!'
'Au revoir!' emphatically answered Busch, who deceived himself with the idea that Saccard's embarrassment implied confession, and who was already wondering how largely he might profit by the adventure.
On finding himself in the street, Saccard mechanically turned back towards the Place de la Bourse. He was trembling, and did not even look at little Madame Conin, whose pretty blonde face was smiling in the doorway of the stationery shop. The agitation had increased on the Place; it was with uncurbed flood-tide violence that the clamour of the speculators swept across the roadway to the footwalks swarming with people. It was the last roar, the roar which bursts forth as soon as the clock points to a quarter to three, the battle of the last quotations, the rageful longing to know who will come away with his pockets full. And, standing at the corner of the Rue de la Bourse, opposite the peristyle, Saccard fancied that, amid all the confused jostling under the columns he could recognise 'bear' Moser and 'bull' Pillerault quarrelling, and that he could hear the shrill voice of broker Mazaud coming from the depths of the great hall, but drowned occasionally by the shouts of Nathansohn, sitting under the clock in the coulisse. However, a vehicle, fringing the gutter as it drove up, came near spattering him with mud. Massias leaped out, even before the driver had stopped, and darted up the steps at a bound, bringing, quite out of breath, some customer's last order.
And Saccard, still motionless and erect, with his eyes fixed on the mêlée above him, ruminated over his life, haunted by the memory of his beginnings, which Busch's question had just awakened. He recalled the Rue de la Harpe, and then the Rue Saint-Jacques, through which he had dragged his boots, worn down at heel, on arriving in Paris to subdue it like a conquering adventurer; and a fury seized him at the thought that he had not subdued it yet, that he was again upon the pavement, still watching for fortune, still unsatisfied, tortured by such an appetite for enjoyment that never had he suffered more. That mad fellow Sigismond was right: labour cannot give one life; merely wretches and fools labour, to fatten the others. There was only gambling that was worth anything—gambling which in one afternoon can at one stroke bring comfort, luxury, life, broad and entire. Even if this old social world were fated to crumble some day, could not a man like himself still find time and room to satisfy his desires before the Downfall?
But just then a passer-by jostled him without even turning to apologise. He looked, and recognised Gundermann taking his little walk for his health, and saw him enter a confectioner's, whence this gold king sometimes brought a franc box of bonbons to his grand-daughters. And that elbow-thrust, at that minute, in the fit of fever that had been rising in him since he had begun the circuit of the Bourse, was like the whip-stroke, the last shove that determined him. He had completed his investment of the fortress, now he would make the assault. He swore to begin a merciless struggle; he would not leave France, he would defy his brother, he would play the final rubber, a battle of terrible audacity, which should either put Paris beneath his heels or throw him into the gutter with a broken back.
Until the moment when the Bourse closed Saccard obstinately lingered there, erect at his post of menace and observation. He watched the peristyle clearing, the steps blackening again as the whole fagged, heated crowd slowly scattered. Both on the foot and roadways around him the block continued—an endless flow of people, the eternal crowd of future victims, the investors of to-morrow, who could not pass that great lottery office of speculation without turning their heads, curious and fearful as to what might be going on there, as to all those mysterious financial operations which are the more attractive to French brains as they are penetrated by so few of them.
CHAPTER II
DREAMS AND SCHEMES
When, after his last and disastrous land speculation, Saccard had been obliged to leave his palace in the Parc Monceau, which he abandoned to his creditors in order to avoid a yet greater catastrophe, his first idea had been to take refuge with his son Maxime. The latter, since the death of his wife, now sleeping in a little cemetery in Lombardy, had been living alone in a mansion in the Avenue de l'Impératrice, where he had planned out his life with a prudent and ferocious egoism. There he spent the fortune of the deceased, methodically, without ever overstepping the bounds, like a man in feeble health whom vice had prematurely ripened; and it was in a clear voice that he refused to lodge his father in his house, wishing, he explained with his smiling, prudent air, that they might continue on good terms together.
Saccard thereupon thought of some other retreat, and was on the point of taking a little house at Passy, a retired merchant's bourgeois asylum, when he recollected that the first and second floors of the Orviedo mansion, in the Rue Saint-Lazare, were still unoccupied, with doors and windows closed. The Princess d'Orviedo, who had withdrawn into three rooms on the second floor since her husband's death, had not even put up any notice 'To Let' at the carriage entrance, where the weeds were growing. A low door at the other end of the façade led to the second storey by a servants' staircase. And in the course of his business relations with the Princess, during the visits that he paid her, Saccard had often been astonished at the negligence which she showed in the matter of deriving some profit from her property. But she shook her head in reply to his remarks; she had theories of her own as to money matters. However, when he applied in his own name, she consented at once, and for the ridiculous rent of ten thousand francs made over to him both the sumptuous ground and first floors, decorated in princely fashion, and worth certainly double the money.
The magnificence displayed by Prince d'Orviedo was well remembered. It was in the feverish flush of his immense financial fortune, when he had come from Spain to Paris amid a rain of millions, that he had bought and redecorated this mansion, pending the erection of the palace of marble and gold with which he dreamed of astonishing the world. The edifice dated from the last century; it had been one of those pleasure-houses built in the midst of vast gardens by noble gallants. Partially demolished, however, and re-erected in a severer style, it had of its park of former days merely retained a large court, bordered with stables and coach-houses, which the projected Rue du Cardinal-Fesch would surely sweep away. The Prince acquired the mansion from the heirs of a Mademoiselle Saint-Germain, whose property had formerly extended to the Rue des Trois-Frères, as the further end of the Rue Taitbout was once called. The entrance of the mansion was still in the Rue Saint-Lazare, adjoining a large building of the same period, the whilom Folie-Beauvilliers, which the Beauvilliers still occupied, after passing through a period of slow ruin; and they there possessed some remnants of an admirable garden, with magnificent trees, likewise condemned to disappear in the approaching transformation of the district.
In the midst of his disaster, Saccard still dragged about with him a number of servants, the débris of his over-numerous household, a valet, a chef, and his wife who had charge of the linen, another woman who had remained no one knew why, a coachman and two ostlers; and he filled up the stables and coach-houses, putting two horses and three carriages in them, and arranged a servants' dining-hall on the ground floor of the house. He had not five hundred francs in cash in his coffers, but lived at the rate of two or three hundred thousand francs a year. And with his own person he managed to fill the vast first-floor apartments, the three drawing- and five bed-rooms, not to mention the immense dining-room, where covers could be laid for fifty persons. Here a door had formerly opened upon an inner staircase, leading to another and smaller dining-room on the second floor, and the Princess, who had recently let this part of the second floor to an engineer, M. Hamelin, a bachelor, living with his sister, had contented herself with closing the door by the aid of a couple of stout screws. She herself shared the old servants' staircase with the Hamelins, while Saccard had the main stairway at his own entire disposal. He partially furnished a few rooms with some remnants from his Parc Monceau establishment, and left the others empty, succeeding, nevertheless, in restoring some life to that series of bare, gloomy walls, whence an obstinate hand seemed to have torn even the smallest shreds of hangings on the very morrow of the Prince's death. And here then he was able to indulge afresh his dream of a great fortune.
The Princess d'Orviedo was at that time one of the most curious notabilities of Paris. Fifteen years previously she had resignedly married the Prince, whom she did not love, in obedience to the formal command of her mother, the Duchess de Combeville. At that period this young girl of twenty had been famous for her beauty and exemplary conduct, being very religious, and perhaps a little too serious, although loving society passionately. She was ignorant of the singular stories current regarding the Prince, the sources of his regal fortune estimated at three hundred millions of francs—his whole life of frightful robberies, perpetrated, not on the skirts of a wood and weapon in hand, after the fashion of the noble adventurers of former days, but according to the system of the correct modern bandit, in the broad sunlight of the Bourse, where amidst death and ruin he had emptied the pockets of poor credulous folks. Over there in Spain, and here in France, the Prince for twenty years had appropriated the lion's share in every great legendary piece of rascality. Although suspecting nothing of the mire and blood in which he had just picked up so many millions, his wife at their first meeting had felt a repugnance towards him, which even her religious sentiments were powerless to overcome; and to this antipathy was soon added a secret, growing rancour at having no child by this marriage, to which she had submitted for obedience' sake. Maternity would have sufficed her, for she adored children; and thus she came to hate this man, who, after taking from her all hope of love, had even been unable to satisfy her maternal longings. It was then that the Princess was seen to precipitate herself into a life of unheard-of luxury, dazzling Paris with the brilliancy of her fêtes, and displaying in all things such magnificence that even the Tuileries were said to be jealous. Then suddenly, on the day after the Prince died from a stroke of apoplexy, the mansion in the Rue Saint-Lazare fell into absolute silence, complete darkness. Not a light, not a sound; doors and windows alike remained closed; and the rumour spread that the Princess, after violently stripping the lower part of the house, had withdrawn, like a recluse, into three little rooms on the second floor, with old Sophie, her mother's former maid, who had brought her up. When she reappeared in public, she wore a simple black woollen dress, with a lace fichu concealing her hair. Short and still plump, with her narrow forehead and her pretty round face with pearly teeth hidden by tightly-set lips, she already had a yellow complexion, with the silent countenance of a woman who has but one desire, one purpose in life, like a nun long immured in the cloister. She had just reached thirty, and lived henceforth solely for deeds of charity on a colossal scale.
The surprise of Paris was very great, and all sorts of extraordinary stories began to circulate. The Princess had inherited her husband's entire fortune, the famous three hundred millions of francs,[10] which the newspapers were always talking about. And the legend which finally sprang up was a romantic one. A man, a mysterious stranger dressed in black, it was said, had suddenly appeared one evening in the Princess's chamber just as she was going to bed, without her ever understanding by what secret door he had gained admission; and what this man had told her no one in the world knew; but he must have revealed to her the abominable origin of those three hundred millions, and perhaps have exacted from her an oath to offer reparation for so many iniquities, if she wished to avoid the most frightful catastrophes. Then the man had disappeared; and now during the five years that she had been a widow, either in obedience to an order received from the realms beyond, or through a simple revolt of honesty when the record of her fortune had fallen into her hands, she had lived in a burning fever of renunciation and reparation. All the pent-up feelings of this woman, who had not known love, and who had not succeeded in becoming a mother, and especially her unsatisfied affection for children, blossomed forth in a veritable passion for the poor, the weak, the disinherited, the suffering, from whom she believed the stolen millions to be withheld, to whom she swore to restore them royally in a rain of alms. A fixed idea took possession of her, a thought she could not get rid of had been driven into her brain; she henceforth simply looked upon herself as a banker with whom the poor had deposited those millions, in order that they might be employed for their benefit in the most advantageous way. She herself was but an accountant, a business agent, living in a realm to figures, amidst a population of notaries, architects, and workmen. She had established a vast office in town, where a score of employees worked. In her three small rooms at home she only received four or five intermediaries, her lieutenants; and there she passed her days, at a desk, like the director of some great enterprise, cloistered far away from the importunate among a growing heap of papers spread out all around her. It was a dream to relieve every misery, from that of the child who suffers from being born, to that of the old man who cannot die without suffering. During those five years, scattering gold by the handful, she had founded the St. Mary's Infant Asylum at La Villette—an asylum with white cradles for the very little and blue beds for the bigger ones—a vast, well-lighted establishment, already occupied by three hundred children; then had come the St. Joseph's Orphan Asylum at Saint Mandé, where a hundred boys and a hundred girls received such education and training as are given in bourgeois families; next an asylum for the aged at Châtillon, capable of accommodating fifty men and fifty women, and finally a hospital—the St. Marceau Hospital it was called—in one of the suburbs of Paris. Here the wards, containing a couple of hundred beds, had only just been opened. But her favourite foundation, that which at this moment absorbed her whole heart, was the Institute of Work,[11] a creation of her own, which was to take the place of the House of Correction, and where three hundred children, one hundred and fifty girls and one hundred and fifty boys, rescued from crime and debauchery on the pavements of Paris, were to be regenerated by good care and apprenticeship at a trade. These various foundations, with large donations to public establishments and a reckless prodigality in private charity, had in five years devoured almost a hundred millions of francs. At this rate, in a few years more she would be ruined, without having reserved even a small income to buy the bread and milk upon which she now lived. When her old servant Sophie, breaking her accustomed silence, scolded her with a harsh word, prophesying that she would die a beggar, she gave a feeble smile, now the only one that ever appeared on her colourless lips, a divine smile of hope.
It was precisely in connection with the Institute of Work that Saccard made Princess d'Orviedo's acquaintance. He was one of the owners of the land which she bought for this institution, an old garden planted with beautiful trees reaching to the Park of Neuilly, and skirting the Boulevard Bineau. He had attracted her by his brisk way of doing business; and, certain difficulties arising with her contractors, she wished to see him again. He himself had become greatly interested in what she was doing—struck, charmed by the grand plan which she had imposed upon the architect: two monumental wings, one for the boys, the other for the girls, connected with each other by a main building containing the chapel, the common departments, the offices, and various services; and each wing with its spacious yard, its workshops, its outbuildings of all sorts. But what particularly fired his enthusiasm, given his own taste for the grand and the gorgeous, was the luxury displayed, the very vastness of the edifice, the materials employed in building it—materials which would defy the centuries—the marble lavished upon all sides, the kitchen walled and floored with faïence, and with sufficient accommodation for the roasting of an ox, the gigantic dining-halls with rich oak panellings and ceilings, the dormitories flooded with light and enlivened with bright paintings, the linen room, the bath room, and the infirmary, where all the appointments bespoke extreme refinement; and on all sides there were broad entrances, stairways, corridors, ventilated in summer and heated in winter; and the entire house, bathed in the sunlight, had the gaiety of youth, the complete comfort which only immense wealth can procure. When the anxious architect, considering all this magnificence useless, spoke to the Princess of the expense, she stopped him with a word: she had enjoyed luxury; she wished to give it to the poor, that they might enjoy it in their turn—they who create the luxury of the rich. Her fixed idea centred in this dream; to gratify every desire of the wretched, to provide them with the same beds, the same fare, as the fortunate ones of this world.
There was to be no question of a crust of bread, or a chance pallet by way of alms; but life on a large scale within this palace, where they would be at home, taking their revenge, tasting the enjoyment of conquerors. Only, amidst all this squandering, all these enormous estimates, she was abominably robbed; a swarm of contractors lived upon her, to say nothing of the losses due to inadequate superintendence; the property of the poor was being wasted. And it was Saccard who opened her eyes to this, begging her to let him set her accounts straight. And he did this in a thoroughly disinterested way, solely for the pleasure of regulating this mad dance of millions which aroused his enthusiasm. Never before had he shown himself so scrupulously honest. In this colossal, complicated affair he proved the most active, most upright of helpers, giving his time and even his money, taking his reward simply in the delight which he felt at such large sums passing through his hands. Scarcely anyone but himself was known at the Institute of Work, whither the Princess never went, any more than she visited her other establishments, preferring to remain hidden within her three little rooms, like some invisible good fairy, whilst he was adored, blessed, overwhelmed with all the gratitude which she did not seem to desire.
It was at this time undoubtedly that Saccard began nursing the indefinite project, which, when once he was installed as a tenant in the Orviedo mansion, became transformed into a sharp, well-defined desire. Why should he not devote himself entirely to the management of the Princess's charitable enterprises? In the period of doubt in which he found himself, vanquished on the field of speculation, not knowing how to rebuild his fortune, this course appeared to him like a new incarnation, a sudden deifical ascent. To become the dispenser of that royal charity, the channel through which would roll that flood of gold that was pouring upon Paris! There were two hundred millions left; what works might still be created, what a city of miracle might be made to spring from the soil! To say nothing of the fact that he would make those millions fruitful, double, triple them, know so well how to employ them that he would make them yield a world. Then, in his passionate fever, his ideas broadened; he lived in this one intoxicating thought of scattering those millions broadcast in endless alms, of drowning all happy France with them; and he grew sentimental, for his probity was without a reproach—not a sou stuck to his fingers. In his brain—the brain of a visionary—a giant idyl took shape, the idyl of one free from all self-consciousness, an idyl in no wise due to any desire to atone for his old financial brigandage. There was the less cause for any such desire, as at the end there still lay the dream of his entire life, the conquest of Paris. To be the king of charity, the adored God of the multitude of the poor, to become unique and popular, to occupy the attention of the world—it even surpassed his ambition. What prodigies could he not realize, should he employ in goodness his business faculties, his strategy, obstinacy, and utter freedom from prejudice! And he would have the irresistible power which wins battles, money, coffers full of money, which often does so much harm, and which would do so much good as soon as it should be used to satisfy his pride and pleasure.
Then, enlarging his project still further, Saccard came to the point of asking himself why he should not marry the Princess d'Orviedo. That would determine their mutual position, and prevent all evil interpretations. For a month he manœuvred adroitly, disclosed superb plans, sought to make himself indispensable; and one day, in a tranquil voice, again becoming ingenuous, he made his proposal, developed his great project. It was a veritable partnership that he proposed; he offered himself as the liquidator of the sums stolen by the Prince; pledged himself to return them to the poor tenfold. The Princess, in her eternal black dress, with her lace fichu on her head, listened to him attentively, no emotion whatever animating her sallow face. She was very much struck with the advantages that such an association might offer, and quite indifferent to the other considerations. However, having postponed her answer till the next day, she finally refused; she had upon reflection doubtless realized that she would no longer be sole mistress of her charities, and these she meant to dispense with absolute sovereignty, even if she did so madly. However, she explained that she would be happy to retain him as a counsellor; and showed how precious she considered his collaboration by begging him to continue to attend to the Institute of Work, of which he was the real director.
For a whole week Saccard experienced violent chagrin, as one does at the loss of a cherished idea; not that he felt himself falling back into the abyss of brigandage; but, just as a sentimental song will bring tears to the eyes of the most abject drunkard, so this colossal idyl of good accomplished by dint of millions had moved his corsair soul. Once more he fell, and from a great height: it seemed to him that he was dethroned. From money he had always sought to derive, in addition to the satisfaction of his appetites, the magnificence of a princely life, and never had he sufficiently achieved it. He grew enraged as one by one his tumbles carried away his hopes. And thus, when his project was destroyed by the Princess's quiet, precise refusal, he was thrown back into a furious desire for battle. To fight, to prove the strongest in the stern war of speculation, to eat up others in order to keep them from eating him, was, after his thirst for splendour and enjoyment, the one great motive of his passion for business. Though he did not heap up treasure, he had another joy, the delight attending on the struggle between vast amounts of money pitted against one another—fortunes set in battle array, like contending army corps, the clash of conflicting millions, with defeats and victories that intoxicated him. And forthwith there returned his hatred of Gundermann, his ungovernable longing for revenge. To conquer Gundermann was the chimerical desire that haunted him, each time that he found himself prostrate, vanquished. Though he felt the childish folly attaching to such an attempt, might he not at least cut into him, make a place for himself opposite him, force him to share, like those monarchs of neighbouring countries and equal power who treat each other as cousins? Then it was that the Bourse again attracted him; his head once more became full of schemes that he might launch; conflicting projects claimed him in all directions, putting him in such a fever that he knew not what to decide until the day came when a supreme, stupendous idea evolved itself from amidst all the others, and gradually gained entire possession of him.
Since he had been living in the Orviedo mansion, Saccard had occasionally seen the sister of the engineer Hamelin, who lived in the little suite of rooms on the second floor, a woman with an admirable figure—Madame Caroline she was familiarly called. What had especially struck him, at their first meeting, was her superb white hair, a royal crown of white hair, which had a most singular effect on the brow of this woman, who was still young, scarcely thirty-six years old. At the age of five and twenty her hair had thus turned completely white. Her eyebrows, which had remained black and very thick, imparted an expression of youth, and of extreme oddity, to her ermine-girt countenance. She had never been pretty, for her nose and chin were too pronounced, and her mouth large with thick lips expressive of exquisite kindliness. But certainly that white fleece, that wavy whiteness of fine silken hair, softened her rather stern physiognomy, and added a grandmother's smiling charm to the freshness and vigour of a beautiful, passionate woman. She was tall and strongly built, with a free and very noble carriage.
Every time he met her, Saccard, shorter than she was, followed her with his eyes, in an interested way, secretly envying her tall figure, her healthy breadth of shoulders. And gradually, through the servants, he became acquainted with the whole history of the Hamelins, Caroline and George. They were the children of a Montpellier physician, a remarkable savant, an enthusiastic Catholic, who had died poor. At the time of their father's death the girl was eighteen and the boy nineteen; and, the latter having just entered the Polytechnic School, his sister followed him to Paris, where she secured a place as governess. It was she who slipped five-franc pieces into his hand, and kept him in pocket-money during his two years' course; later, when, having graduated with a low rank, he had to tramp the pavements, it was still she who supported him until he found employment. They adored each other, and it was their dream never to separate. Nevertheless, an unhoped-for marriage offering itself—the good grace and keen intelligence of the young girl having made the conquest of a millionaire brewer in the house where she was employed—George wished her to accept; a thing which he cruelly repented of, for, after a few years of married life, Caroline was obliged to apply for a separation in order to avoid being killed by her husband, who drank and pursued her with a knife in fits of imbecile jealousy. She was then twenty-six years old, and again found herself poor, obstinately refusing to claim any alimony from the man whom she left. But her brother had at last, after many attempts, put his hand upon a work that pleased him: he was about to start for Egypt, with the Commission appointed to prosecute the first investigations connected with the Suez Canal, and he took his sister with him. She bravely established herself at Alexandria, and again began giving lessons, while he travelled about the country. Thus they remained in Egypt until 1859, and saw the first blows of the pick struck upon the shore at Port Said by a meagre gang of barely a hundred and fifty navvies, lost amid the sands, and commanded by a handful of engineers. Then Hamelin, having been sent to Syria to ensure a constant supply of provisions, remained there, in consequence of a quarrel with his chiefs. He made Caroline come to Beyrout, where other pupils awaited her, and launched out into a big enterprise, under the patronage of a French company—the laying out of a carriage road from Beyrout to Damascus, the first, the only route opened through the passes of the Lebanon range. And thus they lived there three years longer, until the road was finished; he visiting the mountains, absenting himself for two months to make a trip to Constantinople through the Taurus, she following him as soon as she could escape, and fully sharing the revivalist projects which he formed, whilst tramping about this old land, slumbering beneath the ashes of dead and vanished civilisations. He had a portfolio full of ideas and plans, and felt the imperative necessity of returning to France if he was to give shape to all his vast schemes, establish companies, and find the necessary capital. And so, after nine years' residence in the East, they started off, and curiosity prompted them to return by way of Egypt, where the progress made with the works of the Suez Canal filled them with enthusiasm. In four years a city had grown up on the strand at Port Said; an entire people was swarming there; the human ants were multiplying, changing the face of the earth. In Paris, however, dire ill-luck awaited Hamelin. For fifteen months he struggled on with his projects, unable to impart his faith to anyone, too modest as he was, too taciturn, stranded on that second floor of the Orviedo mansion, in a little suite of five rooms, for which he paid twelve hundred francs a year, farther from success than he had even been when roaming over the mountains and plains of Asia. Their savings rapidly decreased, and brother and sister came at last to a position of great embarrassment.
In fact, it was this that interested Saccard—the growing sadness of Madame Caroline, whose hearty gaiety was dimmed by the discouragement into which she saw her brother falling. She was to some extent the man of the household; George, who greatly resembled her physically, though of slighter build, had a rare faculty for work, but he became absorbed in his studies, and did not like to be roused from them. Never had he cared to marry, not feeling the need of doing so, his adoration of his sister sufficing him. This whilom student of the Polytechnic School, whose conceptions were so vast, whose zeal was so ardent in everything he undertook, at times evinced such simplicity that one would have deemed him rather stupid. Brought up, too, in the narrowest Romanism he had kept the religious faith of a child, careful in his observance of all rites and ceremonies like a thorough believer; whereas his sister had regained possession of herself by dint of reading and learning during the long hours when he was plunged in his technical tasks. She spoke four languages; she had read the economists and the philosophers, and had for a time been moved to enthusiasm by socialistic and evolutionary theories. Subsequently, however, she had quieted down, acquiring—notably by her travels, her long residence among far-off civilisations—a broad spirit of tolerance and well-balanced common-sense. Though she herself no longer believed, she retained great respect for her brother's faith. There had been one explanation between them, after which they had never referred to the matter again. She, with her simplicity and good-nature, was a woman of real intelligence; and, facing life with extraordinary courage, with a gay bravery which withstood the cruel blows of fate, she was in the habit of saying that a single sorrow alone remained within her—that of never having had a child.
Saccard was able to render Hamelin a service—some little work which he secured for him from some investors who needed an engineer to report upon the output of a new machine, and thus he forced an intimacy with the brother and sister, and frequently went up to spend an hour with them in their salon, their only large room, which they had transformed into a work room. This room remained virtually bare, for its only furniture consisted of a long designing table, a smaller table covered with papers, and half a dozen chairs. Books were heaped up on the mantel-shelf, whilst on the walls an improvised decoration enlivened the blank space—a series of plans, of bright water-colour drawings, each held in place by four tacks. The plans were those which Hamelin had gathered together in his portfolio of projects; they were the notes he had taken in Syria, the bases on which he hoped to build up all his future fortune; whereas the water-colours were the work of Madame Caroline—Eastern views, types, and costumes which she had noted while accompanying her brother about, which she had sketched with keen insight into the laws of colour, though in a very unpretending way. Two larger windows overlooking the garden of the Beauvilliers mansion admitted a bright light to illumine these straggling designs, typical of another life, of an ancient society sinking into dust, which the plans, firmly and mathematically outlined, seemed about to put upon its feet again, supported, as it were, by the solid scaffolding of modern science. And Saccard, when he had rendered himself useful, with that display of activity which made him so charming, would often linger before the plans and water-colours, seduced, and continually asking for fresh explanations. Vast schemes were already germinating in his brain.
One morning he found Madame Caroline seated alone at the little table which she used as her desk. She was dreadfully sad, her hands resting among her papers.
'What can you expect?' said she, 'things are turning out very badly. I am brave, but everything seems about to fail us at once; and what distresses me is the powerlessness to which misfortune reduces my poor brother, for he is not valiant, he has no strength except for work. I thought of getting another situation as governess, that I might at least help him. But I have sought, and found nothing. Yet I cannot go out working as a charwoman.'
Never had Saccard seen her so upset, so dejected. 'The devil! you have not come to that!' he cried.
She shook her head, and evinced great bitterness against life, which she usually accepted so jovially, even when at its worst. And Hamelin just then coming in with the news of a fresh disappointment, big tears ran slowly down her cheeks. She spoke no further, but sat there, her hands clenched on the table, her eyes wandering away into space.
'And to think,' said Hamelin, 'that there are millions awaiting us in the East, if someone would only help me to make them!'
Saccard had planted himself in front of a plan representing a view of a pavilion surrounded by vast store-houses. 'What is that?' he asked.
'Oh! something I did for my amusement,' explained the engineer. 'It's the plan of a dwelling at Beyrout for the manager of the Company which I dreamed of, you know, the United Steam Navigation Company.'
He became animated, and went into fresh particulars. During his stay in the East, he had noticed how defective were all the transport services. The various companies established at Marseilles were ruining one another by competition, and were unable to provide vessels in sufficient number or of sufficient comfort. One of his first ideas, the very basis indeed of his many enterprises, was to syndicate these services, to unite them in one vast, wealthy company, which should exploit the entire Mediterranean, and acquire the sovereign control thereof, by establishing lines to all the ports of Africa, Spain, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Asia, and even the remotest parts of the Black Sea. It was a scheme worthy at once of a shrewd organiser and a good patriot; it meant the East conquered, given to France, to say nothing of the close relations which it would establish with Syria, where lay the vast field of his proposed operations.
'Syndicates,' murmured Saccard—'yes, nowadays the future seems to lie in that direction. It is such a powerful form of association! Three or four little enterprises, which vegetate in isolation, acquire irresistible vitality and prosperity as soon as they unite. Yes, to-morrow belongs to the association of capital, to the centralised efforts of immense masses. All industry and commerce will end in a single huge bazaar, where a man will provide himself with everything.'
He had stopped again, this time before a water-colour which represented a wild locality, an arid gorge, blocked up by a gigantic pile of rocks crowned with brambles. 'Oh! oh!' he resumed, 'here is the end of the world. There can be no danger of being jostled by passers-by in that nook.'
'A Carmel gorge,' answered Hamelin. 'My sister sketched it while I was making my studies in that neighbourhood,' and he added simply: 'See! between the cretaceous limestone and the porphyry which raised up that limestone over the entire mountain-side, there is a considerable vein of sulphuretted silver—yes, a silver mine, the working of which, according to my calculations, would yield enormous profits.'
'A silver mine?' repeated Saccard eagerly.
Madame Caroline, with her eyes still wandering far away, had overheard them amid her fit of sadness, and, as if a vision had risen before her, she said: 'Carmel, ah! what a desert, what days of solitude! It is full of myrtle and broom, which make the warm air balmy. And there are eagles continually circling aloft—and to think of all this silver, sleeping in that sepulchre, beside so much misery, where one would like to see happy multitudes, workshops, cities spring up—a whole people regenerated by toil.'