'A road could easily be opened from Carmel to Saint Jean d'Acre,' continued Hamelin. 'And I firmly believe that iron, too, would be found there, for it abounds in all the mountains in the neighbourhood. I have also studied a new system of extraction, by which large savings could be made. All is ready; it is only a matter of finding the capital.'
'The Carmel Silver Mining Company!' murmured Saccard.
But it was now the engineer who, with raised eyes, went from one plan to another, again full of this labour of his life, seized with fever, at thought of the brilliant future which was sleeping there while want was paralysing him. 'And these are only the small preliminary affairs,' he continued. 'Look at this series of plans; here is the grand stroke, a complete railway system traversing Asia Minor from end to end. The lack of convenient and rapid communication, that is the primary cause of the stagnation into which this rich country has sunk. You would not find a single carriage road there, travel and transport being invariably effected by means of mules or camels. So imagine the revolution if the iron horse could penetrate to the confines of the desert! Industry and commerce would be increased tenfold, civilisation would be victorious, Europe would at last open the gates of the East. Oh! if it interests you, we will talk of it in detail. And you shall see, you shall see!'
And such was his excitement that he could not refrain from straightway entering into explanations. It was especially during his journey to Constantinople that he had studied his projected railway system. The great, the only difficulty was presented by the Taurus mountains; but he had explored the different passes, and asserted that a direct and comparatively inexpensive line was possible. However, it was not his intention to make the system complete at one stroke. On obtaining a full grant from the Sultan, it would be prudent at the outset to merely lay down the mother line, from Broussa to Beyrout, by way of Angora and Aleppo. Later on, they might lay down branch lines from Smyrna to Angora, and from Trebizond to Angora, by way of Erzeroum and Sivas. 'And after that, and after that,' he continued; but, instead of finishing, he contented himself with a smile, not daring to tell how far he had carried the audacity of his projects.
'Ah! the plains at the foot of Taurus,' said Madame Caroline, in the slow, low voice of an awakened sleeper; 'what a delightful paradise! One has only to scratch the earth, and harvests spring up in abundance. The boughs of the fruit trees, peach, cherry, fig, and almond, break under their weight of fruit. And what fields of olive and mulberry—dense as woods! And what a natural, easy existence in that light atmosphere, under that sky for ever blue!'
Saccard began to laugh, with that shrill laugh betokening a fine appetite, which was his whenever he scented fortune. And, as Hamelin went on talking yet of more projects, notably of the establishment of a bank at Constantinople, with just an allusion to the all-powerful relations which he had left behind him, especially with the entourage of the Grand Vizier, he interrupted him to say gaily: 'Why, it is Tom Tiddler's land, one could sell it!' Then, very familiarly resting both hands on the shoulders of Madame Caroline, who was still sitting at the table, he added: 'Don't despair, madame. I have great sympathy for you; between us, your brother and I, we will do something that will benefit all of us. You'll see; be patient, and wait.'
During the ensuing month Saccard again procured some little jobs for the engineer; and though he talked no further of the latter's grand enterprises, he must have steadily thought of them, hesitating the while on account of their crushing magnitude.
The bond of intimacy between them was drawn tighter, however, by the wholly natural fashion in which Madame Caroline came to occupy herself with his household, the household of a single man, whose resources were diminished by useless expenses, and who was the worse served the more servants he had. He, so shrewd out of doors, famous for the vigour and cunning of his hand when any huge robbery had to be perpetrated, let everything go helter-skelter at home, careless of the frightful waste that tripled his expenses; and the absence of a woman was cruelly felt, even in the smallest matters. When Madame Caroline perceived how he was being pillaged, she at first gave him advice, and then intervened in person, with the result of effecting a saving in two or three directions, so that one day he laughingly offered her a position as his housekeeper. Why not? She had sought a place as governess, and might well accept an honourable situation, which would permit her to wait. The offer made in jest became a serious one. Would it not give her occupation, and enable her to assist her brother to the extent, at any rate, of the three hundred francs a month that Saccard was willing to give? And so she accepted. She reformed the household in a week, discharging the chef and his wife, and replacing them by a female cook, who, with the valet and the coachman, would suffice for Saccard's requirements. Further, she retained but one horse and one carriage, assumed authority over everything, and examined the accounts with such scrupulous care that at the end of the first fortnight she had reduced expenses by one-half. He was delighted, and jokingly told her that it was he who was now robbing her, and that she ought to have claimed a percentage on all the profits that she realised for him.
Then a very intimate life began. Saccard had the idea of removing the screws that fastened the door which supplied communication between the two suites of rooms, and they went up and down freely, from one dining-room to the other, by the inner staircase. While her brother was at work, shut up from morning till night, busy with the task of putting his Eastern designs in order, Madame Caroline, leaving her own household to the care of the one servant in her employ, came down at all hours of the day to give her orders, as though she were at home. It had become Saccard's joy to see this tall, stately woman continually appear and cross the rooms with a firm, superb step, bringing with her the ever-unexpected gaiety of her white hair flying about her young face. Again she was very gay; she had recovered her courage now that she felt she was useful once more, her time occupied, her feet ever on the move. Without any affectation of simplicity, she always wore a black dress, in the pocket of which could be heard the jingling of her bunch of keys; and it certainly amused her—she, the woman of learning, the philosopher—to be solely a good housewife, the housekeeper of a prodigal, whom she was beginning to love as one loves naughty children. He, greatly attracted for a time, calculating that after all there was but a difference of fourteen years between them, had asked himself what would happen should he some day talk to her of love. He knew, however, that a friend of her brother's, a Monsieur Beaudoin, a merchant whom they had left at Beyrout, and whose return to France was near at hand, had been much in love with her, to the point indeed of offering to wait for the death of her husband, who had just been shut up in an asylum, crazy with alcoholism.
In this connection it suddenly happened that Madame Caroline subsided into deep sorrow. One morning she came down dejected, extremely pale, and with heavy eyes. Saccard could learn nothing from her; in fact, he ceased to question her, so obstinately did she declare that there was no trouble, and that she was just as usual. Only on the following day did he understand matters on finding in the rooms upstairs the printed notification of M. Beaudoin's marriage to an English consul's daughter, who was both very young and immensely rich. The blow must have been the harder because of the arrival of the news in this way, without any preparation, without even a farewell. It was a complete collapse in the unfortunate woman's existence, the loss of the far-off hope to which she had clung in hours of disaster. And chance also proved abominably cruel, for only two days before she had learnt that her husband was dead; for forty-eight hours she had been able to believe in the approaching realisation of her dream, and then her life had fallen into ruin, leaving her as if annihilated. That same evening, when, in accordance with her habit, she entered Saccard's rooms to talk of the orders for the next day, he spoke to her of her misfortune so gently that she burst out sobbing; and then the inevitable came to pass, words of comfort were at last followed by words of love, and Madame Caroline fell.
For a fortnight afterwards she remained in a state of frightful sadness. The strength of life, that impulse which makes existence a necessity and a delight, had abandoned her. She attended to her manifold occupations, but like one whose mind was far away, without any illusion as to the ratio and interest of things. She personified the human machine still toiling on, but in despair over the annihilation of everything. And, amid this shipwreck of her bravery and gaiety, she had but one distraction, that of passing all her spare time with her brow pressed against the panes of one of the windows of the large work-room, her eyes fixed upon the garden of the neighbouring mansion, that Hôtel Beauvilliers where, since the first days of her sojourn in the neighbourhood, she had divined the presence of anguish, of one of those hidden miseries which are all the more distressing by reason of the effort made to save appearances. There, too, were beings who suffered, and her sorrow was, so to speak, steeped in their tears; at sight of which she was so overcome with melancholy as to deem herself insensible, dead, lost in the sorrow of others.
These Beauvilliers—who, to say nothing of their immense estates in Touraine and Anjou, had formerly possessed a magnificent mansion in the Rue de Grenelle—now, in Paris, only owned this old pleasure-house, built at the beginning of the last century outside the city walls, and at present shut in among the gloomy buildings of the Rue Saint-Lazare. The few beautiful trees of the garden lingered there, as at the bottom of a well; and the cracked, crumbling entrance-steps were covered with moss. The place seemed like some corner of Nature put in prison, a meek, mournful nook where dumb despair reigned, and where the sun only cast a greenish light, which chilled one's shoulders. And in this still, damp, cellar-like place, at the top of the disjoined steps, the first person noticed by Madame Caroline had been the Countess de Beauvilliers, a tall, thin woman of sixty, with perfectly white hair and a very noble old-time air. With her large straight nose, thin lips, and particularly long neck, she looked like a very old swan, meekly woeful. Then, almost immediately behind her, had come her daughter, Alice de Beauvilliers, now twenty-five years old, but with such an impoverished constitution that one would have taken her for a little girl, had it not been for the spoiled complexion and already drawn features of her face. She was her mother over again, but more puny and with less aristocratic nobility, her neck elongated to the point of ugliness, having nothing left her, indeed, but the pitiful charm that may cling to the last daughter of a great race. The two women had been living alone since the son, Ferdinand de Beauvilliers, had enlisted in the Pontifical Zouaves, after the battle of Castelfidardo, lost by Lamoricière. Every day, when it did not rain, they thus appeared, one behind the other, and, descending the steps, made the circuit of the little central grass-plot, without exchanging a word. The path was merely edged with ivy; flowers would not have grown in such a spot, or perhaps they would have cost too dear. And the slow promenade—undoubtedly a simple constitutional—made by those two pale women, under the centenarian trees which long ago had witnessed so many festivities, and which the neighbouring bourgeois houses were now stifling, was suggestive of a melancholy grief, as though they had been performing some mourning ceremony for old, dead things.
Her interest aroused, Madame Caroline had watched her neighbours out of tender sympathy, without evil curiosity of any kind; and gradually from her view of the garden she penetrated their life, which they hid with jealous care from the street. There was still a horse in the stable, and a carriage in the coach-house, in the care of an old domestic who was at once valet, coachman, and door-porter; just as there was a cook, who also served as a chambermaid; but if the carriage went out at the main gate, with the horse properly harnessed, to take the ladies visiting, and if there was a certain display at table in the winter, at the fortnightly dinners to which a few friends came, how long were the fasts, how sordid the economies that were hourly practised in order to secure this false semblance of fortune! In a little shed, screened from every eye, there were, in order to reduce the laundry bill, continual washings of wretched garments worn out by frequent soaping, and mended thread by thread; three or four vegetables were picked for the evening meal; bread was allowed to grow stale on a board, in order that less of it might be eaten; all sorts of avaricious, mean, and touching practices were resorted to: the old coachman would sew up the holes in Mademoiselle's boots, the cook would blacken the tips of Madame's faded gloves with ink; and then the mother's dresses were passed over to the daughter after ingenious transformations; and hats and bonnets lasted for years, thanks to changes of flowers and ribbons.
When they were expecting no one, the reception rooms on the ground floor were kept carefully closed, as well as the large apartments of the first storey; for, of the whole large pile, the two women now occupied but one small room, which they used both as their dining-room and boudoir. When the window was partly open, the Countess could be seen mending her linen, like some needy little bourgeoise; while the young girl, between her piano and her box of water-colours, knit stockings and mittens for her mother. One very stormy day, both were seen to go down into the garden, and gather up the sand of the pathway, which the violence of the rain was sweeping away.
Madame Caroline now knew their history. The Countess de Beauvilliers had suffered much from her husband, a rake of whom she had never complained. One evening they had brought him home to her at Vendôme, with the death-rattle in his throat and a bullet-hole through his body. There was talk of a hunting accident, some shot fired by a jealous gamekeeper whose wife or daughter he had probably seduced. And the worst of it was that with him vanished that formerly colossal fortune of the Beauvilliers, consisting of immense tracts of land, regal domains, which the Revolution had already found diminished, and which his father and himself had now exhausted. Of all the vast property, a single farm remained, the Aublets, situated at a few leagues from Vendôme and yielding a rental of about fifteen thousand francs, the sole resource left for the widow and her two children. The mansion in the Rue de Grenelle had long since been sold; and that in the Rue Saint-Lazare consumed the larger part of the fifteen thousand francs derived from the farm, for it was heavily mortgaged, and would in its turn be sold if they did not pay the interest. Thus scarcely six or seven thousand francs were left for the support of four persons, of the household of a noble family still unwilling to abdicate. It was now eight years since the Countess, on becoming a widow with a son of twenty and a daughter of seventeen, had, amid the crumbling of her fortune, and with her aristocratic pride waxing within her, sworn that she would live on bread and water rather than fall. From that time she had indeed had but one thought—to hold her rank, to marry her daughter to a man of equal nobility, and to make a soldier of her son. At first Ferdinand had caused her mortal anxieties in consequence of some youthful follies, debts which it became necessary to pay; but, warned of the situation in a solemn interview with his mother, he had not repeated the offence, for he had a tender heart at bottom, albeit he was simply an idle cypher in the world, unfitted for any employment, any possible place in contemporary society. And, now that he was a soldier of the Pope, he was still a cause of secret anguish to the Countess, for he lacked health, delicate despite his proud bearing, with impoverished, feeble blood, which rendered the Roman climate dangerous for him. As for Alice's marriage, it was so slow in coming that the sad mother's eyes filled with tears when she looked at her daughter already growing old, withering whilst she waited. Despite her air of melancholy insignificance, the girl was not stupid; she had ardent aspirations for life, for a man who would love her, for happiness; but, not wishing to plunge the house into yet deeper grief, she pretended to have renounced everything; making a jest of marriage, and saying that it was her vocation to be an old maid; though at night she would weep on her pillow, almost dying of grief at the thought that she would never be mated. The Countess, however, by prodigies of avarice, had succeeded in laying aside twenty thousand francs, which constituted Alice's entire dowry. She had likewise saved from the wreck a few jewels—a bracelet, some finger-rings and ear-rings, the whole possibly worth ten thousand francs—a very meagre dowry, a wedding-gift of which she did not dare to speak, since it was scarcely enough to meet the necessary expenditure, should the awaited husband ever appear. And yet she would not despair, but struggled on in spite of everything, unwilling to abandon a single one of the privileges of her birth, still as haughty, as observant of the proprieties as ever, incapable of going out on foot, or of cutting off a single entremets when she was receiving guests, but ever reducing the outlay of her hidden life, condemning herself for weeks to potatoes without butter, in order that she might add another fifty francs to her daughter's ever-insufficient dowry. It was a painful, puerile daily heroism that she practised, whilst week by week the house was crumbling a little more about their heads.
So far, however, Madame Caroline had not had an opportunity of speaking to the Countess and her daughter. Although she finally came to know the most private details of their life, those which they hid from the entire world, she had as yet only exchanged glances with them, those glances that suddenly turn into a feeling of secret sympathy. The Princess d'Orviedo was destined to bring them together. She had the idea of appointing a sort of committee of superintendence for her Institute of Work—a committee composed of ten ladies, who would meet twice a month, visit the Institute in detail, and see that all the departments were properly managed. Having reserved the selection of these ladies for herself, she designated, among the very first, Madame de Beauvilliers, who had been a great friend of hers in former days, but had become simply her neighbour, now that she had retired from the world. And it had come about that the committee of superintendence, having suddenly lost its secretary, Saccard, who retained authority over the management of the establishment, had recommended Madame Caroline as a model secretary, such a one as could not be found elsewhere. The duties of the post were rather arduous; there was much clerical work, and even some material cares, that were somewhat repugnant to the ladies of the committee. From the start, however, Madame Caroline had shown herself an admirable hospitaller; for her unsatisfied longing for maternity, her hopeless love of children, kindled within her an active tenderness for all those poor creatures whom it was sought to save from the Parisian gutter. In this wise, at the last meeting of the committee, she had met the Countess de Beauvilliers; but the latter had given her rather a cold salute, striving to conceal her secret embarrassment, for she undoubtedly realised that this Madame Caroline was an eye-witness of her poverty. However, they now both bowed whenever their eyes met, since it would have been gross impoliteness to pretend they did not recognise each other.
One day, in the large workroom, while Hamelin was correcting a plan in accordance with some new calculations he had made, and Saccard, standing by, was watching his work, Madame Caroline, at the window as usual, gazed at the Countess and her daughter as they made their tour of the garden. That morning she noticed that they were wearing shoes which a rag-picker would have scorned to touch.
'Ah! the poor women!' she murmured; 'how terrible and distressing it must be, that comedy of luxury which they think themselves obliged to play!'
So saying, she drew back, hiding herself behind the window-curtain, for fear lest the mother should see her and suffer yet more intensely at being thus watched. She herself had grown calmer during the three weeks that she had been lingering every morning at that window; the great sorrow born of her abandonment was quieting down; it seemed as if the sight of the woes of others induced a more courageous acceptance of her own, that fall which she had deemed the fall of her entire life. Again, indeed, she occasionally caught herself laughing.
For a moment longer, and with an air of profound meditation, she watched the two women pace the garden, green with moss; then, quickly turning towards Saccard, she exclaimed: 'Tell me why it is that I cannot be sad. No, it never lasts, has never lasted; I cannot be sad, whatever happens to me. Is it egotism? Really, I do not think so. Egotism would be wrong; and, besides, it is in vain that I am gay; my heart seems ready to break at sight of the least sorrow. Reconcile these things; I am gay, and yet I should weep over all the unfortunates who pass if I did not restrain myself—understanding as I do that the smallest scrap of bread would serve their purpose better than my vain tears.'
So speaking, she laughed her beautiful brave laugh, like a courageous woman who prefers action to garrulous pity.
'And yet,' she continued, 'God knows that I have had occasion to despair of everything! Ah! fortune has not favoured me so far. After my marriage, falling as I did into a perfect hell, insulted, beaten, I really believed that there was nothing for me to do but to throw myself into the water. I did not throw myself into it, however, and a fortnight later, when I started with my brother for the East, I was quite lively again, full of immense hope. And at the time of our return to Paris, when almost everything else failed us, I passed abominable nights, when I pictured ourselves dying of hunger amid all our fine projects. We did not die, however, and again I began to dream of wonderful things, happy things, that sometimes made me laugh as I sat alone. And lately, when I received that frightful blow, which I still don't dare to speak of, my heart seemed torn away; yes, I positively felt it stop beating; I thought that it had ceased to be, I fancied that I myself no longer existed, annihilated as I was. But not at all! Here is existence returning; to-day I laugh, and to-morrow I shall hope; I shall be longing to live on, to live for ever. Is it not extraordinary that I cannot long be sad?'
Saccard, who was laughing also, shrugged his shoulders. 'Bah! you are like the rest of the world. Such is life,' he said.
'Do you think so?' she cried, in astonishment. 'It seems to me there are some people who are so sad that they never know a gay moment, people who render their own life intolerable, in such dark colours do they paint it. Oh! not that I entertain any illusion as to the pleasantness and beauty which it offers. In my case it has been too hard: I have seen it too closely, too freely, under all aspects. It is execrable when it is not ignoble. But what would you have? I love it all the same. Why? I do not know. In vain does everything crumble around me; on the morrow I find myself standing on the ruins, gay and confident. I have often thought that my case is, on a small scale, the case of humanity, which certainly lives in frightful wretchedness, cheered up, however, by the youth of each succeeding generation. After each crisis that throws me down, there comes something like a new youth, a spring time whose promise of sap warms me and inspirits my heart. So true is this that, after some severe affliction, if I go out into the street, into the sunshine, I straightway begin loving, hoping, feeling happy again. And age has no influence upon me; I am simple enough to grow old without noticing it. You see, I have read a great deal more than a woman should; I no longer know where I myself am going, any more than this vast world knows where it is going, for that matter. Only, in spite of myself, it seems to me that I am going, indeed that we are all going, towards something very good and thoroughly gay.'
Although affected, she ended by turning the matter into jest, trying to hide the emotion born of her hope; whilst her brother, who had raised his head, looked at her with mingled adoration and gratitude.
'Oh! you,' he declared, 'you are made for catastrophes; you personify the love of life, whatever it may be.'
These daily morning conversations gradually became instinct with a kind of fever. If Madame Caroline returned to that natural inherent gaiety of hers, it was due to the courage which Saccard, with his active zeal for great enterprises, imparted. It was, indeed, now almost decided: they were going to turn the famous portfolio to account; and when the financier's shrill voice rang out everything seemed to acquire life, to assume colossal proportions. They would, in the first place, lay hands on the Mediterranean, conquer it by means of their steamship company. And, enumerating all the ports where they would establish stations, he mingled dim classical memories with his stock-exchange enthusiasm, chanting the praises of that sea, the only one which the old world had known, that blue sea around which civilisation had blossomed, and whose waves had bathed the ancient cities—Athens, Rome, Tyre, Alexandria, Carthage, Marseilles—all those seats of commerce and empire that have made Europe. Then, when they had ensured themselves possession of that vast waterway to the East, they would make a start in Syria with that little matter of the Carmel Silver Mining Company, just a few millions to gain en passant, but a capital thing to introduce, for the idea of a silver mine, of money found in the bowels of the earth and thrown up by the shovelful, was still attractive to the public, especially when ticketed with a prodigious, resounding name like that of Carmel. There were also coal mines there, coal just beneath the rock, which would be worth gold when the country should be covered with factories; to say nothing of other little ventures, which would serve as interludes—the establishment of banks and industrial syndicates, and the opening up and felling of the vast Lebanon forests, whose huge trees were rotting where they stood for want of roads. Finally, he came to the giant morsel, the Oriental Railway Company, and then he began to rave, for that system of railroads cast over Asia Minor from one end to the other, like a net, to him meant speculation, financial life, at one stroke seizing hold of a new prey—that old world still intact, with incalculable wealth concealed under the ignorance and grime of ages. He scented the treasure, and neighed like a war-horse at the smell of powder.
Madame Caroline, albeit possessed of sterling good sense, and not easily influenced by feverish imaginations, yielded at last to this enthusiasm, no longer detecting its extravagance. In truth, it fanned her affection for the East, her longing to again behold that wonderful country, where she had thought herself so happy; and, by a logical counter-effect, without calculation on her part, it was she who, by her glowing descriptions and wealth of information, stimulated the fever of Saccard. When she began talking of Beyrout, where she had lived for three years, she could never stop; Beyrout lying at the foot of the Lebanon range, on a tongue of land, between a stretch of red sand and piles of fallen rock; Beyrout with its houses reared in amphitheatral fashion amid vast gardens; a delightful paradise of orange, lemon, and palm trees. Then there were all the cities of the coast: on the north, Antioch, fallen from its whilom splendour; on the south, Saida, the Sidon of long ago, Saint Jean d'Acre, Jaffa, and Tyre, now Sur, which sums them all up: Tyre, whose merchants were kings, whose mariners made the circuit of Africa, and which to-day, with its sand-choked harbour, is nothing but a field of ruins, the dust of palaces, where stand only a few fishermen's wretched and scattered huts.
And Madame Caroline had accompanied her brother everywhere; she knew Aleppo, Angora, Broussa, Smyrna, and even Trebizond. She had lived a month at Jerusalem, sleeping amid the traffic of the holy places; then two months more at Damascus, the queen of the East, standing in the midst of a vast plain—a commercial, industrial city, which the Mecca and Bagdad caravans fill with swarming life. She was also acquainted with the valleys and mountains, with the villages of the Maronites and the Druses, perched upon table-lands or hidden away in gorges, and with the cultivated and the sterile fields. And from the smallest nooks, from the silent deserts as from the great cities, she had brought back the same admiration for inexhaustible, luxuriant nature, the same wrath against evil-minded humanity. How much natural wealth was disdained or wasted! She spoke of the burdens that crushed both commerce and industry, the imbecile law that prevents the investment of more than a certain amount of capital in agriculture, the routine that leaves the peasant with nothing but the old plough which was in use before the days of Christ, and the ignorance in which millions of men are steeped even to-day, like idiotic children stopped in their growth. Once upon a time the coast had proved too small; the cities had touched each other; but now life had gone away towards the West, and only an immense, abandoned cemetery seemed to remain. No schools, no roads, the worst of Governments, justice sold, execrable officials, crushing taxes, absurd laws, idleness, and fanaticism, to say nothing of the continual shocks of civil war, massacres which destroyed entire villages.
And at thought of this she became angry, and asked if it was allowable that men should thus spoil the work of nature, a land so blest, of such exquisite beauty, where all climates were to be found—the glowing plains, the temperate mountain-sides, the perpetual snows of the lofty peaks. And her love of life, her ever-buoyant hopefulness, filled her with enthusiasm at the idea of the all-powerful magic wand with which science and speculation could strike this old sleeping soil, and suddenly reawaken it.
'Look here!' cried Saccard, 'that Carmel gorge which you have sketched, where there are now only stones and mastic-trees, well! as soon as we begin to work the silver mine, there will start up first a village, then a city! And we will clear all those sand-choked harbours, and protect them with strong breakwaters. Large ships will anchor where now mere skiffs do not venture to moor. And you will behold a complete resurrection over all those depopulated plains, those deserted passes, which our railway lines will traverse—yes! fields will be cleared, roads and canals built, new cities will spring from the soil, life will return as it returns to a sick body, when we stimulate the system by injecting new blood into the exhausted veins. Yes! money will work these miracles!'
And such was the evoking power of his piercing voice that Madame Caroline really saw the predicted civilisation rise up before her. Those bare diagrams, those sketches in outline, became animated and peopled; it was the dream that she had sometimes had of an East cleansed of its filth, drawn from its ignorance, enjoying its fertile soil and charming sky, amid all the refinements of science. She had already witnessed such a miracle at Port Said, which in so few years had lately sprung up on a barren shore; at first some huts to shelter the few labourers who began the operations, then a city of two thousand souls, followed by one of ten thousand, with houses, huge shops, a gigantic pier, life and comfort stubbornly created by toiling human ants. And it was just this that she saw rising again—the forward, irresistible march, the social impulse towards the greatest possible sum of happiness, the need of action, of going ahead, without knowing exactly whither, but at all events with more elbow-room and under improved circumstances; and amid it all there was the globe turned upside down by the ant-swarm rebuilding its abode, its work never ending, fresh sources of enjoyment ever being discovered, man's power increasing tenfold, the earth belonging to him more and more every day. Money, aiding science, yielded progress.
Hamelin, who was listening with a smile, then gave vent to a prudent remark: 'All this is the poetry of results, and we are not yet at the prose of starting.'
But Saccard's enthusiasm was only increased by the extravagance of Madame Caroline's conceptions, and matters even became worse when, on beginning to read some books about the East, he opened a history of Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition. The memory of the Crusades already haunted him, the memory of that return of the West to its cradle the East, that great movement which had carried extreme Europe back to the original country, still in full flower, and where there was so much to learn. But he was struck still more by the towering figure of Napoleon, going thither to wage war, with a grand and mysterious object. Though he had talked of conquering Egypt, of installing a French establishment there, and of thus placing the commerce of the Levant in the hands of France, he had certainly not told all; and in all that was vain and enigmatical about the expedition, Saccard fancied he could detect some mysterious, hugely ambitious project, an immense empire refounded, Napoleon crowned at Constantinople as Emperor of the East and the Indies, thus realising the dream of Alexander, and rising to a greater height than even Cæsar and Charlemagne. Had he not said at Saint Helena, in speaking of Sidney Smith, the general who had stopped him before Saint Jean d'Acre: 'That man ruined my fortune'? And it was this gigantic thought of conquering the East, the scheme which the Crusaders had attempted, and which Napoleon had been unable to accomplish, that inflamed Saccard; though, in his case, it was to be a rational conquest, effected by the double agency of science and money. Since civilisation had flown from the East to the West, why should it not come back towards the East, returning to the first garden of humanity, to that Eden of the Hindustan peninsula which had fallen asleep beneath the fatigue of centuries? He would endow it with fresh youth; he would galvanise the earthly paradise, make it habitable again by means of steam and electricity, replace Asia Minor in the centre of the world, as a point of intersection of the great natural highways that bind the continents together. And it was no longer a question of gaining millions, but milliards and milliards.
After that, Hamelin and he engaged in long conversations every morning. Vast as was their hope, the difficulties that presented themselves were numerous and colossal. The engineer, who had been at Beyrout in 1862, at the very time of the horrible butchery of the Maronite Christians by the Druses—a butchery which had necessitated the intervention of France—did not conceal the obstacles which would be encountered among those populations, who were ever battling together, delivered over to the tender mercies of the local authorities. However, he had powerful relations at Constantinople, where he had assured himself the support of the Grand Vizier, Fuad Pasha, a man of great merit, an avowed partisan of reforms, from whom, he flattered himself, he would obtain all necessary grants. On the other hand, whilst prophesying the inevitable bankruptcy of the Ottoman Empire, he saw a rather favourable circumstance in its unlimited need of money, in the loans which followed one upon another from year to year: for although a needy Government may offer no personal guarantee, it is usually quite ready to come to an understanding with private enterprises, if it can detect the slightest profit in them. And would it not be a practical way of solving the eternal and embarrassing Eastern question to interest the empire in great works of civilisation, and gradually lead it towards progress, that it might no longer constitute a monstrous barrier between Europe and Asia? What a fine patriotic rôle the French Companies would play in all this!
Then, one morning, Hamelin quietly broached the secret programme to which he sometimes alluded, and which he smilingly called the crowning of his edifice.
'When we have become the masters,' said he, 'we will restore the kingdom of Palestine, and put the Pope there. At first we might content ourselves with Jerusalem, with Jaffa as a seaport. Then Syria will be declared independent, and can be annexed. You know that the time is near when it will be impossible for the Papacy to remain at Rome under the revolting humiliations in store for it. It is for that day that we must have all in readiness.'
Saccard listened open-mouthed whilst Hamelin said these things in a thoroughly unaffected way, actuated solely by his deep Catholic faith. The financier himself did not shrink from extravagant dreams, but never would he have gone to such a point as this. This man of science, apparently so cold, quite astounded him. 'It's madness!' he cried. 'The Porte won't give up Jerusalem.'
'Oh! why not?' quietly rejoined Hamelin. 'It is always in such desperate need of money! Jerusalem is a burden to it; it would be a good riddance. The Porte, you know, often can't tell what course to take between the various sects which dispute for possession of the sanctuaries. Moreover, the Pope would have true supporters among the Syrian Maronites, for you are not unaware that he has established a college for their priests at Rome. In fact, I have thought the matter over carefully, have calculated everything, and this will be the new era, the triumphant era of Catholicism. It may be said that we should be sending the Pope too far away, that he would find himself isolated, thrust out of European affairs. But with what brilliancy and authority would he not radiate when once he was enthroned in the holy places, and spoke in the name of Christ from the very land where Christ Himself spoke! That is his patrimony, there should be his kingdom. And, rest easy, we will build this kingdom up, firm and powerful; we will put it beyond the reach of political disturbances, by basing its budget—guaranteed by the resources of the country—on a vast bank for the shares of which the Catholics of the entire world will scramble.'
Saccard, who had begun to smile, already attracted by the magnitude of the project, although not convinced, could not help christening this bank with a joyous 'Eureka! The Treasury of the Holy Sepulchre, eh? Superb! There you have it!'
But just then his eyes met those of Madame Caroline, beaming with common-sense. She was smiling also, but like one who is sceptical, even a little vexed. She felt ashamed of his enthusiasm.
'All the same, my dear Hamelin,' said he, 'it will be best for us to keep secret this crowning of the edifice, as you call it. Folks might make fun of us. And, besides, our programme is already a terribly heavy one; it is a good plan to reserve the final result, the glorious ending, for the initiated alone.'
'Undoubtedly; such has always been my intention,' declared the engineer. 'That shall be the mystery.'
And thereupon, that very day, they finally decided to turn the portfolio of schemes to account, to launch the whole huge series of projects. They would begin by founding a small financial establishment, to promote the first enterprises; then success aiding, they would, little by little, subjugate the market and conquer the world.
The next day, as Saccard went up to take some order from the Princess d'Orviedo respecting the Institute of Work, he remembered the dream that he had for a moment cherished of becoming this queen of charity's prince-consort, the mere dispenser and manager of the fortune of the poor. And he smiled, for he now thought all that a little silly. He was built to make life, not to dress the wounds that life has made. And now he was about to find himself at work again, in the thick of the battle of interests, in the midst of that race for happiness which has brought about the very progress of humanity, from century to century, towards greater joy and greater light.
That same day he found Madame Caroline alone in the work-room among the diagrams. She was standing at one of the windows, detained there by the appearance of the Countess de Beauvilliers and her daughter in the neighbouring garden at an unusual hour. The two women were reading a letter with an air of deep sadness; a letter, no doubt, from the son Ferdinand, whose position at Borne could not be a brilliant one.
'Look,' said Madame Caroline, on recognising Saccard. 'Another sorrow for those unfortunates. The poor women in the streets give me less pain.'
'Bah!' he gaily cried, 'you shall ask them to come to see me. We will enrich them also, since we are to make everybody's fortune.'
And, in his happy fever, he sought her lips, to press a kiss upon them. But she abruptly drew back, and became grave and pale.
'No, I beg of you,' said she.
'Really, would it pain you?'
'Yes, deeply.'
'But I adore you.'
'No, do not say that—you are going to be so busy. Besides, I assure you that I shall feel true friendship for you if you prove the active man I think, and do all the great things you say. Come, friendship is far better!'
He listened to her, still smiling and irresolute. 'Then, friends only?' said he.
'Yes, I will be your comrade, I will help you. Friends, great friends!' With these words she offered him her cheeks, and he, conquered, and realizing that she was right, imprinted two loud kisses upon them.
CHAPTER III
SACCARD MAKES A START
The letter from the Russian banker at Constantinople, which Sigismond had translated, was a favourable reply awaited before launching the enterprise in Paris; and on the next day but one Saccard, on waking, had an inspiration that he must act at once, and, before night, form the syndicate which he wished to make sure of, in order to secure the immediate allotment of the fifty thousand shares of his projected company. The capital of the latter was to be five and twenty millions, each share representing five hundred francs.
In jumping out of bed, he had at last just thought of a name for this company, such as he had long been seeking. The words 'Universal Bank' had suddenly flamed up before him, in letters of fire as it were, in the still dark room. 'The Universal Bank,' he kept on repeating whilst he dressed himself, 'the Universal Bank, that is both simple and grand; it takes in everything, covers the world. Yes, yes, it is excellent! the Universal Bank!'
Until half-past nine o'clock he walked up and down his spacious rooms, absorbed in doubt as to where he should begin hunting for the necessary millions in Paris. Twenty-five millions of francs—such a sum is still to be found at a turn of the street; it was rather the embarrassment of making a selection that made him reflect, for he wished to proceed with some method. He drank a glass of milk, and evinced no vexation when the coachman came up to tell him that his horse was not well, having undoubtedly caught cold, so that it would be prudent to send for the veterinary surgeon.
'All right, do so. I will take a cab,' said Saccard.
Once out of doors, however, he was surprised by the keen bitterness of the wind; it was like a sudden return of winter in this month of May, which only the night before had been so mild. It was not yet raining certainly, but dense yellow clouds were rising on the horizon. Still he did not take a cab; a walk, he thought, would warm him up; he might, first of all, go on foot to Mazaud's office, in the Rue de la Banque; for he had an idea of sounding the broker with regard to Daigremont, the well-known speculator, the lucky member of every syndicate. On reaching the Rue Vivienne, however, such a shower of hail and water fell from the sky, now overspread with livid clouds, that he took refuge under the carriage entrance of a house.
He had been standing there for a moment, watching the downpour, when, above the noise it made, there arose a jingling sound of gold, which attracted his attention. Continuous, light, and musical, this sound seemed to come from the bowels of the earth, as in some tale of the 'Arabian Nights.' He turned his head, took his bearings, and saw that he was standing in the doorway of a house occupied by a banker named Kolb, whose especial business it was to deal in gold. Buying up specie in states where it was cheap, he melted it, and sold it in ingots in the countries where it commanded higher prices; and thus, from morning till night, on casting days there arose from the basement that crystalline jingle of gold coins carried by the shovelful from cases to the melting-pot. The ears of the passers-by fairly rang with the sound from one year's end to the other. Saccard smiled with satisfaction as he heard this music, which was like the subterranean voice of the entire Bourse district. He interpreted it as a happy omen.
The rain had ceased falling, so he crossed the Place, and at once found himself at Mazaud's. Unlike the majority of his colleagues, the young broker had his private abode on the first floor of the very house in which his offices were situated. He had, in fact, simply taken over the rooms occupied by his uncle, when, on the latter's death, he had agreed with his joint heirs to purchase the business.
It was striking ten o'clock, and Saccard went straight up to the offices, at the door of which he met Gustave Sédille.
'Is Monsieur Mazaud in?'
'I do not know, monsieur; I have just come.'
The young man smiled; always a late arrival, he took things at his ease, like the mere unpaid amateur he was, quite resigned to spending a year or two in this fashion, in order to please his father, the silk manufacturer of the Rue des Jeûneurs.
Saccard passed through the outer office, saluted by both cashiers, the one who dealt with specie and the one who dealt with stock, and then entered the room set aside for the two 'authorised clerks,' where he only found Berthier, the one whose duty was to receive customers, and who accompanied his employer to the Bourse.
'Is Monsieur Mazaud in?'
'Why, I think so; I just left his private room. But no—he isn't there. He must be in the "cash" office.'
He pushed open a door near at hand, and glanced round a rather large room, in which live employees were at work, under the orders of a head clerk.
'No; that's strange. Look for yourself in the "account" office there, yonder.'
Saccard entered the account office. It was there that the head accountant, the pivot of the business as it were, aided by seven employees,[12] went through the memorandum-book, handed him by the broker every afternoon after the Bourse, and entered to the various customers the sales and purchases which had been effected according to their orders. In doing this, he referred to the numerous fiches in order to ascertain the customers' names, for these did not appear in the memorandum-book, which contained only brief notes of the transactions: such a stock, such an amount bought or sold, at such a rate, from such a broker.
'Have you seen Monsieur Mazaud?' inquired Saccard.
But they did not even answer him. The head accountant having gone out, three of the clerks were reading their newspapers, and two others were staring up at the ceiling; while the arrival of Gustave Sédille had just keenly interested little Flory, who in the morning made entries, and in the afternoon looked after the telegrams at the Bourse. Born at Saintes, of a father employed at the local registry office, he had started in life as a clerk to a Bordeaux banker; after which, reaching Paris towards the close of the previous autumn, he had entered Mazaud's office with no other prospect before him than the possible doubling of his salary in ten years' time. At first he had conducted himself well, performing his duties regularly and conscientiously. But during the last month, since Gustave had entered the office, he had been going astray, led away by his new comrade—a fellow of very elegant tastes, and well provided with money—who was launching out in no small degree, and had made him acquainted with women. With bearded chin and cheeks, Flory was possessed of a sensual nose, an amiable mouth, and soft eyes; and he had now reached the point of indulging in little secret, inexpensive pleasure parties, with a figurante of the Variétés—a slim grasshopper from the Parisian pavements, the runaway daughter of a Montmartre door-porter. She was named Mdlle. Chuchu, and was fairly amusing with her papier-mâché face, in which gleamed a pair of beautiful large brown eyes.
Standing behind Flory and Gustave Sédille, Saccard heard them whispering women's names. He smiled, and addressing himself to Flory, inquired: 'Haven't you seen Monsieur Mazaud?'
'Yes, monsieur, he came to give me an order, and then went down to his apartments again. I believe that his little boy is ill; he was told that the doctor had come. You had better ring at his door, for he will very likely go out without coming up again.'
Saccard thanked him, and hurried down to the floor below. Mazaud was one of the youngest of the official brokers, and an extremely lucky man to boot; for by the death of his uncle he had come into one of the largest businesses in Paris at an age when one can still learn. Though short, he was very pleasant-looking, with a small brown moustache and piercing black eyes; and he displayed great activity, and a very alert mind. He was already known in the corbeille for his vivacity of mind and body, such a desideratum in his calling, and one which, coupled with a keen scent and remarkable intuition, was sure to place him in the first rank; to say nothing of the fact that he possessed a shrill piercing voice, received direct information from foreign Bourses, did business with all the great bankers, and was reputed to have a second cousin employed at the Havas News Agency. His wife, whom he had married for love, and who had brought him a dowry of twelve hundred thousand francs, was a charming young woman, and had already presented him with two children, a little girl now three years and a boy some eighteen months old.
As Saccard came down he found Mazaud ushering out the doctor, who was laughingly tranquillising his paternal anxiety.
'Come in,' said the broker to Saccard. 'It's true, you know—with these little creatures you at once get anxious; the slightest ailment, and you think them lost.'
So saying, he ushered him into the drawing-room, where his wife was still seated, holding the baby on her knees, while the little girl, glad to see her mother gay, was raising herself on tip-toe to kiss her.
'You see that we were foolish,' said he.
'Ah! that makes no difference, my friend,' she answered. 'I am so glad that he has reassured us!'
In presence of all this happiness, Saccard halted, bowing. The room, luxuriously furnished, was redolent of the happy life of this household, which nothing had yet disunited. During four years of wedlock, Mazaud had been accused of nothing save a fleeting curiosity with regard to a vocalist at the Opéra Comique. He remained a faithful husband, just as he had the reputation of not yet speculating too heavily on his own account, despite all the natural impetuosity of youth. And a pleasant perfume of luck, of unclouded felicity could really be detected here, amid the discreet peacefulness of the apartment, amid the delicious odour with which a large bouquet of roses, overflowing from a china vase, had scented the entire room.
Madame Mazaud, who was slightly acquainted with Saccard, addressed him gaily: 'Is it not true, monsieur, one need only wish it to be always happy?'
'I am convinced of it, madame,' he answered. 'And besides, there are persons so beautiful and good that misfortune never dares to touch them.'
She had risen, radiant. Kissing her husband in her turn, she went out, carrying the little boy, and followed by the little girl, who had been hanging on her father's neck. The latter, wishing to hide his emotion, turned towards his visitor with the bantering remark: 'You see we don't lead a dull life here.'
Then he quickly added: 'You have something to say to me? Let us go upstairs, eh? We shall be more at our ease there.'
Up above, in the cashiers' office, Saccard recognised Sabatani, who had called for some money due to him; and he was surprised to see how cordially the broker shook hands with his customer. However, as soon as he was seated in Mazaud's private room, he explained his visit by questioning the broker as to the formalities which were necessary to secure the quotation of a new security in the official list. In a careless way he spoke of the affair which he was about to launch, the Universal Bank, with a capital of twenty-five millions. Yes, a financial establishment which would especially patronise certain great enterprises, which he just alluded to. Mazaud listened with perfect composure, and, in the most obliging way, explained the formalities that were requisite. However he was in no wise duped; Saccard had certainly not called on him merely with reference to this trifling matter, and so when his visitor at last mentioned the name of Daigremont he gave an involuntary smile. Certainly Daigremont had a colossal fortune behind him; it was said that his fidelity was not of the surest; but then who is faithful in business and in love? Nobody! For the rest, he (Mazaud) hardly cared to speak the full truth about Daigremont, for they had quarrelled, and their quarrel had been the talk of the whole Bourse. Daigremont now gave most of his orders to a Bordeaux Jew, named Jacoby, a tall man of sixty, with a broad, gay face, whose roaring voice was celebrated, but who was growing heavy and corpulent; and there was a sort of rivalry between him and Mazaud, between the young man favoured by fortune and the elder who owed his position to long service, for Jacoby had been a mere authorised clerk until—financed by sleeping partners—he had finally succeeded in purchasing his employer's business. Though of very great experience and shrewdness, he was sorely handicapped by his passion for speculation, and, in spite of considerable profits, always seemed on the eve of a catastrophe. His money melted away on settling days.
'In any case,' concluded Mazaud, yielding at last to his resentment against the man he had quarrelled with, spite of all his scruples, 'it is quite certain that Daigremont played his allies false in that Caraccas affair, and swept away the profits—I consider him a very dangerous man.' Then, after a pause, he added: 'But why don't you apply to Gundermann?'
'Never!' cried Saccard, in a fit of passion.
Just then Berthier, the authorised clerk, came in and whispered a few words in the broker's ear. The Baroness Sandorff had come to pay her losses, and was raising all sorts of quibbling objections by way of trying to reduce her account. Mazaud generally hastened to receive her in person, but, when she had lost, he avoided her like the plague, certain as he was that his gallantry would be put to too severe a test. There are no worse clients than women, for as soon as they have to pay money away they become absolutely dishonest.
'No, no; tell her that I am not in,' he answered testily. 'And don't abate a centime, you understand?'
When Berthier had gone, seeing by Saccard's smile that he had heard him, he continued: 'It is true, my dear fellow, she's very pretty, but you have no idea of her rapacity. Ah; how our customers would love us if they always won! Yet the richer they are, the higher the society in which they move, God forgive me! the more I distrust them, the more I fear I may not be paid. Yes, there are days when, apart from the large banking houses, I could wish that my connection was purely a provincial one.'
Just then a clerk came in, handed him some papers that he had asked for that morning, and then went out.
'See here!' he resumed, 'here is a receiver of dividends at Vendôme, a man named Fayeux. Well, you can have no idea of the number of orders that I receive from him. To be sure, these orders, taken singly, are modest ones, coming as they do from folks of the petty bourgeoisie, shopkeepers and farmers. But there are so many of them. Really, the best of our business, the very foundation of it, will be found among the people of modest means, the crowd of nobodies who speculate.'
This somehow reminded Saccard of Sabatani, whom he had seen in the cashiers' office.
'I see that you have Sabatani now,' said he.
'I have had him for a year, I believe,' replied the broker, with an air of amiable indifference. 'He's a pleasant fellow, isn't he? He began in a small way, he is very prudent, and he will end by making something.'
What he did not say, what he no longer even remembered, was that Sabatani had merely deposited two thousand francs with him by way of 'cover.' Hence the moderate ventures at the outset. Undoubtedly, like many others, the Levantine expected that the insignificance of this 'cover' would be forgotten; and he evinced great prudence, increasing his orders in a stealthy gradual fashion, pending the day when, with a heavy settlement to meet, it would be necessary for him to disappear. But how could one distrust such a charming fellow, whose friend one has become? How could one doubt his solvency when one sees him gay, well-dressed, 'got up' in that elegant style which is indispensable, the very uniform, as it were, of robbery at the Bourse?
'Very pleasant, very intelligent,' repeated Saccard, suddenly resolving to remember Sabatani whenever he might need a discreet and unscrupulous fellow. Then, rising and taking leave, he said: 'Well, good-bye; when our stock is ready, I will see you again, before trying to get it quoted.'
And as Mazaud shook hands with him on the threshold, saying: 'You are wrong; you had better see Gundermann for your syndicate,' he again shouted in a fury: 'No, never!'
On leaving the broker's private room, he recognised Moser and Pillerault in the cashiers' office; the first was pocketing with a woeful air his fortnight's profits of seven or eight thousand francs; while the other, who had lost, paid over ten thousand francs with a loud voice, and a proud, aggressive air, as if after a victory. The luncheon and Bourse hour was approaching, and the office would then partly empty. Meantime, from the 'account' office, the door of which was ajar, there came a sound of laughter, provoked by a story which Gustave was telling Flory—a story of a boating party, at which a coxswain of the softer sex had fallen into the Seine.
On reaching the street, Saccard consulted his watch. Eleven o'clock—what a lot of time he had lost! No, he would not go to Daigremont's; and although he had flown into a passion at the very mention of Gundermann's name, he suddenly decided to go to see him. Besides, had he not warned him of his visit on that occasion at Champeaux' restaurant, when he had spoken to him of his great scheme by way of silencing his malicious laugh? He even excused the visit on the plea that he did not wish to get anything out of the man, but simply desired to confront and triumph over one who ever affected to treat him as an urchin. And so, as a fresh shower began to lash the pavement with a flood of water, he leaped into a cab, bidding the Jehu drive him to the Rue de Provence.
Gundermann there occupied an immense mansion, just large enough for his innumerable family. He had five daughters and four sons, of whom three daughters and three sons were married, and these had already given him fourteen grandchildren. At the evening meal, when all were gathered together, there were, counting his wife and himself, thirty-one at table. And, excepting two of his sons-in-law, who did not live in the house, all had their apartments there, in the left and right wings facing the garden; for the central block was entirely occupied by the spacious banking offices. In less than a century a monstrous fortune of a milliard of francs[13] had been amassed by this one family, thanks partly to thrift, and partly to fortunate combinations of circumstances. This wealth seemed a sort of predestination, which keen intelligence, persistent labour, prudent and invincible effort—continually directed to the same end—had largely assisted. Every river of gold now flowed into that sea; other millions were absorbed by those which Gundermann already possessed; it was a swallowing-up of the public wealth by the ever-increasing wealth of a single individual; and Gundermann was the true master, the omnipotent king, feared and obeyed by Paris and by the world.
As Saccard ascended the broad stone stairway, the steps of which were worn by the continual ascent and descent of scores of feet—more worn indeed than the thresholds of many old churches—he felt inextinguishable hatred for this man rising within him. Ah! the Jew! Against the Jew he harboured all the old racial resentment, to be found especially in the South of France; and it was something like a revolt of his very flesh, a repugnance of the skin, which, at the idea of the slightest contact, filled him with disgust and anger, a sensation which no reasoning could allay, which he was quite unable to overcome. And the singular thing was that he, Saccard, the terrible company promoter, the spendthrift with unclean hands, lost all self-consciousness as soon as a Jew was in question, and spoke of him with the harshness, the revengeful indignation of an honest man who lives by the labour of his arms, unstained by any usurious dealings. He indicted the whole Hebrew race, the cursed race without a country, without a prince, which lives as a parasite upon the nations, pretending to recognise their laws, but in reality only obeying its Jehovah—its God of robbery, blood, and wrath; and he pointed to it fulfilling on all sides the mission of ferocious conquest which this God has assigned to it, establishing itself among every people, like a spider in the centre of its web, in order to watch its prey, to suck the blood of one and all, to fatten itself by devouring others. 'Did anyone ever see a Jew working with his fingers?' he would ask.[14] Were there any Jewish peasants and working men? 'No,' he would say; 'labour disgraces, their religion almost forbids it, exalting only the exploitation of the labour of others. Ah! the rogues!' Saccard's rage was all the greater because he admired them, envied their prodigious financial faculties, that innate knowledge of arithmetic, that natural facility evinced by them in the most complicated operations, that scent and that luck which assure triumph in everything they undertake. 'Christians,' he would say, 'make sorry financial rogues, they always end by coming to grief; but take a Jew who does not even understand book-keeping, throw him into the troubled waters of any shady affair, and he will not only save himself, but bring out all the profit on his back.' It was the gift of the race, the reason why it ever subsisted among all the other nationalities that start up and disappear. And he would passionately predict the final conquest of every nation by the Jews, when they should at last have secured possession of the entire fortune of the globe, a feat which it would not take them long to accomplish, since they were allowed every day to freely extend their kingdom, and one could already see in Paris a Gundermann reigning on a firmer and more respected throne than the Emperor's.
When, after climbing the stairs, he was on the point of entering the spacious ante-room, he felt an inclination to turn back, for he saw that it was full of remisiers and other applicants, a tumultuous swarming crowd of men and women. The remisiers especially were struggling for first place, in the improbable hope of carrying off an order; for the great banker had his own agents; but it was already an honour, a recommendation, even to be received by him, and each of them wished to be able to boast of it. Accordingly the 'waits' were never long, the two office attendants had little else to do than to organise the procession—a continuous procession it was, a real gallop through the swinging doors. And thus, in spite of the crowd, Saccard was almost immediately admitted with the stream.
Gundermann's private office was a vast apartment, of which he simply occupied a little corner at the farther end, near the last window. Seated at a simple mahogany writing table, he was so placed as to turn his back to the light, his face remaining completely in the shade. Up at five o'clock every morning, he was at work when Paris was still asleep; and when at about nine the scramble of appetites began, rushing past him at a gallop, his day's work was already done. In the middle of the office, and at larger tables, stood two of his sons, and one of his sons-in-law who assisted him, rarely sitting down, but moving about hither and thither amid a world of clerks. All this, however, was the inner working of the establishment. The crowd from the street went straight across the room to him, the master, seated in his modest corner, as for hours and hours he held this open reception with an impassive gloomy air, often contenting himself with a mere sign, and only now and again speaking a word when he wished to appear particularly amiable.
As soon as he perceived Saccard, a faint, somewhat sarcastic smile lighted up his face.
'Ah! so it's you, my friend,' he said. 'Be seated a moment, if you have anything to say to me. I will be at your disposal directly.'
Then he pretended to forget him. Saccard, however, was not impatient, for he felt interested in the procession of remisiers, who, at each other's heels, entered the room with the same profound bow, drawing from their irreproachable frock coats the same little cards setting forth the same Bourse quotations, which they presented to the banker with the same suppliant and respectful gestures. Ten of them, twenty of them, passed by; the banker each time took the list, glanced at it and then returned it; and nothing equalled the patience he displayed beneath this avalanche of offers, unless indeed it were his absolute indifference.
At last Massias appeared, with the gay yet anxious air of a good dog who is often whipped. At times folks received him so badly that he could have cried. That day, undoubtedly, his stock of humility was exhausted, for he ventured to insist in the most unexpected fashion.
'See! monsieur, Mobiliers are very low. How much shall I buy for you?'
Without taking the proffered list, Gundermann raised his sea-green eyes upon this young man, who was so familiar, and roughly answered: 'I say, my friend, do you think it amuses me to receive you?'
'Well, monsieur,' retorted Massias, turning pale, 'it amuses me still less to come every morning for nothing, as I have done for three months past.'
'Then don't come again.'
The remisier bowed and withdrew, after exchanging with Saccard the furious, distressful glance of one who has suddenly become conscious that he will never make his fortune.
Saccard meantime was asking himself what interest Gundermann could have in receiving all these people. Evidently he had a special power of isolating himself; he remained absorbed, continued thinking. Moreover, in all this there must be some question of discipline, a habit of passing the market in review every morning, which invariably conduced to some little profit or other. In a greedy fashion Gundermann deducted eighty francs from the amount claimed by some jobber to whom he had given an order the day before, and who, it should be said, was certainly robbing him. Then a dealer in curiosities arrived, bringing an enamelled gold box of the last century, which had been considerably restored, a trick which the banker immediately scented. Next came two ladies, an old one with the beak of a night-bird, and a young one, a very beautiful brunette; they wished to show him at their house a Louis XV. commode, which he promptly refused to go and see. Then came a jeweller with some rubies, a couple of inventors, some Englishmen, Germans, and Italians, folks of both sexes and every language. And meantime the procession of remisiers went on just the same, between the other visits, endless to all appearance, with an incessant repetition of one and the same gesture—the mechanical presentation of the list; while, as the hour for the opening of the Bourse approached, the clerks crossed the room in greater numbers than ever, bringing telegrams, or coming to ask for signatures.
But the tumult reached a climax when a little boy of five or six, riding astride a stick, burst into the office, playing a trumpet and followed by two other children—little girls, one three years old, and the other eight—who besieged their grandfather's arm-chair, tugged at his arms, and hung upon his neck; to all which he placidly submitted, kissing them with all the Jewish passion for one's offspring—the numerous progeny which yields strength, and which one defends.
Suddenly, however, he seemed to remember Saccard: 'Ah! my good friend, you must excuse me; you see that I haven't a minute to myself. Come now, explain your business to me.'
And he was beginning to listen to him, when an employee, who had introduced a tall, fair gentleman, came to whisper a name in his ear. He rose promptly, yet without haste, and went to confer with the gentleman in question at another window, while one of his sons continued receiving the remisiers and coulissiers in his stead.
In spite of his secret irritation, Saccard was beginning to experience a feeling of respect. In the tall, fair gentleman he had recognised the ambassador of one of the Great Powers, full of arrogance at the Tuileries, but here standing with his head slightly inclined, smiling like one who solicits some favour. At other times officials of high rank in the public service, the Emperor's ministers themselves, would be received standing in this way, in this room as public as a square, and resounding with the noisy mirth of children. And here was affirmed the universal sovereignty of this man, who had his own ambassadors in every court of the world, his consuls in every province, his agents in every city, and his vessels on every sea. He was not a speculator, a soldier of fortune manœuvring with the millions of others, dreaming, like Saccard, of heroic combats in which he should prove conqueror and win colossal booty for himself, thanks to the aid of mercenary gold enlisted under his orders; he was, as he quietly said, a simple money merchant, but the most shrewd, most careful there could be. Nevertheless, to establish his power, it was essential that he should rule the Bourse; and so with each settlement there was a new battle, in which the victory infallibly remained with him, thanks to the decisive power of his big battalions. For a moment, Saccard, as he sat watching him, was overwhelmed by the thought that all the money which this man set in motion was his own, that he held in his cellars an inexhaustible supply, in which he trafficked like a shrewd and prudent merchant, like an absolute master, obeyed at a glance, bent on hearing everything, seeing everything, doing everything himself. A milliard of one's own thus manipulated is an invincible force.
'We shan't have a minute, my good friend,' said Gundermann, when he came back. 'I am going to breakfast; come with me into the next room. Perhaps they will leave us in peace there.'
It was the little dining-room of the mansion, the one used for the morning meal, and where the entire family was never gathered together. That day there were only nineteen at table, eight of them children. The banker sat in the middle, and all he had in front of him was a bowl of milk.