Eleven o\'clock had just struck at the Bourse when, making his way into Champeaux\' restaurant, Saccard entered the public room, all white and gold and with two high windows facing the Place. At a glance he surveyed the rows of little tables, at which the busy eaters sat closely together, elbow to elbow; and he seemed surprised not to see the face he sought.

As a waiter passed, laden with dishes, amid the scramble of the service, he turned to him and asked: \'I say, hasn\'t Monsieur Huret come?\'

\'No, monsieur, not yet.\'

Thereupon, making up his mind, Saccard sat down at a table, which a customer was leaving, in the embrasure of one of the windows. He thought that he was late; and whilst a fresh cover was being laid he directed his looks outside, scrutinising the persons passing on the footway. Indeed, even when the table had been freshly laid, he did not at once give his orders, but remained for a moment with his eyes fixed on the Place, which looked quite gay on that bright morning of an early day in May. At that hour, when everybody was at lunch, it was almost empty: the benches under the chestnut trees of a fresh and tender green remained unoccupied; a line of cabs stretched from one to the other end of the railing, and the omnibus going to the Bastille stopped at the office at the[Pg 2] corner of the garden, without dropping or taking up a single passenger. The sun\'s rays fell vertically, lighting up the whole monumental pile of the Bourse, with its colonnade, its pair of statues, and its broad steps, at the top of which there was as yet only an army of chairs ranged in good order.

Having turned, however, Saccard recognised Mazaud, a stock-broker, sitting at the table next to his own. He held out his hand. \'Dear me, you are here? Good morning,\' said he.

\'Good morning,\' answered Mazaud, shaking hands in an absent-minded fashion.

Short, dark, a very brisk, good-looking man, Mazaud, at the age of two and thirty, had just inherited the business of one of his uncles. He seemed to be altogether taken up with the person opposite him, a stout gentleman with a red and shaven face, the celebrated Amadieu, whom the Bourse revered since his famous deal in Selsis mining stock. When the Selsis shares had fallen to fifteen francs, and anyone who bought them was looked upon as a madman, he had put his whole fortune, two hundred thousand francs, into the affair at a venture, without calculation or instinct—indeed, through mere obstinate confidence in his own brutish luck. Now that the discovery of real and important veins had sent the price of the shares up above a thousand francs, he had made fifteen millions; and his imbecile operation, which ought to have led to his being shut up in an asylum, had raised him to the level of men of great financial intellect. He was saluted and, above all things, consulted. Moreover, he placed no more orders, but seemed to be satisfied, enthroned as it were upon his unique and legendary stroke of genius.

Mazaud must have been dreaming of securing his patronage.

Saccard, having failed to obtain even a smile from Amadieu, bowed to the table opposite, where three speculators of his acquaintance, Pillerault, Moser, and Salmon, were gathered together.

\'Good day. Quite well?\' he asked.

\'Yes, thanks—Good morning.\'

Among these men also he divined coldness, in fact almost[Pg 3] hostility. Pillerault, however, very tall, very thin, with spasmodic gestures, and a nose like a sabre-blade set in the bony face of a knight-errant, habitually displayed the familiarity of a gambler—the gambler who makes recklessness a principle, for he declared that he plunged head over heels into catastrophes whenever he paused to reflect. He had the exuberant nature of a \'bull,\' ever turned towards victory; whereas Moser, on the contrary, short of stature, yellow-skinned, and afflicted moreover by a liver complaint, was continually lamenting, in incessant dread of some approaching cataclysm. As for Salmon, a very fine-looking man struggling against old age, and displaying a superb beard of inky blackness, he passed for a fellow of extraordinary acumen. Never did he speak; he answered only by smiles; folks could never tell in what he was speculating, or whether he was speculating at all; and his way of listening so impressed Moser, that the latter, after making him his confidant, was frequently so disconcerted by his silence that he ran off to countermand an order.

Amid the indifference exhibited towards him, Saccard, with feverish and provoking glances, went on finishing his survey of the room, and he exchanged no other nod except with a tall young man sitting three tables away, the handsome Sabatani, a Levantine with a long dark face, illumined by magnificent black eyes, but spoiled by an evil, disquieting mouth. This fellow\'s amiability put the finishing touch to his irritation. A defaulter on some foreign Stock Exchange, one of those mysterious scamps whom women love, Sabatani had tumbled into the market during the previous autumn. Saccard had already seen him at work as figure-head in a banking disaster, and now he was little by little gaining the confidence of both the corbeille[1] and the coulisse[2] by scrupulous correctness of behaviour and an unremitting graciousness even towards the most disreputable.

[Pg 4]

A waiter, however, was standing before Saccard. \'What are Monsieur\'s orders?\'

\'Oh, anything you like—a cutlet, some asparagus.\' Then calling the waiter back, he added: \'You are sure that Monsieur Huret did not come in before me and go away again?\'

\'Oh! absolutely sure.\'

So there he was, after the crash which in October had once more forced him to wind up his affairs, to sell his mansion in the Parc Monceau, and rent a suite of rooms. The Sabatani set alone saluted him; his entrance into a restaurant where he had once reigned no longer caused all heads to turn, all hands to be stretched forth. He was a good gambler; he harboured no rancour with regard to that last scandalous and disastrous speculation in land, from which he had scarcely saved more than his skin. But a fever of revenge was kindling within him; and the absence of Huret, who had formally promised to be there at eleven o\'clock to acquaint him with the result of an application which he had undertaken to make to his—Saccard\'s—brother, Rougon, the then triumphant minister, exasperated him especially against the latter. Huret, a docile deputy, and one of the great man\'s creatures, was after all merely a messenger. But Rougon, he who could do anything, was it possible that he had abandoned him in this fashion? Never had he shown himself a good brother. That he should have been angry after the catastrophe, and have broken with him in order not to be compromised himself, was natural enough; but ought he not to have come secretly to his assistance during the last six months? And now would he have the heart to refuse him the final lift which he solicited through a third party, not daring indeed to see him in person, for fear lest he might be carried away by some fit of passion? Rougon had only to say a word to put him on his feet again, with all huge, cowardly Paris beneath his heels.

\'What wine will Monsieur drink?\' asked the waiter.

\'Your ordinary Bordeaux.\'

Saccard, who, with his absent-mindedness and lack of[Pg 5] appetite, was letting his cutlet grow cold, raised his eyes as he saw a shadow pass over the table-cloth. It was the shadow of Massias, a stout, red-faced remisier,[3] whom he had known in want, and who glided between the tables with his list of quotations in his hand. Saccard was exasperated at seeing him march past him, without stopping, in order to hand the list to Pillerault and Moser. With their thoughts elsewhere, engaged in a discussion together, these two barely gave it a glance; no, they had no order, they would give one some other time. Massias, not daring to approach the celebrated Amadieu, who was leaning over a lobster salad and conversing in a low tone with Mazaud, thereupon came back to Salmon, who took the list, studied it for some time, and then returned it without a word. The room was growing animated. The door swung every moment as other remisiers entered. Loud words were being exchanged at a distance, and all the passion for business rose as the hour advanced. Saccard, whose eyes continually turned to the window, saw also that the Place was now gradually filling, that vehicles and pedestrians were flocking in; whilst on the steps of the Bourse, of dazzling whiteness in the sunlight, men were already appearing one by one, like black spots.

\'Again I tell you,\' said Moser, in his disconsolate voice, \'that those complementary elections of March 20[4] are a most disturbing symptom. In fact, all Paris is nowadays on the side of the Opposition.\'

Pillerault shrugged his shoulders, however. What difference could it make that Carnot[5] and Garnier-Pagès should be added to the ranks of the Left?

\'It is like the question of the Duchies,\'[6] resumed Moser; \'it is fraught with complications. It is indeed; you needn\'t laugh. I don\'t say that we were bound to make war on Prussia to prevent her from laying hands on Denmark; but there were other means of action. Yes, yes, when the big[Pg 6] begin to eat the little, one never knows where it will all end, and, as for Mexico——\'

Pillerault, who was in one of his fits of satisfaction with everything, interrupted with a shout of laughter: \'Oh, no, my dear fellow, don\'t weary us any more with your terrors about Mexico. Mexico will be the glorious page of the reign. Where the deuce did you get the idea that the Empire is ailing? Wasn\'t the loan of three hundred millions covered more than fifteen times over last January? An overwhelming success! Well, I\'ll give you rendez-vous for \'67, yes, in three years from now, when the Universal Exhibition which the Emperor has just decided upon will open.\'

\'I tell you that things are very bad,\' declared Moser in despair.

\'Oh, leave us in peace; everything is all right.\'

Salmon looked at them in turn, smiling in his profound way. And Saccard, who had been listening, connected the difficulties of his personal situation with the crisis upon which the Empire seemed to be entering. He was once more down; and now was this Empire, which had made him, about to tumble over like himself, suddenly falling from the highest to the most miserable destiny? Ah! for twelve years past, how he had loved and defended that régime, in which he had felt himself live, grow, and imbibe sap, like some tree whose roots plunge into fitting soil. But if his brother were determined to tear him from it, if he were to be cut off from those who were exhausting that fertile soil of enjoyment, then might all be swept away in the great final smash-up!

He now sat waiting for his asparagus, his thoughts wandering away from the room, where the hubbub kept on increasing, his mind invaded by memories of the past. He had just caught sight of his face in a large mirror opposite, and it had surprised him. Age had made no impression upon his short slight figure; his fifty years seemed to have been scarcely more than eight and thirty. He still had the slender build and vivacious manners of a young man. His dark, sunken marionette\'s face, with its sharp nose and small glittering eyes, had, with the march of years, adapted itself[Pg 7] to his supple, active youthfulness, so long abiding that as yet his still bushy hair was without a single white thread. And irresistibly he recalled his arrival in Paris on the morrow of the coup d\'état, that winter evening when he had alighted on the pavement, penniless, hungry, with a perfect rage of appetite to satisfy. Ah! that first trip through the streets, when, even before unpacking his trunk, he had felt the need of rushing through the city to conquer it in his greasy overcoat and his boots trodden down at heel! Since that night he had often risen very high; a river of millions had flowed through his fingers, yet he had never been able to make a slave of fortune, something of his own that he could dispose of, and keep under lock and key, alive and real. Falsehood and fiction had always dwelt in his safes, the gold in which had always slipped out through unknown holes. And now he again found himself upon the pavement, as in the far-off days of the beginning, as young and as hungry as then, still unsatisfied, tortured by the same need of enjoyment and conquest. He had tasted of everything, but was not satiated, having lacked both opportunity and time, he thought, to bite deeply enough into persons and things. At this present hour he felt less wretched at finding himself on the pavement than a beginner would have felt, and this although the latter would probably have been sustained by illusion and hope. He was seized with a feverish desire to begin all over again, to regain everything, to rise higher than he had ever risen before, to place his foot at last full upon the conquered city. No longer the lying finery of the fa?ade, but the solid edifice of fortune, the true royalty of gold enthroned upon real money bags full to overflowing—that was what he wanted.

Moser\'s voice, which again rose sharp and shrill, aroused him for a moment from his reflections. \'The Mexican expedition costs fourteen million francs a month; Thiers has proved it, and one must really be blind not to see that the majority in the Chamber is shaken. The Left now counts thirty odd members. The Emperor himself clearly sees that absolute power is becoming impossible, for he himself is coming forward as a promoter of liberty.\'

[Pg 8]

Pillerault vouchsafed no further answer, but contented himself with a contemptuous sneer.

\'Yes, I know the market seems firm to you,\' continued Moser; \'as yet business prospers. But wait till the end. There has been far too much pulling down and rebuilding in Paris, you see. The great public works have exhausted everybody\'s savings. As for the powerful financial houses, which seem to you so prosperous, wait till one of them goes down, and then you will see all the others tumble in a row—to say nothing of the fact that the lower orders are getting restless. That International Association of the working classes, which has just been founded to improve the position of those who labour, inspires me with great fear. There is a revolutionary movement in France, which is becoming more pronounced every day—yes, I tell you that the worm is in the fruit. There will be a general burst up at last!\'

Thereupon came a noisy protest. That confounded Moser had one of his liver attacks decidedly. He himself, however, while talking on, did not take his eyes off the neighbouring table, where, amid all the noise, Mazaud and Amadieu continued conversing in low tones. Little by little the entire room began to feel uneasy over that prolonged confidential chat. What could they have to say to each other that they should be whispering in that way? Undoubtedly Amadieu was placing some orders, preparing some deal or other. For three days past, unfavourable rumours had been circulating respecting the works at Suez. Moser winked, and lowered his voice: \'You know,\' said he, \'that the English wish to prevent them from working there. We may very likely have war.\'

This time Pillerault was shaken by the very enormity of the news. It was incredible, yet the report at once flew from table to table, acquiring the force of certainty. England had sent an ultimatum, demanding an immediate cessation of work. Clearly enough, Amadieu was talking of it with Mazaud, and giving him orders to sell all his Suez shares. A buzz of panic arose in the odour-laden atmosphere, amid the increasing clatter of the crockery. And at that moment the general emotion was brought to a climax by the sudden entry[Pg 9] of Mazaud\'s clerk, little Flory, a fellow with a flabby face, overgrown with a thick chestnut beard. He rushed in with a number of fiches[7] in his hand, and gave them to his employer, saying something in his ear.

\'All right,\' answered Mazaud quietly, as he classified the fiches in his pocket-book; then taking out his watch, he added: \'Already noon! Tell Berthier to wait for me. And be there yourself; go up after the telegrams.\'

When Flory had gone, he resumed his talk with Amadieu, taking some other fiches from his pocket, and placing them on the table-cloth beside his plate. Every minute or so some customer passing him on his way out leaned over him and said a word or two, which he rapidly noted down on one of the bits of paper between a couple of mouthfuls. The false news which had originated no one knew where, which had been born of nothing, was growing and swelling like a storm-cloud.

\'You mean to sell, don\'t you?\' asked Moser of Salmon.

However, the latter\'s silent smile had something so sharp and knowing about it, that he was left in anxiety, suddenly doubting the existence of this ultimatum from England, which he did not even remember had been invented by himself.

\'For my part, I shall buy as long as anyone will sell,\' concluded Pillerault, with the boastful temerity of a gambler without a system.

Meantime Saccard—his temples heated by the fever of speculation, which was stimulated by all the noise attending the close of the luncheon hour in that narrow room—had at last made up his mind to eat his asparagus, again full of irritation against Huret, whom he had now given up. He, as a rule so prompt in coming to a decision, had for weeks past been hesitating, a prey to conflicting doubts. He realised the imperative necessity of slipping into a new skin, and had at first dreamed of an entirely new life, in the upper circles of the Civil Service, or else in political spheres. Why should[Pg 10] not a seat in the Legislature land him in the Cabinet, like his brother? He was discontented with speculation on account of its continual instability, huge sums being as quickly lost as won. Never had he slept on a real million, owing nothing to anyone. And now that he was subjecting his conscience to examination, he said to himself that perhaps he was of too passionate a nature for financial warfare, which required so much coolness. That must be the reason why, after such an extraordinary life of mingled luxury and need, he had come out of the fray empty-handed, badly scorched by ten years\' formidable trafficking in the soil of new Paris—trafficking in which many others, not nearly as sharp as himself, had amassed colossal fortunes. Yes, perhaps he had mistaken his real vocation. With his activity and ardent faith perhaps he would triumph at one bound in the hubbub of politics. Everything depended, however, on his brother\'s answer. If Rougon should repulse him, throw him back into the gulf of speculation, well, it would undoubtedly be so much the worse for him and everyone else; he would then risk the grand stroke which he had not as yet spoken of to anyone, the huge affair which he had been dreaming of for weeks past, and which frightened even himself, so vast it was, so calculated to shake the world whether it succeeded or collapsed.

Pillerault had raised his voice again. \'I say, Mazaud,\' he asked, \'is everything settled about Schlosser?\'

\'Yes,\' answered the broker, \'he will be posted to-day. What would you have? It is annoying, of course, but I had received the most alarming reports, and was the first to move in the matter. It is necessary to make a sweep from time to time, you know.\'

\'I have been told,\' said Moser, \'that your colleagues, Jacoby and Delarocque, lost large sums by him.\'

The broker made a vague gesture. \'Bah! we always have to make an allowance for losses. That fellow Schlosser must belong to a gang; he will now be free to go and play the wrecker on the Bourse of Berlin or Vienna.\'

Saccard\'s eyes had fallen upon Sabatani, whose secret association with Schlosser had been revealed to him by chance[Pg 11] some time previously. Both had been playing a well-known game, the one \'bulling\' and the other \'bearing\' the same stock, he who lost being free to share the other\'s profit and then disappear. However, the young Levantine was quietly settling his score for the dainty repast which he had just made; after which, with the caressing grace of a semi-Oriental, semi-Italian, he came forward to shake hands with Mazaud, whose customer he was. Leaning over, he gave an order to the broker, which the latter inscribed upon a fiche.

\'He is selling his Suez,\' murmured Moser, and thereupon, distracted with doubt, he added aloud: \'I say, what do you think of Suez?\'

Silence fell amid all the hubbub of voices; every head at the neighbouring tables turned. The question summed up the growing anxiety. However, Amadieu, who had simply asked Mazaud to lunch, in order to recommend one of his nephews to him, remained impenetrable, having indeed nothing to say; while the broker, who was becoming astonished at the number of orders to sell which he was receiving, contented himself with shaking his head, in accordance with his professional habit of discretion.

\'Suez, why, it\'s capital,\' declared Sabatani in his sing-song voice, as before going out he stepped aside to shake hands gallantly with Saccard.

For a moment afterwards it seemed to Saccard that he could still feel the pressure of the Levantine\'s soft, supple, almost feminine hand. In his uncertainty as to the course he should take to begin his life anew, he looked upon all who were there as sharpers. Ah! if they forced him to it, how he would hunt them down, how he would shear them, those trembling Mosers, those boastful Pilleraults, those Salmons, hollower than gourds, and those Amadieus whose chance success had transformed them into geniuses! The clatter of plates and glasses had begun again; voices were growing hoarse; and the doors swung faster than ever in the hasty eagerness that consumed them all to be across the way, at the game, if there was to be a crash in Suez. And in the middle of the Place, now crowded with pedestrians and crossed by cabs in[Pg 12] all directions, Saccard, looking out of the window, saw that the shining steps of the Bourse were sprinkled with human insects—insects ever climbing—men correctly dressed in black, who gradually filled the colonnade, while behind the railings there vaguely appeared a few women, prowling about under the chestnut trees.

Suddenly, while he was cutting some cheese which he had just ordered, a gruff voice made him raise his head.

\'I beg your pardon, my dear fellow, but it was impossible for me to come sooner.\'

So here at last was Huret, a Norman of Calvados, with the thick broad face of a shrewd peasant who affected the air of a simple man. He straightway told the waiter to bring him whatever he pleased, the dish of the day, with some vegetables.

\'Well?\' drily asked Saccard, containing himself.

The other, however, evinced no hurry, but watched him like a sly, prudent man. Then, beginning to eat, bringing his face forward and lowering his voice, he said: \'Well, I saw the great man. Yes, at his house this morning. Oh, he spoke very kindly of you, yes, very kindly.\'

He paused, drank a large glass of wine, and put a potato in his mouth.

\'And what else?\' asked Saccard.

\'What else, my dear fellow, why this: He is very willing to do what he can for you; he will find you a very comfortable berth, but not in France. Say, for instance, the governorship of one of our colonies, one of the good ones. You would be the master there, a real little prince.\'

Saccard had turned very pale. \'I say,\' he exclaimed, \'you must be having a joke with me, mocking at me, surely. Why not penal servitude at once? Ah! so he wants to get rid of me. Let him look out, or I shall end by embarrassing him in earnest.\'

Huret, with his mouth full, remained conciliatory. \'Come, come,\' said he, \'we only wish your own welfare; leave us to act.\'

\'Leave myself to be suppressed, eh? Why, only just now[Pg 13] they were saying here that there soon won\'t be a single mistake left for the Empire to make. Yes, the Italian war, Mexico, the attitude of the Government towards Prussia! Upon my word, it is the truth! You will be up to such stupidity and folly, that all France will rise up to pitch you out.\'

On hearing this, Huret, deputy, faithful creature of the minister as he was, at once became anxious, turned pale, and looked about him. \'Ah, come, come, I cannot follow you. Rougon is an honest man; there is no danger as long as he is at the helm. No, not another word—you misunderstand him, I must really say so——\'

Clenching his teeth so as to deaden his voice, Saccard furiously interrupted him. \'Very well, love him—keep house together. Yes or no, will he give me his patronage here, in Paris?\'

\'In Paris, never!\'

Without adding a word, Saccard rose and called the waiter in order to pay his score, whilst Huret, who knew his temper, calmly continued swallowing huge mouthfuls of bread, and let him go, through fear of a scene. Just then, however, quite a sensation was caused in the room.

Gundermann[8] had just entered it—Gundermann the banker-king, the master of the Bourse and of the world, a man of sixty, whose huge bald head, thick nose and round goggle-eyes betokened immense obstinacy and weariness. Never did he go to the Bourse; in fact he even pretended that he sent no official representative thither; neither did he ever breakfast in a public place. Only from time to time he happened, as on this occasion, to show himself at Champeaux\' restaurant, where he would seat himself at one of the tables that he might simply drink a glassful of Vichy water. For twenty years he had suffered from a gastric affection, and nourished himself exclusively with milk.

All the waiters were at once on the move to bring him his glass of water, and all who were lunching suddenly became very humble. Moser sat like one overwhelmed, contemplating[Pg 14] this man who knew all secrets and who made stock rise or fall at will, just as the Divinity makes the thunder growl. Even Pillerault saluted him, like one whose only faith is in the irresistible force of the milliard. It was half-past twelve, and Mazaud, who was hurriedly leaving Amadieu, stepped back and bent low before the banker, from whom he sometimes had the honour to receive an order. Many boursiers, similarly on the point of departing, remained standing around the demigod, forming about him a very deferential court, amid the disarray of the soiled tablecloths; and it was with veneration that they watched him take the glass of water in his trembling hand and carry it to his pale lips.

Formerly, during his speculations in the lands of the Monceau Plain, Saccard had had sundry discussions and even a quarrel with Gundermann. They could not get on together—the one passionate and fond of the pleasures of life, the other sober and coldly logical. Accordingly the former, his fit of passion increased by this triumphal entrance, was going away, when the other called him.

\'I say, my good friend, is it true that you are giving up business? Really, you act wisely; it is the best course.\'

This, to Saccard, was like a lash across his face. He straightened his little figure, and in a clear voice, as sharp as a sword, replied: \'I am about to establish a banking house with a capital of twenty-five millions, and I expect to call upon you soon.\'

And thereupon he went out, leaving behind him the fiery hubbub of the room, where all were now jostling one another, eager not to miss the opening of the Bourse. Ah! to succeed at last, to set his heel once more upon these people, who turned their backs upon him, and to struggle for power with that king of wealth, and some day perhaps beat him! He had not really decided to launch his great enterprise, and was surprised at the phrase which the necessity of answering had wrung from him. But could he tempt fortune elsewhere, now that his brother abandoned him, and that men and things were galling him back into the struggle, even as the bleeding bull is galled back into the arena?

[Pg 15]

For a moment he stood quivering on the edge of the footway. It was that active hour when all the life of Paris seems to flow into that central square between the Rue Montmartre and the Rue Richelieu, those two teeming arteries that carry the crowd along. From the four crossways at the four corners of the Place, streams of vehicles poured in uninterruptedly, whisking across the pavement amid an eddying mob of foot passengers. The two rows of cabs at the stand, beside the railings, were continually breaking and reforming; while along the Rue Vivienne the victorias of the remisiers stretched away in a compact line, above which towered the drivers, reins in hand and ready to whip up at the first signal. The steps and peristyle of the Bourse were quite black with swarming frock-coats; and from among the coulissiers, already installed under the clock and hard at work, there arose the clamour of bull and bear, the flood-tide roar of speculation dominating all the rumbling hubbub of the city. Passers-by turned their heads, curious and fearful as to what might be going on there—all those mysterious financial operations which few French brains can penetrate, all that sudden ruin and fortune brought about—how, none could understand—amid gesticulation and savage cries. And Saccard, standing on the kerb of the footway, deafened by the distant voices, elbowed by the jostling, hurrying crowd, dreamed once more of becoming the Gold King, the sovereign of that fever-infested district, in the centre of which the Bourse, from one till three o\'clock, beats as it were like some enormous heart.

Since his fall, however, he had not dared to re-enter the edifice; and on this day also a feeling of suffering vanity, a conviction that he would be received as a beaten man, prevented him from ascending the steps. Yet, like the lovers driven from the presence of a mistress whom they still desire, even while thinking that they hate her, he ever and ever returned to the spot, making the tour of the colonnade under various pretexts, entering the garden and strolling along in the shade of the chestnut-trees. Perambulating this dusty square, grassless and flowerless, where shady speculators and[Pg 16] bareheaded women of the neighbourhood nursing their babies mingled together on the benches near the newspaper stalls, he affected a disinterested saunter, raised his eyes, and watched, absorbed by the exciting thought that he was besieging the monumental pile, drawing his lines more and more closely around it, in order that he might some day re-enter it in triumph.

Having made his way into the garden at the right-hand corner, under the trees facing the Rue de la Banque, he at once fell upon the Little Bourse, where discredited stock is negotiated, a Bourse of hawker-brokers—the \'Wet Feet\' as others have nicknamed them with ironical contempt—men who quote in the open air, and in the mud on rainy days, the shares and debentures of defunct companies. There, an unclean Jewry was gathered in a tumultuous group—fat, shining faces, withered profiles like those of voracious birds, an extraordinary assemblage of typical noses, all drawn together as by a prey, all eagerly, angrily disputing, with guttural shouts, and seemingly ready to devour one another. He was passing on, when, a little apart, he noticed a stout man looking in the sunlight at a ruby, which he held up delicately between his huge dirty fingers.

\'What! is it you, Busch? You remind me that I intended to call at your place,\' said Saccard.

Busch, who kept an agency in the Rue Feydeau at the corner of the Rue Vivienne, had on several occasions been very useful to him in moments of difficulty. He was standing there in a state of ecstasy, examining the water of the jewel, with his broad flat face upturned and the glow of his heavy grey eyes extinguished, as it were, by the bright light. The white tie which he always wore was twisted round his neck like a bit of rope; while his second-hand frock coat, a superb garment once upon a time, but now wonderfully threadbare and covered with grease spots, reached up to the light hair falling in scanty rebellious locks from his head, which on the top was quite bald. Nobody could tell the age of his hat, browned by the sun and washed by countless showers. At last he decided to descend to earth again. \'Ah![Pg 17] Monsieur Saccard, so you are taking a little walk this way?\' said he.

\'Yes, I have a letter in the Russian language—a letter from a Russian banker in business at Constantinople. It occurred to me that your brother could translate it for me.\'

Busch, who with a gentle movement was still unconsciously rolling the ruby between the fingers of his right hand, held out the left, saying that the translation would be forwarded that very evening. But Saccard explained that it was only a matter of ten lines. \'I will go up,\' said he; \'your brother will read it to me at once.\'

He was, however, at that moment interrupted by the arrival of a woman of colossal proportions, a certain Madame Méchain, well known to the frequenters of the Bourse as one of those fierce, wretched female speculators whose fat hands dabble in all sorts of suspicious jobs. Her red, puffy, full-moon face, with little blue eyes, a little hidden nose, and a little mouth whence came a child-like piping voice, protruded from an old mauve bonnet, tied askew with garnet ribbons; and her gigantic bosom and dropsical body strained almost to bursting point her mud-stained poplin gown, once green but now turning yellow. She carried on her arm an immense old black leather bag, as deep as a valise, which never left her. That afternoon the bag, so full that it seemed likely to burst, drew her down on the right side, like a tree that has grown slantwise.

\'Here you are, then?\' said Busch, who had evidently been waiting for her.

\'Yes, and I have received the Vend?me papers; I have brought them,\' she replied.

\'Good! Let us be off to my place, then. There\'s nothing to be done here to-day.\'

Saccard had darted a wavering glance at the vast leather bag. He knew that into it inevitably fell all sorts of discredited stock, the shares of bankrupt companies, in which the \'Wet Feet\' still speculate—shares issued at five hundred francs, but which they dispute for at twenty or even ten sous apiece, either in the vague hope of an improbable rise or, more practically,[Pg 18] as merchandise which they can sell at a profit to fraudulent bankrupts who are desirous of having something to show by way of explaining their pretended losses. In the deadly battles of speculation, La Méchain was the raven that followed the armies on the march; not a company, not a large financial establishment was founded, but she appeared with her bag, sniffing the air, awaiting the corpses, even in the prosperous hours of triumphant issues. For she well knew that ruin was inevitable, that the day of massacre would come, when there would be dead to eat, shares to pick up for nothing, from amid the mire and the blood. And Saccard, who even then was revolving a grand banking project in his mind, gave a slight shudder, and felt a presentiment at sight of that bag, that charnel-house, as it were, of depreciated stock, into which passed all the dirty paper swept away from the Bourse.

Busch was on the point of taking the old woman off, when Saccard stopped him, saying: \'Then I can go up? I am certain of finding your brother, eh?\'

The Jew\'s eyes softened with an expression of anxious surprise. \'My brother! Why, certainly. Where do you expect him to be?\'

\'Very well, then; I will go up directly.\'

Allowing them to move away, Saccard thereupon resumed his slow walk under the trees, towards the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. This is one of the most frequented sides of the Place, overlooked by houses occupied by commercial firms and petty manufacturers, whose gilt signboards were flaming in the sunlight. Blinds, too, were flapping at the balconies; and a whole family of provincials stood gaping at the window of a hotel. Saccard mechanically raised his head, and looked at these people, whose amazement made him smile, comforting him with the thought that plenty of investors would always be found in the provinces. Behind him, the clamour of the Bourse, the distant flood-tide roar, was still resounding, haunting him, following him like a threat of doom which would presently overtake him.

Another meeting, however, made him pause.

[Pg 19]

\'What, Jordan, you at the Bourse?\' he exclaimed, shaking hands with a tall, dark young man, with a small moustache and a determined, wilful air.

For ten years past, Jordan, whose father, a Marseilles banker, had committed suicide in consequence of some disastrous speculations, had been tramping the pavements of Paris with the fever of literature within him, in a gallant struggle against black misery. One of his cousins, residing at Plassans, where he knew the Rougon family, had formerly recommended him to Saccard, at the time when the latter was receiving all Paris at his mansion of the Parc Monceau.

\'Oh! at the Bourse, never!\' answered the young man, with a violent gesture, as if he were driving away the tragic memory of his father. Then, beginning to smile, he added: \'You know that I have got married—yes, to a little friend of my childhood\'s days. We were betrothed at the time when I was rich, and she has persisted in taking me—poor devil though I now am.\'

\'Quite so; I received the notification,\' said Saccard. \'And do you know that I used to be in business relations with your father-in-law, Monsieur Maugendre, when he had his awning factory at La Villette? He must have made a pretty fortune there.\'

The conversation was taking place near a bench; and at this point Jordan interrupted it to introduce a short, stout gentleman, of military bearing, who was sitting there, and with whom he had been talking when Saccard came up. \'Captain Chave, an uncle of my wife\'s,\' said he. \'Madame Maugendre, my mother-in-law, is a Chave, of Marseilles.\'

The captain had risen, and Saccard bowed. He was by sight acquainted with the owner of that apoplectic face, set on a neck stiffened by long wearing a military choker—that type of the petty cash gambler, whom one is certain to find somewhere about the Bourse every day from one to three o\'clock. The game that men of this class play is one of small winnings, an almost certain profit of from fifteen to twenty francs, which must be realised before the day\'s operations are over.

Jordan, with his good-natured laugh, now added, by way of[Pg 20] explaining his presence: \'My uncle is a ferocious speculator, with whom I sometimes stop to shake hands as I pass by.\'

\'Why,\' said the captain, simply. \'I\'m obliged to speculate, since the Government, with its beggarly pension, leaves me to die of hunger.\'

Saccard, whom the young man interested by reason of his courageous battle for existence, next asked him how things were going in the domain of literature, and Jordan, again becoming merry, thereupon described in what a sorry fashion he had started housekeeping on the fifth storey of a house in the Avenue de Clichy; for the Maugendres, who distrusted a poet, and thought they had gone very far indeed in consenting to the marriage, had given their daughter nothing by way of portion, under the pretext that she would have their fortune intact, increased by their savings, when they were dead and gone. No, said Jordan, literature did not feed its man; he had an idea of a novel, but could not find time to write it, and had been obliged to embrace journalism, knocking off anything that his position called for, from leading articles to law reports and even news \'pars.\'

\'Well,\' said Saccard, \'if I start my great enterprise, I shall perhaps need you. So come and see me.\'

After bowing he turned away, and found himself behind the Bourse. There the distant clamour, the howling of the gamesters at last ceased, subsided into a vague hum, lost amid the rumbling of the street traffic. The steps on this side, like those in front, were, it is true, invaded by people; but the brokers\' room, whose red hangings could be seen at the high windows, here intervened between the hubbub of the main hall and the colonnade, where sundry fastidious and richer speculators, some alone and others in little groups, were sitting comfortably in the shade, transforming the vast open peristyle into a sort of club. The rear of the building was, moreover, something like the rear of a theatre—the stage entrance, as it were, reached by that equivocal and comparatively quiet street, the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, which was lined with wine-shops, cafés, beer-houses, and taverns, all swarming with a special class of customers strangely mingled. The signboards[Pg 21] also betokened an evil growth that had sprung up at the very brink of the great cloaca: a growth of disreputable insurance companies, blackmailing financial journals, syndicates, banks, agencies, counting-houses, an entire series of cut-throat places on a petty scale, installed in dingy shops or on first floors no bigger than one\'s pocket-handkerchief. On the footways and in the middle of the street, everywhere in fact, men were prowling, waiting, as on the outskirts of a wood.

Saccard had stopped inside the Bourse railings, raising his eyes to the door leading to the brokers\' room, with the piercing glance of the commander of an army who is examining from every side the fortress which he proposes to storm—when a tall fellow, coming out of a tavern, crossed the street and approached him with a very low bow.

\'Ah! Monsieur Saccard, have you nothing for me? I have altogether left the Crédit Mobilier, and am looking for a situation.\'

Jantrou was an ex-professor, who had left Bordeaux for Paris in consequence of some shady affair. Obliged to quit the University, without caste or position, but a handsome fellow with his black fan-shaped beard, and his tendency to early baldness, and lettered, intelligent, and amiable withal, he had, at the age of twenty-eight, landed at the Bourse, where for ten years he had dragged out an unclean life as a remisier, earning scarcely more money than was necessary for the gratification of his vices. And now, quite bald and as disconsolate as a hussy whose wrinkles threaten her with a loss of livelihood, he was still awaiting the opportunity which should start him on the road to success and fortune.

Saccard, on seeing him so humble, bitterly recalled the salutations of Sabatani at Champeaux\' restaurant. The disreputable and the unsuccessful alone remained friendly to him. However, he was not without esteem for this man\'s keen intelligence, and he well knew that the desperate make the bravest troops, those ready to dare everything, having nothing to lose and everything to gain. So he received him fairly cordially. \'A situation?\' he repeated. \'Well, perhaps that can be found. Come and see me.\'

[Pg 22]

\'It\'s Rue Saint-Lazare now, isn\'t it?\'

\'Yes, Rue Saint-Lazare; in the morning.\'

They chatted. Jantrou spoke very excitedly about the Bourse, repeating, with the rancour of a man who has not been lucky in his knavery, that none but a knave could be successful there. For his part, said he, it was all over; he wanted to try something else; it seemed to him that, thanks to his University culture, and his knowledge of the world, he might conquer a fine position in discharging administrative duties. Saccard nodded approval. And, as they were now outside the railings, walking along the footway in the direction of the Rue Brongniart, they both became interested in a dark brougham, a very correct equipage, which had stopped in that street, with the horse turned towards the Rue Montmartre. The back of the high-perched coachman was as motionless as a rock, but they had twice noticed a woman\'s head appear at the carriage door, and then quickly disappear. All at once this head was again thrust out, and this time it lingered at the window, giving a long, backward, impatient look in the direction of the Bourse.

\'The Baroness Sandorff,\' muttered Saccard.

It was a very strange brown head, with burning black eyes beneath dark lids; a passionate face, with blood-red lips, and only marred by rather a long nose. Altogether its possessor seemed very pretty and precociously mature for her five-and-twenty years, having the look of a Bacchante garmented by the foremost dressmakers of the reign.

\'Yes, the Baroness,\' repeated Jantrou. \'I knew her when she was a young girl, at her father\'s, Count de Ladricourt. Oh! a mad speculator he was, and revoltingly brutal. I went to take his orders every morning; one day he came near giving me a beating. I shed no tears when he died in an apoplectic fit, ruined after a series of lamentable "settlements." The little one then had to make up her mind to marry Baron Sandorff, Counsellor to the Austrian Embassy, who was thirty-five years older than herself, and whom she had positively driven mad with her fiery glances.\'

\'I know,\' said Saccard, simply.

[Pg 23]

The Baroness\'s head had again dived back into the brougham, but it almost immediately reappeared, more ardent than ever, and turned so as to command a better view of the Place.

\'She speculates, doesn\'t she?\'

\'Oh, like a crazy woman! Whenever there is a crisis, she is to be seen there in her carriage, following the quotations, feverishly taking notes in her memorandum book, giving orders—and see! it was Massias whom she was waiting for: here he comes to join her.\'

In fact, Massias, his quotations in his hand, was running up as fast as his short legs would carry him, and they saw him rest his elbows on the carriage door, and pop his head through the open window, in order to confer with the Baroness. Then Saccard and Jantrou stepped away a little, so that they might not be caught spying on the pair, and as the remisier came back, still on the run, they called him. He at first gave a glance back, to make sure that he was hidden by the street corner, and then he stopped short, out of breath, his florid face quite purple, but still gay, with big blue eyes as limpid as those of a child.

\'But what is the matter with them all?\' he cried. \'There\'s Suez all going to rack and ruin. There are rumours of a war with England, a piece of news that revolutionises them all, and that comes no one knows whence. War, indeed! who can have invented such a cram? Or did it invent itself all alone? At all events, there\'s a nice to-do!\'

\'Does the lady still bite?\' asked Jantrou with a wink.

\'Oh, madly! I am carrying her orders to Nathansohn.\'

Saccard, who was listening, remarked: \'Ah, yes, so it\'s true, then; I had heard that Nathansohn had joined the coulisse.\'

\'A very nice fellow is Nathansohn,\' repeated Jantrou, \'and one who deserves to succeed. We were at the Crédit Mobilier together. But he\'ll succeed, he will, for he is a Jew. His father, an Austrian, is in business at Besan?on, as a watchmaker, I believe. The fever took him one day at the[Pg 24] Crédit, you know, when he saw how things were managed. He said to himself that it wasn\'t such a trick, after all; that it was only necessary to get a room, put a wire grating across it, and open a wicket; and he has opened a wicket. And you, Massias, are you satisfied?\'

\'Oh, satisfied! You\'ve been in the mill; you are right in saying that it is necessary to be a Jew; otherwise it is useless to try to understand. There\'s no such thing as a look in, nothing but cursed bad luck. What a filthy trade! But when a man is in it, he stays. And, besides, I have good legs still, and keep on hoping all the same.\'

Thereupon he started off, running and laughing. He was said to be the son of a Lyons magistrate, removed from his post for unworthiness, and had stranded at the Bourse, after the disappearance of his father, not caring to continue his law studies.

With short, slow steps, Saccard and Jantrou retraced their way towards the Rue Brongniart, and there they again found the Baroness\'s brougham; but the windows were now raised, and the mysterious carriage appeared to be empty, while the coachman seemed more motionless than ever, still waiting—as he often had to do, until the very last quotations.

\'She is devilishly provoking,\' resumed Saccard, brutally. \'I understand the old Baron.\'

A singular smile came over Jantrou\'s face. \'I fancy that he has had enough long ago. And he is very stingy, they say. And do you know who now pays her bills, speculation never sufficing?\'

\'No.\'

\'Delcambre!\'

\'Delcambre, the Public Prosecutor! that tall, dry man, so stiff and yellow! a future minister! Is it possible?\'

Thereupon, in great good-humour, altogether enlivened, the pair separated with a vigorous handshake, after the one had reminded the other that he should take the liberty of calling on him shortly.

As soon as he found himself alone again, Saccard once more heard the loud voice of the Bourse, persistently swelling[Pg 25] like that of the rising tide. He had turned the corner, and was making his way towards the Rue Vivienne, by this side of the Place, which through the complete absence of cafés has a more solemn aspect than any other. He passed the Chamber of Commerce, the Post Office, and the great advertising agencies, becoming more and more deafened, growing more and more feverish, as he drew nearer to the principal fa?ade. And when by an oblique glance he could again command a view of the peristyle, he paused afresh as if reluctant to finish his circuit of the colonnade, to complete his investment of it. Here, where the footway broadened, life spread, burst forth upon him; torrents of customers invaded the cafés, the pastrycook\'s shop never emptied, and pedestrians were ever pausing, fascinated by the display in the shop windows, especially in those of a silversmith\'s establishment, which were all ablaze with large pieces of plate. And at the four cross-ways, at the four corners of the Place, the flood of cabs and wayfarers seemed to be increasing in inextricable entanglement; whilst the traffic at the omnibus station added to the block, and the carriages of the remisiers, ranged in a line, prevented access to the footway almost from one end of the railing to the other. Saccard\'s eyes, however, were fixed on the high steps, where frock-coats clustered in the sunlight. Then they were lifted towards the columns, towards the compact mass of speculators—the dense swarm, the blackness of which was scarcely relieved by the pale faces in the crowd. All were standing, no chairs could be seen; the curve formed by the coulisse under the clock could only be divined by the prevalent ebullition, the fury of gestures and words which made the very atmosphere quiver.

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[Pg 26] 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 Je?neurs, 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[Pg 27] 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[Pg 28] 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[Pg 29] 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 Vend?me. 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?\'

[Pg 30]

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 Vend?me. 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[Pg 31] 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[Pg 32] 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.\'

[Pg 33]

La Méchain, however, absolutely barred the passage, and scrutinised the new-comer with an air of increasing surprise. No end of man?uvring 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[Pg 34] 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[Pg 35] 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[Pg 36] 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[Pg 37] 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[Pg 38] 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[Pg 39] 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[Pg 40] 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[Pg 41] 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[Pg 42] 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[Pg 43] 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[Pg 44] 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.