penetrating a glance, that Aristide bowed his head, feeling that his
brother was descending into the innermost depths of his being. The
latter continued with a sort of friendly bluntness:
"You've come to me to get you something to do, have you not? I've
already thought of you, but I've found nothing as yet. You see, I can't
put you into the first position that offers. You need an occupation
that will enable you to carry on your little game without danger either
to yourself or to me. Don't protest, we're alone here, and can say
anything to each other."
Aristide thought it best to laugh.
"Oh! I know that you're intelligent," continued Eugène, "and that
you're not likely to do anything foolish again without you reap some
benefit from it. So soon as a good opportunity offers, I will do
something for you. Meanwhile, if you should happen to be in want of a
twenty-franc piece, come to me for it."
They talked for a few minutes about the insurrection in the South,
through which their father had gained his appointment of tax collector.
Eugène dressed himself while talking. Just as he was parting from his
brother outside in the street, he detained him a moment longer to say
in a lower tone of voice:
"By-the-way, you'll oblige me by not loafing about, but by quietly
waiting at home for the berth I promise you. It would annoy me to see
my brother dancing attendance on any one."
Aristide had a high respect for Eugène, who seemed to him a wonderfully
smart fellow. He did not however forgive him his mistrust, nor his
rather rough frankness; nevertheless he obediently went and shut
himself up in the Rue Saint-Jacques. He had arrived with five hundred
francs which his wife's father had lent him. After paying the expenses
of the journey, he made the three hundred francs that remained to
him last a month. Angèle was a hearty eater; moreover she thought
it necessary to retrim her best dress with some mauve ribbons. This
month of waiting appeared interminable to Aristide. He was burning
with impatience. Each time he leaned out of his window and felt the
gigantic labour of Paris beneath him, he experienced a mad longing to
throw himself into the furnace with one bound, so as to mould the gold
with his quivering fingers, as though it had been wax. He inhaled those
still vague vapours which rose from the great city, that breath of the
nascent Empire, laden already with the odours of alcoves and financial
hells, with the warm effluvia of every kind of enjoyment. The faint
fumes that reached him seemed to tell him that he was on the right
scent, that the quarry was scudding along before him, that the grand
imperial hunt, the pursuit of adventures, of women, and of millions,
was about to begin. His nostrils quivered, his instinct of a famished
beast caught in a marvellous manner as they passed the slightest signs
of that fierce division of spoil of which the city was to be the scene.
Twice he called on his brother to urge him to be more expeditious.
Eugène received him rather ungraciously, repeating that he was not
forgetting him, but that it was necessary to wait patiently. At length
Aristide received a letter requesting him to call in the Rue de
Penthièvre. He hastened thither, his heart beating violently, as though
he were on his way to a lovers' meeting. He found Eugène seated before
the same little black table, in the large cold room which he used as a
study. On his appearance the lawyer held a document towards him, saying:
"There, I settled your matter yesterday. You are appointed deputy
trustee of roads at the Hôtel de Ville. You will be in receipt of a
salary of two thousand four hundred francs."
Aristide had remained standing. He turned ghastly pale, and did not
take the document, thinking that his brother was poking fun at him. He
had at least expected an appointment worth six thousand francs a year.
Eugène, guessing what was passing within him, wheeled his chair round
and folded his arms.
"Are you a fool after all?" he asked angrily. "You've been building
castles in the air like a girl, have you not? You would wish to have
a grand establishment with footmen, to live on the fat of the land,
sleep in silk, gratify your desires at once in no matter whose arms, in
a boudoir furnished in a couple of hours. You and those like you, if
we allowed you to have your way, would empty the coffers even before
they were full. Now, in the name of all that's good! do have a little
patience! See how I live, and do at least take the trouble to stoop to
pick up a fortune."
He spoke with profound contempt of his brother's schoolboy impatience.
One could feel, in his rough speech, a loftier ambition, a longing for
untarnished power; that naive appetite for money no doubt appeared to
him both paltry and puerile. He continued in a gentler voice and with a
crafty smile:
"No doubt your propensities are excellent, and I have not the least
desire to thwart them. Men like you are precious. We have every
intention of choosing our friends from among the most hungry. You may
be quite easy, we shall keep open house, and the greatest appetites
will be satisfied. And this is after all the easiest way of reigning.
But, for goodness sake, wait till the cloth is laid, and, if you'll
accept my advice, just go yourself and fetch your knife and fork from
the kitchen."
Aristide continued to look very glum. His brother's pleasant
comparisons were unable to bring a smile to his countenance. Then the
latter again gave way to anger.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, "my first opinion was the right one: you're a fool!
What on earth did you expect, whatever did you imagine I was going to
do with your illustrious person? You didn't even have the courage to
finish your reading for the bar, you went and buried yourself for ten
years in the wretched berth of clerk at a sub-prefecture, and you come
to me with the detestable reputation of a Republican whom the Coup
d'État was alone able to convert. Do you think that with such a past
there is the making of a cabinet minister in you? Oh! I know that you
have in your favour a ferocious desire to reach the goal by any means
possible. That is a great virtue, I admit, and it was precisely on that
account that I obtained your admittance into the Hôtel de Ville."
And rising from his seat he placed the document containing the
appointment in Aristide's hands.
"Take it," continued he, "you'll thank me some day. It's I who chose
the berth, I know what you'll be able to get out of it. All you'll
have to do will be to look about you and keep your ears open. If you
are intelligent, you'll soon understand and know how to act. Now pay
particular attention to what I am about to say to you. Make piles
of money, I permit it; only do nothing foolish, no noisy scandal,
otherwise I shall suppress you instantly."
This threat produced the effect his promises had been unable to obtain.
All Aristide's ardour was rekindled at the thought of the fortune to
which his brother alluded. It seemed to him that he was at last let
loose in the thick of the fray, authorised to slaughter right and left,
but legally, and without causing too much commotion. Eugène gave him
two hundred francs to enable him to wait till the end of the month.
Then he remained wrapt in thought.
"I'm thinking of changing my name," said he at length; "you ought to do
the same. We should interfere with each other less."
"As you like," answered Aristide quietly.
"You need not trouble yourself about anything. I will attend to the
necessary formalities. How would you like to call yourself by your
wife's name Sicardot?"
Aristide glanced up at the ceiling, repeating the name, and listening
to the sound of the syllables.
"Sicardot--Aristide Sicardot--no, on my word, it's clownish and has a
suggestion of bankruptcy about it."
"Think of something better then," said Eugène.
"I would prefer Sicard without the ot," resumed the other after a
pause; "Aristide Sicard--that isn't bad, is it? perhaps a bit jaunty--"
He stood thinking a few moments longer, and then triumphantly exclaimed:
"I've got it, I've found it at last! Saccard, Aristide Saccard! with a
double c. Eh! there's money in such a name as that; it has a sound like
the counting out of five franc pieces."
Eugène was rather brutal in his jokes. He dismissed his brother, saying
to him with a smile:
"Yes, a name that will make you a convict or a millionaire."
A few days later Aristide Saccard found himself at the Hôtel de Ville.
He there learnt that his brother must have commanded considerable
influence to get him appointed without the customary examinations.
Then the couple began the monotonous life of the underpaid clerk.
Aristide and his wife resumed their old Plassans ways. Only they fell
from a dream of sudden fortune, and their poverty-stricken existence
weighed heavier upon them, now that they looked upon it as a time of
probation, the duration of which they were unable to fix. To be poor in
Paris, is to be doubly poor. Angèle accepted the wretchedness of their
position with all the listlessness of a chlorotic woman. She spent days
in her kitchen, or else lying on the floor, playing with her daughter,
and never lamenting except when she reached her last twenty-sou piece.
But Aristide quivered with rage in the midst of this poverty, of this
narrow existence, out of which he sought an issue like some caged
beast. To him it was a period of ineffable suffering; his pride was
wounded, his unsated cravings goaded him furiously. And he suffered all
the more on learning that his brother had been elected to represent
Plassans in Parliament. He felt too much Eugène's superiority to be
foolishly jealous; but he accused him of not doing all that he might
have done for him. On several occasions, absolute necessity forced him
to knock at his door for the purpose of borrowing a trifle. Eugène
lent the money, but at the same time roughly reproached him with being
destitute of both courage and will. Then Aristide took the bull indeed
by the horns. He swore to himself that he would never again borrow so
much as a sou from any one, and he kept his oath. The last eight days
of each month, Angèle would eat dry bread and sigh. This apprenticeship
completed Saccard's terrible education. His thin lips became narrower
still; he was no longer so stupid as to dream of millions out loud;
his scraggy person became dumb, and no longer expressed but one will,
one fixed idea nursed at every hour of the day. When he hurried along
from the Rue Saint-Jacques to the Hôtel de Ville, his boots worn down
at heel resounded harshly on the pavement, and he buttoned himself up
in his shabby old overcoat as though in an asylum of hatred, while his
weasel-like snout sniffed the air of the streets. He was an angular
figure of the jealous misery that one sees roaming along the Paris
side-walks, carrying with him his plan for conquering a fortune, and
the dream of the eventual gratification of his appetite.
Early in 1853, Aristide Saccard was appointed trustee of roads. He now
received a salary of four thousand five hundred francs. This rise came
at an opportune moment; Angèle was slowly wasting away; little Clotilde
was looking quite pale. He retained his small lodging of two rooms,
the dining-room furnished in walnut, and the bedroom in mahogany,
continuing to lead an austere life, carefully avoiding getting into
debt, unwilling to touch other people's money until he could bury his
arms into it to the elbows. He thus belied his instincts, disdaining
the few extra sous he received, preferring to remain on the watch.
Angèle felt completely happy. She bought herself some new clothes,
and had a joint to roast every day of the week. She could no longer
understand the reason of her husband's suppressed passion, his gloomy
ways of a man working out the solution of some formidable problem.
Acting on Eugène's advice, Aristide was keeping his eyes and ears
open. When he went to thank his brother for his promotion, the
latter understood the revolution that had taken place within him; he
complimented him on what he called his good appearance. The clerk, whom
envy was inwardly rendering inflexible, had outwardly become pliant
and insinuating. In a few months he was transformed into a marvellous
comedian. All his southern animation had awakened, and he carried the
art so far that his comrades at the Hôtel de Ville looked upon him
as a jolly good fellow, whose near relationship to a deputy designed
beforehand for some grand appointment. This relationship also secured
him the good will of his chiefs. He thus enjoyed a kind of authority
superior to his position, which enabled him to open certain doors, and
to poke his nose into certain portfolios, without his indiscretion
appearing in the least culpable. For two years he was seen roaming
about all the passages, lingering in all the rooms, getting up from his
seat twenty times a day to talk to a comrade, carry an order, or take
a stroll through the different departments, endless wanderings which
caused his colleagues to say:
"That devil of a Southerner! he can't keep still a minute; he must
indeed have quicksilver in his legs."
His own particular friends took him for a lazy fellow, and the worthy
man laughed when they accused him of seeking to rob the service of a
few minutes. He never committed the mistake of listening at key-holes;
but he had a bold way of opening doors, and crossing rooms, apparently
deeply intent upon some document or other in his hand, and with so
slow and regular a walk that he never lost a word of whatever was
being said. They were the tactics of a genius; people ended by no
longer interrupting their conversation when this energetic clerk passed
by, gliding so to say in the shadow of the offices, and seemingly so
wrapt in his own business. He had yet another method; he was extremely
obliging, and would offer to assist his comrades, whenever they were
behindhand with their work; and then he would study the registers and
the documents that passed through his hands with quite a meditative
tenderness. But one of his favourite peccadilloes was to form
acquaintance with the messengers. He would even shake hands with them.
For hours together he would keep them talking in doorways, stifling
little bursts of laughter, telling them stories, and drawing them out.
These worthy fellows quite worshipped him, and were in the habit of
saying:
"There's a gentleman who isn't a bit proud!"
The moment there was the least scandal, he knew of it before any one.
It was thus that at the end of two years the Hôtel de Ville held no
mysteries for him. He knew everybody employed there, even to the lamp
cleaners, and was acquainted with every paper the place contained, not
omitting the washing books.
At this time, Paris formed, for a man like Aristide Saccard, a most
interesting spectacle. The Empire had just been proclaimed, after
that famous journey during which the Prince President had succeeded
in arousing the enthusiasm of some Bonapartist departments. Silence
reigned both at the tribune and in the press. Society, saved once more,
was congratulating itself and indolently resting, now that a strong
government was protecting it and relieving it even of the trouble of
thinking and of attending to its own business. The great preoccupation
of society was to know in what way it should kill time. As Eugène
Rougon so happily expressed it, Paris was dining and anticipating no
end of pleasure at dessert. Politics produced an universal scare,
like some dangerous drug. The wearied minds turned to pleasure and
money-making. Those who had any of the latter brought it out, and those
who had none sought in all the out-of-the-way places for forgotten
treasures. A secret quiver seemed to run through the multitude,
accompanied by a nascent jingling of five-franc pieces, by the rippling
laughter of women, and the yet faint clatter of crockery and murmur of
kisses. Amidst the great silence of the reign of order, the profound
peacefulness brought by the change of government, there arose all
sorts of pleasant rumours, gilded and voluptuous promises. It was as
though one were passing in front of one of those little houses, the
carefully drawn curtains of which reveal no more than the shadows of
women, and where one can overhear the jingling of gold on the marble
mantelpieces. The Empire was about to turn Paris into the bagnio of
Europe. The handful of adventurers who had just stolen a throne needed
a reign of adventure, of shadowy business transactions, of consciences
sold, of women bought, of furious and universal intoxication. And, in
the city where the blood of December was scarcely wiped away, there
slowly uprose, timidly as yet, that mad desire for enjoyment which
was destined to bring the country to the lowest dregs of corrupt and
dishonoured nations.
From the very first days Aristide Saccard had felt the approach of this
rising tide of speculation, the foam of which was soon to envelop the
whole of Paris. He watched its progress with profound attention. He
found himself right in the very midst of the warm downpour of silver
crowns falling thick and fast on to the roofs of the city. In his
constant wanderings through the Hôtel de Ville, he had obtained an
inkling of the vast project for the transformation of Paris, of the
plan of the demolitions and of the new thoroughfares and the altered
districts, of the formidable jobbery with respect to the sale of the
land and the buildings, which was kindling all over the town the battle
of interests and the flare-up of unbridled luxury. From that moment
his activity had an object. It was at this epoch that he became quite
a jolly good fellow. He even grew a trifle stout, he no longer hurried
about the streets like a half starved cat in search of something
to devour. At his office he was more talkative, more obliging than
ever. His brother, to whom he paid occasional visits, in some measure
official, congratulated him on so happily putting his counsels into
practice. In the early days of 1854, Saccard confided to him that he
had several affairs in view, but that he would require some rather
large advances in the way of money.
"You should look about," said Eugène.
"You are right, I will look about," he replied without the least
trace of ill-humour, and without appearing to notice that his brother
declined to furnish him with the necessary funds.
How to procure this money had now become his constant thought. His plan
was formed; it grew maturer every day. But he was as far as ever from
obtaining the first few thousands of francs he required. His faculties
became keener; he began to look at people in a profound and nervous
manner, as though he were seeking a lender in every passer-by. Angèle
continued to lead at home her secluded and happy existence. He was for
ever watching for an opportunity, and his laugh of a jolly good fellow
became more bitter as this opportunity delayed in presenting itself.
Aristide had a sister living in Paris. Sidonie Rougon had married
a solicitor's clerk at Plassans, who had come with her to the Rue
Saint-Honoré to start business as a dealer in Southern commodities.
When her brother came across her, the husband had disappeared, and
the business had long ago gone to the dogs. She occupied in the Rue
du Faubourg-Poissonnière, a small mezzanine floor consisting of three
rooms. She also leased the shop beneath, a narrow and mysterious shop
in which she pretended to carry on the business of a dealer in lace.
True enough, there was a display of Valenciennes and Maltese lace
suspended from gilt rods in the window; but inside, the place had more
the look of an ante-room, with its polished wainscotting, and a total
absence of goods of any description. Light curtains hung before the
glazed door and the window, intercepting the glances of the passers-by,
and helping to give the shop the veiled and discreet appearance of
a waiting-room at the entrance to some strange temple. It was very
seldom that any customer was seen to call at Madame Sidonie's; the
handle was even generally removed from the door. She spread a report
in the neighbourhood that she went personally to offer her wares
to ladies of fortune. The convenient arrangement of the place, she
would say, had alone caused her to rent the shop and the floor above
which communicated by a staircase hidden in the wall. And indeed the
lace-dealer was constantly out of doors; she might be seen hurrying in
or out at least ten times a day.
The lace trade, however, was not her only business; she utilised her
upper floor--cramming it full of merchandise of one sort or another,
bought up no one knew where. At different times she had dealt there
in gutta-percha goods, such as waterproof coats, shoes, braces, &c;
then had followed a new oil to promote the growth of the hair, various
orthopedic instruments, and an automatic coffee-pot, a patented
invention, the working of which gave her a great deal of trouble. The
first time her brother came to see her, she had gone in for pianos,
to such an extent that her apartments were full of them; they were
even in her bedroom, a very daintily decorated room, which contrasted
violently with the commercial untidiness of the two others. She carried
on her two businesses with perfect method; the customers who came for
the goods on the mezzanine floor, entered and departed by means of
a carriage entrance which gave admittance to the house from the Rue
Papillon; only those acquainted with the mysterious little staircase
were able to form an idea of the lace-dealer's underhand trading. Up in
her apartments she was known as Madame Touche, which was the name of
her husband, whilst she had had only her Christian name painted on the
shop-door, which was the reason for her being generally addressed as
Madame Sidonie.
Madame Sidonie was thirty-five years of age, but she dressed so
carelessly, she had so little of the woman in her appearance, that
one would have taken her to be much older. In truth, she was a person
whose age it would have been difficult to tell. She was always seen in
the same black dress, frayed at the edges, rumpled and discoloured by
constant wear, reminding one of a lawyer's old gown become threadbare
through years of daily attendance in court. With a black bonnet which
came as low as her forehead and hid all her hair, and a pair of thick
heavy shoes, she scurried along the streets, carrying on her arm a
little basket the handles of which had been mended with pieces of
string. This basket, which never left her, was quite a little world in
itself. Whenever she raised the lid, samples of all sorts issued forth,
diaries, pocket books, and especially bundles of stamped documents, the
almost illegible writing of which she deciphered with extraordinary
dexterity. She comprised in her person something of the broker and
of the man of law. She lived amidst protests, writs, and orders of
the court; when she had secured an order for ten francs' worth of
pomatum or lace, she would insinuate herself into the good graces of
her customer, and become her man of business, calling in her stead on
solicitors, barristers and judges.
She would thus carry for weeks together at the bottom of her basket all
the documents relating to a case, taking no end of trouble about it,
going from one end of Paris to the other, with the same regular little
trot-trot, never for a moment thinking of riding to save her legs. It
would have been difficult to say what profit she obtained from such a
business; in the first place she engaged in it through an instinctive
taste for questionable matters, a love for cavilling; besides this,
however, it enabled her to secure a host of little profits; invitations
to dinner in every direction, innumerable franc pieces pocketed here
and there. But her clearest gain was undoubtedly the numerous secrets
confided to her wherever she went, which showed her where a good stroke
of business was to be done or a handsome windfall to be obtained.
Living in the homes of others and wrapt up in their affairs, she had
become a veritable repertory existing on offers and demands. She knew
where there was a daughter ready to be married at once, a family in
need of three thousand francs, an old gentleman willing to lend the
three thousand francs, but on substantial security and at a high rate
of interest. She knew of matters more delicate still: the sadness of
a fair lady whose husband did not understand her, and who longed to
be understood; the secret desires of a good mother who dreamed of
settling her daughter advantageously; the taste of a certain baron for
little supper-parties and very young girls. And smiling faintly, she
went about hawking these offers and these demands, she would walk a
couple of leagues to bring her clients together; she sent the baron to
the good mother, prevailed upon the old gentleman to lend the three
thousand francs to the needy family, obtained the necessary consolation
for the fair lady and a not over-scrupulous husband for the young girl
in a hurry to marry.
She was also engaged in some very important business, business that
there was no occasion to keep secret, and with which she pestered
whoever went near her: an interminable law-suit that a noble but ruined
family had intrusted her with, and a debt owing by the English to the
French nation since the time of the Stuarts, and which amounted with
the compound interest to nearly three milliards of francs. This debt of
three milliards was her hobby-horse; she would explain the case with no
end of particulars, launching out into quite a course of history, and a
flush of enthusiasm would rush to her cheeks, usually yellow and flabby
like wax. At times, between a call on a lawyer and a visit paid to a
lady friend, she would secure an order for a coffee-pot, a mackintosh,
a piece of lace, or a piano on hire. These were matters arranged in a
moment. Then she would hurry back to her shop, where a lady customer
had an appointment with her to see a piece of Chantilly. The customer
arrived and glided like a shadow into the discreet and veiled shop.
And it often happened that a gentleman, entering by way of the carriage
entrance in the Rue Papillon, called at the same time to see Madame
Touche's pianos on the floor above.
If Madame Sidonie had not made a fortune, it was because she often
worked for love of the thing. With a great hankering after legal
business, forgetting her own affairs for those of others, she allowed
herself to be fleeced by the lawyers, which procured her, however, an
enjoyment unknown to any but litigious persons. There was scarcely
anything womanly left about her; she had become nothing more nor less
than a man of business, an agent ever bustling about the four corners
of Paris, carrying in her legendary basket articles of the most
equivocal description, selling every thing, dreaming of milliards,
and even going to the court-house for a favourite client to plead in
a case of a disputed ten francs. Short, skinny and pale, dressed in
that thin black garment which looked as though it had been cut out of
a barrister's gown, she seemed to have shrivelled up, and to see her
scuttling along close to the houses, one would have taken her for an
errand-boy disguised as a girl. Her complexion had the mournful wanness
of stamped paper. Her lips parted in a dim smile, whilst her eyes
seemed to be wandering amidst the hubbub of business, matters of every
description with which she loaded her brain. Of discreet and timid
ways, moreover, combined with a vague odour of the confessional and a
midwife's sanctum, she always appeared as gentle and maternal as a nun
who, having renounced all the affections of this world, takes pity on
the sufferings of the heart. She never mentioned her husband, neither
did she allude to her childhood, her family, or her affairs. There was
only one thing she did not deal in, and that was herself; not that
she had any scruples about the matter, but because the idea of such a
bargain could never occur to her. She was as dry as an invoice, as cold
as a protest, and at heart as brutal and indifferent as a bumbailiff.
Saccard, all fresh from his province, could not at first fathom the
delicate depths of Madame Sidonie's numerous callings. As he had
during twelve months studied for the bar, she one day spoke to him of
the three milliards with a very grave air, which gave him but a poor
opinion of her intelligence. She came and rummaged in all the corners
of the lodging in the Rue Saint-Jacques, weighed Angèle at a glance,
and never again put in an appearance excepting when her own affairs
brought her into the neighbourhood, and when she felt a desire to again
discuss the question of the three milliards. Angèle had swallowed the
bait of the story of the English debt. The woman of business mounted
her hobby, and made it rain gold for an hour or more. It was the crack
in this shrewd intellect, the gentle myth with which she deluded her
life wasted in a wretched traffic, the magical lure that intoxicated
not only herself but the more credulous of her clients. Thoroughly
convinced, moreover, she ended by speaking of the three milliards as
of some private fortune, which the judges would have to restore to
her sooner or later, and this shed a marvellous aureola around her
shabby black bonnet on which hung a few faded violets attached to
brass-wire stems bare of all covering. Angèle would open her eyes
wide with amazement. On several occasions, she spoke to her husband
of her sister-in-law with great respect, saying that Madame Sidonie
would perhaps make them all rich one day. Saccard merely shrugged his
shoulders; he had gone and inspected the shop and floor above in the
Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, and the only impression he had taken
away with him was that of an approaching bankruptcy. He wished to
know Eugène's opinion of their sister; but his brother became grave
and merely replied that he never saw her, that he knew she was very
intelligent, though perhaps rather compromising.
However as Saccard was returning to the Rue de Penthièvre some little
while afterwards, he fancied he saw Madame Sidonie's black dress leave
his brother's abode and glide rapidly along the houses. He hastened
forward, but lost all trace of the black garment. The woman of business
had one of those spare figures which so easily lose themselves in a
crowd. This set him thinking, and it was from this moment that he
commenced to study his sister more attentively. It was not long before
he began to understand the immense task performed by that pale and
shadowy little body, whose entire face seemed to squint and melt away.
He came to look upon her with respect. She had the true Rougon blood
in her veins. He recognised that appetite for money, that longing for
every kind of intrigue which was characteristic of the family; only, in
her case, thanks to the surroundings amidst which she had grown old,
thanks to that Paris where every morning she had been obliged to set
forth to seek her evening meal, the common temperament had deviated
from its usual course to produce this extraordinary hermaphrodism of a
woman changed into a being without a gender, both man of business and
procuress at the same time.
When Saccard, after having fixed upon his plan, was seeking for the
means for putting it into execution, he naturally bethought him of
his sister. She shook her head, and with a sigh alluded to the three
milliards. But the civil servant would not humour her whim, he pulled
her up rather roughly each time she mentioned the debt connected with
the Stuarts; such a chimera seemed to him to dishonour so practical an
intelligence. Madame Sidonie, who quietly swallowed the most cutting
irony without in any way allowing her convictions to be shaken, next
explained to him in a very lucid manner that he would never raise a
sou, having no security to offer. This conversation took place opposite
the Bourse, where she no doubt dabbled with her savings. Towards three
o'clock one was sure to find her leaning against the railing to the
left, near the post-office; it was there that she gave audience to
individuals as fishy and shadowy as herself. Her brother was on the
point of leaving her, when she murmured regretfully: "Ah! if only you
were not married!" This reticence, the full and exact sense of which he
was unwilling to ask, made Saccard singularly thoughtful.
Months passed by, the Crimean war had just been declared. Paris,
quite unaffected by a war so far away, was launching with more ardour
than ever into speculation and women; whilst Saccard stood by gnawing
his fists as he assisted at this ever increasing mania which he had
long before foreseen. The hammers in the gigantic forge beating the
gold upon the anvil made him quiver with rage and impatience. His
intelligence and his will were worked up to such a pitch that he lived
as in a dream, like a somnambulist walking along the edge of a roof
a prey to some fixed idea. He was therefore surprised and annoyed
one evening to find Angèle ill and in bed. His home-life, regulated
like a clock, was getting out of order, and this exasperated him like
some intentional spitefulness of destiny. Poor Angèle complained in a
gentle voice; she had taken a severe chill. When the doctor arrived,
he appeared very anxious; he told the husband, outside on the landing,
that his wife was suffering from inflammation of the lungs and that
he could not answer for her life. From that moment the civil servant
tended the invalid without a vestige of anger; he no longer went to
his office, he remained beside her, watching her with an indefinable
expression as she lay sleeping, flushed and panting with fever.
Madame Sidonie, in spite of the overwhelming business which claimed
her attention, found time to call each evening to make diet drinks
which she pretended were sovereign remedies. To all her other trades
she could add that of a sick-nurse by vocation, taking an interest in
suffering, in medicaments, and in the heart-rending conversations which
go on at the bedsides of those about to depart this life. Besides this,
she seemed to be full of a tender friendship for Angèle; she loved
women of amorous natures, showing her affection by a thousand little
caressing ways, no doubt because of the pleasure they gave mankind; she
treated them with the delicate attentions which dealers show towards
the more precious of their wares, calling them "My beauty, my darling,"
cooing and almost swooning before them, like a lover in the presence
of his mistress. Though Angèle was one of those from whom she expected
nothing, she petted her up like the others, just by way of principle.
When the young woman took to her bed, Madame Sidonie's effusions became
quite pathetic, she filled the silent chamber with demonstrations of
her devotion. Her brother watched her moving about, his teeth tightly
set, and looking as though utterly wrapt up in a silent grief.
The disease took a turn for the worse. One evening the doctor informed
them that the patient would not live through the night. Madame Sidonie
had called early, with a preoccupied air, and she kept looking at
Aristide and Angèle out of her watery eyes, lighted up every now
and then by sudden flashes of fire. When the doctor had taken his
departure, she turned down the lamp, and a great silence enveloped all.
Death was slowly entering into this warm and dampish room, where the
irregular breathing of the dying woman resembled the spasmodic ticking
of a clock about to stop. Madame Sidonie had given up the diet drinks,
and now allowed the disease to go its course. She had seated herself
before the fire-place, at the side of her brother, who was stirring the
coals with a feverish hand, and casting now and again an involuntary
glance at the bed. Then, as though enervated by the close atmosphere,
and by the sad spectacle, he withdrew into the adjoining room. Little
Clotilde had been shut in there, and was playing very quietly with her
doll on the edge of the rug. His daughter was smiling up at him when
Madame Sidonie, creeping to where he stood, drew him into a corner, and
commenced to speak in a hushed voice. The door had remained ajar. One
could hear the faint rattle in Angèle's throat.
"Your poor wife," sobbed the business woman. "I fear the end is at
hand. You heard what the doctor said?"
For all answer Saccard mournfully bowed his head.
"She was a good creature," continued the other, speaking as though
Angèle were already dead and buried. "You may find many richer women,
and ones more used to the world, but you will never meet with another
heart like hers."
And as she stopped, and set to mopping her eyes, as though seeking a
means of bringing the conversation to the subject she was driving at.
"You have something to tell me?" asked Saccard, without any beating
about the bush.
"Yes, I have been busying myself about you, in reference to the matter
you spoke of, and I think I have found something--but at such a
moment--you see, my heart is bursting."
She mopped her eyes again. Saccard let her have her way, and did not
utter a word. Then she made up her mind to speak.
"It's a young girl, her relations wish to see her married at once,"
said she. "The dear child has met with a misfortune. There is an aunt
who will be willing to make any sacrifice--"
She interrupted herself, she was continuing to moan, drawling out her
words as though she were still pitying poor Angèle. She did this with
a view of making her brother lose patience and forcing him to question
her, so as not to have the whole responsibility of the offer she was
about to make him. And, indeed, an inward feeling of irritation began
to work upon the civil servant.
"Come, say what you have to say!" said he. "Why do they wish to see
this young girl married?"
"She had just left school," resumed the woman of business in a doleful
voice, "and a man seduced her, down in the country, at the home of
one of her schoolfellows where she was staying. The father has just
discovered her condition. He wished to kill her. The aunt, to save the
dear child, made herself her accomplice, and they have both of them
told the father a story, to the effect that the seducer was a worthy
fellow who was longing to redeem his momentary error."
"Therefore," said Saccard in a tone of surprise and as though annoyed,
"the man in the country is going to marry the young girl?"
"No, he cannot, he is already married."
A pause ensued. The rattle in Angèle's throat resounded more painfully
in the quivering atmosphere. Little Clotilde had ceased playing; she
was now looking at Madame Sidonie and her father, with her great eyes
of a thoughtful child, as though she had understood their words.
Saccard began to put a few brief questions.
"How old is the young girl?"
"Nineteen."
"How long has she been in her present condition?"
"Three months. There will no doubt be a miscarriage."
"And the family is a wealthy and honourable one?"
"An old middle-class family. The father was a judge. A very handsome
fortune."
"What is the aunt prepared to give?"
"A hundred thousand francs."
Another pause ensued. Madame Sidonie was no longer blubbering; she was
on business, her voice assumed the metallic jingle of a second-hand
dealer trying to drive a bargain. Her brother took a covert glance at
her, and added with some slight hesitation:
"And you, what will you want?"
"We'll talk of that later on," replied she. "You can do me a service in
your turn."
She waited a few seconds, and as he remained silent, she asked him
plainly:
"Well, what have you decided? These poor women are in despair; they
wish to prevent a scandal. They have promised the father to tell him
to-morrow the name of the seducer. If you accept, I will send them one
of your cards by a commissionaire."
Saccard seemed to awaken from a dream; he started, and turned with a
frightened air towards the adjoining room, where he fancied he had
heard a slight noise.
"But I cannot," said he with anguish; "you know very well that I
cannot."
Madame Sidonie looked at him fixedly, with a cold and disdainful gaze.
All the Rougon blood, all his ardent longings came rushing back to his
throat. He took a card from his pocket-book and gave it to his sister,
who, after carefully scratching out the address, placed it in an
envelope. She then went out. It was barely nine o'clock.
Left alone, Saccard went and pressed his forehead against the icy
cold window panes. He forgot himself so far as to beat the tattoo on
the glass with the tips of his fingers. But the night was so black,
the darkness outside hung about in such strange masses, that he could
not help experiencing a feeling of uneasiness, and he mechanically
returned to the room in which Angèle was dying. He had quite forgotten
her, and received a terrible shock on finding her half raised up in
bed on her pillows; her eyes were wide open, a flush of life seemed to
have returned to her lips and cheeks. Little Clotilde, still holding
her doll, was seated on the edge of the bed; the moment her father had
turned his back she had quickly glided into that chamber from which she
had so long been kept, and to which her gladsome childish curiosity
attracted her. His head full of what his sister had been saying to him,
Saccard suddenly beheld his dream dashed to pieces. A frightful thought
must have glared from out his eyes. Seized with terror, Angèle tried
to bury herself in the bedclothes right up against the wall; but death
was nigh, this awakening in the midst of the last agony was the supreme
flicker of the lamp going out. The dying woman was unable to move,
and as her last remnant of strength left her, she continued to keep
her wide open eyes fixed on her husband, as though to watch his every
movement.
[Illustration: THE DEATH OF ANGÈLE.]
Saccard, who for a moment had believed in some diabolical resurrection,
invented by destiny to keep him in poverty, became reassured on seeing
that the wretched woman had scarcely another hour to live. His other
feelings gave way to one of intolerable uneasiness. Angèle's eyes said
plainly enough that she had overheard the conversation between her
husband and Madame Sidonie, and that she feared he would strangle her
if she did not die quick enough. And her eyes were also full of the
horrible amazement of a gentle and inoffensive nature which learns
at the last moment the infamies of this world, and shudders at the
thought of having passed years side by side with a bandit. By degrees
her look became more kind; she was no longer frightened, she no doubt
found excuses for the wretch as she recollected the desperate struggle
he had been maintaining so long against fate. Followed by the dying
woman's gaze, in which he read such bitter reproach, Saccard clung to
the furniture for support, and sought the darkest corner of the room.
Then, feeling on the point of fainting, he tried to drive away this
nightmare which was maddening him, and advanced into the light of
the lamp. But Angèle motioned him not to speak, and she continued
looking at him with that air of terror-stricken anguish, to which was
now joined a promise of pardon. Then he stooped to take up Clotilde in
his arms and carry her into the other room. She again forbade him with
a movement of her lips. She insisted upon his remaining where he was.
She slowly passed away, not once removing her gaze from him, and as he
paled beneath it, this gaze grew more and more benign. She forgave with
her last sigh. She died as she had lived, tamely; her diffidence in
life attending her till death. Saccard stood shivering before the dead
woman's eyes, which remained wide open, and transfixed him by their
very immobility. Little Clotilde nursed her doll on the edge of the
sheet, very gently though, so as not to wake her mother.
When Madame Sidonie got back it was all over. Like a woman in the habit
of performing such operations, she deftly closed Angèle's eyes with a
touch of her fingers, and this was an immense relief to Saccard. Then,
after putting the little girl to bed, she quickly arranged the room as
befits the chamber of death. When she had lighted two candles on the
chest of drawers, and carefully drawn the sheet up to the chin of the
corpse, she cast a satisfied glance around her, and ensconced herself
in an easy-chair, where she dozed till daybreak. Saccard passed the
night in the adjoining room, writing letters announcing his wife's
death. He interrupted himself now and again, musing and adding up
columns of figures on odd bits of paper.
On the evening of the day of the funeral, Madame Sidonie took Saccard
to her apartment on the mezzanine floor, and grand resolutions were
formed there. The civil servant decided that he would send little
Clotilde to one of his brothers, Pascal Rougon, a doctor at Plassans,
who led a bachelor life, wrapt up in the love of science, and who had
often offered to take his niece to live with him to enliven his silent
home. Madame Sidonie then made Saccard understand that he could no
longer sojourn in the Rue Saint-Jacques. She would take an elegantly
furnished apartment for him for a month, somewhere in the neighbourhood
of the Hôtel de Ville; she would try to find this apartment in a
private house, so that the furniture should appear to belong to him. As
to the chattels in the Rue Saint-Jacques, they should all be sold, so
as to efface every trace of the past. He could use the money in buying
himself a trousseau and some decent clothes.
Three days later, Clotilde was handed over to an old lady who it
so happened was just starting for the South. And Aristide Saccard,
triumphant and rosy-cheeked, looking fattened up in three days by the
first smiles of fortune, occupied in a quiet and respectable house in
the Rue Payenne, situated in the Marais quarter, a charming floor of
five rooms through which he wandered with embroidered slippers on his
feet. They were the apartments of a young abbé who had been suddenly
called to Italy, and who had instructed his servant to let the rooms
during his absence. This servant was a friend of Madame Sidonie's, who
rather fancied the cloth; she loved priests with the same love that she
showered on women, through instinct, no doubt establishing a certain
nervous relationship between cassocks and silk skirts. From that time
Saccard was ready; he arranged the part he was to play with exquisite
art; he awaited without betraying the least emotion the difficulties
and niceties of the situation which he had accepted.
On the dreadful evening when Angèle died, Madame Sidonie had faithfully
told in a few words the misfortune which had overtaken the Bérauds.
The father, Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel, a fine old man of sixty, was
the last representative of an ancient middle-class family, who could
trace their origin much farther back than many a noble house. One of
his ancestors was a companion of Étienne Marcel. In 1793 his father
perished on the scaffold, after saluting the Republic with all the
enthusiasm of a Paris citizen, in whose veins flowed the revolutionary
blood of the city. He himself was one of those Spartan republicans who
dream of a government of full justice and wise liberty. Grown old in
the magistracy, where he had contracted quite a professional stiffness
and severity, he resigned his post of presiding judge in 1851, at the
time of the Coup d'État, after refusing to be a member of one of those
mixed commissions which dishonoured French justice.
Since that time he had been living, solitary and retired, in his
mansion on the Île Saint-Louis, situated at the extremity of the
island, almost opposite the mansion of the Lamberts. His wife had
died young. Some secret drama, the wound from which still remained
unhealed, probably added to the gloom of the judge's grave countenance.
He was already the father of a girl of eight, Renée, when his wife
expired on giving birth to a second daughter. This latter, who was
named Christine, was taken care of by a sister of Monsieur Béraud
Du Châtel's, the wife of Aubertot the notary. Renée was sent to a
convent. Madame Aubertot, who had no child of her own, was filled
with quite a maternal affection for Christine, whom she brought up
herself. Her husband dying, she took the little one back to her father,
and remained between the silent old man and his smiling fair-haired
daughter. Renée was forgotten at her school. During the holidays she
filled the house with such an uproar that her aunt heaved a great
sigh of relief when she at length escorted her back to the ladies
of the Visitation, where the child had been a boarder since she was
eight years old. She did not leave the convent for good until she
was nineteen, and then she went to pass the summer at the home of
her friend Adeline, whose parents owned a beautiful estate in the
Nivernais. When she came back in October, her Aunt Élisabeth was
surprised to find her very grave and profoundly sad. One evening she
discovered her stifling her sobs in the pillow, writhing on her bed in
an attack of mad grief. In the misery of her despair the child told her
a most heart-rending story: a man of forty, rich, married, and whose
wife, a young and charming person, was also staying at the house, had
violated her during her visit in the country, without her daring or
knowing how to defend herself.
This confession terrified Aunt Élisabeth; she accused herself,
as though she had felt she were an accomplice; she regretted her
preference for Christine, and could not help thinking that, if she had
also kept Renée beside her, the poor child would not have succumbed.
Henceforward, to drive away that bitter remorse which her tender nature
still further exaggerated, she did her best to sustain the erring
one; she bore the brunt of the father's anger when they both apprised
him of the horrible truth by the very excess of their precautions; in
the bewilderment of her solicitude she invented that strange project
of marriage which to her idea was to arrange everything, appease
the father and rehabilitate Renée, and the shamefulness and fatal
consequences of which she was unwilling to see.
It was never known how Madame Sidonie had got wind of this magnificent
piece of business. The honour of the Bérauds had been dragged about
in her basket amongst the protested bills of every dollymop of Paris.
When she learned the story, she almost forced them to accept her
brother, whose wife lay at death's door. Aunt Élisabeth ended by
thinking that she was under an obligation to this lady, so gentle and
humble, and who was so devoted to poor Renée, that she even found her
a husband in her own family. The first interview between Saccard
and the aunt took place in the little apartment on the upper floor
of the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière. The civil servant, who had
gained admittance through the carriage entrance in the Rue Papillon,
understood, on beholding Madame Aubertot arrive by way of the shop and
little staircase, all the ingenious mechanism of the two entrances.
He was full of tact and good manners. He treated the marriage as a
matter of business, but like a man of the world about to settle his
gambling debts. Aunt Élisabeth was by far the more trembling of the
two; she stammered, not daring to mention the hundred thousand francs
which she had promised. It was he who first brought forward the money
question, in the manner of a solicitor discussing a client's case.
According to him, a hundred thousand francs was a ridiculous fortune
for Mademoiselle Renée's husband to start housekeeping upon. And he
laid a gentle stress on the word "Mademoiselle." Monsieur Béraud Du
Châtel would despise still more a poor son-in-law; he would accuse him
of having seduced his daughter for the sake of her money; perhaps,
it might even occur to him to make some secret inquiries. Madame
Aubertot, greatly frightened, and scared by Saccard's calm and polite
way of talking, lost her head and consented to double the sum when he
declared that he would not dare to ask for Renée's hand for less than
two hundred thousand francs, not wishing to be considered an infamous
fortune-hunter. The worthy lady departed quite confused, scarcely
knowing what to think of a fellow who could be so indignant and yet
enter into such an arrangement.
This first interview was followed by an official visit which Aunt
Élisabeth paid Saccard at his apartments in the Rue Payenne. This time,
she came in the name of Monsieur Béraud. The retired judge had refused
to see "that man," as he called his daughter's seducer, so long as he
was not married to Renée, to whom he had also closed his door. Madame
Aubertot had full powers to arrange everything. She appeared delighted
with the civil servant's luxurious surroundings; she had feared that
the brother of that Madame Sidonie, with the draggled skirts, might be
a blackguard. He received her, arrayed in a delicious dressing-gown.
It was at the time, when the adventurers of the 2nd of December, after
having paid their debts, were pitching their worn-out boots and frayed
coats into the sewers, having their dirty chins shaved, and becoming
respectable members of society. Saccard was at length joining the
band; he took to cleaning his nails and using at his toilet the most
invaluable powder and perfume. He was quite gallant; he changed his
tactics and showed himself most prodigiously disinterested. When the
old lady broached the subject of the marriage contract, he made a
gesture as though to say that it was a matter of indifference to him.
For a week past he had been studying the Code, considering this grave
question upon which his future liberty of action in his underhand
dealings would depend.
"For goodness' sake," said he, "let's say no more about this
disagreeable money question. My opinion is that Mademoiselle Renée
should remain mistress of her fortune and I master of mine. The notary
will settle all that."
Aunt Élisabeth approved this arrangement; she trembled for fear this
fellow, whose iron grip she could vaguely feel, should wish to thrust
his fingers into her niece's dowry. She next gave the particulars of
this dowry.
"My brother," said she, "possesses a fortune consisting mainly of
landed property and houses. He is not the man to punish his daughter
by reducing the share he intended for her. He gives her an estate in
Sologne, valued at three hundred thousand francs, as well as a house in
Paris said to be worth about two hundred thousand francs."
Saccard was quite dazzled, he had not expected such an amount; he
slightly turned away his head so as to hide the rush of blood which
dyed his face.
"That makes five hundred thousand francs," continued the aunt; "but I
must not hide from you that the Sologne property only yields two per
cent."
He smiled and repeated his disinterested gesture, wishing to imply that
that could not affect him as he declined to meddle with his wife's
fortune. He was seated in his easy-chair in an attitude of adorable
indifference, with an absent-minded air, his foot playing with his
slipper, and he appeared to be listening purely out of politeness.
Madame Aubertot, with the good nature of a worthy old soul, spoke with
difficulty, choosing her words so as not to wound him.
"Besides that, however, I wish to make Renée a present," she resumed.
"I have no child of my own, my fortune will one day devolve to my
nieces, and it is not because one of them is in grief that I would now
close my hand. The wedding presents for both of them have been long
ready. Renée's consists in some vast plots of ground near Charonne,
which I have reason to believe are worth two hundred thousand francs.
Only--"
At the word ground, Saccard slightly started. In spite of his pretended
indifference he was listening with profound attention. Aunt Élisabeth
became confused, at a loss for words to express what she wished to say.
Turning very red, she at length continued:
"Only I wish that the ownership of this ground should be settled on
Renée's first child. You no doubt understand my reason: I do not desire
that this child should one day be an expense to you. Should it die, the
property will become solely Renée's."
He did not display the least sign of disappointment, but his knit brow
showed how deeply he was thinking. The plots of ground at Charonne had
awakened a host of ideas within him. Madame Aubertot feared she had
offended him by speaking of Renée's child, and she remained abashed and
quite unable to continue the conversation.
"You have not told me in what street the house property valued at two
hundred thousand francs is situated," said he, resuming his pleasant
air.
"In the Rue de la Pépinière," she replied, "almost at the corner of the
Rue d'Astorg."
This simple answer produced a decisive effect upon him. He could no
longer conceal his delight; he drew his easy-chair nearer the lady, and
with his southern volubility, and in coaxing tones said:
"Dear madame, have we not said enough, must we still continue to
discuss this horrid money question? Listen, I wish to speak to you
with all frankness, for I should be in despair did I not merit your
esteem. I lost my wife lately, I have two children to look after, I
am practical and sensible. By marrying your niece I shall be doing
every one a good turn. If you have still any prejudice against me you
will lose it later on, when I shall have dried all your tears and made
the fortunes of all my descendants. Success is a golden flame which
purifies everything. I will force Monsieur Béraud himself to hold out
his hand to me and thank me."
He went rattling on, speaking for a long while in the same strain with
mocking impudence which showed at times beneath his pleasant air. He
talked of his brother the deputy, and of his father the receiver of
taxes at Plassans. He ended by completely ingratiating himself with
Aunt Élisabeth, who beheld with involuntary joy the drama through which
she had been suffering for a month past terminate almost in a merry
comedy in the hands of this clever man. It was settled that they should
see the notary on the morrow.
As soon as Madame Aubertot took her departure he went to the Hôtel
de Ville, and spent the day there examining certain documents with
which he was acquainted. At the meeting at the notary's he raised a
difficulty, he said that as Renée's dowry consisted solely in landed
property he feared it would give her no end of trouble, and he thought
it would be wise to sell at least the house in the Rue de la Pépinière
and to invest the money for her in the funds. Madame Aubertot wished
to refer the matter to Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel, who continued to
shut himself up in his room. Saccard went out again until the evening.
He visited the Rue de la Pépinière, he hurried about Paris with the
thoughtful air of a general on the eve of a decisive battle. The next
morning Madame Aubertot stated that Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel left
everything to her. The marriage contract was drawn up on the basis
already discussed. Saccard brought two hundred thousand francs, Renée's
dowry consisted of the Sologne property and the house in the Rue de la
Pépinière, which latter she undertook to sell; besides this, she would,
in the event of her first child dying, be sole owner of the plots of
ground at Charonne given by her aunt. The contract was in accordance
with the system of separate estates which preserves to the husband
and wife the entire administration of their respective fortunes. Aunt
Élisabeth, who was listening attentively to the notary, appeared to
be satisfied with this arrangement which seemed to insure her niece's
independence by placing her fortune beyond the reach of any attempts
that might be made upon it. A vague smile played upon Saccard's
countenance as he saw the worthy lady approve each clause with a nod.
The marriage was fixed to take place at the shortest possible date.
When everything was settled, Saccard went and paid a ceremonious visit
to his brother Eugène to announce to him his union with Mademoiselle
Renée Béraud Du Châtel. This master stroke astonished the deputy. As he
did not attempt to conceal his surprise, the civil servant said:
"You told me to look about; I did so and I have found what I wanted."
Eugène, quite at sea at first, then began to see the truth. And in a
charming tone of voice he observed:
"Come now, you're a clever fellow. You've called to ask me to be your
best man, have you not? You may count upon me. If necessary I will
bring all the members of the right of the Corps Législatif to your
wedding; that would be a famous thing for you."
Then as he had opened the door, he lowered his voice to add:
"But tell me? I must not compromise myself too much just now, for we
have a very difficult law to pass--The lady's condition is not too
apparent, is it?"
Saccard gave him such a bitter look, that Eugène said to himself as he
closed the door:
"That is a joke that would cost me dear, were I not a Rougon."
The marriage was performed at the church of Saint-Louis-en-l'Île.
Saccard and Renée did not see each other until the eve of the great
day. The interview took place in the evening, just at nightfall,
in a low room of the Béraud mansion. They examined each other with
curiosity. Since arrangements had been entered into for her marriage,
Renée had regained her giddy ways, her light-heartedness. She was
a tall girl of an exquisite though turbulent beauty, who had grown
up at random amidst her school-girl caprices. She found Saccard
little and ugly, but of a restless and intelligent ugliness which
did not displease her; he was, moreover, perfect both in manners
and conversation. He made a slight grimace on first seeing her; she
no doubt appeared to him too tall, taller than he was himself. They
exchanged a few words without embarrassment. Had the father been
present, he might indeed have thought that they had known each other a
long while, that they had committed some grievous fault together. Aunt
Élisabeth assisted at the interview and blushed for them.
On the day after the wedding, which was quite an event in the Île
Saint-Louis thanks to the presence of Eugène Rougon, whom a recent
speech had brought to the fore, the newly married couple were at length
admitted to the presence of Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel. Renée wept on
finding her father looking older, graver and more mournful. Saccard,
whom nothing had put out of countenance till then, was frozen by the
chilliness and the dim light of the apartment, by the sad austerity of
the tall old man, whose piercing eye seemed to him to search into the
very depths of his conscience. The retired judge slowly kissed his
daughter on the forehead, as though to tell her that he forgave her,
and then turning to his son-in-law:
"Sir," said he simply, "we have suffered much. I count upon you to make
us forget the wrong you have done us."
He held out his hand to him. But Saccard stood shivering. He was
thinking that if Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel had not been bent low by the
tragic grief of Renée's shame, he would at a glance, and without an
effort, have seen through Madame Sidonie's machinations. The latter,
after having brought her brother and Aunt Élisabeth together, had
prudently made herself scarce. She had not even gone to the wedding.
He made a point of being very frank with the old man, having read in
his look his surprise at finding his daughter's seducer to be a little
ugly fellow forty years old. The newly married couple were obliged to
pass the first nights at the Béraud mansion. A month before, Christine
had been sent away, so that the child of fourteen should have no
suspicion of the drama that was being enacted in that house as serene
and undisturbed as a cloister. When she returned home, she gazed with
astonishment at her sister's husband, whom she also thought old and
ugly. Renée was the only one who did not seem to notice either her
husband's age or his sorry appearance. She treated him without contempt
as without affection, with an absolute tranquillity through which
occasionally gleamed a touch of ironical disdain. Saccard strutted
about and made himself at home, and really, thanks to his frankness and
good spirits, he little by little won the friendship of one and all.
When they took their departure to occupy a superb suite of apartments
in a new house in the Rue de Rivoli, Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel's look
no longer displayed any astonishment, and little Christine romped
with her brother-in-law as with an old friend. Renée was at that time
four months gone in the family way; her husband was on the point of
sending her into the country, when, in accordance with Madame Sidonie's
prophecy, she had a miscarriage. She had laced herself up so tightly to
hide her condition, which, moreover, disappeared beneath the fulness
of her skirts, that she was obliged to keep her bed for several weeks.
He was delighted with the adventure; fortune was at length smiling
upon him; he had made a golden bargain, a magnificent dowry, a wife
lovely enough to have him decorated in six months, and not the least
encumbrance. He had been paid two hundred thousand francs to give
his name to a fœtus which the mother would not even look at. From
that moment his thoughts lovingly lingered on the plots of ground at
Charonne. But for the time being he was giving all his attention to a
speculation which was to form the basis of his fortune.
Notwithstanding the high position of his wife's family, he did not at
once resign his post at the Hôtel de Ville. He talked of work on hand
to be finished, and of some other occupation to be sought for. The
truth was he wished to remain till the end on the battle-field where he
was playing his first cards. He was so to say at home, and could cheat
more at his ease.
His plan for making his fortune was simple and practical. Now that
he possessed more money than he had ever hoped for to commence his
operations, he intended to put his designs into execution on a grand
scale. He knew Paris by heart; he knew that the shower of gold which
was already beating against the walls would fall heavier every day.
Clever people had only to open their pockets. He had placed himself
among the clever ones by reading the future in the offices of the Hôtel
de Ville. His duties had taught him what can be stolen in the buying
and selling of houses and ground. He was fully acquainted with all the
classic swindles: he knew how to sell for a million that which only
cost five hundred thousand francs; how to pay the right to ransack
the cash boxes of the State, which smiles and shuts its eyes; how, by
making a Boulevard pass over the entrails of some old neighbourhood,
to juggle with six storeyed houses, amidst the applause of all the
dupes. And that which in those still clouded days, when the chancre
of speculation was not beyond the period of incubation, made him a
terrible gambler was that he foresaw more than his chiefs themselves
respecting the future of stone and plaster reserved to Paris. He had
ferreted about so much, collected together so many clues, that he might
have prophesied the spectacle the new districts would offer in 1870. At
times, as he walked along the streets, he would look at certain houses
in a singular manner, as though they were old friends whose destiny,
known to him alone, affected him deeply.
Two months previous to Angèle's death, he had taken her one Sunday
to the Buttes Montmartre. The poor woman delighted in eating at
restaurants; she was never more pleased than when, after a long walk,
he would take her to dine at some suburban eating-house. That day they
had their dinner right at the top of the hill, in a restaurant, with
windows overlooking Paris, that ocean of houses with bluey roofs,
looking like surging billows filling the immense horizon. Their table
was placed before one of the windows. The sight of the Paris roofs
enlivened Saccard. At dessert he called for a bottle of Burgundy. He
smiled at space, he was most unusually gallant. And his look kept
lovingly returning to that living, swarming sea, from which issued
the deep voice of the crowd. It was autumn; beneath the vast pale sky
the city lay languishing, a soft and tender grey in hue, studded here
and there with dark green foliage, which resembled great leaves of
nenuphars floating on a lake; the sun was setting behind a red cloud,
and, whilst the background was filled with a slight haze, a golden
dust, an auriferous dew was falling upon the city on the right bank of
the river, in the neighbourhood of the Madeleine and the Tuileries. It
was like the enchanted corner of some city of the "Arabian Nights,"
with trees formed of emeralds, roofs of sapphires, and weather-cocks of
rubies. There came a moment when a ray of sunshine, gliding between two
clouds, was so resplendent that the houses seemed to flare up and melt
away like an ingot of gold in a crucible.
"Oh! look," said Saccard, with a childish laugh, "a shower of
twenty-franc pieces has burst over Paris!"
Angèle began to laugh too, accusing these pieces of not being easy to
gather up. But her husband had risen from his seat, and leaning against
the handrail of the window, he continued:
"That's the Vendôme column shining over there, isn't it? There, more to
the right, is the Madeleine--a fine neighbourhood, where there's plenty
to be done. Ah! this time, it'll all be ablaze! Do you see? One could
almost fancy that the whole neighbourhood was boiling in some chemist's
still."
His voice was becoming grave and agitated. The comparison he had drawn
seemed to strike him immensely, he had drank a few glasses of Burgundy
and was musing; and he went on, stretching out his arm to show the
different sights of Paris to Angèle, who was also leaning over the
handrail on her side of the window.
"Yes, yes, what I said was right enough, more than one district will
be melted down, and gold will stick to the fingers of those who heat
and stir the copper. That great noodle Paris! see how immense he is and
how innocently he slumbers! Such great towns are always fools! He has
no idea of the army of picks that will attack him one of these fine
mornings, and some of the mansions in the Rue d'Anjou would not shine
so brightly beneath the setting sun if they knew they had no more than
three or four years to live."
Angèle fancied her husband was joking. He had at times a taste for
immense and disquieting jokes. She laughed, but with a vague fear, at
seeing the little man tower above the giant crouched at his feet, and
shake his fist at him while ironically pursing his lips.
"It's already begun," continued he; "but nothing to speak of as yet.
Look over there, beside the Halles, Paris has been cut into four."
And with his extended hand, open and sharp edged like a cutlass, he
made a motion as though separating the city into four portions.
"You're alluding to the Rue de Rivoli and the new Boulevard they are
making aren't you?" asked his wife.
"Yes, the great window of Paris as it's called. They're clearing away
the buildings that hide the Louvre and the Hôtel de Ville. But that's
mere child's play! It's only good to rouse the public's appetite.
When the first improvements are completed the grand work will begin.
The city will be pierced in every direction to unite the suburbs to
the main artery. The houses will fall amidst clouds of plaster. Look,
follow the direction of my hand a minute. From the Boulevard du Temple
to the Barrière du Trône will be one gap; then, more this way, from the
Madeleine to the Plaine Monceaux will be another; and a third in this
direction, another along here, another over there, and still another
farther away, in fact gaps everywhere, Paris hacked about as with a
sabre, its veins opened, feeding a hundred thousand navvies and masons,
traversed right and left by splendid strategical ways which will bring
the very forts right into the heart of the old quarters of the city."
Night was coming on. His dry and nervous hand kept hacking about in
space. Angèle slightly shuddered before this living knife, these iron
fingers mercilessly chopping up the boundless mass of dusky roofs.
For some little while past the haze of the horizon had been slowly
descending from the heights, and she fancied she could hear, beneath
the gloom that was gathering in the hollows, a distant and prolonged
sound of cracking, as though her husband's hand had really made the
openings he had been speaking of, opening up Paris from one end to the
other, severing beams, crushing masonry, leaving in its wake long and
frightful wounds of demolished walls. The diminutiveness of this hand,
implacably hovering over a giant prey, ended by becoming alarming,
and whilst it tore open the entrails of the enormous city without an
effort, it seemed to assume a strange shimmer of steel in the bluey
twilight.
"There will be a third artery," continued Saccard, at the end of a
pause, as though speaking to himself; "but that one is too distant,
I see it less plainly. I have come across only a few signs of it.
But it will be pure madness, the infernal gallop of millions, Paris
intoxicated and overwhelmed!"
He again relapsed into silence, his eyes ardently fixed on the city,
where the shadows were gathering deeper and deeper. He was probably
interrogating that too distant future which escaped him. Then night
enveloped all, the city became lost in a confused mass, one could hear
it breathing plentifully, like some sea, the crest of the pale waves of
which is all the eye can distinguish. Here and there, a few walls still
preserved a whitish hue; and the yellow flames of the gas-jets pierced
the gloom one by one, similar to stars shining amidst the darkness of a
stormy sky.
Angèle shook off her feeling of uneasiness and continued the jest her
husband had commenced at dessert.
"Ah! well," said she with a smile, "there's been a good shower of those
twenty-franc pieces! The Parisians are counting them now. Look at the
fine piles they're making at our feet!"
She pointed to the streets which descend from the Buttes Montmartre,
with their double rows of lighted gas-lamps looking like piles of gold.
"And over there," cried she, indicating a galaxy of lights, "that is
surely the treasury!"
The remark made Saccard laugh. They remained a few minutes longer
at the window, delighted with this flood of "twenty-franc pieces,"
which was ending by covering the whole of Paris. On returning from
Montmartre, the civil servant no doubt regretted having gossiped so
much. He put it down to the Burgundy, and requested his wife not to
repeat the "nonsense" he had been saying; he wished, said he, to be
considered a serious person.
For a long time past, Saccard had been studying these three lines of
streets and Boulevards, the pretty correct plan of which he had so far
forgotten himself as to place before Angèle. When the latter died,
he in nowise regretted that she carried with her into the tomb the
recollection of all he had said up on the Buttes Montmartre. It was
there that his fortune lay, in those famous gaps which his hand had, so
to say, opened in the very heart of Paris, and he had made up his mind
to share his idea with no one, knowing well enough that on the day of
the sharing of the spoil there would be plenty of crows hovering over
the gutted city.
His original plan had been to purchase, on low terms, some building or
other which he knew beforehand was condemned to shortly come down, and
to realize an immense profit by obtaining a substantial indemnity. He
would, perhaps, have decided to make the attempt without a sou, to buy
the building on credit and merely to pocket the difference afterwards,
like people do on the Bourse, when his second marriage, bringing him in
a premium of two hundred thousand francs, fixed and developed his plan.
He had now made his calculations: under the name of an intermediary,
and without appearing personally in the matter, he would purchase
the house in the Rue de la Pépinière from his wife, and treble his
outlay, thanks to the knowledge he had acquired in his perambulations
through the Hôtel de Ville, and to his friendly relations with certain
influential personages.
The reason he started when Aunt Élisabeth told him where the house was
situated, was because it happened to be in the line of a contemplated
thoroughfare, the piercing of which was at that time kept secret
outside the sanctum of the prefect of the Seine. This thoroughfare,
the Boulevard Malesherbes, would necessitate the clearance of the
entire house. It was one of the first Napoleon's old projects which
it was proposed to put into execution, "to give a normal outlet," so
said serious people, "to districts lost behind a labyrinth of narrow
streets, on the slopes of the hills which hem in Paris." This official
phrase did not, of course, admit the interest the Empire had in the
turning over of money, in those vast alterations about the city which
left the working classes no time to think. One day at the prefect's,
Saccard had ventured to consult that famous plan of Paris on which "an
august hand" had marked, in red ink, the principal thoroughfares of the
second network of streets. These gory-looking strokes from a pen cut
deeper into Paris even than did the civil servant's hand.
The Boulevard Malesherbes, which razed to the ground some superb
mansions in the Rue d'Anjou and the Rue de la Ville-l'Évêque, and which
necessitated some very considerable levelling works, was to be laid out
one of the first. When Saccard went to inspect the building in the Rue
de la Pépinière, his thoughts reverted to that autumn evening, to that
dinner he had eaten with Angèle up on the Buttes Montmartre, and during
which, while the sun was setting, so thick a shower of gold had seemed
to fall about the neighbourhood of the Madeleine. He smiled; he fancied
that the dazzling cloud had burst right over his own courtyard, and
that all he had to do was to go and gather up the twenty-franc pieces.
Whilst Renée, luxuriously installed in the apartments in the Rue de
Rivoli, in the very midst of that new Paris of which she was about to
become one of the queens, was meditating on her future toilettes, and
trying her hand at leading the life of a great lady of fashion, her
husband was devoutly nursing his first great scheme. He first of all
purchased of his wife the house in the Rue de la Pépinière, thanks
to the intermediary of a certain Larsonneau, whom he had come across
prying like himself into the secrets of the Hôtel de Ville, but who had
been foolish enough to get caught one day that he was examining the
contents of the prefect's drawers. Larsonneau had set up in business
as an agent at the end of a dark and dank courtyard, at the foot of
the Rue Saint-Jacques. His pride and his covetousness suffered cruelly
there. He found himself in the same position as Saccard before his
marriage; he had, he would say, also invented "a machine for coining
five franc pieces;" only he was minus the funds necessary to take
advantage of his invention. It needed only a few words for him to come
to an understanding with his former colleague, and he set to work with
so good a will that he obtained the house for a hundred and fifty
thousand francs. Renée was already, at the end of a few months, in need
of considerable sums of money. The husband did not appear in the matter
except to authorise his wife to sell. When everything was settled she
asked him to invest a hundred thousand francs for her in the funds, and
confidently handed him the money, no doubt as an appeal to his feelings
and to shut his eyes regarding the fifty thousand francs she retained.
He smiled in a knowing manner; it formed part of his calculations that
she should squander her money; these fifty thousand francs which were
about to disappear in jewellery and lace were to bring him in cent per
cent. He carried his honesty so far, for he was so well satisfied with
his first affair, as to really invest Renée's hundred thousand francs
and to hand her the certificates. His wife could not realize upon them;
he was certain of finding them in the nest if ever he happened to want
them.
"My dear, this will do for your dress," said he gallantly.
When he was in possession of the house, he was skilful enough to
sell it twice in a month to fictitious persons, increasing each
time the amount paid. The last purchaser gave no less than three
hundred thousand francs. Meanwhile, Larsonneau, who alone appeared as
representative of the successive landlords, worked upon the tenants.
He pitilessly declined to renew the leases, unless they consented to
a formidable increase of rent. The tenants, who had an inkling of the
approaching dispossession, were in despair; they ended by agreeing to
the increase, especially when Larsonneau added in a conciliatory manner
that this increase should remain a fictitious one during the first
five years. As for the tenants who continued nasty, they were replaced
by persons to whom the apartments were let for nothing and who signed
everything they were asked to; there was thus a double profit: the rent
was raised, and the indemnity reserved to the tenant for his lease was
to go to Saccard. Madame Sidonie was willing to assist her brother
by starting a piano-dealer's in one of the shops. It was then that
Saccard and Larsonneau were carried away by their greed for gain and
rather overreached themselves: they concocted the books of a regular
business, they falsified accounts, so as to establish a sale of pianos
on an enormous footing. During several nights they sat scribbling away
together. Worked in this skilful manner the house increased in value
threefold. Thanks to the last sale, to the raising of the rent, to
the false tenants, and to Madame Sidonie's piano business, it might
be considered worth five hundred thousand francs when the indemnity
commission came to inquire into the matter.
The mechanism of the instrument of dispossession, of that powerful
machine which during fifteen years turned Paris topsy-turvy,
breathing fortune and ruin the while, is of the simplest. Directly
a new thoroughfare is decided upon, the road inspectors draw up the
plan in separate portions and appraise the various buildings to be
removed. They generally, after making inquiries, arrive at the total
amount of the rents and can thus fix upon the approximate value. The
indemnity commission, consisting of members of the municipal council,
always offers something beneath this sum, knowing that the interested
parties will be sure to demand more, and that there will be a mutual
concession. When they are unable to come to terms, the matter is
brought before a jury which decides without appeal between the offer of
the municipality and the claims of the dispossessed landlord or tenant.
Saccard, who had remained at the Hôtel de Ville for the decisive
moment, had at one time the impudence to wish to be appointed to
appraise his own house when the Boulevard Malesherbes was commenced.
But he feared by so doing to paralyse his influence with the members
of the indemnity commission. He caused one of his colleagues to be
chosen, a gentle and smiling young man named Michelin, whose wife,
an adorably beautiful creature, came at times to offer her husband's
excuses to his chiefs when he absented himself through indisposition.
Saccard had noticed that pretty Madame Michelin, who glided so humbly
through the half closed doorways, was all-powerful; Michelin gained
some advancement at each illness, he made his way by taking to his
bed. During one of his absences, when his wife was calling nearly
every morning at the office to say how he was getting on, Saccard came
across him twice on the outer Boulevards, smoking his cigar with the
tender and delighted air which never left him. This filled Saccard with
sympathy for the good young man, for the happy couple so ingenious and
so practical. He had a great admiration for all money-making machines
cleverly worked. When he had got Michelin appointed he called on his
charming wife, insisted on introducing her to Renée, and talked before
her of his brother the deputy, the illustrious orator. Madame Michelin
understood. From that day her husband kept his most select smiles for
his colleague. The latter, who had no intention of taking the worthy
fellow into his confidence, contented himself by being present as if by
chance on the day when the other proceeded to appraise the house in the
Rue de la Pépinière. He assisted him. Michelin, who had the stupidest
and emptiest head it is possible to imagine, followed his wife's
instructions, which were to satisfy Monsieur Saccard in all things.
Moreover, he had not the slightest suspicion of anything; he imagined
that his friend was in a hurry to see him finish his work so as to take
him off to a café. The leases, the receipts for rent, Madame Sidonie's
famous books passed through his colleague's hands beneath his eyes,
without his even having time to check the figures which the other read
out. Larsonneau was there also, treating his accomplice as a perfect
stranger.
"Come, put down five hundred thousand francs," Saccard ended by saying.
"The house is worth more. Hurry up, I think there is going to be a
change in the staff of the Hôtel de Ville, and I want to talk to you
about it so that you may let your wife know."
The business was thus carried through. But he still had other fears. He
was afraid that the sum of five hundred thousand francs would appear
rather excessive to the indemnity commission, for a house which was
notoriously only worth two hundred thousand. The formidable rise in
the value of buildings had not then taken place. An inquiry would have
caused him to run the risk of serious unpleasantness. He recalled his
brother's words: "No noisy scandal or I shall suppress you;" and he
knew that Eugène was the man to put his threat into execution. It was
necessary to blindfold the gentlemen forming the commission and to
ensure their good will. He cast his eyes on two influential men whom
he had made his friends by the way in which he saluted them in the
passages whenever he met them. The thirty-six members of the municipal
council were carefully selected by the Emperor himself from a list
drawn up by the prefect comprising the senators, deputies, lawyers,
doctors, and great manufacturers who prostrated themselves the most
devotedly before the power that was; but amongst them all Baron Gouraud
and Monsieur Toutin-Laroche especially deserved the good will of the
Tuileries by their fervour.
All Baron Gouraud's history is contained in this short biography: made
a baron by Napoleon I. for supplying bad biscuits to the grand army,
he had successively been a peer under Louis XVIII., Charles X., and
Louis-Philippe, and he was now a senator under Napoleon III. He was
a worshipper of the throne, of the four gilded boards covered with
velvet; it mattered little to him who the man was that sat upon it.
With his enormous stomach, his ox-like countenance, his elephantine
manner, he boasted a delightful rascality; he would sell himself
majestically and commit the greatest infamies in the name of duty and
conscience. But this man surprised one still more by his vices. Stories
were told of him which could only be whispered from ear to ear. His
seventy-eight years flourished amidst the most monstrous debauchery. On
two occasions it had been necessary to hush up some filthy adventures
so that his embroidered senator's coat should not be dragged through
the dock of the assize court.
Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, who was tall and thin, and the inventor of
a mixture of suet and stearin for the manufacture of candles, had
a hankering to enter the senate. He stuck to Baron Gouraud like a
leech; he rubbed up against him with the vague idea that his doing
so would bring him luck. In reality he was thoroughly practical,
and had he come across a senator's chair to be sold he would have
fiercely higgled over the price. The Empire was about to bring out this
greedy nonentity, this narrow mind which had a genius for dabbling
in industrial affairs. He was the first to sell his name to a bogus
company, one of those associations which sprouted up like poisonous
toadstools on the dunghill of imperial speculations. At that time one
could have seen on all the walls a poster bearing the following words
in bold black letters:--"Société générale of the ports of Morocco," and
beneath which the name of Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, with his title of
municipal councillor, appeared at the head of the list of directors,
all more or less unknown personages. This proceeding, which has become
far more popular since, succeeded wonderfully; the shares were snapped
up, though the question of the ports of Morocco was not very clear,
and the worthy people who brought their money were themselves unable
to explain to what purpose it was to be put. The poster announced in
a superb manner the project of establishing commercial stations along
the Mediterranean coast. For two years past certain newspapers had
been celebrating this magnificent undertaking, which they declared
to be more and more prosperous every three months. Amongst the
municipal council Monsieur Toutin-Laroche had the reputation of being
a first-class administrator; he was one of the strong minds of the
neighbourhood, and his acrimonious tyranny over his colleagues was only
equalled by his devout platitude in the presence of the prefect. He
was already engaged in founding a great financial company, the Crédit
Viticole, a sort of loan office for vine growers, and to which he would
allude in a grave and reticent manner which aroused the covetousness of
the fools around him.
Saccard secured the protection of these two personages by rendering
them certain services, of the importance of which he cleverly pretended
to be ignorant. He brought his sister and the baron together, the
latter being then compromised in a very objectionable affair. He took
her to him, under the pretence of soliciting his support in the favour
of the dear woman who had been petitioning for a long time to obtain an
order for the supply of curtains to the Tuileries. But it so happened
that, when the road inspector left them together, it was Madame Sidonie
who promised the baron to enter into negotiations with certain people
who were stupid enough not to have felt honoured by the attention that
a senator had deigned to bestow on their daughter, a little girl ten
years old. Saccard took Monsieur Toutin-Laroche in hand himself; he
manœuvred so as to obtain an interview with him in a corridor, and then
brought the conversation round to the famous Crédit Viticole. At the
end of five minutes, the great administrator, dazed and astounded by
the amazing things told him, took the civil service clerk familiarly by
the arm and detained him a full hour in the passage. Saccard whispered
in his ear some financial deals which were prodigiously ingenious. When
Monsieur Toutin-Laroche took his departure, he shook his hand in an
expressive manner, and gave him the glance of a freemason.
"You shall belong to it," murmured he, "you must really belong to it."
Saccard surpassed himself throughout this affair. He carried
his prudence so far as not to make Baron Gouraud and Monsieur
Toutin-Laroche accomplices. He visited them separately, letting drop
a word or two in their ear in favour of one of his friends who was
about to be dispossessed of his house in the Rue de la Pépinière; he
was careful to tell each of his confederates that he would mention
the matter to no other member of the commission, that it was all very
uncertain, but that he counted on his friendliness.
The road inspector had done right to fear and to take his precautions.
When the documents relating to his house came before the indemnity
commission, it so happened that one of the members lived in the Rue
d'Astorg, and knew the house. This member protested against the sum
of five hundred thousand francs, which, according to him, should have
been reduced to less than half. Aristide had had the impudence to
have a claim sent in for seven hundred thousand francs. On that day
Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, who was usually very disagreeable towards his
colleagues, was even of a more detestable temper still. He became quite
angry, and took the part of the landlords.
"We're all of us landlords, gentlemen," cried he. "The Emperor wishes
to do grand things, don't let us stick at trifles. This house is no
doubt worth the five hundred thousand francs; it's one of our own
people, a city inspector, who fixed this price. Really, one would
almost fancy we were living amongst thieves; you'll see, we shall end
by suspecting one another."
Baron Gouraud, sitting heavily on his chair, watched in a surprised
manner, from out of the corner of his eye, Monsieur Toutin-Laroche
storming away in favour of the owner of the house in the Rue de la
Pépinière. He had a suspicion. But, after all, as this violent outburst
saved him the trouble of speaking, he set to slowly nodding his head
as a sign of his complete approval. The member hailing from the Rue
d'Astorg indignantly resisted, determined not to yield to the two
tyrants of the commission in a matter in which he felt himself to be
more competent than they. It was then that Monsieur Toutin-Laroche,
noticing the baron's marks of approval, hastily pounced upon the
documents relating to the case, and said curtly:
"Very well. We'll dispel your doubts. If you will allow it, I'll take
the matter in hand, and Baron Gouraud shall join me in the inquiry."
"Yes, yes," said the baron gravely, "there must be no underhand
dealings to sully our decisions."
The documents had already disappeared inside Monsieur Toutin-Laroche's
capacious pockets. The commission had no choice but to accept the
arrangement. As they stood outside upon the quay on leaving the
meeting, the two cronies looked at each other without smiling. They
felt themselves to be confederates, and this added to their assurance.
Two vulgar minds would have sought an explanation; they continued
to plead the case of the landlords, as though they could still be
overheard, and to deplore the spirit of mistrust which was insinuating
itself everywhere. Just as they were about to separate, the baron
observed, with a smile:
"Ah! I was forgetting, my dear colleague, I am just about to leave for
the country. You would be very kind to make this little inquiry without
me. And, above all, don't peach; our colleagues are already complaining
that I take too many holidays."
"Be easy," replied Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, "I will go at once to the
Rue de la Pépinière."
He went quietly home, with a certain feeling of admiration for the
baron, who so cleverly got out of the most ticklish positions. He kept
the documents in his pocket, and at the next sitting of the commission
he declared, in a peremptory tone of voice, both in his own name and in
the baron's, that between the offer of five hundred thousand francs and
the claim of seven hundred thousand, they should take a medium course,
and award six hundred thousand francs. There was not the slightest
opposition. The member hailing from the Rue d'Astorg, having no doubt
reflected, said, with great simplicity, that he had been mistaken: he
had thought it was the next house.
It was thus that Aristide Saccard won his first victory. He quadrupled
his outlay, and secured two accomplices. One thing alone made him
uneasy; when he wished to destroy Madame Sidonie's famous books, he
was unable to find them. He hastened to Larsonneau, who boldly avowed
that he had them, and that he meant to stick to them. The other did
not lose his temper; he inferred that he had only been anxious on his
dear friend's account, who was far more compromised than he by these
entries, which were almost entirely in his handwriting, but that he
was quite easy now that he knew they were safe. In reality, he would
willingly have strangled "his dear friend;" he remembered a very
compromising document, a bogus inventory, which he had been foolish
enough to draw up, and which must have been left in one of the ledgers.
Handsomely remunerated, Larsonneau started a business agency in the
Rue de Rivoli, where he had offices furnished as luxuriously as any
courtesan's apartments. On leaving the Hôtel de Ville, Saccard, having
a considerable amount of funds at his disposal, launched madly into
speculation, whilst Renée, carried away by her intoxication, filled
Paris with the clatter of her equipages, the sparkle of her diamonds,
and the whirl of her noisy and adorable existence.
Now and again, the husband and wife, those two enthusiasts of money and
pleasure, penetrated into the chilly mists of the Île Saint-Louis. They
felt as though they were entering a dead city.
The Béraud mansion, built in the early part of the seventeenth century,
was one of those square buildings, gloomy and severe-looking, with
tall narrow windows, so numerous in the Marais district, and which are
let to schoolmasters, manufacturers of seltzer water, and bonders of
wines and spirits. The building, however, was in an admirable state
of preservation. On the Rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Île side it consisted of
only three storeys, storeys fifteen and twenty feet high. The ground
floor, not near so lofty, had its windows protected by enormous iron
bars, windows which sunk dismally into the dreary thickness of the
walls, whilst the arched door, almost as broad as high, and bearing
a cast-iron knocker, was painted a deep green and strengthened with
enormous nails, forming stars and lozenges on either panel. This
door was typical, with blocks of granite on each flank, half buried
in the soil and protected by broad bands of iron. One could see that
formerly a gutter had run under the centre of this door, the pavement
of the porch sloping gently down on either side: but Monsieur Béraud
had decided to close up this gutter by having the entrance laid with
bitumen; this was, moreover, the only sacrifice he was ever willing
to make to modern architecture. The windows of the upper floors were
ornamented with slender handrails of wrought iron, which allowed a
full view of the colossal sashes of substantial brown wood frames
and little greenish panes of glass. Right at the top, opposite the
attics, the roof came to an end, and the gutter alone continued
on its way to discharge the rain water into the pipes placed for
the purpose. And what tended to increase still further the austere
bareness of the frontage was the total absence of any blind or shutter,
for at no season of the year did the sun ever shine on these pale
and melancholy stones. This frontage, with its venerable air, its
middle-class severity, slumbered solemnly amid the peacefulness of
the neighbourhood, the silence of the street, seldom disturbed by the
passage of vehicles.
In the interior of the mansion was a square courtyard surrounded by
arcades, a kind of Place Royale on a reduced scale, paved with enormous
flags, which finished giving to this lifeless abode the appearance
of a cloister. Facing the porch a fountain, a lion's head half worn
away, the gaping jaws of which were alone distinguishable, discharged
from an iron tube a thick and monotonous water into a trough all green
with moss, its edges polished by wear. This water was icy cold. Tufts
of grass sprouted up between the flagstones. In summer-time a narrow
ray of sunshine entered the courtyard, and this occasional visit had
whitened a corner of the frontage on the south side, whilst the three
other walls, morose and blackish, were streaked with mildew. There, in
the depths of this courtyard as chilly and silent as a well, lighted
with the white glimmer of a wintry day, one could have thought oneself
a thousand leagues away from that new Paris wherein was flaring
every passionate enjoyment, amidst the hubbub of the millions. The
apartments of the mansion possessed the sad calm, the cold solemnity
of the courtyard. Reached by a broad staircase with an iron handrail,
where the footsteps and the coughing of visitors resounded as in the
aisle of a church, they extended in long suites of vast and lofty
rooms, in which the ancient furniture of dark woodwork and squat
design seemed lost; and the pale light was only peopled by the figures
on the tapestries, whose great colourless bodies were just vaguely
distinguishable. All the luxury pertaining to the old Parisian middle
classes was there, a stiff and wear-resisting luxury, chairs the oak
seats of which are scarcely covered with a handful of tow, beds of
inflexible material, linen chests in which the roughness of the boards
would peculiarly compromise the slender existence of modern dresses.
Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel had selected his apartments in the darkest
portion of the mansion, on the first floor, between the street and the
courtyard. He was there in a marvellous surrounding of peacefulness,
silence and shade. When he pushed open the doors, traversing the
solemnity of the rooms with his slow and serious step, one could
have fancied him one of those members of the old parliaments, whose
portraits adorned the walls, returning home wrapt in reverie after
discussing and refusing to sign an edict of the king's.
But in this still house, in this cloister, there existed a warm nest
full of life, a corner of sunshine and gaiety, an abode of adorable
childhood, fresh air, and bright light. One had to ascend a host of
little staircases, pass along ten or twelve corridors, go down and
come up again; in fact, make quite a journey, and then one at last
reached a vast chamber, a kind of belvedere built up on the roof, at
the back of the mansion, right above the Quai de Béthune. It was in
a full southern aspect. The window opened so wide that the heavens,
with all their rays, fresh air, and azure blue, seemed to enter there.
Perched aloft like a pigeon-house, the apartment contained long boxes
full of flowers, an immense aviary, but not a single article of
furniture. There was simply some matting spread over the floor. It
was the "children's room." Throughout the mansion it was known and
called by this name. The house was so cold, the courtyard so damp,
that aunt Élisabeth had dreaded some harm might come to Christine and
Renée from this chill breath which hung about the walls; more than
once had she scolded the children for running about the arcades, and
taking a delight in dipping their little arms in the icy water of the
fountain. Then she had the idea to turn this out-of-the-way garret to
account for them, the only nook wherein the sunshine had been entering
and rejoicing, all by itself, for two centuries past, in the midst
of the cobwebs. She gave them some matting, some birds, and some
flowers. The little girls were delighted. During the holidays Renée
lived there, bathing in the yellow sunshine, which seemed pleased with
the embellishments made to its retreat, and with the two fair heads
sent to keep it company. The room became a paradise, ever resounding
with the chirping of the birds and the chatter of the children. It
had been given up to them entirely. They called it "our room;" it was
their domain; they even went so far as to lock themselves in to prove
to their satisfaction that they were the sole mistresses of it. What
an abode of happiness! A massacre of playthings lay expiring on the
matting in the midst of the bright sunshine.
And the great delight of the children's room was, after all, the vast
horizon. From the other windows of the mansion there was nothing to
gaze upon but black walls a few feet off. But from this one, one could
see all that portion of the Seine, all that district of Paris which
extends from the Cité to the Pont de Bercy, flat and immense, and which
resembles some primitive city in Holland. Down below, on the Quai de
Béthune, were some tumble-down wooden sheds, accumulations of beams
and fallen roofs, amidst which the children often amused themselves
by watching enormous rats scamper about, with a vague dread of seeing
them crawl up the high walls. But it was beyond this that the real
delight of the view began. The boom, with its tiers of timbers, its
buttresses resembling those of some Gothic cathedral, and the slender
Pont de Constantine swaying like a piece of lace beneath the footsteps
of passengers, crossed each other at right angles, and seemed to dam
up and keep in check the enormous mass of water. Right in front, the
trees of the Halle aux Vins, and further away, the shrubberies of the
Jardin des Plantes were a mass of green, and spread out as far as the
horizon; whilst, on the other side of the river, the Quai Henri IV. and
the Quai de la Rapée extended their low and irregular buildings, their
row of houses which, looked at from above, resembled the tiny wood and
cardboard houses the little girls kept in boxes. In the background,
to the right, the slate roof of the Salpêtrière rose with a bluish
tinge above the trees. Then, in the centre, descending right down to
the Seine, the broad paved banks formed two long grey tracks, streaked
here and there by a row of casks, a horse and cart, or an empty coal
or wood barge lying stranded high and dry. But the soul of all this,
the soul which filled the landscape, was the Seine, the living river;
it came from afar, from the vague and trembling border of the horizon,
it emerged from over there, as from a dream, to flow straight to the
children, in the midst of its tranquil majesty, its mighty expansion
which spread and became a flood of water at their feet, at the
extremity of the island. The two bridges which crossed it, the Pont de
Bercy and the Pont d'Austerlitz, seemed like necessary bonds placed
there to keep it in check, and prevent it rising to the room. The
little ones loved the giant, they filled their eyes with its colossal
flow, with that ever murmuring flood which rolled towards them, as
though to reach to where they were, and which they could feel rive and
disappear to the right and left into the unknown, with the docility of
a conquered Titan. On fine days, mornings with a blue sky overhead,
they were charmed with the beautiful dresses the Seine assumed; varying
dresses which changed from blue to green, with a thousand infinitely
delicate tints; one could have fancied them of silk, spotted with white
flames, and trimmed with frills of satin; whilst the boats drawn up at
either bank formed an edging of black velvet ribbon. In the distance,
especially, the material became quite admirable and precious, like some
fairy's tunic of enchanted gauze; beyond the strip of dark green satin,
with which the shadow of the bridges girdled the Seine, were plastrons
of gold and skirts of some plaited material the colour of the sun. The
immense sky formed a vaulted roof above this water, these low rows of
houses, this foliage of the two parks.
Weary at times of this boundless horizon, Renée, already a big girl,
and full of a carnal curiosity picked up at school, would take a peep
at Petit's floating swimming-baths moored to the extremity of the
island. She sought to catch a glimpse, between the waving linen clothes
hung up on lines in place of a roof, of the men in their bathing
drawers, and with their chests all bare.
CHAPTER III.
Maxime remained at the college of Plassans until the holidays of 1854.
He was thirteen years and a few months old and had just passed through
the fifth class. It was then that his father decided that he should
come to Paris, reflecting that a son of Maxime's age would consolidate
his position and establish him for good in the part he played as a
rich and serious re-married widower. When he mentioned his plan to
Renée, towards whom he prided himself upon being extremely gallant, she
negligently answered:
"Quite so, let the little fellow come. He will amuse us a bit. One is
bored to death of a morning."
The little fellow arrived a week afterwards. He was already a tall,
spare urchin with an effeminate face, a delicate, wide-awake look, and
pale flaxen hair. But how he was rigged out; good heavens! Cropped
to the ears, with his hair so short that the whiteness of his skull
was barely covered with a slight shadow, he moreover wore a pair of
trousers too short for his legs, carter's shoes, and a frightfully
threadbare tunic which was much too full and made him almost look
hunchbacked. Thus accoutred, surprised by the new things he saw, he
looked around him, not at all timidly but with the savage, cunning air
of a precocious child who hesitates about trusting himself to anyone at
once.
A servant had just brought him from the railway station, and he was in
the large drawing-room, delighted with the gilding of the furniture
and the ceiling, completely happy at sight of this luxury amid which
he was going to live, when Renée, returning from her tailor's, swept
in like a gust of wind. She threw off her hat and the white burnous
which she had placed upon her shoulders to shield her from the cold,
which was already keen; and she appeared before Maxime--stupefied with
admiration--in all the glow of her marvellous costume.
The child thought she was disguised. Over a delicious skirt of blue
faille with deep flounces, she wore a kind of _garde française_ habit
in pale grey silk. The lappets of the habit, lined with blue satin of
a deeper shade than the faille of the skirt, were coquettishly caught
up and secured with bows of ribbon; the cuffs of the tight sleeves,
the broad facings of the bodice expanded on either side trimmed with
the same satin. And, as a supreme seasoning, as a bold stroke of
eccentricity, large buttons imitating sapphires, and fastened on blue
rosettes, adorned the front of the habit in a double row. It was at
once ugly and adorable.
[Illustration: RENÉE AND MAXIME MEETING FOR THE FIRST TIME.]
As soon as Renée perceived Maxime, "It's the little fellow, isn't it?"
she asked of the servant; she was surprised to find him as tall as
herself.
The child was eating her with his eyes. This lady, with so white
a skin, whose bosom could be seen through a gap of her plaited
chemisette, this sudden and charming apparition with her hair raised
high on her head, her gloved slender hands and her little masculine
boots with pointed heels, delighted him; she seemed to be the good
fairy of this warm gilded room. He began to smile, and he was just
awkward enough in manner to retain his urchin-like gracefulness.
"Why, he is funny!" exclaimed Renée. "But how horrible! How they have
cut his hair! Listen, my little fellow, your father will probably only
come home for dinner and I shall be obliged to settle you here. I'm
your stepmamma, sir. Will you kiss me?"
"Willingly," answered Maxime without any fuss; and he kissed the young
wife on both cheeks, taking hold of her by the shoulders, whereby the
_garde française_ habit was a trifle crumpled.
She freed herself, laughing, and saying: "Dear me! how funny he is, the
little shearling!" Then again approaching him and more serious: "We
shall be friends sha'n't we? I want to be a mother to you. I reflected
about it while I was waiting for my tailor, who was engaged, and I said
to myself that I ought to be very kind and bring you up quite properly.
I will be very nice!"
Maxime continued looking at her, with his blue, minx-like eyes, and
suddenly: "How old are you?" he asked.
"But that is a question one never asks!" she exclaimed, clasping her
hands together. "He doesn't know it, poor little fellow! It will be
necessary to teach him everything. Fortunately I can still confess my
age. I am twenty-one."
"I shall soon be fourteen. You might be my sister--"
He did not finish his sentence, but his eyes added that he had expected
to find his father's second wife much older. He was very near her and
looked at her neck so attentively that she almost finished by blushing.
Besides, her giddy head was turning, it could never dwell for long on
the same subject; and she began to walk about and talk of her tailor,
forgetting that she was addressing a child.
"I ought to have been here to receive you. But, just fancy, Worms
brought me this costume this morning. I tried it on and found it rather
successful. It is very stylish, isn't it?"
She had placed herself before a mirror. Maxime was coming and going
behind her to examine her on all sides.
"However as I put on the coat," she added, "I noticed there was a large
fold there on the left shoulder, do you see? That fold is very ugly, it
makes me look as if I had one shoulder higher than the other."
He had approached and passed his finger over the fold as if to smooth
it down, and his vicious schoolboy hand seemed to tarry on the spot
with a certain amount of satisfaction.
"Well," she continued, "I couldn't wait. I had the horses harnessed and
I went to tell Worms what I thought of his inconceivable carelessness.
He promised me he would set it right."
Then she remained in front of the mirror still looking at herself, lost
as it were in a sudden reverie. She ended by placing a finger on her
lips with an air of thoughtful impatience. And in a low voice as if
talking to herself she said: "There is something wanting--yes, really,
there is something wanting--"
Then, with quick motion, she turned and stationed herself in front of
Maxime and asked him:
"Is it really the thing? Don't you think there is something wanting, a
trifle, a bow somewhere?" The schoolboy, reassured by the young woman's
familiarity, had regained all the assurance of his forward nature. He
drew back, drew near, blinked his eyes and muttered:
"No, no, nothing's wanting, it's very pretty, very pretty--I rather
think that there is something too much."
He slightly blushed despite his audacity, drew still nearer, and
tracing with his finger-tip an acute angle on Renée's breast: "In your
place," he continued, "I should round that lace like that and put on a
necklace with a large cross."
She clapped her hands and looked radiant. "That's it, that's it," she
cried, "I had the large cross on the tip of my tongue."
She folded back her chemisette, disappeared for a couple of minutes,
and then returned with the necklace and the cross, and placing herself
again in front of the mirror with an air of triumph:
"Oh! that's the ticket, quite the ticket," she muttered. "The little
shearling isn't at all a fool. Did you dress women in the country then?
I see that we shall really be good friends. But you must listen to me.
To begin with, you must let your hair grow and you mustn't wear that
frightful tunic any more. Besides, you must pay proper attention to my
lessons in good manners. I want you to be a nice young man."
"Why, of course," said the child naively, "as papa is rich at present
and as you are his wife."
She smiled and with her usual vivacity:
"Then let us begin by thee-and-thouing one another. I say thou and you
in the same breath. It's stupid. You will love me a great deal?"
"I will love thee with all my heart," he answered with the effusive
manner of an urchin towards his sweetheart.
Such was Maxime and Renée's first interview. The lad did not go to
school till a month later. During the earlier days his stepmother
played with him as with a doll. She polished off his countryfied air,
and it must be added that he seconded her with extreme willingness.
When he appeared, dressed from head to foot in new clothes supplied
by his father's tailor, she gave a cry of joyous surprise. He was
as pretty as a heart, such was her expression. The only thing was
that his hair grew with most annoying sluggishness. The young woman
frequently said that all one's face was in one's hair. She tended her
own devoutly. For a long while she had been greatly worried by its
colour, that particular pale yellow tint, which reminded one of the
best butter. But when the fashion of wearing yellow hair set in she
was delighted, and to make people believe that she did not follow the
fashion by compulsion she declared that she dyed her hair every month.
Maxime was already terribly knowing for his thirteen years. His was one
of those frail precocious natures in which the senses assert themselves
early. He practised vice even before he knew desire. On two occasions
he had all but been expelled from the college. Had Renée's eyes been
accustomed to provincial graces she would have noticed that, despite
his ill-fitting clothes, the little shearling, as she called him,
smiled, turned his neck and extended his arms in a pretty way, with
the feminine air of those who serve as schoolboys' girls. He was very
careful about his hands, which were slight and long; and although his
hair remained cropped short by order of the principal, an ex-colonel
of engineers, he possessed a little looking-glass which he pulled out
of his pocket during lesson time, which he placed between the pages
of his book, and into which he gazed for whole hours, examining his
eyes, his gums, making pretty faces at himself, and learning various
kinds of coquetry. His schoolfellows hung round his blouse as round a
skirt, and he buckled his belt so tightly that he had a grown woman's
slim waist and undulation of the hips. To tell the truth, he received
as many blows as caresses. The college of Plassans, a den of little
bandits, like most provincial colleges, thus proved to be a hotbed
of contamination in which Maxime's neutral temperament and childhood
fraught with evil owing to some mysterious hereditary cause, were
singularly developed. Fortunately age was about to alter him. But the
trace of his childish abandonments, the effemination of his whole
being, the time when he had thought himself a girl, were destined to
remain in him and strike him for ever in his virility.
Renée called him "Mademoiselle," without knowing that six months
earlier she would have spoken the truth. To her he seemed very
obedient, very loving, and indeed his caresses often made her
ill-at-ease. He had a manner of kissing that heated her skin. But what
delighted her was his artfulness; he was exceedingly funny and bold,
already speaking of women with a smile and holding his own against
Renée's friends, dear Adeline who had just married M. d'Espanet, and
fat Suzanne, married quite recently to the great manufacturer Haffner.
When he was fourteen he had a passion for the latter. He had taken his
stepmother into his confidence and she was greatly amused.
"For myself I should have preferred Adeline," she said, "she's
prettier."
"Perhaps so," replied the urchin, "but Suzanne is ever so much fatter.
I like fine women. It would be very kind of you to speak to her for me."