[The following passage occurs in the first act of Dumas's
play. The characters include the young parvenu Jean Giraud,
the aristocratic M. De Cayolle, and several others, all
guests in the drawing-room of the country-house of Madame
Durieu. In course of the conversation Giraud refers to his
father, at one time a gardener on the estate of M. De
Charzay.]
_Jean Giraud_--Oh, yes, yes, I have got along in the world, as people
say. There are people who blush for their fathers; I make a brag of
mine--that's the difference.
_Rene de Charsay_--And what is Father Giraud nowadays? Oh, I beg your
pardon--
_Jean_--Don't be embarrassed--we keep on calling him Father Giraud all
the same. He is a gardener still, only he gardens on his own account.
He owns the house that your father was obliged to sell a while ago. My
father has never had but one idea,--our Father Giraud,--and that is to
be a land-owner; I bought that piece of property for him, and so he is
as happy as a fish in the water. If you like, we will go and take
breakfast with him to-morrow morning. He will be delighted to see you.
How things change, eh? There, where a while ago we were the servants,
now we are the masters; though we are not so very proud, for all that.
_Countess Savelli_ [_aside_]--He has passed the Rubicon of parvenus!
He has confessed his father! Now nothing can stop his way!
_Jean_ [_to De Charsay_]--I have wanted to see you for a long time,
but I have not been sure how you would meet me.
_Rene_--I would have met you with pleasure, as my uncle would have met
you. One cannot utter reproaches to a man who has made his own
fortune, except when he has made it by dishonest means; a man who owes
it to his intelligence and his probity, who uses it worthily,
everybody is ready to meet kindly, as you are met here.
_Jean_--Sir, it is not necessary that a man should use his fortune
nobly, provided it is made--that is the main thing!
_Madame Durieu_--Oh, oh, M. Giraud! there you spoil everything that
you have said.
_Jean_--I don't say that of my own case, madam, but I say just what I
say,--money is money, whatever may be the kind of hands where it
sticks. It is the sole power that one never disputes. You may dispute
virtue, beauty, courage, genius; but you can't dispute money. There is
not one civilized being, rising in the morning, who does not recognize
the sovereignty of money, without which he would have neither the roof
which shelters, him, nor the bed in which he sleeps, nor the bread
that he eats. Whither are bound these masses of people crowding in the
streets?--from the employe sweating under his too heavy burden, to the
millionaire hurrying down to the Bourse behind his two trotters? The
one is running after fifteen sous, the other after one hundred
thousand francs. Why do we all have these shops, these railroads,
these factories, these theatres, these museums, these lawsuits between
brothers and sisters, between fathers and sons, these revelations,
these divisions in families, these murders? All for pieces, more or
less numerous, of that white or yellow metal which people call silver
or gold. And pray who will be the most thought of at the end of this
grand race after money? The man who brings back the most of it. Ah,
nowadays a man has no business to have more than one object in
life--and that is to become as rich as possible! For my part, that has
always been my idea; I have carried it out: I congratulate myself on
it. Once upon a time everybody found me homely, stupid, a bore; to-day
everybody finds me handsome, witty, amiable,--and the Lord knows if
_I_ am witty, amiable, handsome! On the day when I might be stupid
enough to let myself be ruined, to become plain "Jean" as before,
there would not be enough stones in the Montmartre quarries to throw
at my head. But there, that day is a good way off, and meantime many
of my business acquaintances have been ruined for the sake of keeping
me from ruin. The last word, too, the greatest praise that I could
give to wealth, certainly is, that such a circle as I find myself in
at present has had the patience to listen so long to the son of a
gardener, who has no other right to their attention than the poor
little millions that he has made.
_Durieu_ [_aside_]--It is all absolutely true, every word that he has
been saying--gardener's son that he is! He sees our epoch just as it
really is.
_Madame Durieu_--Come now, my dear M. De Cayolle, what do you think of
what M. Giraud has been telling us?
_Cayolle_--I think, madam, that the theories of M. Giraud are sound,
but sound only as to that society in which M. Giraud has lived until
now: a world of speculation, whose one object naturally ought to be to
make money. As to wealth itself, it brings about infamous things, but
it also brings about great and noble things. In that respect it is
like human speech: a bad thing for some people, a good thing for
others, according to the use they make of it. This obligation of our
state of society that makes a man wake up each morning with taking
thought of the necessary sum for his personal wants, lest he take what
does not belong to him, has created the finest intelligence of all the
ages! It is simply to this need of money every day that we owe
Franklin, who began the world by being a printer's apprentice;
Shakespeare, who used to hold horses at the door of the theatre which
later he was going to immortalize; Machiavelli, who was secretary to
the Florentine republic at fifteen crowns a month; Raphael, the son of
a mere dauber; Jean Jacques Rousseau, a notary's clerk and an
engraver,--one who did not have a dinner every day; Fulton, once upon
a time a mechanic, who gave us steam: and so many others. Had these
same people been born with an income of half a million livres apiece,
there would have been a good many chances that not one of them would
ever have become what he did become. [_To M. Giraud._] This race after
wealth, of which you speak, M. Giraud, has good in it: even if it
enriches some silly people or some rascals, if it procures for them
the consideration of those in a humble station of life,--of the lower
classes, of those who have cash relations with society, on the other
hand there is a great deal of good in the spur given to faculties
which would otherwise remain stationary; enough good to pardon some
errors in the distribution of wealth. Just in proportion as you enter
into the true world of society--a world which is almost unknown to
you, M. Giraud--you will find that a man who is received there is
received only in proportion to his personal value. Look around here
where we are, without taking the trouble to go any further, and you
will see that money has not the influence you ascribe to it. For
proof, here is Countess Savelli, with half a million francs income,
who in place of dining out with millionaires besieging her house every
day, comes quietly here to dine with our friends the Durieus, people
without title, poor people measured by her fortune; and she comes here
for the pleasure of meeting M. De Charzay, who has not more than a
thousand crowns income, but who, for all the millionaires in the
world, would never do a thing a man ought not to do; and she meets
here M. De Roncourt, who has a business of fifteen hundred francs
because he gave up his fortune to creditors who were not his own
creditors. There is Mademoiselle De Roncourt, who sacrificed her dowry
to the same sentiment of honor; yonder is Mademoiselle Durieu, who
would never be willing to become the wife of any other than an honest
man, even if he had for his rivals all the Croesuses present and to
come; and last of all, one meets me here,--a man who has for money (in
the acceptation that you give the word) the most profound contempt.
Now, M. Giraud, if we listened to you for so long a time, it is
because we are well-bred people, and besides, you talk very well; but
there has been no flattery for your millions in our attention, and the
proof is that everybody has been listening to me a longer time than to
you,--listening to me, who have not like you a thousand-franc note to
put along with every one of my phrases!
_Jean_--Who is that gentleman who has just been speaking?
_Durieu_--That is M. De Cayolle.
_Jean_--The railway director?
_Durieu_--Yes.
_Jean_ [_going to M. De Cayolle_]--M. De Cayolle, I hope you will
believe that I am very glad to meet you.
_Cayolle_--I dare say you are, monsieur. [_M. De Cayolle as he utters
the words turns his back upon Giraud and steps aside_.]
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by
E. Irenaeus Stevenson