The next day, towards the afternoon, Frederic Lemercier, somewhat
breathless from the rapidity at which he had ascended to so high an
eminence, burst into Alain's chamber.
"'Br-r! mon cher;' what superb exercise for the health--how it must
strengthen the muscles and expand the chest! After this who should
shrink from scaling Mont Blanc? Well, well. I have been meditating on
your business ever since we parted. But I would fain know more of its
details. You shall confide them to me as we drive through the Bois. My
coupe is below, and the day is beautiful; come."
To the young Marquis, the gayety, the heartiness of his college friend
were a cordial. How different from the dry counsels of the Count de
Vandemar! Hope, though vaguely, entered into his heart. Willingly he
accepted Frederic's invitation, and the young men were soon rapidly borne
along the Champs Elysees. As briefly as he could Alain described the
state of his affairs, the nature of his mortgages, and the result of his
interview with M. Gandrin.
Frederic listened attentively. "Then Gandrin has given you as yet no
answer?"
"None; but I have a note from him this morning asking me to call
to-morrow."
"After you have seen him, decide on nothing,--if he makes you any offer.
Get back your abstract, or a copy of it, and confide it to me. Gandrin
ought to help you; he transacts affairs in a large way. 'Belle
clientele' among the millionnaires. But his clients expect fabulous
profits, and so does he. As for your principal mortgagee, Louvier, you
know, of course, who he is."
"No, except that M. Hebert told me that he was very rich."
"'Rich' I should think so; one of the Kings of Finance, Ah! observe
those young men on horseback."
Alain looked forth and recognized the two cavaliers whom he had
conjectured to be the sons of the Count de Vandemar.
"Those 'beaux garcons' are fair specimens of your Faubourg," said
Frederic; "they would decline my acquaintance because my grandfather kept
a shop, and they keep a shop between them."
"A shop! I am mistaken, then. Who are they?"
"Raoul and Enguerrand, sons of that mocker of man, the Count de
Vandemar."
"And they keep a shop! You are jesting."
"A shop at which you may buy gloves and perfumes, Rue de la Chaussee
d'Antin. Of course they don't serve at the counter; they only invest
their pocket-money in the speculation; and, in so doing, treble at least
their pocket-money, buy their horses, and keep their grooms."
"Is it possible! nobles of such birth! How shocked the Count would be
if he knew it!"
"Yes, very much shocked if he was supposed to know it. But he is too
wise a father not to give his sons limited allowances and unlimited
liberty, especially the liberty to add to the allowances as they please.
Look again at them; no better riders and more affectionate brothers since
the date of Castor and Pollux. Their tastes indeed differ--Raoul is
religious and moral, melancholy and dignified; Enguerrand is a lion of
the first water,--elegant to the tips of his nails. These demigods
nevertheless are very mild to mortals. Though Enguerrand is the best
pistol-shot in Paris, and Raoul the best fencer, the first is so good-
tempered that you would be a brute to quarrel with him, the last so true
a Catholic, that if you quarrelled with him you need not fear his sword.
He would not die in the committal of what the Church holds a mortal sin."
"Are you speaking ironically? Do you mean to imply that men of the name
of Vandemar are not brave?"
On the contrary, I believe that, though masters of their weapons, they
are too brave to abuse their skill; and I must add that, though they are
sleeping partners in a shop, they would not cheat you of a farthing.
Benign stars on earth, as Castor and Pollux were in heaven."
"But partners in a shop!"
"Bah! when a minister himself, like the late M. de M______, kept a shop,
and added the profits of 'bons bons' to his revenue, you may form some
idea of the spirit of the age. If young nobles are not generally
sleeping partners in shops, still they are more or less adventurers in
commerce. The Bourse is the profession of those who have no other
profession. You have visited the Bourse?"
"No."
"No! this is just the hour. We have time yet for the Bois. Coachman,
drive to the Bourse."
"The fact is," resumed Frederic, "that gambling is one of the wants of
civilized men. The 'rouge-et-noir' and 'roulette' tables are forbidden;
the hells closed: but the passion for making money without working for it
must have its vent, and that vent is the Bourse. As instead of a hundred
wax-lights you now have one jet of gas, so instead of a hundred hells you
have now one Bourse, and--it is exceedingly convenient; always at hand;
no discredit being seen there as it was to be seen at Frascati's; on the
contrary, at once respectable, and yet the mode."
The coupe stops at the Bourse, our friends mount the steps, glide through
the pillars, deposit their canes at a place destined to guard them, and
the Marquis follows Frederic up a flight of stairs till he gains the open
gallery round a vast hall below. Such a din! such a clamour!
disputations, wrangling, wrathful.
Here Lemercier distinguished some friends, whom he joined for a few
minutes.
Alain left alone, looked down into the hall. He thought himself in some
stormy scene of the First Revolution. An English contested election in
the market-place of a borough when the candidates are running close on
each other--the result doubtful, passions excited, the whole borough in
civil war--is peaceful compared to the scene at the Bourse.
Bulls and bears screaming, bawling, gesticulating, as if one were about
to strangle the other; the whole, to an uninitiated eye, a confusion, a
Babel, which it seems absolutely impossible to reconcile to the notion of
quiet mercantile transactions, the purchase and sale of shares and
stocks. As Alain gazed bewildered, he felt himself gently touched, and,
looking round, saw the Englishman.
"A lively scene!" whispered Mr. Vane. "This is the heart of Paris: it
beats very loudly."
"Is your Bourse in London like this?"
"I cannot tell you: at our Exchange the general public are not admitted:
the privileged priests of that temple sacrifice their victims in closed
penetralia, beyond which the sounds made in the operation do not travel
to ears profane. But had we an Exchange like this open to all the world,
and placed, not in a region of our metropolis unknown to fashion, but in
some elegant square in St. James's or at Hyde Park Corner, I suspect that
our national character would soon undergo a great change, and that all
our idlers and sporting-men would make their books there every day,
instead of waiting long months in 'ennui' for the Doncaster and the
Derby. At present we have but few men on the turf; we should then have
few men not on Exchange, especially if we adopt your law, and can
contrive to be traders without risk of becoming bankrupts. Napoleon I.
called us a shopkeeping nation. Napoleon III. has taught France to excel
us in everything, and certainly he has made Paris a shopkeeping city."
Alain thought of Raoul and Enguerrand, and blushed to find that what he
considered a blot on his countrymen was so familiarly perceptible to a
foreigner's eye.
"And the Emperor has done wisely, at least for the time," continued the
Englishman, with a more thoughtful accent. "He has found vent thus for
that very dangerous class in Paris society to which the subdivision of
property gave birth; namely the crowd of well-born, daring young men
without fortune and without profession. He has opened the 'Bourse' and
said, 'There, I give you employment, resource, an 'avenir.'' He has
cleared the byways into commerce and trade, and opened new avenues of
wealth to the noblesse, whom the great Revolution so unwisely beggared.
What other way to rebuild a 'noblesse' in France, and give it a chance
of power be side an access to fortune? But to how many sides of your
national character has the Bourse of Paris magnetic attraction! You
Frenchmen are so brave that you could not be happy without facing
danger, so covetous of distinction that you would pine yourselves away
without a dash, coute quo coute, at celebrity and a red ribbon. Danger!
look below at that arena: there it is; danger daily, hourly. But there
also is celebrity; win at the Bourse, as of old in a tournament, and
paladins smile on you, and ladies give you their scarves, or, what is
much the same, they allow you to buy their cachemires. Win at the
Bourse,--what follows? the Chamber, the Senate, the Cross, the
Minister's 'portefeuille.' I might rejoice in all this for the sake of
Europe,--could it last, and did it not bring the consequences that
follow the demoralization which attends it. The Bourse and the Credit
Mobilier keep Paris quiet, at least as quiet as it can be. These are the
secrets of this reign of splendour; these the two lions couchants on
which rests the throne of the Imperial reconstructor."
Alain listened surprised and struck. He had not given the Englishman
credit for the cast of mind which such reflections evinced.
Here Lemercier rejoined them, and shook hands with Graham Vane, who,
taking him aside, said, "But you promised to go to the Bois, and indulge
my insane curiosity about the lady in the pearl-coloured robe?"
"I have not forgotten; it is not half-past two yet; you said three.
'Soyez tranquille;' I drive thither from the Bourse with Rochebriant."
"Is it necessary to take with you that very good-looking Marquis?"
"I thought you said you were not jealous, because not yet in love.
However, if Rochebriant occasions you the pang which your humble servant
failed to inflict, I will take care that he do not see the lady."
"No," said the Englishman; "on consideration, I should be very much
obliged to any one with whom she would fall in love. That would
disenchant me. Take the Marquis by all means."
Meanwhile Alain, again looking down, saw just under him, close by one
of the pillars, Lucien Duplessis. He was standing apart from the throng,
a small space cleared round himself, and two men who had the air of
gentlemen of the 'beau monde,' with whom he was conferring. Duplessis,
thus seen, was not like the Duplessis at the restaurant. It would be
difficult to explain what the change was, but it forcibly struck Alain:
the air was more dignified, the expression keener; there was a look of
conscious power and command about the man even at that distance; the
intense, concentrated intelligence of his eye, his firm lip, his marked
features, his projecting, massive brow, would have impressed a very
ordinary observer. In fact, the man was here in his native element; in
the field in which his intellect gloried, commanded, and had signalized
itself by successive triumphs. Just thus may be the change in the great
orator whom you deemed insignificant in a drawing-room, when you see his
crest rise above a reverential audience; or the great soldier, who was
not distinguishable from the subaltern in a peaceful club, could you see
him issuing the order to his aids-de-camp amidst the smoke and roar of
the battle-field.
"Ah, Marquis!" said Graham Vane, "are you gazing at Duplessis? He is the
modern genius of Paris. He is at once the Cousin, the Guizot, and the
Victor Hugo of speculation. Philosophy, Eloquence, audacious Romance,--
all Literature now is swallowed up in the sublime epic of 'Agiotage,' and
Duplessis is the poet of the Empire."
"Well said, M. Grarm Varn," cried Frederic, forgetting his recent lesson
in English names. "Alain underrates that great man. How could an
Englishman appreciate him so well?"
"'Ma foi!'" returned Graham, quietly. "I am studying to think at Paris,
in order some day or other to know how to act in London. Time for the
Bois. Lemercier, we meet at seven,--Philippe's."