Money (Oxford World’s Classics) Read online

  ‘They say we’ll have war in April… That’s how it’s bound to end, with all these massive armaments. Germany won’t want to give us time to apply the new army law* the Chamber is about to vote on… and anyway, Bismarck…’

  Pillerault burst out laughing.

  ‘Oh, do let up about your Bismarck!… I spent five minutes talking to him myself this summer when he was here. He seems a very decent chap… If you’re still not satisfied after the thundering success of the Exhibition, what more do you want? Eh? My dear fellow, the whole of Europe is ours!’

  Moser shook his head in despair. Then, though he was continually interrupted by the jostling of the crowd, he continued to speak of his fears. The market was too prosperous, with an excessive prosperity, of no more real worth than the surplus fat of obesity. Thanks to the Exhibition, too many new businesses had sprung up, people had got too carried away, there was now a sheer mania for gambling on the market. Universals, for instance, at three thousand and thirty, wasn’t that just crazy?

  ‘Ah, now we’re getting to it,’ cried Pillerault.

  And moving closer, emphasizing each syllable, he said: ‘My dear chap, by this evening they’ll be up to three thousand and sixty… you’ll all be knocked sideways, I’m telling you…’

  Moser, easily impressionable though he was, gave a little hiss of defiance. And he gazed into the air to underline his false tranquillity of soul, pausing for a moment to look intently at the heads of some women who were leaning over, up there in the telegraph gallery,* astonished at the spectacle in this room that they were not allowed to enter. There were shields bearing the names of towns, while capitals and cornices stretched away up there in a colourless perspective, stained here and there with yellow where rain had leaked in.

  ‘Aha! It’s you!’ Moser went on, lowering his head as he recognized Salmon standing in front of him, smiling his eternal and profound smile. Then, somewhat disturbed, taking that smile as approval of Pillerault’s comments:

  ‘Well, if you know something, tell us. My own reasoning is simple. I’m with Gundermann, because, well, Gundermann is Gundermann, isn’t he?… With him things always turn out right.’

  ‘But’, said Pillerault with a snigger, ‘how do you know Gundermann is short-selling?’

  At this, Moser’s eyes widened with alarm. For some time everyone had been saying in the Bourse that Gundermann was out to get Saccard, and that he was promoting short-selling against the Universal, until he could finally cripple it at some month’s end, with a sudden effort, when the time was ripe for crushing the market with his millions; and if this session already looked so turbulent, it was because everyone thought, and kept repeating, that the battle was at last going to take place that very day, one of those merciless battles in which one of the two armies is left on the field, destroyed. But could you ever be sure, in this world of lies and trickery? Even the most certain things, the most firmly predicted, could, at the slightest breath, become subjects of anguished doubt.

  ‘You’re denying the evidence,’ Moser murmured. ‘Of course I haven’t seen the orders, and one can’t be certain of anything… eh? Salmon, what do you think? Gundermann really can’t give up, damn it!’

  He didn’t know what to think, faced with Salmon’s silent smile that seemed to narrow with an extreme subtlety.

  ‘Ah!’ Moser went on, indicating with his chin a large man who was passing by, ‘if only that man chose to speak, I’d have no problem. He sees things clearly.’ It was the famous Amadieu, still living on his success with the Selsis mines, shares he had bought at fifteen francs in an idiotic fit of obstinacy, and later sold for a profit of about fifteen million, without his having foreseen or calculated anything at all, but just by chance. He was revered for his great financial abilities, he had a real court of followers who tried to catch his slightest word in order to place their money in the direction it seemed to indicate.

  ‘Bah!’ cried Pillerault, caught up in his favourite theory of reckless gambling. ‘The best thing is still to do whatever you fancy, come what may… It’s all just luck. Either one has luck or one doesn’t. So there’s no point in thinking about it. Every time I’ve actually thought about it I’ve almost lost my shirt… Look, as long as I can see that gentleman over there, firmly at his post, and looking ready to devour everything in sight, I shall go on buying.’

  With a wave he had pointed out Saccard, who had just arrived and settled into his usual place beside the pillar of the first archway on the left. Like all the heads of important companies, he had his own recognized place, where employees and clients could be certain of finding him on the days when the Bourse was open. Only Gundermann made a point of never setting foot in the great hall; he didn’t even send an official representative; but one could tell he had his army there, and as an absent and sovereign master, he reigned through the vast legion of jobbers and brokers who carried his orders, not to mention the others he had working for him, so numerous that any man present might be one of his mysterious soldiers. And it was against this elusive, but everywhere active, army that Saccard was fighting, in person and out in the open. Behind him, on the corner of the pillar, was a bench, but he never sat on it, staying on his feet for the two hours of the market, as if disdainful of fatigue. Sometimes, relaxing a moment, he would lean his elbow against the stone, which long rubbing had darkened and polished up to the height of a man; and in the dull bareness of the monument, this was even a characteristic feature, this band of shiny dirt, on the doors, on the walls, on the stairs, in the hall, a filthy underlay of the accumulated sweat of generations of gamblers and thieves. Very elegant, very correctly dressed, like all the market men, in his fine cloth and dazzling linen, Saccard, amid those walls with black borders, had the amiable and relaxed look of a man with no worries.

  ‘You know,’ said Moser, lowering his voice, ‘some say he’s supporting the rise by making large purchases. If the Universal is speculating on its own shares, it’s done for.’

  But Pillerault protested:

  ‘Another bit of gossip!… How can you tell for sure who’s buying and who’s selling?… He’s here for the clients of his company, which is quite natural. And he’s also here on his own account, for he must be speculating too.’

  Moser, anyway, did not insist. Nobody at the Bourse would yet have dared to state positively the terrible campaign conducted by Saccard, all the buying he had done on behalf of the bank under cover of frontmen like Sabatani, Jantrou, and others, especially his own employees. There was just a rumour going round, whispered from ear to ear, always denied but always springing up again, though without any possible proof. Saccard had at first been cautious in his support of the market price, reselling as soon as he could, to avoid tying up too much capital and loading the coffers with shares. But now he was being dragged along by the struggle; he had foreseen that he might need, that day, to make excessive purchases if he wanted to remain master of the battlefield. He had given his orders and now affected the smiling tranquillity of any ordinary day, despite his uncertainty about the final outcome and the worry he felt at thus proceeding further and further down a path he knew to be appallingly dangerous.

  Suddenly Moser, who had been prowling about behind the back of the famous Amadieu, who was deep in conversation with a small, sly-looking man, came back very excited, stammering:

  ‘I heard him, heard him with my own ears… He said that Gundermann’s orders to sell were for more than ten million… Oh! I’m selling, I’m selling, I’d sell my very shirt!…’

  ‘Heavens! Ten million!’ muttered Pillerault, in a slightly changed tone. ‘The knives are really out.’

  And in the ever growing clamour, intensified by all the individual conversations, there was now no other subject than the ferocious duel between Gundermann and Saccard. It was impossible to make out the words, but this was the very substance of the noise, this alone that made so loud a roar; the calm and logical obstinacy of the one selling, and the feverish passion to keep on buying tha
t was suspected in the other. Conflicting reports were circulating, at first murmured, but ending up as trumpet-blasts. As soon as they opened their mouths, some were shouting to make themselves heard above the din; while others, full of mystery, were bending close to the ears of their interlocutors, speaking very quietly, even when they had nothing to say.

  ‘Ah! I’m keeping to my position, going for a rise!’ said Pillerault, already reassured. ‘With such lovely sunshine, everything will go up again.’

  ‘Everything’s going to collapse,’ said Moser, stubbornly doleful. ‘Rain is not far off, I had a really bad night last night.’

  But the smile of Salmon, who was listening to each of them in turn, became so narrowed that both became unhappy, without any possibility of certainty. Could that devil of a man, so extraordinarily able, so deep, and so discreet, have found a third way of playing the market, being neither bull nor bear?

  Saccard, at his pillar, could see the throng of flatterers and clients growing around him. Hands continually stretched out towards him, and he shook them all with the same happy ease, putting a promise of triumph into each squeeze of his fingers. Some ran up to him, exchanged a word or two, and went off again, delighted. Many stayed on obstinately, refusing to leave him in their pride at being in his group. He would often show kindness towards people, even when he couldn’t remember the names of those who were speaking to him. He did not recognize Maugendre, for instance, until Captain Chave told him his name. The Captain, now reconciled with his brother-in-law, was urging him to sell, but Saccard’s handshake was enough to inflame Maugendre with unlimited hope. Then there was Sédille, the great silk-merchant and one of the directors of the bank, who wanted to consult him for a moment. His business was going downhill, and his entire fortune was so tied in with the Universal that if the price dropped it would mean ruin for him; anxious and consumed by his passion, and worried too about his son Gustave, who was not doing at all well at Mazaud’s, he was in need of reassurance and encouragement. With one tap on his shoulder, Saccard sent him away full of faith and ardour. Then there was quite a procession: Kolb the banker, who had taken his profits some time ago, but was trying to keep on the right side of fortune; the Marquis de Bohain, with his lordly air of haughty condescension, who affected to go to the Bourse solely out of curiosity and through having nothing better to do; and even Huret, incapable of nursing a grudge, and supple enough to remain friends with people until the very day they were finally swallowed up, was there to see if there was anything left for him to pick up. But Daigremont appeared and everyone moved aside. He was very influential, and people noticed his affability and the confident and friendly way he joked with Saccard. The ‘bulls’ were radiant, for he had a reputation as a man who knew his way about, shrewd enough to get out of a business at the first sign of cracks in the floor; so it became certain that Universals were not cracking yet. Others too were walking about and simply exchanging glances with Saccard; these were his own men, the employees who were there to give his orders, and who were also buying for themselves in the mania for gambling, the epidemic that was decimating the staff in the Rue de Londres, always on the watch, with an ear at every keyhole in the hunt for tips. Sabatani passed by twice, with the soft grace of his mixed Italian and Oriental blood, affecting not even to see Saccard, while Jantrou, standing a few paces away with his back turned, seemed absorbed in reading the dispatches from the foreign stock-exchanges pinned up on wire-meshed frames. Massias the jobber, running as usual, bumped into the group and gave a little nod, doubtless a reply about some swiftly performed commission. As the opening-hour approached, the endless shuffling of feet, and the double movement of the crowd, back and forth across the room, filled it with the deep upheavals and roaring of a high tide.

  They were waiting for the first price to be announced.

  Mazaud and Jacoby had just come out from the brokers’ room on to the trading-floor side by side, with an air of conventional confraternity. Yet they knew they were adversaries in the merciless struggle which had been going on for weeks, and which could end with the ruin of one of them. Mazaud, short, with the slim figure of a handsome man, had a bright vivacity in keeping with his good luck thus far—luck that had led to his inheriting his uncle’s business at the age of only thirty-two, while Jacoby, a former manager, had only become a broker by virtue of seniority, thanks to clients who supported him, and had the stout belly and heavy gait of his sixty years—a tall man, bald and grizzled, he had the broad face of a cheery, pleasure-loving fellow. And both of them, with their notebooks in their hands, were chatting about the fine weather as if they were not holding, on those pages, the millions they would be exchanging like gunshots in the murderous fight between offer and demand.

  ‘A fine frost, eh?’

  ‘Oh indeed, it was so pretty I even came on foot!’

  When they reached the trading-floor, its vast circular basin as yet free of the cast-off papers and cards that get thrown down there, they paused a moment, leaning on the red-velvet balustrade that goes around it, continuing to exchange banal and inconsequential remarks, while also keeping an eye on their surroundings.

  The four gated aisles formed a cross, a sort of four-branched star with the trading-floor at its centre; this was the sacrosanct area closed to the public; and between the branches, at the front, there was, on one side, another section for the clerks dealing in cash, overlooked by the three quoters* perched on high chairs in front of their huge registers; on the other side, a smaller open section, known as the ‘guitar’, no doubt on account of its shape, allowed employees and speculators to have direct contact with the brokers. Behind, in the angle formed by two other branches, in the midst of the crowd was the market for government stocks, where each broker was represented, as in the cash market, by a special clerk, each with his own distinctive notebook; for the brokers around the trading-floor are concerned exclusively with forward trading, totally given over to the great, frenetic task of speculation.

  But Mazaud, seeing Berthier, his authorized clerk, trying to get his attention in the left-hand aisle, went over to exchange a few quiet words with him, the authorized clerks being allowed only in the aisles, at a respectful distance from the red-velvet balustrade which was not be touched by any profane hand. Every day Mazaud came to the Bourse with Berthier and his two clerks, one for cash deals and one for government stock, usually accompanied by the settlement clerk as well as the telegraph clerk, the latter always being little Flory, whose face was disappearing more and more under his bushy beard, leaving only the tender sparkle of his eyes. Since gaining ten thousand francs in the aftermath of Sadowa, Flory, driven to distraction by the demands of Chuchu, who was now both capricious and rapacious, was speculating wildly on his own account, without any calculation, just copying the moves of Saccard, which he followed with blind faith. The orders he knew about and the telegrams that passed through his hands were a sufficient guide for him. And now, as he was running down from the telegraph office on the first floor, both hands full of telegrams, he had to send one of the attendants to call Mazaud, who left Berthier and came over to the guitar.

  ‘Monsieur, do I need to go through them and classify them today?’

  ‘Yes of course, if they’re arriving en masse like this… What’s all that?’

  ‘Oh, Universals, purchase orders, almost all of them.’

  The broker, with a practised hand, flicked through the telegrams, obviously pleased. Very much involved with Saccard, whom he had been carrying over* for some time for considerable sums of money, and having that very morning received from him huge orders to buy, he had ended up as the official broker for the Universal. Although not greatly worried thus far, he still found it reassuring to see the continuing infatuation of the public and the obstinate buying, in spite of the extravagant rise in the price. One name stood out for him in the signatories of the telegrams: that of Fayeux, the revenue-collector of Vendôme, who must have acquired an extremely large clientele of small buyers among the fa
rmers, pious ladies and priests of his province, for not a week went by without his sending telegram after telegram like this.

  ‘Give all that to the cash-clerk,’ Mazaud told Flory, ‘and don’t wait for the telegrams to be brought down to you, eh? Stay up there and take them yourself.’

  Flory went and leaned over the balustrade of the cash section, shouting loudly: ‘Mazaud! Mazaud!’

  It was Gustave Sédille who came, for in the Bourse employees lose their own names, using only the name of the broker they represent. Flory, too, was called Mazaud. After leaving the office for nearly two years, Gustave had just gone back to it, to try to persuade his father to pay his debts, and that day, in the absence of the head clerk, he found himself in charge of the cash section, which greatly amused him. Flory leant over to whisper in his ear, and both agreed to buy for Fayeux only on the last quotation, after using his orders for their own speculation, buying and selling in the name of their usual frontman so as to pocket the difference, since a further rise seemed certain.

  Meanwhile, Mazaud came back to the trading-floor. But at every step, an attendant passed him a card with an order scribbled in pencil on it, from some client who had not been able to reach him. Each broker had his own card, of a special colour—red, yellow, blue or green—so it could be easily recognized. Mazaud’s were green, the colour of hope, and the little green slips kept on accumulating between his fingers, as the attendants went to and fro, taking the cards at the end of the aisles, from the hands of clerks and speculators, all of them having a ready stock of these cards in order to save time. As he paused once more by the velvet balustrade, he again found Jacoby, who was also holding a constantly growing fistful of cards, red cards, the bright red of spilt blood; orders, no doubt, from Gundermann and his followers, for everyone knew that in the massacre being prepared Jacoby was the agent for the bears, the chief operator for the Jewish banks. He was now chatting with another broker, Delarocque, his brother-in-law, a Christian married to a Jewish woman, a big, stocky, ruddy-faced man, now very bald, a frequenter of clubland, and known to be the receiver of the orders of Daigremont, who had recently fallen out with Jacoby, as he had previously done with Mazaud. The story Delarocque was telling, a rather coarse story about a woman who had returned home to her husband in a state of undress, made his little eyes twinkle and blink, while in excited mimicry he waved his notebook about, bulging with cards, blue ones, the tender blue of an April sky.