The Rougon-Macquart: Complete 20 Book Collection. Эмиль Золя
did not appear in the matter except to authorize his wife to sell. When the sale was effected, she asked him to invest a hundred thousand francs for her, handing it to him with full confidence, so as no doubt to touch him and make him close his eyes to the fact that she was keeping fifty thousand francs back. He smiled knowingly; he had reckoned on her squandering her money; those fifty thousand francs, which were about to disappear in jewellery and lace, were calculated to bring him in cent. per cent. He carried his honesty so far, so well satisfied was he with his first transaction, as really to invest Renée’s hundred thousand francs and hand her the share certificates. His wife had no power to transfer them; he was certain of being able to lay his hand on them if ever he happened to want them.
“My dear, this will do for your dress,” he said gallantly.
When he had obtained possession of the house, he had the ingenuity to have it sold over again, twice in one month, to men of straw, increasing the purchase price each time. The last purchaser paid no less than three hundred thousand francs for it. Meanwhile Larsonneau alone appeared as the representative of the successive landlords, and worked the tenants. He pitilessly refused to renew the leases unless they consented to a formidable increase of rent. The tenants, who had an inkling of the approaching expropriation, were in despair; they ended by agreeing to the increase, especially when Larsonneau added, with a conciliatory air, that this increase should remain a fictitious one during the first five years. As for the tenants who were unaccommodating, they were replaced by creatures who received the apartment for nothing and signed anything they were asked to; in their case there was a double profit: the rent was raised, and the compensation due to the tenant for his lease went to Saccard. Madame Sidonie was so good as to assist her brother by setting up a pianoforte-agency in one of the shops on the ground-floor. It was then that Saccard and Larsonneau, seized with the fever of gain, went rather too far: they concocted business-books, they forged letters, so as to establish a trade in pianos on an immense footing. They scribbled away together for many nights. Worked in this fashion, the house trebled in value. Thanks to the last sale, thanks to the increase in the rents, to the fictitious tenants, and to Madame Sidonie’s business, it was in a condition to be valued at five hundred thousand francs before the compensations commission.
The machinery of expropriation, of that powerful piece of mechanism that for fifteen years turned Paris topsy-turvy, breathing fortune and ruin, is of the simplest. So soon as a new thoroughfare is decided upon, the surveyors of roads draw up the plan in separate sections and appraise the buildings. As a rule, in the case of houses let in apartments, they add up the total amount of the rents, after making enquiries, and are thus enabled to fix upon the approximate value. The compensations commission, consisting of members of the Municipal Council, always make an offer lower than this sum, knowing that the interested parties will claim more, and that there will be a concession on both sides. When they are unable to come to terms, the case is taken before a jury, which decides authoritatively upon the offer of the town and the claim of the evicted landlord or tenant.
Saccard, who had remained at the Hotel de Ville for the decisive moment, had for one instant the impudence to wish to have himself appointed when the works of the Boulevard Malesherbes were begun, and himself to appraise his house. But he was afraid by so doing to paralyze his influence with the members of the compensations commission. He caused one of his colleagues to be chosen, a young man with a sweet smile, called Michelin, whose wife, an adorably pretty woman, occasionally called to apologize to her husband’s chiefs for his absence, when he stayed away through ill-health. He was often ill. Saccard had noticed that the pretty Madame Michelin, who glided so humbly through the half-closed doorways, was omnipotent; Michelin obtained promotion at each illness, he made his career by taking to his bed. During one of his absences, when he was sending his wife almost every morning to the office to say how he was getting on, Saccard twice met him on the outer boulevards, smoking a cigar with the expression of rapt affection that never left him. This filled him with sympathy for this good young man, for that happy couple, so practical and so ingenious. He admired all “five-franc-piece machines” that were properly worked. When he had got Michelin appointed, he went and called on his charming wife, expressed a wish to introduce her to Renée, talked before her of his brother the deputy, the brilliant orator. Madame Michelin understood.
From that day forward her husband kept his choicest smiles for his colleague. The latter, who had no desire to take the worthy fellow into his confidence, contented himself with being present, as though casually, on the day when the other proceeded to value the house in the Rue de la Pépinière. He assisted him. Michelin, who had the most insignificant and the emptiest head imaginable, followed the instructions of his wife, who had urged him to satisfy M. Saccard in all things. He suspected nothing, moreover; he thought the surveyor 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 from his colleague’s hands under his eyes without his even having time to verify the figures which the latter read aloud. Larsonneau was present, and treated his accomplice as a stranger.
“Come, put down five hundred thousand francs,” Saccard ended by saying. “The house is worth more…. Hurry up; I believe there is going to be a change in the staff of the Hotel de Ville, and I want to talk to you about it, so that you may let your wife know beforehand.”
The business was thus carried through. But he still had fears. He dreaded lest the sum of five hundred thousand francs should seem rather excessive to the compensations commission for a house which was well known to be worth at most two hundred thousand. The formidable rise in house-property had not yet taken place. An enquiry would have caused him to run the risk of serious unpleasantness. He remembered his brother’s words: “No flagrant scandal, or I’ll exterminate you;” and he knew Eugène was the man to carry out his threat. It was a question of blindfolding those gentlemen of the commission, and ensuring their good will. He cast his eyes on two influential men, of whom he had made friends through his habit of saluting them in the corridors when he met them. The thirty-six members of the Municipal Council were carefully selected by the Emperor himself, on the recommendation of the préfet, from among the senators, deputies, advocates, doctors, and great manufacturers, who prostrated themselves the most devoutly before the reigning power; but among them all, the fervour of the Baron Gouraud and of M. Toutin-Laroche more especially attracted the good will of the Tuileries.
The whole of the Baron Gouraud is comprised in this short biography: he was made a baron by Napoleon I as a reward for supplying damaged biscuits to the Grand Army, he was a peer successively under Louis XVIII, Charles X, and Louis-Philippe, and he was a senator under Napoleon III. He worshipped the throne, the four gilded boards covered with velvet; It mattered little to him what man sat upon it. With his enormous belly, his bovine face, his elephantine movements, he boasted a delightful rascality; he sold himself majestically, and committed the greatest infamies in the name of duty and conscience. But the man was yet more astonishing in his vices. Stories were current about him which could not be told above a whisper. In spite of his seventy-eight years, he flourished in the midst of the most monstrous debauchery. It was necessary on two occasions to hush up some dirty adventure, so that his embroidered senator’s coat should not be dragged through the dock of the assize-court.
M. Toutin-Laroche, tall and thin, had invented a mixture of tallow and stearine for the manufacture of candles, and longed to enter the Senate. He clung to the Baron Gouraud like a leech; he rubbed up against him with the vague idea that it would bring him luck. At bottom he was exceedingly practical; and had he come across a senator’s seat for sale, he would have haggled fiercely over the price. The Empire was to bring into prominence this greedy nonentity, this narrow brain with its genius for industrial swindling. He was the first to sell his name to a shady company, one of those associations which sprouted like poisonous toadstools on the dunghill of imperial speculation. At that time one could see stuck on the walls a placard bearing these words in big black letters: “Société Générale of the Ports of Morocco,” on which the name of M. Toutin-Laroche, with his title of municipal councillor, was displayed at the head of the list of members of the board of directors, each more unknown than the other. This method, which has since been abused, succeeded admirably; the shares were snapped up, although the question of the Ports of Morocco was not a very definite one, and the worthy people who brought their money were not themselves able to explain to what use