The Kill - Emile Zola [44]
He extended his hand, but Saccard stood on the spot trembling. He believed that if the judge had not buckled under the tragic burden of grief at Renée’s disgrace, he would have thwarted Mme Sidonie’s machinations with a glance or a gesture. After putting the clerk in touch with Aunt Elisabeth, his sister had prudently stepped aside. She had not even come to the wedding. He took a very straightforward line with the old man, having read in his eyes a look of surprise at discovering that his daughter had been seduced by a man who was short, ugly, and forty years old. The newlyweds were obliged to spend their first nights together in the Hôtel Béraud. Christine, a child of fourteen, had been sent away two months earlier in order to make sure that she would not get wind of the drama unfolding in the house, as calm and serene as a convent. When she returned, she was aghast at the sight of her sister’s husband, whom she also found old and ugly. Only Renée seemed to take relatively little notice of her husband’s age or the slyness of his countenance. She showed him neither contempt nor affection and dealt with him in absolute tranquillity, through which a hint of ironic disdain manifested itself from time to time. Saccard settled in, made himself at home, and with his verve and frankness gradually won the genuine friendship of everyone involved. By the time the couple left to take up residence in a superb apartment in a new house on the rue de Rivoli, there was no longer any amazement in M. Béraud Du Châtel’s gaze, and little Christine had made a playmate of her brother-in-law. Renée was then four months pregnant. Her husband was about to send her to the country in order to be able to lie about the child’s age later on when, as Mme Sidonie had predicted, she miscarried. She had laced herself up so tightly to hide her condition, which in any case was concealed by the fullness of her skirts, that she was obliged to take to her bed for several weeks. Saccard was delighted by the outcome. Fortune had kept faith with him. He had made a fabulous bargain: a superb dowry, a wife beautiful enough to earn him a decoration six months hence, and no obligations whatsoever. They had paid him 200,000 francs for his name on behalf of a fetus the mother did not even wish to see. Already the Charonne properties had become the object of his fondest dreams, but for the time being he devoted all his attention to a speculative venture that was to become the basis of his fortune.
Despite the high position of his wife’s family, he did not immediately resign his position as surveyor of roads. He spoke of work to be finished and jobs to be done. In reality, he wanted to remain until the end on the battlefield where he was about to strike his first blow. As in a game of cards, it would be easier to cheat if he played at home with his own deck.
The clerk’s plan was simple and pragmatic. Now that he had more money than he had ever dreamed of with which to launch his operations, he was ready to think big. He knew Paris like the back of his hand. He knew that the shower of gold already beating down on the city’s walls would only intensify with each passing day. Clever people had only to open their pockets. He had joined the ranks of the clever by reading the future in the offices of city hall. In the course of his duties he had learned how much could be stolen in the purchase and sale of buildings and land. He was well versed in the usual ways of fraud: he knew how to sell for a million francs what had been bought for 500,000; he knew how to pay for the right to pick the locks of the state treasury, while the state shut its eyes and smiled; he knew how