The Kill - Emile Zola [63]
Saccard worked a huge swindle on city hall. Oppressed and overburdened by debt, the city, having been dragged into the dance of millions that it had set in motion to please the Emperor and line certain pockets, was reduced to borrowing money in secret so as not to be obliged to confess its own raging fever, its obsession with pickaxe and quarry stone. It had just invented something called delegation bonds, long-term letters of exchange, with which it could pay contractors on the day that papers were signed so that they could then sell the notes at a discount in exchange for needed funds. The Crédit Viticole had graciously accepted this paper from the contractors. The day the city ran short of money, Saccard tried putting temptation in its way. A considerable sum of money was advanced on the security of delegation bonds that M. Toutin-Laroche swore he had obtained from companies doing business with the city, and which he dragged through all the gutters of speculation. The Crédit Viticole was thereafter safe from attack; it held Paris by the throat. From then on the managing director never spoke about the famous Société Générale des Ports du Maroc without a smile. It still existed, however, and the newspapers continued to celebrate the great commercial stations at regular intervals. One day, when M. Toutin-Laroche urged Saccard to take some shares of the company, the latter laughed in his face and asked if he, Toutin-Laroche, thought him fool enough to invest his money in the “The Arabian Nights, Inc.”
Saccard had thus far speculated successfully on sure things, cheating, selling himself, making money on his deals, and extracting some sort of profit from each of his ventures. Before long, however, this wheeling and dealing ceased to satisfy him. He was too proud to scoop up the remains, to pick up the gold that men like Toutin-Laroche and Baron Gouraud let fall in their wake. He plunged his arms into the sack up to his shoulders. He formed a partnership with Mignon, Charrier & Co., the well-known contractors, who were then just starting out on their way to amassing colossal fortunes. The city had already decided not to build the new boulevards itself but to hire contractors to do the work instead. These contractors agreed to deliver a finished street complete with trees, benches, and gaslights in exchange for a fixed fee. Sometimes they laid the roadway for nothing, feeling amply compensated by the adjacent land, from which they derived substantial profits. The speculative fever over land and the dizzying rise in the price of housing date from the same period. With his connections Saccard obtained the rights to develop three stretches of boulevard. What he brought to the partnership was his ardent if somewhat unmethodical spirit. Initially his underlings, MM Mignon and Charrier, proved to be well-heeled, cunning coconspirators, master masons who knew the value of a franc. The two contractors laughed up their sleeves at the sight of Saccard’s horses. They usually wore overalls, did not refuse to shake hands with their workmen, and went home at night covered with plaster. Both were from Langres. To ardent, insatiable Paris they brought their Champenois8 prudence and unflappable wits, which, though not very open to new ideas and not very intelligent, were nevertheless quite apt at profiting from opportunities to line their pockets