Free Money (Oxford World’s Classics) by Émile Zola Page A

years as a jobber, earning scarcely enough money to keep him in his vices. And today, completely bald and complaining like a whore whose wrinkles threaten her livelihood, he was still waiting for the opportunity that would launch him into success and fortune.
    Seeing him so humble, Saccard remembered with some bitterness the greeting of Sabatani at Champeaux’s: clearly all he had left now was the flawed and the failed. But he was not without esteem for this man’s lively intelligence, and he well knew that desperate men make the bravest and most daring troops, having nothing to lose and everything to gain. So he made himself agreeable.
    ‘A job,’ he repeated. ‘Well, that might be possible. Come and see me.’
    ‘It’s Rue Saint-Lazare now, isn’t it?’
    ‘Yes, Rue Saint-Lazare. In the morning.’
    They chatted. Jantrou had plenty to say against the Bourse, insisting, with all the rancour of an unsuccessful scoundrel, that you had to be a scoundrel to succeed in it. That was all over now, he wanted to try something else, and he felt that, given his university background and his knowledge of the world, he would be able to find a good position in management. Saccard nodded approvingly. And as they were now outside the railings, walking along the pavement up to the RueBrongniart, the attention of both men was caught by a dark coupé, * very well turned-out, which was standing in that street with the horse facing the Rue Montmartre. They had noticed that while the back of the coachman, perched on his high seat, was as still as if made of stone, a woman’s head on two occasions appeared at the carriage door then quickly vanished. Suddenly the head leaned out and remained there, casting a long, impatient look back towards the Bourse.
    ‘Baroness Sandorff,’ murmured Saccard.
    It was a very strange, dark head, with black eyes burning beneath bruised eyelids, a face of passion, with blood-red mouth, a face marred only by an overlong nose. She seemed very pretty, and unusually mature for her twenty-five years, with the look of a Bacchante, * dressed by the great dress-designers of the age.
    ‘Yes, the Baroness,’ echoed Jantrou, ‘I met her when she was a girl living with her father, Count de Ladricourt. Oh! a crazy speculator and a man of appalling brutality! I used to go to get his orders every morning, and one day he came close to beating me. I shed no tears for him when he died of apoplexy, ruined after a series of terrible losses on the market… So the girl had to resign herself to marrying Baron Sandorff, Counsellor at the Austrian Embassy, thirty-five years her senior, whom she had quite driven mad with her fiery eyes.’
    Saccard just said: ‘I know.’
    Once more the head of the Baroness had disappeared inside the coupé. But almost immediately it reappeared, her face more ardent and her neck straining to see over the square, in the distance.
    ‘She plays the market, doesn’t she?’
    ‘Oh, like one demented! Every time there’s a crisis you can see her here, in her carriage, watching the market quotations, feverishly taking notes in her notebook and placing orders… And look! It was Massias she was waiting for, and here he comes to join her.’
    Indeed, Massias was running as fast as his short legs would carry him, his list of market-rates in his hand, and they saw him leaning over the carriage door, he too now plunging his head inside, deep in discussion with the Baroness. Then, as they were moving off a little to avoid being caught spying, and the broker had started back, still running, they called out to him. First he glanced sideways to make sure he was hidden by the corner of the street; then he stopped, breathless, his florid face all puffed up but still cheerful, and his big blue eyes as limpid as a child’s.
    ‘Whatever is the matter with them!’ he exclaimed. ‘Now it’s Suez collapsing. And they’re talking of a war with England. A piece of news that is totally upsetting everyone, and