One evening, thoroughly stirred by his passionate fever, Saccard could not help speaking of the matter to Madame Caroline. 'I fancy that things will soon be getting warm,' said he; 'we have become too strong, and they find us in their way. I can scent Gundermann. I know his tactics: he will begin selling regularly, so much to-day, so much to-morrow, increasing the amount until he succeeds in shaking us.'
Interrupting him, she said gravely: 'If he has any Universals he does right to sell.'
'What! he does right to sell!'
'No doubt, my brother told you so. All quotations above two thousand francs are absurd.'
He looked at her, and, quite beside himself, gave vent to an angry outburst: 'Sell them! Dare to sell your own shares! Yes, play against me, since you want me to be defeated!'
She blushed slightly, for, truth to tell, she had only the day before sold a thousand of her shares in obedience to her brother's orders; and this sale, like some tardy act of honesty, had eased her feelings. As Saccard did not put any direct questions to her, she did not confess the matter to him, but her embarrassment increased when he added: 'For instance, there were some defections yesterday, I am sure of it. Quite a large parcel of shares came into the market, and quotations would certainly have fallen if I hadn't intervened. It wasn't Gundermann who made such a stroke as that. His system is a slower one, though the result in the long run is more crushing. Ah! my dear, I am quite confident, but still I can't help trembling, for it's nothing to defend one's life in comparison with having to defend one's money and that of others.'
And indeed from that moment Saccard ceased to be his own master. He belonged to the millions which he was making, still triumphing, yet ever on the verge of defeat. He no longer even found time to see the Baroness Sandorff, who felt that he was breaking away from her and relapsed into her former ignorance and doubts. Since their intimacy had begun she had gambled with almost a certainty of winning and had made much money, but she now clearly saw that he was unwilling to answer her, and even feared that he might be lying to her. Either because her luck had turned, or he had indeed been amusing himself by starting her on a false scent, a day came when she lost by following his advice. Her faith was then badly shaken. If he thus misled her, who would guide her? And the worst was that the secret hostility to the Universal at the Bourse, so slight at first, was now growing day by day. There were still only rumours; no precise statement was made; no genuine fact impaired the Bank's credit. Only it was tacitly allowed that there must be something the matter, that the worm was in the fruit, though this did not prevent the rise of the stock from continuing, from becoming more and more formidable every day.
However, after a deal in Italians which proved disastrous, the Baroness, decidedly anxious, resolved to call at the office of 'L'Espérance' to try to make Jantrou talk.
'Come, what's the matter?' she said to him. 'You must know. Universals have just gone up another twenty francs and yet there are rumours afloat—no one can tell me exactly what, but at all events nothing very good.'
Jantrou's perplexity was, however, as great as her own. Placed at the fountain-head of information, in case of need manufacturing reports himself, he jokingly compared his position to that of a clock-maker who lives among hundreds of clocks and yet never knows the correct time. Thanks to his advertising agency, he was in everybody's confidence, but the result of this was that he could never form a firm opinion, for the information which he received on one hand was generally contradicted, reduced to nought, by that which he received on another.