Then the couple began the monotonous life of the underpaid clerk. Aristide and his wife resumed their old Plassans ways. Only they fell from a dream of sudden fortune, and their poverty-stricken existence weighed heavier upon them, now that they looked upon it as a time of probation, the duration of which they were unable to fix. To be poor in Paris, is to be doubly poor. Angèle accepted the wretchedness of their position with all the listlessness of a chlorotic woman. She spent days in her kitchen, or else lying on the floor, playing with her daughter, and never lamenting except when she reached her last twenty-sou piece. But Aristide quivered with rage in the midst of this poverty, of this narrow existence, out of which he sought an issue like some caged beast. To him it was a period of ineffable suffering; his pride was wounded, his unsated cravings goaded him furiously. And he suffered all the more on learning that his brother had been elected to represent Plassans in Parliament. He felt too much Eugène's superiority to be foolishly jealous; but he accused him of not doing all that he might have done for him. On several occasions, absolute necessity forced him to knock at his door for the purpose of borrowing a trifle. Eugène lent the money, but at the same time roughly reproached him with being destitute of both courage and will. Then Aristide took the bull indeed by the horns. He swore to himself that he would never again borrow so much as a sou from any one, and he kept his oath. The last eight days of each month, Angèle would eat dry bread and sigh. This apprenticeship completed Saccard's terrible education. His thin lips became narrower still; he was no longer so stupid as to dream of millions out loud; his scraggy person became dumb, and no longer expressed but one will, one fixed idea nursed at every hour of the day. When he hurried along from the Rue Saint-Jacques to the Hôtel de Ville, his boots worn down at heel resounded harshly on the pavement, and he buttoned himself up in his shabby old overcoat as though in an asylum of hatred, while his weasel-like snout sniffed the air of the streets. He was an angular figure of the jealous misery that one sees roaming along the Paris side-walks, carrying with him his plan for conquering a fortune, and the dream of the eventual gratification of his appetite.
Early in 1853, Aristide Saccard was appointed trustee of roads. He now received a salary of four thousand five hundred francs. This rise came at an opportune moment; Angèle was slowly wasting away; little Clotilde was looking quite pale. He retained his small lodging of two rooms, the dining-room furnished in walnut, and the bedroom in mahogany, continuing to lead an austere life, carefully avoiding getting into debt, unwilling to touch other people's money until he could bury his arms into it to the elbows. He thus belied his instincts, disdaining the few extra sous he received, preferring to remain on the watch. Angèle felt completely happy. She bought herself some new clothes, and had a joint to roast every day of the week. She could no longer understand the reason of her husband's suppressed passion, his gloomy ways of a man working out the solution of some formidable problem.
Acting on Eugène's advice, Aristide was keeping his eyes and ears open. When he went to thank his brother for his promotion, the latter understood the revolution that had taken place within him; he complimented him on what he called his good appearance. The clerk, whom envy was inwardly rendering inflexible, had outwardly become pliant and insinuating. In a few months he was transformed into a marvellous comedian. All his southern animation had awakened, and he carried the art so far that his comrades at the Hôtel de Ville looked upon him as a jolly good fellow, whose near relationship to a deputy designed beforehand for some grand appointment. This relationship also secured him the good will of his chiefs. He thus enjoyed a kind of authority superior to his position, which enabled him to open certain doors, and to poke his nose into certain portfolios, without his indiscretion appearing in the least culpable. For two years he was seen roaming about all the passages, lingering in all the rooms, getting up from his seat twenty times a day to talk to a comrade, carry an order, or take a stroll through the different departments, endless wanderings which caused his colleagues to say:
"That devil of a Southerner! he can't keep still a minute; he must indeed have quicksilver in his legs."
His own particular friends took him for a lazy fellow, and the worthy man laughed when they accused him of seeking to rob the service of a few minutes. He never committed the mistake of listening at key-holes; but he had a bold way of opening doors, and crossing rooms, apparently deeply intent upon some document or other in his hand, and with so slow and regular a walk that he never lost a word of whatever was being said. They were the tactics of a genius; people ended by no longer interrupting their conversation when this energetic clerk passed by, gliding so to say in the shadow of the offices, and seemingly so wrapt in his own business. He had yet another method; he was extremely obliging, and would offer to assist his comrades, whenever they were behindhand with their work; and then he would study the registers and the documents that passed through his hands with quite a meditative tenderness. But one of his favourite peccadilloes was to form acquaintance with the messengers. He would even shake hands with them. For hours together he would keep them talking in doorways, stifling little bursts of laughter, telling them stories, and drawing them out. These worthy fellows quite worshipped him, and were in the habit of saying:
"There's a gentleman who isn't a bit proud!"
The moment there was the least scandal, he knew of it before any one. It was thus that at the end of two years the Hôtel de Ville held no mysteries for him. He knew everybody employed there, even to the lamp cleaners, and was acquainted with every paper the place contained, not omitting the washing books.
At this time, Paris formed, for a man like Aristide Saccard, a most interesting spectacle. The Empire had just been proclaimed, after that famous journey during which the Prince President had succeeded in arousing the enthusiasm of some Bonapartist departments. Silence reigned both at the tribune and in the press. Society, saved once more, was congratulating itself and indolently resting, now that a strong government was protecting it and relieving it even of the trouble of thinking and of attending to its own business. The great preoccupation of society was to know in what way it should kill time. As Eugène Rougon so happily expressed it, Paris was dining and anticipating no end of pleasure at dessert. Politics produced an universal scare, like some dangerous drug. The wearied minds turned to pleasure and money-making. Those who had any of the latter brought it out, and those who had none sought in all the out-of-the-way places for forgotten treasures. A secret quiver seemed to run through the multitude, accompanied by a nascent jingling of five-franc pieces, by the rippling laughter of women, and the yet faint clatter of crockery and murmur of kisses. Amidst the great silence of the reign of order, the profound peacefulness brought by the change of government, there arose all sorts of pleasant rumours, gilded and voluptuous promises. It was as though one were passing in front of one of those little houses, the carefully drawn curtains of which reveal no more than the shadows of women, and where one can overhear the jingling of gold on the marble mantelpieces. The Empire was about to turn Paris into the bagnio of Europe. The handful of adventurers who had just stolen a throne needed a reign of adventure, of shadowy business transactions, of consciences sold, of women bought, of furious and universal intoxication. And, in the city where the blood of December was scarcely wiped away, there slowly uprose, timidly as yet, that mad desire for enjoyment which was destined to bring the country to the lowest dregs of corrupt and dishonoured nations.
From the very first days Aristide Saccard had felt the approach of this rising tide of speculation, the foam of which was soon to envelop the whole of Paris. He watched its progress with profound attention. He found himself right in the very midst of the warm downpour of silver crowns falling thick and fast on to the roofs of the city. In his constant wanderings through the Hôtel de Ville, he had obtained an inkling of the vast project for the transformation of Paris, of the plan of the demolitions and of the new thoroughfares and the altered districts, of the formidable jobbery with respect to the sale of the land and the buildings, which was kindling all over the town the battle of interests and the flare-up of unbridled luxury. From that moment his activity had an object. It was at this epoch that he became quite a jolly good fellow. He even grew a trifle stout, he no longer hurried about the streets like a half starved cat in search of something to devour. At his office he was more talkative, more obliging than ever. His brother, to whom he paid occasional visits, in some measure official, congratulated him on so happily putting his counsels into practice. In the early days of 1854, Saccard confided to him that he had several affairs in view, but that he would require some rather large advances in the way of money.
"You should look about," said Eugène.