The Rush for the Spoil (La Curée): A Realistic Novel

by Émile Zola

"You are right, I will look about," he replied without the least trace of ill-humour, and without appearing to notice that his brother declined to furnish him with the necessary funds.

How to procure this money had now become his constant thought. His plan was formed; it grew maturer every day. But he was as far as ever from obtaining the first few thousands of francs he required. His faculties became keener; he began to look at people in a profound and nervous manner, as though he were seeking a lender in every passer-by. Angèle continued to lead at home her secluded and happy existence. He was for ever watching for an opportunity, and his laugh of a jolly good fellow became more bitter as this opportunity delayed in presenting itself.

Aristide had a sister living in Paris. Sidonie Rougon had married a solicitor's clerk at Plassans, who had come with her to the Rue Saint-Honoré to start business as a dealer in Southern commodities. When her brother came across her, the husband had disappeared, and the business had long ago gone to the dogs. She occupied in the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, a small mezzanine floor consisting of three rooms. She also leased the shop beneath, a narrow and mysterious shop in which she pretended to carry on the business of a dealer in lace. True enough, there was a display of Valenciennes and Maltese lace suspended from gilt rods in the window; but inside, the place had more the look of an ante-room, with its polished wainscotting, and a total absence of goods of any description. Light curtains hung before the glazed door and the window, intercepting the glances of the passers-by, and helping to give the shop the veiled and discreet appearance of a waiting-room at the entrance to some strange temple. It was very seldom that any customer was seen to call at Madame Sidonie's; the handle was even generally removed from the door. She spread a report in the neighbourhood that she went personally to offer her wares to ladies of fortune. The convenient arrangement of the place, she would say, had alone caused her to rent the shop and the floor above which communicated by a staircase hidden in the wall. And indeed the lace-dealer was constantly out of doors; she might be seen hurrying in or out at least ten times a day.

The lace trade, however, was not her only business; she utilised her upper floor—cramming it full of merchandise of one sort or another, bought up no one knew where. At different times she had dealt there in gutta-percha goods, such as waterproof coats, shoes, braces, &c; then had followed a new oil to promote the growth of the hair, various orthopedic instruments, and an automatic coffee-pot, a patented invention, the working of which gave her a great deal of trouble. The first time her brother came to see her, she had gone in for pianos, to such an extent that her apartments were full of them; they were even in her bedroom, a very daintily decorated room, which contrasted violently with the commercial untidiness of the two others. She carried on her two businesses with perfect method; the customers who came for the goods on the mezzanine floor, entered and departed by means of a carriage entrance which gave admittance to the house from the Rue Papillon; only those acquainted with the mysterious little staircase were able to form an idea of the lace-dealer's underhand trading. Up in her apartments she was known as Madame Touche, which was the name of her husband, whilst she had had only her Christian name painted on the shop-door, which was the reason for her being generally addressed as Madame Sidonie.

Madame Sidonie was thirty-five years of age, but she dressed so carelessly, she had so little of the woman in her appearance, that one would have taken her to be much older. In truth, she was a person whose age it would have been difficult to tell. She was always seen in the same black dress, frayed at the edges, rumpled and discoloured by constant wear, reminding one of a lawyer's old gown become threadbare through years of daily attendance in court. With a black bonnet which came as low as her forehead and hid all her hair, and a pair of thick heavy shoes, she scurried along the streets, carrying on her arm a little basket the handles of which had been mended with pieces of string. This basket, which never left her, was quite a little world in itself. Whenever she raised the lid, samples of all sorts issued forth, diaries, pocket books, and especially bundles of stamped documents, the almost illegible writing of which she deciphered with extraordinary dexterity. She comprised in her person something of the broker and of the man of law. She lived amidst protests, writs, and orders of the court; when she had secured an order for ten francs' worth of pomatum or lace, she would insinuate herself into the good graces of her customer, and become her man of business, calling in her stead on solicitors, barristers and judges.

She would thus carry for weeks together at the bottom of her basket all the documents relating to a case, taking no end of trouble about it, going from one end of Paris to the other, with the same regular little trot-trot, never for a moment thinking of riding to save her legs. It would have been difficult to say what profit she obtained from such a business; in the first place she engaged in it through an instinctive taste for questionable matters, a love for cavilling; besides this, however, it enabled her to secure a host of little profits; invitations to dinner in every direction, innumerable franc pieces pocketed here and there. But her clearest gain was undoubtedly the numerous secrets confided to her wherever she went, which showed her where a good stroke of business was to be done or a handsome windfall to be obtained. Living in the homes of others and wrapt up in their affairs, she had become a veritable repertory existing on offers and demands. She knew where there was a daughter ready to be married at once, a family in need of three thousand francs, an old gentleman willing to lend the three thousand francs, but on substantial security and at a high rate of interest. She knew of matters more delicate still: the sadness of a fair lady whose husband did not understand her, and who longed to be understood; the secret desires of a good mother who dreamed of settling her daughter advantageously; the taste of a certain baron for little supper-parties and very young girls. And smiling faintly, she went about hawking these offers and these demands, she would walk a couple of leagues to bring her clients together; she sent the baron to the good mother, prevailed upon the old gentleman to lend the three thousand francs to the needy family, obtained the necessary consolation for the fair lady and a not over-scrupulous husband for the young girl in a hurry to marry.

She was also engaged in some very important business, business that there was no occasion to keep secret, and with which she pestered whoever went near her: an interminable law-suit that a noble but ruined family had intrusted her with, and a debt owing by the English to the French nation since the time of the Stuarts, and which amounted with the compound interest to nearly three milliards of francs. This debt of three milliards was her hobby-horse; she would explain the case with no end of particulars, launching out into quite a course of history, and a flush of enthusiasm would rush to her cheeks, usually yellow and flabby like wax. At times, between a call on a lawyer and a visit paid to a lady friend, she would secure an order for a coffee-pot, a mackintosh, a piece of lace, or a piano on hire. These were matters arranged in a moment. Then she would hurry back to her shop, where a lady customer had an appointment with her to see a piece of Chantilly. The customer arrived and glided like a shadow into the discreet and veiled shop. And it often happened that a gentleman, entering by way of the carriage entrance in the Rue Papillon, called at the same time to see Madame Touche's pianos on the floor above.

If Madame Sidonie had not made a fortune, it was because she often worked for love of the thing. With a great hankering after legal business, forgetting her own affairs for those of others, she allowed herself to be fleeced by the lawyers, which procured her, however, an enjoyment unknown to any but litigious persons. There was scarcely anything womanly left about her; she had become nothing more nor less than a man of business, an agent ever bustling about the four corners of Paris, carrying in her legendary basket articles of the most equivocal description, selling every thing, dreaming of milliards, and even going to the court-house for a favourite client to plead in a case of a disputed ten francs. Short, skinny and pale, dressed in that thin black garment which looked as though it had been cut out of a barrister's gown, she seemed to have shrivelled up, and to see her scuttling along close to the houses, one would have taken her for an errand-boy disguised as a girl. Her complexion had the mournful wanness of stamped paper. Her lips parted in a dim smile, whilst her eyes seemed to be wandering amidst the hubbub of business, matters of every description with which she loaded her brain. Of discreet and timid ways, moreover, combined with a vague odour of the confessional and a midwife's sanctum, she always appeared as gentle and maternal as a nun who, having renounced all the affections of this world, takes pity on the sufferings of the heart. She never mentioned her husband, neither did she allude to her childhood, her family, or her affairs. There was only one thing she did not deal in, and that was herself; not that she had any scruples about the matter, but because the idea of such a bargain could never occur to her. She was as dry as an invoice, as cold as a protest, and at heart as brutal and indifferent as a bumbailiff.

Saccard, all fresh from his province, could not at first fathom the delicate depths of Madame Sidonie's numerous callings. As he had during twelve months studied for the bar, she one day spoke to him of the three milliards with a very grave air, which gave him but a poor opinion of her intelligence. She came and rummaged in all the corners of the lodging in the Rue Saint-Jacques, weighed Angèle at a glance, and never again put in an appearance excepting when her own affairs brought her into the neighbourhood, and when she felt a desire to again discuss the question of the three milliards. Angèle had swallowed the bait of the story of the English debt. The woman of business mounted her hobby, and made it rain gold for an hour or more. It was the crack in this shrewd intellect, the gentle myth with which she deluded her life wasted in a wretched traffic, the magical lure that intoxicated not only herself but the more credulous of her clients. Thoroughly convinced, moreover, she ended by speaking of the three milliards as of some private fortune, which the judges would have to restore to her sooner or later, and this shed a marvellous aureola around her shabby black bonnet on which hung a few faded violets attached to brass-wire stems bare of all covering. Angèle would open her eyes wide with amazement. On several occasions, she spoke to her husband of her sister-in-law with great respect, saying that Madame Sidonie would perhaps make them all rich one day. Saccard merely shrugged his shoulders; he had gone and inspected the shop and floor above in the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, and the only impression he had taken away with him was that of an approaching bankruptcy. He wished to know Eugène's opinion of their sister; but his brother became grave and merely replied that he never saw her, that he knew she was very intelligent, though perhaps rather compromising.

However as Saccard was returning to the Rue de Penthièvre some little while afterwards, he fancied he saw Madame Sidonie's black dress leave his brother's abode and glide rapidly along the houses. He hastened forward, but lost all trace of the black garment. The woman of business had one of those spare figures which so easily lose themselves in a crowd. This set him thinking, and it was from this moment that he commenced to study his sister more attentively. It was not long before he began to understand the immense task performed by that pale and shadowy little body, whose entire face seemed to squint and melt away. He came to look upon her with respect. She had the true Rougon blood in her veins. He recognised that appetite for money, that longing for every kind of intrigue which was characteristic of the family; only, in her case, thanks to the surroundings amidst which she had grown old, thanks to that Paris where every morning she had been obliged to set forth to seek her evening meal, the common temperament had deviated from its usual course to produce this extraordinary hermaphrodism of a woman changed into a being without a gender, both man of business and procuress at the same time.