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

by Émile Zola

Whilst Renée, luxuriously installed in the apartments in the Rue de Rivoli, in the very midst of that new Paris of which she was about to become one of the queens, was meditating on her future toilettes, and trying her hand at leading the life of a great lady of fashion, her husband was devoutly nursing his first great scheme. He first of all purchased of his wife the house in the Rue de la Pépinière, thanks to the intermediary of a certain Larsonneau, whom he had come across prying like himself into the secrets of the Hôtel de Ville, but who had been foolish enough to get caught one day that he was examining the contents of the prefect's drawers. Larsonneau had set up in business as an agent at the end of a dark and dank courtyard, at the foot of the Rue Saint-Jacques. His pride and his covetousness suffered cruelly there. He found himself in the same position as Saccard before his marriage; he had, he would say, also invented "a machine for coining five franc pieces;" only he was minus the funds necessary to take advantage of his invention. It needed only a few words for him to come to an understanding with his former colleague, and he set to work with so good a will that he obtained the house for a hundred and fifty thousand francs. Renée was already, at the end of a few months, in need of considerable sums of money. The husband did not appear in the matter except to authorise his wife to sell. When everything was settled she asked him to invest a hundred thousand francs for her in the funds, and confidently handed him the money, no doubt as an appeal to his feelings and to shut his eyes regarding the fifty thousand francs she retained. He smiled in a knowing manner; it formed part of his calculations that she should squander her money; these fifty thousand francs which were about to disappear in jewellery and lace were to bring him in cent per cent. He carried his honesty so far, for he was so well satisfied with his first affair, as to really invest Renée's hundred thousand francs and to hand her the certificates. His wife could not realize upon them; he was certain of finding them in the nest if ever he happened to want them.

"My dear, this will do for your dress," said he gallantly.

When he was in possession of the house, he was skilful enough to sell it twice in a month to fictitious persons, increasing each time the amount paid. The last purchaser gave no less than three hundred thousand francs. Meanwhile, Larsonneau, who alone appeared as representative of the successive landlords, worked upon the tenants. He pitilessly declined to renew the leases, unless they consented to a formidable increase of rent. The tenants, who had an inkling of the approaching dispossession, were in despair; they ended by agreeing to the increase, especially when Larsonneau added in a conciliatory manner that this increase should remain a fictitious one during the first five years. As for the tenants who continued nasty, they were replaced by persons to whom the apartments were let for nothing and who signed everything they were asked to; there was thus a double profit: the rent was raised, and the indemnity reserved to the tenant for his lease was to go to Saccard. Madame Sidonie was willing to assist her brother by starting a piano-dealer's in one of the shops. It was then that Saccard and Larsonneau were carried away by their greed for gain and rather overreached themselves: they concocted the books of a regular business, they falsified accounts, so as to establish a sale of pianos on an enormous footing. During several nights they sat scribbling away together. Worked in this skilful manner the house increased in value threefold. Thanks to the last sale, to the raising of the rent, to the false tenants, and to Madame Sidonie's piano business, it might be considered worth five hundred thousand francs when the indemnity commission came to inquire into the matter.

The mechanism of the instrument of dispossession, of that powerful machine which during fifteen years turned Paris topsy-turvy, breathing fortune and ruin the while, is of the simplest. Directly a new thoroughfare is decided upon, the road inspectors draw up the plan in separate portions and appraise the various buildings to be removed. They generally, after making inquiries, arrive at the total amount of the rents and can thus fix upon the approximate value. The indemnity commission, consisting of members of the municipal council, always offers something beneath this sum, knowing that the interested parties will be sure to demand more, and that there will be a mutual concession. When they are unable to come to terms, the matter is brought before a jury which decides without appeal between the offer of the municipality and the claims of the dispossessed landlord or tenant.

Saccard, who had remained at the Hôtel de Ville for the decisive moment, had at one time the impudence to wish to be appointed to appraise his own house when the Boulevard Malesherbes was commenced. But he feared by so doing to paralyse his influence with the members of the indemnity commission. He caused one of his colleagues to be chosen, a gentle and smiling young man named Michelin, whose wife, an adorably beautiful creature, came at times to offer her husband's excuses to his chiefs when he absented himself through indisposition. Saccard had noticed that pretty Madame Michelin, who glided so humbly through the half closed doorways, was all-powerful; Michelin gained some advancement at each illness, he made his way by taking to his bed. During one of his absences, when his wife was calling nearly every morning at the office to say how he was getting on, Saccard came across him twice on the outer Boulevards, smoking his cigar with the tender and delighted air which never left him. This filled Saccard with sympathy for the good young man, for the happy couple so ingenious and so practical. He had a great admiration for all money-making machines cleverly worked. When he had got Michelin appointed he called on his charming wife, insisted on introducing her to Renée, and talked before her of his brother the deputy, the illustrious orator. Madame Michelin understood. From that day her husband kept his most select smiles for his colleague. The latter, who had no intention of taking the worthy fellow into his confidence, contented himself by being present as if by chance on the day when the other proceeded to appraise the house in the Rue de la Pépinière. He assisted him. Michelin, who had the stupidest and emptiest head it is possible to imagine, followed his wife's instructions, which were to satisfy Monsieur Saccard in all things. Moreover, he had not the slightest suspicion of anything; he imagined that his friend was in a hurry to see him finish his work so as to take him off to a café. The leases, the receipts for rent, Madame Sidonie's famous books passed through his colleague's hands beneath his eyes, without his even having time to check the figures which the other read out. Larsonneau was there also, treating his accomplice as a perfect stranger.

"Come, put down five hundred thousand francs," Saccard ended by saying. "The house is worth more. Hurry up, I think there is going to be a change in the staff of the Hôtel de Ville, and I want to talk to you about it so that you may let your wife know."

The business was thus carried through. But he still had other fears. He was afraid that the sum of five hundred thousand francs would appear rather excessive to the indemnity commission, for a house which was notoriously only worth two hundred thousand. The formidable rise in the value of buildings had not then taken place. An inquiry would have caused him to run the risk of serious unpleasantness. He recalled his brother's words: "No noisy scandal or I shall suppress you;" and he knew that Eugène was the man to put his threat into execution. It was necessary to blindfold the gentlemen forming the commission and to ensure their good will. He cast his eyes on two influential men whom he had made his friends by the way in which he saluted them in the passages whenever he met them. The thirty-six members of the municipal council were carefully selected by the Emperor himself from a list drawn up by the prefect comprising the senators, deputies, lawyers, doctors, and great manufacturers who prostrated themselves the most devotedly before the power that was; but amongst them all Baron Gouraud and Monsieur Toutin-Laroche especially deserved the good will of the Tuileries by their fervour.

All Baron Gouraud's history is contained in this short biography: made a baron by Napoleon I. for supplying bad biscuits to the grand army, he had successively been a peer under Louis XVIII., Charles X., and Louis-Philippe, and he was now a senator under Napoleon III. He was a worshipper of the throne, of the four gilded boards covered with velvet; it mattered little to him who the man was that sat upon it. With his enormous stomach, his ox-like countenance, his elephantine manner, he boasted a delightful rascality; he would sell himself majestically and commit the greatest infamies in the name of duty and conscience. But this man surprised one still more by his vices. Stories were told of him which could only be whispered from ear to ear. His seventy-eight years flourished amidst the most monstrous debauchery. On two occasions it had been necessary to hush up some filthy adventures so that his embroidered senator's coat should not be dragged through the dock of the assize court.

Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, who was tall and thin, and the inventor of a mixture of suet and stearin for the manufacture of candles, had a hankering to enter the senate. He stuck to Baron Gouraud like a leech; he rubbed up against him with the vague idea that his doing so would bring him luck. In reality he was thoroughly practical, and had he come across a senator's chair to be sold he would have fiercely higgled over the price. The Empire was about to bring out this greedy nonentity, this narrow mind which had a genius for dabbling in industrial affairs. He was the first to sell his name to a bogus company, one of those associations which sprouted up like poisonous toadstools on the dunghill of imperial speculations. At that time one could have seen on all the walls a poster bearing the following words in bold black letters:—"Société générale of the ports of Morocco," and beneath which the name of Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, with his title of municipal councillor, appeared at the head of the list of directors, all more or less unknown personages. This proceeding, which has become far more popular since, succeeded wonderfully; the shares were snapped up, though the question of the ports of Morocco was not very clear, and the worthy people who brought their money were themselves unable to explain to what purpose it was to be put. The poster announced in a superb manner the project of establishing commercial stations along the Mediterranean coast. For two years past certain newspapers had been celebrating this magnificent undertaking, which they declared to be more and more prosperous every three months. Amongst the municipal council Monsieur Toutin-Laroche had the reputation of being a first-class administrator; he was one of the strong minds of the neighbourhood, and his acrimonious tyranny over his colleagues was only equalled by his devout platitude in the presence of the prefect. He was already engaged in founding a great financial company, the Crédit Viticole, a sort of loan office for vine growers, and to which he would allude in a grave and reticent manner which aroused the covetousness of the fools around him.

Saccard secured the protection of these two personages by rendering them certain services, of the importance of which he cleverly pretended to be ignorant. He brought his sister and the baron together, the latter being then compromised in a very objectionable affair. He took her to him, under the pretence of soliciting his support in the favour of the dear woman who had been petitioning for a long time to obtain an order for the supply of curtains to the Tuileries. But it so happened that, when the road inspector left them together, it was Madame Sidonie who promised the baron to enter into negotiations with certain people who were stupid enough not to have felt honoured by the attention that a senator had deigned to bestow on their daughter, a little girl ten years old. Saccard took Monsieur Toutin-Laroche in hand himself; he manœuvred so as to obtain an interview with him in a corridor, and then brought the conversation round to the famous Crédit Viticole. At the end of five minutes, the great administrator, dazed and astounded by the amazing things told him, took the civil service clerk familiarly by the arm and detained him a full hour in the passage. Saccard whispered in his ear some financial deals which were prodigiously ingenious. When Monsieur Toutin-Laroche took his departure, he shook his hand in an expressive manner, and gave him the glance of a freemason.