Had Elias not been so well known he might have become popular. All the same, he met a thorough refusal at the hands of the Graff family, and, as though to intensify the insult offered to him, before six months the beautiful Elise married the former sergeant, Baradier. At the same time, a rumour spread abroad that the Graffs were leaving the town. Antoine followed his step-brother to Paris, and entered with him into the banking establishment of Baradier senior.
It was too much for Elias. He lost his sleep, and one day, after meeting the Graffs, who were being escorted to the station by all their friends, he returned home, and was taken suddenly ill. Old Moses, terrified, put his son to bed, summoned the doctor, and learnt that the new convert was at the point of death. A furious delirium had taken possession of him; during its course he negotiated fabulous bargains with imaginary buyers and sellers. A semblance of reason returned only when he poured forth floods of insults and threats against the Baradiers and the Graffs, whilst his father calmed him by saying—
“Yes, Elias, you shall have your revenge on these rascals! You shall ruin them! You shall crush them under your heel!”
Then a happy smile came over the patient’s lips; he slept a few hours, and awoke feeling much better. One may affirm that it was the intensity of his hatred that kept him from dying. Plans of revenge haunted his fevered brain, and when the doctor, in astonishment, declared that the young man was convalescent, the first words Elias uttered were, “All the better! Had I died, the Baradiers and Graff’s would have been too glad!”
To tell the truth, the latter paid not the slightest heed to the feelings of rancour they had so violently aroused. They had assumed the direction of the firm, had extended the business, and founded additional woollen factories. Marcel Baradier and his sister Amélie were born. Complete harmony seemed to exist in this happy family, when Elias Lichtenbach, his father having died, came to establish himself in Paris.
A singular metamorphosis had been wrought in him. The first time Baradier and his rival met at the Bourse the banker did not recognize Lichtenbach. He saw before him a thin, stooping man, almost bald, with cold, passionless eyes, hidden behind gold spectacles. His very voice had changed. M. Lichtenbach spoke little, said only what was absolutely essential, and remained impassive before the most important news. A contraction of the jaws alone betrayed his emotion, giving to his countenance a character of singular ferocity.
Lichtenbach’s connection with the firm of Baradier and Graff was full of meaning. He caused them to lose three hundred thousand francs in a single morning on a contract for wool, concluded at the Bourse of Troyes. Elias sold wool from Hungary at so low a rate that Baradier and Graff, who had speculated on a rise, were obliged to sell out rapidly to limit their risks. It was the first clear flash from the cloud. Henceforward an enemy, always on the watch, was ever ready to strike the Baradier firm in its most vulnerable part. Lichtenbach’s evil intentions, though concealed, were none the less certain.
When attacked they ingeniously defended themselves, took needful precautions, and trusted nothing to hazard. Lichtenbach was very powerful and dangerous. Left a widower, with one daughter, whom he had sent to the Sacre-Coeur, there to be brought up according to the principles of the most rigid devotion, Elias was a type of the renegade who had become more Christian than the Pope himself.
Still, if Lichtenbach was dreaded, he was received everywhere, and his influence in society was as secret as it was sure. He rendered priceless help to ruined families. Instead of aiming his financial batteries against the established Government, he divided his attempts, placed his hands on all the syndicates of Europe, and by means of the capital he collected caused diverse speculations not only to benefit himself, but all his friends in addition.
The simplicity of his life was extreme. He lived in a gloomy mansion in the Rue Barbet-de-Jouy, attended by servants from Lorraine, who spoke German better than French. He never received visitors, whilst a game of whist seemed to form his only distraction. It was at his office, right in front of the Bourse, that he received his clients. Although only forty-five years of age, he seemed to have lost all interest in the fair sex, as though all women were an object of terror for him. The little Duchess de Bernay, who, thanks to speculations conducted by Elias, had been able to pay her debts, one day said to her friend, the Marchioness de Premeur—