The afternoon offers other kinds of pleasures, and fashionable society, after a pause at the aforementioned tea-houses, repairs either to the races or to some exhibition, or more often in summer time to the polo ground at Bagatelle, where it likes to watch the game. The players belong to the most elegant men about town, and think that the fact of taking part in polo confers on them the reputation of being real sportsmen. The evenings are spent either at a ball or at a reception, but late hours are not now the custom in Paris, and midnight generally sees the fashionable birds in their beds.
There is no serious interest in that kind of existence, no conversations worthy of being so called, except now and then by the greatest of chances. The witty, clever French society, the salons which had such a universal reputation in olden times, have all disappeared with the snows of the many winters that have elapsed since the days when they ruled public opinion, and when their influence was felt everywhere, often in politics and always in literature, which had to conform more or less to their rules, and which would not have cared to offend their good taste. Parisian society has degenerated, it is impossible to deny it, degenerated on account of the many foreign elements that have invaded it, and also on account of the importance which money has acquired, an importance that has taken the place occupied formerly by intelligence, beauty, virtue—all the things which ought to be respected, but which we are apt, now, to forget when we find them associated with that money which is the only god whose supremacy is acknowledged in that Paris which thinks itself the capital of the world, but which is only the purveyor of most of its evil pleasures.
Not only in society as a whole is this laxity of demeanour and conduct discernible, but there is a perceptible loosening of the laws which used to govern legislators and officials. What men would formerly consider as impinging upon their honour is no longer looked at askance, and so things happen which leave an unpleasant memory. This has been observed in certain activities in the financial world.
In an earlier part of these reflections I have spoken of the Panama affair, and in the present chapter I have made some reference to the money-fever that pervades Paris to-day. It is therefore only necessary here to be very brief.
There was a great outcry and a wealth of righteous indignation at the Panama disclosures, but it is difficult to perceive any improvement. There have been scandals of recent date, the echoes of which reverberate even in 1914, and in which just as many people were implicated whose names and social position ought to have put them above sordid intrigues. Paris has always offered an excellent ground for financiers of doubtful moral standing. Every paper has advertisements offering to the innocent public every kind of facility to enable it to lose its money. With the help of a press willing to print anything provided it is paid for at a sufficiently high rate, shares not worth the paper they are printed upon are thrown upon the market, and are eagerly bought by credulous creatures who believe blindly in what their papers tell them, and who look forward to large benefits out of the promised rise of the said shares. That rise never comes, and then sometimes an angry dupe inquires of the police, generally without success, as to the reason why no redress can be obtained. The man in the street holds and expresses emphatic opinions, which if people believed were true would mean that the corruption of Republican government surpasses everything of the kind that ever flourished at the time of the Second Empire, about the venality of which so much has been written and spoken.
Whatever may be said of present-day finance, it is enough to remind the reader of the gigantic frauds which Madame Humbert was able to perpetrate for so many years, of the ease with which Cornelius Herz and Arton were able to escape from the grip of the law, and of the facility which the famous Rochette, the hero of the last financial scandal that France can boast, found in avoiding being imprisoned or obliged to give up any portion of his ill-gotten gains. Rochette succeeded in avoiding every pursuit for a long time, though numerous complaints had been made against him. It was said that the complaints had always been left unexamined under the pretence that they proceeded from people who simply wanted blackmail. It is no secret that several deputies were great friends with that successful financier, during whose reign their stock exchange operations were always profitable.
Rochette is a curious example of the ease with which any man gifted with sufficient impudence can become an important personage. He began his career by being a waiter in a small hotel at Melun, soon tired of it, and went to Paris, where he obtained a situation as office assistant in one of those financial establishments which flourish for a few months and disappear together with their directors into the unknown after a brief and brilliant existence. His experience there helped him considerably in his future life. He learned to avoid mistakes into which a novice in finance would be apt to fall. It is said that he profited by the whispered advice that “in order to be a lucky financier, one must before everything have a deputy in one’s pocket.”
When he became a banker and a director of several large concerns, he frequented the Chamber of Deputies, and even honoured with his attention the Senate. He affected great modesty, but took care to be kept well informed as to the private means of several important personages whose protection he thought might be of use to him in the future, and he managed in an unobtrusive way to make himself indispensable to them.
When the end came it was rumoured in Paris that most scandalous facts were about to come to light, and that the Panama affair would be eclipsed by them. Names were mentioned, at first secretly then quite loudly, until at last they found their way into the newspapers. But, somehow, the inquiry which had been begun dragged on until the public got tired of hearing nothing about it, and made up its mind not to think any more about the affair. In the meantime in prison Rochette was leading the best kind of life possible under the circumstances, had all the comforts which money allowed him to procure for himself, received visits from his numerous friends, and when at last he was released on bail pending his trial, he declared to all those who cared to hear it, that he would not only prove his innocence, but find people willing to trust him with their money again, in spite of his recent misadventures.
And when he was sentenced to several years’ imprisonment, Rochette quietly took a railway ticket and disappeared into an unknown land, which probably is not very far from the scene of his former exploits; sure that no one is going to discover him in the refuge which he had chosen, he is awaiting with the greatest confidence and calm the expiration of the time when proscription will allow him to reappear in Paris, and to begin again the financial career which he was obliged to interrupt for a short period.