Money (Oxford World’s Classics) by Émile Zola

faces. Everyone was standing, the chairs were not visible, and the circle of the kerb market, sitting under the clock, could only be guessed at from a sort of bubbling, a frenzy of words and gestures that had set the air a-tremble. Over on the left the group of bankers engaged in arbitrage, foreign-currency operations, and English cheques * was quieter than the rest, though a queue of people kept passing through to get to the telegraph office. Even the side galleries were crammed with a crush of speculators; and between the columns, leaning against the metal handrails, some were showing their backs or bellies, seeming quite at ease, as if leaning on the velvet of a box at the theatre. The vibration andrumbling, like an engine getting up steam, grew ever louder, making the whole of the Bourse shake like the flickering of a flame. Suddenly he saw the jobber Massias racing down the steps and leaping into his carriage, whereupon the coachman immediately set the horse off at a gallop.
    Then Saccard felt his fists clenching. Violently tearing himself away, he turned into the Rue Vivienne, crossing the road to reach the corner of the Rue Feydeau, where Busch lived. He had just remembered the Russian letter that he needed to get translated. But as he entered, he was greeted by a young man standing by the stationer’s on the ground floor, and he recognized Gustave Sédille, the son of a silk manufacturer in the Rue des Jeûneurs; his father had placed him with Mazaud to study the workings of the world of finance. He smiled paternally at the tall, elegant lad, readily guessing what he was up to, waiting there. Conin’s stationery shop had been supplying notebooks to the whole of the Bourse ever since little Madame Conin had begun helping her husband, big Monsieur Conin, who never came out from the back of the shop; he attended to the manufacturing, while she was forever coming and going, serving at the counter and running errands outside. She was plump and blonde and pink, a real little curly lamb with her pale, silky hair, very pleasant and affectionate and always in good spirits. She was fond of her husband, it was said, but this didn’t stop her from a bit of dalliance when one of the broker customers took her fancy; but not for money, only for pleasure, and once only, in a friend’s house nearby, or so it was said. In any case, the favoured ones must have been both discreet and grateful, for she was still adored and made a fuss of, with no ugly rumours about her. And the stationer’s continued to prosper, it was a real little nest of happiness. As he passed by, Saccard saw Madame Conin smiling at Gustave through the window. Such a pretty little lamb! He felt a delicious sensation like a caress. Then he went up the stairs.
    For twenty years now Busch had occupied a cramped lodging right at the top, on the fifth floor, just two bedrooms and a kitchen. Born in Nancy, of German parents, he had ended up here after leaving his home town, and had gradually widened his extraordinarily complicated business circle, without feeling the need for a larger office, leaving the room on the street side to his brother Sigismond and keeping for himself only the little room overlooking the interior yard, and there the heaps of paper, the files and packages of all sorts, were piledup to such an extent that there was only room for one single chair beside the desk. One of his main concerns was trading in collapsed stocks; he collected them together and acted as intermediary between the Little Bourse of the ‘Wet Feet’ and the bankrupts with holes to account for in their books; so he followed the market rates closely, occasionally buying directly, but mainly being supplied from stocks that were brought to him. Besides moneylending and a covert traffic in jewels and precious stones, he particularly occupied himself with buying up debts. That was what filled his office to bursting-point and sent him to the four corners of Paris, sniffing and