intermediary, without allowing his own name to appear, and treble his outlay, thanks to the knowledge he had picked up in the corridors of the Hotel de Ville, and to his pleasant relations with certain eminent persons of influence. The reason he started when Aunt Elisabeth told him where the house was situated was because this was right in the centre of the design for a thoroughfare which had not yet been talked of outside the private office of the Préfet of the Seine. This thoroughfare would be swallowed up entirely by the Boulevard Malesherbes. It was an old scheme of Napoleon I, which they were now thinking of carrying out, “in order,” said the serious people, “to give a normal outlet to districts lost behind a labyrinth of narrow streets on the slope of the hills that mark the outskirts of Paris.” This official phrase did not, of course, admit the interest the Empire possessed in making the money dance, in organising those redoubtable excavations and building operations which gave the labouring classes no time to think. Saccard had ventured one day to consult, in the préfet’s room, that famous plan of Paris on which “an august hand” had traced in red ink the principal thoroughfares of the second network. Those blood-red pen-strokes cut even deeper gashes into Paris than did Saccard’s hand. The Boulevard Malesherbes, which pulled down some magnificent houses in the Rue d’Anjou and the Rue de la Ville-l’Évêque, and necessitated a large number of levelling works, was to be one of the first laid out. When Saccard went to look over the building in the Rue de la Pépinière, he thought of that autumn evening, of that dinner he had taken with Angèle on the Buttes Montmartre, during which, at sunset, so thick a shower of louis d’or had fallen on the Madeleine quarter. He smiled; he pictured to himself the radiant cloud as bursting over his own courtyard, and that he was on his way to pick up the twenty-franc pieces.
While Renée, luxuriously installed in the flat in the Rue de Rivoli, in the centre of that new Paris, one of whose queens she was destined to become, thought out her future dresses and took her first steps in the life of a woman of fashion, her husband was devoutly maturing his first great scheme. He began by purchasing from her the house in the Rue de la Pépinière, thanks to the intermediary of a certain Larsonneau, whom he had come across ferreting like himself in the offices of the Hotel de Ville. Larsonneau, however, had been stupid enough to allow himself to be caught one day when he was prying into the préfet’s private drawers. He had set up as an agent at the end of a dark, damp court at the foot of the Rue Saint-Jacques. His pride, his greed suffered torments there. He found himself in the same position as Saccard before his marriage; he too, he would say, had invented “a five-franc piece machine”; only he lacked the necessary funds to turn his invention to profit. A hint was sufficient to enable him to come to an understanding with his former colleague; and he did his part of the work so well that he obtained the house for one hundred and fifty thousand francs. Renée was already, before many months had elapsed, in great need of money. The husband did not appear in the matter except to authorize his wife to sell. When the sale was effected, she asked him to invest a hundred thousand francs for her, handing it to him with full confidence, so as no doubt to touch him and make him close his eyes to the fact that she was keeping fifty thousand francs back. He smiled knowingly; he had reckoned on her squandering her money; those fifty thousand francs, which were about to disappear in jewellery and lace, were calculated to bring him in cent. per cent. He carried his honesty so far, so well satisfied was he with his first transaction, as really to invest Renée’s hundred thousand francs and hand her the share certificates. His wife had no power to transfer them; he was certain of being able to lay his hand on them if ever he happened to want them.
“My dear, this will do for your dress,” he said gallantly.
When he had obtained possession of the house, he had the ingenuity to have it sold over again, twice in one month, to men of straw, increasing the purchase price each time. The last purchaser paid no less than three hundred thousand francs for it. Meanwhile Larsonneau alone appeared as the representative of the successive landlords, and worked the tenants. He pitilessly refused to renew the leases unless they consented to a formidable increase of rent. The tenants, who had an inkling of the approaching expropriation, were in despair; they ended by agreeing to the increase, especially when Larsonneau added, with a conciliatory air, that this increase should remain a fictitious one during the first five years. As for the tenants who were unaccommodating, they were replaced by creatures who received the apartment for nothing and signed anything they were asked to; in their case there was a double profit: the rent was raised, and the compensation due to the tenant for his lease went to Saccard. Madame Sidonie was so good as to assist her brother by setting up a pianoforte-agency in one of the shops on the ground-floor. It was then that Saccard and Larsonneau, seized with the fever of gain, went rather too far: they concocted business-books, they forged letters, so as to establish a trade in pianos on an immense footing. They scribbled away together for many nights. Worked in this fashion, the house trebled in value. Thanks to the last sale, thanks to the increase in the rents, to the fictitious tenants, and to Madame Sidonie’s business, it was in a condition to be valued at five hundred thousand francs before the compensations commission.
The machinery of expropriation, of that powerful piece of mechanism that for fifteen years turned Paris topsy-turvy, breathing fortune and ruin, is of the simplest. So soon as a new thoroughfare is decided upon, the surveyors of roads draw up the plan in separate sections and appraise the buildings. As a rule, in the case of houses let in apartments, they add up the total amount of the rents, after making enquiries, and are thus enabled to fix upon the approximate value. The compensations commission, consisting of members of the Municipal Council, always make an offer lower than this sum, knowing that the interested parties will claim more, and that there will be a concession on both sides. When they are unable to come to terms, the case is taken before a jury, which decides authoritatively upon the offer of the town and the claim of the evicted landlord or tenant.
Saccard, who had remained at the Hotel de Ville for the decisive moment, had for one instant the impudence to wish to have himself appointed when the works of the Boulevard Malesherbes were begun, and himself to appraise his house. But he was afraid by so doing to paralyze his influence with the members of the compensations commission. He caused one of his colleagues to be chosen, a young man with a sweet smile, called Michelin, whose wife, an adorably pretty woman, occasionally called to apologize to her husband’s chiefs for his absence, when he stayed away through ill-health. He was often ill. Saccard had noticed that the pretty Madame Michelin, who glided so humbly through the half-closed doorways, was omnipotent; Michelin obtained promotion at each illness, he made his career by taking to his bed. During one of his absences, when he was sending his wife almost every morning to the office to say how he was getting on, Saccard twice met him on the outer boulevards, smoking a cigar with the expression of rapt affection that never left him. This filled him with sympathy for this good young man, for that happy couple, so practical and so ingenious. He admired all “five-franc-piece machines” that were properly worked. When he had got Michelin appointed, he went and called on his charming wife, expressed a wish to introduce her to Renée, talked before her of his brother the deputy, the brilliant orator. Madame Michelin understood.
From that day forward her husband kept his choicest smiles for his colleague. The latter, who had no desire to take the worthy fellow into his confidence, contented himself with being present, as though casually, on the day when the other proceeded to value the house in the Rue de la Pépinière. He assisted him. Michelin, who had the most insignificant and the emptiest head imaginable, followed the instructions of his wife, who had urged him to satisfy M. Saccard in all things. He suspected nothing, moreover; he thought the surveyor 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 from his colleague’s hands under his eyes without his even having time to verify the figures which the latter read aloud. Larsonneau was present, and treated his accomplice as a stranger.
“Come, put down five hundred thousand francs,” Saccard ended by saying. “The house is worth more…. Hurry up; I believe there is going to be a change in the staff of the Hotel de Ville, and I want to talk to you about it, so that you may let your wife know beforehand.”
The business was thus carried through. But he still had fears. He dreaded lest the sum of five hundred thousand francs should seem rather excessive to the compensations commission for a house which was well known to be worth at most two hundred thousand.