House of All Nations

By Christina Stead

House of All Nations is Christina Stead's 1938 gripping portrayal of financial world success. Set in an exclusive European bank in the heady days of the early thirties, Stead weaves a remarkable tale of greedy, devious and shady characters, all brought together by their love of money. The director of the bank, Jules Bertillon, leads these gamblers, crooks and prospectors on a treacherous journey navigating political and natural disasters, and using both to his advantage.
House of All Nations has never been more relevant, as Stead's remarkable work speaks loudly about the modern markets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Apr 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9780522862522

Christina Stead

Christina Stead (1902–1983) was an Australian writer regarded as one of the twentieth century’s master novelists. Stead spent most of her writing life in Europe and the United States, and her varied residences acted as the settings for a number of her novels. She is best known for The Man Who Loved Children (1940), which was praised by author Jonathan Franzen as a “crazy, gorgeous family novel” and “one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century.” Stead died in her native Australia in 1983.

Book preview

The general series of the

Miegunyah Volumes

was made possible by the

Miegunyah Fund

established by bequests

under the wills of

Sir Russell and Lady Grimwade.

‘Miegunyah’ was the home of

Mab and Russell Grimwade

from 1911 to 1955.

Miegunyah Modern Library

Titles in this series

Christina Stead, The Man Who Loved Children

Christina Stead, For Love Alone

Christina Stead, Letty Fox

Christina Stead, House of All Nations

Christina Stead, Cotter’s England (upcoming)

Praise for Christina Stead

‘Christina Stead has the scope, the imagination, the objectivity of the greatest novelists.’

David Malouf, Sydney Morning Herald

‘The most extraordinary woman novelist produced by the English-speaking race since Virginia Woolf.’

Clifton Fadiman, New Yorker

‘I could die of envy of her hard eye.’

Helen Garner, Scripsi

‘Stead is of that category of fiction writer who restores to us the entire world, in its infinite complexity and inexorable bitterness.’

Angela Carter, London Review of Books

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Introduction

Alan Kohler

The title says it all really: House of All Nations was a high-class Paris brothel as well as being the fictional Banque Mercure, aka ‘Bertillon Freres’, of Christina Stead’s fourth novel. She was a Marxist, writing about capitalism and the men in it—there are no women—are financial whores.

Except, that is, for the one who was her lover at the time and future husband, William J Blake. For in writing this epic novel, Stead was putting his work and his colleagues at Travelers’ Bank under a merciless spotlight. It might have been called ‘The Men Who Loved Money’, to paraphrase Stead’s great classic.

Blake’s character in the book is Michel Alphendery, assistant to the principal of the bank, Jules Bertillon, who is, in turn, based on Peter Neidecker, the managing director of Travelers’ Bank, whom both William and Christina worked for while writing novels, before it collapsed in 1935.

Blake/Alphendery is a Marxist too, which is one reason they fell for each so hard while working together at a grain merchant called Strauss & Co. Early on in House of All Nations Bertillon says to Alphendery: ‘You’re just an idealist. The people who can’t make money invent a theory that those who do are thieves. Without us there’d be no money at all. We make it: the smart people. You revolutionaries are crazy.’ But Christina loved that about him.

She did not love his boss though. Stead describes Bertillon/Neidecker as ‘a robber by instinct, sharpshooter of commerce by career, nourished by corruption, (one of his grandfathers served his time), child of his age…’

‘He had only one interpretation of history and politics, an economic one; he saw in altruism the perspicacious self-interest of cunning ambition, imagined that philanthropists are good jelly souls who can’t bear to be afflicted by the sight of the misery of men.

‘He admired the successful and was cheered up by all success of any kind in any sphere of activity, gangsterism, revolution, politics, roguery, or even the arts, because art, he said, was a way to get oneself fed by the rest of mankind without working, or with little work, by reason of an inborn capacity.’

Phew. This book is basically about that man and his behaviour, plus a much more appealing capitalist, Henri Leon, who is based on Christina and William’s earlier, beloved boss at Strauss & Co. He was Alfred Hurst, born Avrom Hersovici in Romania. Stead used to call him the ‘Grand Jew’ and lovingly referred to him in her letters to William as ‘Alfish’.

House of All Nations was published in 1938, preceding The Man Who Loved Children by two years (Stead was a ferocious worker, engaging in what she called writing ‘blitzes’ of thousands of words a day), and she wrote it in Spain during the final years of the Great Depression.

The fascinating and impressive thing about it is that the story is entirely recognisable today.

Bankers are obviously the same throughout history, everywhere in the world, because we could be reading about Lehman Brothers in New York City rather than Bertillon Freres in Paris and the characters could have been working on a US mortgage scheme rather than the Wheat Scheme devised by Henri Leon.

Today’s Wall Street and London bankers, or at least those of the decade up to 2008, are the same amoral, womanising robbers as those populating Stead’s remarkable novel. Today’s ones are sadder and wiser robbers, having been reminded of the fallibility of markets by the credit crisis and Great Recession of 2008, but what Stead reminds us is that through it all, they don’t really change.

We learn from her that financial winters like the one we’ve been experiencing for five years, and the one in which House of All Nations is set, are mere intermissions in life’s rich drama for bankers and most of the time just deliver a whole new set of opportunities to profit. Through Stead, we watch them at play as well as at work; we eavesdrop on their conversations in sometimes mind-numbing detail.

The book is set in 1931-32, when Wall Street was at its nadir, against the background of Hitler’s rise in Germany, Roosevelt’s ascent in the United States and the demise of the Macdonald Government in Britain. Austria’s largest bank, Creditanstalt, had collapsed, throwing the European financial world into a state of panic, Germany was in Depression and in September of 1931, England suddenly went off the gold standard.

In the book, Jules Bertillon manages to keep Banque Mercure going until the end of 1932, when it collapses; in real life Peter Neidecker’s Travelers’ Bank lasts until 1935 before going under.

There are no real heroes and villains in this book, or in Stead’s real life with bankers. Although she paints an affectionate portrait of Hurst as Leon in House of All Nations, she also described Hurst as a ‘mean bastard’ who underpaid Bill Blake and who, in the book, gave Michel Alphendery ‘as low a salary as possible’.

As for Neidecker, Stead paints him (as Bertillon) as a charming rogue. Stead’s biographer Hazel Rowley writes that she and Blake admired Neidecker for his bursts of generosity, his boyish enthusiasm and inventive mind, yet morally and politically he stood for everything that Stead despised. As the final words of the novel put it: ‘he was ‘the chamer who deceived.’ But as she wrote to Blake in a letter: ‘to me he (Neidecker) is quite fascinating.’

In fact throughout her life, says Rowley, Stead would be haunted and obsessed by people who attracted and angered her at the same time, and these were the people on whom she based her main characters.

In the end House of All Nations was a terrible disappointment to Stead. She had been ‘quite sure’ it would sell 10,000 copies and would pay for a trip to Sydney for her and Blake, but Simon & Schuster refused to print more than 3000 copies. Later the Australian critic HM Green described it as ‘neither a popular nor artistic success’, which must have also been a bitter pill to swallow.

But re-reading it today, the book stands up as an astonishing achievement, a sort of financial War and Peace. Like all great novels, the characters are timeless and confirm, once again, that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

List of Characters

Achitophelous Greek merchant

Achitophelous, Mme. His wife

Achitophelous, Henrietta His daughter

Alphendéry, Michel Bank economist

Alphendéry, Estelle His wife

Anna A servant

Ashnikidzé, Mme. Vera A prostitute

Beaubien, Maître Fashionable lawyer

Benezech, Inès de, Comtesse Carrière’s mother

de Marengo

Berthellot, ‘Old’ Jean-Baptiste Chief accountant

Bertillon, Jules Banker

Bertillon, William His brother

Bertillon, Paul and Francis Twin brothers of Jules

Bertillon, Claire-Josèphe Jules’s wife

Bomba, Theodor Jules’s toady

Brookings-Plessis, Lord Tout and sandwich-snatcher

Brossier, Armand Gold clerk

Brouwer, Cornelis Brussels manager

Betty Alphendéry’s cousin, professional family cadger

Cambo, Daniel Enterprising merchant

Campoverde, Prince Julius Client

Cancre Artist

Carrière, Dr. Jacques Antagonist of Jules

Caudal, Dacre-Derek London employee

Claude, Estèphe Bankrupt banker

Constant, Adam Teller, poet

Constant, Suzanne His wife

Cousse, Comtesse Rosy de Packingtown countess

Cristopoulos, Mnemon Customers’ man

Dalbi, Mlle. Lucille Typist

Dame Examining magistrate

Dannevig Bertillon’s Oslo correspondent

Dararat, Fernand Customers’ man

Deville-de-Ré Jules’s secret go-between

Devlin-Smithe Official at Washington

Delisle-Delbe, Princesse Client

Duc-Adam Husband of Toots Legris

Durban, Frank Plowman’s friend

Dvorjine, Ignace Cashier

Eloth, Mme. Mimi Sweetheart of Achitophelous

Empain Hamburg grain dealer

Eyk, Mr. van Dutch gold broker

Etienne Doorkeeper

Ferrure, Mme. de Society figure

Fetterling Raccamond’s man in Amsterdam

Flower, Roger Blue Coast playboy

Frère, Jean Communist writer

Frère, Judith Jean’s wife

Friesz, Maître Amsterdam lawyer

Faniul, Caro de Carrière’s catamite

Gairdner, Abernethy Client

Garrigues Sculptor

Gentil, Mlle. Annette Accountant

Guinédor, Henri Léon’s familiar

Guipatin, Comte Jean de Customers’ man

Guildenstern, Franz Wheat commission agent

Haller, Georg and Julie Clients, rentiers

Huesca, Xesús Maria de Client

Jean Chauffeur

Kézébec Breton poet, client

Koffer, Baron Client

Kratz, Julius Léon’s candleholder

Klotz, Etienne Imaginary employee invented by Jules

Lalmant, Armand Comtesse de Voigrand’s librarian

Lallant, Maître Talented shyster

Ledger, James London solicitor

Légaré, Philippe Neurotic

Legris, François and Anthony Amsterdam brokers

Legris, Toots Heiress

Lemaître, Maître Jurist

Léon, Henri Grain merchant

Lorée, Professor Charles Physicist

Luc, Maître André Fashionable lawyer

Lucé, Comte Hervé Client

MacMahon, Arturito Argentine client

Manray, Jacques Clerk

Marcuzo Banker

Martin, Henri Cashier

Méline, Paul Léon’s friend

McCahey, Eddie Tout for pools

Montdent Belgian richissime

Mouradzian Customers’ man

Munychion Greek philanderer

Nanti, Maître Legris’ lawyer

Newchurch London accountant

Olympe, Maître Addled lawyer

Olonsky, Maître Raccamond’s family lawyer

Paëz, Mlle. Armelle Bank glamour girl

Paleologos Mouradzian’s best account

Parouart, Henri Needy swindler

Partiefine, Marquis de The marrying Casanova

Pentous, Stevie Jules’s crony

Pharion, Fred An actor

Posset Raccamond’s man in Brussels

Plowman, Richard Retired banker

Quiero, Mme. Society medium

Raccamond, Aristide Customers’ man

Raccamond, Marianne His wife

Raoul and Lucien Legitimate and adopted sons of Raccamond

Ras Berri Fashionable medium

Rhys of Rotterdam Grain dealer

Rodolphe, Maître The Wades’ lawyer

Rosenkrantz, Franz Wheat commission agent

Schicklgrüber, Davigdor Zinovraud’s stalking-horse

Silva-Vizcaïno, Pedro de Chilean client

Sluys-Forêt, Mme. de Client

Smith Raccamond’s man in London

Sournois Carrière’s friend, a deputy

Stewart, E. Ralph London broker

Sweet, Thomas Customers’ man for Stewart

Tanker, John, Sr. Client

Thargelion Greek gentleman

Thew, Manrose London employee

Tlqui Pedro’s dog

Treviranus, Paul Broker

Tony and Aline Friends of Claire-Josèphe

Vallat, François Clients’ groom

Vanderallee, Maître Legris’ lawyer

Voulou, Urbain Customers’ man

Voigrand, Comtesse de Richissime

Wade, André and Lucienne Crooked clients

Waters Washington official

Weyman, Mrs. Margaret Léon’s passion

Witkraan, Jan Amsterdam manager

Zinovraud, Lord English magnate

Zurbaran, Zucchero Argentine

List of Firms

Banque du Littoral du Nord Bank friendly to Bertillon

Bertillon Freres, The scene of the story

the Banque Mercure

Claude & Cie. Private bank now bankrupt

Cleat, Placket & Co. American competitors of Bertillon

Crédit French competitor of Bertillon

Czorvocky Bank Private Paris bank run by Marcuzo, relative of the Raccamonds

Five Brothers Simla Bertillon holding company

(Luxemburg) Corporation

Ganz & Genug London brokers employing Schicklgrüber

Green Ray Detective Agency

Interland Finance Corporation Méline’s financing trust

International Quayside Léon’s Swiss correspondents

Corporation

Kirkonhill Trust Méline’s financing trust

Kaimaster-Blés, S.A. Firm of Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern

Lapage, A. & Cie. Decorators suing Bertillon

Leadenhall Securities Guarantee Bertillon English company

Corporation, Ltd.

Ledger, Ledger & Braves London solicitors of Bertillon

Legris & Co. Amsterdam correspondents of Bertillon

Léon & Guinédor, S.A. Léon’s former business

Magen (France), Ltd. English-derived firm favorable to Bertillon

Mulloney & Moonsteyn Brokers participating in pools

Peney & Denari, S.A. Champs-Elysées brokers competing with Bertillon

Strindl & Co. Léon’s London grain associates

Sedeba, Roda, Jones London brokers

Stewart, Murthen & Co. Bertillon’s London brokers

House of All Nations

Scene One: He Travels Fast But Not Alone

They were in the Hotel Lotti in the Rue de Castiglione, but not in Léon’s usual suite. Léon’s medicine case in yellow pigskin lay open, showing its crystal flasks, on a Louis XV chair. The Raccamonds, man and wife, bent over this case and poked at it.

‘He always travels with it: cowardice of the lion before a common cold, eh?’ Aristide reflected.

Marianne sniffed. ‘He’s afraid to lose his money, that’s all.’

The white door opened a few inches and an immense head, with long black hair carefully brushed over a God’s acre of baldness, appeared in the crack. Clear brown eyes sunk in large sockets searched them, forgave them. ‘Hello, Aristide! Just having a bath,’ said the head. ‘Wait a few minutes, will you? Sit down, Marianne. Ring if you want anything. Excuse me.’ The door shut. In a moment, it reopened. ‘Excuse me. How are you, Marianne? Do you want some tea, some—a cockta’, sherry? Ring, on the telephone. I’ll be with you in a minute.’

The door shut. Water was running behind several doors. Marianne fingered the curtains. ‘Why did they give him a suite at the back this time?’

‘Perhaps they’re full up?’

‘So early in spring? No. He must be economizing.’ They waited. The water stopped running and they heard distant splashing. Persuasively came the edged voice of a woman. Marianne pricked her ears and looked at Aristide. ‘Then Mme. Léon is here?’

‘No: one of his women, it must be.’

Léon’s traveling library was on the table: three dictionaries; Cook’s handbook; Winter Sunshine; the Revue de Transylvanie, and Polish Up Your French.

‘She must be taking a bath, too.’

Aristide shook his head vigorously. ‘Léon never lets his women use his bed or his bath: modesty.’

Beside his bed was a faded breast-pocket photograph of a solid woman in ostrich plumes and kid gloves—his mother.

Marianne laughed. ‘Fear.’

In a moment more the door opened and Léon appeared, fully dressed and very fresh. Behind him was a dazzling young woman, a Ukraine blonde, with a long plump face, a complexion of radishes in cream, hair in page curls. Her eyes, large as imperial amethysts, roved in an indolent stare of proud imbecility. For a full minute after the sudden splendor of her entrance, Aristide Raccamond found himself bathed in her glare. In the exalted fashion of Paris whores, she singled out and courted the husband in the presence of the wife. Henri Léon waited for her a moment and then hurriedly introduced her: ‘My friends, Mr. and Mme. Raccamond, old friends, good friends: Mme. Vera Ashnikidzé, an old friend of mine.’

She advanced with studied insulting vanity. ‘Charmed, I am sure.’ Her manners were perfect, that is, she flouted the Raccamonds outrageously, stirred the eels in their souls, while she went through the polite ritual minutely and coaxingly. Léon allowed them another gasp at his swan and then spoke to her in Russian. With a little frown and a lascivious smile, a short cooing broke out of her throat and she passed to the outer door, wallowing in the swelling air, not giving a second glance to the Raccamonds.

Léon came back from shooing her off, with a bashful family smile. ‘What do you think of her, eh? Eh, Marianne?’ He flushed. ‘I value your opinion, Marianne.’

‘Russian, eh?’ asked Aristide, somewhat embarrassed.

‘Very beautiful: I admire your taste,’ croaked Marianne.

Léon made a wry face, recovered himself, expostulated, ‘She’s a lady. I met her with Paul, Paul Méline, with a little friend, a Mme. Something, on the Champs-Élysées, Café du Berry. There were two of them right there at the little table. Méline was with me and I had a bet with him that they wouldn’t speak to us. He got them into conversation and he won. I didn’t pay him yet. He got the other girl. A lady, too.’ He begged, ‘She’s a decent woman, Marianne, married. Have you ever seen a girl like that, Aristide?’ He exulted, checked himself immediately out of respect for Marianne. He grinned at Marianne. ‘Marianne doesn’t mind if you speak up. She knows you’re faithful. Don’t you, eh, Marianne?’ He became earnest. ‘I can tell you one thing about that boy, Marianne. I’ve known him ten, fifteen years, I’ve tempted him.’ He bubbled over with the confession. ‘I’ve tempted him.’ He sobered again. ‘No disrespect to you, Marianne. That was before I met you. Since I met you, never! Never, I swear to you! You’re a fine type of woman. I respect you. But I’ve got to say it: he never fell! He’s faithful to you, Marianne, I’ve got to say that for him.’ He ended with a shade of regret.

Then he laughed, ‘Listen, Aristide, there’s too much talk about how good the pound sterling is. I want to see that banker you were telling me about. Berty? Berty—Bertillon? I’ve got an idea. Never mind—’ He lowered his voice. ‘The other girl says she’s a widow. She’s quite a lady. Méline had breakfast with her. She’s just gone, I think. Poor girl—’ (He was evidently thinking of his own girl again.) He confided to Marianne: ‘A beauty like that. That’s surprising, isn’t it, Marianne? What do you make of it? And she lives in the Rue de Valence, near the Gobelins. Quite poor! Miserable! That shows she’s honest.’ He looked dubious. ‘I saw her room last night: two rooms. Her husband’s a naval lieutenant—comes home every three months. It’s not much. She hasn’t heard from him for three months. She’s had typhoid fever. Some little trouble between them, I guess.’ He said lustily, ‘I should worry! My profit, eh! He, he, my profit.’ He clouded again. ‘I didn’t like her telling me about the typhoid, but she says she comes from Transylvania too. Says she’s a country girl. Shows she’s honest. Eh? Eh?’ He meditated between them, convinced they were absorbed by his affair. ‘She seems unhappy—I don’t want no sympathy tales though. Imagine a girl like that living all alone. Can you?’ He became gigantically sunny. ‘If she does. Well, who knows? Well, where are we lunching, Aristide? How’s the son at Oxford, Marianne? My boy—not satisfied at all. Wants to be an archeologist; what’s that, eh? Old ruins, eh? No good. Well, wait, wait, we’ll see.’

They went towards the door, Léon affectionately grabbing Marianne’s arm and murmuring, ‘What do you advise me to do, eh? You’re a mother. You’ve got brains. What can I do? Well, where shall we—here, here, downstairs, I’ve got some telephoning to do. Here, here, this way.’

They had resigned themselves to Léon ten minutes before. Now, they let him waft them to the lounge, where they were supposed to wait for him respectably while he skirmished with his own business. They drifted to the bar of the hotel, waited, standing, awkwardly. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ said Marianne.

‘What for?’ Aristide asked. ‘We don’t know if Léon is going to drink.’

A handsome, slender, middle-aged South Russian, with that mottled dusky-and-olive complexion often seen in underfed Negroes, leaned across the bar to a young woman whose silver curves resembled those of the chromium. He said in a conversational tone, ‘What beautiful nipples you have, Mademoiselle! I’m mad with enthusiasm. I should love to bite your splendid breasts.’

Aristide started. ‘There’s Paul Méline! Let’s go and speak to him before Henri comes back.’

The barman laughed. ‘I’ll introduce you to Mademoiselle, Mr. Méline, so that you needn’t be so formal: but you must behave.’

The young woman had flushed, but looked at Méline without resentment. No woman had ever looked at Paul Méline with resentment.

‘See how beautiful my wife is,’ said Méline, getting out a leather billfold and extracting a bundle of photographs. ‘Here she is—that’s my little boy.’ Whereas Léon had an old, dull story and began by telling girls that he was unhappy and misunderstood at home, Méline always showed a picture of his wife and raved about his domestic happiness. It put everyone on the right footing and kept him out of scrapes.

‘Good morning, Paul,’ said Marianne. She took the photograph and looked again at the heavy Russian beauty whose dress was dashingly but comfortably draped over her, like a shawl over a grand piano. Meline got up, bowed, ignored Marianne’s plainness, seemed to enter it in large figures in her credit sheet that she was cherished by someone (Aristide) if not by him. Then he took the photograph back rather hastily. It was not intended for Marianne. ‘Let’s have our drinks in the foyer,’ he said. A waiter saw Méline a long way off and floated rapidly nearer.

From their seats in the lounge, waiting for their drinks, they could see Léon at the desk. A black-coated manager with a set face appeared to remonstrate with Léon. Two clerks looked distantly preoccupied till they moved round the corner when they began to smirk in an unpleasant gentlemanly way. The revolving door turned and blew Léon’s voice to them, brisk: ‘No, no, no, no, no. You quoted me one price. I’ve been here for months. You made me one price. I don’t pay another. Next time you tell me beforehand, see.’ His voice faded again. They heard Léon commanding, ‘Send someone to fix up the room. Did Mr. Méline come downstairs? Where, where? Is there a lady waiting for me? Where is she?’

He came springing towards them with his sturdy step, a short giant, five feet three in height, a great skull, bull neck, prizefighter’s shoulders, gorilla’s chest, thick waist and fleshy limbs, in a suit with too swagger a cut. His arms were short and thick above the elbow but of normal size in the forearm, so that they swung as he walked with an exaggerated sweep. Everything he did, even his sitting still, betrayed a violent will. He turned and rushed back to the desk with a swirl of coattails, to give the groom a message. He called peremptorily, ‘Hé, boy!’ Another groom approached with the self-respecting scuttle of a great hotel. When he dispatched the second, both grooms sneered and grinned behind his back. They were taller, and were slender, dark young fellows, wearing white collars and the hotel livery. They thought Léon a bounder and themselves the tailor’s dream. Besides, Léon had an all-in rate at the hotel and did not give any tips.

A pale blonde with large hat, pointed chin, thin toes, thin neck but a good figure, sat and scrutinized them steadily. She also observed Léon with prepossession. Leon’s bossy back, bright shoes, and malacca cane at an angle of forty-five degrees performed at the telephone switchboard. The telephone girl smiled her sweetest. Now he came towards them again. ‘That’s right, Aristide, having a drink? No, none for me. Well, where shall we eat?’

‘Griffon’s is a good place: I’ve been there a lot since you were here last,’ Aristide informed the air.

Léon recovered himself. ‘Yes, yes, is it good? I’ve got a lot to talk over with you, Aristide.’ He turned to them, ‘Excuse us, Marianne. I want to go over a lot of business with your husband. We’ll both make a profit. You don’t mind, do you? I must look around. I’m expecting someone. A lady. I want her to come to lunch—er, I want you to run your eye over her, Marianne. I think a lot of your opinion. A very fine business head. I don’t usually go in for business ladies—’ (the sudden sunrise which was his smile) ‘—one of the smartest I ever met.’ He frowned slightly, shook his head vigorously into his collar, and pulled back his chin with a rebellious pout and a somber roll of the eye. He thrust at Aristide, ‘How’s Bertillon? Jules?’

‘As usual. I’d like you two to meet.’

‘He does, eh?’ he said vaguely. ‘I want to meet him, too. Saw him only a second. Heard about him. Smart feller. Must see for myself. Can’t believe it: a goyisher Kopf. Old Amsterdam family, isn’t it—Antwerp? Family in diamonds, something?’

‘The grandfather. The only non-Jew,’ said Aristide priggishly, ‘in the business.’

Léon’s laughter rumbled in the seven mountains of his mind, ‘And he got out. He, he, he, ho, ho. When can I meet him?’

‘This afternoon. Whenever you like. What hour? I’ll be there.’

‘No, no. Not this afternoon. No. I’ve got some business. Yes. Business. Be occupied until late tonight. This woman’s introducing me to a cotton planter and a man with an oil-royalties business in Mexico. Very smart girl. A cotton-picker, she says: revolutionize the southern states of the U.S.A. I hope it’s one hundred per cent. I don’t trust women’s introductions. I’ll see. At any rate. When can I see Bertillon? Tomorrow morning early? First thing? Eh, early? What time’s he get in, eight?’

‘Nine-thirty,’ said Aristide.

‘All right: late. I’ll be—where is it?—39, Pillet-Will, nine-thirty.’ He wrote it down. ‘All right. Come along, Marianne. Wait, I’ll look round. She must be here. Smart woman. She wouldn’t come upstairs. Nice woman.’

Léon frowned. ‘No, no, no, no: she doesn’t want me to put up—nothing like that. If she does, good-by: nothing doing. But—I’ll see. You’ll give me your opinion, Marianne,’ he said coaxingly, but without conviction.

He bustled into the passage, came round through the winter garden and the writing room, energetically shuttling his haunches, enumerating the women. Halfway, he saw the observant blonde and, hooking his stick over his arm, rushed towards her. She sat still and when he bent over her, smiled a pearly smile. The great impediment in her career was her expression: she looked as calculating as she was. She had a sweet smile and had brought out with care the lights of her soft skin and pale blonde hair, but the gray-blue eyes looked out sharply still from between her pale lashes and the California sun had drawn early crow’s-feet in the corners. Léon held her pear-shaped small hand with its diamond and platinum bracelet for a minute, patted it, devoured the jewels. Méline lost nothing of all this. ‘Will she?’ said Léon’s attitude. ‘Won’t she!’ replied Méline’s.

She rose, and they approached. Aristide stood up. Nothing distinguished him from hundreds of Paris stock-exchange runners but an extensible melancholy, indicated by a gloomy bend of the head, feet firmly placed, and eyes bent down as if he were forever in a struggle, torn between pleasing others and doing his duty to himself. He was a Mediterranean, pallid, with large mistral-shaded eyes, glossy like the polished woods of ornaments: the hairs of his large head had moved aside to form a Suez Canal in the center. His sensually rounded, great-bodied, sulky, sloping frame was almost drowned in a tidal wave of flesh that had struck him two years before, at forty.

‘Mrs. Weyman—good friend,’ said Léon, ‘from Hollywood.’

Marianne took a fancy to Mrs. Weyman while Léon was introducing her. She appeared to be as clever as Marianne herself; physically she was her antithesis.

Léon left. In about a quarter of an hour, he joined them at the table, with a wink at Méline and a smile as big as an oyster in each eye. His mind was elsewhere. He cheerfully threw an observation into the conversation, ‘Alfonso XIII will fly if he loses, eh? It would be pretty cowardly, eh? You expect a man with Alfonso’s salary to show more manhood. But he won’t. They sent a bull into the arena and found it was a cow.’ He laughed, looked round the table, blooming and nodding, like a great peony.

Raccamond was a little more talkative than usual, from the wine and the presence of ‘personalities’ and money. ‘When the bull doesn’t fight, they say, Go home, cow!’ He laughed under his breath. ‘You know,’ he looked at the American, ‘that is the worst thing you can say to a bull.’ His voice became confidential, almost as if they talked about sexual matters. ‘And the worst thing you can say to a man is to call him a femmelette, puny woman: did you know that?’

The restaurant manager came near at this moment and, seeing his client Aristide fat, prosperous, and conversational, he bowed his old head to him, ‘How do you like the sole? Is it good today? I believe so.’ Aristide resented this familiarity, was furious at being interrupted in this rare imaginative vein, and scolded, without looking up, ‘Wait till I’ve tasted it: then perhaps I’ll have something to say.’ The manager moved away with bitterness. Méline threw him a posy of smiles on the way.

Léon was intensely impatient, hardly listening even to what Mrs. Weyman had to say. His ideas had reached a certain heat so that sitting down, eating, thinking, reading the menu, even the appearance of light streaming on palms, even the sound of water splashing and the orchestra playing, were impediments to his will. He wanted to be gesticulating, calling attention to himself in a very grand manner. When they made remarks to him, he drew them into his eyes thickly, with a somber look; his eyes snapped away from them, he drew himself up and looked at them all from under his monumental lids as if they were enemies who would insult him in another minute: but he was ready for them.

‘Have you been to the zoo in London?’ said Mrs. Weyman in passing.

‘Eh, eh? Animals? What is there in animals? Do you like animals?’ he said desperately to Aristide, thrusting his Adam’s apple across his plate. Animals were, God knew, quite another thing from himself and his affairs. ‘No animals!’ He looked round and perceived the waiter serving fish at a side table. He snapped his fingers, ‘Hey, cigars!’ He stuck a large cigar in his mouth and rolled his head around the restaurant, Jovelike. ‘Hey, allumettes!’ he called. The waiter, ruffled, took no notice. ‘Hey, hey’ (snapping his fingers) ‘—I don’t think much of this restaurant,’ said Léon to Méline. ‘Not as good as the Criterium in Antwerp and this—in Paris—not as good as the—you know, you know the—’ He snapped his fingers at Aristide. Aristide cravenly replied, ‘Rôtisserie Ardennaise in Brussels?’

‘No, no Ardennaise! No!’ He looked furiously at Aristide as if he had committed the most stupid mistake. ‘No—hey! Hey! Allumettes!’

‘Rocher de Cancale,’ said Méline, flirting with Mrs. Weyman the while.

Léon noted this and muted his pipe for a moment. ‘That’s it: Rocher de Cancale: not so good! Much better! No taste!’ He forgot his manners and looked round impatiently.

Marianne said sagely, ‘I think they have finer flavors here.’

Léon thundered, ‘No! Allumettes!’ The head waiter was now quite near, side on, endeavoring to make up his mind to obey, trying to hide his chagrin.

Méline brought the scene to an end by saying sweetly to the waiter, ‘Would you kindly bring some matches for Mr. Léon?’

Léon rumbled, ‘Very bad service here—no good, like the other—bad—’ When the cigar began to run through his veins, he melted somewhat and began to take notice of Mrs. Weyman, leaving Marianne to her own devices. He patted Mrs. Weyman’s silky arm and issued an ukase: ‘Paul, Aristide, Paul—Marianne, what do you say? Tonight we’ll make whoopee.’ He blushed and smiled like a small boy, ‘I mean fun, by that.’ He patted Mrs. Weyman’s hand, ‘I feel like making whoopee, we’ll rejoice. We’ve got—’ he hesitated, looking at Marianne, ‘—beautiful—’ he swallowed with embarrassment and cheered up again ‘—beautiful woman, Aristide, you must come, make Marianne come, no excuses, you haven’t got an engagement, have you? Put it off! Put it off! Méline!’

Paul Méline excused himself. Léon frowned for a moment, bit his cigar at the unperturbed Méline. He began clapping and looking round. ‘The bill! The bill!’ A flustered and irate waiter arrived with the bill. He planked down some notes, got up before the women were ready, helped Mrs. Weyman brusquely with her furs and marshaled them all out, like some sultan, decent fellow, who has taken his wives and flatterers to a restaurant for a mild birthday. The women tried to keep each other in countenance. Outside, Léon dropped behind and asked Méline, ‘Did you see him, eh? Achitophelous? He’s in there with Henrietta, his daughter. Pretty girl. Wonder what he’s here for? You know what he’s doing here? Have you seen him?’

Méline looked through the curtained glass which separated the lounge from the fountain court. ‘No. Henrietta? She must be nineteen. She’s a raving beauty, isn’t she ? He must have difficulty keeping her at home at night.’

They both peered like conspirators through the curtain. ‘Maybe he’s come down to fix up a wedding,’ said Léon. ‘I heard he was after Rhys of Rotterdam’s boy. But where’s the mother? Are they on good terms still? My, what a beauty! Let’s get rid of the girls for half an hour and go in, see what he’s up to.’ ‘Mrs. Weyman?’ said Méline. Léon laughed uneasily and looked inquisitively at Méline. ‘I’m looking for romance, you know.’ Méline knew then that Léon really believed in the business Mrs. Weyman had proposed to him. Léon saw his twinkle and clouded a little, ‘I don’t know if I ought to go in there when he’s with his daughter. What’s his game?’

Méline said without malice, ‘I thought you and he weren’t friends since the diamond deal.’

Léon looked at him directly, divining how much he knew, ‘Never mind, never mind!’ he finished vaguely. He went to the desk to ask if Mr. and Mlle. Achitophelous were staying in the hotel. They were. Much pleased, he came back towards the women with Méline.

‘Got to run,’ apologized Méline.

‘Are you going to Bertillon’s?’ asked Henri Léon with sudden suspicion.

‘I might run in. I’ll have a look at what the market is doing. See you soon.’ Méline went off, cheerful in the thought that Léon would spend the entire afternoon wondering what he was doing in the Bertillon Bank and what his game was in Paris.

Léon looked through the glass again at Henrietta Achitophelous. She was a Southern beauty of Assyrian cast, with a long pronounced nose and jaw of perfect mold attached to a small rounded skull, low forehead, brilliant sensual eyes, brows like plumes, a bisque face framed entirely in small black curls. Her shoulders, upper arms, and bust swelled from the slender parts as if formed by the gust of some longing potter. Léon was overcome for a moment by a fragrant intoxicating cloud, peculiar to him when he saw a passionate female beauty. Achitophelous, his great friend and enemy, was dining discreetly in a corner of the farther court. He could see him accidentally between the players in the orchestra, but the cold light from the glass roof fell straight on Henrietta’s face.

Marianne had tried for several years to contact Hollywood through the actors and American moneyed men going and coming in Paris in the stock-exchange houses and in the Parisian theatrical world. While Léon was still footling round the lobby as if he had affairs with invisible beings there, Marianne bent to Mrs. Weyman. ‘Do you like Paris, Madame?’

Mrs. Weyman tossed off a laugh. ‘Oh, I come here every so often: I knew Paris as a young girl. I like it in a way. I have roots everywhere. Or none.’

Her eyes glittered towards Aristide. ‘Are you interested in getting foreign accounts, say in the U.S.A., for your bank? I have many friends among novelists, Hollywood artists, and the planetary rich!’ She laughed a head laugh. ‘They’ve got the big money of today. I can put you in touch certainly with some of them. Paris attracts them. You can do me services. I’d like to meet the head of your bank: I hear he’s the white-haired boy of society here.’ She leaned forward nervously, vibrating with the thought of business.

Aristide was intent: they wandered hand in hand through a desert of stock-exchange conversation. Aristide and Marianne exchanged glances which said, ‘This is a valuable friend: we’ll make up to her.’

They all at once saw Léon dialing numbers out of the tiny memorandum book in which he kept the names of women, houses, and streets. He came out slapping the book into his vest pocket with a satisfied air and approached with a rapid military stagger. He grasped Mrs. Weyman’s arm. ‘You’ve got a beautiful figure, Margaret.’

In the end Léon succeeded in bundling them out of the hotel into a taxi, which sailed off, headed for the Scribe Bar, leaving him unexpectedly standing on the mat. He turned quickly into the hotel. The manager at the desk, watching him, frowned. Léon had sent four girls up to his rooms in twenty-four hours. And on an all-in rate: not even a market tip to the manager.

After Mrs. Weyman left them at the Scribe, Aristide had his notebook in his hand, ‘Hotel Westminster. I’m to have lunch with Mrs. Weyman tomorrow. It looks like business.’ He gave Marianne a marital glance, full-bodied with meaning. Marianne said in a lower tone, ‘Well, I saw Mme. Quiero.’

Aristide frowned a query. She leaned forward. ‘You know, the handwriting expert that Mme. Bertillon uses? She said your handwriting shows you have a difficult temperament but this will be a lucky year for you.’

‘Lucky in money?’

‘Lucky in money, advances, and favors from friends. She said a blond man (that’s Bertillon evidently) will make your fortune this year and a dark-faced man next.’ She hesitated.

‘Well?’

‘She said you run in cycles—always the same, beginning to end. She said what you’re afraid of will come about.’

‘Did she mean war? Perhaps it means the officers of reserve will be called up. Did she use the crystal, too? I don’t believe in them unless they can do that. Did you ask her about stocks and currencies? Did you ask her about the pound and the dollar? I suppose nothing on that—they’re worthless for exact figures—’ He drooped. ‘Who knows if they’re not just police agents? They don’t seem to know much else.’

Marianne recited, ‘What is secret will be found out within the twelvemonth.’

Irritably Aristide knocked on the cab window saying, ‘Can I sell or buy the market tomorrow on information like that?’

Marianne smiled a little, her self-reliant conceited smile. ‘She said you would lose old friends and make new enemies.’

‘You pay the taxi,’ said Aristide. ‘I have no change.’

‘Neither have I: I’m just going in to cash a check.’

Raccamond paid, giving twenty-five centimes for a tip. The chauffeur looked up at the bronze doors of the bank, standing inwards. On each leaf shone Mercury’s staff, in bronze. The chauffeur spat.

* * *

Scene Two: A Check Technique

On one side of the doorway was a brass plate with the name Banque Mercure and on the other side, facing it, the name Bertillon & Cie. s.a.

A woman went into the bank before Aristide. He plunged forward, bowed: ‘Good day, Princesse.’ She smiled cozily, went in chatting. Raccamond followed doggedly. Marianne restrained him in the square entrance and murmured, ‘Who is it? Tell me please, Aristide.’

‘Princess Delisle-Delbe,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve taken over her account. Let me go, Marianne: I must go.’

He unhanded himself and fled after the Napoleonic Princesse, a young widow with a large estate who put plenty of money into the American and English markets. He intercepted her before Urbain Voulou, the elephantine, smiling blond chief customers’ man of the bank, had reached her. The three stood together a little while, until Aristide with his dark atmosphere of earnest insistence drew her eyes away from the smile of Voulou; and Voulou, saying, with good sad simplicity, ‘Things don’t look too good, Princesse: I think things are going down, Princesse,’ withdrew.

Aristide went on as if Voulou had never been there, ‘The figures for the first two months of 1931 show a decline in trade: an increase in tariffs is sure. Mr. Alphendéry, our technician, you know, thinks you should sell about half of your long position in U.S. Steel and Air Liquide. He says he calculates Air Liquide will lose eventually about one-third of its value. There are queer rumors from the U.S.A. The banking situation is bad. We recommend selling short rather than buying.’

The Princesse, settling the pretty little black hat on her black hair, said, ‘Is that Mr. Bertillon’s opinion? I think Mr. Jules Bertillon is a genius in markets. Is he in?’

‘Not yet, Madame. Yes, I believe that is his opinion. He and Mr. Alphendéry are generally of the same opinion.’

‘I just want to sell a foreign check,’ smiled the Princesse, dismissing him. ‘Will you see if Mr. Bertillon is in?’

‘The telephone, Mr. Raccamond,’ said Jacques Manray, the stock-exchange clerk, respectfully.

On the telephone. Aristide heard, ‘Aristide! Are you and Marianne coming out with me tonight? Sure? All right. I’ll be round. H’m. I put off the business dinner. Is—is Bertillon there now? I’m coming round.’

In ten minutes Aristide heard a garble of laughter in the quiet green murmuring entrance hall. Somehow Michel Alphendéry had got downstairs and introduced himself to Henri Léon. They had got on to Spain. Léon, as usual: ‘Because I have confidence: I believe in Spain—don’t you think that counts, eh? Don’t you think that counts? I don’t mind doing business in the country of Garcia or Hernandez: that country appeals to me.’

‘Fermin Galan and Garcia Hernandez,’ Alphendéry emended.

‘The revolution began in Spain already with Fermin and Garcia Hernandez on the border: that’s a great country. I’d put my money there any day, when it quietens down a bit, if those boys look as if they can hold the—reins of power,’ stoutly continued Léon. ‘Any day. My boy!’

Alphendéry began a conversational oration: ‘A country that’s entering into revolution is a great country: stocks fall, landlords sell, dowagers shriek and depart, squires fly, but the land continues to bear in the old, golden way, olives grow, there’s electric light to sell: socialist municipalities need whitewash for the cabins and stones for the roads, there’s medicine, cosmetics, hairwashes, Woolworth dodges to sell. When the permanent moneybags fly, there’s the place for new wealth. When others go like this’ (he stuck out his absurd little hands and shook them violently), ‘that’s the time I move right in.

‘You’re right, Mr. Léon: your instinct’s perfectly right. Supplies are cheap, consumption is never as low as it seems, and a new market is worth a ton of money today. The Spaniards have nothing: then you have everything to sell them. It’s the new colony. Life goes on, doesn’t it? Everyone has an infinite capacity for consumption. Especially the Latins!’

Léon nodded energetically, his face drawn a little from a too fatiguing day and night, his eyes no longer dancing, but serious and absorbed. Aristide saw this close attention to Alphendéry, and approached with his solemn authority. ‘Léon, I—’ Léon waved him aside. ‘Léon—’

‘Wait, wait, Aristide: this is—’ He actually held Aristide off with his large hand, made a half-turn to shut Aristide off from the colloquy: ‘Interested!’ was the word that tumbled out of his mouth.

Alphendéry went on instantly, ‘Life goes on! Life went on under the corruption of the Roman Empire. These ages look like acts of a historical drama to us, but they were sewed together by the little Andrés and little Maries who set up house together, had children and bought gadgets for the home all through the Dark Ages and today. A few go revoluting but the girls buy rouge to attract the boys and the mothers look for cheaper zippers to put on François’ pants.’

Restlessly Léon egged him on to the more serious part: ‘And, yes—and—but the—Coty—’

Joyfully, Alphendéry took him up, ‘Life went on under Attila, went on in the Dark Ages. These will be the ages of night looking back from the days to come, but we’re alive: we can’t go dead dog. This is a new Napoleonic age, a new Commune age. Revolution! Why, it always produces new markets! All new money is made through the shifting of social classes and the dispossession of old classes. Today we have it. Property is changing hands, losing its old owners all the time. This is the time to move in.’

Léon rolled a fierce look round the people scattered near, wanting to get Alphendéry away to privacy.

At this moment, a fragile, tall, elegantly dressed young man, with a bowler hat, a fur collar, and an antique Dutch face, with long nose tip biting the air, approached nonchalantly.

‘Jules,’ caroled Alphendéry, ‘meet Henri Léon, a grain—’

‘We’ve met,’ said Léon.

‘Hullo, Léon,’ said Jules Bertillon. ‘What have you been saying, Michel? That now is the time to make money? It is.’

‘I was saying that few old fortunes survived the war: you must make new money to swim through a social crisis. The old goes rusty.’

‘Like the General Strike,’ said Léon. ‘In the General Strike I—did I ever tell you that story, Aristide? I must tell it to you, Alphen: the same thing. Everyone sitting round wrapped in their coats like corpses, waiting for the last day, red flag over London: I get an idea—I get an idea.’ He looked around, for some spot to talk business in.

Jules said, ‘Every crisis is a storm of gold: most people run under an awning to get away from it. Do you know how to make money, Léon? If you do, spill it. Here we are sitting in a shower of gold and nothing to hold up but a pitchfork!’

There was a wash of laughter, but Léon stood and looked at Bertillon, now moving harmoniously towards the stairway, pale marble and green-carpeted. Léon looked as if he had been faintly smacked. In another moment he was walking after him. He took two steps, then turned and called, ‘Mr. Michel? Mr.—er—er—are you coming up?’ Alphendéry started and hurried after him. Aristide Raccamond strung out last, following the other three upstairs, dubious, but on the job. ‘Mr. Alphen?’ called Léon.

‘Alphendéry,’ said Alphendéry, ‘Alphendéry.’

‘Nice furnishings—’ said Léon ‘—looks good. Respectable: looks businesslike but elegant.’

‘Jules Bertillon did it all himself. He has superb taste! He always says that money should live in the Ritz-Carlton.’

‘Did he say that?’ inquired Léon hastily, in a confidential tone. ‘A nice feller, has charm, hasn’t he? Eh? He has charm. Gets people in.’

‘Oh, the bank,’ said Alphendéry easily, laughing, ‘is a sort of cosmopolite club for the idle rich and speculators of Paris, Madrid, Rio, Buenos Aires, New York, London, and points farther east and west. And Mr. Bertillon gives the best exchange rates in France. People appreciate that courtesy—it’s the one thing that tells in a foreign city. A little paring of the rate of exchange and the client has big confidence.’

‘Right,’ said Léon, settling back his head and eying the back of Alphendéry’s small, square head with augur look. ‘And charm.’

‘Charm is a cunning self-forgetfulness,’ confided Alphendéry.

‘I like the looks of it,’ declared Léon.

They followed Jules into his own room, a large room overlooking the general entrance and the cashiers’ windows and booths downstairs. It was furnished grandly, if somewhat gloomily, in the best Amsterdam taste, with walnut paneling and bookcases, a beautiful French desk, a high-backed carved Italian chair in which Jules sat, flanked by two branched upright Italian bronze candlesticks, six feet high. Facing the desk and Jules’s great chair were three large, deep, and superlatively soft green armchairs. In those chairs people were at their very best. The walls were olive green: on the green carpet were several Persian rugs. The glass-cabinet bookcases lining two walls were empty except for several rows of blind backs.

‘Sit down,’ said Jules. At Aristide, who entered with some diffidence, he frowned. ‘Do you want something?’ Alphendéry interposed, ‘Baron Koffer’s man will be downstairs at two-thirty: you know him, don’t you?’ Aristide started and hurried out.

‘The great Belgian financier?’ inquired Léon hotly.

‘Yes.’

‘You better go and see him,’ Jules said crisply to Alphendéry.

‘He’s not there, yet,’ Michel explained. Jules smiled coolly. ‘I thought you said he was. Sit down, Michel. Mr. Léon, I want you to go over with Mr. Alphendéry the idea you have about the pound. Mr. Alphendéry is my exchange expert.’

‘Yes?’ Léon looked at Alphendéry with interest. ‘What do you think of sterling? Will it hold? Will it go off?’

‘How long ahead are you looking?’

‘This year? What’s the secret of sterling? Do you think it will go off? I figure—sterling, gold bloc, Belgian franc, Swiss franc, French franc. What’s the secret? That’s just my instinct.’

‘Perfect,’ laughed Alphendéry. ‘You mean, will the French withdraw the balances they have in London? Will it pay them to, or will it pay them to hold them there as permanent blackmail? Can they afford cheaper wages in England?’

Léon poured out a confusion of ideas, declared to Jules, ‘I think sterling will go off this year, or early next. That’s what they think in Amsterdam. (It doesn’t matter who thinks it, you can always make money.) It’s an open secret that can’t be used. They will hold off. They have to use money. You can think money is going off, but you’ve got to do business. You can’t hold up payments: if you don’t pay, they only wait to pounce on you—credit’s no good. In the ordinary course of business you pass through checks on Saturday morning for cashing on Monday. Nothing suspicious in that. Suppose it goes off over the week end? Eh? I’ve got an idea. I want to know, Bertillon: I have a technique. Infallible. Will you endorse me? I give you ten per cent.’

‘Do you get it, Michel?’ asked Jules offhandedly.

Alphendéry leaned forward, his eyes glossy with his personal passion, exposition, ‘Certainly. Mr. Léon will pass through checks selling sterling for X francs or X guilders, say. To prove he is not selling short, which requires margins, you, Jules, will give your guarantee that Léon actually holds in your bank the amount of sterling he is selling. Léon can say, I have sterling credits to my account in the Bertillon Bank in Paris and can turn over the sterling at a moment’s notice. If they call you on the telephone, Bertillon, you say the sterling’s here. You will give the accommodation to Léon, in that case, Jules. If necessary, you can transfer the amount of sterling necessary to Léon’s name, under release from him, on the books.’

‘Check technique,’ said Léon.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Jules impatiently. ‘You better open an account here, as from today, though, so that it looks O.K.’

‘Yes,’ Alphendéry answered Jules. ‘A couple of thousand francs: nominal.’

‘I can do it anyhow, I think,’ said Léon, ‘but if you want do it that way, I’ll let you know. I have an arrangement with—a friend, with—you know, Grosshändler in Switzerland, of the International Quayside Corporation? Him. He knows everything that goes on in Zurich, Geneva. The Federated Cantons Bank knows everything a couple of days before. They generally go off over a week end. Now if I can know on Friday, say, or even early Saturday morning—you see—I ring up, say, anyone, Meyer, I say, ‘Wolff, listen, Brandenberger, I’m selling sterling, are you a taker?’ ‘I know what you’re doing, Léon,’ he says, ‘but I need the sterling, anyhow: I can’t help it and perhaps you’re wrong.’ I sell, he takes the check: Monday morning, the banks give me half an hour—I’m in, say it will go off twenty francs in the pound over the week end. Say, I have a hundred thousand sterling—it’s a little profit, but it will cover any losses in a bad grain year.’

‘If you get the information from this Grosshändler,’ said Jules.

‘Oh, we’re thick, I’m in deep with him.’

‘But do you think sterling will go off this year?’ queried Jules. ‘I don’t.’

‘If I’m wrong, I don’t lose anything: I have my sterling, I sell it, I have my francs: a few francs one way or another. It’s—certain, certain: it’s one of the few safe investments!’ He laughed round at them. ‘Well, what do you think of my check technique?’

‘You ring me up, Léon, and we’ll fix it up,’ promised Jules.

Alphendéry went out with Léon. Generously Léon said, flushed with having spoken, ‘You get percentages out of accounts here, don’t you, Alphen-phendéry?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘I’ll put in a small account, how much? Fifty thousand francs! You’ll get the percentage: there you are, that’s what I think of you,’ said Léon, beaming into Alphendéry’s face.

‘Jules will be anxious to work in with you,’ said Alphendéry modestly. ‘Don’t worry about the percentage. I work here—I work here on a different basis, do you see?’

Léon’s face fell. ‘He wouldn’t give it to you? I don’t put it in unless you get a percentage.’ He became absolute, ‘No, I don’t put it in otherwise—I want you to get it, my boy. That’s to show friendship. I can sense we’re going to work together.’ He leaned back and stared at Alphendéry’s forehead, seriously. ‘You’re a—’ he shut his mouth strictly. ‘We’ll do business, my boy.’ He patted Alphendéry on the back and began to stride towards the stairs. He stopped at the stairs for Alphendéry to catch up a step. He went downstairs impulsively and when they reached the ground floor, he planted himself in the fairway looking at the well-dressed crowd of clients. They were cosmopolitans interested in speculation in the bourses of the world; in the stock and commodity markets as well as in exchanges.

‘What do they take positions in?’ asked Léon, staring quickly at them all: ‘Any grain, maize, barley: or just shares? What shares? American ? There’s no money, only trouble in America now. England, eh? The market’s up. What do they come here for? Who’s Bertillon? Has he got big money? I hear he hasn’t so much. A one-man bank. There’s a brother, eh, eh?’

‘They’re here,’ laughed Alphendéry, ‘because they want big profits in a little time: this is the same crowd you’ll see at Biarritz and at Deauville and at Le Touquet. This is the International of the Upper Ten Thousand. Some of them believe in Jules’s luck. So do I. Some of them hope to divide the profits of his careless audacity. So do I. Then he has branches abroad: they keep their accounts and clip their coupons there and avoid income tax here.’

Léon’s eyes had brightened, his voice dimmed. ‘Yes, is that so, is that so? Some lad, eh? Smart boy. Has he got brains, eh? He’s a genius?’

‘I think so.’

Léon nodded and considered Alphendéry. He nodded again to himself.

‘A mercurial money crowd,’ laughed Alphendéry. ‘It flows, it registers the temperature, it never freezes.’

Léon’s great laugh: ‘You’ll do, my boy, you’ll do.’ He looked around. ‘Beautiful: he has taste: it’s the finest bank in Paris, and little —you could hold it in the hollow of your hand. A hollow jewel. Perhaps not hollow, eh?’

‘Not hollow for Jules or us: it represents hollowness,’ said Alphendéry with a touch of sorrow.

Léon started. ‘How?’

Alphendéry said, ‘You know the lines of Shelley?

There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built

Upon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave

For bread, and blood and gold: Pain, linked to Guilt,

Agitates the light flame of their hours,

Until its vital oil is spent or spilt.

There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers

And sacred domes; each marble-ribbèd roof,

The brazen-gated temples, and the bowers

Of solitary wealth—’

Alphendéry’s resonant and variable voice gave the lines full beauty. Léon had swung round slowly to face him and come close to him, like a freighter swinging at its mooring in a harbor. Léon’s face had softened and his eyes had misted.

‘The tower of famine: for the people, you mean? Is that what he meant? A poet. My boy, if I don’t see the people win, I’ll go to my—I’ll see the end of my life, unhappy. I don’t care if they expropriate me. I used to be a poor boy and stand in the snow waiting for a plate of charity soup. I don’t like that to go on.’

Alphendéry bit his lip, nodded his head, his eyes shining meanwhile. After a moment, Léon said, ‘So they’re all society butterflies, eh? And Bertillon’s a bit of a playboy, I hear. Doesn’t he give a cup for racing, or something? Does he spend money?’

‘Jules is as full of ideas as a hive of bees. He goeth along like a dancer.’

‘A dancing hive? And honey? Honey on thorns, eh?’ He laughed, his eyes showered merriment. ‘Alphéry—Alphendéry—you’re an inspiration to me. You ought to come and see me up in Amsterdam soon. I’d like to ask you about my investments. If you—can give me—you can advise me, perhaps. I’ve got Argentine bonds—you’ll tell me. Not now. I’ve got fifty thousand sterling in South American bonds.’

‘Sell them,’ said Alphendéry promptly.

‘You’re a bear?’

‘I’m a bear on everything. So is Jules,’ said Alphendéry. ‘That’s our opinion on the world.’

Léon patted him on the arm with finality. ‘I think you’re right, my boy: by James, if I don’t think you’re right. Well, come up and see me. We’ll work together.’ He looked at Alphendéry’s forehead seriously again, stuck on his hat, and strutted valiantly out. He jumped into a taxi, stuck a cigar into his mouth, and gave an address. Closing the door, he peered into the obscurity of the twilight entrance to the bank, and waved gaily to Alphendéry.

Aristide Raccamond came up with an air of portent to the straddling Alphendéry and said, ‘I just saw the agent for the Baron Koffer. If you will talk to him and give him some views on the market I think I’ll be able to swing the account: at least, he’s promised to make a deposit here of bonds and gold.’

‘What good is that? You mean, as collateral?’

‘No, no: just to give us prestige. We would have to give a receipt for the numbers of the bonds and the gold: but if we give him the accommodation of our vaults here, he might swing us some of his business later on. We ought to give him a small commission.’

‘For what? Is he going to give us stock-exchange orders? Is he keeping a drawing account here? No. It’s not business. I mean, we’ll accept the gold and bonds if he wants, for the sake of the prestige and of having the Baron’s man about, but no commission unless he gives commission business. That’s flat.’

Aristide frowned. At the same moment, Jules Bertillon appeared on the gallery above, walking from his own room towards the staircase and casting an eye over the bank and its human contents as he did so. When he got downstairs, Aristide Raccamond was sitting at the desk which lay between the staircase and the front door. Alphendéry was standing near the front door observing the transactions at the tellers’ windows.

Jules Bertillon stood still at the desk and looked at Aristide Raccamond, who raised his eyes and said, ‘You see, Mr. Bertillon, I am here.’

‘How did you get here?’ said Jules without anger. ‘I told you I didn’t want you working for me.’

Alphendéry, observing the conversation, approached.

‘Ask Mr. Alphendéry and Mr. William Bertillon, your brother,’ said Raccamond, most seriously, neither impudence nor triumph showing in his great solemn face, only a great sense of personal dignity and worth.

Alphendéry began to explain with hurried, light accents, ‘You see, Mr. Bertillon, this man was brought in to us by the Comte de Guipatin and by Légaré. The Comte de Guipatin vouched for his moneymaking ability. He has a list