Chapter IX: Excelsior! (2)

Marcelle's eyes now sparkled with gratitude. 'Oh, Monsieur Saccard, how kind you are!' she exclaimed. And, addressing her husband, she added: 'You see, you big silly, that Monsieur Saccard has not eaten us!'

Yielding to an irresistible impulse, he threw his arms round her neck and kissed her, as though to thank her for being more energetic and skilful than himself in these material difficulties which paralysed his energy.

'No, no!' said Saccard, when the young man finally pressed his hand, 'the pleasure is mine; it is very pleasant to see you love one another so much. Go home, and be easy.'

In a couple of minutes his brougham, which was waiting for him, conveyed him to the Rue Feydeau, through muddy Paris, amid the jostling of umbrellas and splashing of puddles. But once upstairs he rang in vain at the dirty old door, on which was a plate bearing the inscription '_Disputed Claims_' in big letters. It did not open, there was no sound within, and he was on the point of going away, when, in his keen vexation, he shook it violently with his fist. Then a halting step was heard, and at last Sigismond appeared.

'What! it is you! I thought that it was my brother, who had come up again and forgotten his key. I never answer the door myself. Oh, he won't be long, and you can wait for him if you wish to see him.'

With the same painful, unsteady step he returned, followed by Saccard, into the room which he occupied overlooking the Place de la Bourse. It was still quite light at that height above the mist, whence the rain was pouring into the streets. The room was frigidly bare with its little iron bedstead, its table and two chairs, and its few shelves of books. A small stove stood in front of the chimney-piece, and the fire, carelessly looked after, forgotten, had just gone out.

'Sit down, monsieur,' said Sigismond, 'my brother told me that he was only going out for a moment.'

Saccard declined the proffered chair, however, and stood looking at him, struck by the progress which consumption had made in this tall, pale fellow with child-like eyes--eyes with a dim, dreamy expression, passing strange under a forehead which seemed typical of energy and obstinacy. His long wavy hair fell on either side of his face, which had become extremely sunken and emaciated, elongated too and drawn, as it were, towards the grave.

'You have been ill?' remarked Saccard, at a loss what else to say.

Sigismond made a gesture of complete indifference. 'Oh, as usual,' he replied. 'This last week hasn't been a good one on account of the wretched weather. But I get on very well all the same. I no longer sleep, you know, so I can work, and if I have a little fever, why, it keeps me warm. Ah, there is so much to be done!'

He had again seated himself at his table, on which a book in the German language was lying open. 'I must apologise for sitting down,' said he; 'I remained up all night in order to read this book, which I received yesterday. A masterpiece, yes, the fruit of ten years' labour, ten years of the life of my master, Karl Marx. It is the treatise on Capital which he promised us so long ago. So now we here have our Bible.'

Saccard took a step forward to glance inquisitively at the book, but the sight of the Gothic characters at once repelled him. 'I shall wait until it is translated!' he exclaimed, laughing.

The young man shook his head as though to say that even when translated the book would be understood by few excepting the initiated. It was not a work of propaganda. But how wonderfully logical it was, with what a victorious abundance of proofs it showed that existing society, based upon the capitalistic system, would inevitably be destroyed! The ground clear, they would be able to rebuild.

'Then this is the sweep of the broom?' asked Saccard, still jesting.

'In theory, yes,' answered Sigismond. 'All that I one day explained to you, the whole evolution, is in these pages. It only remains for us to carry it out. And you are blind if you do not see the progress which the idea is already making every hour. Thus you, who, with your Universal, have stirred up and centralized hundreds of millions during the last three years, you really don't seem to suspect that you are leading us straight to Collectivism. I have followed your enterprise with passionate interest; yes, from this quiet out-of-the-way room I have studied its development day by day, and I know it as well as you do, and I say that you are giving us a famous lesson; for the collectivist State will only have to do what you are doing, expropriate you in bulk when you have expropriated the smaller capitalists in detail. And in this wise will be realised the ambition of your huge dream, which is, I understand, to absorb all the capital in the world, to become the one bank, the one general warehouse of public wealth. Oh, I admire you very much; I would let you go on if I were the master, because you are beginning our work, like a forerunner of genius!'

Thereupon he smiled, with the pale smile of an invalid, as he noticed the attention of his questioner, who was very surprised to find him so familiar with the affairs of the day, and also very flattered by his intelligent praise. 'Only,' continued Sigismond, 'on the day when we expropriate you in the name of the nation, substituting for your private interests the interests of all, and transforming your great machine for sucking the blood of others into the regulator of social wealth, we shall begin by abolishing this.'

He had found a sou among the papers on his table and was holding it up between two fingers.

'Money!' exclaimed Saccard, 'abolish money! What fantastic madness!'

'We shall abolish coined money. Remember that metallic money will have no place, no _raison d'être_ in a collectivist State. For purposes of remuneration we shall replace it by our labour notes, and if you look upon it as a measure of value we have another which will fulfil the same purpose, that which we shall obtain by determining the average day's labour in our workshops. This money, which masks and favours the exploitation of the workman, which enables people to rob him, by reducing his salary to the minimum sum which he must secure to avoid dying of hunger--this money must be destroyed. Is it not something frightful, this possession of money which creates a multitude of private fortunes, which prevents free and fruitful circulation, which begets scandalous sovereignties, makes a few men masters of both the financial market and social production? Each of our crises, all the anarchy of the time, come from that source. Money must be killed--yes, killed.'

Saccard grew angry, however. What! no more money, no more gold, no more of those shining stars which had illumined his life! In his eyes wealth had always taken the shape of bright new coins, raining like a spring shower amid the sunbeams, falling like hail upon the ground, and strewing it with heaps of silver, heaps of gold which were stirred with a shovel in order that one might have the pleasure of seeing them shine and hearing them jingle. And that gaiety, that incentive to effort and life, was to be abolished!

'It's idiotic, that is,' said he; 'yes, idiotic. It will never be done, you hear me.'

'Why never? Why idiotic? Do we use money in family life? In family economy you only find common effort and exchange. So of what use will money be when society shall have become one large family, governing itself?'

'I tell you that it is madness! Destroy money! Why, money is life itself! There would be nothing left, nothing!'

He was walking up and down, beside himself. And in this fit of passion, as he passed the window, he gave a glance outside as though to make sure that the Bourse was still there, for perhaps this terrible fellow had blown it down with a breath. But yes, it was still there, though very vague and dim in the depths of the twilight, looking, in fact, as if it were melting away under the rain, like a pale phantom Bourse on the point of vanishing into grey mist.

'However, it is stupid of me to discuss such a thing,' resumed Saccard. 'It is impossible. Abolish money! I should like to see you do it.'

'Bah!' murmured Sigismond, 'everything undergoes transformation and disappears. We already saw the form of wealth change when the value of land declined, and real estate, fields and forests became as nothing by the side of funded property, investments in State securities and industrial stocks and shares. And now this form of wealth is smitten with premature decay. Money was long considered to be worth its five per cent. per annum, but such is no longer the case; its value is steadily falling, so why should it not at last disappear, why should not a new form of wealth govern social relations? It is this wealth of to-morrow that our labour notes will bring.'

He had become absorbed in the contemplation of that sou, as if he dreamt that he held in his hand the last sou of the past ages, a sou that had outlived the defunct old time society. How many joys and how many tears had worn away the humble coin!

Then, growing sad as he thought of the seeming eternity of human desires, he resumed in a gentle voice: 'After all, you are right: we ourselves shall not see these things. It will take years and years. Can we even know whether the love of others will ever have sufficient vigour to take the place of egotism in the social organisation? Yet I had hoped for a nearer triumph. Ah, I should so much have liked to witness the dawn of justice!'

For a moment the bitterness born of the disease from which he suffered broke his voice. He who, in his denial of death, treated it as if it were not, made a gesture as if to brush it aside. And yet he was already resigned.

'I have performed my task,' said he; 'I shall, at all events, leave my notes, if I have not time to prepare the complete scheme of reconstruction which I dreamed of. The society of to-morrow must be the ripe fruit of civilisation, for if we do not retain the good features of emulation and control all will collapse. Ah, how clearly I can see that society even now, complete, such as I have managed to construct it after labouring through so many nights! All contingencies are foreseen; everything is solved; sovereign justice, absolute happiness, are ensured at last. It is all there--on paper, mathematical, final----'

His long, emaciated hands were straying among the papers on his table, and he grew quite excited, dreaming of the many milliards reconquered for humanity and equitably divided among all; of the joy and health which with a stroke of the pen he restored to suffering mankind, he who no longer ate, who no longer slept, but, without a want, was slowly dying in that bare room.

A harsh voice, however, suddenly made Saccard start. 'What are you doing here?'

It was Busch, who had just come back, and who in his perpetual fear that his brother might be sent into a fit of coughing by being made to talk too much was darting at his visitor the oblique glances of a jealous lover. However, he did not wait for Saccard's reply, but in a maternal, almost despairing fashion began to scold. 'What! you have let your fire go out again. Is there any sense in it, on such a cold damp day as this!'

And, already bending on his knees, despite the weight of his huge frame, he began breaking up some small wood and relighting the fire. Then he went to fetch a broom, swept up the litter, and saw to the medicine which his brother had to take every two hours. And it was only when he had prevailed on him to lie down on the bed to rest that he again became tranquil.

'If you will step into my office, Monsieur Saccard,' said he.

Madame Méchain was now there, seated on the only chair there was. She and Busch had just been down to make an important call, with the complete success of which they were delighted. At last, after a delay which had well-nigh driven them to despair, one of the affairs which they had most at heart had been set afoot again. For three years, indeed, La Méchain had been tramping the pavements in search of Léonie Cron, that girl in whose favour the late Count de Beauvilliers had signed an acknowledgment of ten thousand francs, payable on the day when she should attain her majority. Vainly had La Méchain applied to her cousin Fayeux, the dividend-collector at Vendôme, who had bought this acknowledgment for Busch in a lot of old debts belonging to the estate of a certain Charpier, a grain merchant and occasional usurer. Fayeux knew nothing, and simply wrote that Léonie Cron must be in the employ of a process-server in Paris; at all events, she had left Vendôme more than ten years before and had never returned, and it was impossible to obtain any information from any of her relatives, as they were all dead. La Méchain had managed to discover the process-server, and had even succeeded in tracing Léonie to a butcher's house, next to a fast woman's, and next to a dentist's; but then the thread abruptly broke, the scent was lost. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack. How can one hope to find a girl who has fallen, disappeared amid the mire of a great city like Paris? In vain had she tried the servants' agencies, visited the low lodging-houses, ransacked the haunts of vice, always on the watch, turning her head and questioning as soon as the name of Léonie fell upon her ears. And this girl, for whom she had searched so far, she had that very day, by chance, discovered in the Rue Feydeau itself, in a disreputable house, where she had called to hunt up an old tenant of the Cité de Naples who owed her three francs. A stroke of genius had led her to recognise the wench under the distinguished name of Léonide, and Busch, being notified, had at once returned with her to the house to negotiate. Stout, with coarse black hair falling to her eyebrows, and with a flat, flabby face, Léonie had at first surprised him; then, with a feeling of delight that she had fallen so low, he had offered her a thousand francs if she would relinquish to his hands her rights in the matter. She had accepted the offer with childish delight, like the simpleton she was; and by this means they would at last be able to carry out their scheme of hunting down the Countess de Beauvilliers. The long-searched-for weapon was in their grasp, a weapon hideous and shameful beyond their wildest hopes.

'I was expecting you, Monsieur Saccard,' said Busch. 'We have to talk. You received my letter, of course.'

Meantime La Méchain, motionless and silent, did not stir from the only chair in that little room, which was littered with papers and lighted by a smoky lamp. And Saccard, who had to remain standing and did not wish it to be supposed that he had come there in response to any threat, at once entered upon the Jordan matter in a stern, contemptuous voice.

'Excuse me,' said he, 'I came up to settle the debt of one of my contributors--little Jordan, a very nice fellow, whom you are pursuing with red-hot shot, indeed with really revolting ferocity. This very morning, it seems, you behaved towards his wife in a way in which no man of good breeding, would behave.'

Astonished at being attacked in this fashion when he was on the point of assuming offensive tactics himself, Busch lost his balance, forgot the other matter, and became irritated on account of this one. 'The Jordans!' said he; 'you have come on account of the Jordans. There is no question of any wife or any good breeding in matters of business. When people owe, they ought to pay, that is my rule. Scamps, who have been humbugging me for years past, from whom I have had the utmost trouble to extract four hundred francs, copper by copper! Ah! thunder, yes! I will sell them up! I will throw them into the street to-morrow morning, if I don't have the three hundred and thirty francs and fifteen centimes which they still owe me upon my desk to-night!'

Thereupon, Saccard, in order to drive him quite wild, declared that he had already been paid his money forty times over, for the debt had certainly not cost him ten francs. These tactics succeeded, for Busch almost choked with anger. 'There it goes again! That is the only thing that any of you can find to say!' he exclaimed; 'and what about the costs, pray? This debt of three hundred francs which has increased to more than seven hundred? However, that does not concern me. When folks don't pay me, I prosecute. So much the worse if justice is expensive; it is their fault! But according to you, when I have bought a debt for ten francs, I ought to receive ten francs and no more! And what about my risks, pray, and all the running about that I have to perform, and my brain-work--yes, my intelligence? For instance, in this Jordan matter you can consult Madame, who is here. She has been attending to it. Ah, the journeys and the applications which she has made! She has worn out no end of shoe-leather in climbing the stairs of newspaper offices, where folks showed her the door as if she were a beggar, without ever giving her the address she wanted. Why, we have been nursing this affair for months, we have dreamed about it, we have been working on it as one of our masterpieces; it has cost me a tremendous sum, even if I only calculate the time spent over it at ten sous an hour!'

He was becoming excited, and with a sweeping gesture pointed to the papers that filled the room. 'I have here more than twenty millions of debts, of all ages, owed by people in all stations of life--some very small amounts, others very large ones. Will you pay a million for them? If so, I will willingly let you have them. When one thinks that there are some debtors whom I have been hunting for a quarter of a century! To obtain a few paltry hundred francs, and sometimes even less from them, I wait in patience for years until they become successful or inherit property. The others, the unknown and most numerous, sleep there--look! in that corner, where that huge heap is. That is chaos, or rather raw material, from which I must extract life--I mean my life, and Heaven alone knows after what an entanglement of search and worry! And when I at last catch one of these folks in a solvent condition, you expect me not to bleed him? But, come, you would think me a fool if I didn't do so; you would not be so stupid yourself!'

Without waiting to discuss the question any further, Saccard took out his pocket-book. 'I am going to give you two hundred francs,' said he, 'and you will give me the Jordan papers, with a receipt in full.'

Busch's exasperation made him start. 'Two hundred francs! Not if I know it! The amount is three hundred and thirty francs and fifteen centimes, and I want the centimes!'

But with the tranquil assurance of a man who knows the power which money has when it is spread out before one, Saccard, in a voice which neither rose nor fell, repeated: 'I am going to give you two hundred francs.'

Three times he spoke these words, and the Jew, convinced at heart that it would be sensible to compromise, ended by accepting the offer, but with a cry of rage and with tears starting from his eyes. 'I am too weak. What a wretched trade! Upon my word I am plundered, robbed. Go on while you are about it, don't restrain yourself, take some others too--yes, pick some out of the heap, for your two hundred francs.'

Then having signed a receipt and written a line to the process-server, for the papers were no longer at the office in the Rue Feydeau, Busch remained for a moment panting at his desk, so upset that he would have let Saccard then and there go off had it not been for La Méchain, who so far had neither made a gesture nor spoken a word.

'And the affair?' said she.

He suddenly remembered. He was going to take his revenge. But all that he had prepared, his narrative, his questions, the skilfully planned moves which were to make the interview take the course he desired, were swept away, forgotten in his haste to come to the brutal fact.

'The affair, true--I wrote to you, Monsieur Saccard. We now have an old account to settle together.'

He stretched out his hand to take the wrapper containing the Sicardot notes, and laid it open in front of him.

'In 1852,' he said, 'you stayed at a lodging-house in the Rue de la Harpe; you there signed twelve promissory notes of fifty francs each in favour of a girl of sixteen, Octavie Chavaille, whom you had ruined. Those notes are here. You have never paid a single one of them, for you went away without leaving any address before the first one matured. And the worst of it is you signed them with a false name, Sicardot, the name of your first wife.'

Very pale, Saccard listened and looked at him. In utter consternation he once more beheld the past, and it seemed as though some huge, shadowy, but crushing mass were falling upon him. In the fear of the first moment he quite lost his head, and stammered, 'How is it you know that? How did you get hold of those notes?'

Then, with trembling hands, he hastened to take out his pocket-book again, with the one thought of paying and regaining possession of those annoying papers. 'There are no costs, are there?' said he. 'It is six hundred francs. Oh! a good deal might be said, but I prefer to pay without discussion.'

And thereupon he tendered six bank-notes.

'By-and-by!' cried Busch, pushing back the money. 'I have not finished. Madame, whom you see there, is Octavie's cousin, and these papers are hers; it is in her name that I seek payment. That poor Octavie became a cripple, and had many misfortunes before she at last died at Madame's house in frightful poverty. If Madame chose, she could tell you things----'

'Terrible things!' emphasised La Méchain in her piping voice, breaking silence at last.

Saccard, quite scared, having forgotten her, turned and saw her sitting there all of a heap, like a half-empty wineskin. Bird of prey that she was with her shady trade in worthless securities, she had always made him feel uneasy, and now he found her mixed up in this unpleasant story.

'Undoubtedly, poor creature, it is very sad,' he murmured.

'But if she is dead, I really do not see----Here, at any rate, are the six hundred francs.'

A second time Busch refused to take the sum.

'Excuse me,' he said, 'you do not know all yet; she had a child. Yes, a child who is now in his fourteenth year--a child who so resembles you that you cannot deny him.'

'A child, a child!' Saccard repeated several times, quite thunderstruck.

Then, suddenly replacing the six bank-notes in his pocket-book, recovering his self-possession and becoming quite merry, he continued:

'But, I say, are you having a game with me? If there is a child, I shan't give you a copper! The little one is his mother's heir. He shall have the money and whatever more he wants besides. A child, indeed! Why, it makes me feel quite young again. Where is he? I must go to see him. Why didn't you bring him to me at once?'

In his turn stupefied, Busch now thought of how long he had hesitated and of the infinite pains that Madame Caroline had taken to hide Victor's existence from his father. And, quite nonplussed, he burst into complicated explanations, revealing everything--the six thousand francs claimed by La Méchain for keep and money lent, the two thousand which Madame Caroline had paid on account, the frightful instincts which Victor had displayed, and his removal to the Institute of Work. And at each fresh revelation Saccard gave a violent start. What! Six thousand francs, indeed! How was he to know, on the contrary, that they had not despoiled the little fellow? Two thousand francs on account! They had had the audacity to extort two thousand francs from a lady friend of his! Why, it was robbery, abuse of confidence! The little one, of course, had been brought up badly, and now he, Saccard, was expected to pay those who were responsible for his evil education! Did they take him to be a fool, then?

'Not a copper!' he cried. 'You hear me. You need not expect to get a copper from me!'

With a pale face, Busch rose and took his stand in front of his table. 'Well, we will see,' he exclaimed; 'I will drag you into court!'

'Don't talk nonsense. You know very well that the courts don't deal with such matters. And if you hope to blackmail me you deceive yourself, for I don't care one rap for anything you may say or do. A child! Why, I tell you it makes me feel quite proud!' Then, as La Méchain blocked up the doorway, he had to hustle her, climb over her in fact, in order to get out. She was suffocating, but managed to call to him in her flute-like voice as he went down the stairs, 'You rascal! You heartless wretch!'

'You shall hear from us,' howled Busch, shutting the door with a bang.

Such was Saccard's excitement that he gave his coachman orders to drive to the Rue Saint-Lazare at once. He was in a hurry to see Madame Caroline, whom he accosted without the slightest sign of embarrassment, at once scolding her for having given the two thousand francs. 'Why, my dear friend, one should never part with money in that fashion. Why did you act without consulting me?'

She, scared at finding that he knew the story at last, remained silent. It was really Busch's handwriting that she had recognised on that envelope, and now she had nothing more to hide, since another had just relieved her of the secret. Nevertheless, she still hesitated, in confusion for this man who questioned her so much at his ease.

'I wanted to spare you a chagrin,' she began. 'The poor child was in such a terrible state. I should have told you all long ago, but for a feeling----'

'What feeling? I confess that I do not understand you.'

She did not try to explain herself, to further excuse herself, invaded as she was by a feeling of sadness, of weariness with everything--she whom life usually found so courageous; while he, delighted, really rejuvenated, continued chattering.

'The poor little fellow! I shall be very fond of him, I assure you. You did quite right to take him to the Institute of Work, so that they might clean him up a little. But we will remove him from there and give him teachers. To-morrow I will go to see him--yes, to-morrow, if I am not too busy.'

The next day, however, there was a board meeting, and two days passed, and then a week, during which Saccard was unable to find a spare minute. He often spoke of the child, but kept on postponing his visit, always yielding to the overflowing river that carried him along.

In the early days of December, amidst the extraordinary fever to which the Bourse was still a prey, Universals had reached the price of two thousand seven hundred francs. Unfortunately, the alarming reports went on growing and spreading, and though the rise continued there was an intolerable feeling of uneasiness. The inevitable catastrophe was indeed openly predicted, and if the shares still went up--went up incessantly--it was by the force of one of those prodigious, obstinate infatuations which refuse to surrender to evidence. And Saccard now lived amid the glamour of his spurious triumph, with a halo around him as it were--a halo emanating from that shower of gold which he caused to rain upon Paris. Still, he was shrewd enough to feel that the soil beneath him was undermined, cracking, threatening to sink under his feet and swallow him up. And so, although he remained victorious after each settlement, he felt perfectly enraged with the 'bears,' whose losses must already be very heavy. What possessed those dirty Jews that they should fight on so tenaciously? Would he not soon annihilate them? And he was especially exasperated by the fact that, apart from Gundermann, who was playing his usual game, he could scent other sellers--soldiers of the Universal perhaps, traitors who, losing confidence, were going over to the enemy, all eagerness to realise their gains.

One day when Saccard was thus venting his displeasure in presence of Madame Caroline, she thought it her duty to tell him everything. 'You know, my friend,' said she, 'that I also have sold. Yes, I have just parted with our last thousand shares at the rate of two thousand seven hundred francs.'

He was overcome, as though confronted by the blackest of treasons. 'You have sold, you! you, my God!' he gasped.

She had taken hold of his hands and was pressing them, really grieved for him, but reminding him that she and her brother had long since warned him of their intention. Moreover, Hamelin, who was still at Rome, kept on writing to her in the most anxious strain about this exaggerated rise, which he could not understand, and which must be stopped, said he, even under penalty of tumbling into an abyss. Only the day before she had received a letter from him, giving her formal orders to sell. And so she had sold.

'You, you!' repeated Saccard; 'so it was you who were fighting me, you whom I felt in the dark! It is your shares that I have been obliged to buy up!'

He did not fly into a passion, as he usually did, and she suffered the more from his utter despondency; she would have liked to reason with him, to induce him to abandon that merciless struggle, which nothing but a massacre could terminate.

'Listen to me, my friend,' she said. 'Reflect that our three thousand shares have brought us more than seven millions and a half. Is not that an unhoped-for, an extravagant profit? Indeed, all this money frightens me, I cannot believe that it belongs to me. However, it is not our personal interest that is in question. Think of the interests of all those who have entrusted their fortunes in your hands, of all the millions which you are risking in the game. Why sustain that senseless rise? why stimulate it further? I hear people say on every hand that a catastrophe lies inevitably at the end of it all. You cannot keep on rising for ever; there is no shame in allowing the shares to revert to their real value, and, with the enterprise firm and stable, that will mean salvation.'

But he had already sprung to his feet.

'I mean that the quotations shall reach three thousand francs!' he cried. 'I have bought, and I will buy again, even if it kills me. Yes! may I burst and all burst with me, if I do not reach the figure of three thousand francs, and keep to it!'

After the settlement of December 15, Universals rose to two thousand eight hundred, and then to two thousand nine hundred francs. And on the 21st the quotation of three thousand and twenty francs was proclaimed at the Bourse, amid the uproar of an insane multitude. There was no longer any truth or logic in it all; the idea of value was perverted to the point of losing all real significance. A report was current that Gundermann, contrary to his prudent habits, had involved himself in frightful risks. For months he had been nursing a fall; and so each fortnight his losses had increased by leaps and bounds in proportion to the rise Indeed, people were beginning to whisper that his back might be broken after all. All brains were topsy-turvy; prodigies were expected.

And at that supreme moment, when Saccard, at the summit, felt the earth trembling under him, and secretly feared that he might fall, he was king. When his carriage reached the Rue de Londres, and drew up outside the triumphal palace of the Universal, a valet hastened down and spread out a carpet, which rolled across the footway from the vestibule steps to the gutter; and then Saccard condescended to alight from his brougham, and made his entrance into the Bank, like a sovereign, spared from treading on the common pavement of the streets.