Money (Oxford World’s Classics) by Émile Zola Page B

some outbreaks of revolutionary violence, they are often inevitable. But the excesses and outbursts are temporary… Oh, I don’t try to disguise the immediate difficulties. All that dreamed-of future seems impossible, it’s hard to give people a reasonable idea of that future society, that society of fair labour whose way of life will be so different from ours. It’s like another world on another planet… And it has to be admitted: reorganization isn’t ready yet, we’re still finding our way. I, who hardly sleep any more, spend my nights on it. For instance, we can certainly be told: “If things are as they are, it’s because the logic of human activity has made them so.” So what a task it is, to take the river back to its source and direct it into another valley!… Certainly, the present state of society has owed its prosperity over the centuries to the individualist principle, which through emulation and personal interest becomes an endlessly renewed source of fertile production. Will collectivism ever reach that level of fecundity, and how are we to activate the productive function of the worker once the idea of earnings has been destroyed? This, for me, is where the doubt and anguish lie, the weak ground on which we must fight if we want the victory of socialism to be won on it one day… But wewill overcome, for we are justice itself. Look! You see that monument before you… Do you see it?’
    ‘The Bourse?’ Saccard answered. ‘Lord, yes, I can see it!’
    ‘Well, it would be stupid to blow it up, it would simply get rebuilt elsewhere. But I predict that it will blow itself up, once the state has taken it over and become, in consequence, the sole and universal bank of the nation. And who knows? It may then serve as a public warehouse for our excess of wealth, one of those granaries of abundance in which our grandchildren will find the luxuries for their feast-days.’
    With an expansive gesture, Sigismond seemed to open up this future of general and widespread happiness. And he was so carried away that a new fit of coughing shook his frame as he returned to his table, with his elbows among the papers and holding his head in his hands to smother the hacking rattle of his throat. But this time it would not calm down. Suddenly the door opened and Busch, having sent away La Méchain, ran in looking distraught, as if he himself was suffering that abominable coughing. He at once leaned over and took his brother in his broad arms, as if rocking an unhappy child.
    ‘Come on, my dear, what is making you choke like this? You know I want you to call a doctor. This is just not sensible… you must have been talking too much, for sure.’
    And he cast a sidelong glance at Saccard, still standing in the middle of the room, decidedly disturbed by what he had just heard from the mouth of this tall fellow, so passionate and so ill, who from his window up here must be casting a spell over the Bourse with his notions of sweeping everything away and rebuilding.
    ‘Thanks, I’ll leave you now,’ said the visitor, eager to be outside. Send me my letter, with the ten lines of translation… I’m expecting some more, so we’ll settle the whole lot together.’
    But, now the crisis was over, Busch kept him back a moment or two more.
    ‘By the way, the lady who was here just now had met you before, oh! a long time ago.’
    ‘Ah! Where was that?’
    ‘Rue de la Harpe, in ’52.’
    Self-controlled as he was, Saccard nevertheless lost colour. A nervous tic twitched at his mouth. It wasn’t that he remembered at that instant the girl he’d tumbled on the staircase: he hadn’t knownabout her pregnancy, and did not know there was a child. But the memory of those first wretched years was always very disagreeable.
    ‘Rue de la Harpe. Oh, I only stayed there about a week when I first arrived in Paris, while I looked for somewhere to live… Au revoir!’
    ‘Au revoir!’ Busch pointedly repeated, mistakenly seeing