No. 18 · 1891
L'Argent
Money
Zola's great novel of financial capitalism. Aristide Saccard — having lost his first fortune in the ruins of La Curée — returns to Paris and founds the Universal Bank on the basis of his engineer friend Georges Hamelin's genuine projects: railways into the Ottoman Empire, agricultural schemes in the Levant, a Catholic establishment in the Holy Land. The projects are real; the problem is that Saccard inflates the stock far beyond any rational valuation, manipulating the price upward through planted rumour and engineered confidence, attracting tens of thousands of small investors — widows, working women, retired tradespeople — whose savings he pours into a machine designed to enrich himself. The bank soars, then collapses with devastating violence, ruining its shareholders. Caroline Hamelin, who has become Saccard's mistress while watching his operation with lucid moral disquiet, survives the disaster with her dignity and most of her judgment intact; her brother Hamelin returns from the Orient to find his genuine work buried under rubble. Saccard is arrested and eventually escapes consequences almost entirely. Zola does not make it simple: the novel holds a genuine paradox — Saccard's own argument that speculation is the engine of progress, that without fever nothing great would be built, is given enough force that it cannot be simply dismissed. It is one of Zola's most intellectually demanding novels.
Roman du capitalisme financier. Saccard, ayant perdu sa première fortune, fonde la Banque universelle sur les vrais projets de l'ingénieur Hamelin : chemins de fer ottomans, établissements en Orient. Il en fait une machine spéculative, attire des milliers de petits épargnants, fait monter le cours artificiellement, puis tout s'effondre. Caroline Hamelin, sa maîtresse et conscience morale du roman, s'en sort intacte. Saccard échappe aux conséquences. Zola pose la question : la spéculation est-elle la condition du progrès ?
Setting: Paris — the Bourse