CHAPTER XVI

      THE USURERS

      M. ROSTAND was a clever man. He pursued his shameful calling undisturbed. To give an honest appearance to his trade, he had opened a banking-house; and having paid for the license, he was legally established. At times, he could even be a trifle honest, and would lend money at the same rate of interest as the other bankers of the town. But there was, so to say, a back office in his establishment, wherein he took delight in elaborating his knavish schemes.

      Six months after the opening of his bank, he became the managing director of a company of usurers, a black band which entrusted him with certain funds for investment. The combination was of a simplicity quite patriarchal. People endowed with the bump of usury, and who feared to indulge their propensity at their own risk and peril, brought him their money and requested him to turn it to good account. By these means he always had a considerable capital to turn over, and was enabled to take full advantage of needy borrowers.

      Those who furnished the money remained in the background. He had solemnly undertaken to lend at a fabulous rate of interest, at fifty, sixty and even eighty per cent. The sleeping partners met at his office once a month, he produced his accounts, and they shared the spoil. But he so arranged matters as to keep the larger share for himself in fact, he robbed the robbers.

      It was especially against the small traders that he directed his operations. When a shopkeeper came to see him the day before a payment fell due, he imposed most exorbitant terms. The tradesman invariably accepted them; and in this way he had brought about more than fifty failures in ten years. Moreover, all was fish that came to his net; he would as soon lend five francs to a market-woman as a thousand to a cattle-dealer; he kept a sharp lookout, and never lost an opportunity of investing ten francs one day to receive twelve the next. He was on the watch for noble youths, fast young men who fling their money out of window; he filled their hands with gold, so that they might throw the more, and he stood outside to pick up what they threw. He also took trips into the country and tempted the peasants; when the crops failed he dispossessed them piece by piece of their land and farms.

      His house had thus become a veritable pitfall which swallowed up whole fortunes. The individuals, the entire families he had ruined were well-known. No one was ignorant of his underhand dealings. His sleeping partners were pointed at in the streets, wealthy men, ex-officials, merchants and even workmen. But proof was lacking. His banker’s license shielded him, and he was too clever to allow himself to be caught napping.

      Since he had first started his nefarious speculations, Rostand had only once found himself in danger. The affair created a great sensation. A lady belonging to a wealthy family borrowed a rather large sum of him; she was very pious and had bereft herself of her fortune by giving money in charity on all sides. Knowing that she was completely without means, he insisted upon her signing bills with her brother’s name. Having these forgeries in his possession, he was certain of being paid by the brother, who would be anxious to avoid a scandal. The poor lady signed as required. Charity had ruined her, and the weak kindliness of her nature brought about her fall.

      His calculations turned out correct, and the first bills were paid; but as more and more were presented, the brother grew tired of paying and determined to get to the bottom of the matter. He called on Rostand and threatened to expose him; he said that he would sooner see his sister disgraced than allow himself to be further robbed with impunity by such a scoundrel. The usurer, thoroughly cowed, gave up the bills he still possessed. He did not, however, lose a copper on the transaction, having advanced the loan at cent per cent.

      Since then, Rostand had been extremely careful. He invested the capital of the black band with a skill which won him the admiration and confidence of the usurers.

      Whilst his sleeping partners were airing themselves in the sunshine, like worthy people who would never rob a soul, he remained buried in a great dark office: it was there that the golden coins of the concern grew and multiplied.

      Rostand had ended by acquiring quite an affection for his fraudulent and thievish trade. Some members of the band applied their profits to satisfying their passions, their appetites for luxurious and dissolute living. He took his sole delight in being a clever rascal; he felt as much interest in each of his operations as if it had been a drama or a comedy he was witnessing; he applauded himself when his plans succeeded, and he then felt the pride, the joy of a successful author; then he spread out on a table the money he had stolen and lost himself in all the voluptuous sensations of the miser.

      It was to such a man that Revertégat had naively sent Marius.

      The latter knocked at Rostand’s door on the following morning towards eight o’clock. It was a heavy square house, and the closed shutters gave it a bare cold appearance, an air of mystery and mistrust. A toothless old waiting-woman, attired in a dirty, ragged, cotton gown, opened the door a few inches.

      “M. Rostand?” asked Marius.

      “He is in, but engaged,” replied the servant, without opening the door any wider.

      The young man, losing patience, pushed the door open and entered the hall.

      “Very well,” he said, “I’ll wait.”

      Surprised and scarcely knowing what to do, the servant, seeing she could not get rid of him, took him up to the first floor, and left him by himself in a kind of anteroom. It was a small dark apartment hung with greenish wall paper, discoloured by large damp stains. The only furniture consisted in a rush-bottomed chair, upon which Marius seated himself. Opposite him, an open door showed the interior of an office in which a clerk was writing with a quill pen, which made a grating noise as it travelled over the paper. There was another door on his left which probably led to the banker’s private room.

      Marius waited a long time. The stale smell of old papers pervaded the atmosphere around him. The apartment was sickeningly dirty, and the nakedness of the walls gave it a lugubrious appearance. Dust was accumulated in all the corners, and cobwebs hung from the ceiling. The young man was suffocating and getting out of patience with the grating of the quill pen which kept on increasing. Suddenly