At times Saccard becomes positively phallic, as in his triumph at countering Gundermann’s first attack on the Universal, when he is described as having really swollen and grown bigger. He succeeds in buying a night with Madame de Jeumont for a grotesquely huge sum, and parades her vaingloriously at the ball where, however, Bismarck watches them go by with an ironic smile. The smile is amply justified if Saccard here represents the dissolute society of the Empire, or even Napoleon III himself, who at Sedan would be crushed by the Prussians, accompanied by King Wilhelm I and Otto von Bismarck. Saccard becomes a metaphor for energy, sexual vitality, creativity, at times seeming the embodiment of money itself, creative and destructive, capable of much good and much evil. In his audacity, Saccard is indeed a Napoleon of finance, and like Napoleon he has his ‘Austerlitz’. But he also meets his Waterloo when he is left on the trading-floor, waiting in vain for the promised troops from Daigremont, just as Napoleon at Waterloo awaited in vain the troops of Grouchy.

The fortunes of Saccard parallel the fortunes of the Empire, both reaching a peak with the Universal Exhibition of 1867, the ‘Exposition Universelle’, the extravagant world fair held in Paris under the auspices of Napoleon III, where forty-two nations were represented. The Empire is making a great display, and so is Saccard’s ‘Universal’, with its new, extravagantly palatial premises. If the Universal Bank is built on sand and lies, as Madame Caroline remarks, so, Zola suggests, is the Empire itself, as it promotes itself with false glamour. On the day when the Emperor in person awards the prizes to the exhibitors, the event is described as a huge fairy-tale lie. The Emperor presents himself as ‘master of Europe, speaking with calmness and strength and promising peace’ (p. 234) on the very day that news had come of the execution of Maximilian.10 Saccard’s glittering bank, with its coffers full of gold, is also a huge fairy-tale lie; this is fairy gold that will not stand the light of day. When the Exhibition is over, Paris is left still giddy and intoxicated with Second Empire extravagance, not realizing that Krupp’s splendid cannon, greatly admired in the Exhibition, would quite soon be pounding the city. At the end of the novel Saccard is bankrupt and so is the Empire, leaving France open to invasion and defeat: the Bourse, now deserted, is seen against a fiery sky that prefigures the fires that would rage through Paris in the violent days of the Commune: ‘Twilight was falling, and the winter sky, laden with mist, had created behind the monument of the Bourse a cloud of dark and reddish smoke as if from a fire, as if made from the flames and dust of a city stormed’ (p. 336).

Madame Caroline

It is a central paradox of the novel that Madame Caroline, seen by Zola as a sort of ‘chorus’ for his drama, the voice of morality and legality, should fall in love with Saccard, the financial pirate. Having fallen into his arms almost inadvertently after an emotional shock, Madame Caroline berates herself for her weakness, but Saccard’s dynamism and energy again win her over. She shares his dreams of what ‘the all-powerful magic wand of science and speculation’ (p. 64) might achieve, and caught up by his enthusiasm she even finds him handsome and charming, though Madame Caroline is not endowed by Zola with anything like Saccard’s sexuality or passion. He stresses above all her prudence and her frustrated maternal instincts, a frustration she shares with Princess d’Orviedo. It is largely on the basis of a quasi-maternal affection that she becomes Saccard’s mistress, but when she learns of his affair with Baroness Sandorff she discovers, with a shock, that she really loves him. Her feeling for Saccard is one of the rare examples of genuine love in the novel: the other is the touching love of the Jordan couple, blessed as it is by their expected child.

Throughout the novel Madame Caroline provides a moral commentary on the character and conduct of Saccard as she tries to restrain his reckless illegalities, countering his excesses with her moderation and good sense. But he will not be restrained, and in the end, after promising so much, Saccard brings ruin, misery, and even death to his victims. Madame Caroline, the moral compass of the novel, condemns and curses the man she loved and almost sinks into despair. Her brother, however, persuades her to go and see the imprisoned Saccard. In their last interview Madame Caroline finally tells Saccard what has become of Victor, the illegitimate son he now regrets never having seen, and for the first time she sees him in tears. Unlike Hamelin, Saccard is not peacefully resigned. He demands—with some justification, given the weaknesses of the case against him and the vengeful involvement of Delcambre, the Public Prosecutor—to know why he and Hamelin are singled out for punishment. What about the directors who made huge amounts of money? And the auditors? Why are they all able to get away with it? If there were any justice, he argues, they and the heads of the major banks of Paris would be sharing his fate—questions and views that may strike a chord in contemporary Europe. Saccard’s belief in himself is still unshaken, and Madame Caroline marvels at his irresponsible assurance. Yet, as she feels once more his astonishing strength and vitality she finds her anger dissolving, and there is a moment of subdued tenderness between them before they finally part.

In the final chapter Zola takes Madame Caroline all over Paris, linking up with almost all the main characters, starting with Princess d’Orviedo from whom she learns of the rape of Alice de Beauvilliers by the fifteen-year-old Victor at the Work Foundation—that institution built to help and educate the poor. Seeing again its lavish splendour, she asks herself what was the point of it all if it couldn’t even turn one wretched boy into an honest citizen? Victor is now roaming at large, with no one to try to deliver him from his viciousness.