‘I should like to hear it.’
‘Good! These men came to us from Hamburg, unknown, unannounced, without any letter of introduction. They walked in from the street.’
‘We already had an establishment in Boissy d’Anglas,’ interrupted Guildenstern promptly.
‘They were negotiating for half a shopfront precisely,’ continued Alphendéry. Their argument before you, Monsieur le Juge, is that on us they built up a business and when we broke the contract it crumbled. Therefore, they had little or no business before.’
‘Proceed.’
‘Their own books will show that ninety-five per cent of their customers came from our bank. Now, sir, they have therefore made money through us since the beginning of their contract. As an aside, I mention that we have never made a penny out of them. Their statement was that they would transmit to us stock-exchange business and solicit their clients for stock-exchange business for us. They never did this, but as we did not, really did not, desire to make any money out of them, we pass this by.’
The judge said, with low cunning, ‘You didn’t want to make money out of them?’
‘No. In the first place, we are, primarily, a bank. In the second place, although we signed on a basis of quid pro quo, for the sake of commercial routine, since we were not in competition with Kaimaster Blés, S.A., and we handed them business that was of little use to us, we regarded the whole thing as a minor courtesy, and not as a profitable undertaking …’
‘But you lent them your name on their letterhead.’
‘Publicity. We even designed the letterhead for them, so that the name of the bank, though in small letters, would be presented with elegance. One thinks of those things, as a routine. Thus the contract was made, in the first place, to enable them to use our name, to help them only, and not with an idea of profit to ourselves.’
‘But you say you also agreed to hand them your commodity-exchange business. Why, if with no hope of return?’
‘Commodities have never been a branch of our business. Occasionally, to oblige board-room clients, or bank clients, we have passed through an order for wheat, cotton, barley, et cetera, but it is an expensive nuisance and we never encouraged it. We quote commodity exchanges on our boards, because they are an index to the trend of stock markets. Our books will show that commodity business has not been one, not one-half per cent of our business.’
‘Then you deny that you asked these gentlemen to act for you in developing the commodities business, with yourselves?’
‘We gave them that business as one gives away a new pair of shoes that don’t fit. They got no business for us; they occupied themselves only with their own business.’
The sneering suavity of Maître Lallant broke in: ‘My clients found it impossible to get any business for you on account of the bad reputation of your bank, and the publicity round the broken contract with Dr. Jacques Carrière.’ The maître smiled knowingly at the judge.
Alphendéry, with passion, turned to Maître Lallant. ‘There is too much of Jacques Carrière in your activity against us! Strange, that all of our enemies, poor and rich, find their advocate in you! I say nothing more. I wish to proceed without interruption from parties whose interest in this invites examination.’
‘Gently,’ said the judge, with enthusiasm. Debates, personal enmities, especially when conducted with vileness and venality, were the sauce of life to him. ‘Proceed, Mr. Alphendéry. Maître, you may speak later.’
The lawyer folded his robes round with ease; what did he care?
The judge rolled his lips outwards and leaned forward: would he hear anything of the inside story of the quarrel of these two rich youths, anything of the seamy side of the Haute Banque. He hoped so. He was a poor man, completely stupid, immoral: getting secrets and making relations with the financially great were his only hope. He almost smiled at Alphendéry.
‘Mr. Alphendéry?’
Alphendéry threw himself into the debate again with the gesture of a surf-club hero in a relay race. ‘All we did was out of pure generosity, out of pure humanity, to help two exiles, two Germans who might not find it so easy to make a footing here. The financial world is jealous.’
The judge took out a toothpick. ‘Ah?’ A little smile, the unspoken sneer of the lawyer’s drudge who ‘knows his world,’ broke on his face. Maître Lallant turned his head, nodded to his two clients. ‘Is that usual—such generosity—Mr. Alphendéry?’
Alphendéry had paled. ‘Monsieur le Juge, these two gentlemen, these three gentlemen are Jews!’ The three looked at him somewhat startled. ‘I myself am a Jew! Messieurs Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern came along, and when Mr. Jules Bertillon had refused to see them two or three times, he deputed me to see them, because, coming from Alsace, I speak German with ease, and he thought I could find out their business more easily. As it happens, the gentlemen speak French. I came to them and said, “I represent Mr. Bertillon, I am his deputy: what do you want?”’
‘As soon as they saw me they recognized that I was of Jewish blood. They said to me, “We come to you as a Jew, we appeal to you as Jews. There is an anti-Semitic wave rising in Germany, and we believe it will sweep the country. We believe our race will again be dyed in its own blood. Our property, our lives, are not safe. Therefore, we come to France, where there is still liberty of thought. Nevertheless, as well as Jews, we are Germans. We are not as acceptable to Frenchmen as might be Englishmen or Americans: there is the race-hatred!” (A phrase and a concept,’ said Alphendéry aside, ‘which I regard as stuff and nonsense, but let that pass.) Mr. Rosenkrantz here was a lieutenant, Mr. Guildenstern was a liaison officer, I believe’ (Alphendéry smiled sweetly at them; Maître Lallant frowned), ‘and “although” (said they) “we have sent our children to a German school in Switzerland, on account of the superiority of German thought and education, and we hope to return to the fatherland when the trouble is over—we are obliged now to seek the hospitality of French soil and French tolerance. We know no one here and we are foreigners. We hope that you, Alphendéry, as a brother in the Jewish faith” (which I am not, Monsieur le Juge, being an atheist), “and that Mr. Jules Bertillon, that gallant onetime enemy, that hero decorated with the Legion of Honor and the Military Medal, will unite your sympathies and lend us a helping hand.” I said to them, “I am not a synagogue Jew; but of Jewish stock, that I am. I will do my best to help you, though, not as a Jew, but as a Frenchman who detests intolerance, loves liberty, and sympathizes with your difficulties.” Messieurs Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern then told me a long tale of their miseries and the difficulties which begin to appear in the path of business in Germany, explained that their business was commodities, and asked me to help them build up their business. I explained to them that we did no commodities business but that the few orders that accidentally came our way, we would send through them. I went to Mr. Bertillon and took it upon myself to plead for them, because they had moved me with the story of their business troubles and also, undoubtedly, with the story of their persecution. I said, “Here are two men of high character and good business ability who are practically thrown out of their country for no fault of their own.” Mr. Bertillon is a kindhearted man who detests all kind of fanaticism and he said, after some discussion, that there was no reason why we shouldn’t throw them any commodities business that came along. In return they made many protestations, urged that they would endeavor to get clients for us among the North Americans and others they proposed to canvass. That was the origin, the whole background of the contract.’
The judge had finished picking his teeth and the lines of his face had firmed. ‘Do you agree with this story?’ asked he, of the plaintiffs.
Mr. Alphendéry has related facts,’ said Maître Lallant. ‘The coloring is his own.’
‘That’s all right,’ said the judge, turning to Alphendéry with more warmth than before. ‘Mr. Alphendéry, what happened after that?’
Maît
re Lallant was about to protest, bit his lip, and said nothing. Alphendéry went on, ‘The contract was drawn up by Mr. Bertillon and these gentlemen and me, presented to them by me, and signed by them and me.’
‘This was where the misrepresentation occurred,’ said Guildenstern.
‘What misrepresentation?’ asked Alphendéry angrily. ‘Are these gentlemen children in arms? They signed with me. The paper has the bank’s letterhead: I work in the bank. They had service from the bank. No rubber stamp or typewritten indication of status followed my name nor theirs. They appealed to me as an individual. I used my power to get them the bank’s help: they got it. What was the misrepresentation? They have a paper … it is before you. I am given no designation; they are able to read.’
‘You have no property in France,’ cried Guildenstern, suddenly outraged. ‘We made commercial inquiries about Bertillon and the bank, which were none too good but we decided to risk it, but about you none—only later, when it was too late. I assure you if we had known what we knew later, we would have signed nothing.’
The judge had now taken sides; he waved his hand with negligence towards Guildenstern, ‘Calm yourself, Monsieur. You will speak later. Meanwhile, it seems to me, as an observer, that you had made inquiries about the bank and had decided to take a risk.’
Guildenstern was furious at the false step. He cried, ‘This man has no property in France that can be seized. Does that look like a responsible personage, a personage who intends to pay his debts and constitute a proper commercial responsibility?’
Alphendéry looked at the plaintiffs. ‘You made inquiries as to whether the Bertillons and the bank had property that could be seized?’
‘Certainly: we found that there were bank deposits—and so forth—’
‘Does that look like good faith?’ inquired Alphendéry of the judge.
‘An ordinary commercial proceeding,’ said Lallant. ‘My clients simply do not express themselves in routine language.’
‘Exceptional language expresses exceptional intention,’ said Alphendéry hotly. ‘I contend that Messieurs Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern came into this business, because they had picked up rumors about us, heard of the scandal being made by a person that need not be named, a person who uses his influence unduly to persecute Mr. Bertillon. I contend that these men approached us with the insistence that characterizes all their relations with us, because they thought they could utilize the reputed idiosyncrasies of the bank and its owner for their own purposes, that they designed us as a victim, they conceived a plot and they intended to hold the bank up, cut its purse, take its clients and by holding it up, I mean they intended to hold it up by legal means, in the first legal trap they could catch it in. Their admission that they first found out what the bank had that could be seized is a very fair testimony on my side.’
‘This is not pleading, this is abracadabra,’ said Lallant hastily, for he saw his clients, Rosenkrantz especially, were raging.
‘Ah, ah,’ said the judge, tapping happily on his desk. ‘There is much that is curious in this case, Maître. I am not prejudiced; I wish to hear the full story of this witness.’
‘Detective story—’ said the maître with composure.
‘Repeat what you said, Maître,’ said the judge.
‘I said, Invective has no force.’ The maître was sober again: he continued, ‘This witness has no evidence whatever for what he says. It is pure fantasy. He is a very imaginative man.’ He smiled at Alphendéry, like an appreciative opponent in a simulacrum-boxing contest, though. Alphendéry ignored this marking of the thrust. He nodded his head, appealing to the judge.
‘Monsieur le Juge, Maître Lallant represents also Monsieur Parouart, a sinister person without visible means of support, who sued the bank for fraud and whose case was thrown out of court for want of evidence,’ he said in a louder voice, throwing his defiance into Maître Lallant’s face. ‘Maître Lallant represents Messieurs Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, suing the bank on a dubious contract; he appears in court on other cases for Dr. Jacques Carrière, who, incidentally, is conducting a campaign against the bank and Mr. Bertillon in particular. I only suggest that it is unlikely that Maître Lallant’s imagination would go so far as to take our side, if we had all the proofs and the purity of newborn babes.’
‘I work for who pays me,’ said Lallant, unruffled.
‘As to their good faith,’ said Alphendéry, ‘if they had not been accumulating complaints against us from the first, what is the explanation of one aspect of their behavior, which I am about to relate? Every time we had a private conversation in a café, at dinner, over the telephone, or informally at the bank, these German exiles ‘confirmed’ (as they said) the conversation, by a précis or summary report of all that was said, in their own terms of course, by pneumatique or registered letter. Even the first conversation I reported to you, and in which they made an appeal to me on the basis of brotherhood and common faith, was ‘confirmed’ to me by registered letter! Why were they laying a foundation for injury for themselves, why trying to trip us from the beginning?’
‘Have you these confirmations?’ asked the judge.
‘Yes.’
‘Let me see them.’
The bank lawyer, Maître Lemaître, who was in attendance, passed them over.
‘We naturally took no such measures with them. We laughed at these registered letters and regarded them as freaks. In the second place, Monsieur le Juge, as soon as we had begun business with them, they made friends with me, Rosenkrantz especially, and plied me with questions, asking me, as a Jew, to communicate to them as Jews, private information about the status of the bank, its financial position, its balance sheet, and the rest, blithely supposing that I had a stronger fidelity to them than to the man who gave me my living and paid my salary. When I avoided or sidetracked their questions, they went to Mr. Bertillon and to subordinates in the bank, to find out my position in the bank, tried to confirm all that I had said by the mouths of others, asked Mr. Bertillon the same questions, and put their questions in such a way that he would think I had been babbling; they pried into my private affairs, gossiped about me to the other employees, complained about me to the two brothers Bertillon and to the twins Bertillon, in the hope of getting some advantage to themselves. I know all this, because, as we are a most united society at the bank, these things were immediately told back to me. But my private annoyances do not count.
‘Our contract was for nine months. As the seventh month passed and the eighth month was entered, they became more exigent, irritating our employees, till the whole business downstairs seemed upside down: it began to seem as if we were living for them. I need not say, that we had other things to occupy our minds and that the bond with these two brokers galled very much. Finally, in the middle of the eighth month, our manager, Mr. Manray, who has to see to the execution of clients’ orders and keep their daily accounts straight, became so angry with them that he came to Mr. Bertillon and said he would rather resign than answer them again on the telephone.
‘We received a blue paper from them within thirty-six hours: they did not attempt mediation, compromise, or a parley. Like a man who at last sees that he holds the winning number in a lottery, they threw themselves on what they considered their prize—damages.
‘Shall I proceed to further points?’
‘What is all this?’ asked Guildenstern rudely. ‘We have a contract which was not fulfilled; we have been damaged and we want reparations: the rest is beside the point. You could have sued us; you did not. We are the plaintiffs.’
‘We do not sue for a living,’ said Alphendéry sharply. Rosenkrantz grinned derisively. ‘I should like to know what you do for a living. Eh? You are known.’
‘If you thought that our business, you’d try to imitate it,’ said Alphendéry. ‘You might make some money; you wouldn’t be forced to chicane.’
When they left, Maîtr
e Lemaître, who had not intervened at all during the hearing, said with some feeling, ‘You made an appeal I could not have. Before you began he was our enemy: he thought of you as swindlers, and after you finished he thought of our gentlemen as conspirators. You will see: I know my judges. You will hear no more of this. You cleverly reduced it to the size of a family quarrel—and the nationalist line—’
‘Oh, it was a low brawl,’ said Alphendéry with discouragement. ‘Those fellows put things on such a plane.’
‘It’s all right,’ laughed Lemaître. ‘I am satisfied. Technically, of course, they can still claim damages; but I know my men: they will actually never get them. I think we can count—three down for the count.’
‘Three! Parouart? The landlords?’
‘Yes,’ the lawyer turned to him smiling. ‘Perhaps luck is favoring the most careless man in the universe, Mr. Jules Bertillon! If it were not so, Mr. Bertillon would be even now selling his wife’s ring to pay his blackmailers. What a man, what an erratic genius! Frankly I still can’t believe that such a bank exists. I know it does; I have the papers. I plead for it. But— Tell me frankly, why doesn’t he take at least one lawyer into his service and let him advise him?’
‘Jules would rather go to jail than tell the whole truth to anyone on earth: that’s his foible.’
‘Ah, in that case,’ said Lemaître, displeased.
‘Don’t desert him, Maître; he is a splendid fellow; he is worth your defenses: it is a question of temperament! He has never been any different since he was born.’
‘Nevertheless, it is for your sake that I take the trouble,’ said the lawyer, not entirely appeased: ‘I regard you as a friend, although our views on life and politics are at opposite poles. As a friend, if I might be allowed to say a word as a friend, I would advise you to leave Bertillon. He will wreck himself and you, too.’
‘I want to leave him but I can’t when he is ill and harassed …’
‘In that case, I can only hope to help you by giving you legal advice,’ said the lawyer, with a gallant smile. ‘No man can be dissuaded from his—’ he softened the rest with an affectionate glance, ‘—his mistaken loyalties. Being a conformist, and having passed the age of vanity, my meaning is that there is no loyalty but to yourself in the world we live in. I count no other.’
House of All Nations Page 70
