Money

FIRST EDITION. One of the numbered copies on Holland paper.

Eighteenth volume of the Rougon-Macquart series.

“L'Argent is the book that gave me the biggest headache, amidst the mass of documents provided by stock market men, so bewildering to me that I still doubt I understood anything about it.”. Aristide Saccard, after going bankrupt, gets back in the saddle with a new lucrative project: “to form a cartel bringing together shipping companies that ply the Mediterranean, build a major railway line that would connect the cities of Lebanon, those of Syria and would go as far as Turkey, help in the emergence of a national Turkish bank, finance the exploitation of silver mines in the Mount Carmel region of Lebanon and, more broadly, awaken an entire dormant continent.”. Thus was born the Banque Universelle, whose trajectory mirrored that of L'Union Générale, a bank founded by Eugène Bontoux, which was at the origin of a financial scandal that left many small Catholic savers, lured by gambling instinct, in destitution.

To sell his pipe dream, Aristide does what he knows best: he acquires L'Espérance, a small newspaper in which the former journalist from L'Indépendant dispenses financial advice to small shareholders, touting good opportunities and products offered by the Banque Universelle. However, Aristide forgets to mention that he is massively buying his own shares to artificially inflate their price, and when Gundermann sells his shares, the market collapses; it's the crash.