The investigative commission stopped at two more buildings. The doctor remained outside, smoking and staring at the sky. When the men came to the rue des Amandiers, the houses thinned out, and now they made their way through fenced lots and land undeveloped but for a few tumbledown cottages. Saccard seemed delighted by this stroll through the ruins. He was reminded of the dinner he had had long ago with his first wife on the Buttes Montmartre and vividly recalled having gestured with the edge of his hand to indicate where Paris would be sliced open from the place du Château-d’Eau to the Barrière du Trône. It enchanted him to know that this prediction from the distant past had come true. He followed the line of that slice with the secret pleasure of an author, as if he himself had struck the first blows of the pickaxe with his iron fingers. And as he jumped the puddles, he relished the thought that three million francs awaited him beneath these ruins, at the end of this greasy river of muck.

Meanwhile, the members of the committee began to fancy that they had reached the countryside. The path of the roadway ran through gardens, whose walls had been knocked down to make way for it. Huge lilac bushes were in bud. The foliage was a very delicate light green in color. Each of these gardens opened out like a castle keep walled off by shrubbery, inside which lay a narrow pool, a miniature waterfall, and a section of wall featuring trompe-l’oeil representations of foreshortened bowers set against distant blue landscapes. The houses, spread out and discreetly hidden, resembled Italian pavilions or Greek temples. Moss ate away at the bottoms of the plaster columns, while weeds loosened the mortar of the pediments.

“These are petites maisons,” said the physician with a wink.

But when he saw that the other gentlemen didn’t understand what he meant by this, he explained that in the time of Louis XIV nobles had kept retreats for assignations in the country. It was the fashion. “They called them petites maisons. This neighborhood was full of them. . . . You can bet that there were some wild goings-on in those places!”

The investigative committee had become quite attentive. Eyes glistening, the two businessmen smiled and examined these gardens and pavilions with great interest, even though they had not so much as glanced at them before hearing their colleague’s explanations. One grotto held their attention for quite some time. But when the doctor noticed one house that had already fallen victim to the pickaxes and mentioned that he recognized it as having been the petite maison of the comte de Savigny—and well-known for that gentleman’s orgies—the entire committee left the boulevard to visit the ruin. They climbed up over the rubble and entered through the first-floor windows. Since the workers were on their lunch break, they were able to enjoy themselves to their heart’s content. They stayed for more than half an hour, examining the rosettes in the ceilings, the paintings above the doors, and the overelaborate plaster moldings that had turned yellow with age. The doctor reconstructed the house.

“This room, you see, must have been the formal dining room. Over there, in that recess in the wall, there was surely a huge sofa. And wait a minute, I’m even certain there must have been a mirror above that sofa. There are the retainers for the glass. . . . Those bastards really knew how to enjoy life!”

They would never have left those old stones, which piqued their curiosity, if Saccard, impatient to get going, had not laughingly reminded them that “it’s no use looking for the ladies, they’re not here anymore. . . . It’s time to get back to business.”

Before leaving, however, the doctor climbed up on a mantel and with a deft blow from an axe detached the small painted head of a cupid, which he slipped into the pocket of his coat.

At last they came to the end of their route. The property that had previously belonged to Mme Aubertot was quite extensive. The music hall and garden occupied barely half of it. A few nondescript houses were scattered around the remaining land. The fact that the new boulevard cut diagonally across this large parallelogram had allayed one of Saccard’s fears. For a long time he had worried that only the music hall would be affected by the planned route. He had accordingly instructed Larsonneau to talk things up, since the value of the adjacent land should have increased at least fivefold. He was already threatening the city by saying that he might invoke a recent ordinance authorizing landowners to surrender only that portion of a property absolutely essential for public works.

It was the expropriation agent who received the gentlemen of the committee. He showed them around the garden and the music hall and gave them a huge file to examine. But the two businessmen had gone back downstairs with the doctor, whom they continued to question about the petite maison of the comte de Savigny, which had fired their imaginations. With jaws hanging, both men listened to the doctor’s stories, as all three stood alongside a “barrel ride” in the amusement park. And the doctor regaled them with tales of Mme de Pompadour and recounted the loves of Louis XV ¹ while M. de Mareuil and Saccard carried on with the investigation by themselves.

“This job is done,” said the latter upon returning to the garden. “If you’ll allow me, gentlemen, I’ll accept responsibility for writing up the report.”

The man who manufactured surgical instruments didn’t even hear what Saccard had said. He was lost in the Régence.²

“What a strange time, for sure!” he murmured.

Then they found a cab on the rue de Charonne and drove off, spattered with filth up to the knees and as pleased with their outing as if they’d been to a picnic in the country. In the cab the conversation turned to politics; they agreed that the Emperor was doing great things. No one had ever seen anything like what they had just seen. This big straight boulevard would be superb once houses were built along it.

Saccard drew up the report, and the jury awarded an indemnity of three million francs. The speculator had his back to the wall; he couldn’t have held out another month. This money saved him from ruin and perhaps even from the criminal courts. He paid 500,000 francs of the million he owed his upholsterer and contractor on the Parc Monceau house. He attended to other trouble spots, plunged into new ventures, and deafened Paris with the sound of the very real gold coins that he loaded into his safe by the shovelful. The river of gold at last had a source. But it was not yet a solid, entrenched fortune flowing at an even and steady rate. Saved from bankruptcy, Saccard considered himself a beggar reduced to living on the crumbs from his three million francs; naïvely he told himself that he was still too poor, that he could not stop. And soon the ground had opened up yet again beneath his feet.

Larsonneau had behaved so admirably in the Charonne business that Saccard, after only a moment’s hesitation, had pushed honesty to the point of paying him his ten percent plus a bonus of 30,000 francs. With that the expropriation agent opened a bank. When his accomplice grumpily accused him of having outstripped him in wealth, the yellow-gloved dandy replied with a laugh: “You see, my beloved teacher, you’re very clever at making money rain down, but you’ve no idea how to pick it up.”

Mme Sidonie took advantage of her brother’s stroke of fortune to borrow 10,000 francs from him, with which she spent two months in London. She returned without a penny. No one ever found out what had become of the 10,000 francs.

“Oh, my, you know everything costs money,” she replied when questioned. “I scoured all the libraries. I had three secretaries to help with my research.”

And when people asked if she had at last found out anything certain about her three billion, she smiled mysteriously at first and then murmured, “You’re all skeptics. . . . I didn’t find anything, but it makes no difference. You’ll see, one of these days you’ll see.”