I am not against public companies. Let us have them; let us have as many good ones as we can get, but let them be honestly founded and honestly administered. It is through the multiplicity of public companies that we may eventually attain to Collectivism, which so many great thinkers of the age deem to be the future towards which the world is slowly but surely marching. And when that comes, perhaps, as Sigismond Busch, one of M. Zola's characters, foreshadows in the following pages, we shall have some other means of exchange than money--the metallic money of the present day. Sigismond Busch is a Karl Marxite, a believer in the universal fraternity of humanity, a fraternity which he regretfully admits is still far away from us. Of a very different stamp to him is M. Zola's hero--if hero he can be called--Saccard, the scheming financier, the sanguine promoter and manager of the Universal Bank, the poet of money, the apostle of gambling, ever intent on gigantic enterprises, believing that the passion for gain should be fostered rather than discouraged, and that in order to set society on a proper basis it is necessary to destroy the financial power of the Jews. Saccard is one of M. Zola's favourite creations. After figuring in the 'Fortune des Rougon,' he played a prominent part in 'La Curée;' and he is further alluded to in 'Doctor Pascal,' Clotilde, the heroine of that work, being his daughter. Certainly Saccard, the worshipper of Mammon, the man to whom money is everything in life, is a true type of our _fin-de-siècle_ society. It has often occurred to me that in sketching this daring and unscrupulous financier M. Zola must have bethought himself of Mirès, whose name is so closely linked to the history of Second Empire finance. Mirès, however, was a Jew, whereas Saccard is a Jew-hater, and outwardly, at all events, a zealous Roman Catholic. In this respect he reminds one of Bontoux, of Union Générale notoriety, just as Hamelin the engineer reminds one of Feder, Bontoux's associate. Indeed, the history of M. Zola's Universal Bank is much the history of the Union Générale. The latter was solemnly blessed by the Pope, and in a like way M. Zola shows us the Universal receiving the Papal benediction. Moreover, the secret object of the Union Générale was to undermine the financial power of the Jews, and in the novel we find a similar purpose ascribed to Saccard's Bank. The Union, we know, was eventually crushed by the great Israelite financiers, and this again is the fate which overtakes the institution whose meteor-like career is traced in the pages of 'L'Argent.'