But his purest glory was the Crédit Viticole, which he had established in conjunction with Toutin-Laroche. The latter was the official director, he himself only figured as a member of the board. In this circumstance Eugène had again done his brother a good turn. Thanks to him the government authorized the establishment of the company and watched its operations with great indulgence. On one difficult occasion, when an evil-minded newspaper ventured to criticise one of the company's operations, the "Moniteur" went so far as to publish a note forbidding any discussion concerning so honourable an undertaking, which the State deigned to patronize. The Crédit Viticole was based on an excellent financial system; it lent farmers half of the estimated value of their property, obtained a mortgage as guarantee for the loan, and received interest from the borrowers as well as an annual instalment of the principal. No financial system was ever more dignified or proper. Eugène had informed his brother with a sly smile that the Tuileries wished people to be honest. M. Toutin-Laroche interpreted this wish by letting the farmers' loan-machine work quietly, and by annexing to it a banking-house which attracted capital and gambled feverishly, launching forth into all sorts of adventurous enterprises. The Crédit Viticole thanks to the formidable impulsion it received from its director, soon enjoyed a well-established reputation of solidity and prosperity. At the outset, in view of offering at the Bourse, at one go, a mass of shares freshly detached from their counterfoils, and to give them the aspect of having long been in circulation, Saccard ingeniously had them trodden on and beaten, during a whole night, by the bank collectors provided with birch brooms. The headquarters of the Crédit Viticole might have been taken for a branch of the Bank of France. The house where the offices were located seemed to be the grave and dignified temple of Mammon, with its courtyard full of equipages, its solemn iron railings, its broad flight of steps and its monumental staircase, its suites of luxurious private rooms, and its world of clerks and liveried lackeys; and nothing could fill the public with more religious emotion than the sanctuary, the cashier's office, reached by a passage of sacred bareness, and where one perceived the safe, the god, crouching, embedded in the wall, squat and somniferous with its three locks, its massive flanks, and its air of divine brutishness.