“What about getting some bullion and running it to Geneva for a bill of exchange?” Abraham demanded. “Much quicker, and easier to carry to Amsterdam than casks of honey.”
“There is a lot of competition for the small amount of bullion that exists here, and so you will have to accept a large discount,” Monsieur Wachsmann warned him, “but if that is really what you want, the house that specializes in such transactions is that of Hacklheber. They are at the Sign of the Golden Mercury, cater-corner from the Place au Change.”
“Now, there is a familiar name,” Eliza said. “I have been to their factory in Leipzig, and been ogled by Lothar himself.”
“I have never heard of them,” said Samuel, “but if this Lothar was ogling you it means he is not altogether stupid.”
“They are metals specialists,” said Jacob Gold, “I know that much.”
“When the Genoese here went bankrupt,” said Monsieur Wachsmann, “it happened because the Spanish mines had hiccuped in their delivery of silver to Seville. Bankers of Geneva and other places came to Lyon to fill the void left by the Genoese. They had connections to silver mines in the Harz and the Ore Range, which flourished for a brief time, until Spanish silver once again flooded the market. Anyway, one of those banking-families had an agency in Leipzig, and the people they sent thither to look after it became linked by marriage to this family of von Hacklheber. Because of the Hacklhebers’ connections to the mines, they had older ties to the Fuggers. Indeed, it is said that this family goes all the way back to the time of the Romans…”
Abraham snorted. “Ours goes back all the way to Adam.”
“Yes; but to them this is all very impressive,” said Monsieur Wachsmann patiently, “and by the way, now that you have had your bar mitzvah you might spend less time poring over Torah and more learning social graces. At any rate, fortune favored the Leipzig branch, and before long the Hacklheber tail was wagging the Geneva dog. It is a small house, but reputed extraordinarily clever. They are in Lyon, Cadiz, Piacenza: anywhere there is a large flux of money.”
“What do they do?” Abraham wanted to know.
“Lend money, clear transactions, like other banks. But their real specialty is maneuvers such as the one we are talking about now: shipment of bullion to Geneva. Do you remember when I warned you that there would be a discount if you converted your earnings to bullion here? It should have occurred to you to wonder just where the missing money disappears to in such a case. The answer is that it goes into the coffers of Lothar von Hacklheber.”
Monsieur Wachsmann rolled to his feet, and paced across the terrace once or twice before going on.
“I trade in wax. I know where wax comes from and where it goes, and how much wax of different types is worth to different people in different times and places. I say to you that what I am to wax, Lothar von Hacklheber is to money.”
“You mean gold? Silver?”
“All kinds. Metals in pig, bullion, or minted form, paper, moneys of account such as our ecus au soleil. To me, money is frankly somewhat mysterious; but to him it is all as simple as wax. Or so it would seem; like honeycombs in a boiler, it melts together and is con-fused into one thing.”
“Then we shall go and talk to his agent here,” Eliza said.
“Agreed,” said Samuel de la Vega, “but I say to you that if they simply had a few coins lying about the place, we could get this whole thing done in an hour. That this system works, I cannot deny; but this Dép?t reminds me of certain towns up in the Alps where people have been marrying each other for too long.”
“THE NEXT DAY,” Eliza continued, “I met Gerhard Mann, who is the Hacklheber agent in Lyon.”
She now relaxed her grip on Bonaventure Rossignol’s testicles. For in the end, this was the only way she had found to maintain Bon-bon’s attentiveness as she had discoursed of ecus au soleil and the Dép?t and so forth. But the mention of the name Hacklheber brought Rossignol to attention.
“Lothar von Hacklheber,” she continued, “is not the sort who gladly suffers an employee to while away the afternoons sipping coffee in the café.”
“I should think not!”
“He has so arranged it that Mann has more work than he can handle. This forces him to make choices. He is always dashing about town on horseback like a Cavalier. Carriages are too slow for him. Arranging the meeting was absurdly difficult. It required half a dozen exchanges of notes. Finally I did what was simplest, namely remained still at the pied-à-terre and waited for him to come to me. He galloped up, naturally, just as I was beginning to suckle Jean-Jacques. And so rather than send him away, I invited him in, and bade him sit down across the table from me even as Jean-Jacques was hanging off my tit.”
“Appalling!”
“But I did this as a sort of test, Bon-bon, to see if he’d be appalled by it.”
“Was he?”
“He pretended not to notice, which was not an easy thing for him.”
Rossignol shuddered. “What did you talk about?”
“We talked about Lothar von Hacklheber.”