The Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau/Part II/Chapter IV
During the first three days of the year, two hundred visiting cards were sent to Birotteau. This rush of fictitious friendship, these empty testimonials of favor, are horrible to those who feel themselves drawn down into the vortex of misfortune. Birotteau presented himself three times at the hotel of the famous banker, the Baron de Nucingen, but in vain. The opening of the year with all its festivities sufficiently explained the absences of the financier. On the last occasion Birotteau got as far as the office of the banker, where the head-clerk, a German, told him that Monsieur de Nucingen had returned at five in the morning from a ball at the Kellers', and would not be visible until half-past nine o'clock. Birotteau had the luck to interest this man in his affairs, and remained talking with him more than half an hour. In the course of the afternoon this prime minister of the house of Nucingen wrote Birotteau that the baron would receive him the next day, 13th, at noon. Though every hour brought its drop of absinthe, the day went by with frightful rapidity. Cesar took a hackney coach, but stopped it several paces distant from the hotel, whose courtyard was crowded with carriages. The poor man's heart sank within him when he saw the splendors of that noted house.
"And yet he has failed twice," he said to himself as he went up a superb staircase banked with flowers, and crossed the sumptuous rooms which helped to make Madame Delphine de Nucingen famous in the Chaussee d'Antin. The baronne's ambition was to rival the great ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, to whose houses she was not as yet admitted. The baron was breakfasting with his wife. In spite of the crowd which was waiting for him in the counting-room, he had left word that any friend of du Tillet was to be admitted. Birotteau trembled with hope as he noticed the change which the baron's order had wrought in the hitherto insolent manner of the footman.
"Pardon me, my tear," said the baron to his wife, in a strong German accent, as he rose and nodded to Birotteau, "monsieur is a good royalist, and der intimate frient of tu Tillet. Bezides, monsieur is debudy-mayor of der zecond arrondissement, and gifs palls of Aziatigue magnifissence; so vill you mak his acquentence mit blaysure."
"I should be delighted to take lessons from Madame Birotteau, for Ferdinand—"
"She calls him Ferdinand!" thought Cesar.
"—spoke of the ball with great admiration, which is all the more valuable because he usually admires nothing. Ferdinand is a harsh critic; in his eyes everything ought to be perfect. Shall you soon give another ball?" she inquired affably.
"Madame, poor people, such as we are, seldom have many amusements of that kind," said the perfumer, not knowing whether she meant to ridicule him, or was merely paying an empty compliment.
"Monsieur Grindot suberintented der resdoration of your abbartement, I zink?" said the baron.
"Ah, Grindot! that nice little architect who has just returned from Rome," said Delphine de Nucingen. "I dote on him; he makes delicious drawings in my album."
No culprit enduring the torments of hell in Venetian dungeons ever suffered more from the torture of the boot than Birotteau did, standing there in his ordinary clothes. He felt a sneer in every word.
"Vill you gif oder little palls?" said the banker, with a searching look at the perfumer. "You see all der vorld ist inderesded."
"Will Monsieur Birotteau breakfast with us, without ceremony?" said Delphine, motioning towards the table which was sumptuously served.
"Madame la baronne, I came on business, and I am—"
"Yes, matame, vill you bermit us to speak of business?"
Delphine made a little sign of assent, saying to her husband, "Are you going to buy perfumery?" The baron shrugged his shoulders and turned to Cesar, who trembled with anxiety.
"Tu Tillet takes der graadest inderest in you," he said.
"At last," thought the poor man, "we are coming to the point."
"His ledder gif you in my house a creydit vich is only limided by der limids of my privade fortune."
The exhilarating balm infused into the water offered by the angel to Hagar in the desert, must have been the same cordial which flowed through Cesar's veins as he listened to these words. The wily banker retained the horrible pronunciation of the German Jews,—possibly that he might be able to deny promises actually given, but only half-understood.
"You shall haf a running aggont. Ve vill broceed in dis vay—" said this great and good and venerable financier, with Alsatian good-humor.
Birotteau doubted no longer; he was a merchant, and new very well that those who have no intention of rendering a service never enter into the details of executing it.
"I neet not tell you dat der Bank demands of all, graat and small alaike, dree zignatures. So denn, you traw a cheque to die order of our frient tu Tillet, and I vill sent it, same tay, to der Bank mit mein zignature; so shall you haf, at four o'clock, der amount of die cheque you trew in der morning; and at der costs of die Bank. I vill not receif a commission, no! I vill haf only der blaysure to be agreeaple to you. But I mak one condeetion," he added, laying his left finger lightly on his nose with an inimitably sly gesture.
"Monsieur le baron, it is granted on the sport," said Birotteau, who thought it concerned some tithe to be levied on his profits.
"A condeetion to vich I attache der graatest imbortance, because I vish Matame de Nucingen should receif, as she say, zom lessons from Matame Pirodot."
"Monsieur le baron! pray do not laugh at me, I entreat you."
"Monsieur Pirodot," said the financier, with a serious air, "it is deen agreet; you vill invite us to your nex pall? My vife is shalous; she vish to see your abbartement, of vich she hear so mooch."
"Monsieur le baron!—"
"Oh! if you reffuse me, no creydit! Yes, I know der Prayfic of die Seine was at your las pall."
"Monsieur le baron!—"
"You had Pillartiere, shentelman of der betchamber; goot royalist like you, who vas vounded at Zaint-Roqque—"
"On the 13th Vendemiaire, Monsieur le baron."
"Denn you hat Monsieur de Lazabed, Monsieur Fauquelin of der Agatemi—"
"Monsieur le baron!—"
"Hey! der tefle! dont pe zo humple, Monsieur der debudy-mayor; I haf heard dat der king say dat your ball—"
"The king?" exclaimed Birotteau, who was destined to hear no more, for, at this moment, a young man entered the room familiarly, whose step, recognized from afar by the beautiful Delphine de Nucingen, brought the color to her cheek.
"Goot morning, my tear te Marsay; tak my blace. Dere is a crowd, zey tell me, waiting in der gounting-room. I know vy. Der mines of Wortschin bay a graat divitent! I haf receifed die aggonts. You vill haf one hundert tousant francs, Matame de Nucingen, so you can buy chewels and oder tings to make you bretty,—as if you could be brettier!"
"Good God! the Ragons sold their shares!" exclaimed Birotteau.
"Who are those persons?" asked the elegant de Marsay, smiling.
"Egzactly," said Monsieur de Nucingen, turning back when he was almost at the door. "I zink tat dose persons—te Marsay, dis is Monsieur Pirodot, your berfumer, who gifs palls of a magnifissence druly Aziatique, and whom der king has decoraded."
De Marsay lifted his eyeglass, and said, "Ah! true, I thought the face was not unknown to me. So you are going to perfume your affairs with potent cosmetics, oil them with—"
"Ah! dose Rakkons," interrupted the baron, making a grimace expressive of disgust; "dey had an aggont mit us; I fafored dem, and dey could haf made der fortune, but dey would not wait one zingle day longer."
"Monsieur le baron!" cried Birotteau.
The worthy man thought his own prospects extremely doubtful, and without bowing to Madame de Nucingen, or to de Marsay, he hastily followed the banker. The baron was already on the staircase, and Birotteau caught him at the bottom just as he was about to enter the counting-room. As Nucingen opened the door he saw the despairing gesture of the poor creature behind him, who felt himself pushed into a gulf, and said hastily,—
"Vell, it is all agreet. See tu Tillet, and arranche it mit him."
Birotteau, thinking that de Marsay might have some influence with Nucingen, ran back with the rapidity of a swallow, and slipped into the dining-room where he had left the baronne and the young man, and where Delphine was waiting for a cup of cafe a la creme. He saw that the coffee had been served, but the baronne and the dandy had disappeared. The footman smiled at the astonishment of the worthy man, who slowly re-descended the stairs. Cesar rushed to du Tillet's, and was told that he had gone into the country with Madame Roguin. He took a cabriolet, and paid the driver well to be taken rapidly to Nogent-sur-Marne. At Nogent-sur-Marne the porter told him that monsieur and madame had started for Paris. Birotteau returned home, shattered in mind and body. When he related his wild-goose chase to his wife and daughter he was amazed to find his Constance, usually perched like a bird of ill omen on the smallest commercial mishap, now giving him the tenderest consolation, and assuring him that everything would turn out well.
The next morning, Birotteau mounted guard as early as seven o'clock before du Tillet's door. He begged the porter, slipping ten francs into his hand, to put him in communication with du Tillet's valet, and obtained from the latter a promise to show him in to his master the moment that du Tillet was visible: he slid two pieces of gold into the valet's hand. By such little sacrifices and great humiliations, common to all courtiers and petitioners, he was able to attain his end. At half-past eight, just as his former clerk was putting on a dressing-gown, yawning, stretching, and shaking off the cobwebs of sleep, Birotteau came face to face with the tiger, hungry for revenge, whom he now looked upon as his only friend.
"Go on with your dressing," said Birotteau.
"What do you want, my good Cesar?" said du Tillet.
Cesar stated, with painful trepidation, the answer and requirements of Monsieur de Nucingen to the inattentive ears of du Tillet, who was looking for the bellows and scolding his valet for the clumsy manner in which he had lighted the fire.
The valet listened. At first Cesar did not notice him; when he did so he stopped short, confused, but resumed what he was saying as du Tillet touched him with the spur exclaiming, "Go on! go on! I am listening to you."
The poor man's shirt was wet; his perspiration turned to ice as du Tillet looked fixedly at him, and he saw the silver-lined pupils of those eyes, streaked with threads of gold, which pierced to his very heart with a diabolical gleam.
"My dear master, the Bank has refused to take your notes which the house of Claparon passed over to Gigonnet not guaranteed. Is that my fault? How is it that you, an old commercial judge, should commit such blunders? I am, first and foremost, a banker. I will give you my money, but I cannot risk having my signature refused at the Bank. My credit is my life; that is the case with all of us. Do you want money?"
"Can you give me what I want?"
"That depends on how much you owe. How much do you want?"
"Thirty thousand francs."
"Are the chimney-bricks coming down on my head?" exclaimed du Tillet, bursting into a laugh.
Cesar, misled by the luxury about him, fancied it was the laugh of a man to whom the sum was a mere trifle; he breathed again. Du Tillet rang the bell.
"Send the cashier to me."
"He has not come, monsieur," said the valet.
"These fellows take advantage of me! It is half-past eight o'clock, and he ought to have done a million francs' worth of business by this time."
Five minutes later Monsieur Legras came in.
"How much have we in the desk?"
"Only twenty thousand francs. Monsieur gave orders to buy into the Funds to the amount of thirty thousand francs cash, payable on the 15th."
"That's true; I am half-asleep still."
The cashier gave Birotteau a suspicious look as he left the room.
"If truth were banished from this earth, she would leave her last word with a cashier," said du Tillet. "Haven't you some interest in this little Popinot, who has set up for himself?" he added, after a dreadful pause, in which the sweat rolled in drops from Cesar's brow.
"Yes," he answered, naively. "Do you think you could discount his signature for a large amount?"
"Bring me his acceptances for fifty thousand francs, and I will get them discounted for you at a reasonable rate by old Gobseck, who is very easy to deal with when he has funds to invest; and he has some now."
Birotteau went home broken-hearted, not perceiving that the bankers were tossing him from one to the other like a shuttle-cock; but Constance had already guessed that credit was unattainable. If three bankers refused it, it was very certain that they had inquired of each other about so prominent a man as a deputy-mayor; and there was, consequently, no hope from the Bank of France.
"Try to renew your notes," she said; "go and see Monsieur Claparon, your copartner, and all the others to whom you gave notes for the 15th, and ask them to renew. It will be time enough to go to the money-lenders with Popinot's paper if that fails."
"To-morrow is the 13th," said Birotteau, completely crushed.
In the language of his own prospectus, he enjoyed a sanguine temperament, which was subject to an enormous waste through emotions and the pressure of thought, and imperatively demanded sleep to repair it. Cesarine took her father into the salon and played to him "Rousseau's Dream,"—a pretty piece of music by Herold; while Constance sat sewing beside him. The poor man laid his head on a cushion, and every time he looked up at his wife he saw a soft smile upon her lips; and thus he fell asleep.
"Poor man!" said Constance; "what misery is in store for him! God grant he may have strength to bear it!"
"Oh! what troubles you, mamma?" said Cesarine, seeing that her mother was weeping.
"Dear daughter, I see a failure coming. If your father is forced to make an assignment, we must ask no one's pity. My child, be prepared to become a simple shop-girl. If I see you accepting your life courageously, I shall have strength to begin my life over again. I know your father,—he will not keep back one farthing; I shall resign my dower; all that we possess will be sold. My child, you must take your jewels and your clothes to-morrow to your uncle Pillerault; for you are not bound to any sacrifice."
Cesarine was seized with a terror beyond control as she listened to these words, spoken with religious simplicity. The thought came into her mind to go and see Anselme; but her native delicacy checked it.
On the morrow, at nine o'clock, Birotteau, following his wife's advice, went to find Claparon in the Rue de Provence, in the grasp of anxieties quite other than those through which he had lately passed. To ask for a credit is an ordinary business matter; it happens every day that those who undertake an enterprise are obliged to borrow capital; but to ask for the renewal of notes is in commercial jurisprudence what the correctional police is to the court of assizes,—a first step towards bankruptcy, just as a misdemeanor leads to crime. The secret of your embarrassment is in other hands than your own. A merchant delivers himself over, bound hand and foot, to another merchant; and mercy is a virtue not practised at the Bourse.
Cesar, who once walked the streets of Paris with his head high and his eye beaming with confidence, now, unstrung by perplexity, shrank from meeting Claparon; he began to realize that a banker's heart is mere viscera. Claparon had seemed to him so brutal in his coarse jollity, and he had felt the man's vulgarity so keenly, that he shuddered at the necessity of accosting him.
"But he is nearer to the people; perhaps he will therefore have more heart!" Such was the first reproachful word which the anguish of his position forced from Cesar's lips.
Birotteau drew upon the dregs of his courage, and went up the stairway of a mean little entresol, at whose windows he had caught a glimpse of green curtains yellowed by the sun. He read the word "Offices," stamped in black letters on an oval copper-plate; he rapped, nobody answered, and he went in. The place, worse than humble, conveyed an idea of penury, or avarice, or neglect. No employe was to be seen behind the brass lattice which topped an unpainted white wooden enclosure, breast-high, within which were tables and desks in stained black wood. These deserted places were littered with inkstands, in which the ink was mouldy and the pens as rumpled as a ragammufin's head, and twisted like sunfish; with boxes and papers and printed matter,—all worthless, no doubt. The floor was as dirty, defaced, and damp as that of a boarding-house. The second room, announced by the word "Counting-Room" on its door, harmonized with the grim facetiae of its neighbor. In one corner was a large space screened off by an oak balustrade, trellised with copper wire and furnished with a sliding cat-hole, within which was an enormous iron chest. This space, apparently given over to the rioting of rats, also contained an odd-looking desk, with a shabby arm-chair, which was ragged, green, and torn in the seat,—from which the horse-hair protruded, like the wig of its master, in half a hundred libertine curls. The chief adornment of this room, which had evidently been the salon of the appartement before it was converted into a banking-office, was a round table covered with a green cloth, round which stood a few old chairs of black leather with tarnished gilt nails. The fireplace, somewhat elegant, showed none of the sooty marks of a fire; the hearth was clean; the mirror, covered with fly-specks, had a paltry air, in keeping with a mahogany clock bought at the sale of some old notary, which annoyed the eye, already depressed by two candelabras without candles and the sticky dust that covered them. The wall-paper, mouse-gray with a pink border, revealed, by certain fuliginous stains, the unwholesome presence of smokers. Nothing ever more faithfully represented that prosaic precinct called by the newspapers an "editorial sanctum." Birotteau, fearing that he might be indiscreet, knocked sharply three times on the door opposite to that by which he entered.
"Come in!" cried Claparon, the reverberation of whose voice revealed the distance it had to traverse and the emptiness of the room,—in which Cesar heard the crackling of a good fire, though the owner was apparently not there.
The room was, in truth, Claparon's private office. Between the ostentatious reception-room of Francois Keller and the untidy abode of the counterfeit banker, there was all the difference that exists between Versailles and the wigwam of a Huron chief. Birotteau had witnessed the splendors of finance; he was now to see its fooleries. Lying in bed, in a sort of oblong recess or den opening from the farther end of the office, and where the habits of a slovenly life had spoiled, dirtied, greased, torn, defaced, obliterated, and ruined furniture which had been elegant in its day, Claparon, at the entrance of Birotteau, wrapped his filthy dressing-gown around him, laid down his pipe, and drew together the curtains of the bed with a haste which made even the innocent perfumer suspect his morals.
"Sit down, monsieur," said the make-believe banker.
Claparon, without his wig, his head wrapped up in a bandanna handkerchief twisted awry, seemed all the more hideous to Birotteau because, when the dressing-gown gaped open, he saw an undershirt of knitted wool, once white, but now yellowed by wear indefinitely prolonged.
"Will you breakfast with me?" said Claparon, recollecting the perfumer's ball, and thinking to make him a return and also to put him off the scent by this invitation.
Cesar now perceived a round table, hastily cleared of its litter, which bore testimony to the presence of jovial company by a pate, oysters, white wine, and vulgar kidneys, sautes au vin de champagne, sodden in their own sauce. The light of a charcoal brazier gleamed on an omelette aux truffes.
Two covers and two napkins, soiled by the supper of the previous night, might have enlightened the purest innocence. Claparon, thinking himself very clever, pressed his invitation in spite of Cesar's refusal.
"I was to have had a guest, but that guest has disappointed me," said the crafty traveller, in a voice likely to reach a person buried under coverlets.
"Monsieur," said Birotteau, "I came solely on business, and I shall not detain you long."
"I'm used up," said Claparon, pointing to the desk and the tables piled with documents; "they don't leave me a poor miserable moment to myself! I don't receive people except on Saturdays. But as for you, my dear friend, I'll see you at any time. I haven't a moment to love or to loaf; I have lost even the inspiration of business; to catch its vim one must have the sloth of ease. Nobody ever sees me now on the boulevard doing nothing. Bah! I'm sick of business; I don't want to talk about business; I've got money enough, but I never can get enough happiness. My gracious! I want to travel,—to see Italy! Oh, that dear Italy! beautiful in spite of all her reverses! adorable land, where I shall no doubt encounter some angel, complying yet majestic! I have always loved Italian women. Did you ever have an Italian woman yourself? No? Then come with me to Italy. We will see Venice, the abode of doges,—unfortunately fallen into those intelligent Austrian hands that know nothing of art! Bah! let us get rid of business, canals, loans, and peaceful governments. I'm a good fellow when I've got my pockets lined. Thunder! let's travel."
"One word, monsieur, and I will release you," said Birotteau. "You made over my notes to Monsieur Bidault."
"You mean Gigonnet, that good little Gigonnet, easy-going—"
"Yes," said Cesar; "but I wish,—and here I count upon your honor and delicacy,—"
Claparon bowed.
"—to renew those notes."
"Impossible!" snapped the banker. "I'm not alone in the matter. We have met in council,—regular Chamber; but we all agreed like bacon in a frying-pan. The devil! we deliberated. Those lands about the Madeleine don't amount to anything; we are operating elsewhere. Hey! my dear sir, if we were not involved in the Champs Elysees and at the Bourse which they are going to finish, and in the quartier Saint-Lazare and at Tivoli, we shouldn't be, as that fat Nucingen says, in peaseness at all. What's the Madeleine to us?—a midge of a thing. Pr-r-r! We don't play low, my good fellow," he said, tapping Birotteau on the stomach and catching him round the waist. "Come, let's have our breakfast, and talk," added Claparon, wishing to soften his refusal.
"Very good," said Birotteau. "So much the worse for the other guest," he thought, meaning to make Claparon drunk, and to find out who were his real associates in an affair which began to look suspicious to him.
"All right! Victoire!" called the banker.
This call brought a regular Leonarde, tricked out like a fish-woman.
"Tell the clerks that I can't see any one,—not even Nucingen, Keller, Gigonnet, and all the rest of them."
"No one has come but Monsieur Lempereur."
"He can receive the great people," said Claparon; "the small fry are not to get beyond the first room. They are to say I'm cogitating a great enterprise—in champagne."
To make an old commercial traveller drunk is an impossibility. Cesar mistook the elation of the man's vulgarity when he attempted to sound his mind.
"That infamous Roguin is still connected with you," he began; "don't you think you ought to write and tell him to assist an old friend whom he has compromised,—a man with whom he dined every Sunday, and whom he has known for twenty years?"
"Roguin? A fool! his share is ours now. Don't be worried, old fellow, all will go well. Pay up to the 15th, and after that we will see—I say, we will see. Another glass of wine? The capital doesn't concern me one atom; pay or don't pay, I sha'n't make faces at you. I'm only in the business for a commission on the sales, and for a share when the lands are converted into money; and it's for that I manage the owners. Don't you understand? You have got solid men behind you, so I'm not afraid, my good sir. Nowadays, business is all parcelled out in portions. A single enterprise requires a combination of capacities. Go in with us; don't potter with pomatum and perfumes,—rubbish! rubbish! Shave the public; speculate!"
"Speculation!" said Cesar, "is that commerce?"
"It is abstract commerce," said Claparon,—"commerce which won't be developed for ten years to come, according to Nucingen, the Napoleon of finance; commerce by which a man can grasp the totality of fractions, and skim the profits before there are any. Gigantic idea! one way of pouring hope into pint cups,—in short, a new necromancy! So far, we have only got ten or a dozen hard heads initiated into the cabalistic secrets of these magnificent combinations."
Cesar opened his eyes and ears, endeavoring to understand this composite phraseology.
"Listen," said Claparon, after a pause. "Such master-strokes need men. There's the man of genius who hasn't a sou—like all men of genius. Those fellows spend their thoughts and spend their money just as it comes. Imagine a pig rooting round a truffle-patch; he is followed by a jolly fellow, a moneyed man, who listens for the grunt as piggy finds the succulent. Now, when the man of genius has found a good thing, the moneyed man taps him on the shoulder and says, 'What have you got there? You are rushing into the fiery furnace, my good fellow, and you haven't the loins to run out again. There's a thousand francs; just let me take it in hand and manage the affair.' Very good! The banker then convokes the traders: 'My friends, let us go to work: write a prospectus! Down with humbug!' On that they get out the hunting-horns and shout and clamor,—'One hundred thousand francs for five sous! or five sous for a hundred thousand francs! gold mines! coal mines!' In short, all the clap-trap of commerce. We buy up men of arts and sciences; the show begins, the public enters; it gets its money's worth, and we get the profits. The pig is penned up with his potatoes, and the rest of us wallow in banknotes. There it all is, my good sir. Come, go into the business with us. What would you like to be,—pig, buzzard, clown, or millionaire? Reflect upon it; I have now laid before you the whole theory of the modern loan-system. Come and see me often; you'll always find me a jovial, jolly fellow. French joviality—gaiety and gravity, all in one—never injures business; quite the contrary. Men who quaff the sparkling cup are born to understand each other. Come, another glass of champagne! it is good, I tell you! It was sent to me from Epernay itself, by a man for whom I once sold quantities at a good price—I used to be in wines. He shows his gratitude, and remembers me in my prosperity; very rare, that."
Birotteau, overcome by the frivolity and heedlessness of a man to whom the world attributed extreme depth and capacity, dared not question him any further. In the midst of his own haziness of mind produced by the champagne, he did, however, recollect a name spoken by du Tillet; and he asked Claparon who Gobseck the banker was, and where he lived.
"Have you got as far as that?" said Claparon. "Gobseck is a banker, just as the headsman is a doctor. The first word is 'fifty per cent'; he belongs to the race of Harpagon; he'll take canary birds at all seasons, fur tippets in summer, nankeens in winter. What securities are you going to offer him? If you want him to take your paper without security you will have to deposit your wife, your daughter, your umbrella, everything down to your hat-box, your socks (don't you go in for ribbed socks?), your shovel and tongs, and the very wood you've got in the cellar! Gobseck! Gobseck! in the name of virtuous folly, who told you to go to that commercial guillotine?"
"Monsieur du Tillet."
"Ah! the scoundrel, I recognize him! We used to be friends. If we have quarrelled so that we don't speak to each other, you may depend upon it my aversion to him is well-founded; he let me read down to the bottom of his infamous soul, and he made me uncomfortable at that beautiful ball you gave us. I can't stand his impudent airs—all because he has got a notary's wife! I could have countesses if I wanted them; I sha'n't respect him any the more for that. Ah! my respect is a princess who'll never give birth to such as he. But, I say, you are a funny fellow, old man, to flash us a ball like that, and two months after try to renew your paper! You seem to have some go in you. Let's do business together. You have got a reputation which would be very useful to me. Oh! du Tillet was born to understand Gobseck. Du Tillet will come to a bad end at the Bourse. If he is, as they say, the tool of old Gobseck, he won't be allowed to go far. Gobseck sits in a corner of his web like an old spider who has travelled round the world. Sooner or later, ztit! the usurer will toss him off as I do this glass of wine. So much the better! Du Tillet has played me a trick—oh! a damnable trick."
At the end of an hour and a half spend in just such senseless chatter, Birotteau attempted to get away, seeing that the late commercial traveller was about to relate the adventure of a republican deputy of Marseilles, in love with a certain actress then playing the part of la belle Arsene, who, on one occasion, was hissed by a royalist crowd in the pit.
"He stood up in his box," said Claparon, "and shouted: 'Arrest whoever hissed her! Eugh! If it's a woman, I'll kiss her; if it's a man, we'll see about it; if it's neither the one nor the other, may God's lightning blast it!' Guess how it ended."
"Adieu, monsieur," said Birotteau.
"You will have to come and see me," said Claparon; "that first scrap of paper you gave Cayron has come back to us protested; I endorsed it, so I've paid it. I shall send after you; business before everything."
Birotteau felt stabbed to the heart by this cold and grinning kindness as much as by the harshness of Keller or the coarse German banter of Nucingen. The familiarity of the man, and his grotesque gabble excited by champagne, seemed to tarnish the soul of the honest bourgeois as though he came from a house of financial ill-fame. He went down the stairway and found himself in the streets without knowing where he was going. As he walked along the boulevards and reached the Rue Saint-Denis, he recollected Molineux, and turned into the Cour Batave. He went up the dirty, tortuous staircase which he once trod so proudly. He recalled to mind the mean and niggardly acrimony of Molineux, and he shrank from imploring his favor. The landlord was sitting in the chimney-corner, as on the occasion of Cesar's first visit, but his breakfast was now in process of digestion. Birotteau proffered his request.
"Renew a note for twelve hundred francs?" said Molineux, with mocking incredulity. "Have you got to that, monsieur? If you have not twelve hundred francs to pay me on the 15th, do you intend to send back my receipt for the rent unpaid? I shall be sorry; but I have not the smallest civility in money-matters,—my rents are my living. Without them how could I pay what I owe myself? No merchant will deny the soundness of that principle. Money is no respecter of persons; money has no ears, it has no heart. The winter is hard, the price of wood has gone up. If you don't pay me on the 15th, a little summons will be served upon you at twelve o'clock on the 16th. Bah! the worthy Mitral, your bailiff, is mine as well; he will send you the writ in an envelope, with all the consideration due to your high position."
"Monsieur, I have never received a summons in my life," said Birotteau.
"There is a beginning to everything," said Molineux.
Dismayed by the curt malevolence of the old man, Cesar was cowed; he heard the knell of failure ringing in his ears, and every jangle woke a memory of the stern sayings his pitiless justice had uttered against bankrupts. His former opinions now seared, as with fire, the soft substance of his brain.
"By the by," said Molineux, "you neglected to put upon your notes, 'for value received in rental,' which would secure me preference."
"My position will prevent me from doing anything to the detriment of my creditors," said Cesar, stunned by the sudden sight of the precipice yawning before him.
"Very good, monsieur, very good; I thought I knew everything relating to rentals and tenants, but I have learned through you never to take notes in payment. Ah! I shall sue you, for your answer shows plainly enough that you are not going to meet your liabilities. Hard cash is a matter which concerns every landlord in Paris."
Birotteau went out, weary of life. It is in the nature of such soft and tender souls to be disheartened by a first rebuff, just as a first success encourages them. Cesar no longer had any hope except in the devotion of little Popinot, to whom his thoughts naturally turned as he crossed the Marche des Innocents.
"Poor boy! who could have believed it when I launched him, only six weeks ago, in the Tuileries?"
It was just four o'clock, the hour at which the judges left their court-rooms. Popinot the elder chanced to go and see his nephew. This judge, whose mind was singularly acute on all moral questions, was also gifted with a second-sight which enabled him to discover secret intentions, to perceive the meaning of insignificant human actions, the germs of crime, the roots of wrongdoing; and he now watched Birotteau, though Birotteau was not aware of it. The perfumer, who was annoyed at finding the judge with his nephew, seemed to him harassed, preoccupied, pensive. Little Popinot, always busy, with his pen behind his ear, lay down as usual flat on his stomach before the father of his Cesarine. The empty phrases which Cesar addressed to his partner seemed to the judge to mask some important request. Instead of going away, the crafty old man stayed in spite of his nephew's evident desire, for he guessed that the perfumer would soon try to get rid of him by going away himself. Accordingly, when Birotteau went out the judge followed, and saw Birotteau hanging about that part of the Rue des Cinq-Diamants which leads into the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher. This trifling circumstance roused the suspicions of old Popinot as to Cesar's intentions; he turned into the Rue des Lombards, and when he saw the perfumer re-enter Anselme's door, he came hastily back again.
"My dear Popinot," said Cesar to his partner, "I have come to ask a service of you."
"What can I do?" cried Popinot with generous ardor.
"Ah! you save my life," exclaimed the poor man, comforted by this warmth of heart which flamed upon the sea of ice he had traversed for twenty-five days.
"You must give me a note for fifty thousand francs on my share of the profits; we will arrange later about the payment."
Popinot looked fixedly at Cesar. Cesar dropped his eyes. At this moment the judge re-entered.
"My son—ah! excuse me, Monsieur Birotteau—Anselme, I forget to tell you—" and with an imperious gesture he led his nephew into the street and forced him, in his shirt-sleeves and bareheaded, to listen as they walked towards the Rue des Lombards. "My nephew, your old master may find himself so involved that he will be forced to make an assignment. Before taking that step, honorable men who have forty years of integrity to boast of, virtuous men seeking to save their good name, will play the part of reckless gamblers; they become capable of anything; they will sell their wives, traffic with their daughters, compromise their best friends, pawn what does not belong to them; they will frequent gambling-tables, become dissemblers, hypocrites, liars; they will even shed tears. I have witnessed strange things. You yourself have seen Roguin's respectability,—a man to whom they would have given the sacraments without confession. I do not apply these remarks in their full force to Monsieur Birotteau,—I believe him to be an honest man; but if he asks you to do anything, no matter what, against the rules of business, such as endorsing notes out of good-nature, or launching into a system of 'circulations,' which, to my mind, is the first step to swindling,—for it is uttering counterfeit paper-money,—if he asks you to do anything of the kind, promise me that you will sign nothing without consulting me. Remember that if you love his daughter you must not—in the very interests of your love you must not—destroy your future. If Monsieur Birotteau is to fall, what will it avail if you fall too? You will deprive yourselves, one as much as the other, of all the chances of your new business, which may prove his only refuge."
"Thank you, my uncle; a word to the wise is enough," said Popinot, to whom Cesar's heart-rending exclamation was now explained.
The merchant in oils, refined and otherwise, returned to his gloomy shop with an anxious brow. Birotteau saw the change.
"Will you do me the honor to come up into my bedroom? We shall be better there. The clerks, though very busy, might overhear us."
Birotteau followed Popinot, a prey to the anxiety a condemned man goes through from the moment of his appeal for mercy until its rejection.
"My dear benefactor," said Anselme, "you cannot doubt my devotion; it is absolute. Permit me only to ask you one thing. Will this sum clear you entirely, or is it only a means of delaying some catastrophe? If it is that, what good will it do to drag me down also? You want notes at ninety days. Well, it is absolutely impossible that I could meet them in that time."
Birotteau rose, pale and solemn, and looked at Popinot.
Popinot, horror-struck, cried out, "I will do them for you, if you wish it."
"UNGRATEFUL!" said his master, who spent his whole remaining strength in hurling the word at Anselme's brow, as if it were a living mark of infamy.
Birotteau walked to the door, and went out. Popinot, rousing himself from the sensation which the terrible word produced upon him, rushed down the staircase and into the street, but Birotteau was out of sight. Cesarine's lover heard that dreadful charge ringing in his ears, and saw the distorted face of the poor distracted Cesar constantly before him; Popinot was to live henceforth, like Hamlet, with a spectre beside him.
Birotteau wandered about the streets of the neighborhood like a drunken man. At last he found himself upon the quay, and followed it till he reached Sevres, where he passed the night at an inn, maddened with grief, while his terrified wife dared not send in search of him. She knew that in such circumstances an alarm, imprudently given, might be fatal to his credit, and the wise Constance sacrificed her own anxiety to her husband's commercial reputation: she waited silently through the night, mingling her prayers and terrors. Was Cesar dead? Had he left Paris on the scent of some last hope? The next morning she behaved as though she knew the reasons for his absence; but at five o'clock in the afternoon when Cesar had not returned, she sent for her uncle and begged him to go at once to the Morgue. During the whole of that day the courageous creature sat behind her counter, her daughter embroidering beside her. When Pillerault returned, Cesar was with him; on his way back the old man had met him in the Palais-Royal, hesitating before the entrance to a gambling-house.
This was the 14th. At dinner Cesar could not eat. His stomach, violently contracted, rejected food. The evening hours were terrible. The shaken man went through, for the hundredth time, one of those frightful alternations of hope and despair which, by forcing the soul to run up the scale of joyous emotion and then precipitating it to the last depths of agony, exhaust the vital strength of feeble beings. Derville, Birotteau's advocate, rushed into the handsome salon where Madame Cesar was using all her persuasion to retain her husband, who wished to sleep on the fifth floor,—"that I may not see," he said, "these monuments of my folly."
"The suit is won!" cried Derville.
At these words Cesar's drawn face relaxed; but his joy alarmed Derville and Pillerault. The women left the room to go and weep by themselves in Cesarine's chamber.
"Now I can get a loan!" cried Birotteau.
"It would be imprudent," said Derville; "they have appealed; the court might reverse the judgment; but in a month it would be safe."
"A month!"
Cesar fell into a sort of slumber, from which no one tried to rouse him,—a species of catalepsy, in which the body lived and suffered while the functions of the mind were in abeyance. This respite, bestowed by chance, was looked upon by Constance, Cesarine, Pillerault, and Derville as a blessing from God. And they judged rightly: Cesar was thus enabled to bear the harrowing emotions of that night. He was sitting in a corner of the sofa near the fire; his wife was in the other corner watching him attentively, with a soft smile upon her lips,—the smile which proves that women are nearer than men to angelic nature, in that they know how to mingle an infinite tenderness with an all-embracing compassion; a secret belonging only to angels seen in dreams providentially strewn at long intervals through the history of human life. Cesarine, sitting on a little stool at her mother's feet, touched her father's hand lightly with her hair from time to time, as she gave him a caress into which she strove to put the thoughts which, in such crises, the voice seems to render intrusive.
Seated in his arm-chair, like the Chancelier de l'Hopital on the peristyle of the Chamber of Deputies, Pillerault—a philosopher prepared for all events, and showing upon his countenance the wisdom of an Egyptian sphinx—was talking to Derville and his niece in a suppressed voice. Constance thought it best to consult the lawyer, whose discretion was beyond a doubt. With the balance-sheet written in her head, she explained the whole situation in low tones. After an hour's conference, held in presence of the stupefied Cesar, Derville shook his head and looked at Pillerault.
"Madame," he said, with the horrible coolness of his profession, "you must give in your schedule and make an assignment. Even supposing that by some contrivance you could meet the payments for to-morrow, you would have to pay down at least three hundred thousand francs before you could borrow on those lands. Your liabilities are five hundred thousand. To meet them you have assets that are very promising, very productive, but not convertible at present; you must fail within a given time. My opinion is that it is better to jump out of the window than to roll downstairs."
"That is my advice, too, dear child," said Pillerault.
Derville left, and Madame Cesar and Pillerault went with him to the door.
"Poor father!" said Cesarine, who rose softly to lay a kiss on Cesar's head. "Then Anselme could do nothing?" she added, as her mother and Pillerault returned.
"UNGRATEFUL!" cried Cesar, struck by the name of Anselme in the only living part of his memory,—as the note of a piano lifts the hammer which strikes its corresponding string.