Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau, Honoré de Balzac [good fiction books to read .TXT] 📗

the Tourangian peasant triumphed; his head grew clear. Monsieur Haudry ordered stimulants and generous diet, and before long, after an occasional cup of coffee, Cesar was on his feet again. Constance, wearied out, took her husband's place in bed.

"Poor woman!" said Cesar, looking at her as she slept.

"Come, papa, take courage! you are so superior a man that you will triumph in the end. This trouble won't last; Monsieur Anselme will help you."

Cesarine said these vague words in the tender tones which give courage to a stricken heart, just as the songs of a mother soothe the weary child tormented with pain as its cuts its teeth.

"Yes, my child, I shall struggle on; but say not a word to any one,--not to Popinot who loves us, nor to your uncle Pillerault. I shall first write to my brother; he is canon and vicar of the cathedral. He spends nothing, and I have no doubt he has means. If he saves only three thousand francs a year, that would give him at the end of twenty years one hundred thousand francs. In the provinces the priests lay up money."

Cesarine hastened to bring her father a little table with writing-things upon it,--among them the surplus of invitations printed on pink paper.

"Burn all that!" cried her father. "The devil alone could have prompted me to give that ball. If I fail, I shall seem to have been a swindler. Stop!" he added, "words are of no avail." And he wrote the following letter:--

My dear Brother,--I find myself in so severe a commercial crisis
that I must ask you to send me all the money you can dispose of,
even if you have to borrow some for the purpose.

Ever yours,
Cesar.

Your niece, Cesarine, who is watching me as I write, while my poor
wife sleeps, sends you her tender remembrances.

This postscript was added at Cesarine's urgent request; she then took the letter and gave it to Raguet.

"Father," she said, returning, "here is Monsieur Lebas, who wants to speak to you."

"Monsieur Lebas!" cried Cesar, frightened, as though his disaster had made him a criminal,--"a judge!"

"My dear Monsieur Birotteau, I take too great an interest in you," said the stout draper, entering the room, "we have known each other too long,--for we were both elected judges at the same time,--not to tell you that a man named Bidault, called Gigonnet, a usurer, has notes of yours turned over to his order, and marked 'not guaranteed,' by the house of Claparon. Those words are not only an affront, but they are the death of your credit."

"Monsieur Claparon wishes to speak to you," said Celestin, entering; "may I tell him to come up?"

"Now we shall learn the meaning of this insult," said Lebas.

"Monsieur," said Cesar to Claparon, as he entered, "this is Monsieur Lebas, a judge of the commercial courts, and my friend--"

"Ah! monsieur is Monsieur Lebas?" interrupted Claparon. "Delighted with the opportunity, Monsieur Lebas of the commercial courts; there are so many Lebas, you know, of one kind or another--"

"He has seen," said Birotteau, cutting the gabbler short, "the notes which I gave you, and which I understood from you would not be put into circulation. He has seen them bearing the words 'not guaranteed.'"

"Well," said Claparon, "they are not in general circulation; they are in the hands of a man with whom I do a great deal of business,--Pere Bidault. That is why I affixed the words 'not guaranteed.' If the notes were intended for circulation you would have made them payable to his order. Monsieur Lebas will understand my position. What do these notes represent? The price of landed property. Paid by whom? By Birotteau. Why should I guarantee Birotteau by my signature? We are to pay, each on his own account, our half of the price of the said land. Now, it is enough to be jointly and separately liable to the sellers. I hold inflexibly to one commercial rule: I never give my guarantee uselessly, any more than I give my receipt for moneys not yet paid. He who signs, pays. I don't wish to be liable to pay three times."

"Three times!" said Cesar.

"Yes, monsieur," said Claparon, "I have already guaranteed Birotteau to the sellers, why should I guarantee him again to the bankers? The circumstances in which we are placed are very hard. Roguin has carried off a hundred thousand francs of mine; therefore, my half of the property costs me five hundred thousand francs instead of four hundred thousand. Roguin has also carried off two hundred and forty thousand francs of Birotteau's. What would you do in my place, Monsieur Lebas? Stand in my skin for a moment and view the case. Give me your attention. Say that we are engaged in a transaction on equal shares; you provide the money for your share, I give bills for mine; I offer them to you, and you undertake, purely out of kindness, to convert them into money. You learn that I, Claparon,--banker, rich, respected (I accept all the virtues under the sun),--that the virtuous Claparon is on the verge of failure, with six million of liabilities to meet: would you, at such a moment, give your signature to guarantee mine? Of course not; you would be mad to do it. Well, Monsieur Lebas, Birotteau is in the position which I have supposed for Claparon. Don't you see that if I endorse for him I am liable not only for my own share of the purchase, but I shall also be compelled to reimburse to the full amount of Birotteau's paper, and without--"

"To whom?" asked Birotteau, interrupting him.

"--without gaining his half of the property?" said Claparon, paying no attention to the interruption. "For I should have no rights in it; I should have to buy it over again; consequently, I repeat, I should have to pay for it three times."

"Reimburse whom?" persisted Birotteau.

"Why, the holder of the notes, if I were to endorse, and you were to fail."

"I shall not fail, monsieur," said Birotteau.

"Very good," said Claparon. "But you have been a judge, and you are a clever merchant; you know very well that we should look ahead and foresee everything; you can't be surprised that I should attend to my business properly."

"Monsieur Claparon is right," said Joseph Lebas.

"I am right," said Claparon,--"right commercially. But this is an affair of landed property. Now, what must I have? Money, to pay the sellers. We won't speak now of the two hundred and forty thousand francs,--which I am sure Monsieur Birotteau will be able to raise soon," said Claparon, looking at Lebas. "I have come now to ask for a trifle, merely twenty-five thousand francs," he added, turning to Birotteau.

"Twenty-five thousand francs!" cried Cesar, feeling ice in his veins instead of blood. "What claim have you, monsieur?"

"What claim? Hey! we have to make a payment and execute the deeds before a notary. Among ourselves, of course, we could come to an understanding about the payment, but when we have to do with a financial public functionary it is quite another thing! He won't palaver; he'll trust you no farther than he can see. We have got to come down with forty thousand francs, to secure the registration, this week. I did not expect reproaches in coming here, for, thinking this twenty-five thousand francs might be inconvenient to you just now, I meant to tell you that, by a mere chance, I have saved you--"

"What?" said Birotteau, with that rending cry of anguish which no man ever mistakes.

"A trifle! The notes amounting to twenty-five thousand francs on divers securities which Roguin gave me to negotiate I have credited to you, for the registration payment and the fees, of which I will send you an account; there will be a small amount to deduct, and you will then owe me about six or seven thousand francs."

"All that seems to me perfectly proper," said Lebas. "In your place, monsieur, I should do the same towards a stranger."

"Monsieur Birotteau won't die of it," said Claparon; "it takes more than one shot to kill an old wolf. I have seen wolves with a ball in their head run, by God, like--wolves!"

"Who could have foreseen such villany as Roguin's?" said Lebas, as much alarmed by Cesar's silence as by the discovery of such enormous speculations outside of his friend's legitimate business of perfumery.

"I came very near giving Monsieur Birotteau a receipt for his four hundred thousand francs," said Claparon. "I should have blown up if I had, for I had given Roguin a hundred thousand myself the day before. Our mutual confidence is all that saved me. Whether the money were in a lawyer's hands or in mine until the day came to pay for the land, seemed to us all a matter of no importance."

"It would have been better," said Lebas, "to have kept the money in the Bank of France until the time came to make the payments."

"Roguin was the bank to me," said Cesar. "But he is in the speculation," he added, looking at Claparon.

"Yes, for one-fourth, by verbal agreement only. After being such a fool as to let him run off with my money, I sha'n't be such a fool as to throw any more after it. If he sends me my hundred thousand francs, and two hundred thousand more for his half of our share, I shall then see about it. But he will take good care not to send them for an affair which needs five years' pot-boiling before you get any broth. If he has only carried off, as they say, three hundred thousand francs, he will want the income of all of that to live suitably in foreign countries."

"The villain!"

"Eh! the devil take him! It was a woman who got him where he is," said Claparon. "Where's the old man who can answer for himself that he won't be the slave of his last fancy? None of us, who think ourselves so virtuous, know how we shall end. A last passion,--eh! it is the most violent of all! Look at Cardot, Camusot, Matifat; they all have their mistresses! If we have been gobbled up to satisfy Roguin's, isn't it our own fault? Why didn't we distrust a notary who meddles with speculations? Every notary, every broker, every trustee who speculates is an object of suspicion. Failure for them is fraudulent bankruptcy; they are sure to go before the criminal courts, and therefore they prefer to run out of the country. I sha'n't commit such a stupid blunder again. Well, well! we are too shaky ourselves in the matter not to let judgment go by default against the men we have dined with, who have given us fine balls,--men of the world, in short. Nobody complains; we are all to blame."

"Very much to blame," said Birotteau. "The laws about failures and insolvency should be looked into."

"If you have any need of me," said Lebas to Cesar, "I am at your service."

"Monsieur does not need any one," said the irrepressible chatterbox, whose floodgates du Tillet had set wide open when he turned on the water,--for Claparon was now repeating a lesson du Tillet had cleverly taught him. "His course is quite clear. Roguin's assets will give fifty per cent to the creditors, so little Crottat tells me. Besides this, Monsieur Birotteau gets back the forty thousand on