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

felt within her heart an emotion that counteracted her bitter grief.

"Now that we have got so far," whispered Pillerault to Constance, "shall we strike the last blow?"

Madame Birotteau let a sign of grief rather than of acquiescence escape her.

"My nephew," said Pillerault, addressing Cesar, "what do you intend to do?"

"To carry on my business."

"That would not be my judgment," said Pillerault. "Take my advice, wind up everything, make over your whole assets to your creditors, and keep out of business. I have often imagined how it would be if I were in a situation such as yours--Ah, one has to foresee everything in business! a merchant who does not think of failure is like a general who counts on never being defeated; he is only half a merchant. I, in your position, would never have continued in business. What! be forced to blush before the men I had injured, to bear their suspicious looks and tacit reproaches? I can conceive of the guillotine--a moment, and all is over. But to have the head replaced, and daily cut off anew,--that is agony I could not have borne. Many men take up their business as if nothing had happened: so much the better for them; they are stronger than Claude-Joseph Pillerault. If you pay in cash, and you are obliged to do so, they say that you have kept back part of your assets; if you are without a penny, it is useless to attempt to recover yourself. No, give up your property, sell your business, and find something else to do."

"What could I find?" said Cesar.

"Well," said Pillerault, "look for a situation. You have influential friends,--the Duc and the Duchesse de Lenoncourt, Madame de Mortsauf, Monsieur de Vandenesse. Write to them, go and see them; they might get you a situation in the royal household which would give you a thousand crowns or so; your wife could earn as much more, and perhaps your daughter also. The situation is not hopeless. You three might earn nearly ten thousand francs a year. In ten years you can pay off a hundred thousand francs, for you shall not use a penny of what you earn; your two women will have fifteen hundred francs a year from me for their expenses, and, as for you,--we will see about that."

Constance and Cesar laid these wise words to heart. Pillerault left them to go to the Bourse, which in those days was held in a provisional wooden building of a circular shape, and was entered from the Rue Faydeau. The failure, already known, of a man lately noted and envied, excited general comment in the upper commercial circles, which at that period were all "constitutionnel." The gentry of the Opposition claimed a monopoly of patriotism. Royalists might love the king, but to love your country was the exclusive privilege of the Left; the people belonged to it. The downfall of the protege of the palace, of a ministeralist, an incorrigible royalist who on the 13th Vendemiaire had insulted the cause of liberty by fighting against the glorious French Revolution,--such a downfall excited the applause and tittle-tattle of the Bourse. Pillerault wished to learn and study the state of public opinion. He found in one of the most animated groups du Tillet, Gobenheim-Keller, Nucingen, old Guillaume, and his son-in-law Joseph Lebas, Claparon, Gigonnet, Mongenod, Camusot, Gobseck, Adolphe Keller, Palma, Chiffreville, Matifat, Grindot, and Lourdois.

"What caution one needs to have!" said Gobenheim to du Tillet. "It was a mere chance that one of my brothers-in-law did not give Birotteau a credit."

"I am in for ten thousand francs," said du Tillet; "he asked me for them two weeks ago, and I let him have them on his own note without security. But he formerly did me some service, and I am willing to lose the money."

"Your nephew has done like all the rest," said Lourdois to Pillerault,--"given balls and parties! That a scoundrel should try to throw dust in people's eyes, I can understand; but it is amazing that a man who passed for as honest as the day should play those worn-out, knavish tricks which we are always finding out and condemning."

"Don't trust people unless they live in hovels like Claparon," said Gigonnet.

"Hey! mein freint," said the fat Nucingen to du Tillet, "you haf joust missed blaying me a bretty drick in zenting Pirodot to me. I don't know," he added, addressing Gobenheim the manufacturer, "vy he tid not ask me for fifdy tousand francs. I should haf gif dem to him."

"Oh, no, Monsieur le baron," said Joseph Lebas, "you knew very well that the Bank had refused his paper; you made them reject it in the committee on discounts. The affair of this unfortunate man, for whom I still feel the highest esteem, presents certain peculiar circumstances."

Pillerault pressed the hand of Joseph Lebas.

"Yes," said Mongenod, "it seems impossible to believe what has happened, unless we believe that concealed behind Gigonnet there are certain bankers who want to strangle the speculation in the lands about the Madeleine."

"What has happened is what happens always to those who go out of their proper business," said Claparon, hastily interrupting Mongenod. "If he had set up his own Cephalic Oil instead of running up the price of all the land in Paris by pouncing upon it, he might have lost his hundred thousand francs with Roguin, but he wouldn't have failed. He will go on now under the name of Popinot."

"Keep a watch on Popinot," said Gigonnet.

Roguin, in the parlance of such worthy merchants, was now the "unfortunate Roguin." Cesar had become "that wretched Birotteau." The one seemed to them excused by his great passion; the other they considered all the more guilty for his harmless pretensions.

Gigonnet, after leaving the Bourse, went round by the Rue Perrin-Gasselin on his way home, in search of Madame Madou, the vendor of dried fruits.

"Well, old woman," he said, with his coarse good-humor, "how goes the business?"

"So-so," said Madame Madou, respectfully, offering her only armchair to the usurer, with a show of attention she had never bestowed on her "dear defunct."

Mother Madou, who would have floored a recalcitrant or too-familiar wagoner and gone fearlessly to the assault of the Tuileries on the 10th of October, who jeered her best customers and was capable of speaking up to the king in the name of her associate market-women,--Angelique Madou received Gigonnet with abject respect. Without strength in his presence, she shuddered under his rasping glance. The lower classes will long tremble at sight of the executioner, and Gigonnet was the executioner of petty commerce. In the markets no power on earth is so respected as that of the man who controls the flow of money; all other human institutions are as nothing beside him. Justice herself takes the form of a commissioner, a familiar personage in the eyes of the market; but usury seated behind its green boxes,--usury, entreated with fear tugging at the heart-strings, dries up all jesting, parches the throat, lowers the proudest look, and makes the commonest market women respectful.

"Do you want anything of me?" she said.

"A trifle, a mere nothing. Hold yourself ready to make good those notes of Birotteau; the man has failed, and claims must be put in at once. I will send you the account to-morrow morning."

Madame Madou's eyes contracted like those of a cat for a second, and then shot out flames.

"Ah, the villain! Ah, the scoundrel! He came and told me himself he was a deputy-mayor,--a trumped-up story! Reprobate! is that what he calls business? There is no honor among mayors; the government deceives us. Stop! I'll go and make him pay me; I will--"

"Hey! at such times everybody looks out for himself, my dear!" said Gigonnet, lifting his leg with the quaint little action of a cat fearing to cross a wet place,--a habit to which he owed his nickname. "There are some very big wigs in the matter who mean to get themselves out of the scrape."

"Yes, and I'll pull my nuts out of the fire, too! Marie-Jeanne, bring my clogs and my rabbit-skin cloak; and quick, too, or I'll warm you up with a box on the ear."

"There'll be warm work down there!" thought Gigonnet, rubbing his hands as he walked away. "Du Tillet will be satisfied; it will make a fine scandal all through the quarter. I don't know what that poor devil of a perfumer has done to him; for my part I pity the fellow as I do a dog with a broken leg. He isn't a man, he has got no force."

Madame Madou bore down, like an insurrectionary wave from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, upon the shop-door of the hapless Birotteau, which she opened with excessive violence, for her walk had increased her fury.

"Heap of vermin! I want my money; I will have my money! You shall give me my money, or I carry off your scent-bags, and that satin trumpery, and the fans, and everything you've got here, for my two thousand francs. Who ever heard of mayors robbing the people? If you don't pay me I'll send you to the galleys; I'll go to the police,--justice shall be done! I won't leave this place till I've got my money."

She made a gesture as if to break the glass before the shelves on which the valuables were placed.

"Mother Madou takes a drop too much," whispered Celestin to his neighbor.

The virago overheard him,--for in paroxysms of passion the organs are either paralyzed or trebly acute,--and she forthwith applied to Celestin's ear the most vigorous blow that ever resounded in a Parisian perfumery.

"Learn to respect women, my angel," she said, "and don't smirch the names of the people you rob."

"Madame," said Madame Birotteau, entering from the back-shop, where she happened to be with her husband,--whom Pillerault was persuading to go with him, while Cesar, to obey the law, was humbly expressing his willingness to go to prison,--"madame, for heaven's sake do not raise a mob, and bring a crowd upon us!"

"Hey! let them come," said the woman; "I'll tell them a tale that will make you laugh the wrong side of your mouth. Yes, my nuts and my francs, picked up by the sweat of my brow, helped you to give balls. There you are, dressed like the queen of France in woollen which you sheared off the backs of poor sheep such as me! Good God! it would burn my shoulders, that it would, to wear stolen goods! I've got nothing but rabbit-skin to cover my carcass, but it is mine! Brigands, thieves, my money or--"

She darted at a pretty inlaid box containing toilet articles.

"Put that down, madame!" said Cesar, coming forward, "nothing here is mine; everything belongs to my creditors. I own nothing but my own person; if you wish to seize that and put me in prison, I give you my word of honor"--the tears fell from his eyes--"that I will wait here till you have me arrested."

The tone and gesture were so completely in keeping with his words that Madame Madou's anger subsided.

"My property has been carried off by a notary; I am innocent of the disasters I cause," continued Cesar, "but you shall be paid in course of time if I have to die in the effort, and work like a galley-slave as a porter in the markets."

"Come, you are a good man," said the market-woman. "Excuse my words, madame; but I may as well go and drown myself, for Gigonnet will hound