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

full, with interest. I must ask you to come with me now to Monsieur Crottat, only two steps from here."

"Before a notary?"

"Monsieur; I am not forbidden to aim at my complete reinstatement; to obtain it, all deeds and receipts must be legal and undeniable."

"Come, then," said du Tillet, going out with Birotteau; "it is only a step. But where did you take all that money from?"

"I have not taken it," said Cesar; "I have earned it by the sweat of my brow."

"You owe an enormous sum to Claparon."

"Alas! yes; that is my largest debt. I think sometimes I shall die before I pay it."

"You never can pay it," said du Tillet harshly.

"He is right," thought Birotteau.

As he went home the poor man passed, inadvertently, along the Rue Saint-Honore; for he was in the habit of making a circuit to avoid seeing his shop and the windows of his former home. For the first time since his fall he saw the house where eighteen years of happiness had been effaced by the anguish of three months.

"I hoped to end my days there," he thought; and he hastened his steps, for he caught sight of the new sign,--

CELESTIN CREVEL

Successor to Cesar Birotteau

"Am I dazzled, am I going blind? Was that Cesarine?" he cried, recollecting a blond head he had seen at the window.

He had actually seen his daughter, his wife, and Popinot. The lovers knew that Birotteau never passed before the windows of his old home, and they had come to the house to make arrangements for a fete which they intended to give him. This amazing apparition so astonished Birotteau that he stood stock-still, unable to move.

"There is Monsieur Birotteau looking at his old house," said Monsieur Molineux to the owner of a shop opposite to "The Queen of Roses."

"Poor man!" said the perfumer's former neighbor; "he gave a fine ball--two hundred carriages in the street."

"I was there; and he failed in three months," said Molineux. "I was the assignee."

Birotteau fled, trembling in every limb, and hastened back to Pillerault.

Pillerault, who had just been informed of what had happened in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants, feared that his nephew was scarcely fit to bear the shock of joy which the sudden knowledge of his restoration would cause him; for Pillerault was a daily witness of the moral struggles of the poor man, whose mind stood always face to face with his inflexible doctrines against bankruptcy, and whose vital forces were used and spent at every hour. Honor was to Cesar a corpse, for which an Easter morning might yet dawn. This hope kept his sorrow incessantly active. Pillerault took upon himself the duty of preparing his nephew to receive the good news; and when Birotteau came in he was thinking over the best means of accomplishing his purpose. Cesar's joy as he related the proof of interest which the king had bestowed upon him seemed of good augury, and the astonishment he expressed at seeing Cesarine at "The Queen of Roses" afforded, Pillerault thought, an excellent opening.

"Well, Cesar," said the old man, "do you know what is at the bottom of it?--the hurry Popinot is in to marry Cesarine. He cannot wait any longer; and you ought not, for the sake of your exaggerated ideas of honor, to make him pass his youth eating dry bread with the fumes of a good dinner under his nose. Popinot wishes to lend you the amount necessary to pay your creditors in full."

"Then he would buy his wife," said Birotteau.

"Is it not honorable to reinstate his father-in-law?"

"There would be ground for contention; besides--"

"Besides," exclaimed Pillerault, pretending anger, "you may have the right to immolate yourself if you choose, but you have no right to immolate your daughter."

A vehement discussion ensued, which Pillerault designedly excited.

"Hey! if Popinot lent you nothing," cried Pillerault, "if he had called you his partner, if he had considered the price which he paid to the creditors for your share in the Oil as an advance upon the profits, so as not to strip you of everything--"

"I should have seemed to rob my creditors in collusion with him."

Pillerault feigned to be defeated by this argument. He knew the human heart well enough to be certain that during the night Cesar would go over the question in his own mind, and the mental discussion would accustom him to the idea of his complete vindication.

"But how came my wife and daughter to be in our old appartement?" asked Birotteau, while they were dining.

"Anselme wants to hire it, and live there with Cesarine. Your wife is on his side. They have had the banns published without saying anything about it, so as to force you to consent. Popinot says there will be much less merit in marrying Cesarine after you are reinstated. You take six thousand francs from the king, and you won't accept anything from your relations! I can well afford to give you a receipt in full for all that is owing to me; do you mean to refuse it?"

"No," said Cesar; "but that won't keep me from saving up everything to pay you."

"Irrational folly!" cried Pillerault. "In matters of honor I ought to be believed. What nonsense were you saying just now? How have you robbed your creditors when you have paid them all in full?"

Cesar looked earnestly at Pillerault, and Pillerault was touched to see, for the first time in three years, a genuine smile on the face of his poor nephew.

"It is true," he said, "they would be paid; but it would be selling my daughter."

"And I wish to be bought!" cried Cesarine, entering with Popinot.

The lovers had heard Birotteau's last words as they came on tiptoe through the antechamber of their uncle's little appartement, Madame Birotteau following. All three had driven round to the creditors who were still unpaid, requesting them to meet at Alexandre Crottat's that evening to receive their money. The all-powerful logic of the enamored Popinot triumphed in the end over Cesar's scruples, though he persisted for some time in calling himself a debtor, and in declaring that he was circumventing the law by a substitution. But the refinements of his conscience gave way when Popinot cried out: "Do you want to kill your daughter?"

"Kill my daughter!" said Cesar, thunderstruck.

"Well, then," said Popinot, "I have the right to convey to you the sum which I conscientiously believe to be your share in my profits. Do you refuse it?"

"No," said Cesar.

"Very good; then let us go at once to Crottat and settle the matter, so that there may be no backing out of it. We will arrange about our marriage contract at the same time."

* * * * *


A petition for reinstatement with corroborative documents was at once deposited by Derville at the office of the _procureur-general_ of the Cour Royale.

During the month required for the legal formalities and for the publication of the banns of marriage between Cesarine and Anselme, Birotteau was a prey to feverish agitation. He was restless. He feared he should not live till the great day when the decree for his vindication would be rendered. His heart throbbed, he said, without cause. He complained of dull pains in that organ, worn out as it was by emotions of sorrow, and now wearied with the rush of excessive joy. Decrees of rehabilitation are so rare in the bankrupt court of Paris that seldom more than one is granted in ten years.

To those persons who take society in its serious aspects, the paraphernalia of justice has a grand and solemn character difficult perhaps to define. Institutions depend altogether on the feelings with which men view them and the degree of grandeur which men's thoughts attach to them. When there is no longer, we will not say religion, but belief among the people, whenever early education has loosened all conservative bonds by accustoming youth to the practice of pitiless analysis, a nation will be found in process of dissolution; for it will then be held together only by the base solder of material interests, and by the formulas of a creed created by intelligent egotism.

Bred in religious ideas, Birotteau held justice to be what it ought to be in the eyes of men,--a representation of society itself, an august utterance of the will of all, apart from the particular form by which it is expressed. The older, feebler, grayer the magistrate, the more solemn seemed the exercise of his function,--a function which demands profound study of men and things, which subdues the heart and hardens it against the influence of eager interests. It is a rare thing nowadays to find men who mount the stairway of the old Palais de Justice in the grasp of keen emotions. Cesar Birotteau was one of those men.

Few persons have noticed the majestic solemnity of that stairway, admirably placed as it is to produce a solemn effect. It rises, beyond the outer peristyle which adorns the courtyard of the Palais, from the centre of a gallery leading, at one end, to the vast hall of the Pas Perdus, and at the other to the Sainte-Chapelle,--two architectural monuments which make all buildings in their neighborhood seem paltry. The church of Saint-Louis is among the most imposing edifices in Paris, and the approach to it through this long gallery is at once sombre and romantic. The great hall of the Pas Perdus, on the contrary, presents at the other end of the gallery a broad space of light; it is impossible to forget that the history of France is linked to those walls. The stairway should therefore be imposing in character; and, in point of act, it is neither dwarfed nor crushed by the architectural splendors on either side of it. Possibly the mind is sobered by a glimpse, caught through the rich gratings, of the Place du Palais-de-Justice, where so many sentences have been executed. The staircase opens above into an enormous space, or antechamber, leading to the hall where the Court holds its public sittings.

Imagine the emotions with which the bankrupt, susceptible by nature to the awe of such accessories, went up that stairway to the hall of judgment, surrounded by his nearest friends,--Lebas, president of the Court of Commerce, Camusot his former judge, Ragon, and Monsieur l'Abbe Loraux his confessor. The pious priest made the splendors of human justice stand forth in strong relief by reflections which gave them still greater solemnity in Cesar's eyes. Pillerault, the practical philosopher, fearing the danger of unexpected events on the worn mind of his nephew, had schemed to prepare him by degrees for the joys of this festal day. Just as Cesar finished dressing, a number of his faithful friends arrived, all eager for the honor of accompanying him to the bar of the Court. The presence of this retinue roused the honest man to an elation which gave him strength to meet the imposing spectacle in the halls of justice. Birotteau found more friends awaiting him in the solemn audience chamber, where about a dozen members of the council were in session.

After the cases were called over, Birotteau's attorney made his demand for reinstatement in the usual terms. On a sign from the presiding judge, the _procureur-general_ rose.