Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau Part 32

Gigonnet opened the door himself. Cesar's two supporters, entering the precincts of bankruptcy, crossed the first room, which was clean and chilly and without curtains to its windows. All three sat down in the inner room where the money-lender lived, before a hearth full of ashes, in the midst of which the wood was successfully defending itself against the fire. Popinot's courage froze at sight of the usurer's green boxes and the monastic austerity of the room, whose atmosphere was like that of a cellar. He looked with a wondering eye at the miserable blueish paper sprinkled with tricolor flowers, which had been on the walls for twenty-five years; and then his anxious glance fell upon the chimney-piece, ornamented with a clock shaped like a lyre, and two oval vases in Sevres blue richly mounted in copper-gilt. This relic, picked up by Gigonnet after the pillage of Versailles, where the populace broke nearly everything, came from the queen's boudoir; but these rare vases were flanked by two candelabra of abject shape made of wrought-iron, and the barbarous contrast recalled the circ.u.mstances under which the vases had been acquired.

"I know that you have not come on your own account," said Gigonnet, "but on behalf of the great Birotteau. Well, what is it, my friends?"

"We can tell you nothing that you do not already know; so I will be brief," said Pillerault. "You have notes to the order of Claparon?"

"Yes."

"Will you exchange the first fifty thousand of those notes against the notes of Monsieur Popinot, here present,--less the discount, of course?"

Gigonnet took off the terrible green cap which seemed to have been born on him, pointed to his skull, denuded of hair and of the color of fresh b.u.t.ter, made his usual Voltairean grimace, and said: "You wish to pay me in hair-oil; have I any use for it?"

"If you choose to jest, there is nothing to be done but to beat a retreat," said Pillerault.

"You speak like the wise man that you are," answered Gigonnet, with a flattering smile.

"Well, suppose I endorse Monsieur Popinot's notes?" said Pillerault, playing his last card.

"You are gold by the ingot, Monsieur Pillerault; but I don't want bars of gold, I want my money."

Pillerault and Popinot bowed and went away. Going down the stairs, Popinot's knees shook under him.

"Is that a man?" he said to Pillerault.

"They say so," replied the other. "My boy, always bear in mind this short interview. Anselme, you have just seen the banking-business unmasked, without its cloak of courtesy. Unexpected events are the screw of the press, we are the grapes, the bankers are the casks. That land speculation is no doubt a good one; Gigonnet, or some one behind him, means to strangle Cesar and step into his skin. It is all over; there's no remedy. But such is the Bank: be warned; never have recourse to it!"

After this horrible morning, during which Madame Birotteau for the first time sent away those who came for their money, taking their addresses, the courageous woman, happy in the thought that she was thus sparing her husband from distress, saw Popinot and Pillerault, for whom she waited with ever-growing anxiety, return at eleven o'clock, and read her sentence in their faces. The a.s.signment was inevitable.

"He will die of grief," said the poor woman.

"I could almost wish he might," said Pillerault, solemnly; "but he is so religious that, as things are now, his director, the Abbe Loraux, alone can save him."

Pillerault, Popinot, and Constance waited while a clerk was sent to bring the Abbe Loraux, before they carried up to Cesar the schedule which Celestin had prepared, and asked him to affix his signature. The clerks were in despair, for they loved their master. At four o'clock the good priest came; Constance explained the misfortune that had fallen upon them, and the abbe went upstairs as a soldier mounts the breach.

"I know why you have come!" cried Birotteau.

"My son," said the priest, "your feelings of resignation to the Divine will have long been known to me; it now remains to apply them. Keep your eyes upon the cross; never cease to behold it, and think upon the humiliations heaped upon the Saviour of men. Meditate upon the agonies of his pa.s.sion, and you will be able to bear the mortification which G.o.d has laid upon you--"

"My brother, the abbe, has already prepared me," said Cesar, showing the letter, which he had re-read and now held out to his confessor.

"You have a good brother," said Monsieur Loraux, "a virtuous and gentle wife, a tender daughter, two good friends,--your uncle and our dear Anselme,--two indulgent creditors, the Ragons: all these kind hearts will pour balm upon your wounds daily, and will help you to bear your cross. Promise me to have the firmness of a martyr, and to face the blow without faltering."

The abbe coughed, to give notice to Pillerault who was waiting in the salon.

"My resignation is unbounded," said Cesar, calmly. "Dishonor has come; I must now think only of reparation."

The firm voice of the poor man and his whole manner surprised Cesarine and the priest. Yet nothing could be more natural. All men can better bear a known and definite misfortune than the cruel uncertainties of a fate which, from one moment to another, brings excessive hope or crus.h.i.+ng sorrow.

"I have dreamed a dream for twenty-two years; to-day I awake with my cudgel in my hand," said Cesar, his mind turning back to the Tourangian peasant days.

Pillerault pressed his nephew in his arms as he heard the words.

Birotteau saw that his wife, Anselme, and Celestin were present. The papers which the head-clerk held in his hand were significant. Cesar calmly contemplated the little group where every eye was sad but loving.

"Stay!" he said, unfastening his cross, which he held out to the Abbe Loraux; "give it back to me on the day when I can wear it without shame.

Celestin," he added, "write my resignation as deputy-mayor,--Monsieur l'abbe will dictate the letter to you; date it the 14th, and send it at once to Monsieur de la Billardiere by Raguet."

Celestin and the abbe went down stairs. For a quarter of an hour silence reigned unbroken in Cesar's study. Such strength of mind surprised the family. Celestin and the abbe came back, and Cesar signed his resignation. When his uncle Pillerault presented the schedule and the papers of his a.s.signment, the poor man could not repress a horrible nervous shudder.

"My G.o.d, have pity upon me!" he said, signing the dreadful paper, and holding it out to Celestin.

"Monsieur," said Anselme Popinot, over whose dejected brow a luminous light flashed suddenly, "madame, do me the honor to grant me the hand of Mademoiselle Cesarine."

At these words tears came into the eyes of all present except Cesar; he rose, took Anselme by the hand and said, in a hollow voice, "My son, you shall never marry the daughter of a bankrupt."

Anselme looked fixedly at Birotteau and said: "Monsieur, will you pledge yourself, here, in presence of your whole family, to consent to our marriage, if mademoiselle will accept me as her husband, on the day when you have retrieved your failure?"

There was an instant's silence, during which all present were affected by the emotions painted on the worn face of the poor man.

"Yes," he said, at last.

Anselme made a gesture of unspeakable joy, as he took the hand which Cesarine held out to him, and kissed it.

"You consent, then?" he said to her.

"Yes," she answered.

"Now that I am one of the family, I have the right to concern myself in its affairs," he said, with a strange, excited expression of face.

He left the room precipitately, that he might not show a joy which contrasted too cruelly with the sorrow of his master. Anselme was not actually happy at the failure, but love is such an egoist! Even Cesarine 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 a.s.sets 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 a.s.sets; 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 d.u.c.h.esse 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 "const.i.tutionnel." 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 t.i.ttle-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."