Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau


"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.



V

From the moment when that word "Ungrateful" was flung at him like an
anathema, little Popinot had not had an hour's sleep nor an instant's
peace of mind. The unhappy lad cursed his uncle, and finally went to
see him. To get the better of that experienced judicial wisdom he
poured forth the eloquence of love, hoping it might seduce a being
from whose mind human speech slips like water from a duck's back,--a
judge!

"From a commercial point of view," he said, "custom does allow the
managing-partner to advance a certain sum to the sleeping-partner on
the profits of the business, and we are certain to make profits. After
close examination of my affairs I do feel strong enough to pay forty
thousand francs in three months. The known integrity of Monsieur Cesar
is a guarantee that he will use that forty thousand to pay off his
debts. Thus the creditors, if there should come a failure, can lay no
blame on us. Besides, uncle, I would rather lose forty thousand francs
than lose Cesarine. At this very moment while I am speaking, she has
doubtless been told of my refusal, and will cease to esteem me. I
vowed my blood to my benefactor! I am like a young sailor who ought to
sink with his captain, or a soldier who should die with his general."

"Good heart and bad merchant, you will never lose my esteem," said the
judge, pressing the hand of his nephew. "I have thought a great deal
of this," he added. "I know you love Cesarine devotedly, and I think
you can satisfy the claims of love and the claims of commerce."

"Ah! my uncle, if you have found a way my honor is saved!"

"Advance Birotteau fifty thousand on his share in your oil, which has
now become a species of property, reserving to yourself the right of
buying it back. I will draw up the deed."

Anselme embraced his uncle and rushed home, made notes to the amount
of fifty thousand francs, and ran from the Rue des Cinq-Diamants to
the Place Vendome, so that just as Cesarine, her mother, and
Pillerault were gazing at Cesar, amazed at the sepulchural tone in
which he had uttered the word "Ungrateful!" the door of the salon
opened and Popinot appeared.

"My dear and beloved master!" he cried, wiping the perspiration from
his forehead, "here is what you asked of me!" He held out the notes.
"Yes, I have carefully examined my situation; you need have no fear, I
shall be able to pay them. Save--save your honor!"

"I was sure of him!" cried Cesarine, seizing Popinot's hand, and
pressing it with convulsive force.

Madame Cesar embraced him; Birotteau rose up like the righteous at the
sound of the last trumpet, and issued, as it were, from the tomb. Then
he stretched out a frenzied hand to seize the fifty stamped papers.

"Stop!" said the terrible uncle, Pillerault, snatching the papers from
Popinot, "one moment!"

The four individuals present,--Cesar, his wife, Cesarine, and Popinot,
--bewildered by the action of the old man and by the tone of his
voice, saw him tear the papers and fling them in the fire, without
attempting to interfere.

"Uncle!"

"Uncle!"

"Uncle!"

"Monsieur!"

Four voices and but one heart; a startling unanimity! Uncle Pillerault
passed his arm round Popinot's neck, held him to his breast, and
kissed him.

"You are worthy of the love of those who have hearts," he said. "If
you loved a daughter of mine, had she a million and you had nothing
but that [pointing to the black ashes of the notes], you should marry
her in a fortnight, if she loved you. Your master," he said, pointing
to Cesar, "is beside himself. My nephew," resumed Pillerault, gravely,
addressing the poor man,--"my nephew, away with illusions! We must do
business with francs, not feelings. All this is noble, but useless. I
spent two hours at the Bourse this afternoon. You have not one
farthing's credit; every one is talking of your disaster, of your
attempts to renew, of your appeals to various bankers, of their
refusals, of your follies,--going up six flights of stairs to beg a
gossiping landlord, who chatters like a magpie, to renew a note of
twelve hundred francs!--your ball, given to conceal your
embarrassments. They have gone so far as to say you had no property in
Roguin's hands; according to your enemies, Roguin is only a blind. A
friend of mine, whom I sent about to learn what is going on, confirms
what I tell you. Every one foresees that Popinot will issue notes, and
believes that you set him up in business expressly as a last resource.
In short, every calumny or slander which a man brings upon himself
when he tries to mount a rung of the social ladder, is going the
rounds among business men to-day. You might hawk about those notes of
Popinot in vain; you would meet humiliating refusals; no one would
take them; no one could be sure how many such notes you are issuing;
every one expects you to sacrifice the poor lad to your own safety.
You would destroy to no purpose the credit of the house of Popinot. Do
you know how much the boldest money-lender would give you for those
fifty thousand francs? Twenty thousand at the most; twenty thousand,
do you hear me? There are crises in business when we must stand up
three days before the world without eating, as if we had indigestion,
and on the fourth day we may be admitted to the larder of credit. You
cannot live through those three days; and the whole matter lies there.
My poor nephew, take courage! file your schedule, make an assignment.
Here is Popinot, here am I; we will go to work as soon as the clerks
have gone to bed, and spare you the agony of it."