Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau Part 19

"If Pere Birotteau fails," thought du Tillet, "this little imp would make an excellent a.s.signee. His sharpness is invaluable; when he is alone he must amuse himself by catching flies, like Domitian."

Du Tillet went to the card-table, where Claparon was already stationed, under orders; Ferdinand thought that under shelter of a game of _bouillotte_ his counterfeit banker might escape notice. Their demeanor to each other was that of two strangers, and the most suspicious man could have detected nothing that betrayed an understanding between them.

Gaudissart, who knew the career of Claparon, dared not approach him after receiving a solemnly frigid glance from the promoted commercial traveller which warned him that the upstart banker was not to be recognized by any former comrade. The ball, like a brilliant rocket, was extinguished by five o'clock in the morning. At that hour only some forty hackney-coaches remained, out of the hundred or more which had crowded the Rue Saint-Honore. Within, they were dancing the _boulangere_, which has since been dethroned by the cotillon and the English galop. Du Tillet, Roguin, Cardot junior, the Comte de Grandville, and Jules Desmarets were playing at _bouillotte_. Du Tillet won three thousand francs. The day began to dawn, the wax lights paled, the players joined the dancers for a last quadrille. In such houses the final scenes of a ball never pa.s.s off without some impropriety. The dignified personages have departed; the intoxication of dancing, the heat of the atmosphere, the spirits concealed in the most innocent drinks, have mellowed the angularities of the old women, who good-naturedly join in the last quadrille and lend themselves to the excitement of the moment; the men are heated, their hair, lately curled, straggles down their faces, and gives them a grotesque expression which excites laughter; the young women grow volatile, and a few flowers drop from their garlands. The bourgeois Momus appears, followed by his revellers. Laughs ring loudly; all present surrender to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the moment, knowing that on the morrow toil will resume its sway.

Matifat danced with a woman's bonnet on his head; Celestin called the figures of the interminable country dance, and some of the women beat their hands together excitedly at the words of command.

"How they do amuse themselves!" cried the happy Birotteau.

"I hope they won't break anything," said Constance to her uncle.

"You have given the most magnificent ball I have ever seen, and I have seen many," said du Tillet, bowing to his old master.

Among the eight symphonies of Beethoven there is a theme, glorious as a poem, which dominates the finale of the symphony in C minor. When, after slow preparations by the sublime magician, so well understood by Habeneck, the enthusiastic leader of an orchestra raises the rich veil with a motion of his hand and calls forth the transcendent theme towards which the powers of music have all converged, poets whose hearts have throbbed at those sounds will understand how the ball of Cesar Birotteau produced upon his simple being the same effect that this fecund harmony wrought in theirs,--an effect to which the symphony in C minor owes its supremacy over its glorious sisters. A radiant fairy springs forward, lifting high her wand. We hear the rustle of the violet silken curtains which the angels raise. Sculptured golden doors, like those of the baptistery at Florence, turn on their diamond hinges. The eye is lost in splendid vistas: it sees a long perspective of rare palaces where beings of a loftier nature glide. The incense of all prosperities sends up its smoke, the altar of all joy flames, the perfumed air circulates! Beings with divine smiles, robed in white tunics bordered with blue, flit lightly before the eyes and show us visions of supernatural beauty, shapes of an incomparable delicacy. The Loves hover in the air and waft the flames of their torches! We feel ourselves beloved; we are happy as we breathe a joy we understand not, as we bathe in the waves of a harmony that flows for all, and pours out to all the ambrosia that each desires. We are held in the grasp of our secret hopes which are realized, for an instant, as we listen. When he has led us through the skies, the great magician, with a deep mysterious transition of the ba.s.ses, flings us back into the marshes of cold reality, only to draw us forth once more when, thirsting for his divine melodies, our souls cry out, "Again! Again!" The psychical history of that rare moment in the glorious finale of the C minor symphony is also that of the emotions excited by this fete in the souls of Cesar and of Constance. The flute of Collinet sounded the last notes of their commercial symphony.

Weary, but happy, the Birotteaus fell asleep in the early morning amid echoes of the fete,--which for building, repairs, furnis.h.i.+ng, suppers, toilets, and the library (repaid to Cesarine), cost not less, though Cesar was little aware of it, than sixty thousand francs. Such was the price of the fatal red ribbon fastened by the king to the b.u.t.tonhole of an honest perfumer. If misfortunes were to overtake Cesar Birotteau, this mad extravagance would be sufficient to arraign him before the criminal courts. A merchant is amenable to the laws if, in the event of bankruptcy, he is shown to have been guilty of "excessive expenditure."

It is perhaps more dreadful to go before the lesser courts charged with folly or blundering mistakes, than before the Court of a.s.sizes for an enormous fraud. In the eyes of some people, it is better to be criminal than a fool.

PART II. CESAR GRAPPLING WITH MISFORTUNE

I

Eight days after his ball, the last dying flash of a prosperity of eighteen years now about to be extinguished, Cesar Birotteau watched the pa.s.sers-by from the windows of his shop, thinking over the expansion of his affairs, and beginning to find them burdensome. Until then all had been simple in his life; he manufactured and sold, or bought to sell again. To-day the land speculation, his share in the house of A. Popinot and Company, the repayment of the hundred and sixty thousand francs thrown upon the market, which necessitated either a traffic in promissory notes (of which his wife would disapprove), or else some unheard-of success in Cephalic Oil, all fretted the poor man by the multiplicity of ideas which they involved; he felt he had more irons in the fire than he could lay hold of. How would Anselme guide the helm?

Birotteau treated Popinot as a professor of rhetoric treats a pupil,--he distrusted his methods, and regretted that he was not at his elbow. The kick he had given Popinot to make him hold his tongue at Vauquelin's explains the uneasiness which the young merchant inspired in his mind.

Birotteau took care that neither his wife nor his daughter nor the clerks should suspect his anxiety; but he was in truth like a humble boatman on the Seine whom the government has suddenly put in command of a frigate. Troubled thoughts filled his mind, never very capable of reflection, as if with a fog; he stood still, as it were, and peered about to see his way. At this moment a figure appeared in the street for which he felt a violent antipathy; it was that of his new landlord, little Molineux. Every one has dreamed dreams filled with the events of a lifetime, in which there appears and reappears some wayward being, commissioned to play the mischief and be the villain of the piece. To Birotteau's fancy Molineux seemed delegated by chance to fill some part in his life. His weird face had grinned diabolically at the ball, and he had looked at its magnificence with an evil eye. Catching sight of him again at this moment, Cesar was all the more reminded of the impression the little skin-flint (a word of his vocabulary) had made upon him, because Molineux excited fresh repugnance by reappearing in the midst of his anxious reverie.

"Monsieur," said the little man, in his atrociously hypocritical voice, "we settled our business so hastily that you forgot to guarantee the signatures on the little private deed."

Birotteau took the lease to repair the mistake. The architect came in at this moment, and bowed to the perfumer, looking about him with a diplomatic air.

"Monsieur," he whispered to Cesar presently, "you can easily understand that the first steps in a profession are difficult; you said you were satisfied with me, and it would oblige me very much if you would pay me my commission."

Birotteau, who had stripped himself of ready money when he put his current cash into Roguin's hands two weeks earlier, called to Celestin to make out an order for two thousand francs at ninety days' sight, and to write the form of a receipt.

"I am very glad you took part of your neighbor's rental on yourself,"

said Molineux in a sly, half-sneering tone. "My porter came to tell me just now that the sheriff has affixed the seals to the Sieur Cayron's appartement; he has disappeared."

"I hope I'm not juggled out of five thousand francs," thought Birotteau.

"Cayron always seemed to do a good business," said Lourdois, who just then came in to bring his bill.

"A merchant is never safe from commercial reverses until he has retired from business," said little Molineux, folding up his doc.u.ment with fussy precision.

The architect watched the queer old man with the enjoyment all artists find in getting hold of a caricature which confirms their theories about the bourgeoisie.

"When we have got our head under an umbrella we generally think it is protected from the rain," he said.

Molineux noticed the mustachios and the little chin-tuft of the artist much more than he did his face, and he despised that individual folly as much as Grindot despised him. He waited to give him a parting scratch as he went out. By dint of living so long with his cats Molineux had acquired, in his manners as well as in his eyes, something unmistakably feline.

Just at this moment Ragon and Pillerault came in.

"We have been talking of the land affair with the judge," said Ragon in Cesar's ear; "he says that in a speculation of that kind we must have a warranty from the sellers, and record the deeds, and pay in cash, before we are really owners and co-partners."

"Ah! you are talking of the lands about the Madeleine," said Lourdois; "there is a good deal said about them: there will be some houses to build."

The painter who had come intending to have his bill settled, suddenly thought it more to his interest not to press Birotteau.

"I brought my bill because it was the end of the year," he whispered to Cesar; "but there's no hurry."

"What is the matter, Cesar?" said Pillerault, noticing the amazement of his nephew, who, having glanced at the bill, made no reply to either Ragon or Lourdois.

"Oh, a trifle. I took notes to the amount of five thousand francs from my neighbor, a dealer in umbrellas, and he has failed. If he has given me bad securities I shall be caught, like a fool."

"And yet I have warned you many times," cried Ragon; "a drowning man will catch at his father's leg to save himself, and drown him too. I have seen so many failures! People are not exactly scoundrels when the disaster begins, but they soon come to be, out of sheer necessity."

"That's true," said Pillerault.

"If I ever get into the Chamber of Deputies, and ever have any influence in the government," said Birotteau, rising on his toes and dropping back on his heels,--

"What would you do?" said Lourdois, "for you've a long head."

Molineux, interested in any discussion about law, lingered in the shop; and as the attention of a few persons is apt to make others attentive, Pillerault and Ragon listened as gravely as the three strangers, though they perfectly well knew Cesar's opinions.

"I would have," said the perfumer, "a court of irremovable judges, with a magistracy to attend to the application and execution of the laws.

After the examination of a case, during which the judge should fulfil the functions of agent, a.s.signee, and commissioner, the merchant should be declared _insolvent with rights of reinstatement_, or else _bankrupt_. If the former, he should be required to pay in full; he should be left in control of his own property and that of his wife; all his belongings and his inherited property should belong to his creditors, and he should administer his affairs in their interests under supervision; he should still carry on his business, signing always 'So-and-so, insolvent,' until the whole debt is paid off. If bankrupt, he should be condemned, as formerly, to the pillory on the Place de la Bourse, and exposed for two hours, wearing a green cap. His property and that of his wife, and all his rights of every kind should be handed over to his creditors, and he himself banished from the kingdom."

"Business would be more secure," said Lourdois; "people would think twice before launching into speculations."

"The existing laws are not enforced," cried Cesar, las.h.i.+ng himself up.

"Out of every hundred merchants there are more than fifty who never realize seventy-five per cent of the whole value of their business, or who sell their merchandise at twenty-five per cent below the invoice price; and that is the destruction of commerce."

"Monsieur is very right," said Molineux; "the law leaves a great deal too much lat.i.tude. There should either be total relinquishment of everything, or infamy."

"d.a.m.n it!" said Cesar, "at the rate things are going now, a merchant will soon be a licensed thief. With his mere signature he can dip into anybody's money-drawer."

"You have no mercy, Monsieur Birotteau," said Lourdois.

"He is quite right," said old Ragon.

"All insolvents are suspicious characters," said Cesar, exasperated by his little loss, which sounded in his ears like the first cry of the view-halloo in the ears of the game.