Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau Part 21

From thence they went, at Cesar's request, to a judge of the commercial courts. The conference between Crottat and the magistrate lasted long, and the president of the chamber of notaries was summoned. Cesar was carried about from place to place, like a bale of goods; he never moved, and said nothing. Towards seven in the evening Alexandre Crottat took him home. The thought of appearing before Constance braced his nerves.

The young notary had the charity to go before, and warn Madame Birotteau that her husband had had a rush of blood to the head.

"His ideas are rather cloudy," he said, with a gesture implying disturbance of the brain. "Perhaps he should be bled, or leeches applied."

"No wonder," said Constance, far from dreaming of a disaster; "he did not take his precautionary medicine at the beginning of the winter, and for the last two months he has been working like a galley slave,--just as if his fortune were not made."

The wife and daughter entreated Cesar to go to bed, and they sent for his old friend Monsieur Haudry. The old man was a physician of the school of Moliere, a great pract.i.tioner and in favor of the old-fas.h.i.+oned formulas, who dosed his patients neither more nor less than a quack, consulting physician though he was. He came, studied the expression of Cesar's face, and observing symptoms of cerebral congestion, ordered an immediate application of mustard plasters to the soles of his feet.

"What can have caused it?" asked Constance.

"The damp weather," said the doctor, to whom Cesarine had given a hint.

It often becomes a physician's duty to utter deliberately some silly falsehood, to save honor or life, to those who are about a sick-bed. The old doctor had seen much in his day, and he caught the meaning of half a word. Cesarine followed him to the staircase, and asked for directions in managing the case.

"Quiet and silence; when the head is clear we will try tonics."

Madame Cesar pa.s.sed two days at the bedside of her husband, who seemed to her at times delirious. He lay in her beautiful blue room, and as he looked at the curtains, the furniture, and all the costly magnificence about him, he said things that were wholly incomprehensible to her.

"He must be out of his mind," she whispered to Cesarine, as Cesar rose up in bed and recited clauses of the commercial Code in a solemn voice.

"'If the expenditure is judged excessive!' Away with those curtains!"

At the end of three terrible days, during which his reason was in danger, the strong const.i.tution of the Tourangian peasant triumphed; his head grew clear. Monsieur Haudry ordered stimulants and generous diet, and before long, after an occasional cup of coffee, Cesar was on his feet again. Constance, wearied out, took her husband's place in bed.

"Poor woman!" said Cesar, looking at her as she slept.

"Come, papa, take courage! you are so superior a man that you will triumph in the end. This trouble won't last; Monsieur Anselme will help you."

Cesarine said these vague words in the tender tones which give courage to a stricken heart, just as the songs of a mother soothe the weary child tormented with pain as its cuts its teeth.

"Yes, my child, I shall struggle on; but say not a word to any one,--not to Popinot who loves us, nor to your uncle Pillerault. I shall first write to my brother; he is canon and vicar of the cathedral. He spends nothing, and I have no doubt he has means. If he saves only three thousand francs a year, that would give him at the end of twenty years one hundred thousand francs. In the provinces the priests lay up money."

Cesarine hastened to bring her father a little table with writing-things upon it,--among them the surplus of invitations printed on pink paper.

"Burn all that!" cried her father. "The devil alone could have prompted me to give that ball. If I fail, I shall seem to have been a swindler.

Stop!" he added, "words are of no avail." And he wrote the following letter:--

My dear Brother,--I find myself in so severe a commercial crisis that I must ask you to send me all the money you can dispose of, even if you have to borrow some for the purpose.

Ever yours, Cesar.

Your niece, Cesarine, who is watching me as I write, while my poor wife sleeps, sends you her tender remembrances.

This postscript was added at Cesarine's urgent request; she then took the letter and gave it to Raguet.

"Father," she said, returning, "here is Monsieur Lebas, who wants to speak to you."

"Monsieur Lebas!" cried Cesar, frightened, as though his disaster had made him a criminal,--"a judge!"

"My dear Monsieur Birotteau, I take too great an interest in you,"

said the stout draper, entering the room, "we have known each other too long,--for we were both elected judges at the same time,--not to tell you that a man named Bidault, called Gigonnet, a usurer, has notes of yours turned over to his order, and marked 'not guaranteed,' by the house of Claparon. Those words are not only an affront, but they are the death of your credit."

"Monsieur Claparon wishes to speak to you," said Celestin, entering; "may I tell him to come up?"

"Now we shall learn the meaning of this insult," said Lebas.

"Monsieur," said Cesar to Claparon, as he entered, "this is Monsieur Lebas, a judge of the commercial courts, and my friend--"

"Ah! monsieur is Monsieur Lebas?" interrupted Claparon. "Delighted with the opportunity, Monsieur Lebas of the commercial courts; there are so many Lebas, you know, of one kind or another--"

"He has seen," said Birotteau, cutting the gabbler short, "the notes which I gave you, and which I understood from you would not be put into circulation. He has seen them bearing the words 'not guaranteed.'"

"Well," said Claparon, "they are not in general circulation; they are in the hands of a man with whom I do a great deal of business,--Pere Bidault. That is why I affixed the words 'not guaranteed.' If the notes were intended for circulation you would have made them payable to his order. Monsieur Lebas will understand my position. What do these notes represent? The price of landed property. Paid by whom? By Birotteau. Why should I guarantee Birotteau by my signature? We are to pay, each on his own account, our half of the price of the said land. Now, it is enough to be jointly and separately liable to the sellers. I hold inflexibly to one commercial rule: I never give my guarantee uselessly, any more than I give my receipt for moneys not yet paid. He who signs, pays. I don't wish to be liable to pay three times."

"Three times!" said Cesar.

"Yes, monsieur," said Claparon, "I have already guaranteed Birotteau to the sellers, why should I guarantee him again to the bankers? The circ.u.mstances in which we are placed are very hard. Roguin has carried off a hundred thousand francs of mine; therefore, my half of the property costs me five hundred thousand francs instead of four hundred thousand. Roguin has also carried off two hundred and forty thousand francs of Birotteau's. What would you do in my place, Monsieur Lebas?

Stand in my skin for a moment and view the case. Give me your attention.

Say that we are engaged in a transaction on equal shares; you provide the money for your share, I give bills for mine; I offer them to you, and you undertake, purely out of kindness, to convert them into money.

You learn that I, Claparon,--banker, rich, respected (I accept all the virtues under the sun),--that the virtuous Claparon is on the verge of failure, with six million of liabilities to meet: would you, at such a moment, give your signature to guarantee mine? Of course not; you would be mad to do it. Well, Monsieur Lebas, Birotteau is in the position which I have supposed for Claparon. Don't you see that if I endorse for him I am liable not only for my own share of the purchase, but I shall also be compelled to reimburse to the full amount of Birotteau's paper, and without--"

"To whom?" asked Birotteau, interrupting him.

"--without gaining his half of the property?" said Claparon, paying no attention to the interruption. "For I should have no rights in it; I should have to buy it over again; consequently, I repeat, I should have to pay for it three times."

"Reimburse whom?" persisted Birotteau.

"Why, the holder of the notes, if I were to endorse, and you were to fail."

"I shall not fail, monsieur," said Birotteau.

"Very good," said Claparon. "But you have been a judge, and you are a clever merchant; you know very well that we should look ahead and foresee everything; you can't be surprised that I should attend to my business properly."

"Monsieur Claparon is right," said Joseph Lebas.

"I am right," said Claparon,--"right commercially. But this is an affair of landed property. Now, what must I have? Money, to pay the sellers. We won't speak now of the two hundred and forty thousand francs,--which I am sure Monsieur Birotteau will be able to raise soon," said Claparon, looking at Lebas. "I have come now to ask for a trifle, merely twenty-five thousand francs," he added, turning to Birotteau.

"Twenty-five thousand francs!" cried Cesar, feeling ice in his veins instead of blood. "What claim have you, monsieur?"

"What claim? Hey! we have to make a payment and execute the deeds before a notary. Among ourselves, of course, we could come to an understanding about the payment, but when we have to do with a financial public functionary it is quite another thing! He won't palaver; he'll trust you no farther than he can see. We have got to come down with forty thousand francs, to secure the registration, this week. I did not expect reproaches in coming here, for, thinking this twenty-five thousand francs might be inconvenient to you just now, I meant to tell you that, by a mere chance, I have saved you--"

"What?" said Birotteau, with that rending cry of anguish which no man ever mistakes.

"A trifle! The notes amounting to twenty-five thousand francs on divers securities which Roguin gave me to negotiate I have credited to you, for the registration payment and the fees, of which I will send you an account; there will be a small amount to deduct, and you will then owe me about six or seven thousand francs."

"All that seems to me perfectly proper," said Lebas. "In your place, monsieur, I should do the same towards a stranger."