Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau

“Yes,” said Adolphe Keller; “but the Bank would never discount paper which a private bank refused.”

“The Bank of France,” said Birotteau, “has always seemed to me to miss its vocation when it congratulates itself, as it does in presenting its reports, on never losing more than one or two hundred thousand francs through Parisian commerce: it should be the guardian and protector of Parisian commerce.”

Adolphe smiled, and got up with the air and gesture of being bored.

“If the Bank were mixed up as silent partners with people who are involved in the most knavish and hazardous market in the world, it would soon have to hand in its schedule. It has, even now, immense difficulty in protecting itself against forgeries and false circulations of all kinds. Where would it be if it had to take account of the business of every one who wanted to get something out of it?”

“Where shall I find ten thousand francs for to-morrow, the THIRTIETH?” cried Birotteau, as he crossed the courtyard.

According to Parisian custom, notes were paid on the thirtieth, if the thirty-first was a holiday.

As Cesar reached the outer gate, his eyes bathed in tears, he scarcely saw a fine English horse, covered with sweat, which drew the handsomest cabriolet that rolled in those days along the pavements of Paris, and which was now pulled up suddenly beside him. He would gladly have been run over and crushed by it; if he died by accident, the confusion of his affairs would be laid to that circumstance. He did not recognize du Tillet, who in elegant morning dress jumped lightly down, throwing the reins to his groom and a blanket over the back of his smoking thoroughbred.

“What chance brings you here?” said the former clerk to his old patron.

Du Tillet knew very well what it was, for the Kellers had made inquiries of Claparon, who by referring them to du Tillet had demolished the past reputation of the poor man. Though quickly checked, the tears on Cesar’s face spoke volumes.

“It is possible that you have asked assistance from these Bedouins?” said du Tillet, “these cut-throats of commerce, full of infamous tricks; who run up indigo when they have monopolized the trade, and pull down rice to force the holders to sell at low prices, and so enable them to manage the market? Atrocious pirates, who have neither faith, nor law, nor soul, nor honor! You don’t know what they are capable of doing. They will give you a credit if they think you have got a good thing, and close it the moment you get into the thick of the enterprise; and then you will be forced to make it all over to them, at any villanous price they choose to give. Havre, Bordeaux, Marseilles, could tell you tales about them! They make use of politics to cover up their filthy ways. If I were you I should get what I could out of them in any way, and without scruple. Let us walk on, Birotteau. Joseph, lead the horse about, he is too hot: the devil! he is a capital of a thousand crowns.”

So saying, he turned toward the boulevard.

“Come, my dear master, – for you were once my master, – tell me, are you in want of money? Have they asked you for securities, the scoundrels? I, who know you, I offer you money on your simple note. I have made an honorable fortune with infinite pains. I began it in Germany; I may as well tell you that I bought up the debts of the king, at sixty per cent of their amount: your endorsement was very useful to me at that time, and I am not ungrateful, – not I. If you want ten thousand francs, they are yours.”

“Du Tillet!” cried Cesar, “can it be true? you are not joking with me? Yes, I am rather pinched, but only for a moment.”

“I know, – that affair of Roguin,” replied du Tillet. “Hey! I am in for ten thousand francs which the old rogue borrowed of me just before he went off; but Madame Roguin will pay them back from her dower. I have advised the poor woman not to be so foolish as to spend her own fortune in paying debts contracted for a prostitute. Of course, it would be well if she paid everything, but she cannot favor some creditors to the detriment of others. You are not a Roguin; I know you,” said du Tillet, – “you would blow your brains out rather than make me lose a sou. Here we are at Rue de la Chaussee-d’Antin; come home with me.”

They entered a bedroom, with which Madame Birotteau’s compared like that of a chorus-singer’s on a fourth floor with the appartement of a prima-donna. The ceiling was of violet-colored satin, heightened in its effect by folds of white satin; a rug of ermine lay at the bedside, and contrasted with the purple tones of a Turkish carpet. The furniture and all the accessories were novel in shape, costly, and choice in character. Birotteau paused before an exquisite clock, decorated with Cupid and Psyche, just designed for a famous banker, from whom du Tillet had obtained the sole copy ever made of it. The former master and his former clerk at last reached an elegant coquettish cabinet, more redolent of love than finance. Madame Roguin had doubtless contributed, in return for the care bestowed upon her fortune, the paper-knife in chiselled gold, the paper-weights of carved malachite, and all the costly knick-knacks of unrestrained luxury. The carpet, one of the rich products of Belgium, was as pleasant to the eye as to the foot which felt the soft thickness of its texture. Du Tillet made the poor, amazed, bewildered perfumer sit down at a corner of the fireplace.

“Will you breakfast with me?”

He rang the bell. Enter a footman better dressed than Birotteau.

“Tell Monsieur Legras to come here, and then find Joseph at the door of the Messrs. Keller; tell him to return to the stable. Leave word with Adolphe Keller that instead of going to see him, I shall expect him at the Bourse; and order breakfast served immediately.”

These commands amazed Cesar.

“He whistles to that formidable Adolphe Keller like a dog! – he, du Tillet!”

A little tiger, about a thumb high, set out a table, which Birotteau had not observed, so slim was it, and brought in a pate de foie gras, a bottle of claret, and a number of dainty dishes which only appeared in Birotteau’s household once in three months, on great festive occasions. Du Tillet enjoyed the effect. His hatred towards the only man who had it in his power to despise him burned so hotly that Birotteau seemed, even to his own mind, like a sheep defending itself against a tiger. For an instant, a generous idea entered du Tillet’s heart: he asked himself if his vengeance were not sufficiently accomplished. He hesitated between this awakened mercy and his dormant hate.

“I can annihilate him commercially,” he thought; “I have the power of life or death over him, – over his wife who insulted me, and his daughter whose hand once seemed to me a fortune. I have got his money; suppose I content myself with letting the poor fool swim at the end of a line I’ll hold for him?”

Honest minds are devoid of tact; their excellence is uncalculating, even unreflecting, because they are wholly without evasions or mental reservations of their own. Birotteau now brought about his downfall; he incensed the tiger, pierced him to the heart without knowing it, made him implacable by a thoughtless word, a eulogy, a virtuous recognition, – by the kind-heartedness, as it were, of his own integrity. When the cashier entered, du Tillet motioned him to take notice of Cesar.

“Monsieur Legras, bring me ten thousand francs, and a note of hand for that amount, drawn to my order, at ninety days’ sight, by monsieur, who is Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, you know.”

Du Tillet cut the pate, poured out a glass of claret, and urged Cesar to eat. The poor man felt he was saved, and gave way to convulsive laughter; he played with his watch-chain, and only put a mouthful into his mouth, when du Tillet said to him, “You are not eating!” Birotteau thus betrayed the depths of the abyss into which du Tillet’s hand had plunged him, from which that hand now withdrew him, and into which it had the power to plunge him again. When the cashier returned, and Cesar signed the note, and felt the ten bank-notes in his pocket, he was no longer master of himself. A moment sooner, and the Bank, his neighborhood, every one, was to know that he could not meet his payments, and he must have told his ruin to his wife; now, all was safe! The joy of this deliverance equalled in its intensity the tortures of his peril. The eyes of the poor man moistened, in spite of himself.

“What is the matter with you, my dear master?” asked du Tillet. “Would you not do for me to-morrow what I do for you to-day? Is it not as simple as saying, How do you do?”

“Du Tillet,” said the worthy man, with gravity and emphasis, and rising to take the hand of his former clerk, “I give you back my esteem.”

“What! had I lost it?” cried du Tillet, so violently stabbed in the very bosom of his prosperity that the color came into his face.

“Lost? – well, not precisely,” said Birotteau, thunder-struck at his own stupidity: “they told me certain things about your liaison with Madame Roguin. The devil! taking the wife of another man – ”

“You are beating round the bush, old fellow,” thought du Tillet, and as the words crossed his mind he came back to his original project, and vowed to bring that virtue low, to trample it under foot, to render despicable in the marts of Paris the honorable and virtuous merchant who had caught him, red-handed, in a theft. All hatreds, public or private, from woman to woman, from man to man, have no other cause then some such detection. People do not hate each other for injured interests, for wounds, not even for a blow; all such wrongs can be redressed. But to have been seized, flagrante delicto, in a base act! The duel which follows between the criminal and the witness of his crime ends only with the death of the one or of the other.

“Oh! Madame Roguin!” said du Tillet, jestingly, “don’t you call that a feather in a young man’s cap? I understand you, my dear master; somebody has told you that she lent me money. Well, on the contrary it is I who have protected her fortune, which was strangely involved in her husband’s affairs. The origin of my fortune is pure, as I have just told you. I had nothing, you know. Young men are sometimes in positions of frightful necessity. They may lose their self-control in the depths of poverty, and if they make, as the Republic made, forced loans – well, they pay them back; and in so doing they are more honest than France herself.”

“That is true,” cried Birotteau. “My son, God – is it not Voltaire who says, —

“‘He rendered repentance the virtue of mortals’?”

“Provided,” answered du Tillet, stabbed afresh by this quotation, – “provided they do not carry off the property of their neighbors, basely, meanly; as, for example, you would do if you failed within three months, and my ten thousand francs went to perdition.”

“I fail!” cried Birotteau, who had taken three glasses of wine, and was half-drunk with joy. “Everybody knows what I think about failure! Failure is death to a merchant; I should die of it!”

“I drink your health,” said du Tillet.

“Your health and prosperity,” returned Cesar. “Why don’t you buy your perfumery from me?”

“The fact is,” said du Tillet, “I am afraid of Madame Cesar; she always made an impression on me. If you had not been my master, on my word! I – ”

“You are not the first to think her beautiful; others have desired her; but she loves me! Well, now, du Tillet, my friend,” resumed Birotteau, “don’t do things by halves.”

“What is it?”

Birotteau explained the affair of the lands to his former clerk, who pretended to open his eyes wide, and complimented the perfumer on his perspicacity and penetration, and praised the enterprise.

“Well, I am very glad to have your approbation; you are thought one of the wise-heads of the banking business, du Tillet. Dear fellow, you might get me a credit at the Bank of France, so that I can wait for the profits of Cephalic Oil at my ease.”

“I can give you a letter to the firm of Nucingen,” answered du Tillet, perceiving that he could make his victim dance all the figures in the reel of bankruptcy.

Ferdinand sat down to his desk and wrote the following letter: —

To Monsieur le baron de Nucingen:

My dear Baron, – The bearer of this letter is Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, deputy-mayor of the second arrondissement, and one of the best known manufacturers of Parisian perfumery; he wishes to have business relations with your house. You can confidently do all that he asks of you; and in obliging him you will oblige

Your friend,F. Du Tillet.

Du Tillet did not dot the i in his signature. To those with whom he did business this intentional error was a sign previously agreed upon. The strongest recommendations, the warmest appeals contained in the letter were to mean nothing. All such letters, in which exclamation marks were suppliants and du Tillet placed himself, as it were, upon his knees, were to be considered as extorted by necessity; he could not refuse to write them, but they were to be regarded as not written. Seeing the i without a dot, the correspondent was to amuse the petitioner with empty promises. Even men of the world, and sometimes the most distinguished, are thus gulled like children by business men, bankers, and lawyers, who all have a double signature, – one dead, the other living. The cleverest among them are fooled in this way. To understand the trick, we must experience the two-fold effects of a warm letter and a cold one.

“You have saved me, du Tillet!” said Cesar, reading the letter.

“Thank heaven!” said du Tillet, “ask for what money you want. When Nucingen reads my letter he will give you all you need. Unhappily, my own funds are tied up for a few days; if not, I certainly would not send you to the great banking princes. The Kellers are mere pygmies compared to Baron de Nucingen. Law reappears on earth in Nucingen. With this letter of mine you can face the 15th of January, and after that, we will see about it. Nucingen and I are the best friends in the world; he would not disoblige me for a million.”

“It is a guarantee in itself,” thought Birotteau, as he went away full of gratitude to his old clerk. “Well, a benefit is never lost!” he continued, philosophizing very wide of the mark. Nevertheless, one thought embittered his joy. For several days he had prevented his wife from looking into the ledgers; he had put the business on Celestin’s shoulders and assisted in it himself; he wished, apparently, that his wife and daughter should be at liberty to take full enjoyment out of the beautiful appartement he had given them. But the first flush of happiness over, Madame Birotteau would have died rather than renounce her right of personally inspecting the affairs of the house, – of holding, as she phrased it, the handle of the frying-pan. Birotteau was at his wits’ end; he had used all his cunning in trying to hide from his wife the symptoms of his embarrassment. Constance strongly disapproved of sending round the bills; she had scolded the clerks and accused Celestin of wishing to ruin the establishment, thinking that it was all his doing. Celestin, by Birotteau’s order, had allowed himself to be scolded. In the eyes of the clerks Madame Cesar governed her husband; for though it is possible to deceive the public, the inmates of a household are never deceived as to who exercises the real authority. Birotteau knew that he must now reveal his real situation to his wife, for the account with du Tillet needed an explanation. When he got back to the shop, he saw, not without a shudder, that Constance was sitting in her old place behind the counter, examining the expense account, and no doubt counting up the money in the desk.

“How will you meet your payments to-morrow?” she whispered as he sat down beside her.

“With money,” he answered, pulling out the bank-bills, and signing to Celestin to take them.

“Where did you get that money?”

“I’ll tell you all about it this evening. Celestin, write down, ‘Last of March, note for ten thousand francs, to du Tillet’s order.’”

“Du Tillet!” repeated Constance, struck with consternation.

“I am going to see Popinot,” said Cesar; “it is very wrong in me not to have gone before. Have we sold his oil?”

“The three hundred bottles he sent us are all gone.”

“Birotteau, don’t go out; I want to speak to you,” said Constance, taking him by the arm, and leading him into her bedroom with an impetuosity which would have caused a laugh under other circumstances. “Du Tillet,” she said, when she had made sure no one but Cesarine was with them, – “du Tillet, who robbed us of three thousand francs! So you are doing business with du Tillet, – a monster, who wished to seduce me,” she whispered in his ear.

“Folly of youth,” said Birotteau, assuming for the nonce the tone of a free-thinker.

“Listen to me, Birotteau! You are all upset; you don’t go to the manufactory any more; there is something the matter, I feel it! You must tell me; I must know what it is.”

“Well,” said Birotteau, “we came very near being ruined, – we were ruined this very morning; but it is all safe now.”

And he told the horrible story of his two weeks’ misery.

“So that was the cause of your illness!” exclaimed Constance.

“Yes, mamma,” cried Cesarine, “and papa has been so courageous! All that I desire in life is to be loved as he loves you. He has thought only of your grief.”

“My dream is fulfilled!” said the poor woman, dropping upon the sofa at the corner of the fireplace, pale, livid, terrified. “I foresaw it all. I warned you on that fatal night, in our old room which you pulled to pieces, that we should have nothing left but our eyes to weep with. My poor Cesarine, I – ”

“Now, there you go!” cried Cesar; “you will take away from me the courage I need.”

“Forgive me, dear friend,” said Constance, taking his hand, and pressing it with a tenderness which went to the heart of the poor man. “I do wrong. Misfortune has come; I will be silent, resigned, strong to bear it. No, you shall never hear a complaint from me.” She threw herself into his arms, weeping, and whispering, “Courage, dear friend, courage! I will have courage for both, if necessary.”

“My oil, wife, – my oil will save us!”

“May God help us!” said Constance.

“Anselme will help my father,” said Cesarine.

“I’ll go and see him,” cried Cesar, deeply moved by the passionate accents of his wife, who after nineteen years of married life was not yet fully known to him. “Constance, fear nothing! Here, read du Tillet’s letter to Monsieur de Nucingen; we are sure to obtain a credit. Besides,” he said, allowing himself a necessary lie, “there is our uncle Pillerault; that is enough to give us courage.”

“If that were all!” said Constance, smiling.

Birotteau, relieved of a heavy weight, walked away like a man suddenly set at liberty, though he felt within him that indefinable sinking which succeeds great moral struggles in which more of the nervous fluid, more of the will is emitted than should be spent at one time, and by which, if we may say so, the capital of the existence is drawn upon. Birotteau had aged already.

The house of A. Popinot, Rue des Cinq-Diamants, had undergone a great change in two months. The shop was repainted. The shelves, re-varnished and gilded and crowded with bottles, rejoiced the eye of those who had eyes to see the symptoms of prosperity. The floors were littered with packages and wrapping-paper. The storerooms held small casks of various oils, obtained for Popinot on commission by the devoted Gaudissart. The ledgers, the accounts, and the desks were moved into the rooms above the shop and the back-shop. An old cook did all the household work for the master and his three clerks. Popinot, penned up in a corner of the shop closed in with glass, might be seen in a serge apron and long sleeves of green linen, with a pen behind his ear, in the midst of a mass of papers, where in fact Birotteau now found him, as he was overhauling his letters full of proposals and checks and orders. At the words “Hey, my boy!” uttered by his old master, Popinot raised his head, locked up his cubby-hole, and came forward with a joyous air and the end of his nose a little red. There was no fire in the shop, and the door was always open.

“I feared you were never coming,” he said respectfully.

The clerks crowded round to look at the distinguished perfumer, the decorated deputy-mayor, the partner of their own master. Birotteau, so pitifully small at the Kellers, felt a craving to imitate those magnates; he stroked his chin, rose on his heels with native self-complacency, and talked his usual platitudes.

“Hey, my lad! we get up early, don’t we?” he remarked.

“No, for we don’t always go to bed,” said Popinot. “We must clutch success.”

“What did I tell you? My oil will make your fortune!”

“Yes, monsieur. But the means employed to sell it count for something. I have set your diamond well.”

“How do we stand?” said Cesar. “How far have you got? What are the profits?”

“Profits! at the end of two months! How can you expect it? Friend Gaudissart has only been on the road for twenty-five days; he took a post-chaise without saying a word to me. Oh, he is devoted! We owe a great deal to my uncle. The newspapers alone (here he whispered in Birotteau’s ear) will cost us twelve thousand francs.”

“Newspapers!” exclaimed the deputy-mayor.

“Haven’t you read them?”

“No.”

“Then you know nothing,” said Popinot. “Twenty thousand francs worth of placards, gilt frames, copies of the prospectus. One hundred thousand bottles bought. Ah, it is all paying through the nose at this moment! We are manufacturing on a grand scale. If you had set foot in the faubourg, where I often work all night, you would have seen a little nut-cracker which isn’t to be sneezed at, I can tell you. On my own account, I have made, in the last five days, not less than ten thousand francs, merely by commissions on the sale of druggists’ oils.”

“What a capable head!” said Birotteau, laying his hand on little Popinot’s thick hair and rubbing it about as if he were a baby. “I found it out.”

Several persons here came in.

“On Sunday we dine at your aunt Ragon’s,” added Cesar, leaving Popinot to go on with his business, for he perceived that the fresh meat he had come to taste was not yet cut up.

“It is amazing! A clerk becomes a merchant in twenty-four hours,” thought Birotteau, who understood the happiness and self-assurance of Anselme as little as the dandy luxury of du Tillet. “Anselme put on a little stiff air when I patted him on the head, just as if he were Francois Keller himself.”

Birotteau never once reflected that the clerks were looking on, and that the master of the establishment had his dignity to preserve. In this instance, as in the case of his speech to du Tillet, the worthy soul committed a folly out of pure goodness of heart, and for lack of knowing how to withhold an honest sentiment vulgarly expressed. By this trifling act Cesar would have wounded irretrievably any other man than little Popinot.

The Sunday dinner at the Ragon’s was destined to be the last pleasure of the nineteen happy years of the Birotteau household, – years of happiness that were full to overflowing. Ragon lived in the Rue du Petit-Bourbon-Saint-Sulpice, on the second floor of a dignified old house, in an appartement decorated with large panels where painted shepherdesses danced in panniers, before whom fed the sheep of our nineteenth century, the sober and serious bourgeoisie, – whose comical demeanor, with their respectful notions about the nobility, and their devotion to the Sovereign and the Church, were all admirably represented by Ragon himself. The furniture, the clocks, linen, dinner-service, all seemed patriarchal; novel in form because of their very age. The salon, hung with old damask and draped with curtains in brocatelle, contained portraits of duchesses and other royalist tributes; also a superb Popinot, sheriff of Sancerre, painted by Latour, – the father of Madame Ragon, a worthy, excellent man, in a picture out of which he smiled like a parvenu in all his glory. When at home, Madame Ragon completed her natural self with a little King Charles spaniel, which presented a surprisingly harmonious effect as it lay on the hard little sofa, rococo in shape, that assuredly never played the part assigned to the sofa of Crebillon.

Among their many virtues, the Ragons were noted for the possession of old wines which had come to perfect mellowness, and for certain of Madame Anfoux’s liqueurs, which certain persons, obstinately (though it was said hopelessly) bent on making love to Madame Ragon, had brought her from the West Indies. Thus their little dinners were much prized. Jeannette, the old cook, took care of the aged couple with blind devotion: she would have stolen the fruit to make their sweetmeats. Instead of taking her money to the savings-bank, she put it judiciously into lotteries, hoping that some day she could bestow a good round sum on her master and mistress. On the appointed Sundays when they received their guests, she was, despite her years, active in the kitchen to superintend the dishes, which she served at the table with an agility that (to use a favorite expression of the worthy Ragon) might have given points to Mademoiselle Contat when she played Susanne in the “Mariage de Figaro.”