Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau - Honoré de Balzac (best fiction novels .TXT) 📗

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