In the month of May, 1821, this family, ever grappling with adversity,
received a first reward for its efforts at a little fete which
Pillerault, the arbiter of its destinies, prepared for it. The last
Sunday of that month was the anniversary of the day on which Constance
had consented to marry Cesar. Pillerault, in concert with the Ragons,
hired a little country-house at Sceaux, and the worthy old ironmonger
silently prepared a joyous house-warming.
“Cesar,” said Pillerault, on the Saturday evening, “to-morrow we are all
going into the country, and you must come.”
Cesar, who wrote a superb hand, spent his evenings in copying for
Derville and other lawyers. On Sundays, justified by ecclesiastical
permission, he worked like a Negro.
“No,” he said, “Monsieur Derville is waiting for a guardianship
account.”
“Your wife and daughter ought to have some reward. You will meet none
but our particular friends,--the Abbe Loraux, the Ragons, Popinot, and
his uncle. Besides, I wish it.”
Cesar and his wife, carried along by the whirlwind of business, had
never revisited Sceaux, though from time to time each longed to see once
more the tree under which the head-clerk of “The Queen of Roses” had
fainted with joy. During the trip, which Cesar made in a hackney-coach
with his wife and daughter, and Popinot who escorted them, Constance
cast many meaning glances at her husband without bringing to his lips
a single smile. She whispered a few words in his ear; for all answer he
shook his head. The soft signs of her tenderness, ever-present yet at
the moment forced, instead of brightening Cesar’s face made it more
sombre, and brought the long-repressed tears into his eyes. Poor man! he
had gone over this road twenty years before, young, prosperous, full
of hope, the lover of a girl as beautiful as their own Cesarine; he was
dreaming then of happiness. To-day, in the coach before him, sat his
noble child pale and worn by vigils, and his brave wife, whose only
beauty now was that of cities through whose streets have flowed the
lava waves of a volcano. Love alone remained to him! Cesar’s sadness
smothered the joy that welled up in the hearts of Cesarine and Anselme,
who embodied to his eyes the charming scene of other days.
“Be happy, my children! you have earned the right,” said the poor father
in heart-rending tones. “You may love without one bitter thought.”
As he said these words he took his wife’s hands and kissed them with
a sacred and admiring effect which touched Constance more than the
brightest gaiety. When they reached the house where Pillerault, the
Ragons, the Abbe Loraux, and Popinot the judge were waiting for them,
these five choice people assumed an air and manner and speech which put
Cesar at his ease; for all were deeply moved to see him still on the
morrow of his great disaster.
“Go and take a walk in the Aulnay woods,” said Pillerault, putting
Cesar’s hand into that of Constance; “go with Anselme and Cesarine! but
come back by four o’clock.”
“Poor souls, we should be a restraint upon them,” said Madame Ragon,
touched by the deep grief of her debtor. “He will be very happy
presently.”
“It is repentance without sin,” said the Abbe Loraux.
“He could rise to greatness only through adversity,” said the judge.
To forget is the great secret of strong, creative natures,--to forget,
in the way of Nature herself, who knows no past, who begins afresh, at
every hour, the mysteries of her untiring travail.
Feeble existences, like that of Birotteau, live sunk in sorrows, instead
of transmuting them into doctrines of experience: they let them saturate
their being, and are worn-out, finally, by falling more and more under
the weight of past misfortunes.
When the two couples reached the path which leads to the woods
of Aulnay, placed like a crown upon the prettiest hillside in the
neighborhood of Paris, and from which the Vallee-aux-Loups is seen in
all its coquetry, the beauty of the day, the charm of the landscape, the
first spring verdure, the delicious memory of the happiest day of all
his youth, loosened the tight chords in Cesar’s soul; he pressed the arm
of his wife against his beating heart; his eye was no longer glassy, for
the light of pleasure once more brightened in it.
“At last,” said Constance to her husband, “I see you again, my poor
Cesar. I think we have all behaved well enough to allow ourselves a
little pleasure now and then.”
“Ought I?” said the poor man. “Ah! Constance, thy affection is all that
remains to me. Yes, I have lost even my old self-confidence; I have no
strength left; my only desire is that I may live to die discharged of
debt on earth. Thou, dear wife, thou who art my wisdom and my prudence,
thou whose eyes saw clear, thou who art irreproachable, thou canst have
pleasure. I alone--of us three--am guilty. Eighteen months ago, in the
midst of that fatal ball, I saw my Constance, the only woman I have ever
loved, more beautiful than the young girl I followed along this path
twenty years ago--like our children yonder! In eighteen months I have
blasted that beauty,--my pride, my legitimate and sanctioned pride. I
love thee better since I know thee well. Oh, _dear_!” he said, giving to
the word a tone which reached to the inmost heart of his wife, “I would
rather have thee scold me, than see thee so tender to my pain.”
“I did not think,” she said, “that after twenty years of married life
the love of a wife for her husband could deepen.”
These words drove from Cesar’s mind, for one brief moment, all his
sorrows; his heart was so true that they were to him a fortune. He
walked forward almost joyously to _their_ tree, which by chance had not
been felled. Husband and wife sat down beneath it, watching Anselme and
Cesarine, who were sauntering across the grassy slope without perceiving
them, thinking probably that they were still following.
“Mademoiselle,” Anselme was saying, “do not think me so base and
grasping as to profit by your father’s share which I have acquired
in the Cephalic Oil. I am keeping his share for him; I nurse it with
careful love. I invest the profits; if there is any loss I put it to
my own account. We can only belong to one another on the day when your
father is restored to his position, free of debt. I work for that day
with all the strength that love has given me.”
“Will it come soon?” she said.
“Soon,” said Popinot. The word was uttered in a tone so full of meaning,
that the chaste and pure young girl inclined her head to her dear
Anselme, who laid an eager and respectful kiss upon her brow,--so noble
was her gesture and action.
“Papa, all is well,” she said to Cesar with a little air of confidence.
“Be good and sweet; talk to us, put away that sad look.”
When this family, so tenderly bound together, re-entered the house, even
Cesar, little observing as he was, saw a change in the manner of the
Ragons which seemed to denote some remarkable event. The greeting of
Madame Ragon was particularly impressive; her look and accent seemed to
say to Cesar, “We are paid.”
At the dessert, the notary of Sceaux appeared. Pillerault made him sit
down, and then looked at Cesar, who began to suspect a surprise, though
he was far indeed from imagining the extent of it.
“My nephew, the savings of your wife, your daughter, and yourself, for
the last eighteen months, amounted to twenty thousand francs. I have
received thirty thousand by the dividend on my claim. We have therefore
fifty thousand francs to divide among your creditors. Monsieur Ragon has
received thirty thousand francs for his dividend, and you have now
paid him the balance of his claim in full, interest included, for which
monsieur here, the notary of Sceaux, has brought you a receipt. The
rest of the money is with Crottat, ready for Lourdois, Madame Madou, the
mason, carpenter, and the other most pressing creditors. Next year, we
may do as well. With time and patience we can go far.”
Birotteau’s joy is not to be described; he threw himself into his
uncle’s arms, weeping.
“May he not wear his cross?” said Ragon to the Abbe Loraux.
The confessor fastened the red ribbon to Cesar’s buttonhole. The poor
clerk looked at himself again and again during the evening in the
mirrors of the salon, manifesting a joy at which people thinking
themselves superior might have laughed, but which these good bourgeois
thought quite natural.
The next day Birotteau went to find Madame Madou.
“Ah, there you are, good soul!” she cried. “I didn’t recognize you, you
have turned so gray. Yet you don’t really drudge, you people; you’ve got
good places. As for me, I work like a turnspit that deserves baptism.”
“But, madame--”
“Never mind, I don’t mean it as a reproach,” she said. “You have got my
receipt.”
“I came to tell you that I shall pay you to-morrow, at Monsieur
Crottat’s, the rest of your claim in full, with interest.”
“Is that true?”
“Be there at eleven o’clock.”
“Hey! there’s honor for you! good measure and running over!” she cried
with naive admiration. “Look here, my good monsieur, I am doing a fine
trade with your little red-head. He’s a nice young fellow; he lets
me earn a fair penny without haggling over it, so that I may get an
equivalent for that loss. Well, I’ll get you a receipt in full, anyhow;
you keep the money, my poor old man! La Madou may get in a fury, and she
does scold; but she has got something here--” she cried, thumping the
most voluminous mounds of flesh ever yet seen in the markets.
“No,” said Birotteau, “the law is plain. I wish to pay you in full.”
“Then I won’t deny you the pleasure,” she said; “and to-morrow I’ll
trumpet your conduct through the markets. Ha! it’s rare, rare!”
The worthy man had much the same scene, with variations, at Lourdois the
house painter’s, father-in-law of Crottat. It was raining; Cesar left
his umbrella at the corner of the door. The prosperous painter, seeing
the water trickling into the room where he was breakfasting with his
wife, was not tender.
“Come, what do you want, my poor Pere Birotteau?” he said, in the hard
tone which some people take to importunate beggars.
“Monsieur, has not your son-in-law told you--”
“What?” cried Lourdois, expecting some appeal.
“To be at his office this morning at half past eleven, and give me a
receipt for the payment of your claims in full, with interest?”
“Ah, that’s another thing! Sit down, Monsieur Birotteau, and eat a
mouthful with us.”
“Do us the pleasure to share our breakfast,” said Madame Lourdois.
“You are doing well, then?” asked the fat Lourdois.
“No, monsieur, I have lived from hand to mouth, that I might scrape up
this money; but I hope, in time, to repair the wrongs I have done to my
neighbor.”
“Ah!” said the painter, swallowing a mouthful of _pate de foie gras_,
“you are truly a man of honor.”
“What is Madame Birotteau doing?” asked Madame Lourdois.
“She is keeping the books of Monsieur Anselme Popinot.”
“Poor people!” said Madame Lourdois, in a low voice to her husband.
“If you ever need me, my dear Monsieur Birotteau, come and see me,” said
Lourdois. “I might help--”
“I do need you--at eleven o’clock to-day, monsieur,” said Birotteau,
retiring.
* * * * *
This first result gave courage to the poor bankrupt, but not peace of
mind. On the contrary, the thought of regaining his honor agitated his
life inordinately; he completely lost the natural color of his
cheeks, his eyes grew sunken and dim, and his face hollow. When old
acquaintances met him, in the morning at eight o’clock or in the evening
at four, as he went to and from the Rue de l’Oratoire, wearing the
surtout coat he wore at the time of his fall, and which he husbanded as
a poor sub-lieutenant husbands his uniform,--his hair entirely white,
his face pale, his manner timid,--some few would stop him in spite of
himself; for his eye was alert to avoid those he knew as he crept along
beside the walls, like a thief.
“Your conduct is known, my friend,” said one; “everybody regrets the
sternness with which you treat yourself, also your wife and daughter.”
“Take a little more time,” said others; “the wounds of money do not
kill.”
“No, but the wounds of the soul do,” the poor worn Cesar answered one
day to his friend Matifat.
* * * * *
At the beginning of the year 1822, the Canal Saint-Martin was begun.
Land in the Faubourg du Temple increased enormously in value. The canal
would cut through the property which du Tillet had bought of Cesar
Birotteau. The company who obtained the right of building it agreed to
pay the banker an exorbitant sum, provided they could take possession
within a given time. The lease Cesar had granted to Popinot, which
went with the sale to du Tillet, now hindered the transfer to the
canal company. The banker came to the Rue des Cinq-Diamants to see the
druggist. If du Tillet was indifferent to Popinot, it is very certain
that the lover of Cesarine felt an instinctive hatred for du Tillet.
He knew nothing of the theft and the infamous scheme of the prosperous
banker, but an inward voice cried to him, “The man is an unpunished
rascal.” Popinot would never have transacted the smallest business with
him; du Tillet’s very presence was odious to his feelings. Under the
present circumstances it was doubly so, for the banker was now enriched
through the forced spoliation of his former master; the lands about the
Madeleine, as well as those in the Faubourg du Temple, were beginning to
rise in price, and to foreshadow the enormous value they were to reach
in 1827. So that after du Tillet had explained the object of his visit,
Popinot looked at him with concentrated wrath.
“I shall not refuse to give up my lease; but I demand sixty thousand
francs for it, and I shall not take one farthing less.”
“Sixty thousand francs!” exclaimed du Tillet, making a movement to leave
the shop.
“I have fifteen years’ lease still to run; it will, moreover, cost me
three thousand francs a year to get other buildings. Therefore, sixty
thousand francs, or say no more about it,” said Popinot, going to the
back of the shop, where du Tillet followed him.
The discussion grew warm, Birotteau’s name was mentioned; Madame Cesar
heard it and came down, and saw du Tillet for the first time since the
famous ball. The banker was unable to restrain a gesture of surprise at
the change which had come over the beautiful woman; he lowered his eyes,
shocked at the result of his own work.
“Monsieur,” said Popinot to Madame Cesar, “is going to make three
hundred thousand francs out of _your_ land, and he refuses _us_ sixty
thousand francs’ indemnity for _our_ lease.”
“That is three thousand francs a year,” said du Tillet.
“Three--thousand--francs!” said Madame Cesar, slowly, in a clear,
penetrating voice.
Du Tillet turned pale. Popinot looked at Madame Birotteau. There was a
moment of profound silence, which made the scene still more inexplicable
to Anselme.
“Sign your relinquishment of the lease, which I have made Crottat draw
up,” said du Tillet, drawing a stamped paper from a side-pocket. “I will
give you a cheque on the Bank of France for sixty thousand francs.”
Popinot looked at Madame Cesar without concealing his astonishment; he
thought he was dreaming. While du Tillet was writing his cheque at a
high desk, Madame Cesar disappeared and went upstairs. The druggist and
the banker exchanged papers. Du Tillet bowed coldly to Popinot, and went
away.
“At last, in a few months,” thought Popinot, as he watched du Tillet
going towards the Rue des Lombards, where his cabriolet was waiting,
“thanks to this extraordinary affair, I shall have my Cesarine. My poor
little wife shall not wear herself out any longer. A look from Madame
Cesar was enough! What secret is there between her and that brigand? The
whole thing is extraordinary.”
Popinot sent the cheque at once to the Bank, and went up to speak to
Madame Birotteau; she was not in the counting-room, and had doubtless
gone to her chamber. Anselme and Constance lived like mother-in-law and
son-in-law when people in that relation suit each other; he therefore
rushed up to Madame Cesar’s appartement with the natural eagerness of a
lover on the threshold of his happiness. The young man was prodigiously
surprised to find her, as he sprang like a cat into the room, reading
a letter from du Tillet, whose handwriting he recognized at a glance. A
lighted candle, and the black and quivering phantoms of burned letters
lying on the floor made him shudder, for his quick eyes caught the
following words in the letter which Constance held in her hand:--
“I adore you! You know it well, angel of my life, and--”
“What power have you over du Tillet that could force him to agree to
such terms?” he said with a convulsive laugh that came from repressed
suspicion.
“Do not let us speak of that,” she said, showing great distress.
“No,” said Popinot, bewildered; “let us rather talk of the end of all
your troubles.” Anselme turned on his heel towards the window, and
drummed with his fingers on the panes as he gazed into the court.
“Well,” he said to himself, “even if she did love du Tillet, is that any
reason why I should not behave like an honorable man?”
“What is the matter, my child?” said the poor woman.
“The total of the net profits of Cephalic Oil mount up to two hundred
and forty-two thousand francs; half of that is one hundred and
twenty-one thousand,” said Popinot, brusquely. “If I withdraw from
that amount the forty-eight thousand francs which I paid to Monsieur
Birotteau, there remains seventy-three thousand, which, joined to these
sixty thousand paid for the relinquishment of the lease, gives _you_ one
hundred and thirty-three thousand francs.”
Madame Cesar listened with fluctuations of joy which made her tremble so
violently that Popinot could hear the beating of her heart.
“Well, I have always considered Monsieur Birotteau as my partner,” he
went on; “we can use this sum to pay his creditors in full. Add
the twenty-eight thousand you have saved and placed in our uncle
Pillerault’s hands, and we have one hundred and sixty-one thousand
francs. Our uncle will not refuse his receipt for his own claim of
twenty-five thousand. No human power can deprive me of the right of
lending to my father-in-law, by anticipating our profits of next year,
the necessary sum to make up the total amount due to his creditor,
and--he--will--be--reinstated--restored--”
“Restored!” cried Madame Cesar, falling on her knees beside a chair. She
joined her hands and said a prayer; as she did so, the letter slid from
her fingers. “Dear Anselme,” she said, crossing herself, “dear son!” She
took his head in her hands, kissed him on the forehead, pressed him to
her heart, and seemed for a moment beside herself. “Cesarine is thine!
My daughter will be happy at last. She can leave that shop where she is
killing herself--”
“For love?” said Popinot.
“Yes,” answered the mother, smiling.
“Listen to a little secret,” said Popinot, glancing at the fatal letter
from a corner of his eye. “I helped Celestin to buy your business; but I
did it on one condition,--your appartement was to be kept exactly as you
left it. I had an idea in my head, though I never thought that chance
would favor it so much. Celestin is bound to sub-let to you your old
appartement, where he has never set foot, and where all the furniture
will be yours. I have kept the second story, where I shall live with
Cesarine, who shall never leave you. After our marriage I shall come and
pass the days from eight in the morning till six in the evening here.
I will buy out Monsieur Cesar’s share in this business for a hundred
thousand francs, and that will give you an income to live on. Shall you
not be happy?”
“Tell me no more, Anselme, or I shall go out of my mind.”
The angelic attitude of Madame Cesar, the purity of her eyes, the
innocence of her candid brow, contradicted so gloriously the thoughts
which surged in the lover’s brain that he resolved to make an end of
their monstrosities forever. Sin was incompatible with the life and
sentiments of such a woman.
“My dear, adored mother,” said Anselme, “in spite of myself, a horrible
suspicion has entered my soul. If you wish to see me happy, you will put
an end to it at once.”
Popinot stretched out his hand and picked up the letter.
“Without intending it,” he resumed, alarmed at the terror painted on
Constance’s face, “I read the first words of this letter of du Tillet.
The words coincide in a singular manner with the power you have just
shown in forcing that man to accept my absurd exactions; any man would
explain it as the devil explains it to me, in spite of myself. Your
look--three words suffice--”
“Stop!” said Madame Cesar, taking the letter and burning it. “My son, I
am severely punished for a trifling error. You shall know all, Anselme.
I shall not allow a suspicion inspired by her mother to injure my
daughter; and besides, I can speak without blushing. What I now tell
you, I could tell my husband. Du Tillet wished to seduce me; I informed
my husband of it, and du Tillet was to have been dismissed. On the
very day my husband was about to send him away, he robbed us of three
thousand francs.”
“I was sure of it!” said Popinot, expressing his hatred by the tones of
his voice.
“Anselme, your future, your happiness, demand this confidence; but
you must let it die in your heart, just as it is dead in mine and in
Cesar’s. Do you not remember how my husband scolded us for an error in
the accounts? Monsieur Birotteau, to avoid a police-court which might
have destroyed the man for life, no doubt placed in the desk three
thousand francs,--the price of that cashmere shawl which I did not
receive till three years later. All this explains the scene. Alas!
my dear child, I must admit my foolishness; du Tillet wrote me three
love-letters, which pictured him so well that I kept them,” she said,
lowering her eyes and sighing, “as a curiosity. I have not re-read them
more than once; still, it was imprudent to keep them. When I saw du
Tillet just now I was reminded of them, and I came upstairs to burn
them; I was looking over the last as you came in. That’s the whole
story, my friend.”
Anselme knelt for a moment beside her and kissed her hand with an
unspeakable emotion, which brought tears into the eyes of both; Madame
Cesar raised him, stretched out her arms and pressed him to her heart.
* * * * *
This day was destined to be a day of joy to Cesar. The private secretary
of the king, Monsieur de Vandenesse, called at the Sinking-Fund Office
to find him. They walked out together into the little courtyard.
“Monsieur Birotteau,” said the Vicomte de Vandenesse, “your efforts to
pay your creditors in full have accidentally become known to the king.
His Majesty, touched by such rare conduct, and hearing that through
humility you no longer wear the cross of the Legion of honor, has sent
me to command you to put it on again. Moreover, wishing to help you in
meeting your obligations, he has charged me to give you this sum from
his privy purse, regretting that he is unable to make it larger. Let
this be a profound secret. His Majesty thinks it derogatory to the royal
dignity to have his good deeds divulged,” said the private secretary,
putting six thousand francs into the hand of the poor clerk, who
listened to this speech with unutterable emotion. The words that came to
his lips were disconnected and stammering. Vandenesse waved his hand to
him, smiling, and went away.
The principle which actuated poor Cesar is so rare in Paris that his
conduct by degrees attracted admiration. Joseph Lebas, Popinot the
judge, Camusot, the Abbe Loraux, Ragon, the head of the important house
where Cesarine was employed, Lourdois, Monsieur de la Billardiere, and
others, talked of it. Public opinion, undergoing a change, now lauded
him to the skies.
“He is indeed a man of honor!” The phrase even sounded in Cesar’s ears
as he passed along the streets, and caused him the emotion an author
feels when he hears the muttered words: “That is he!” This noble
recovery of credit enraged du Tillet. Cesar’s first thought on receiving
the bank-notes sent by the king was to use them in paying the debt still
due to his former clerk. The worthy man went to the Rue de la Chaussee
d’Antin just as the banker was returning from the Bourse; they met upon
the stairway.
“Well, my poor Birotteau!” said du Tillet, with a stealthy glance.
“Poor!” exclaimed the debtor proudly, “I am very rich. I shall lay my
head this night upon my pillow with the happiness of knowing that I have
paid you in full.”
This speech, ringing with integrity, sent a sharp pang through du
Tillet. In spite of the esteem he publicly enjoyed, he did not esteem
himself; an inextinguishable voice cried aloud within his soul, “The man
is sublime!”
“Pay me?” he said; “why, what business are you doing?”
Feeling sure that du Tillet would not repeat what he told him, Birotteau
answered: “I shall never go back to business, monsieur. No human power
could have foreseen what has happened to me there. Who knows that I
might not be the victim of another Roguin? But my conduct has been
placed under the eyes of the king; his heart has deigned to sympathize
with my efforts; he has encouraged them by sending me a sum of money
large enough to--”
“Do you want a receipt?” said du Tillet, interrupting him; “are you
going to pay--”
“In full, with interest. I must ask you to come with me now to Monsieur
Crottat, only two steps from here.”
“Before a notary?”
“Monsieur; I am not forbidden to aim at my complete reinstatement; to
obtain it, all deeds and receipts must be legal and undeniable.”
“Come, then,” said du Tillet, going out with Birotteau; “it is only a
step. But where did you take all that money from?”
“I have not taken it,” said Cesar; “I have earned it by the sweat of my
brow.”
“You owe an enormous sum to Claparon.”
“Alas! yes; that is my largest debt. I think sometimes I shall die
before I pay it.”
“You never can pay it,” said du Tillet harshly.
“He is right,” thought Birotteau.
As he went home the poor man passed, inadvertently, along the Rue
Saint-Honore; for he was in the habit of making a circuit to avoid
seeing his shop and the windows of his former home. For the first time
since his fall he saw the house where eighteen years of happiness had
been effaced by the anguish of three months.
“I hoped to end my days there,” he thought; and he hastened his steps,
for he caught sight of the new sign,--