“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, whi
ch 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, —
CELESTIN CREVEL
Successor to Cesar Birotteau
“Am I dazzled, am I going blind? Was that Cesarine?” he cried, recollecting a blond head he had seen at the window.
He had actually seen his daughter, his wife, and Popinot. The lovers knew that Birotteau never passed before the windows of his old home, and they had come to the house to make arrangements for a fete which they intended to give him. This amazing apparition so astonished Birotteau that he stood stock-still, unable to move.
“There is Monsieur Birotteau looking at his old house,” said Monsieur Molineux to the owner of a shop opposite to “The Queen of Roses.”
“Poor man!” said the perfumer’s former neighbor; “he gave a fine ball — two hundred carriages in the street.”
“I was there; and he failed in three months,” said Molineux. “I was the assignee.”
Birotteau fled, trembling in every limb, and hastened back to Pillerault.
Pillerault, who had just been informed of what had happened in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants, feared that his nephew was scarcely fit to bear the shock of joy which the sudden knowledge of his restoration would cause him; for Pillerault was a daily witness of the moral struggles of the poor man, whose mind stood always face to face with his inflexible doctrines against bankruptcy, and whose vital forces were used and spent at every hour. Honor was to Cesar a corpse, for which an Easter morning might yet dawn. This hope kept his sorrow incessantly active. Pillerault took upon himself the duty of preparing his nephew to receive the good news; and when Birotteau came in he was thinking over the best means of accomplishing his purpose. Cesar’s joy as he related the proof of interest which the king had bestowed upon him seemed of good augury, and the astonishment he expressed at seeing Cesarine at “The Queen of Roses” afforded, Pillerault thought, an excellent opening.
“Well, Cesar,” said the old man, “do you know what is at the bottom of it? — the hurry Popinot is in to marry Cesarine. He cannot wait any longer; and you ought not, for the sake of your exaggerated ideas of honor, to make him pass his youth eating dry bread with the fumes of a good dinner under his nose. Popinot wishes to lend you the amount necessary to pay your creditors in full.”
“Then he would buy his wife,” said Birotteau.
“Is it not honorable to reinstate his father-in-law?”
“There would be ground for contention; besides — ”
“Besides,” exclaimed Pillerault, pretending anger, “you may have the right to immolate yourself if you choose, but you have no right to immolate your daughter.”
A vehement discussion ensued, which Pillerault designedly excited.
“Hey! if Popinot lent you nothing,” cried Pillerault, “if he had called you his partner, if he had considered the price which he paid to the creditors for your share in the Oil as an advance upon the profits, so as not to strip you of everything — ”
“I should have seemed to rob my creditors in collusion with him.”
Pillerault feigned to be defeated by this argument. He knew the human heart well enough to be certain that during the night Cesar would go over the question in his own mind, and the mental discussion would accustom him to the idea of his complete vindication.
“But how came my wife and daughter to be in our old appartement?” asked Birotteau, while they were dining.
“Anselme wants to hire it, and live ther
e with Cesarine. Your wife is on his side. They have had the banns published without saying anything about it, so as to force you to consent. Popinot says there will be much less merit in marrying Cesarine after you are reinstated. You take six thousand francs from the king, and you won’t accept anything from your relations! I can well afford to give you a receipt in full for all that is owing to me; do you mean to refuse it?”
“No,” said Cesar; “but that won’t keep me from saving up everything to pay you.”
“Irrational folly!” cried Pillerault. “In matters of honor I ought to be believed. What nonsense were you saying just now? How have you robbed your creditors when you have paid them all in full?”
Cesar looked earnestly at Pillerault, and Pillerault was touched to see, for the first time in three years, a genuine smile on the face of his poor nephew.
“It is true,” he said, “they would be paid; but it would be selling my daughter.”
“And I wish to be bought!” cried Cesarine, entering with Popinot.
The lovers had heard Birotteau’s last words as they came on tiptoe through the antechamber of their uncle’s little appartement, Madame Birotteau following. All three had driven round to the creditors who were still unpaid, requesting them to meet at Alexandre Crottat’s that evening to receive their money. The all-powerful logic of the enamored Popinot triumphed in the end over Cesar’s scruples, though he persisted for some time in calling himself a debtor, and in declaring that he was circumventing the law by a substitution. But the refinements of his conscience gave way when Popinot cried out: “Do you want to kill your daughter?”
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 595