"If truth were banished from this earth, she would leave her last word with a cashier," said du Tillet. "Haven't you some interest in this little Popinot, who has set up for himself?" he added, after a dreadful pause, in which the sweat rolled in drops from Cesar's brow.
"Yes," he answered, *****ly. "Do you think you could discount his signature for a large amount?"
"Bring me his acceptances for fifty thousand francs, and I will get them discounted for you at a reasonable rate by old Gobseck, who is very easy to deal with when he has funds to invest; and he has some now."
Birotteau went home broken-hearted, not perceiving that the bankers were tossing him from one to the other like a shuttle-cock; but Constance had already guessed that credit was unattainable. If three bankers refused it, it was very certain that they had inquired of each other about so prominent a man as a deputy-mayor; and there was, consequently, no hope from the Bank of France.
"Try to renew your notes," she said; "go and see Monsieur Claparon, your copartner, and all the others to whom you gave notes for the 15th, and ask them to renew. It will be time enough to go to the money-lenders with Popinot's paper if that fails."
"To-morrow is the 13th," said Birotteau, completely crushed.
In the language of his own prospectus, he enjoyed a sanguine temperament, which was subject to an enormous waste through emotions and the pressure of thought, and imperatively demanded sleep to repair it. Cesarine took her father into the salon and played to him "Rousseau's Dream,"--a pretty piece of music by Herold; while Constance sat sewing beside him. The poor man laid his head on a cushion, and every time he looked up at his wife he saw a soft smile upon her lips; and thus he fell asleep.
"Poor man!" said Constance; "what misery is in store for him! God grant he may have strength to bear it!"
"Oh! what troubles you, mamma?" said Cesarine, seeing that her mother was weeping.
"Dear daughter, I see a failure coming. If your father is forced to make an assignment, we must ask no one's pity. My child, be prepared to become a ****** shop-girl. If I see you accepting your life courageously, I shall have strength to begin my life over again. I
know your father,--he will not keep back one farthing; I shall resign my dower; all that we possess will be sold. My child, you must take your jewels and your clothes to-morrow to your uncle Pillerault; for you are not bound to any sacrifice."
Cesarine was seized with a terror beyond control as she listened to these words, spoken with religious simplicity. The thought came into her mind to go and see Anselme; but her native delicacy checked it.
On the morrow, at nine o'clock, Birotteau, following his wife's advice, went to find Claparon in the Rue de Provence, in the grasp of anxieties quite other than those through which he had lately passed.
To ask for a credit is an ordinary business matter; it happens every day that those who undertake an enterprise are obliged to borrow capital; but to ask for the renewal of notes is in commercial jurisprudence what the correctional police is to the court of assizes, --a first step towards bankruptcy, just as a misdemeanor leads to crime. The secret of your embarrassment is in other hands than your own. A merchant delivers himself over, bound hand and foot, to another merchant; and mercy is a virtue not practised at the Bourse.
Cesar, who once walked the streets of Paris with his head high and his eye beaming with confidence, now, unstrung by perplexity, shrank from meeting Claparon; he began to realize that a banker's heart is mere viscera. Claparon had seemed to him so brutal in his coarse jollity, and he had felt the man's vulgarity so keenly, that he shuddered at the necessity of accosting him.
"But he is nearer to the people; perhaps he will therefore have more heart!" Such was the first reproachful word which the anguish of his position forced from Cesar's lips.
Birotteau drew upon the dregs of his courage, and went up the stairway of a mean little /entresol/, at whose windows he had caught a glimpse of green curtains yellowed by the sun. He read the word "Offices,"
stamped in black letters on an oval copper-plate; he rapped, nobody answered, and he went in. The place, worse than humble, conveyed an idea of penury, or avarice, or neglect. No employe was to be seen behind the brass lattice which topped an unpainted white wooden enclosure, breast-high, within which were tables and desks in stained black wood. These deserted places were littered with inkstands, in which the ink was mouldy and the pens as rumpled as a ragammufin's head, and twisted like sunfish; with boxes and papers and printed matter,--all worthless, no doubt. The floor was as dirty, defaced, and damp as that of a boarding-house. The second room, announced by the word "Counting-Room" on its door, harmonized with the grim /facetiae/
of its neighbor. In one corner was a large space screened off by an oak balustrade, trellised with copper wire and furnished with a sliding cat-hole, within which was an enormous iron chest. This space, apparently given over to the rioting of rats, also contained an odd-
looking desk, with a shabby arm-chair, which was ragged, green, and torn in the seat,--from which the horse-hair protruded, like the wig of its master, in half a hundred libertine curls. The chief adornment of this room, which had evidently been the salon of the appartement before it was converted into a banking-office, was a round table covered with a green cloth, round which stood a few old chairs of black leather with tarnished gilt nails. The fireplace, somewhat elegant, showed none of the sooty marks of a fire; the hearth was clean; the mirror, covered with fly-specks, had a paltry air, in keeping with a mahogany clock bought at the sale of some old notary, which annoyed the eye, already depressed by two candelabras without candles and the sticky dust that covered them. The wall-paper, mouse-