Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau Part 38

"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 pa.s.s 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed along the streets, and caused him the emotion an author feels when he hears the muttered words: "That is he!" This n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.signee."

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 pa.s.s 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?"