Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau

Weary, but happy, the Birotteaus fell asleep in the early morning amid echoes of the fete, – which for building, repairs, furnishing, suppers, toilets, and the library (repaid to Cesarine), cost not less, though Cesar was little aware of it, than sixty thousand francs. Such was the price of the fatal red ribbon fastened by the king to the buttonhole of an honest perfumer. If misfortunes were to overtake Cesar Birotteau, this mad extravagance would be sufficient to arraign him before the criminal courts. A merchant is amenable to the laws if, in the event of bankruptcy, he is shown to have been guilty of “excessive expenditure.” It is perhaps more dreadful to go before the lesser courts charged with folly or blundering mistakes, than before the Court of Assizes for an enormous fraud. In the eyes of some people, it is better to be criminal than a fool.

PART II. CESAR GRAPPLING WITH MISFORTUNE

I

Eight days after his ball, the last dying flash of a prosperity of eighteen years now about to be extinguished, Cesar Birotteau watched the passers-by from the windows of his shop, thinking over the expansion of his affairs, and beginning to find them burdensome. Until then all had been simple in his life; he manufactured and sold, or bought to sell again. To-day the land speculation, his share in the house of A. Popinot and Company, the repayment of the hundred and sixty thousand francs thrown upon the market, which necessitated either a traffic in promissory notes (of which his wife would disapprove), or else some unheard-of success in Cephalic Oil, all fretted the poor man by the multiplicity of ideas which they involved; he felt he had more irons in the fire than he could lay hold of. How would Anselme guide the helm? Birotteau treated Popinot as a professor of rhetoric treats a pupil, – he distrusted his methods, and regretted that he was not at his elbow. The kick he had given Popinot to make him hold his tongue at Vauquelin’s explains the uneasiness which the young merchant inspired in his mind.

Birotteau took care that neither his wife nor his daughter nor the clerks should suspect his anxiety; but he was in truth like a humble boatman on the Seine whom the government has suddenly put in command of a frigate. Troubled thoughts filled his mind, never very capable of reflection, as if with a fog; he stood still, as it were, and peered about to see his way. At this moment a figure appeared in the street for which he felt a violent antipathy; it was that of his new landlord, little Molineux. Every one has dreamed dreams filled with the events of a lifetime, in which there appears and reappears some wayward being, commissioned to play the mischief and be the villain of the piece. To Birotteau’s fancy Molineux seemed delegated by chance to fill some part in his life. His weird face had grinned diabolically at the ball, and he had looked at its magnificence with an evil eye. Catching sight of him again at this moment, Cesar was all the more reminded of the impression the little skin-flint (a word of his vocabulary) had made upon him, because Molineux excited fresh repugnance by reappearing in the midst of his anxious reverie.

“Monsieur,” said the little man, in his atrociously hypocritical voice, “we settled our business so hastily that you forgot to guarantee the signatures on the little private deed.”

Birotteau took the lease to repair the mistake. The architect came in at this moment, and bowed to the perfumer, looking about him with a diplomatic air.

“Monsieur,” he whispered to Cesar presently, “you can easily understand that the first steps in a profession are difficult; you said you were satisfied with me, and it would oblige me very much if you would pay me my commission.”

Birotteau, who had stripped himself of ready money when he put his current cash into Roguin’s hands two weeks earlier, called to Celestin to make out an order for two thousand francs at ninety days’ sight, and to write the form of a receipt.

“I am very glad you took part of your neighbor’s rental on yourself,” said Molineux in a sly, half-sneering tone. “My porter came to tell me just now that the sheriff has affixed the seals to the Sieur Cayron’s appartement; he has disappeared.”

“I hope I’m not juggled out of five thousand francs,” thought Birotteau.

“Cayron always seemed to do a good business,” said Lourdois, who just then came in to bring his bill.

“A merchant is never safe from commercial reverses until he has retired from business,” said little Molineux, folding up his document with fussy precision.

The architect watched the queer old man with the enjoyment all artists find in getting hold of a caricature which confirms their theories about the bourgeoisie.

“When we have got our head under an umbrella we generally think it is protected from the rain,” he said.

Molineux noticed the mustachios and the little chin-tuft of the artist much more than he did his face, and he despised that individual folly as much as Grindot despised him. He waited to give him a parting scratch as he went out. By dint of living so long with his cats Molineux had acquired, in his manners as well as in his eyes, something unmistakably feline.

Just at this moment Ragon and Pillerault came in.

“We have been talking of the land affair with the judge,” said Ragon in Cesar’s ear; “he says that in a speculation of that kind we must have a warranty from the sellers, and record the deeds, and pay in cash, before we are really owners and co-partners.”

“Ah! you are talking of the lands about the Madeleine,” said Lourdois; “there is a good deal said about them: there will be some houses to build.”

The painter who had come intending to have his bill settled, suddenly thought it more to his interest not to press Birotteau.

“I brought my bill because it was the end of the year,” he whispered to Cesar; “but there’s no hurry.”

“What is the matter, Cesar?” said Pillerault, noticing the amazement of his nephew, who, having glanced at the bill, made no reply to either Ragon or Lourdois.

“Oh, a trifle. I took notes to the amount of five thousand francs from my neighbor, a dealer in umbrellas, and he has failed. If he has given me bad securities I shall be caught, like a fool.”

“And yet I have warned you many times,” cried Ragon; “a drowning man will catch at his father’s leg to save himself, and drown him too. I have seen so many failures! People are not exactly scoundrels when the disaster begins, but they soon come to be, out of sheer necessity.”

“That’s true,” said Pillerault.

“If I ever get into the Chamber of Deputies, and ever have any influence in the government,” said Birotteau, rising on his toes and dropping back on his heels, —

“What would you do?” said Lourdois, “for you’ve a long head.”

Molineux, interested in any discussion about law, lingered in the shop; and as the attention of a few persons is apt to make others attentive, Pillerault and Ragon listened as gravely as the three strangers, though they perfectly well knew Cesar’s opinions.

“I would have,” said the perfumer, “a court of irremovable judges, with a magistracy to attend to the application and execution of the laws. After the examination of a case, during which the judge should fulfil the functions of agent, assignee, and commissioner, the merchant should be declared insolvent with rights of reinstatement, or else bankrupt. If the former, he should be required to pay in full; he should be left in control of his own property and that of his wife; all his belongings and his inherited property should belong to his creditors, and he should administer his affairs in their interests under supervision; he should still carry on his business, signing always ‘So-and-so, insolvent,’ until the whole debt is paid off. If bankrupt, he should be condemned, as formerly, to the pillory on the Place de la Bourse, and exposed for two hours, wearing a green cap. His property and that of his wife, and all his rights of every kind should be handed over to his creditors, and he himself banished from the kingdom.”

“Business would be more secure,” said Lourdois; “people would think twice before launching into speculations.”

“The existing laws are not enforced,” cried Cesar, lashing himself up. “Out of every hundred merchants there are more than fifty who never realize seventy-five per cent of the whole value of their business, or who sell their merchandise at twenty-five per cent below the invoice price; and that is the destruction of commerce.”

“Monsieur is very right,” said Molineux; “the law leaves a great deal too much latitude. There should either be total relinquishment of everything, or infamy.”

“Damn it!” said Cesar, “at the rate things are going now, a merchant will soon be a licensed thief. With his mere signature he can dip into anybody’s money-drawer.”

“You have no mercy, Monsieur Birotteau,” said Lourdois.

“He is quite right,” said old Ragon.

“All insolvents are suspicious characters,” said Cesar, exasperated by his little loss, which sounded in his ears like the first cry of the view-halloo in the ears of the game.

At this moment the late major-domo brought in Chevet’s account, followed by a clerk sent by Felix, a waiter from the cafe Foy, and Collinet’s clarionet, each with a bill.

“Rabelais’ quarter of an hour,” said Ragon, smiling.

“It was a fine ball,” said Lourdois.

“I am busy,” said Cesar to the messengers; who all left the bills and went away.

“Monsieur Grindot,” said Lourdois, observing that the architect was folding up Birotteau’s cheque, “will you certify my account? You need only to add it up; the prices were all agreed to by you on Monsieur Birotteau’s behalf.”

Pillerault looked at Lourdois and Grindot.

“Prices agreed upon between the architect and contractor?” he said in a low voice to his nephew, – “they have robbed you.”

Grindot left the shop, and Molineux followed him with a mysterious air.

“Monsieur,” he said, “you listened to me, but you did not understand me, – I wish you the protection of an umbrella.”

The architect was frightened. The more illegal a man’s gains the more he clings to them: the human heart is so made. Grindot had really studied the appartement lovingly; he had put all his art and all his time into it; he had given ten thousand francs worth of labor, and he felt that in so doing he had been the dupe of his vanity: the contractors therefore had little trouble in seducing him. The irresistible argument and threat, fully understood, of injuring him professionally by calumniating his work were, however, less powerful than a remark made by Lourdois about the lands near the Madeleine. Birotteau did not expect to hold a single house upon them; he was speculating only on the value of the land; but architects and contractors are to each other very much what authors and actors are, – mutually dependent. Grindot, ordered by Birotteau to stipulate the costs, went for the interests of the builders against the bourgeoisie; and the result was that three large contractors – Lourdois, Chaffaroux, and Thorein the carpenter – proclaimed him “one of those good fellows it is a pleasure to work for.” Grindot guessed that the contractor’s bills, out of which he was to have a share, would be paid, like his commission, in notes; and little Molineux had just filled his mind with doubts as to their payment. The architect was about to become pitiless, – after the manner of artists, who are most intolerant of men in their dealings with the middle classes.

By the end of December bills to the amount of sixty thousand francs had been sent in. Felix, the cafe Foy, Tanrade, and all the little creditors who ought to be paid in ready money, had asked for payment three times. Failure to pay such trifles as these do more harm in business than a real misfortune, – they foretell it: known losses are definite, but a panic defies all reckoning. Birotteau saw his coffers empty, and terror seized him: such a thing had never happened throughout his whole commercial life. Like all persons who have never struggled long with poverty, and who are by nature feeble, this circumstance, so common among the greater number of the petty Parisian tradesmen, disturbed for a moment Cesar’s brain. He ordered Celestin to send round the bills of his customers and ask for payment. Before doing so, the head clerk made him repeat the unheard-of order. The clients, – a fine term applied by retail shopkeepers to their customers, and used by Cesar in spite of his wife, who however ended by saying, “Call them what you like, provided they pay!” – his clients, then, were rich people, through whom he had never lost money, who paid when they pleased, and among whom Cesar often had a floating amount of fifty or sixty thousand francs due to him. The second clerk went through the books and copied off the largest sums. Cesar dreaded his wife: that she might not see his depression under this simoom of misfortune, he prepared to go out.

“Good morning, monsieur,” said Grindot, entering with the lively manner artists put on when they speak of business, and wish to pretend they know nothing about it; “I cannot get your paper cashed, and I am obliged to ask you to give me the amount in ready money. I am truly unhappy in making this request, but I don’t wish to go to the usurers. I have not hawked your signature about; I know enough of business to feel sure it would injure you. It is really in your own interest that I – ”

“Monsieur,” said Birotteau, horrified, “speak lower if you please; you surprise me strangely.”

Lourdois entered.