"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,--
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.
