Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honoré de Balzac (classic books to read .TXT) 📖

said her all when she dropped a contemptuous word about her husband. Madame Birotteau alone had the good sense to treat hers with honor and respect in public; she knew him to be a man who, in spite of his secret disabilities, had earned their fortune, and whose good name she shared. It is true that she sometimes asked herself what sort of world this could be, if all the men who were thought superior were like her husband. Such conduct contributed not a little to maintain the respectful esteem bestowed upon the perfumer in a community where women are much inclined to complain of their husbands and bring them into discredit.

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The first days of the year 1814, so fatal to imperial France, were marked at the Birotteaus by two events, not especially remarkable in other households, but of a nature to impress such simple souls as Cesar and his wife, who casting their eyes along the past could find nothing but tender memories. They had taken as head-clerk a young man twenty-two years of age, named Ferdinand du Tillet. This lad--who had just left a perfumery where he was refused a share in the business, and who was reckoned a genius--had made great efforts to get employed at "The Queen of Roses," whose methods, facilities, and customs were well known to him. Birotteau took him, and gave him a salary of a thousand francs, intending to make him eventually his successor.

Ferdinand had so great an influence on the destinies of this family that it is necessary to say a few words about him. In the first place he was named simply Ferdinand, without surname. This anonymous condition seemed to him an immense advantage at the time when Napoleon conscripted all families to fill the ranks. He was, however, born somewhere, as the result of some cruel and voluptuous caprice. The following are the only facts preserved about his civil condition. In 1793 a poor girl of Tillet, a village near Andelys, came by night and gave birth to a child in the garden of the curate of the church at Tillet, and after rapping on the window-shutters went away and drowned herself. The good priest took the child, gave him the name of the saint inscribed on the calendar for that day, and fed and brought him up as his own son. The curate died in 1804, without leaving enough property to carry on the education he had begun. Ferdinand, thrown upon Paris, led a filibustering life whose chances might bring him to the scaffold, to fortune, the bar, the army, commerce, or domestic life. Obliged to live like a Figaro, he was first a commercial traveller, then a perfumer's clerk in Paris, where he turned up after traversing all France, having studied the world and made up his mind to succeed at any price.

In 1813 Ferdinand thought it necessary to register his age, and obtain a civil standing by applying to the courts at Andelys for a judgment, which should enable his baptismal record to be transferred from the registry of the parish to that of the mayor's office; and he obtained permission to rectify the document by inserting the name of du Tillet, under which he was known, and which legally belonged to him through the fact of his exposure and abandonment in that township. Without father, mother, or other guardian than the _procureur imperial_, alone in the world and owing no duty to any man, he found society a hard stepmother, and he handled it, in his turn, without gloves,--as the Turks the Moors; he knew no guide but his own interests, and any means to fortune he considered good. This young Norman, gifted with dangerous abilities, coupled his desires for success with the harsh defects which, justly or unjustly, are attributed to the natives of his province. A wheedling manner cloaked a quibbling mind, for he was in truth a hard judicial wrangler. But if he boldly contested the rights of others, he certainly yielded none of his own; he attacked his adversary at the right moment, and wearied him out with his inflexible persistency. His merits were those of the Scapins of ancient comedy; he had their fertility of resource, their cleverness in skirting evil, their itching to lay hold of all that was good to keep. In short, he applied to his own poverty a saying which the Abbe Terray uttered in the name of the State,--he kept a loophole to become in after years an honest man. Gifted with passionate energy, with a boldness that was almost military in requiring good as well as evil actions from those about him, and justifying such demands on the theory of personal interest, he despised men too much, believing them all corruptible, he was too unscrupulous in the choice of means, thinking all equally good, he was too thoroughly convinced that the success of money was the absolution of all moral mechanism, not to attain his ends sooner or later.

Such a man, standing between the hulks and a vast fortune, was necessarily vindictive, domineering, quick in decisions, yet as dissimulating as a Cromwell planning to decapitate the head of integrity. His real depth was hidden under a light and jesting mind. Mere clerk as he was, his ambition knew no bounds. With one comprehensive glance of hatred he had taken in the whole of society, saying boldly to himself, "Thou shalt be mine!" He had vowed not to marry till he was forty, and kept his word. Physically, Ferdinand was a tall, slender young man, with a good figure and adaptive manners, which enabled him to take, on occasion, the key-note of the various societies in which he found himself. His ignoble face was rather pleasant at first sight; but later, on closer acquaintance, expressions were caught such as come to the surface of those who are ill at ease in their own minds, and whose consciences groan at certain times. His complexion, which was sanguine under the soft skin of a Norman, had a crude or acrid color. The glance of his eye, whose iris was circled with a whitish rim as if it were lined with silver, was evasive yet terrible when he fixed it straight upon his victim. His voice had a hollow sound, like that of a man worn out with much speaking. His thin lips were not wanting in charm, but his pointed nose and slightly projecting forehead showed defects of race; and his hair, of a tint like hair that has been dyed black, indicated a mongrel descent, through which he derived his mental qualities from some libertine lord, his low instincts from a seduced peasant-girl, his knowledge from an incomplete education, and his vices from his deserted and abandoned condition.

Birotteau discovered with much amazement that his clerk went out in the evening very elegantly dressed, came home late, and was seen at the balls of bankers and notaries. Such habits displeased Cesar, according to whose ideas clerks should study the books of the firm and think only of their business. The worthy man was shocked by trifles, and reproached du Tillet gently for wearing linen that was too fine, for leaving cards on which his name was inscribed, F. du Tillet,--a fashion, according to commercial jurisprudence, which belonged only to the great world. Ferdinand had entered the employ of this Orgon with the intentions of a Tartuffe. He paid court to Madame Cesar, tried to seduce her, and judged his master very much as the wife judged him herself, and all with alarming rapidity. Though discreet, reserved, and accustomed to say only what he meant to say, du Tillet unbosomed his opinions on men and life in a way to shock a scrupulous woman who shared the religious feelings of her husband, and who thought it a crime to do the least harm to a neighbor. In spite of Madame Birotteau's caution, du Tillet suspected the contempt in which she held him. Constance, to whom Ferdinand had written a few love-letters, soon noticed a change in his manners, which grew presuming, as if intended to convey the idea of a mutual good understanding. Without giving the secret reason to her husband, she advised him to send Ferdinand away. Birotteau agreed with his wife, and the dismissal was determined upon.

Two days before it was carried into effect, on a Saturday night when Birotteau was making up his monthly accounts, three thousand francs were found to be missing. His consternation was dreadful, less for the loss than for the suspicions which fell upon three clerks, one cook, a shop-boy, and several habitual workmen. On whom should he lay the blame? Madame Birotteau never left her counter. The clerk who had charge of the desk was a nephew of Monsieur Ragon named Popinot, a young man nineteen years old, who lived with the Birotteaus and was integrity itself. His figures, which disagreed with the money in the desk, revealed the deficit, and showed that the abstraction had been made after the balance had been added up. Husband and wife resolved to keep silence and watch the house. On the following day, Sunday, they received their friends. The families who made up their coterie met at each other's houses for little festivities, turn and turn about. While playing at _bouillote_, Roguin the notary placed on the card-table some old louis d'or which Madame Cesar had taken only a few days before from a bride, Madame d'Espart.

"Have you been robbing the poor-box?" asked the perfumer, laughing.

Roguin replied that he had won the money, at the house of a banker, from du Tillet, who confirmed the answer without blushing. Cesar, on the other hand, grew scarlet. When the evening was over, and just as Ferdinand was going to bed, Birotteau took him into the shop on a pretext of business.

"Du Tillet," said the worthy man, "three thousand francs are missing from the desk. I suspect no one; but the circumstance of the old louis seems too much against you not to oblige me to speak of it. We will not go to bed till we have found where the error lies,--for, after all, it may be only an error. Perhaps you took something on account of your salary?"

Du Tillet said at once that he had taken the louis. The perfumer opened his ledger and found that his clerk's account had not been debited.

"I was in a hurry; but I ought to have made Popinot enter the sum," said Ferdinand.

"That is true," said Birotteau, bewildered by the cool unconcern of the Norman, who well knew the worthy people among whom he had come meaning to make his fortune. The perfumer and his clerk passed the whole night in examining accounts, a labor which the good man knew to be useless. In coming and going about the desk Cesar slipped three bills of a thousand francs each into the money-drawer, catching them against the top of it; then he pretended to be much fatigued and to fall asleep and snore. Du Tillet awoke him triumphantly, with an excessive show of joy at discovering the error. The next day Birotteau scolded Popinot and his little wife publicly, as if very angry with them for their negligence. Fifteen days later Ferdinand du Tillet got a situation with a stockbroker. He said perfumery did not suit him, and he wished to learn banking. In leaving Birotteau, he spoke of Madame Cesar in a way to make people suppose that his master had dismissed him out of jealousy. A few months later, however, du Tillet went to see Birotteau