"Your hundred thousand francs in his hands, my hundred thousand for his practice, a hundred thousand from Claparon,--there's three hundred thousand francs purloined, not to speak of other thefts which will be discovered," exclaimed the young notary. "Madame Roguin is not to be counted on. Du Tillet has had a narrow escape. Roguin tormented him for a month to get into that land speculation, but happily all his funds were tied up in an affair with Nucingen. Roguin has written an atrocious letter to his wife; I have read it. He has been making free with his clients' money for years; and why? for a mistress,--la belle Hollandaise. He left her two weeks ago. The squandering hussy hasn't a farthing left; they sold her furniture,--she had signed promissory notes. To escape arrest, she took refuge in a house in the Palais-
Royal, where she was assassinated last night by a captain in the army.
God has quickly punished her; she has wasted Roguin's whole fortune and much more. There are some women to whom nothing is sacred: think of squandering the trust moneys of a notary! Madame Roguin won't have a penny, except by claiming her rights of dower; the scoundrel's whole property is encumbered to its full value. I bought the practice for three hundred thousand francs,--I, who thought I was getting a good thing!--and paid a hundred thousand down. I have no receipt; the creditors will think I am an accomplice if I say a word about that hundred thousand francs, and when a man is starting in life he must be careful of his reputation. There will hardly be thirty per cent saved for the creditors. At my age, to get such a set-back! A man fifty-nine years of age to keep a mistress! the old villain! It is only two weeks since he told me not to marry Cesarine; he said you would soon be without bread,--the monster!"
Alexandre might have talked on indefinitely, for Birotteau stood still, petrified. Every phrase was a calamity, like the blows of a bludgeon. He heard the death-bells tolling in his ears,--just as his eyes had seen, at the first word, the flames of his fortune. Alexandre Crottat, who thought the worthy perfumer a strong and able man, was alarmed at his paleness and rigidity. He was not aware that Roguin had carried off Cesar's whole property. The thought of immediate suicide passed through the brain of the victim, deeply religious as he was. In such a case suicide is only a way to escape a thousand deaths; it seems logical to take it. Alexandre Crottat gave him his arm, and tried to make him walk on, but it was impossible: his legs gave way under him as if he were drunk.
"What is the matter?" said Crottat. "Dear Monsieur Cesar, take courage! it is not the death of a man. Besides, you will get back your forty thousand francs. The lender hadn't the money ready, you never received it,--that is sufficient to set aside the agreement."
"My ball--my cross--two hundred thousand francs in paper on the market,--no money in hand! The Ragons, Pillerault,--and my wife, who saw true--"
A rain of confused words, revealing a weight of crushing thoughts and unutterable suffering, poured from his lips, like hail lashing the flowers in the garden of "The Queen of Roses."
"I wish they would cut off my head," he said at last; "its weight troubles me, it is good for nothing."
"Poor Pere Birotteau," said Alexandre, "are you in danger?"
"Danger!"
"Well, take courage; make an effort."
"Effort!"
"Du Tillet was your clerk; he has a good head; he will help you."
"Du Tillet!"
"Come, try to walk."
"My God! I cannot go home as I am," said Birotteau. "You who are my friend, if there are friends,--you in whom I took an interest, who have dined at my house,--take me somewhere in a carriage, for my wife's sake. Xandrot, go with me!"
The young notary compassionately put the inert mechanism which bore the name of Cesar into a street coach, not without great difficulty.
"Xandrot," said the perfumer, in a voice choked with tears,--for the tears were now falling from his eyes, and loosening the iron band which bound his brow,--"stop at my shop; go in and speak to Celestin for me. My friend, tell him it is a matter of life or death, that on no consideration must he or any one talk about Roguin's flight. Tell Cesarine to come down to me, and beg her not to say a word to her mother. We must beware of our best friends, of Pillerault, Ragon, everybody."
The change in Birotteau's voice startled Crottat, who began to understand the importance of the warning; he fulfilled the instructions of the poor man, whom Celestin and Cesarine were horrified to find pale and half insensible in a corner of the carriage.
"Keep the secret," he said.
"Ah!" said Xandrot to himself, "he is coming to. I thought him lost."
From thence they went, at Cesar's request, to a judge of the commercial courts. The conference between Crottat and the magistrate lasted long, and the president of the chamber of notaries was summoned. Cesar was carried about from place to place, like a bale of goods; he never moved, and said nothing. Towards seven in the evening Alexandre Crottat took him home. The thought of appearing before Constance braced his nerves. The young notary had the charity to go before, and warn Madame Birotteau that her husband had had a rush of blood to the head.
"His ideas are rather cloudy," he said, with a gesture implying disturbance of the brain. "Perhaps he should be bled, or leeches applied."
"No wonder," said Constance, far from dreaming of a disaster; "he did not take his precautionary medicine at the beginning of the winter, and for the last two months he has been working like a galley slave,--
just as if his fortune were not made."
The wife and daughter entreated Cesar to go to bed, and they sent for his old friend Monsieur Haudry. The old man was a physician of the school of Moliere, a great practitioner and in favor of the old-