Honoré de Balzac

“ The secret of your embarrassment is in other hands than your own. A merchant delivers himself over, bound hand and foot, to another merchant; and mercy is a virtue not practised at the Bourse.
Cesar, who once walked the streets of Paris with his head high and his eye beaming with confidence, now, unstrung by perplexity, shrank from meeting Claparon; he began to realize that a banker’s heart is mere viscera. Claparon had seemed to him so brutal in his coarse jollity, and he had felt the man’s vulgarity so keenly, that he shuddered at the necessity of accosting him. ”

“ Anselme therefore could see no hindrance to his marriage with Cesarine, though the wealth of the perfumer and the beauty of the daughter were immense obstacles in the path of his ambitious desires: but love gets onward by leaps of hope, and the more absurd they are the greater faith it has in them; the farther off was the mistress of Anselme’s heart, the more ardent became his desires. Happy the youth who in those levelling days when all hats looked alike, had contrived to create a sense of distance between the daughter of a perfumer and himself, the scion of an old Parisian family! ”

“ Light-minded people, devoid of conscience, to whom all things are indifferent, can never present such a spectacle of disaster. Religion alone sets a special seal upon fallen human beings; they believe in a future, in a divine Providence; from within them gleams a light that marks them, a look of saintly resignation mingled with hope, which lends them a certain tender emotion; they realize all that they have lost, like the exiled angel weeping at the gates of heaven. Bankrupts are forbidden to enter the Bourse. Cesar, driven from the regions of integrity, was like an angel sighing for pardon. ”

“ The poor man stopped short; he was about to ask the painter to take the note given to Grindot, ridiculing the architect with the good nature of a merchant sure of his own standing; but he saw a cloud upon Lourdois’ brow, and he shuddered at his own imprudence. The innocent jest would have been the death of his suspected credit. In such a case a prosperous merchant takes back his note, and does not offer it elsewhere. Birotteau felt his head swim, as though he had looked down the sides of a precipice into a measureless abyss. ”

“ Constance and Cesar, struck by these tendencies, so attractive in youth, had repeatedly sung his praises before Cesarine. Petty as they might be in many ways, husband and wife were noble by nature, and understood the deep things of the heart. Their praises found an echo in the mind of the young girl, who, despite her innocence, had read in Anselme’s pure eyes the violent feeling, which is always flattering whatever be the lover’s age, or rank, or personal appearance. Little Popinot had far more reason to adore a woman than a handsome man could ever have. ”

“ Cesar and his wife slept on the second floor. Popinot’s bedroom became that of Celestin and the second clerk. On the third floor the furniture was stored provisionally.
In the grasp of that magnetic ardor, produced by an influx of the nervous fluid, which lights a brazier in the midriff of ambitious men and lovers intent on high emprise, Popinot, so gentle and tranquil usually, pawed the earth like a thoroughbred before the race, when he came down into the shop after dinner. ”

“ Birotteau felt stabbed to the heart by this cold and grinning kindness as much as by the harshness of Keller or the coarse German banter of Nucingen. The familiarity of the man, and his grotesque gabble excited by champagne, seemed to tarnish the soul of the honest bourgeois as though he came from a house of financial ill-fame. He went down the stairway and found himself in the streets without knowing where he was going. As he walked along the boulevards and reached the Rue Saint-Denis, he recollected Molineux, and turned into the Cour Batave. ”

“ To bid adieu to his beloved capital, Gaudissart had gone to see a new piece at the Vaudeville; Popinot resolved to wait for him. Was it not drawing a cheque on fortune to entrust the launching of the oil of nuts to this incomparable steersman of mercantile inventions, already petted and courted by the richest firms? Popinot had reason to feel sure of Gaudissart. The commercial traveller, so knowing in the art of entangling that most wary of human beings, the little provincial trader, had himself become entangled in the first conspiracy attempted against the Bourbons after the Hundred Days. ”

“ We are held in the grasp of our secret hopes which are realized, for an instant, as we listen. When he has led us through the skies, the great magician, with a deep mysterious transition of the basses, flings us back into the marshes of cold reality, only to draw us forth once more when, thirsting for his divine melodies, our souls cry out, “Again! Again!” The psychical history of that rare moment in the glorious finale of the C minor symphony is also that of the emotions excited by this fete in the souls of Cesar and of Constance. ”

“ The agent may make himself useful to both parties; on the one hand by not laying the bankrupt’s business in ashes, on the other by snatching a few morsels for men of influence,—in short, he runs with the hare and holds with the hounds. A clever agent has frequently arrested judgment by buying up the debts and then releasing the merchant, who then rebounds like an india-rubber ball. The agent chooses the best-stocked crib, whether it leads him to cover the largest creditors and shear the debtor, or to sacrifice the creditors for the future prosperity of the restored merchant. ”

“ It is a fault of youth to think the whole world vigorous with its own vigor,—a fault derived from its virtues. Youth sees neither men nor things through spectacles; it colors all with the reflex glory of its ardent fires, and casts the superabundance of its own life upon the aged. Like Cesar and like Constance, Popinot held in his memory a glowing recollection of the famous ball. ”

“ I spent two hours at the Bourse this afternoon. You have not one farthing’s credit; every one is talking of your disaster, of your attempts to renew, of your appeals to various bankers, of their refusals, of your follies,—going up six flights of stairs to beg a gossiping landlord, who chatters like a magpie, to renew a note of twelve hundred francs!—your ball, given to conceal your embarrassments. They have gone so far as to say you had no property in Roguin’s hands; according to your enemies, Roguin is only a blind. ”

“ Honest minds are devoid of tact; their excellence is uncalculating, even unreflecting, because they are wholly without evasions or mental reservations of their own. Birotteau now brought about his downfall; he incensed the tiger, pierced him to the heart without knowing it, made him implacable by a thoughtless word, a eulogy, a virtuous recognition,—by the kind-heartedness, as it were, of his own integrity. When the cashier entered, du Tillet motioned him to take notice of Cesar. ”

“ When, after slow preparations by the sublime magician, so well understood by Habeneck, the enthusiastic leader of an orchestra raises the rich veil with a motion of his hand and calls forth the transcendent theme towards which the powers of music have all converged, poets whose hearts have throbbed at those sounds will understand how the ball of Cesar Birotteau produced upon his simple being the same effect that this fecund harmony wrought in theirs,—an effect to which the symphony in C minor owes its supremacy over its glorious sisters. ”

“ The firm voice of the poor man and his whole manner surprised Cesarine and the priest. Yet nothing could be more natural. All men can better bear a known and definite misfortune than the cruel uncertainties of a fate which, from one moment to another, brings excessive hope or crushing sorrow.
“I have dreamed a dream for twenty-two years; to-day I awake with my cudgel in my hand,” said Cesar, his mind turning back to the Tourangian peasant days.
Pillerault pressed his nephew in his arms as he heard the words. Birotteau saw that his wife, Anselme, and Celestin were present. ”

“ Come, be calm, Cesar! A woman who has lived with you all that time knows down to the bottom of your soul. You are the master, after all. You earned your fortune, didn’t you? It is yours, and you can spend it. If we are reduced to the last straits of poverty, neither your daughter nor I will make you a single reproach. But, listen; when you invented your Paste of Sultans and Carminative Balm, what did you risk? Five or six thousand francs. ”

“ I should be neither a judge nor a deputy-mayor. Do you know what I should be? A shopkeeper like Pere Ragon,—be it said without offence, for I respect shopkeeping; the best of our kidney are in it. After selling perfumery like him for forty years, we should be worth three thousand francs a year; and at the price things are now, for they have doubled in value, we should, like them, have barely enough to live on. (Day after day that poor household wrings my heart more and more. I must know more about it, and I’ll get the truth from Popinot to-morrow!) ”

“ I shall pay my debt of gratitude to Monsieur and Madame Ragon by setting up their nephew, who can make his fortune. The poor Ragonines look to me half-starved of late.”
“Bah! all those people want your money.”
“But what people, my treasure? Is it your uncle Pillerault, who loves us like the apple of his eye, and dines with us every Sunday? Is it good old Ragon, our predecessor, who has forty upright years in business to boast of, and with whom we play our game of boston? Is it Roguin, a notary, a man fifty-seven years old, twenty-five of which he has been in office? A notary of Paris! ”

“ Above all, get rid of your vile habit of touching everything; in society a banker ought to seem tired of seeing and touching things. Hang it! you are supposed to be passing wakeful nights; finance makes you brusque, so many elements must be brought together to launch an enterprise,—so much study! Remember to take gloomy views of business; it is heavy, dull, risky, unsettled. Now, don’t go beyond that, and mind you specify nothing. Don’t sing those songs of Beranger at table; and don’t get fuddled. If you are drunk, your future is lost. Roguin will keep an eye on you. ”

“ Roguin, unable to sue du Tillet in any of the courts, was glad of the bone flung to him, month by month, in the recesses of Switzerland, where he found nymphs at a reduction. Circumstances, actual facts, and not the imagination of a tragic author inventing a catastrophe, gave birth to this horrible scheme. Hatred without a thirst for vengeance is like a seed falling on stony ground; but vengeance vowed to a Cesar by a du Tillet is a natural movement of the soul. ”

“ In 1792 the feet of the deserted Cesar were well-toughened to the pavements, his shoulders to the bales, and his mind to what he called the “humbugs” of Paris. So when Ursula abandoned him he was speedily consoled, for she had realized none of his instinctive ideas in relation to sentiment. Licentious and surly, wheedling and pilfering, selfish and a tippler, she clashed with the simple nature of Birotteau without offering him any compensating perspective. ”

“ We often talk of you in our home: a name that is in the heart is often on the lips. We pray for you every day, my wife and daughter and I, as we ought to pray for our benefactor.”
“Too much for so little,” said Vauquelin, rather bored by the voluble gratitude of the perfumer.
“Ta, ta, ta!” exclaimed Birotteau, “you can’t prevent our loving you, you who will take nothing from us. You are like the sun; you give light, and those whom you illuminate can give you nothing in return.” ”

“ I pass my word,” said Birotteau, running after the notary and seizing his hand. “Take the hundred thousand francs which were laid by for my daughter’s portion.”
“Very good,” said Roguin, leaving him.
For a moment, as Birotteau turned to rejoin little Popinot, he felt a fierce heat in his entrails, the muscles of his stomach contracted, his ears buzzed.
“What is the matter, monsieur?” asked the clerk, when he saw his master’s pale face.
“Ah, my lad! I have just with one word decided on a great undertaking; no man is master of himself at such a moment. You are a party to it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was a woman who got him where he is,” said Claparon. “Where’s the old man who can answer for himself that he won’t be the slave of his last fancy? None of us, who think ourselves so virtuous, know how we shall end. A last passion,—eh! it is the most violent of all! Look at Cardot, Camusot, Matifat; they all have their mistresses! If we have been gobbled up to satisfy Roguin’s, isn’t it our own fault? Why didn’t we distrust a notary who meddles with speculations? Every notary, every broker, every trustee who speculates is an object of suspicion. Failure for them is fraudulent bankruptcy ”

“ There came, as there does at all balls, a moment when the animation of the scene, the torrents of light, the gaiety, the music, the excitement of dancing brought on a species of intoxication which puts out of sight these gradations in the crescendo of the tutti. The ball was beginning to be noisy, and Mademoiselle de Fontaine made a movement to retire; but when she looked about for the arm of her venerable Vendeen, Birotteau, his wife, and daughter made haste to prevent such a desertion of the aristocracy. ”

“ The older, feebler, grayer the magistrate, the more solemn seemed the exercise of his function,—a function which demands profound study of men and things, which subdues the heart and hardens it against the influence of eager interests. It is a rare thing nowadays to find men who mount the stairway of the old Palais de Justice in the grasp of keen emotions. Cesar Birotteau was one of those men. ”

“ If it hadn’t been for your perpetual fears, no man could have been happier than I. If I had listened to you I should never have invented the Paste of Sultans nor the Carminative Balm. Our shop has given us a living, but these two discoveries have made the hundred and sixty thousand francs which we possess, net and clear! Without my genius, for I certainly have talent as a perfumer, we should now be petty retail shopkeepers, pulling the devil’s tail to make both ends meet. I shouldn’t be a distinguished merchant, competing in the election of judges for the department of commerce ”

“ I own nothing but my own person; if you wish to seize that and put me in prison, I give you my word of honor”—the tears fell from his eyes—“that I will wait here till you have me arrested.”
The tone and gesture were so completely in keeping with his words that Madame Madou’s anger subsided.
“My property has been carried off by a notary; I am innocent of the disasters I cause,” continued Cesar, “but you shall be paid in course of time if I have to die in the effort, and work like a galley-slave as a porter in the markets.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Discouraged by his uncle’s opinion, and recognizing its clear-sightedness, Cesar tumbled from the heights of hope into the miry marshes of doubt and uncertainty. In such horrible commercial straits a man, unless his soul is tempered like that of Pillerault, becomes the plaything of events; he follows the ideas of others, or his own, as a traveller pursues a will-o’-the-wisp. ”

“ In short, every calumny or slander which a man brings upon himself when he tries to mount a rung of the social ladder, is going the rounds among business men to-day. You might hawk about those notes of Popinot in vain; you would meet humiliating refusals; no one would take them; no one could be sure how many such notes you are issuing; every one expects you to sacrifice the poor lad to your own safety. You would destroy to no purpose the credit of the house of Popinot. Do you know how much the boldest money-lender would give you for those fifty thousand francs? Twenty thousand at the most ”

“ Madame Birotteau let a sign of grief rather than of acquiescence escape her.
“My nephew,” said Pillerault, addressing Cesar, “what do you intend to do?”
“To carry on my business.”
“That would not be my judgment,” said Pillerault. “Take my advice, wind up everything, make over your whole assets to your creditors, and keep out of business. I have often imagined how it would be if I were in a situation such as yours—Ah, one has to foresee everything in business! a merchant who does not think of failure is like a general who counts on never being defeated; he is only half a merchant. ”