Honoré de Balzac

“ 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. ”

“ She had caught the sentiment of dress from the elegant young women who came to the shop, and had learned from them certain movements of the head, certain ways of speaking and of moving; and she could play the well-bred woman in a way that turned the heads of all the young men, especially the clerks, in whose eyes she appeared truly distinguished. Popinot swore that he would have no other wife than Cesarine. The liquid brightness of that eye, which a look, or a tone of reproach, might cause to overflow in tears, was all that kept him to a sense of masculine superiority. ”

“ La belle Hollandaise was one of those mad-cap women who care nothing as to where the money comes from, or how it is obtained, and who are capable of giving a ball with the gold obtained by a parricide. She never thought of the morrow; for her the future was after dinner, and the end of the month eternity, even if she had bills to pay. Du Tillet, delighted to have found such a lever, exacted from la belle Hollandaise a promise that she would love Roguin for thirty thousand francs a year instead of fifty thousand,—a service which infatuated old men seldom forget. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You may all want bread, and you shall find it with me."
"Want bread, uncle?"
"Yes, bread. See things as they are, Cesar. You cannot extricate yourself. With five thousand six hundred francs income, I could set aside four thousand francs for you and the Ragons. If misfortune overtakes you,—I know Constance, she will work herself to the bone, she will deny herself everything; and so will you, Cesar."
"All is not hopeless, uncle."
"I cannot see it as you do."
"I will prove that you are mistaken."
"Nothing would give me greater happiness."
Birotteau left Pillerault without another word. ”

“ 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! he would be the flower of the lot, if honest folk were not all worth the same price. If necessary, my associates will help me. Where is the plot, my white doe? Look here, I must tell you your defect. On the word of an honest man it lies on my heart. ”

“ We can't go through our own door; everything is pulled down."
"Why did you not bring your nephew?" said Pillerault to Madame Ragon.
"Shall we not see him?" asked Cesarine.
"No, my love," said Madame Ragon; "Anselme, dear boy, is working himself to death. That bad-smelling Rue des Cinq-Diamants, without sun and without air, frightens me. The gutter is always blue or green or black. I am afraid he will die of it. But when a young man has something in his head—" and she looked at Cesarine with a gesture which explained that the word head meant heart.
"Has he got his lease?" asked Cesar. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When they reached the house where Pillerault, the Ragons, the Abbe Loraux, and Popinot the judge were waiting for them, these five choice people assumed an air and manner and speech which put Cesar at his ease; for all were deeply moved to see him still on the morrow of his great disaster.
"Go and take a walk in the Aulnay woods," said Pillerault, putting Cesar's hand into that of Constance; "go with Anselme and Cesarine! but come back by four o'clock."
"Poor souls, we should be a restraint upon them," said Madame Ragon, touched by the deep grief of her debtor. ”

“ Cesar and Popinot got into the hackney-coach before the eyes of the astonished clerks, who did not know what to make of these gorgeous toilets and the abnormal coach, ignorant as they were of the great project revolving in the mind of the master of "The Queen of Roses."
"We are going to hear the truth about nuts," said Cesar, half to himself.
"Nuts?" said Popinot.
"There you have my secret," said the perfumer. "I've let loose the word nuts,—all is there. The oil of nuts is the only oil that has any real effect upon hair. No perfumer has ever dreamed of it. ”

“ In the year 1800, and in the pretty month of May, Mademoiselle Pillerault consented to marry Cesar Birotteau, who fainted with joy at the moment when, under a linden at Sceaux, Constance-Barbe-Josephine Pillerault accepted him as her husband.
"My little girl," said Monsieur Pillerault, "you have won a good husband. He has a warm heart and honorable feelings; he is true as gold, and as good as an infant Jesus,—in fact, a king of men."
Constance frankly abdicated the more brilliant destiny to which, like all shop-girls, she may at times have aspired. ”

“ He found Derville sitting by the fire, wrapped in a white woollen dressing-gown, calm and composed in manner, like all lawyers long used to receiving terrible confidences. Birotteau noticed for the first time in his life this necessary coldness, which struck a chill to the soul of a man grasped by the fever of imperilled interests,—passionate, wounded, and cruelly gashed in his life, his honor, his wife, his child, as Cesar showed himself to be while he related his misfortunes. ”

“ Thus Madame Rabourdin, Madame Jules, and Mademoiselle de Fontaine, who had expected much amusement from the ball of their perfumer, were detached from the background of the bourgeoisie about them by their soft and easy grace, by the exquisite taste of their dress and bearing,—just as three leading singers at an opera stand out in relief from the stolid array of their supernumeraries. They were watched with jealous, wondering eyes. Madame Roguin, Constance, and Cesarine formed, as it were, a link which united the three types of feminine aristocracy to the commercial figures about them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Don't gorge yourself at every table where you dine; recollect you are to maintain the dignity of a millionaire. Don't shovel in your snuff like an old Invalide; toy with your snuff-box, glance often at your feet, and sometimes at the ceiling, before you answer; try to look sagacious, if you can. 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! ”

“ Why should they come and offer you millions? You are giving up your property, you are going beyond your means; and if your oil doesn't succeed, if you don't make the money, if the value of the land can't be realized, how will you pay your notes? With the shells of your nuts? To rise in society you are going to hide your name, take down your sign, 'The Queen of Roses,' and yet you mean to salaam and bow and scrape in advertisements and prospectuses, which will placard Cesar Birotteau at every corner, and on all the boards, wherever they are building. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And yet such monuments stand everywhere; it is tradition and the stones of the earth which tell us of the past, which set a seal upon the caprices of indomitable destiny, whose hand wipes out our dreams, and shows us that all great events are summed up in one idea. Troy and Napoleon are but poems. May this present history be the poem of middle-class vicissitudes, to which no voice has given utterance because they have seemed poor in dignity, enormous as they are in volume. It is not one man with whom we are now to deal, but a whole people, or world, of sorrows. ”

“ All hatreds, public or private, from woman to woman, from man to man, have no other cause then some such detection. People do not hate each other for injured interests, for wounds, not even for a blow; all such wrongs can be redressed. But to have been seized, flagrante delicto, in a base act! The duel which follows between the criminal and the witness of his crime ends only with the death of the one or of the other.
"Oh! Madame Roguin!" said du Tillet, jestingly, "don't you call that a feather in a young man's cap? ”

“ 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. ”