第17章 II(10)

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 and asked his endorsement for twenty thousand francs, to enable him to make up the securities he needed in an enterprise which was to put him on the high-road to fortune. Observing the surprise which Cesar showed at this impudence, du Tillet frowned, and asked if he had no confidence in him. Matifat and two other merchants, who were present on business with Birotteau, also observed the indignation of the perfumer, who repressed his anger in their presence. Du Tillet, he thought, might have become an honest man; his previous fault might have been committed for some mistress in distress or from losses at cards; the public reprobation of an honest man might drive one still young, and possibly repentant, into a career of crime.

So this angel took up his pen and endorsed du Tillet's notes, telling him that he was heartily willing thus to oblige a lad who had been very useful to him. The blood rushed to his face as he uttered the falsehood. Du Tillet could not meet his eye, and no doubt vowed to him at that moment the undying hatred which the spirits of darkness feel towards the angels of light.

From this time du Tillet held his balance-pole so well as he danced the tight-rope of financial speculation, that he was rich and elegant in appearance before he became so in reality. As soon as he got hold of a cabriolet he was always in it; he kept himself in the high sphere of those who mingle business with pleasure, and make the foyer of the opera-house a branch of the Bourse,--in short, the Turcarets of the period. Thanks to Madame Roguin, whom he had known at the Birotteau's, he was received at once among people of the highest standing in finance; and, at the moment of which we write, he had reached a prosperity in which there was nothing fictitious. He was on the best terms with the house of Nucingen, to which Roguin had introduced him, and he had promptly become connected with the brothers Keller and with several other great banking-houses. No one knew from whence this youth had derived the immense capital which he handled, but every one attributed his success to his intelligence and his integrity.

The Restoration made Cesar a personage, and the turmoil of political crises naturally lessened his recollection of these domestic misadventures. The constancy of his royalist opinions (to which he had become exceedingly indifferent since his wound, though he remained faithful to them out of decency) and the memory of his devotion in Vendemiaire won him very high patronage, precisely because he had asked for none. He was appointed major in the National Guard, although he was utterly incapable of giving the word of command. In 1815