"Monsieur le baron!--"

"Oh! if you reffuse me, no creydit! Yes, I know der Prayfic of die Seine was at your las pall."

"Monsieur le baron!--"

"You had Pillartiere, shentelman of der betchamber; goot royalist like you, who vas vounded at Zaint-Roqque--"

"On the 13th Vendemiaire, Monsieur le baron."

"Denn you hat Monsieur de Lazabed, Monsieur Fauquelin of der Agatemi--"

"Monsieur le baron!--"

"Hey! der tefle! dont pe zo humple, Monsieur der debudy-mayor; I haf heard dat der king say dat your ball--"

"The king?" exclaimed Birotteau, who was destined to hear no more, for, at this moment, a young man entered the room familiarly, whose step, recognized from afar by the beautiful Delphine de Nucingen, brought the color to her cheek.

"Goot morning, my tear te Marsay; tak my blace. Dere is a crowd, zey tell me, waiting in der gounting-room. I know vy. Der mines of Wortschin bay a graat divitent! I haf receifed die aggonts. You vill haf one hundert tousant francs, Matame de Nucingen, so you can buy chewels and oder tings to make you bretty,--as if you could be brettier!"

"Good G.o.d! the Ragons sold their shares!" exclaimed Birotteau.

"Who are those persons?" asked the elegant de Marsay, smiling.

"Egzactly," said Monsieur de Nucingen, turning back when he was almost at the door. "I zink tat dose persons--te Marsay, dis is Monsieur Pirodot, your berfumer, who gifs palls of a magnifissence druly Aziatique, and whom der king has decoraded."

De Marsay lifted his eyegla.s.s, and said, "Ah! true, I thought the face was not unknown to me. So you are going to perfume your affairs with potent cosmetics, oil them with--"

"Ah! dose Rakkons," interrupted the baron, making a grimace expressive of disgust; "dey had an aggont mit us; I fafored dem, and dey could haf made der fortune, but dey would not wait one zingle day longer."

"Monsieur le baron!" cried Birotteau.

The worthy man thought his own prospects extremely doubtful, and without bowing to Madame de Nucingen, or to de Marsay, he hastily followed the banker. The baron was already on the staircase, and Birotteau caught him at the bottom just as he was about to enter the counting-room.

As Nucingen opened the door he saw the despairing gesture of the poor creature behind him, who felt himself pushed into a gulf, and said hastily,--

"Vell, it is all agreet. See tu Tillet, and arranche it mit him."

Birotteau, thinking that de Marsay might have some influence with Nucingen, ran back with the rapidity of a swallow, and slipped into the dining-room where he had left the baronne and the young man, and where Delphine was waiting for a cup of _cafe a la creme_. He saw that the coffee had been served, but the baronne and the dandy had disappeared.

The footman smiled at the astonishment of the worthy man, who slowly re-descended the stairs. Cesar rushed to du Tillet's, and was told that he had gone into the country with Madame Roguin. He took a cabriolet, and paid the driver well to be taken rapidly to Nogent-sur-Marne.

At Nogent-sur-Marne the porter told him that monsieur and madame had started for Paris. Birotteau returned home, shattered in mind and body.

When he related his wild-goose chase to his wife and daughter he was amazed to find his Constance, usually perched like a bird of ill omen on the smallest commercial mishap, now giving him the tenderest consolation, and a.s.suring him that everything would turn out well.

The next morning, Birotteau mounted guard as early as seven o'clock before du Tillet's door. He begged the porter, slipping ten francs into his hand, to put him in communication with du Tillet's valet, and obtained from the latter a promise to show him in to his master the moment that du Tillet was visible: he slid two pieces of gold into the valet's hand. By such little sacrifices and great humiliations, common to all courtiers and pet.i.tioners, he was able to attain his end.

At half-past eight, just as his former clerk was putting on a dressing-gown, yawning, stretching, and shaking off the cobwebs of sleep, Birotteau came face to face with the tiger, hungry for revenge, whom he now looked upon as his only friend.

"Go on with your dressing," said Birotteau.

"What do you want, _my good Cesar_?" said du Tillet.

Cesar stated, with painful trepidation, the answer and requirements of Monsieur de Nucingen to the inattentive ears of du Tillet, who was looking for the bellows and scolding his valet for the clumsy manner in which he had lighted the fire.

The valet listened. At first Cesar did not notice him; when he did so he stopped short, confused, but resumed what he was saying as du Tillet touched him with the spur exclaiming, "Go on! go on! I am listening to you."

The poor man's shirt was wet; his perspiration turned to ice as du Tillet looked fixedly at him, and he saw the silver-lined pupils of those eyes, streaked with threads of gold, which pierced to his very heart with a diabolical gleam.

"My dear master, the Bank has refused to take your notes which the house of Claparon pa.s.sed over to Gigonnet _not guaranteed_. Is that my fault? How is it that you, an old commercial judge, should commit such blunders? I am, first and foremost, a banker. I will give you my money, but I cannot risk having my signature refused at the Bank. My credit is my life; that is the case with all of us. Do you want money?"

"Can you give me what I want?"

"That depends on how much you owe. How much do you want?"

"Thirty thousand francs."

"Are the chimney-bricks coming down on my head?" exclaimed du Tillet, bursting into a laugh.

Cesar, misled by the luxury about him, fancied it was the laugh of a man to whom the sum was a mere trifle; he breathed again. Du Tillet rang the bell.

"Send the cashier to me."

"He has not come, monsieur," said the valet.

"These fellows take advantage of me! It is half-past eight o'clock, and he ought to have done a million francs' worth of business by this time."

Five minutes later Monsieur Legras came in.

"How much have we in the desk?"

"Only twenty thousand francs. Monsieur gave orders to buy into the Funds to the amount of thirty thousand francs cash, payable on the 15th."

"That's true; I am half-asleep still."

The cashier gave Birotteau a suspicious look as he left the room.

"If truth were banished from this earth, she would leave her last word with a cashier," said du Tillet. "Haven't you some interest in this little Popinot, who has set up for himself?" he added, after a dreadful pause, in which the sweat rolled in drops from Cesar's brow.

"Yes," he answered, naively. "Do you think you could discount his signature for a large amount?"

"Bring me his acceptances for fifty thousand francs, and I will get them discounted for you at a reasonable rate by old Gobseck, who is very easy to deal with when he has funds to invest; and he has some now."

Birotteau went home broken-hearted, not perceiving that the bankers were tossing him from one to the other like a shuttle-c.o.c.k; but Constance had already guessed that credit was unattainable. If three bankers refused it, it was very certain that they had inquired of each other about so prominent a man as a deputy-mayor; and there was, consequently, no hope from the Bank of France.

"Try to renew your notes," she said; "go and see Monsieur Claparon, your copartner, and all the others to whom you gave notes for the 15th, and ask them to renew. It will be time enough to go to the money-lenders with Popinot's paper if that fails."

"To-morrow is the 13th," said Birotteau, completely crushed.

In the language of his own prospectus, he enjoyed a sanguine temperament, which was subject to an enormous waste through emotions and the pressure of thought, and imperatively demanded sleep to repair it.

Cesarine took her father into the salon and played to him "Rousseau's Dream,"--a pretty piece of music by Herold; while Constance sat sewing beside him. The poor man laid his head on a cushion, and every time he looked up at his wife he saw a soft smile upon her lips; and thus he fell asleep.

"Poor man!" said Constance; "what misery is in store for him! G.o.d grant he may have strength to bear it!"