PART II

CESAR GRAPPLING WITH MISFORTUNE

I

Eight days after his ball, the last dying flash of a prosperity of eighteen years now about to be extinguished, Cesar Birotteau watched the passers-by from the windows of his shop, thinking over the expansion of his affairs, and beginning to find them burdensome.  Until then all had been simple in his life; he manufactured and sold, or bought to sell again.  To-day the land speculation, his share in the house of A. Popinot and Company, the repayment of the hundred and sixty thousand francs thrown upon the market, which necessitated either a traffic in promissory notes (of which his wife would disapprove), or else some unheard-of success in Cephalic Oil, all fretted the poor man by the multiplicity of ideas which they involved; he felt he had more irons in the fire than he could lay hold of.  How would Anselme guide the helm?  Birotteau treated Popinot as a professor of rhetoric treats a pupil,—­he distrusted his methods, and regretted that he was not at his elbow.  The kick he had given Popinot to make him hold his tongue at Vauquelin’s explains the uneasiness which the young merchant inspired in his mind.

Birotteau took care that neither his wife nor his daughter nor the clerks should suspect his anxiety; but he was in truth like a humble boatman on the Seine whom the government has suddenly put in command of a frigate.  Troubled thoughts filled his mind, never very capable of reflection, as if with a fog; he stood still, as it were, and peered about to see his way.  At this moment a figure appeared in the street for which he felt a violent antipathy; it was that of his new landlord, little Molineux.  Every one has dreamed dreams filled with the events of a lifetime, in which there appears and reappears some wayward being, commissioned to play the mischief and be the villain of the piece.  To Birotteau’s fancy Molineux seemed delegated by chance to fill some part in his life.  His weird face had grinned diabolically at the ball, and he had looked at its magnificence with an evil eye.  Catching sight of him again at this moment, Cesar was all the more reminded of the impression the little skin-flint (a word of his vocabulary) had made upon him, because Molineux excited fresh repugnance by reappearing in the midst of his anxious reverie.

“Monsieur,” said the little man, in his atrociously hypocritical voice, “we settled our business so hastily that you forgot to guarantee the signatures on the little private deed.”

Birotteau took the lease to repair the mistake.  The architect came in at this moment, and bowed to the perfumer, looking about him with a diplomatic air.

“Monsieur,” he whispered to Cesar presently, “you can easily understand that the first steps in a profession are difficult; you said you were satisfied with me, and it would oblige me very much if you would pay me my commission.”