The poor man took courage, as he heard Claparon analyzing the affair and summing it up with advice as to his future conduct.  His countenance grew firm and decided; and he began to think highly of the late commercial traveller’s capacity.  Du Tillet had thought best to let Claparon believe himself really the victim of Roguin.  He had given Claparon a hundred thousand francs to pay over to Roguin the day before the latter’s flight, and Roguin had returned the money to du Tillet.  Claparon, therefore, to that extent was playing a genuine part; and he told whoever would listen to him that Roguin had cost him a hundred thousand francs.  Du Tillet thought Claparon was not bold enough, and fancied he had still too much honor and decency to make it safe to trust him with the full extent of his plans; and he knew him to be mentally incapable of conjecturing them.

“If our first friend is not our first dupe, we shall never find a second,” he made answer to Claparon, on the day when his catchpenny banker reproached him for the trick; and he flung him away like a wornout instrument.

Monsieur Lebas and Claparon went out together.

“I shall pull through,” said Birotteau to himself.  “My liabilities amount to two hundred and thirty-five thousand francs; that is, sixty-five thousand in bills for the cost of the ball, and a hundred and seventy-five thousand given in notes for the lands.  To meet these, I have my share of Roguin’s assets, say perhaps one hundred thousand francs; and I can cancel the loan on my property in the Faubourg du Temple, as the mortgage never paid the money,—­in all, one hundred and forty thousand.  All depends on making a hundred thousand francs out of Cephalic Oil, and waiting patiently, with the help of a few notes, or a credit at a banker’s, until I repair my losses or the lands about the Madeleine reach their full value.”

When a man crushed by misfortune is once able to make the fiction of a hope for himself by a series of arguments, more or less reasonable, with which he bolsters himself up to rest his head, it often happens that he is really saved.  Many a man has derived energy from the confidence born of illusions.  Possibly, hope is the better half of courage; indeed, the Catholic religion makes it a virtue.  Hope! has it not sustained the weak, and given the fainting heart time and patience to await the chances and changes of life?  Cesar resolved to confide his situation to his wife’s uncle before seeking for succor elsewhere.  But as he walked down the Rue Saint-Honore towards the Rue des Bourdonnais, he endured an inward anguish and distress which shook him so violently that he fancied his health was giving way.  His bowels seemed on fire.  It is an established fact that persons who feel through their diaphragms suffer in those parts when overtaken by misfortune, just as others whose perceptions are in their heads suffer from cerebral pains and affections.  In great crises, the physical powers are attacked at the point where