Birotteau became Molineux,—­a being at whom he had once laughed so loftily.  Enticed along by the banker,—­who enjoyed disentangling the bobbins of the poor man’s thought, and who knew as well how to cross-question a merchant as Popinot the judge knew how to make a criminal betray himself,—­Cesar recounted all his enterprises; he put forward his Double Paste of Sultans and Carminative Balm, the Roguin affair, and his lawsuit about the mortgage on which he had received no money.  As he watched the smiling, attentive face of Keller and the motions of his head, Birotteau said to himself, “He is listening; I interest him; I shall get my credit!” Adolphe Keller was laughing at Cesar, just as Cesar had laughed at Molineux.  Carried away by the lust of speech peculiar to those who are made drunk by misfortune, Cesar revealed his inner man; he gave his measure when he ended by offering the security of Cephalic Oil and the firm of Popinot,—­his last stake.  The worthy man, led on by false hopes, allowed Adolphe Keller to sound and fathom him, and he stood revealed to the banker’s eyes as a royalist jackass on the point of failure.  Delighted to foresee the bankruptcy of a deputy-mayor of the arrondissement, an official just decorated, and a man in power, Keller now curtly told Birotteau that he could neither give him a credit nor say anything in his favor to his brother Francois.  If Francois gave way to idiotic generosity, and helped people of another way of thinking from his own, men who were his political enemies, he, Adolphe, would oppose with might and main any attempt to make a dupe of him, and would prevent him from holding out a hand to the adversary of Napoleon, wounded at Saint-Roch.  Birotteau, exasperated, tried to say something about the cupidity of the great banking-houses, their harshness, their false philanthropy; but he was seized with so violent a pain that he could scarcely stammer a few words about the Bank of France, from which the Kellers were allowed to borrow.

“Yes,” said Adolphe Keller; “but the Bank would never discount paper which a private bank refused.”

“The Bank of France,” said Birotteau, “has always seemed to me to miss its vocation when it congratulates itself, as it does in presenting its reports, on never losing more than one or two hundred thousand francs through Parisian commerce:  it should be the guardian and protector of Parisian commerce.”

Adolphe smiled, and got up with the air and gesture of being bored.

“If the Bank were mixed up as silent partners with people who are involved in the most knavish and hazardous market in the world, it would soon have to hand in its schedule.  It has, even now, immense difficulty in protecting itself against forgeries and false circulations of all kinds.  Where would it be if it had to take account of the business of every one who wanted to get something out of it?”

* * * * *

“Where shall I find ten thousand francs for to-morrow, the THIRTIETH?” cried Birotteau, as he crossed the courtyard.