Bankruptcy is a species of chemical transmutation, from which a clever merchant tries to emerge in fresh shape.  Birotteau, distilled to the last drop in this retort, gave a result which made du Tillet furious.  Du Tillet looked to see a dishonorable failure; he saw an honorable one.  Caring little for his own gains, though he was about to get possession of the lands around the Madeleine without ever drawing his purse-strings, he wanted to see his old master dishonored, lost, and vilified.  The creditors at the general meeting would undoubtedly show the poor man that they respected him.

By degrees, as Birotteau’s courage came back to him, Pillerault, like a wise doctor, informed him, by gradual doses, of the transactions resulting from his failure.  These harsh tidings were like so many blows.  A merchant cannot learn without a shock the depreciation of property which represents to him so much money, so much solicitude, so much labor.  The facts his uncle now told him petrified the poor man.

“Fifty-seven thousand francs for ‘The Queen of Roses’!  Why, the shop alone cost ten thousand; the appartement cost forty thousand; the mere outlay on the manufactories, the utensils, the frames, the boilers, cost thirty thousand.  Why! at fifty per cent abatement, if my creditors allow me that, there would still be ten thousand francs worth of property in the shop.  Why! the Paste and the Balm are solid property,—­worth as much as a farm!”

Poor Cesar’s jeremiads made no impression upon Pillerault.  The old merchant took them as a horse takes a down-pour; but he was alarmed by the gloomy silence Birotteau maintained when it was a question of the meeting.  Those who comprehend the vanities and weaknesses which in all social spheres beset mankind, will know what a martyrdom it was for this poor man to enter as a bankrupt the commercial tribunal of justice where he once sat as judge; to meet affronts where so often he had been thanked for services rendered,—­he, Birotteau, whose inflexible opinions about bankruptcy were so well known; he who had said, “A man may be honest till he fails, but he comes out of a meeting of his creditors a swindler.”  Pillerault watched for the right moment to familiarize Cesar’s mind with the thought of appearing before his creditors as the law demands.  The thought killed him.  His mute grief and resignation made a deep impression on his uncle, who often heard him at night, through the partition, crying out to himself, “Never! never!  I will die sooner.”

Pillerault, a strong man,—­strong through the simplicity of his life, —­was able to understand weakness.  He resolved to spare Cesar the anguish of appearing before his creditors,—­a terrible scene which the law renders inevitable, and to which, indeed, he might succumb.  On this point the law is precise, formal, and not to be evaded.  The merchant who refused to appear would, for that act alone, be brought before the criminal police courts.