“At least,” he said to Pillerault, with a look that was angelic, “I do not eat the bread of my creditors.  Your bread is sweet to me, though it is your pity that gives it; thanks to your sacred charity, I do not steal a farthing of my salary!”

The merchants, his old associates, who met the clerk could see no vestige of the perfumer.  Even careless minds gained an idea of the immensity of human disaster from the aspect of this man, on whose face sorrow had cast its black pall, who revealed the havoc caused by that which had never before appeared in him,—­by thought! N’est pas detruit qui veut.  Light-minded people, devoid of conscience, to whom all things are indifferent, can never present such a spectacle of disaster.  Religion alone sets a special seal upon fallen human beings; they believe in a future, in a divine Providence; from within them gleams a light that marks them, a look of saintly resignation mingled with hope, which lends them a certain tender emotion; they realize all that they have lost, like the exiled angel weeping at the gates of heaven.  Bankrupts are forbidden to enter the Bourse.  Cesar, driven from the regions of integrity, was like an angel sighing for pardon.  For fourteen months he lived on, full of religious thoughts with which his fall inspired him, and denying himself every pleasure.  Though sure of the Ragons’ friendship, nothing could induce him to dine with them, nor with the Lebas, nor the Matifats, nor the Protez and Chiffrevilles, not even with Monsieur Vauquelin; all of whom were eager to do honor to his rare virtue.  Cesar preferred to be alone in his room rather than meet the eye of a creditor.  The warmest greetings of his friends reminded him the more bitterly of his position.  Constance and Cesarine went nowhere.  On Sundays and fete days, the only days when they were at liberty, the two women went to fetch Cesar at the hour for Mass, and they stayed with him at Pillerault’s after their religious duties were accomplished.  Pillerault often invited the Abbe Loraux, whose words sustained Cesar in this life of trial.  And in this way their lives were spent.  The old ironmonger had too tough a fibre of integrity not to approve of Cesar’s sensitive honor.  His mind, however, turned on increasing the number of persons among whom the poor bankrupt might show himself with an open brow, and an eye that could meet the eyes of his fellows.

VII

In the month of May, 1821, this family, ever grappling with adversity, received a first reward for its efforts at a little fete which Pillerault, the arbiter of its destinies, prepared for it.  The last Sunday of that month was the anniversary of the day on which Constance had consented to marry Cesar.  Pillerault, in concert with the Ragons, hired a little country-house at Sceaux, and the worthy old ironmonger silently prepared a joyous house-warming.

“Cesar,” said Pillerault, on the Saturday evening, “to-morrow we are all going into the country, and you must come.”