After the cases were called over, Birotteau’s attorney made his demand for reinstatement in the usual terms.  On a sign from the presiding judge, the procureur-general rose.  In the name of his office this public prosecutor, the representative of public vindictiveness, asked that honor might be restored to the merchant who had never really lost it,—­a solitary instance of such an appeal; for a condemned man can only be pardoned.  Men of honor alone can imagine the emotions of Cesar Birotteau as he heard Monsieur de Grandville pronounce a speech, of which the following is an abridgement:—­

“Gentlemen,” said that celebrated official, “on the 16th of January, 1820, Birotteau was declared a bankrupt by the commercial tribunal of the Seine.  His failure was not caused by imprudence, nor by rash speculations, nor by any act that stained his honor.  We desire to say publicly that this failure was the result of a disaster which has again and again occurred, to the detriment of justice and the great injury of the city of Paris.  It has been reserved for our generation, in which the bitter leaven of republican principles and manners will long be felt, to behold the notariat of Paris abandoning the glorious traditions of preceding centuries, and producing in a few years as many failures as two centuries of the old monarchy had produced.  The thirst for gold rapidly acquired has beset even these officers of trust, these guardians of the public wealth, these mediators between the law and the people!”

On this text followed an allocution, in which the Comte de Grandville, obedient to the necessities of his role, contrived to incriminate the Liberals, the Bonapartists, and all other enemies of the throne.  Subsequent events have proved that he had reason for his apprehension.

“The flight of a notary of Paris who carried off the funds which Birotteau had deposited in his hands, caused the fall of your petitioner,” he resumed.  “The Court rendered in that matter a decree which showed to what extent the confidence of Roguin’s clients had been betrayed.  A concordat was held.  For the honor of your petitioner, we call attention to the fact that his proceedings were remarkable for a purity not found in any of the scandalous failures which daily degrade the commerce of Paris.  The creditors of Birotteau received the whole property, down to the smallest articles that the unfortunate man possessed.  They received, gentlemen, his clothes, his jewels, things of purely personal use,—­and not only his, but those of his wife, who abandoned all her rights to swell the total of his assets.  Under these circumstances Birotteau showed himself worthy of the respect which his municipal functions had already acquired for him; for he was at the time a deputy-mayor of the second arrondissement and had just received the decoration of the Legion of honor, granted as much for his devotion to the royal cause in Vendemiaire, on the steps of the Saint-Roch,