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As for my customers, they adore me, and I talk to 'em as I choose. If they don't like it, they can snake off elsewhere." "This is the result of monopoly," thought Birotteau. "Popole! that's my godson, he must have got into mischief. Have you come about him, my worthy magistrate?" she said, softening her voice. "No; I had the honor to tell you that I came as a customer."
When he reached the dining-room the old maid said, with a tone of voice in which were mingled sour rebuke and joy at being able to blame him: "It is half-past four, Monsieur Birotteau. You know we are not to wait for you."
I received yesterday the last instalment, five thousand francs, from my business. As for the Ragons, they have put their whole fortune into the affair." "How do they contrive to life?" "Never mind how; they do live." "Uncle, I understand!" said Birotteau, deeply moved, pressing the hand of the austere old man. "How is the affair arranged?" asked Pillerault, brusquely.
"If it were not for his political opinions," thought Birotteau as he went down stairs, "I don't believe he would have his equal here below. What are politics to him? He would be just as well off if he never thought of them. His obstinacy in that direction only shows that there can't be a perfect man." "Three o'clock already!" cried Cesar, as he got back to "The Queen of Roses."
Birotteau went home broken-hearted, not perceiving that the bankers were tossing him from one to the other like a shuttle-cock; but Constance had already guessed that credit was unattainable. If three bankers refused it, it was very certain that they had inquired of each other about so prominent a man as a deputy-mayor; and there was, consequently, no hope from the Bank of France.
"Paris is the only place in the world where you can wave a magic wand like that," said Birotteau, with an Asiatic gesture worthy of the Arabian Nights. "You will do me the honor to come to my ball, monsieur?
"I will see what can be done," she said; "I hardly dare hope anything. Go and consult Monsieur de Bourbonne; ask him to put your renunciation into proper form, and bring me the paper. I will see the archbishop, and with his help we may be able to stop the matter here." Birotteau left the house dismayed. Troubert assumed in his eyes the dimensions of an Egyptian pyramid.
Birotteau, who regarded his secret wishes as crimes, would have been capable, out of contrition, of the utmost devotion to his friend. The latter paid his debt of gratitude for a friendship so ingenuously sincere by saying, a few days before his death, as the vicar sat by him reading the "Quotidienne" aloud: "This time you will certainly get the apartment. I feel it is all over with me now."
Early in the autumn of 1826 the Abbe Birotteau, the principal personage of this history, was overtaken by a shower of rain as he returned home from a friend's house, where he had been passing the evening.
Roguin's assets will give fifty per cent to the creditors, so little Crottat tells me. Besides this, Monsieur Birotteau gets back the forty thousand on his note to Roguin's client, which the lender never paid over; then, of course, he can borrow on that property. We have four months ahead before we are obliged to make a payment of two hundred thousand francs to the sellers.
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