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Birotteau never once reflected that the clerks were looking on, and that the master of the establishment had his dignity to preserve. In this instance, as in the case of his speech to du Tillet, the worthy soul committed a folly out of pure goodness of heart, and for lack of knowing how to withhold an honest sentiment vulgarly expressed.
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."
In those days it was all hand-shaking, and 'Birotteau, take courage; let yourself be killed, like us, for the good cause. Why, we are all comrades in conspiracy." "Very good, put them down," said Constance. "If Monsieur de la Billardiere comes he will want somebody to speak to." "Cesarine, write," said Birotteau.
This forced gaiety, through which an inextinguishable sense of the superiority which Birotteau attributed to himself was naively revealed, made Ragon shudder in spite of his seventy years. Cesar saw his wife passing down letters and papers for Popinot to sign; he could neither restrain his tears nor keep his face from turning pale. "Good-morning, my friend," she said to him, smiling.
Monsieur de Bourbonne asked to see the paper, the deed of relinquishment, which the abbe had just signed. Monsieur Caron gave it to him. "How is this?" he said to the vicar after reading it. "It appears that written documents already exist between you and Mademoiselle Gamard. Where are they? and what do they stipulate?" "The deed is in my library," replied Birotteau.
Therefore the abbe's abandonment was the more insulting, because it made her feel her want of social value; all choice implies contempt for the thing rejected. "Monsieur Birotteau does not find us agreeable enough," said the Abbe Troubert to Mademoiselle Gamard's friends when she was forced to tell them that her "evenings" must be given up. "He is a man of the world, and a good liver!
For twelve years the Abbe Birotteau had seen his friend Chapeloud in that house without ever giving a thought to the motive of the canon's extreme circumspection in his relations to Mademoiselle Gamard. When he came himself to live with that saintly woman he was in the condition of a lover on the point of being made happy.
Well, one of these free lances, as we say on the stock market, of the pen, or of the brush, is the only man in Paris who would marry a penniless beauty, for they have courage enough for anything. Monsieur Popinot married Mademoiselle Birotteau without asking for a farthing. Those men are madmen, to be sure! They trust in love as they trust in good luck and brains!
"He stood up in his box," said Claparon, "and shouted: 'Arrest whoever hissed her! Eugh! If it's a woman, I'll kiss her; if it's a man, we'll see about it; if it's neither the one nor the other, may God's lightning blast it! Guess how it ended." "Adieu, monsieur," said Birotteau.
"Pardon me, my tear," said the baron to his wife, in a strong German accent, as he rose and nodded to Birotteau, "monsieur is a good royalist, and der intimate frient of tu Tillet. Bezides, monsieur is debudy-mayor of der zecond arrondissement, and gifs palls of Aziatigue magnifissence; so vill you mak his acquentence mit blaysure."
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