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Cesar, who wrote a superb hand, spent his evenings in copying for Derville and other lawyers. On Sundays, justified by ecclesiastical permission, he worked like a Negro. "No," he said, "Monsieur Derville is waiting for a guardianship account." "Your wife and daughter ought to have some reward. You will meet none but our particular friends, the Abbe Loraux, the Ragons, Popinot, and his uncle.
Gaudissart, who believed he owed his life to the judge, cherished the grief of being unable to make his savior any other return than that of sterile gratitude. As he could not thank a judge for doing justice, he went to the Ragons and declared himself liege-vassal forever to the house of Popinot.
Their brother, Popinot, the judge, knows nothing about it; they hid it from him so that he may not feel obliged to give up his other works of charity. People who have worked, like me, for forty years!" "God grant that the Oil of Comagene may triumph!" cried Birotteau. "I shall be doubly happy. Adieu; come and dine on Sunday with the Ragons, Roguin, and Monsieur Claparon.
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."
The property of the Ragons, on which he might have counted, was involved, and the orphan lad had the satisfaction of enabling them to live by making over to them his meagre salary. Yet with all these drawbacks he believed in success! He had sometimes caught a glance of dignified approval from Cesarine; in the depths of her blue eyes he had dared to read a secret thought full of caressing hopes.
When the terrible levy of the year II. made a clean sweep in the shop of citizen Ragon, Cesar Birotteau, promoted to be second clerk, profited by the occasion to obtain a salary of fifty francs a month, and took his seat at the dinner-table of the Ragons with ineffable delight.
"Well, my poor nephew, I cannot do it; you are too heavily involved. The Ragons and I each lose our fifty thousand francs. Those worthy people have, by my advice, sold their shares in the mines of Wortschin: I feel obliged, in case of loss, not to return the capital of course, but to succor them, and to succor my niece and Cesarine. You may all want bread, and you shall find it with me."
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