Project Gutenberg's Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau, by Honore de Balzac

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Release Date: October, 1999 [Etext #1942]
Posting Date: March 6, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RISE AND FALL OF CESAR BIROTTEAU ***

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

RISE AND FALL OF CESAR BIROTTEAU

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

PART I. CESAR AT HIS APOGEE

I

During winter nights noise never ceases in the Rue Saint-Honore except
for a short interval. Kitchen-gardeners carrying their produce to market
continue the stir of carriages returning from theatres and balls. Near
the middle of this sustained pause in the grand symphony of Parisian
uproar, which occurs about one o'clock in the morning, the wife of
Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, a perfumer established near the Place Vendome,
was startled from her sleep by a frightful dream. She had seen her
double. She had appeared to herself clothed in rags, turning with a
shrivelled, withered hand the latch of her own shop-door, seeming to be
at the threshold, yet at the same time seated in her armchair behind the
counter. She was asking alms of herself, and heard herself speaking from
the doorway and also from her seat at the desk.

She tried to grasp her husband, but her hand fell on a cold place.
Her terror became so intense that she could not move her neck, which
stiffened as if petrified; the membranes of her throat became glued
together, her voice failed her. She remained sitting erect in the same
posture in the middle of the alcove, both panels of which were wide
open, her eyes staring and fixed, her hair quivering, her ears filled
with strange noises, her heart tightened yet palpitating, and her person
bathed in perspiration though chilled to the bone.

Fear is a half-diseased sentiment, which presses so violently upon the
human mechanism that the faculties are suddenly excited to the highest
degree of their power or driven to utter disorganization. Physiologists
have long wondered at t