II. CESAR GRAPPLING WITH MISFORTUNE

I

Eight days after his ball, the last dying flash of a prosperity of
eighteen years now about to be extinguished, Cesar Birotteau watched the
passers-by from the windows of his shop, thinking over the expansion of
his affairs, and beginning to find them burdensome. Until then all had
been simple in his life; he manufactured and sold, or bought to sell
again. To-day the land speculation, his share in the house of A. Popinot
and Company, the repayment of the hundred and sixty thousand francs
thrown upon the market, which necessitated either a traffic in
promissory notes (of which his wife would disapprove), or else some
unheard-of success in Cephalic Oil, all fretted the poor man by the
multiplicity of ideas which they involved; he felt he had more irons in
the fire than he could lay hold of. How would Anselme guide the helm?
Birotteau treated Popinot as a professor of rhetoric treats a pupil,--he
distrusted his methods, and regretted that he was not at his elbow. The
kick he had given Popinot to make him hold his tongue at Vauquelin's
explains the uneasiness which the young merchant inspired in his mind.

Birotteau took care that neither his wife nor his daughter nor the
clerks should suspect his anxiety; but he was in truth like a humble
boatman on the Seine whom the government has suddenly put in command
of a frigate. Troubled thoughts filled his mind, never very capable of
reflection, as if with a fog; he stood still, as it were, and peered
about to see his way. At this moment a figure appeared in the street
for which he felt a violent antipathy; it was that of his new landlord,
little Molineux. Every one has dreamed dreams filled with the events
of a lifetime, in which there appears and reappears some wayward being,
commissioned to play the mischief and be the villain of the piece. To
Birotteau's fancy Molineux seemed delegated by chance to fill some part
in his life. His weird face had grinned diabolically at the ball, and he
had looked at its magnificence with an evil eye. Catching sight of him
again at this moment, Cesar was all the more reminded of the impression
the little skin-flint (a word of his vocabulary) had made upon him,
because Molineux excited fresh repugnance by reappearing in the midst of
his anxious reverie.

"Monsieur," said the little man, in his atrociously hypocritical voice,
"we settled our business so hastily that you forgot to guarantee the
sign