u did not expect to hold
a single house upon them; he was speculating only on the value of the
land; but architects and contractors are to each other very much
what authors and actors are,--mutually dependent. Grindot, ordered by
Birotteau to stipulate the costs, went for the interests of the
builders against the bourgeoisie; and the result was that three large
contractors--Lourdois, Chaffaroux, and Thorein the carpenter--proclaimed
him "one of those good fellows it is a pleasure to work for." Grindot
guessed that the contractor's bills, out of which he was to have a
share, would be paid, like his commission, in notes; and little Molineux
had just filled his mind with doubts as to their payment. The architect
was about to become pitiless,--after the manner of artists, who are most
intolerant of men in their dealings with the middle classes.

By the end of December bills to the amount of sixty thousand francs had
been sent in. Felix, the cafe Foy, Tanrade, and all the little creditors
who ought to be paid in ready money, had asked for payment three times.
Failure to pay such trifles as these do more harm in business than a
real misfortune,--they foretell it: known losses are definite, but a
panic defies all reckoning. Birotteau saw his coffers empty, and
terror seized him: such a thing had never happened throughout his whole
commercial life. Like all persons who have never struggled long with
poverty, and who are by nature feeble, this circumstance, so common
among the greater number of the petty Parisian tradesmen, disturbed for
a moment Cesar's brain. He ordered Celestin to send round the bills of
his customers and ask for payment. Before doing so, the head clerk made
him repeat the unheard-of order. The clients,--a fine term applied by
retail shopkeepers to their customers, and used by Cesar in spite of his
wife, who however ended by saying, "Call them what you like, provided
they pay!"--his clients, then, were rich people, through whom he had
never lost money, who paid when they pleased, and among whom Cesar often
had a floating amount of fifty or sixty thousand francs due to him. The
second clerk went through the books and copied off the largest sums.
Cesar dreaded his wife: that she might not see his depression under this
simoom of misfortune, he prepared to go out.

"Good morning, monsieur," said Grindot, entering with the lively manner
artists put on when they speak of business, and wish to pretend they
know not