e peace I need so much in my struggle against misfortune."

Pillerault made a gesture of assent.

"Courage, Cesar!" he said. "I see you are angry with me; but later, when
you think of your wife and daughter, you will do me justice."

Discouraged by his uncle's opinion, and recognizing its
clear-sightedness, Cesar tumbled from the heights of hope into the miry
marshes of doubt and uncertainty. In such horrible commercial straits
a man, unless his soul is tempered like that of Pillerault, becomes the
plaything of events; he follows the ideas of others, or his own, as a
traveller pursues a will-o'-the-wisp. He lets the gust whirl him along,
instead of lying flat and not looking up as it passes; or else gathering
himself together to follow the direction of the storm till he can escape
from the edges of it. In the midst of his pain Birotteau bethought him
of the steps he ought to take about the mortgage on his property. He
turned towards the Rue Vivienne to find Derville, his solicitor, and
institute proceedings at once, in case the lawyer should see any chance
of annulling the agreement. He found Derville sitting by the fire,
wrapped in a white woollen dressing-gown, calm and composed in manner,
like all lawyers long used to receiving terrible confidences. Birotteau
noticed for the first time in his life this necessary coldness, which
struck a chill to the soul of a man grasped by the fever of imperilled
interests,--passionate, wounded, and cruelly gashed in his life, his
honor, his wife, his child, as Cesar showed himself to be while he
related his misfortunes.

"If it can be proved," said Derville, after listening to him, "that the
lender no longer had in Roguin's hands the sum which Roguin pretended to
borrow for you upon your property, then, as there has been no delivery
of the money, there is ground for annulling the contract; the lender may
seek redress through the warranty, as you will for your hundred thousand
francs. I will answer for the case, however, as much as one can ever
answer. No case is won till it is tried."

The opinion of so able a lawyer restored Cesar's courage a little,
and he begged Derville to obtain a judgment within a fortnight. The
solicitor replied that it might take three months to get such a judgment
as would annul the agreement.

"Three months!" cried Birotteau, who needed immediate resources.

"Though we may get the case at once on the docket, we cannot make your
adversary keep pace