poor man laid his head on a cushion, and every time he
looked up at his wife he saw a soft smile upon her lips; and thus he
fell asleep.

"Poor man!" said Constance; "what misery is in store for him! God grant
he may have strength to bear it!"

"Oh! what troubles you, mamma?" said Cesarine, seeing that her mother
was weeping.

"Dear daughter, I see a failure coming. If your father is forced to
make an assignment, we must ask no one's pity. My child, be prepared
to become a simple shop-girl. If I see you accepting your life
courageously, I shall have strength to begin my life over again. I know
your father,--he will not keep back one farthing; I shall resign my
dower; all that we possess will be sold. My child, you must take your
jewels and your clothes to-morrow to your uncle Pillerault; for you are
not bound to any sacrifice."

Cesarine was seized with a terror beyond control as she listened to
these words, spoken with religious simplicity. The thought came into her
mind to go and see Anselme; but her native delicacy checked it.

On the morrow, at nine o'clock, Birotteau, following his wife's advice,
went to find Claparon in the Rue de Provence, in the grasp of anxieties
quite other than those through which he had lately passed. To ask for a
credit is an ordinary business matter; it happens every day that those
who undertake an enterprise are obliged to borrow capital; but to
ask for the renewal of notes is in commercial jurisprudence what the
correctional police is to the court of assizes,--a first step towards
bankruptcy, just as a misdemeanor leads to crime. The secret of your
embarrassment is in other hands than your own. A merchant delivers
himself over, bound hand and foot, to another merchant; and mercy is a
virtue not practised at the Bourse.

Cesar, who once walked the streets of Paris with his head high and his
eye beaming with confidence, now, unstrung by perplexity, shrank from
meeting Claparon; he began to realize that a banker's heart is mere
viscera. Claparon had seemed to him so brutal in his coarse jollity,
and he had felt the man's vulgarity so keenly, that he shuddered at the
necessity of accosting him.

"But he is nearer to the people; perhaps he will therefore have more
heart!" Such was the first reproachful word which the anguish of his
position forced from Cesar's lips.

Birotteau drew upon the dregs of his courage, and went up the stairway
of a mean little _entresol_, at whose windows