pentant,
into a career of crime. So this angel took up his pen and endorsed du
Tillet's notes, telling him that he was heartily willing thus to oblige
a lad who had been very useful to him. The blood rushed to his face as
he uttered the falsehood. Du Tillet could not meet his eye, and no doubt
vowed to him at that moment the undying hatred which the spirits of
darkness feel towards the angels of light.

From this time du Tillet held his balance-pole so well as he danced the
tight-rope of financial speculation, that he was rich and elegant in
appearance before he became so in reality. As soon as he got hold of
a cabriolet he was always in it; he kept himself in the high sphere
of those who mingle business with pleasure, and make the foyer of the
opera-house a branch of the Bourse,--in short, the Turcarets of the
period. Thanks to Madame Roguin, whom he had known at the Birotteau's,
he was received at once among people of the highest standing in finance;
and, at the moment of which we write, he had reached a prosperity in
which there was nothing fictitious. He was on the best terms with
the house of Nucingen, to which Roguin had introduced him, and he had
promptly become connected with the brothers Keller and with several
other great banking-houses. No one knew from whence this youth had
derived the immense capital which he handled, but every one attributed
his success to his intelligence and his integrity.

* * * * *

The Restoration made Cesar a personage, and the turmoil of political
crises naturally lessened his recollection of these domestic
misadventures. The constancy of his royalist opinions (to which he
had become exceedingly indifferent since his wound, though he remained
faithful to them out of decency) and the memory of his devotion in
Vendemiaire won him very high patronage, precisely because he had asked
for none. He was appointed major in the National Guard, although he
was utterly incapable of giving the word of command. In 1815 Napoleon,
always his enemy, dismissed him. During the Hundred Days Birotteau was
the bugbear of the liberals of his quarter; for it was not until 1815
that differences of political opinion grew up among merchants, who had
hitherto been unanimous in their desires for public tranquillity, of
which, as they knew, business affairs stood much in need.

At the second Restoration the royal government was obliged to remodel
the municipality of Paris. The p