“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 he had caught a glimpse of green curtains yellowed by the sun.  He read the word “Offices,” stamped in black letters on an oval copper-plate; he rapped, nobody answered, and he went in.  The place, worse than humble, conveyed an idea of penury, or avarice, or neglect.  No employe was to be seen behind the brass lattice which topped an unpainted white wooden enclosure, breast-high, within which were tables and desks in stained black wood.  These deserted places were littered with inkstands, in which the ink was mouldy and the pens as rumpled as a ragammufin’s head, and twisted like sunfish; with boxes and papers and