you provide the money for your share, I give bills for mine; I offer them to you, and you undertake, purely out of kindness, to convert them into money. You learn that I, Claparon,--banker, rich, respected (I accept all the virtues under the sun),--that the virtuous Claparon is on the verge of failure, with six million of liabilities to meet:
would you, at such a moment, give your signature to guarantee mine? Of course not; you would be mad to do it. Well, Monsieur Lebas, Birotteau is in the position which I have supposed for Claparon. Don't you see that if I endorse for him I am liable not only for my own share of the purchase, but I shall also be compelled to reimburse to the full amount of Birotteau's paper, and without--"
"To whom?" asked Birotteau, interrupting him.
"--without gaining his half of the property?" said Claparon, paying no attention to the interruption. "For I should have no rights in it; I
should have to buy it over again; consequently, I repeat, I should have to pay for it three times."
"Reimburse whom?" persisted Birotteau.
"Why, the holder of the notes, if I were to endorse, and you were to fail."
"I shall not fail, monsieur," said Birotteau.
"Very good," said Claparon. "But you have been a judge, and you are a clever merchant; you know very well that we should look ahead and foresee everything; you can't be surprised that I should attend to my business properly."
"Monsieur Claparon is right," said Joseph Lebas.
"I am right," said Claparon,--"right commercially. But this is an affair of landed property. Now, what must I have? Money, to pay the sellers. We won't speak now of the two hundred and forty thousand francs,--which I am sure Monsieur Birotteau will be able to raise soon," said Claparon, looking at Lebas. "I have come now to ask for a trifle, merely twenty-five thousand francs," he added, turning to Birotteau.
"Twenty-five thousand francs!" cried Cesar, feeling ice in his veins instead of blood. "What claim have you, monsieur?"
"What claim? Hey! we have to make a payment and execute the deeds before a notary. Among ourselves, of course, we could come to an understanding about the payment, but when we have to do with a financial public functionary it is quite another thing! He won't palaver; he'll trust you no farther than he can see. We have got to come down with forty thousand francs, to secure the registration, this week. I did not expect reproaches in coming here, for, thinking this twenty-five thousand francs might be inconvenient to you just now, I
meant to tell you that, by a mere chance, I have saved you--"
"What?" said Birotteau, with that rending cry of anguish which no man ever mistakes.
"A trifle! The notes amounting to twenty-five thousand francs on divers securities which Roguin gave me to negotiate I have credited to you, for the registration payment and the fees, of which I will send you an account; there will be a small amount to deduct, and you will then owe me about six or seven thousand francs."
"All that seems to me perfectly proper," said Lebas. "In your place, monsieur, I should do the same towards a stranger."
"Monsieur Birotteau won't die of it," said Claparon; "it takes more than one shot to kill an old wolf. I have seen wolves with a ball in their head run, by God, like--wolves!"
"Who could have foreseen such villany as Roguin's?" said Lebas, as much alarmed by Cesar's silence as by the discovery of such enormous speculations outside of his friend's legitimate business of perfumery.
"I came very near giving Monsieur Birotteau a receipt for his four hundred thousand francs," said Claparon. "I should have blown up if I
had, for I had given Roguin a hundred thousand myself the day before.
Our mutual confidence is all that saved me. Whether the money were in a lawyer's hands or in mine until the day came to pay for the land, seemed to us all a matter of no importance."
"It would have been better," said Lebas, "to have kept the money in the Bank of France until the time came to make the payments."
"Roguin was the bank to me," said Cesar. "But he is in the speculation," he added, looking at Claparon.
"Yes, for one-fourth, by verbal agreement only. After being such a fool as to let him run off with my money, I sha'n't be such a fool as to throw any more after it. If he sends me my hundred thousand francs, and two hundred thousand more for his half of our share, I shall then see about it. But he will take good care not to send them for an affair which needs five years' pot-boiling before you get any broth.
If he has only carried off, as they say, three hundred thousand francs, he will want the income of all of that to live suitably in foreign countries."
"The villain!"
