This was the 14th. At dinner Cesar could not eat. His stomach, violently contracted, rejected food. The evening hours were terrible.
The shaken man went through, for the hundredth time, one of those frightful alternations of hope and despair which, by forcing the soul to run up the scale of joyous emotion and then precipitating it to the last depths of agony, exhaust the vital strength of feeble beings.
Derville, Birotteau's advocate, rushed into the handsome salon where Madame Cesar was using all her persuasion to retain her husband, who wished to sleep on the fifth floor,--"that I may not see," he said, "these monuments of my folly."
"The suit is won!" cried Derville.
At these words Cesar's drawn face relaxed; but his joy alarmed Derville and Pillerault. The women left the room to go and weep by themselves in Cesarine's chamber.
"Now I can get a loan!" cried Birotteau.
"It would be imprudent," said Derville; "they have appealed; the court might reverse the judgment; but in a month it would be safe."
"A month!"
Cesar fell into a sort of slumber, from which no one tried to rouse him,--a species of catalepsy, in which the body lived and suffered while the functions of the mind were in abeyance. This respite, bestowed by chance, was looked upon by Constance, Cesarine, Pillerault, and Derville as a blessing from God. And they judged rightly: Cesar was thus enabled to bear the harrowing emotions of that night. He was sitting in a corner of the sofa near the fire; his wife was in the other corner watching him attentively, with a soft smile upon her lips,--the smile which proves that women are nearer than men to angelic nature, in that they know how to mingle an infinite tenderness with an all-embracing compassion; a secret belonging only to angels seen in dreams providentially strewn at long intervals through the history of human life. Cesarine, sitting on a little stool at her mother's feet, touched her father's hand lightly with her hair from time to time, as she gave him a caress into which she strove to put the thoughts which, in such crises, the voice seems to render intrusive.
Seated in his arm-chair, like the Chancelier de l'Hopital on the peristyle of the Chamber of Deputies, Pillerault--a philosopher prepared for all events, and showing upon his countenance the wisdom of an Egyptian sphinx--was talking to Derville and his niece in a suppressed voice. Constance thought it best to consult the lawyer, whose discretion was beyond a doubt. With the balance-sheet written in her head, she explained the whole situation in low tones. After an hour's conference, held in presence of the stupefied Cesar, Derville shook his head and looked at Pillerault.
"Madame," he said, with the horrible coolness of his profession, "you must give in your schedule and make an assignment. Even supposing that by some contrivance you could meet the payments for to-morrow, you would have to pay down at least three hundred thousand francs before you could borrow on those lands. Your liabilities are five hundred thousand. To meet them you have assets that are very promising, very productive, but not convertible at present; you must fail within a given time. My opinion is that it is better to jump out of the window than to roll downstairs."
"That is my advice, too, dear child," said Pillerault.
Derville left, and Madame Cesar and Pillerault went with him to the door.
"Poor father!" said Cesarine, who rose softly to lay a kiss on Cesar's head. "Then Anselme could do nothing?" she added, as her mother and Pillerault returned.
"UNGRATEFUL!" cried Cesar, struck by the name of Anselme in the only living part of his memory,--as the note of a piano lifts the hammer which strikes its corresponding string.
