s, to understand a part and act it without compromising the
play or the actors in it, and possessed of a rare sort of honor, that
of keeping a secret and letting himself be dishonored to screen his
employers,--out of such a being du Tillet now made a banker, who set on
foot and directed vast enterprises; the head, namely, of the house of
Claparon.

The fate of Charles Claparon would be, if du Tillet's scheme ended
in bankruptcy, a swift deliverance to the tender mercies of Jews and
Pharisees; and he well knew it. But to a poor devil who was despondently
roaming the boulevard with a future of forty sous in his pocket when his
old comrade du Tillet chanced to meet him, the little gains that he
was to get out of the affair seemed an Eldorado. His friendship,
his devotion, to du Tillet, increased by unreflecting gratitude and
stimulated by the wants of a libertine and vagabond life, led him to say
_amen_ to everything. Having sold his honor, he saw it risked with so
much caution that he ended by attaching himself to his old comrade as a
dog to his master. Claparon was an ugly poodle, but as ready to jump as
Curtius. In the present affair he was to represent half the purchasers
of the land, while Cesar Birotteau represented the other half. The notes
which Claparon was to receive from Birotteau were to be discounted by
one of the usurers whose name du Tillet was authorized to use, and this
would send Cesar headlong into bankruptcy so soon as Roguin had drawn
from him his last funds. The assignees of the failure would, as du
Tillet felt certain, follow his cue; and he, already possessed of the
property paid over by the perfumer and his associates, could sell the
lands at auction and buy them in at half their value with the funds of
Roguin and the assets of the failure. The notary went into this scheme
believing that he should enrich himself by the spoliation of Birotteau
and his copartners; but the man in whose power he had placed himself
intended to take, and eventually did take, the lion's share. Roguin,
unable to sue du Tillet in any of the courts, was glad of the bone flung
to him, month by month, in the recesses of Switzerland, where he
found nymphs at a reduction. Circumstances, actual facts, and not the
imagination of a tragic author inventing a catastrophe, gave birth to
this horrible scheme. Hatred without a thirst for vengeance is like a
seed falling on stony ground; but vengeance vowed to a Cesar by a du
Tillet is a