hing about it; "I cannot get your paper cashed, and I am obliged
to ask you to give me the amount in ready money. I am truly unhappy in
making this request, but I don't wish to go to the usurers. I have not
hawked your signature about; I know enough of business to feel sure it
would injure you. It is really in your own interest that I--"

"Monsieur," said Birotteau, horrified, "speak lower if you please; you
surprise me strangely."

Lourdois entered.

"Lourdois," said Birotteau, smiling, "would you believe--"

The poor man stopped short; he was about to ask the painter to take the
note given to Grindot, ridiculing the architect with the good nature of
a merchant sure of his own standing; but he saw a cloud upon Lourdois'
brow, and he shuddered at his own imprudence. The innocent jest would
have been the death of his suspected credit. In such a case a prosperous
merchant takes back his note, and does not offer it elsewhere. Birotteau
felt his head swim, as though he had looked down the sides of a
precipice into a measureless abyss.

"My dear Monsieur Birotteau," said Lourdois, drawing him to the back of
the shop, "my account has been examined, audited, and certified; I must
ask you to have the money ready for me to-morrow. I marry my daughter
to little Crottat; he wants money, for notaries will not take paper;
besides, I never give promissory notes."

"Send to me on the day after to-morrow," said Birotteau proudly,
counting on the payment of his own bills. "And you too, Monsieur," he
said to the architect.

"Why not pay at once?" said Grindot.

"I have my workmen in the faubourg to pay," said Birotteau, who knew not
how to lie.

He took his hat once more intending to follow them out, but the mason,
Thorein, and Chaffaroux stopped him as he was closing the door.

"Monsieur," said Chaffaroux, "we are in great need of money."

"Well, I have not the mines of Peru," said Cesar, walking quickly away
from them. "There is something beneath all this," he said to himself.
"That cursed ball! All the world thinks I am worth millions. Yet
Lourdois had a look that was not natural; there's a snake in the grass
somewhere."

He walked along the Rue Saint-Honore, in no special direction, and
feeling much discomposed. At the corner of a street he ran against
Alexandre Crottat, just as a ram, or a mathematician absorbed in the
solution of a problem, might have knocked against another of his kind.

"Ah, monsieur," said the fu