ws between the criminal and the witness of his crime ends only with
the death of the one or of the other.

"Oh! Madame Roguin!" said du Tillet, jestingly, "don't you call that a
feather in a young man's cap? I understand you, my dear master; somebody
has told you that she lent me money. Well, on the contrary it is I
who have protected her fortune, which was strangely involved in her
husband's affairs. The origin of my fortune is pure, as I have just told
you. I had nothing, you know. Young men are sometimes in positions of
frightful necessity. They may lose their self-control in the depths of
poverty, and if they make, as the Republic made, forced loans--well,
they pay them back; and in so doing they are more honest than France
herself."

"That is true," cried Birotteau. "My son, God--is it not Voltaire who
says,--

"'He rendered repentance the virtue of mortals'?"

"Provided," answered du Tillet, stabbed afresh by this
quotation,--"provided they do not carry off the property of their
neighbors, basely, meanly; as, for example, you would do if you failed
within three months, and my ten thousand francs went to perdition."

"I fail!" cried Birotteau, who had taken three glasses of wine, and
was half-drunk with joy. "Everybody knows what I think about failure!
Failure is death to a merchant; I should die of it!"

"I drink your health," said du Tillet.

"Your health and prosperity," returned Cesar. "Why don't you buy your
perfumery from me?"

"The fact is," said du Tillet, "I am afraid of Madame Cesar; she always
made an impression on me. If you had not been my master, on my word!
I--"

"You are not the first to think her beautiful; others have desired her;
but she loves me! Well, now, du Tillet, my friend," resumed Birotteau,
"don't do things by halves."

"What is it?"

Birotteau explained the affair of the lands to his former clerk, who
pretended to open his eyes wide, and complimented the perfumer on his
perspicacity and penetration, and praised the enterprise.

"Well, I am very glad to have your approbation; you are thought one
of the wise-heads of the banking business, du Tillet. Dear fellow, you
might get me a credit at the Bank of France, so that I can wait for the
profits of Cephalic Oil at my ease."

"I can give you a letter to the firm of Nucingen," answered du Tillet,
perceiving that he could make his victim dance all the figures in the
reel of bankruptcy.

Ferdinand sat down to his desk and