r, and went out. Popinot, rousing himself
from the sensation which the terrible word produced upon him, rushed
down the staircase and into the street, but Birotteau was out of sight.
Cesarine's lover heard that dreadful charge ringing in his ears, and saw
the distorted face of the poor distracted Cesar constantly before him;
Popinot was to live henceforth, like Hamlet, with a spectre beside him.

Birotteau wandered about the streets of the neighborhood like a drunken
man. At last he found himself upon the quay, and followed it till he
reached Sevres, where he passed the night at an inn, maddened with
grief, while his terrified wife dared not send in search of him. She
knew that in such circumstances an alarm, imprudently given, might be
fatal to his credit, and the wise Constance sacrificed her own anxiety
to her husband's commercial reputation: she waited silently through the
night, mingling her prayers and terrors. Was Cesar dead? Had he left
Paris on the scent of some last hope? The next morning she behaved as
though she knew the reasons for his absence; but at five o'clock in the
afternoon when Cesar had not returned, she sent for her uncle and
begged him to go at once to the Morgue. During the whole of that day the
courageous creature sat behind her counter, her daughter embroidering
beside her. When Pillerault returned, Cesar was with him; on his way
back the old man had met him in the Palais-Royal, hesitating before the
entrance to a gambling-house.

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 t