pleasure to witness a deed so rare in Paris."

Pillerault, Ragon, and Birotteau retired.

"Well! that wasn't the ocean to drink," said Pillerault, as they left
the court-room.

"I recognize your hand in it," said the poor man, much affected.

"Now, here you are, free, and we are only a few steps from the Rue des
Cinq-Diamants; come and see my nephew," said Ragon.

A cruel pang shot through Cesar's heart when he saw Constance sitting
in a little office in the damp, dark _entresol_ above the shop, whose
single window was one third darkened by a sign which intercepted the
daylight and bore the name,--A. POPINOT.

"Behold a lieutenant of Alexander," said Cesar, with the gaiety of
grief, pointing to the sign.

This forced gaiety, through which an inextinguishable sense of the
superiority which Birotteau attributed to himself was naively revealed,
made Ragon shudder in spite of his seventy years. Cesar saw his wife
passing down letters and papers for Popinot to sign; he could neither
restrain his tears nor keep his face from turning pale.

"Good-morning, my friend," she said to him, smiling.

"I do not ask if you are comfortable here," said Cesar, looking at
Popinot.

"As if I were living with my own son," she answered, with a tender
manner that struck her husband.

Birotteau took Popinot and kissed him, saying,--

"I have lost the right, forever, of calling him my son."

"Let us hope!" said Popinot. "_Your_ oil succeeds--thanks to my
advertisements in the newspapers, and to Gaudissart, who has travelled
over the whole of France; he has inundated the country with placards and
prospectuses; he is now at Strasburg getting the prospectuses printed in
the German language, and he is about to descend, like an invasion, upon
Germany itself. We have received orders for three thousand gross."

"Three thousand gross!" exclaimed Cesar.

"And I have bought a piece of land in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau,--not
dear,--where I am building a manufactory."

"Wife," whispered Cesar to Constance, "with a little help we might have
pulled through."

* * * * *

After that fatal day Cesar, his wife, and daughter understood
each other. The poor clerk resolved to attain an end which, if not
impossible, was at least gigantic in its enterprise,--namely, the
payment of his debts to their last penny. These three beings,--father,
mother, daughter,--bound together by the tie of a passionate integrity,
bec