ame misers, denying themselves everything; a farthing was sacred in
their eyes. Out of sheer calculation Cesarine threw herself into her
business with the devotion of a young girl. She sat up at night,
taxing her ingenuity to find ways of increasing the prosperity of the
establishment, and displaying an innate commercial talent. The masters
of the house were obliged to check her ardor for work; they rewarded her
by presents, but she refused all articles of dress and the jewels which
they offered her. Money! money! was her cry. Every month she carried her
salary and her little earnings to her uncle Pillerault. Cesar did the
same; so did Madame Birotteau. All three, feeling themselves incapable,
dared not take upon themselves the responsibility of managing their
money, and they made over to Pillerault the whole business of investing
their savings. Returning thus to business, the latter made the most of
these funds by negotiations at the Bourse. It was known afterwards that
he had been helped in this work by Jules Desmarets and Joseph Lebas,
both of whom were eager to point out opportunities which Pillerault
might take without risk.

Cesar, though he lived with his uncle, never ventured to question him
as to what was done with the money acquired by his labor and that of his
wife and daughter. He walked the streets with a bowed head, hiding
from every eye his stricken, dull, distraught face. He felt, with
self-reproach, that the cloth he wore was too good for him.

"At least," he said to Pillerault, with a look that was angelic, "I do
not eat the bread of my creditors. Your bread is sweet to me, though
it is your pity that gives it; thanks to your sacred charity, I do not
steal a farthing of my salary!"

The merchants, his old associates, who met the clerk could see no
vestige of the perfumer. Even careless minds gained an idea of the
immensity of human disaster from the aspect of this man, on whose face
sorrow had cast its black pall, who revealed the havoc caused by that
which had never before appeared in him,--by thought! _N'est pas detruit
qui veut_. Light-minded people, devoid of conscience, to whom all
things are indifferent, can never present such a spectacle of disaster.
Religion alone sets a special seal upon fallen human beings; they
believe in a future, in a divine Providence; from within them gleams a
light that marks them, a look of saintly resignation mingled with hope,
which lends them a certain tender emot