A petition for reinstatement with corroborative documents was at once deposited by Derville at the office of the procureur-general of the Cour Royale.
During the month required for the legal formalities and for the publication of the banns of marriage between Cesarine and Anselme, Birotteau was a prey to feverish agitation. He was restless. He feared he should not live till the great day when the decree for his vindication would be rendered. His heart throbbed, he said, without cause. He complained of dull pains in that organ, worn out as it was by emotions of sorrow, and now wearied with the rush of excessive joy. Decrees of rehabilitation are so rare in the bankrupt court of Paris that seldom more than one is granted in ten years.
To those persons who take society in its serious aspects, the paraphernalia of justice has a grand and solemn character difficult perhaps to define. Institutions depend altogether on the feelings with which men view them and the degree of grandeur which men’s thoughts attach to them. When there is no longer, we will not say religion, but belief among the people, whenever early education has loosened all conservative bonds by accustoming youth to the practice of pitiless analysis, a nation will be found in process of dissolution; for it will then be held together only by the base solder of material interests, and by the formulas of a creed created by intelligent egotism.
Bred in religious ideas, Birotteau held justice to be what it ought to be in the eyes of men,—a representation of society itself, an august utterance of the will of all, apart from the particular form by which it is expressed. The older, feebler, grayer the magistrate, the more solemn seemed the exercise of his function,—a function which demands profound study of men and things, which subdues the heart and hardens it against the influence of eager interests. It is a rare thing nowadays to find men who mount the stairway of the old Palais de Justice in the grasp of keen emotions. Cesar Birotteau was one of those men.
Few persons have noticed the majestic solemnity of that stairway, admirably placed as it is to produce a solemn effect. It rises, beyond the outer peristyle which adorns the courtyard of the Palais, from the centre of a gallery leading, at one end, to the vast hall of the Pas Perdus, and at the other to the Sainte-Chapelle,—two architectural monuments which make all buildings in their neighborhood seem paltry. The church of Saint-Louis is among the most imposing edifices in Paris, and the approach to it through this long gallery is at once sombre and romantic. The great hall of the Pas Perdus, on the contrary, presents at the other end of the gallery a broad space of light; it is impossible to forget that the history of France is linked to those walls. The stairway should therefore be imposing in character; and, in point of act, it is neither dwarfed nor crushed by the architectural splendors on either side of it. Possibly the mind is sobered by a glimpse, caught through the rich gratings, of the Place du Palais-de-Justice, where so many sentences have been executed. The staircase opens above into an enormous space, or antechamber, leading to the hall where the Court holds its public sittings.
Imagine the emotions with which the bankrupt, susceptible by nature to the awe of such accessories, went up that stairway to the hall of judgment, surrounded by his nearest friends,—Lebas, president of the Court of Commerce, Camusot his former judge, Ragon, and Monsieur l’Abbe Loraux his confessor. The pious priest made the splendors of human justice stand forth in strong relief by reflections which gave them still greater solemnity in Cesar’s eyes. Pillerault, the practical philosopher, fearing the danger of unexpected events on the worn mind of his nephew, had schemed to prepare him by degrees for the joys of this festal day. Just as Cesar finished dressing, a number of his faithful friends arrived, all eager for the honor of accompanying him to the bar of the Court. The presence of this retinue roused the honest man to an elation which gave him strength to meet the imposing spectacle in the halls of justice. Birotteau found more friends awaiting him in the solemn audience chamber, where about a dozen members of the council were in session.
After the cases were called over, Birotteau’s attorney made his demand for reinstatement in the usual terms. On a sign from the presiding judge, the procureur-general rose. In the name of his office this public prosecutor, the representative of public vindictiveness, asked that honor might be restored to the merchant who had never really lost it,—a solitary instance of such an appeal; for a condemned man can only be pardoned. Men of honor alone can imagine the emotions of Cesar Birotteau as he heard Monsieur de Grandville pronounce a speech, of which the following is an abridgement:—
“Gentlemen,” said that celebrated official, “on the 16th of
January, 1820, Birotteau was declared a bankrupt by the commercial
tribunal of the Seine. His failure was not caused by imprudence,
nor by rash speculations, nor by any act that stained his honor.
We desire to say publicly that this failure was the result of a
disaster which has again and again occurred, to the detriment of
justice and the great injury of the city of Paris. It has been
reserved for our generation, in which the bitter leaven of
republican principles and manners will long be felt, to behold the
notariat of Paris abandoning the glorious traditions of preceding
centuries, and producing in a few years as many failures as two
centuries of the old monarchy had produced. The thirst for gold
rapidly acquired has beset even these officers of trust, these
guardians of the public wealth, these mediators between the law
and the people!”
On this text followed an allocution, in which the Comte de Grandville, obedient to the necessities of his role, contrived to incriminate the Liberals, the Bonapartists, and all other enemies of the throne. Subsequent events have proved that he had reason for his apprehension.
“The flight of a notary of Paris who carried off the funds which
Birotteau had deposited in his hands, caused the fall of your
petitioner,” he resumed. “The Court rendered in that matter a
decree which showed to what extent the confidence of Roguin’s
clients had been betrayed. A concordat was held. For the honor
of your petitioner, we call attention to the fact that his
proceedings were remarkable for a purity not found in any of the
scandalous failures which daily degrade the commerce of Paris. The
creditors of Birotteau received the whole property, down to the
smallest articles that the unfortunate man possessed. They
received, gentlemen, his clothes, his jewels, things of purely
personal use,—and not only his, but those of his wife, who
abandoned all her rights to swell the total of his assets. Under
these circumstances Birotteau showed himself worthy of the respect
which his municipal functions had already acquired for him; for he
was at the time a deputy-mayor of the second arrondissement and
had just received the decoration of the Legion of honor, granted
as much for his devotion to the royal cause in Vendemiaire, on the
steps of the Saint-Roch, which were stained with his blood, as for
his conciliating spirit, his estimable qualities as a magistrate,
and the modesty with which he declined the honors of the
mayoralty, pointing out one more worthy of them, the Baron de la
Billardiere, one of those noble Vendeens whom he had learned to
value in the dark days.”