“What?” said Birotteau, with that rending cry of anguish which no man ever mistakes.
“A trifle! The notes amounting to twenty-five thousand francs on divers securities which Roguin gave me to negotiate I have credited to you, for the registration payment and the fees, of which I will send you an account; there will be a small amount to deduct, and you will then owe me about six or seven thousand francs.”
“All that seems to me perfectly proper,” said Lebas. “In your place, monsieur, I should do the same towards a stranger.”
“Monsieur Birotteau won’t die of it,” said Claparon; “it takes more than one shot to kill an old wolf. I have seen wolves with a ball in their head run, by God, like—wolves!”
“Who could have foreseen such villany as Roguin’s?” said Lebas, as much alarmed by Cesar’s silence as by the discovery of such enormous speculations outside of his friend’s legitimate business of perfumery.
“I came very near giving Monsieur Birotteau a receipt for his four hundred thousand francs,” said Claparon. “I should have blown up if I had, for I had given Roguin a hundred thousand myself the day before. Our mutual confidence is all that saved me. Whether the money were in a lawyer’s hands or in mine until the day came to pay for the land, seemed to us all a matter of no importance.”
“It would have been better,” said Lebas, “to have kept the money in the Bank of France until the time came to make the payments.”
“Roguin was the bank to me,” said Cesar. “But he is in the speculation,” he added, looking at Claparon.
“Yes, for one-fourth, by verbal agreement only. After being such a fool as to let him run off with my money, I sha’n’t be such a fool as to throw any more after it. If he sends me my hundred thousand francs, and two hundred thousand more for his half of our share, I shall then see about it. But he will take good care not to send them for an affair which needs five years’ pot-boiling before you get any broth. If he has only carried off, as they say, three hundred thousand francs, he will want the income of all of that to live suitably in foreign countries.”
“The villain!”