Rise and Fall of César Birotteau | Page 4

which still retained the almost conical shape of his head.
"Can he be dead? Has he killed himself? Why?" she went on. "For the last two years, since they made him deputy-mayor, he is /all-I-don't- know-how/. To put him into public life! On the word of an honest woman, isn't it pitiable? His business is doing well, for he gave me a shawl. But perhaps it isn't doing well? Bah! I should know of it. Does one ever know what a man has got in his head; or a woman either?-- there is no harm in that. Didn't we sell five thousand francs' worth to-day? Besides, a deputy mayor couldn't kill himself; he knows the laws too well. Where is he then?"
She could neither turn her neck, nor stretch out her hand to pull the bell, which would have put in motion a cook, three clerks, and a shop- boy. A prey to the nightmare, which still lasted though her mind was wide awake, she forgot her daughter peacefully asleep in an adjoining room, the door of which opened at the foot of her bed. At last she cried "Birotteau!" but got no answer. She thought she had called the name aloud, though in fact she had only uttered it mentally.
"Has he a mistress? He is too stupid," she added. "Besides, he loves me too well for that. Didn't he tell Madame Roguin that he had never been unfaithful to me, even in thought? He is virtue upon earth, that man. If any one ever deserved paradise he does. What does he accuse himself of to his confessor, I wonder? He must tell him a lot of fiddle-faddle. Royalist as he is, though he doesn't know why, he can't froth up his religion. Poor dear cat! he creeps to Mass at eight o'clock as slyly as if he were going to a bad house. He fears God for God's sake; hell is nothing to him. How could he have a mistress? He is so tied to my petticoat that he bores me. He loves me better than his own eyes; he would put them out for my sake. For nineteen years he has never said to me one word louder than another. His daughter is never considered before me. But Cesarine is here--Cesarine! Cesarine! --Birotteau has never had a thought which he did not tell me. He was right enough when he declared to me at the Petit-Matelot that I should never know him till I tried him. And /not here/! It is extraordinary!"
She turned her head with difficulty and glanced furtively about the room, then filled with those picturesque effects which are the despair of language and seem to belong exclusively to the painters of genre. What words can picture the alarming zig-zags produced by falling shadows, the fantastic appearance of curtains bulged out by the wind, the flicker of uncertain light thrown by a night-lamp upon the folds of red calico, the rays shed from a curtain-holder whose lurid centre was like the eye of a burglar, the apparition of a kneeling dress,--in short, all the grotesque effects which terrify the imagination at a moment when it has no power except to foresee misfortunes and exaggerate them? Madame Birotteau suddenly saw a strong light in the room beyond her chamber, and thought of fire; but perceiving a red foulard which looked like a pool of blood, her mind turned exclusively to burglars, especially when she thought she saw traces of a struggle in the way the furniture stood about the room. Recollecting the sum of money which was in the desk, a generous fear put an end to the chill ferment of her nightmare. She sprang terrified, and in her night-gown, into the very centre of the room to help her husband, whom she supposed to be in the grasp of assassins.
"Birotteau! Birotteau!" she cried at last in a voice full of anguish.
She then saw the perfumer in the middle of the next room, a yard-stick in his hand measuring the air, and so ill wrapped up in his green cotton dressing-gown with chocolate-colored spots that the cold had reddened his legs without his feeling it, preoccupied as he was. When Cesar turned about to say to his wife, "Well, what do you want, Constance?" his air and manner, like those of a man absorbed in calculations, were so prodigiously silly that Madame Birotteau began to laugh.
"Goodness! Cesar, if you are not an oddity like that!" she said. "Why did you leave me alone without telling me? I have nearly died of terror; I did not know what to imagine. What are you doing there, flying open to all the winds? You'll get as hoarse as a wolf. Do you hear me, Birotteau?"
"Yes, wife, here I am," answered the