Tipo de investigación

2.3.1 The Prey

In César Birotteau Balzac shows the vol décent to be either a purposeful manipulation of existing circumstance or an opportunistic reaction to circumstances suitable for exploitation. Ferdinand du Tillet engages in both and Roguin displays ‘ces indomptables passions qui envahissent les hommes’(CB, V1, 86). Uncontrollable

passions place the demands of emotion above those of reason, subvert rational judgement and become a common characteristic of du Tillet’s victims in César Birotteau.

Roguin’s emotional dependency on ‘la belle Hollandaise’ (CB, VI, 88) and his

accompanying financial recklessness form a pattern of self destruction: from marriage to marital servitude; from ‘des grisettes très heureuses de sa protection’

(CB, VI, 86) at a bearable cost, to the uncontrollable costs of taking Sarah Gobseck

for his mistress. ‘Le notaire avait acheté pour sa belle une petite maison aux Champs-Élysées et s’était laissé entrainer à satisfaire les coûteux caprices de cette femme, dont les profusions absorbèrent sa fortune’ (Ibid.). The progression signals a

growing imbalance in his nature: ‘on entrevoyait chez lui l’impureté d’un sang fouetté par des efforts contre lesquels regimbe le corps’ (CB, VI, 85). This internal

conflict is reflected in a lifestyle and a physical appearance that delivers the circumstances ripe for exploitation.

In a seemingly inevitable progression toward professional failure Roguin finds himself in a marital situation that conflates his financial and emotional fragility. The wealthy Mme Roguin’s insurmontable antipathy toward him and her desire for early divorce is only assuaged by Roguin ‘la laissant libre et se soumettant à toutes les conséquences d’un pareil pacte’ (CB, VI, 86). He exacerbates those

consequences when ‘comme beaucoup de maris parisiens, il eut un second ménage en ville’(Ibid.). The expenditure involved in the upkeep of that household, together

with the heavy costs of his wife’s maintenance, is such that his financial position reaches crisis proportions. In an effort to disguise the shortfall between his personal income and expenditure Roguin takes money from funds that have been deposited with him for safe keeping by his clients. Zeldin gives historical support for Balzac’s representation of such practices when he points out, regarding ‘notaires’, that ‘since

there was no serious control […] many absconded with their client’s funds’.136

Amongst those funds is César’s investment deposit in property speculation. Roguin's position as lawyer carries, for César, a social cachet of unquestioned reliability and probity. The strength of that belief is such that César takes no precautions against loss.Roguin predictably divulges his position to du Tillet ‘après un souper très aviné’ and du Tillet immediately ‘aperçut une fortune rapide et sûre qui brilla comme un éclair dans la nuit de l’ivresse’ (CB, VI, 87). The situation that

renders Roguin victim of his own weakness provides du Tillet with financial opportunity in a social replay of prey and predator.

Du Tillet’s vol décent concerning land speculation around la Madeleine necessitates a straw man, ‘l’un de ces mannequins vivants nommés dans la langue commercial hommes de paille’ (CB, VI, 90). This is a nominee, in this case Claparon,

who will ultimately take the legal, financial and social consequences of financial disaster. The function of the straw man for du Tillet is that it frees him from any connection with the theft, leaving him free of legal liability. Claparon is aware of his potential fate, and this invites the question as to what sort of character accepts such a position. A question that the narrator himself answers by unveiling the nature of the relationship between du Tillet and his prey. Balzac re-enforces his position as advocate of focus and exclusion. The monetary pathway, increasingly characteristic of the period, excludes emotional dependency, leaving the likes of Claperon without power or hope, having to say ‘amen à tout’:

Mais pour un pauvre diable qui se promenait mélancoliquement sur les boulevards avec un avenir de quarante sous dans sa poche quand son comarade du Tillet le rencontra, les petites parts qui devaient lui être abandonnées dans chaque affaire furent un Eldorado. Ainsi son amitié, son dévouement pour du Tillet, corroborés d’une reconnaissance irréfléchie, excités par les besoins d’une vie libertine et décousue, lui faisaient dire amen à tout (CB, VI, 90-91).

‘Une vie libertine’, a common element amongst the Roguin coterie, indicates an lack of emotional equilibrium and results in Claparon being too easily satisfied by ‘les petites parts’ and ‘un avenir de quarante sous dans la poche’. In the urgent recognition of du Tillet as a ‘camarade’ who earns ‘amitié’ and ‘dévouement’, Claparon, like Roguin, Mme Roguin and Sarah Gobseck, signals the presence of a deeper misfortune than that of penury: impotence in the face of adverse circumstances.

Like Victor Grandet in Eugénie Grandet, ‘l’infortuné Roguin se brûlerait la cervelle, car il croyait diminuer l’horreur de la faillite en imposant la pitié publique’. The suicide contemplated is a sacrifice to the power of public exposure but du Tillet views Roguin’s circumstances unclouded by such social or moral pressures. He ignores the notion of moral vilification to concentrate exclusively on the financial opportunities still to be exploited. In a sphere isolated from ethical concerns, he pursues a monetary strategy regarding client funds that is careless of reference to public castigation:

Il lui conseilla de prendre dès à présent une forte somme, de la lui confier pour être jouée avec audace dans une partie quelconque, à la Bourse, ou dans quelque speculation choisie entre les mille qui s’entreprenaient alors. En cas de gain, ils fonderaient à eux deux une maison de banque où l’on tirerait parti des dépôts, et dont les bénéfices lui serviraient à contenter sa passion. Si la chance tournait contre eux, Roguin irait vivre à l’étranger au lieu de se tuer, parce que […] du Tillet lui serait fidèle jusqu’au dernier sou(CB, VI, 87).

Du Tillet offers Roguin some kind of financial salvation, continuing indulgence in his passions and freedom from criminal or social retribution. In return the operative control of available funds, including César’s investments, is placed into his own hands. The money withdrawn from the remaining capital, held in Roguin’s client accounts, is used to fund du Tillet’s speculative venture in banking rather than providing protection against further loss. Similarly, Mme Roguin’s ‘prévenue d’un désastre’ leaves her prey to du Tillet’s blandishments and she yields control of her finances to him in return for consolidation of her wealth and indulgence in ‘la plus violente passion’. An accommodation between willing partners also operates between du Tillet and Sarah Gobseck: ‘il n’eut pas de peine à convaincre la maîtresse de risquer une somme, afin de ne jamais être obligée de recourir à la prostitution’ (CB, VI, 87). All three are easy targets for du Tillet, as he knows how to

satisfy the urgent emotional demands of his victims. This is a vol décent that delivers additional funding for du Tillet himself and deprives Roguin, Mme Roguin, Sarah Gobseck, Roguin’s clients and investors.

2.3.2 The Predator

Du Tillet's ‘prey’ intuitively seek to protect and prolong satisfaction of their desires but they also recognise in him the impassive objectivity of the predator. Balzac suggests here, as elsewhere, a psychological dimension that results in an unwitting complicity between prey and predator. This idea will be explored more fully in my analysis of Nucingen. The narrator provides the reader with early evidence of the

power of personal and social disinterestedness when, unsatisfied with the return from the monies received from ‘ses trois commanditaires’, du Tillet arranges an account of fictitious losses sustained on the Bourse and invests the funds for his own benefit, raising his return to 50,000 francs. He re-invests this capital sum and by careful analysis of political movements buys at the bottom and sells at the top of the market to raise his capital to 100,000 ecus.

When he manipulates the speculation around the Madeleine du Tillet designs a scheme under which ‘il voulait si bien cacher son bras tout en conduisant l’affaire, qu’il pût recueillir les profits du vol sans en avoir la honte’. (CB, VI, 90) In distancing

himself from the transaction with the invention of the ‘straw man’, and from any associated legal obligations, he evades any legality, his deeds being sanctioned by loopholes in the legal code. Taking investors’ funds, he commits a vol décent, that leaves him impervious to legal retribution or public reckoning that could reduce his social capital.

Du Tillet creates circumstances in which actions are determined solely according to their capacity to work effectively in speculative markets. He looks for successful financial outcome by seeking an alignment with the underlying laws that govern profit. To discover these laws Balzac examines an event, its moment in history, its causes and its circumstance in search of the universal truths that determine events. In the ‘Avant-propos’ to La Comédie humaine he confirms both the task and its purpose within a creative context:

Pour mériter les éloges que doit ambitionner tout artiste, ne devais-je pas étudier les raisons ou la raison de ces effets sociaux, surprendre le sens caché dans cet immense assemblage de figures, de passions et d’événements. Enfin, après avoir cherché, je ne dis pas trouvé, cette raison, ce moteur social, ne fallait-il pas méditer sur les principes naturels et voir en quoi les Sociétés s’écartent ou se rapprochent de la règle éternelle, du vrai, du beau. (Avant-propos, I, 11-12)

To be successful in a world whose laws are hidden, it is necessary to face the hard reality of unpredictable event. Vautrin has already made what he sees as the necessity of that fundamental confrontation clear in Le Père Goriot, three years prior to the publication of César Birotteau:

Un homme qui se vante de ne jamais changer d’opinion est un homme qui se charge d’aller toujours en ligne droite, un niais qui croit à l’infaillibilité. Il n’y a pas de principes, il n’y a que des événements; il n’y a pas de lois, il n’y a que des circonstances: l’homme supérieur épouse les événements et les circonstances pour les conduire (PG, III, 144).

The anarchy inherent in ‘il n’y a pas de principes’ ‘il n’y a pas de lois’ is actually played out in César’s visit to the Keller Bank in search of funds to save himself from

bankruptcy. What he does not know is that the Keller Brothers, with the complicity of Nucingen and du Tillet, have no intention of lending him funds. Their purpose is not financial gain but a secondary vol décent that will deliver the ultimate deprivation. César is stripped of all self-worth in a wanton, malevolent destruction of his identity. A game of ‘cat and mouse’ leaves him totally demoralised, exposed to the hopelessness of his situation. For his predators, this is a frolic in power for its own sake, with no fear of either legal or moral retribution. The frolic is part of an immanent game of self-satisfaction which needs no external reference: it represents the ultimate form of social disinterest. A basic instinct to indulge in domination is satisfied, even though no other benefit accrues under the vol décent. The authority of the bank has already been sanctioned and Balzac shows such institutional power to extend beyond financial transactions. The deception, an essential element of the

vol décent, relies on the bank’s sustained appearance of probity and financial acumen.