Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau

César Birotteau sells perfume on the rue Saint-Honoré, has just been made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour and deputy mayor of his arrondissement, and decides to mark it with a ball — and, on the advice of men who intend his ruin, with a speculation in building land near the Madeleine. The book follows the arithmetic of his fall with the patience of a ledger: the notes coming due, the doors closing one by one along the street, his former clerk du Tillet quietly arranging each refusal. What raises it above a cautionary tale is what Birotteau does next, which is to spend three years paying every creditor in full.

Honoré de Balzac published the novel in 1837, as part of the Scènes de la vie parisienne in La Comédie humaine; he had been bankrupt himself as a young printer, and the mechanics of credit, protest and discharge in it are those of a man who had been through them. This edition is Katharine Prescott Wormeley's English translation.

This Bibliomancer edition presents the complete text.