ARUNDDtllARDINOL- 
 
 - -
 
 UCSB LiSKAKY, 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Mr. H. H. KMiani
 
 H. DE BALZAC 
 
 THE COMEDIE HUMAINE
 
 ;
 
 WITH HIS BACK AGAINST A TREE IN THE BOULEVARD, HE 
 TURNED THE PACES OVER.
 
 H. DE BALZAC 
 
 THE RISE AND FALL OF 
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU 
 
 (GRANDEUR ET DE'CADENCE DE 
 CE'SAR BIROTTEAU) 
 
 AND GAUDISSART THE GREAT 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 ELLEN MARRIAGE 
 
 WITH A PREFACE BY 
 
 GEORGE SAINTSBURY 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE GEBBIE PUBLISHING Co., Ltd. 
 i)
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU 
 
 HIS APOGEE I 
 
 CESAR STRUGGLES WITH MISFORTUNES l8o 
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT 343
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 WITH HIS BACK AGAINST A TREE IN THE BOULEVARD, HE TURNED 
 
 THE PAGES OVER (p. 34) Frontispiece 
 
 PACK 
 
 "GOOD-DAY, MY DEAR LADY," SAID BIROTTEAU FLIPPANTLY . 98 
 "TO WHAT DO I OWE THE HONOR OF YOUR VISIT, SIR?" . 2l6 
 
 "I MUST HAVE MY MONF.Y, I WANT MY MONEY!" . . .286 
 
 Drawn by W. Boucher. 
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT 343 
 
 Drawn by J. Ayton Symington.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 FEW books of Balzac's have been the subject of more diverse 
 judgment than " Cesar Birotteau." From the opinion of the 
 unnamed solicitor, who told Madame Serville that it was an 
 invaluable work to consult on bankruptcy, to that of M. Paul 
 Lacroix (beloved of many as the Bibliophile Jacob), that it 
 might be forgiven for the sake of " Le Pere Goriot " and the 
 " Peau de Chagrin," there is not perhaps quite so great a 
 distance as may appear ; but other expressions, opposed not 
 merely in form, but in fact, might probably be collected. 
 
 As for the unfavorable division of these opinions there is no 
 difficulty in discovering their causes ; and there should be 
 little, save in the case of blind partisans, in acknowledging 
 their partial validity. Although the book opens with one of 
 Balzac's most brilliant pieces of actual human observation 
 the description of the vague and half-delirious terror of waking 
 from a bad dream and though the subsequent conversation 
 between Cesar and Constance has the merit of no vulgar cur- 
 tain-lecture, it soon goes off into one of those endless retro- 
 spective narrations which are among the greatest blots on the 
 Comedie, which utterly stop the action, and which, in the 
 case of very many readers who are not gifted with the faculty 
 of what may be called literary mountaineering, are very 
 likely to cause the putting down of the book. To this initial 
 difficulty has to be added the choking of the latter part with 
 those bankruptcy details which did so charm the professional 
 mind of Laure Balzac's learned friend, and which, for unpro- 
 fessional minds, have something which is very much the re- 
 verse of charm. The reader of only moderate athletic powers, 
 who has with difficulty struggled through and up the sloughs 
 and slopes of the previous history of the Birotteau business, is 
 hardly to be blamed if he gives up the attempt in despair 
 
 (ix)
 
 * PREFACE. 
 
 after some attempt on the slippery "screes" of commercial 
 law which Balzac has delighted to strew over the higher 
 ground. 
 
 Complaints of these drawbacks, I repeat, would be, and 
 are, just. Nevertheless, though the list of the faults of the 
 book is not even yet exhausted, it will be a very great pity if 
 any one is baffled by them and fails to go through to the end. 
 For " C6sar Birotteau" is a book than which none of Bal- 
 zac's is more thoroughly vecu, as his countrymen say, more 
 thoroughly inspired with the personal sympathies and ex- 
 periences of the author ; and this with Balzac was always a 
 guarantee of success. He too knew bankruptcy well, and not 
 merely by his studies in the lawyer's office ; for though I 
 believe he never actually " passed the court " (even his print- 
 ing and publishing operations, disastrous as they were, termi- 
 nated in arrangements), he was face to face with it all his 
 life. He, too, knew the attraction, the fatal attraction of une 
 bonne affaire, such as he speaks of in one of his letters une 
 bonne affaire qui ne demande que cent mille francs. He was 
 perfectly capable of buying up all the nuts in Paris in order 
 to make hair-oil of them; I should not be at all surprised 
 if he had actually had in view this very speculation. And 
 he thought he knew the ways of bankers and folk of that kind; 
 though whether he did or not, the sons of Zeruiah were 
 usually as much too hard for him as they were for Birotteau. 
 Hence there is even in the dryest details, even in the most 
 long-winded reportage of the book, the throb of personal in- 
 terest, the pulse and pant of life. 
 
 The action and characters also are interesting, if not, on 
 the whole, quite artistically probable. It will be observed 
 that the hero does a little underlie the constant objection of 
 the Devil's Advocate to Balzac, that almost every one of his 
 good characters is more or less of a fool. Even a keen man 
 of business may, of course, be easily outwitted in a game of 
 pure speculation a proposition which we need not go to
 
 PREFACE. xi 
 
 France, or examine the long list of "crashes " from the ficti- 
 tious terrains de la Madeleine to the real Panama, in order to 
 establish. And a very keen man of business may be imprud- 
 ently expensive in a combined fit of personal vanity and affec- 
 tion for his family. But it is a little of a stretch on the 
 credulity of the reader to represent a plodding tradesman like 
 Birotteau, who, as we are expressly told, had an old-fashioned 
 horror of "paper," as not merely incurring large speculative 
 obligations, but as stripping himself of every rap of ready 
 money while exposing himself to an unusual demand for it. 
 The picture of his going a-borrowing and a-sorrowing is drawn 
 with great power and with much vivacity ; but here, too, his 
 simplicity is a thought exaggerated. And Constance's affection 
 for and fidelity to an unattractive man, whom she saw to be 
 little better than a fool, may be thought improbable in an 
 ideal beauty with a clear head, while some may even say that 
 ideal beauties are almost always extremely stupid. Yet, again, 
 in Cesarine, Momus may point to that superficiality and vague- 
 ness which usually, if not always, mar Balzac's treatment of 
 an "honest " girl. 
 
 Yet these things will not, any more than those formerly 
 mentioned, make any fair or genial judge give up the book to 
 a lower class than that of Balzac's best, if not of his very 
 best. Whatever faults Birotteau may have, his goodness and 
 his probity and, let us add (though it be a little illegitimate), 
 his tragic end, make him one of the author's most sympathetic 
 personages, as are also his wife and daughter. If Popinot is 
 rather the virtuous apprentice of the stage, and Du Tillet the 
 wicked ditto, who is not punished, the former at least is attrac- 
 tive ; and Pillerault, the good uncle, certainly cannot be ac- 
 cused of foolishness. All the minor figures come in well for 
 the action whenever Balzac will let them act, and not be talk- 
 ing himself; and even the bankruptcy affair acquires a sort of 
 interest from the rapidity and bustle of its conduct. As for 
 the ball that famous and elaborate instance of the penalties
 
 xu PREFACE. 
 
 and disappointments of elaborately engineered and anticipated 
 pleasure it is excellent. Nor should we close without special 
 commendation for Claparon, a less labored personage than 
 some of the author's, but a very happy sketch of rascality 
 which is not exactly scoundrelism, because, though entirely 
 unscrupulous, it is not in the least malign. 
 
 The book was originally published after a fashion not un- 
 common in France, but, I think, hardly, if at all, known in 
 England, with no publisher's name, and not for sale, but as 
 a bonus jointly given by the ' Figaro " and the " Estafette" 
 to their subscribers for 1838. It bore that date, but was act- 
 ually issued in November, 1837. In this form it had two 
 volumes, three parts (the present two, and a third, " Le Tri- 
 omphe de C6sar"), and sixteen chapters and headings. Re- 
 published by Charpentier in 1839, it lost the chapter, but 
 kept the part-headings, the last being omitted when it be- 
 came a " Scdne de la Vie Parisienne " in the general arrange- 
 ment of the Comddie (1844). 
 
 "Gaudissart the Great " is, of course, slight, not merely in 
 bulk, but in conception. Balzac's Tourangeau patriotism may 
 have amused itself by the idea of the villagers " rolling " the 
 great Gaudissart ; but the ending of the tale can hardly be 
 thought to be quite so good as the beginning. Still, that be- 
 ginning is altogether excellent. The sketch of the commis- 
 voyageur generally smacks of that physiologic style of which 
 Balzac was so fond ; but it is good, and Gaudissart himself, as 
 well as the whole scene with his tpouse libre, is delightful. 
 The Illustrious One was evidently a favorite character with 
 his creator. He nowhere plays a very great part ; but it is 
 everywhere a rather favorable and, except in this little mishap 
 with Margaritis (which, it must be observed, does not turn 
 entirely to his discomfiture), a rather successful part. We 
 have him in "Cesar Birotteau," superintending the early 
 efforts of Popinot to launch the Huile Cdphalique. He was 
 present at the great ball. He served as intermediary to M.
 
 PREFACE. xiii 
 
 de Bauvan in the merciful scheme of buying at fancy prices 
 the handiwork of the Count's faithless spouse, and so providing 
 her with a livelihood ; and later, as a theatrical manager, a 
 little spoilt by his profession, we find him in "Le Cousin 
 Pons." But he is always what the French call "a good 
 devil," and here he is a very good devil, indeed. 
 
 G. S. 
 
 Note. I hope it is not improper to bespeak unusual indulgence for the 
 translator in regard to the technicalities of this book. She has, I know, 
 taken the greatest pains with them. But to secure absolute success in 
 such a matter we must have an expert in French bankruptcy law who is 
 also an expert in English bankruptcy law, and perfect in both literatures 
 as well. One might go far before finding such a person.
 
 THE RISE AND FALL OF 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU, 
 
 Retail Perfumer, 
 
 Deputy-Mayor of the Second Arrondissement, Paris, 
 Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, etc. 
 
 To Monsieur Alphonse de Lamartine, from his admirer, 
 
 DE BALZAC. 
 
 I. 
 
 CESAR'S APOGEE. 
 
 THERE is but one brief interval of silence during a winter 
 night in the Rue Saint-Honor6 ; for to the sounds of carriages 
 rolling home from balls and theatres succeeds the rumbling 
 of market-gardeners' carts on their way to the Great Market. 
 During this pause in the great symphony of uproar sent up by 
 the streets of Paris, this cessation of traffic toward one o'clock 
 in the morning, the wife of M. Cesar Birotteau, of the retail 
 perfumery establishment near the Place Vendome, dreamed a 
 frightful dream, and awoke with a start. 
 
 She had met her double. She had appeared to herself, 
 clad in rags, laying a meagre, shriveled hand on her own 
 store-door handle. She had been at once in her chair at the 
 cash desk and on the threshold ; she had heard herself beg- 
 ging ; she had heard two selves speaking in fact, the one from 
 the desk, the other from the doorstep. She turned and 
 stretched out her hand for her husband, and found his place 
 cold. At that her terror grew to such a pitch that she could not 
 move her head, her neck seemed stiffened to stone, the walls 
 
 (1)
 
 2 C&SA& BIROTTEAU. 
 
 of her throat were glued together, her voice failed her ; she 
 sat up rigid and motionless, staring before her with wide eyes. 
 Her hair rose with a painful sensation, strange sounds rang in 
 her ears, something clutched at her heart though it beat hard, 
 she was covered with perspiration, and yet shuddering with 
 cold in the alcove behind the two open folding-doors. 
 
 Fear, with its partially morbific effects, is an emotion which 
 puts so violent a strain upon the human mechanism that the 
 mental faculties are either suddenly stimulated by it to the 
 highest degree of activity or reduced to the last extremity 
 of disorganization. Physiology has long been puzzled to 
 account for a phenomenon which upsets its theories and stul- 
 tifies its hypotheses, although it is simply and solely a shock 
 brought about spontaneously, but, like all electrical phenom- 
 ena, erratic and unaccountable in its manifestations. This 
 explanation will become a commonplace when men of science 
 recognize the great part played by electricity in human think- 
 ing power. 
 
 Mme. Birotteau was just then enduring the pangs which 
 bring about a certain mental lucidity consequent on those 
 terrible discharges when the will is contracted or expanded 
 by a mysterious mechanism. So that, during a lapse of time, 
 exceedingly short if measured by the tickings of a clock, but 
 incommensurable by reason of the infinite rapid impressions 
 which it brought, the poor woman had the prodigious power 
 of uttering more thoughts and of calling up more memories 
 than would have arisen in her mind in its normal state in the 
 course of a whole day. Her soliloquy during this vivid and 
 painful experience may be resumed in a few words she uttered, 
 incongruous and nonsensical as they were 
 
 " There is no reason whatever why Birotteau should be out 
 of bed. He ate so much veal ; perhaps it disagreed with 
 him. But if he had been taken ill, he would have waked me 
 up. These nineteen years that we have slept here together 
 under this roof, he has never got up in the middle of the
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 3 
 
 night without telling me, poor dear ! He has never slept out 
 except when he was on guard. Did he go to bed when I did ? 
 Why, yes. Dear me ! how stupid I am ! " 
 
 She glanced over the bed. There lay her husband's night- 
 cap, moulded to the almost conical shape of his head. 
 
 " Can he be dead ? Can he have made away with himself? 
 Why should he?" she thought. "Since they made him 
 deputy-mayor two years ago, I haven't known what to make of 
 him. To get mixed up with public affairs, on the word of an 
 woman, isn't it enough to make you feel sorry for a man ? 
 The business is doing well. He has just given me a shawl. 
 Perhaps it is doing badly ! Pshaw ! I should know of it if it 
 were. But is there any knowing what is in the bottom of a 
 man's mind? Or a woman's either? There is no harm in 
 that. Haven't sales amounted to five thousand francs this very 
 day ! And then a deputy-mayor is not likely to kill himself; 
 he knows the law too well for that. But where can he be?" 
 
 She had no power to turn her head ; she could not stretch 
 out a hand to the bell-rope, which would have set in motion 
 a general servant, three clerks, and the errand boy. The 
 nightmare that lasted on into her waking moments was so 
 strong upon her that she forgot her daughter, peacefully sleep- 
 ing in the next room, beyond the door which opened at the 
 foot of the bed. 
 
 "Birotteau? " She received no answer. She fancied that 
 she had called aloud, but, as a matter of fact, she had only 
 spoken in her thoughts. 
 
 " Suppose he should have a mistress? But he has not wit 
 enough for that," she thought, "and then he is too fond of 
 me. Didn't he tell Madame Roguin that he had never been 
 unfaithful to me, even in thought? Why, the man is honesty 
 itself! If any one deserves to go to heaven, he does. What 
 he finds to say to his confessor, I don't know. He tells him 
 make-believes. For a Royalist as he is (without any reason to 
 give for it, by-the-by), he does not make much of a puff of
 
 4 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 his religion. Poor dear, he slips out to mass at eight o'clock 
 as if he were running off to amuse himself on the sly. It is 
 the fear of God that he has before his eyes ; he does not 
 trouble himself much about hell. How should he have a 
 mistress? He keeps so close to my apron-strings that I get 
 tired of it. He loves me like the apple of his eye ; he would 
 put out his eyes for me. All these nineteen years he has 
 never spoken a harsh word to myself. I come before his 
 
 daughter with him. Why, Cdsarine is there (C6sarine ! 
 
 Cisarine !) Birotteau never has a thought that he does not 
 tell me. It was a true word he said when he came to the 
 sign of the Little Sailor and told me that it would take time 
 
 to know him. And he's gone ! that is the extraordinary 
 
 thing! " 
 
 She turned her head with an effort and peered into the 
 darkness. Night filled the room with picturesque effects, the 
 despair of language, the exclusive province of the painter of 
 genre. What words could reproduce the whimsical shapes 
 that the curtains took as the draft swelled them, or the startling 
 zigzag shadows that they cast ? The dim night-light flickered 
 over the red cotton folds ; the brass rosette of the curtain-rest 
 reflected the crimson gleams from a central boss, blood-shot 
 like a robber's eye ; a ghostly gown was kneeling there ; the 
 room was filled, in fact, with all the strange, unfamiliar appear- 
 ances which appal the imagination at a time when it can only 
 see horrors and exaggerate them. 
 
 Mme. Birotteau fancied that she saw a bright light in the 
 next room, and a thought of fire flashed across her ; but she 
 caught sight of a red bandanna handkerchief, which looked 
 to her like a pool of blood, and in another moment she dis- 
 covered traces of a struggle in the arrangement of the furni- 
 ture, and could think of nothing but burglars. She remem- 
 bered that there was a sum of money in the safe, and a gener- 
 ous fear extinguished the cold ague of nightmare. Thoroughly 
 alarmed, she sprang out on to the floor in her night-dress, to
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 5 
 
 go to the assistance of the husband whom she fancied as en- 
 gaged in a hand-to-hand conflict with assassins. 
 
 " Birotteau ! Birotteau ! " she cried in a voice of anguish. 
 
 The retail perfumer was standing in the middle of the ad- 
 jacent room, apparently engaged in measuring the air with a 
 yard-stick. His dressing-gown (of green cotton with choco- 
 late-colored spots) covered him so ill that his bare legs were 
 red with the cold, but he did not seem to notice this. 
 
 When Cesar turned round with a " Well, what is it, Con- 
 stance ? " he looked as a man absorbed by his schemes is apt 
 to look so ludicrously foolish, that Mme. Birotteau began to 
 laugh. 
 
 " Dear me, C6sar, how queer you look ! " said she. " What 
 made you leave me alone without saying anything? I nearly 
 died of fright. I did not know what to think. What are you 
 after, open to every wind that blows ? You will catch your 
 death of cold. Birotteau ! do you hear ? " 
 
 "Yes, wife; here I am," and the perfumer returned to the 
 bedroom. 
 
 " There, come along and warm yourself, and tell me what 
 crotchet you have in your head," returned Mme. Birotteau, 
 raking among the ashes, which she hastily tried to rekindle. 
 "I am frozen. How stupid it was of me to get up in my 
 night-dress ! But I really thought you were being mur- 
 dered." 
 
 The merchant set down the bedroom candlestick on the 
 mantel, huddled himself in his dressing-gown, and looked 
 about the room in an absent fashion for his wife's flannel 
 petticoat. 
 
 "Here, pussie, just put this on," said he. "Twenty-two 
 
 by eighteen " he added, continuing his soliloquy. "We 
 
 could have a magnificent drawing-room." 
 
 " Look here ! Birotteau, you seem to be in a fair way to 
 lose your wits. Are you dreaming ? " 
 
 " No ; I am thinking, wife."
 
 6 C&SAK BIROTTEAU. 
 
 " Then you might wait ; your follies will keep till daylight, 
 at any rate," cried she, and, fastening her petticoat under her 
 sleeping-jacket, she went to open the door of their daughter's 
 room. 
 
 " Cesarine is fast asleep. She will not hear a word. Come, 
 Birotteau, tell me about it. What is it ? " 
 
 "We can give the ball." 
 
 " Give a ball ! We give a ball ! My dear ! on the word 
 of an honest woman, you are dreaming! " 
 
 " Dreaming ? not a bit of it, darling." 
 
 " Listen ; you should always do your duty according to your 
 station in life. Now the Government has brought me into 
 prominence, I belong to the Government, and it is incumbent 
 upon us to study its spirit and to forward its aims by develop- 
 ing them. The Due de Richelieu has just put an end to the 
 occupation of the allied troops. According to Monsieur de 
 la Billardiere, official functionaries who represent the city of 
 Paris ought to regard it as a duty each in his own sphere of 
 influence to celebrate the liberation of French soil. Let us 
 establish beyond proof a genuine patriotism which shall put 
 those accursed schemers that call themselves Liberals to the 
 blush, eh ? Do you think that I do not love my country ? I 
 mean to show the Liberals and my enemies that to love the 
 King is to love France." 
 
 " Then do you think that you have any enemies, my poor 
 Birotteau?" 
 
 " Why, yes, we have enemies, wife. And half our friends 
 in the quarter are among them. They all say, ' Birotteau has 
 such luck ; Birotteau was once a nobody, and look at him 
 now ! He is deputy-mayor ; everything has prospered with 
 him.' Very well; there is a nice disappointment still in 
 store for them. You shall be the first to hear that I am a 
 chevalier of the Legion of Honor ; the King signed the patent 
 yesterday. ' ' 
 
 " Oh ! well then, dear, we must give the ball," cried Mme.
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 7 
 
 Birotteau, greatly excited. " But what can you have done so 
 great as to have the cross ? " 
 
 Birotteau was embarrassed. 
 
 " When Monsieur de la Billardiere told me about it yester- 
 day," said he, " I asked myself, just as you did, what claim I 
 had to it. But, after thinking it over, I saw that I deserved 
 it, and ended by approving the action of the Government. 
 To begin with, I am a Royalist, and I was wounded at Saint- 
 Roch in Vend6miaire ; it is something, isn't it, to have borne 
 arms for the good cause in those times ? Then some of the 
 merchants think that the way I discharged my duties as arbi- 
 trator at the Consular Tribunal had given general satisfaction ; 
 and, lastly, I am a deputy-mayor, and the King is distributing 
 four crosses among the municipal authorities in the city of 
 Paris. After they had gone into the claims of the deputy- 
 mayors for a decoration, the prefect put me down at the top 
 of the list. The King, too, is sure to know my name ; thanks 
 to old Ragon, I supply him with the only hair powder he will 
 use ; no one else has the recipe for the powder the late Queen 
 used to wear, poor dear august victim ! The mayor backed 
 me up with all his might. What was I to do ? If the King 
 gives me the cross when I don't ask him for it, it looks to 
 me as if I could not decline it without failing in respect. 
 Was it my doing that I was made a deputy-mayor? So as we 
 have the wind in our sails, wife, as your uncle Pillerault says 
 when he is in a joking humor, I have made up my mind that 
 we must live up to our high position. If I am to be some- 
 body, I will have a try at being whatever Providence meant 
 me to be ; a sub-prefect, if such is my destiny. And you 
 make a great mistake, wife, when you imagine that a citizen 
 has discharged all the duty he owes his country when he has 
 supplied his customers with scent across the counter for a 
 score of years. If the State demands the cooperation of our 
 intelligence, we are as much bound to give it as to pay suc- 
 cession duty or the door and window tax, et cetera. Do you
 
 8 CSAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 want to sit at your desk all your life? You have been there 
 a pretty long time (God be thanked). The ball will be a 
 private fete of our own. No more of the store ; tor you, that 
 is. I shall burn the signboard THE QUEEN OF ROSES, and 
 the words, CESAR BIROTTEAU (LATE RAGON), RETAIL PER- 
 FUMER, shall be painted out on the store-front. I shall simply 
 put up PERFUMERY in big gold letters instead. There will be 
 room on the mezzanine floor for a cash desk and the safe, 
 and a nice little room for you. I shall make the back-store 
 and the present dining-room and kitchen into a warehouse. 
 Then I mean to take the second floor next door, and make a 
 way into it through the wall. The staircase must be altered 
 so that we can walk on the level out of one house and into 
 the other. We shall have a fine set of rooms then, furnished 
 up to the nines. 
 
 "Yes. I will have your room done up and contrive a 
 boudoir for you, and C6sarine shall have a pretty room. You 
 must engage a young lady for the store, and she and the assist- 
 ant and your waiting-maid (yes, madame, you shall have a 
 waiting-maid) shall have rooms on the third floor. The 
 kitchen must be on the fourth floor. The cook and the errand- 
 boy shall be lodged up there, and we will keep the stock of 
 bottles, and flasks, and china on the fifth. The workrooms 
 can be in the attics, so when people come in they will not see 
 bottles being filled and stoppered and labeled, nor sachets 
 being made. That sort of thing is all very well for the Rue 
 Saint-Denis, but it won't do in the Rue Saint-Honor6 ! Bad 
 style. Our store ought to be as snug as a drawing-room. 
 Just tell me this : are we the only perfumers who have come 
 in for honors? Aren't there vinegar-makers and mustard 
 manufacturers who have a command in the National Guard, 
 and are well looked on at the Tuileries ? Let us do as they 
 do, and extend the business, at the same time making our 
 way in society." 
 
 " One moment, Birotteau. Do you know what I think while
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 9 
 
 I hear you talk? Well, to me, it is just as if a man was start- 
 ing out on a wild-goose chase. Don't you remember what I 
 told you when there was talk of your being made mayor ? A 
 quiet life before all things, I said ; you are about as fit for 
 public life as my arm for a windmill sail. Grand doings will 
 be the ruin of you. 
 
 "You did not listen to me; and here the ruin has come 
 upon us. If you are going to take part in politics, you must 
 have money ; and have we money ? What ! you mean to 
 burn the signboard that cost six hundred francs, and give up 
 the Queen of Roses and your real glory? Leave ambition 
 to other people. If you put your hand in the fire, you get 
 singed, don't you? Politics are very hot nowadays. We 
 have a hundred thousand francs good money invested outside 
 the business, the stock, and the factory, have we? If you 
 have a mind to increase it, do now as you did in 1793. The 
 funds are at seventy-two, buy rentes ; you would have ten 
 thousand livres a year coming in without drawing anything 
 out of the business. Then take advantage of the transfer to 
 marry our Cesarine, sell the business, and let us go and live 
 in your part of the world. Why, any time for these fifteen 
 years you have talked of buying the Treasury Farm, that nice 
 little place near Chinon, with streams, and meadows, and 
 woods and vineyards, and crofts. It would bring you in a 
 thousand crowns a year, and we both of us like the house. 
 It is still to be had for sixty thousand crowns, and my gentle- 
 man must meddle and make in politics, must he ? 
 
 " Just remember what we are we are perfumers. Sixteen 
 years ago, before you thought of the Superfine Pate des Sul- 
 tanes and the Carminative Toilet Lotion, if any one had come 
 and said to you, ' You will have money enough to buy the 
 Treasury Farm,' wouldn't you have been wild with joy? 
 Very well ; and now, when you can buy the property which 
 you wanted so much that you talked of nothing else every 
 time that you opened your mouth, you begin to talk of squan-
 
 10 C&SAR JBfKOTTEACr. 
 
 dering the money that we have earned by the sweat of our 
 brows, ours I may say, for all along I have sat there at the 
 desk like a dog in a kennel. Now, instead of turning five 
 sous into six centimes, and six centimes into nothing at all, 
 wouldn't it be better to have a daughter married to a notary 
 in Paris, and a house that you can stay at, and to spend eight 
 months in the year at Chinon ? 
 
 " Wait until the funds rise. You can give your daughter 
 eight thousand livres a year ; we will keep two thousand for 
 ourselves, and the sale of the business will pay for the Treasury 
 Farm. We will take the furniture down into the country, 
 dear, it is quite worth while, and there we can live like 
 princes, while here one must haveat least a million to cut a 
 figure." 
 
 "That is just what I expected," said C6sar Birotteau. 
 " Oh ! you think I am very foolish, no doubt, but I am not 
 so foolish but that I have looked at the thing all around. 
 Attend to what I am going to say. Alexandre Crottat is a 
 son-in-law that would suit us to a T, and he will have Rognin's 
 practice ; but do you imagine that he would be satisfied with 
 a hundred thousand francs? (always supposing that we pay 
 down all our ready money when we marry our daughter; and 
 I am of that way of thinking, for I would have nothing but 
 dry bread for the rest of my days to see her as happy as a 
 queen and the wife of a Paris notary, as you say). Very well, 
 but a hundred thousand francs down, or even eight thousand 
 francs of rentes, would go no way toward buying Roguin's 
 practice. 
 
 "Young Xandrot (as we call him) thinks, like everybody 
 else, that we are a great deal richer than we are. If that 
 father of his, a rich fanner who sticks to his property like a 
 leech, does not sell something like a hundred thousand francs 
 worth of land, Xandrot will not be a notary, for Roguin's 
 practice is worth four or five hundred thousand francs. If 
 Crottat does not pay half the money down, how will he man-
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 11 
 
 age the business ? Cesarine ought to have a portion of two 
 hundred thousand francs, and we should retire like decent 
 citizens of Paris on fifteen thousand livres a year in the funds ; 
 that is what I should like. If I could make you see all this as 
 clear as daylight, you would have nothing left to say for your- 
 self, eh?" 
 
 "Oh ! if you have the wealth of the Indies " his wife 
 
 returned. 
 
 "So I have, darling. Yes," he put his arm round his 
 wife's waist, and tapped her gently with his fingers, impelled 
 by the joy that shone from every feature of his face. " I did 
 not want to say a word about this to you till the thing was 
 ripe, but, faith ! to-morrow perhaps it will be settled. This 
 is it : 
 
 " Roguin has been proposing a business speculation to me, 
 so safe that he and one or two of his clients, and Ragon, and 
 your uncle Pillerault, are going into it. We are to buy some 
 building land near the Madeleine. Roguin thinks that we 
 can buy it now for a quarter of the price it will fetch in three 
 years' time when the leases will be out, and we shall be free 
 to exploit it. There are six of us ; each agrees to take so 
 much ; I am finding three hundred thousand francs for the 
 purchase of three-eighths. If any of us are short of money, 
 Roguin will advance it, taking a mortgage on the share of the 
 land as security. Pillerault, old Ragon, and I are going to 
 take half of it among us ; but I want to have it registered in 
 my name, so as to keep hold of the handle of the pan and 
 see how the fish are frying. Roguin himself, under the name 
 of Monsieur Charles Claparon, will be joint-owner with me ; 
 he will give a guarantee to each of his partners, and I shall 
 do the same with mine. The deeds of purchase will be private 
 deeds until we have all the land in our hands. Roguin will 
 look into it and see which of the purchases must be com- 
 pleted, for he is not sure that we can dispense with intermedi- 
 ary registration, and yet transfer a separate title to the buyers
 
 12 C&SAK BIROTTEAU. 
 
 when we break up the estate into separate lots; but it would 
 take too long to explain it to you. 
 
 " When the building land has been paid for, we shall have 
 nothing to do but fold our arms, and in three years' time we 
 shall have a million. Cesarine will be twenty years old, we 
 shall have sold the business, and then, God willing, we will 
 go modestly toward greatness." 
 
 " Well, but where are the three hundred thousand francs to 
 come from?" asked Mme. Birotteau. 
 
 14 My dear little woman, you know nothing of business. 
 There are the hundred thousand francs in Roguin's hands ; I 
 will pay them down. Then I shall borrow forty thousand 
 francs on the buildings and the land that our factory stands 
 on, over in the Faubourg du Temple, and we have twenty 
 thousand francs in bills and acceptances in the portfolio 
 altogether that makes a hundred and sixty thousand francs. 
 There remain a hundred and forty thousand francs to be 
 raised ; I will draw bills to the order of Charles Claparon the 
 banker ; he will advance the money, less the discount. And 
 there are our three hundred thousand francs : and you don't 
 owe an account until it is due. When the bills fall due we 
 shall be ready for them with the profits of the business. If 
 we should find any difficulty in meeting them, Roguin would 
 lend me the money at five per cent, on a mortgage on my 
 share of the building land. But there is no need to borrow. 
 I have discovered a specific for making the hair grow, a Com- 
 agen oil. Livingston has put up a hydraulic press for me 
 down yonder for the hazelnuts ; all the oil should be squeezed 
 out at once under such strong pressure. In a year's time the 
 probabilities are that I shall have made a hundred thousand 
 francs at least. I am thinking about a placard with DOWN 
 WITH WIGS ! for a heading. It would make a prodigious 
 sensation. You don't notice how I lie awake. These three 
 months past Macassar Oil has not let me sleep. I mean to do 
 for Macassar ! "
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 13 
 
 " So these are the fine plans that have been running in your 
 head for a couple of months, and not a word to me about 
 them. And I have just seen myself begging at my own door; 
 what a warning from heaven ! There will be nothing left to 
 us after a while except our eyes to cry with over our troubles. 
 Never shall you do it so long as I am alive ; do you hear, 
 Cesar ? There is some underhand work somewhere that you 
 do not see ; you are so straightforward and honest that you 
 don't suspect others of cheating. What makes them come to 
 offer you millions? You are giving bills; you are going be- 
 yond your means ; and how if the Oil does not take ? Sup- 
 pose that the money does not come in suppose that you do 
 not sell the building lots, how are you going to meet the bills ? 
 With the hazelnut shells ? You want to rise in the world ; 
 you don't intend to have your name over your own store-door 
 any longer ; you mean to take down the sign the Queen of 
 Roses and yet you are making up rigmaroles of prospectuses 
 and placards, and Cesar Birotteau's name will be posted up at 
 every street-corner and all over the hoardings, wherever there 
 is building going on." 
 
 " Oh, no such thing ! I shall open a branch business under 
 the name of Popinot. I shall take a store somewhere near 
 the Rue des Lombardes, and put in young Anselme Popinot 
 to look after it. I shall pay a debt of gratitude which we owe 
 to Monsieur and Madame Ragon by starting their nephew in 
 a business that may make his fortune. The poor Ragons have 
 looked very seedy for some time past, I have thought." 
 
 " There ! those people are after your money." 
 
 "Why, what people, my charmer? Your own uncle who 
 loves us like his own life, and comes to dine here every Sun- 
 day? Then there is that kind old Ragon, our predecessor, 
 who plays boston with us; old Ragon, with a record of forty 
 years of fair dealing. And, lastly, do you mean Roguin, a 
 notary of Paris, a man of fifty, who has been in practice for 
 twenty-five years ? A notary of Paris would be the best of
 
 14 C&SAK BIROTTEAUi 
 
 the bunch if all honest folk were not equally good. My 
 partners will help me out at a pinch. Where is the plot, dar- 
 ling? Look here, I must give you a piece of my mind. On 
 my word as an honest man, it weighs upon me. You have 
 always been as suspicious as a cat ! As soon as we had five 
 sous' worth of goods in the store, you began to think that the 
 customers were thieves. A man has to go down on his knees 
 and beg and pray of you to allow your fortune to be made. 
 For a daughter of Paris you have scarcely any ambition ! If 
 it were not for your eternal fears, there would not be a happier 
 man than I am. If I had listened to you, I should never 
 have made the Pate des Sultanes nor the Carminative Toilet 
 Lotion. We have made a living out of the store, but it was 
 those two discoveries and our soaps that brought in the hun- 
 dred and sixty thousand francs which we have over and above 
 the business ! But for my genius, for I have talent as a per- 
 fumer, we should be petty storekeepers, hard put to it to make 
 both ends meet, and I should not be one of the notable mer- 
 chants who elect the judges at the Tribunal of Commerce ; I 
 should neither have been a judge nor a deputy-mayor. Do you 
 know what I should have been ? A storekeeper like old Ragon 
 no offense to him, for I respect stores ; a store has been the 
 making of us. After selling perfumery for forty years we should 
 have had three thousand livres a year, as he has; and as prices 
 go now, when things are twice as dear as they used to be, we too 
 should have had hardly enough to live upon. (Day after day, 
 it goes to my heart more and more to think of that old couple. 
 I must come at the truth ; I will have it out of Popinot to- 
 morrow.) Yes, if I had taken advice of you, of you that are 
 afraid of your own luck and are always asking if you will 
 have to-morrow what you hold to-day, I should have no credit, 
 nor the cross of the I>egion of Honor, and I should not be 
 looked on as a man who knows what he is about. Oh, you 
 may shake your head ; if this succeeds, I may be deputy for 
 Paris some day. Aha ! I was not named Cesar for nothing ;
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 15 
 
 everything has succeeded with me. This is inconceivable ! 
 Everybody out of my own house admits that I have some 
 capacity; but here at home, the one person that I want so 
 much to please, and I toil and moil to make her happy, is just 
 the very one who takes me for a fool." 
 
 There was such a depth of real and constant affection in 
 these phrases, divided up by eloquent pauses, and hurled 
 forth like cannon balls (as is the wont of those who take up 
 a recriminating attitude), that Mme. Birotteau in her secret 
 heart felt touched, but, wife-like, she took advantage of the 
 love she inspired to gain her own ends. 
 
 "Very well, Birotteau," said she, " if you love me, let me 
 be happy in my own way. Neither you nor I have had any 
 education ; we do not know how to talk, nor how to flatter 
 like worldly-wise people, and how can you expect that we 
 should succeed in office under Government ? I myself should 
 be quite happy at the Treasury Farm. I have always been 
 fond of animals and birds, and I could spend my time quite 
 well in looking after the poultry, and living like a farmer's 
 wife. Let us sell the business, marry our Csarine, and let 
 your ' Imogen ' alone. We will pass the winters in Paris in 
 our son-in-law's house, and we shall be happy ; nothing in 
 politics nor in business could change our ways. Why should 
 you try to eclipse other people ? Is not our fortune enough 
 for us ? When you are a millionaire, will you be able to eat 
 two dinners a day? Do you want another wife! Look at 
 uncle Pillerault ! He is wisely satisfied with what he has, 
 and spends his life in doing good. What does HE want with 
 fine furniture? For I know you have been ordering furni- 
 ture ; I saw Braschon in the shop, and he was not here to buy 
 scent. " 
 
 "Well, yes, darling, there is some furniture ordered for 
 you. The workmen will begin to-morrow under an architect 
 recommended by Monsieur de la Billardiere." 
 
 " Good Lord, have mercy upon us ! "
 
 16 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 11 Why, you are unreasonable, pet. Do you think that, 
 fresh and pretty as you are, you can go and bury yourself at 
 thirty-seven at Chinon ? I myself, thank the Lord, am only 
 thirty-nine. Chance has opened up a fine career to me, and 
 I am going to enter upon it. If I manage wisely, I can found 
 a house famous among Paris citizens, as people used to do, 
 build up a business, and the Birotteaus shall be like Roguin, 
 Cochin, Guillaume, Le Bas, Nucingen, Saillard, Popinot, and 
 Matifat, all of whom are making, or have made, their mark 
 in their quarter. Come I come ! if this speculation were not 
 as safe as gold ingots " 
 
 "Safe!" 
 
 " Yes, safe. I have been reckoning it out these two months. 
 Without appearing to do so, I have been making inquiries as 
 to building, at the H6tel de Ville, and of architects and con- 
 tractors. Monsieur Grindot, the young architect who is to 
 remodel our place, is in despair because he has no capital to 
 invest in our speculation." 
 
 " He knows that there will be houses to build ; he is urging 
 you on so as to gobble you up." 
 
 " Can people like Pillerault, like Charles Claparon, and 
 Roguin be taken in ? The gain is as certain as the profits on 
 the P&te, you see." 
 
 " But why should Roguin want to speculate, dear, when 
 he has bought his practice and made his fortune? I see him 
 go by sometimes; he looks as thoughtful as a minister; 
 he has an underhand look that I do not like ; he has secret 
 cares. . In five years he has come to look like an old rake. 
 Whose word have you for it that he will not take to his 
 heels as soon as your money is in his hands? Such things 
 have been known. Do we know much about him ? It is 
 true that we have been acquainted for fifteen years, but he 
 is not one that I would put my hands into the fire for. I 
 have it! he has ozaena; he does not live with his wife; 
 he has mistresses no doubt, and they are ruining him ;
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 17 
 
 there is no other reason for his low spirits that I see. As 
 I dress in the morning, I look through the blinds, and I 
 see him going home on foot. Where does he come from? 
 Nobody knows. It looks to me as if he had another es- 
 tablishment somewhere in town, and he spends one way 
 and madame another. 
 
 "Is that a life for a notary? If they make fifty thou- 
 sand francs and get through sixty thousand, there will be 
 an end of the money ; in twenty years' time they would be 
 as bare as shorn lambs; but if a man is used to shine, 
 he will plunder his friends without mercy. Charity should 
 properly begin at home. That little rascal du Tillet, who 
 used to be with us, is one of his cronies, and I see nothing 
 good in that friendship. If he could not find out du Tillet 
 he is very blind ; and if he knows him, why does he make 
 so much of him? You will say that there is something 
 between Roguin's wife and du Tillet. Very well ; I look 
 for no good from a man who has no sense of honor where 
 his wife is concerned. And in any case, aren't the owners 
 of the building lots very stupid to sell the worth of a hun- 
 dred francs for a hundred sous ? If you were to meet a 
 child who did not know what a louis was worth, would 
 you not tell him? Your stroke of business looks to me 
 myself very much like a robbery, no offense to you." 
 
 " Dear me ! what queer things women are sometimes, 
 and how they mix up their ideas ! If Roguin had never 
 meddled in the matter, you would have said, ' Stay, Cesar, 
 stop a bit ; you are acting without consulting Roguin, it will 
 come to no good.' In this present instance he is pledged as 
 it were, and you tell me " 
 
 " No ; it is a Monsieur Claparon." 
 
 "But a notary's name cannot appear in a speculation." 
 
 "Then why should he do something against the law? 
 What do you say to that, you who are such a stickler for the 
 law?" 
 2
 
 18 C&SAX BIROTTEAU. 
 
 " Just let me go on. Roguin is going into it himself, and 
 you tell me that it will come to no good. Is that sensible ? 
 Again you say, ' He is doing something against the law.' 
 But his name will appear in it if necessary. And now you 
 tell me that ' he is rich.' Might not people say as much of 
 me? Ragon and Pillerault might just as well say of me, 
 'Why are you going into this when you are wallowing in 
 riches?'" 
 
 "A tradesman is one thing and a notary another," ob- 
 jected Mme. Birotteau. 
 
 "In short, my conscience is quite clear," Cesar went on. 
 " People who sell, sell because they cannot help it ; we are 
 no more robbing them than we rob fund-holders when we buy 
 at seventy-five. To-day you buy building lots at to-day's 
 prices ; in two years' time it will be different, just as it is 
 with rentes. You may be quite sure, Constance-Barbe-Jos6- 
 phine Pillerault, that you will never catch Cesar Birotteau 
 doing anything that is against the law, nor against his con- 
 science, nor unscrupulous, or not strictly just and fair. That 
 a man who has been in business eighteen years should be 
 suspected in his own family of cheating ! " 
 
 " Come, Cesar, be pacified ! A wife who has known you 
 all that time knows the depths of your soul. You are the 
 master after all. You made the money, didn't you? It is 
 yours ; you can spend it. We might be brought to the lowest 
 depths of poverty, but neither your daughter nor I would ever 
 say a single word of reproach. But listen. When you in- 
 vented the Pate des Sultanes and the Carminative Toilet 
 Lotion, what risk did you run? Five or six thousand francs 
 perhaps. To-day you are risking all you have on a single 
 stake, and you are not the only player in this game, and some 
 of the others may turn out sharper than you are. 
 
 " You could give this ball and have the rooms redecorated, 
 and spend a thousand francs over it a useless expense, but 
 not ruinous but as to the Madeleine affair, I am against it,
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 19 
 
 once and for all. Your are a perfumer ; be a perfumer and 
 not a speculator in building land. We women have an in- 
 stinct that does not lead us astray. I have warned you ; now 
 act on your own ideas. You have been a judge at the Tri- 
 bunal of Commerce, you know the law, you have steered your 
 boat wisely, and I will follow you, Cesar ! But I shall have 
 misgivings until I see our fortune on a sound basis and Cesar- 
 ine well married. God send that my dream was not pro- 
 phetic !" 
 
 This meekness was annoying to Birotteau. He had recourse 
 to a simple stratagem, which he found useful on such occasions. 
 
 "Listen, Constance; I have not really given my word, 
 though it is as good as if I had." 
 
 " Oh ! Cesar, there is nothing more to be said, so let us 
 say no more about it. Honor before riches. Come, get 
 into bed, dear ; there is no firewood left. Beside, it is easier 
 to talk in bed if it amuses you. Oh ! the bad dream I had ! 
 Good Lord, to see yourself ! Why, it was fearful ! Cesarine 
 and I will make a pretty number of novenas for the success 
 of the land." 
 
 " Of course, the help of God would do us no harm," 
 Birotteau said gravely, "but the essence of hazelnuts is a 
 power likewise, wife. I discovered this, like the Pate des 
 Sultanes, by accident ; the first time it was by opening a book, 
 but it was an engraving of ' Hero and Leander ' that sug- 
 gested this new idea to me. A woman, you know, pouring 
 oil on her lover's head; isn't it nice? The most certain 
 speculations are those that are based on vanity, self-love, or 
 a regard for appearances. Those sentiments will never be 
 extinct." 
 
 "Alas, I see that clearly." 
 
 "At a certain age," pursued Birotteau, " men will do any- 
 thing to grow hair on their heads when they have none. 
 .Hairdressers have told me for some time past that they are 
 selling hair-dyes and all sorts of drugs that are said to pro-
 
 80 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 mote the growth of the hair as well as Macassar Oil. Since 
 the peace, men live more among women, and women do not 
 like bald heads, eh ! eh ! pet ! So the demand for that 
 class of article can be explained by the political situation. 
 
 "A composition which would keep your hair in good con- 
 dition would sell like bread, and all the more so because the 
 essence will doubtless be approved by the Academic des 
 Sciences. Perhaps kind Monsieur Vauquelin will do me 
 another good turn. I shall go to submit my notion to him 
 to-morrow, and ask him to accept that engraving which I have 
 found at last after inquiring for it for two years in Germany. 
 Monsieur Vauquelin is engaged in analyzing hair, precisely 
 the subject, so Chiffreville (who is associated with him in the 
 production of chemicals) tells me. If my discovery concurs 
 with his, my essence will be bought by both sexes. There is 
 a fortune in my idea, I repeat. Good heavens ! I cannot 
 sleep for it. Eh ! luckily, little Popinot has the finest head 
 of hair in the world. With a young lady in the shop whose 
 hair should reach to the ground, and who should say (if the 
 thing is possible without sinning against God or your neighbor) 
 that the Comagen Oil (for it is decidedly an oil) counts for 
 something in bringing that about ; all the grizzled heads will 
 be down upon it like poverty upon the world. And I say, 
 dearie, how about your ball ? I am not spiteful, but I really 
 should like to have that little rogue of a du Tillet, who 
 swaggers about and never sees me on 'Change. He knows 
 that I know something that is not pretty about him. Perhaps 
 I let him off too easily. How funny it is, wife, that one 
 should always be punished for good actions ; here below, of 
 course ! I have* been like a father to him ; you do not know 
 all that I have done for him." 
 
 "Simply to hear you talk of him makes my flesh creep. 
 If you had known what he intended to do to you, you would 
 not have kept the theft of three thousand francs so quiet (for 
 I have guessed how the thing was arranged). If you had put
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 21 
 
 him in the police court, perhaps you might have done a good 
 many people a service." 
 
 " What did he mean to do to me ? " 
 
 " Nothing. Birotteau, if you were inclined to listen to me 
 to-night, I would give you a bit of sound advice, and that is 
 to let du Tillet alone." 
 
 " Would not people think it very strange if I were to forbid 
 an old assistant my house after I had been his surety for twenty 
 thousand francs when he first started in business for himself? 
 There, let us do good for its own sake. And perhaps du 
 Tillet has mended his ways." 
 
 " Everything must be put topsy-turvy here ! " 
 
 " What is this about topsy-turvy ? Why, it will all be ruled 
 like a sheet of music. So you have forgotten already what I 
 have just told you about the staircase, and how I have ar- 
 ranged with Cayron, the umbrella merchant next door, to 
 take part of his house ! He and I must go together in the 
 morning to see his landlord, Monsieur Molineux. I have as 
 much business on hand to-morrow as a minister." 
 
 "You have made me dizzy with your plans," said Con- 
 stance; "I am muddled with them; and, beside, Birotteau, 
 I am sleepy." 
 
 " Good-morning," returned her husband. " Just listen 
 I say good-morning, because it is morning now, pet ! Ah ! 
 she has dropped off to sleep, dear child ! There ! you shall 
 be the richest of the rich, or my name will not be Cesar any 
 longer," and a few minutes later Constance and Cesar were 
 peacefully snoring. 
 
 A rapid glance over the previous history of this household 
 will confirm the impression which should have been conveyed 
 by the friendly dispute between the two principal personages 
 in this scene, in which the lives of a retail storekeeper and his 
 wife are depicted. This sketch will explain, moreover, the 
 strange chances by which Cesar Birotteau became a perfumer,
 
 22 C&SAK B1ROTTEAU. 
 
 a deputy-mayor, an ex-officer of the National Guard, and a 
 chevalier of the Legion of Honor. By laying bare the depths 
 of his character and the springs of his greatness, it will be 
 possible to comprehend how it is that the vicissitudes of com- 
 merce, which strong heads turn to their advantage, become 
 irreparable catastrophes for weaker spirits. Events are never 
 absolute ; their consequences depend entirely upon the indi- 
 vidual. The misfortune which is a stepping-stone for genius 
 becomes a chapel for the Christian, a treasure for a quick- 
 witted man, and for weaklings an abyss. 
 
 A cotter, Jacques Birotteau by name, living near Chinon, 
 took unto himself a wife, a domestic servant in the house of 
 a lady, who employed him in her vineyard. Three sons were 
 born to them ; his wife died at the birth of the third, and the 
 poor fellow did not long survive her. Then the mistress, out 
 of affection for her maid, adopted the oldest of the cotter's 
 boys; she brought him up with her own son, and placed him 
 in a seminary. This Francois Birotteau took orders, and 
 during the Revolution led the wandering life of priests who 
 would not take the oath, hiding from those who hunted them 
 down like wild beasts, lucky to meet with no worse fate than 
 the guillotine. At the time when this story begins he was a 
 priest of the cathedral at Tours, and had but once left that 
 city to see his brother Cesar. On that occasion the traffic in 
 the streets of Paris so bewildered the good man that he dared 
 not leave his room ; he called the cabs "half-coaches," and 
 was astonished at everything. He stayed one week, and then 
 went back to Tours, promising himself that he would never 
 revisit the capital. 
 
 The vine-dresser's second son, Jean Birotteau, was drawn 
 by the army, and during the early wars of the Revolution 
 promptly became a captain. At the battle of the Trebbia, 
 Macdonald called for volunteers to storm a battery, and Cap- 
 tain Jean Birotteau charged with his company and fell. It
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 28 
 
 appeared to be the destiny of the Birotteaus that other men 
 should supplant them, or that events should be too strong for 
 them wherever they might be. 
 
 The youngest son is the chief actor in this scene. When 
 Cesar was fourteen years old, and could read, write, and 
 cipher, he left the district, and with one louis in his pocket set 
 out on foot for Paris to make his fortune. On the recommen- 
 dation of an apothecary in Tours, M. and Mme. Ragon, re- 
 tail perfumers, took him as errand boy. Cesar at that time 
 was possessed of a pair of hobnailed shoes, a pair of breeches, 
 blue stockings, a sprigged vest, a countryman's jacket, three 
 ample shirts of good linen, and a stout walking-cane. His 
 hair might be clipped like a chorister's, but he was a solidly 
 built Tourangeau ; and any tendency to the laziness rampant 
 in his district was counteracted in him by a strong desire to 
 make his way in the world. Perhaps he was lacking some- 
 what in brains as in education, but he had inherited upright 
 instincts and scrupulous integrity from his mother, who had 
 " a heart of gold," as they say in Touraine. 
 
 Cesar was paid six francs a month by way of wages. He 
 boarded in the house, and slept on a truckle-bed in the attics 
 next to the servant's room. The clerks showed him how to 
 fetch and carry and tie up parcels, to sweep out the store and 
 the pavement before it, and made a butt of him, breaking 
 him in to business after the manner of their kind, and contriv- 
 ing to blend a good deal of amusement (for themselves) with 
 his instruction. M. and Mme. Ragon spoke to him as if he 
 were a dog. Nobody cared how tired the apprentice might 
 be, and he was often very tired and footsore of a night after 
 tramping over the pavements, and his shoulders often ached. 
 The principle "each for himself," that gospel of great cities, 
 put in application, made Cesar's life in Paris a very hard one. 
 He used to cry sometimes when the day was over and he 
 thought of Touraine, where the peasant works leisurely and 
 the mason takes his time about laying a stone, and toil is
 
 24 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 judiciously tempered by idleness ; but he usually fell asleep 
 before he reached the point of thinking of running away, for 
 his morning's round of work awaited him, and he did his 
 duty with the instinctive obedience of a yard dog. If he 
 happened to complain, the first clerk would smile jocosely. 
 " Ah, my boy," said he, " life is not all roses at the Queen 
 of Roses, and larks don't drop ready roasted into your mouth ; 
 first catch your lark, and then you want the other things before 
 you cook it." 
 
 The cook, a stout Picarde, kept the best morsels for her- 
 self, and never spoke to Cesar but to complain of M. and 
 Mine. Ragon, who left her nothing to purloin. On one 
 Sunday at the end of every month she was obliged to stop in 
 the house, and then she broke ground with Cesar. Ursule, 
 scoured for Sunday, was a charming creature in the eyes of 
 the poor errand boy, who, but for a chance, was about to 
 make shipwreck on the first sunken reef in his career. Like 
 all human beings who have no one to care for them, he fell in 
 love with the first woman who gave him a kind glance. The 
 cook took Cesar under her wing and secret love passages 
 followed, at which the assistants jeered unmercifully. Luck- 
 ily, two years later, the cook threw over Cesar for a young 
 runaway from the army, a fellow-countryman of hers who was 
 hiding in Paris; and the Picard, a landowner to the extent 
 of several acres, allowed himself to be drawn into a marriage 
 with Ursule. 
 
 But during those two years the cook fed her lad Cesar well, 
 and explained to him the seamy side of not a few of the mys- 
 teries of Paris. Motives of jealousy led her to instil into him 
 a perfect horror of low haunts, whose perils seemingly were not 
 unknown to her. In 1792 C6sar, the basely deserted, had 
 grown accustomed to his life ; his feet were used to the pave- 
 ments, his shoulders accommodated to packing-cases, his wits 
 to what he called the humbug of Paris. So, when Ursule 
 threw him over, he promptly took comfort, for she had not
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 25 
 
 realized any of his intuitive ideas as to sentiments. Lasciv- 
 ious, bad-tempered, fawning, and rapacious, a selfish woman, 
 given to drink, she had jarred on Birotteau's unsophisticated 
 nature and had opened out no fair future to him. At times 
 the poor boy saw with dismay that he was bound by the 
 strongest of ties, for a simple heart, to a creature with whom he 
 had no sympathy. By the time that he was set free he had 
 developed and had reached the age of sixteen. His wits had 
 been sharpened by Ursule and by the clerk's jokes; he set 
 himself to learn the business. Intelligence was hidden beneath 
 his simplicity. He watched the customers with shrewd eyes. 
 In his spare moments he asked for explanations concerning 
 the goods ; he remembered where everything was kept ; one 
 fine day he knew the goods, prices, and quantities in stock 
 better than the newer comers, and thenceforward M. and 
 Mme. Ragon looked on him as a settled institution. 
 
 When the requisition of the terrible year II. made a clean 
 sweep of Citizen Ragon's house, Cesar Birotteau, promoted to 
 be second assistant, improved his position, received a salary 
 of fifty livres per month, and seated himself at the Ragons' 
 table with joy unspeakable. The second assistant at the sign 
 of the Queen of Roses had by this time saved six hundred 
 francs, and he now had a room filled with furniture such as he 
 had for a long time coveted, in which he could keep the be- 
 longings which he had accumulated, under lock and key. On 
 D6cadis,* dressed after the fashion of an epoch which affected 
 rough and homely ways, the quiet, humble peasant lad looked 
 at least the equal of other young citizens, and in this way he 
 overleaped the social barriers which in domestic life would, in 
 different times, have been raised between the peasant and the 
 trading classes. Toward the end of that year his honesty won 
 for him the control of the till. The awe-inspiring Citizeness 
 Ragon saw to his linen, and husband and wife treated him 
 like one of the family. 
 
 * Each tenth day, replacing Sunday.
 
 26 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 In Vendemiaire 1794 Cesar Birotteau, being possessed of 
 one hundred gold louis, exchanged them for six thousand 
 francs in assignats, bought rentes therewith at thirty francs, 
 paid for them when depreciated prices ruled on the Exchange, 
 and hoarded his stock-receipt with unspeakable delight. From 
 that day forward he followed the rise and fall of the funds and 
 the course of events with a secret anxiety that made his heart 
 beat fast at the tidings of every victory or defeat which marked 
 the history of that period. 
 
 At this critical period M. Ragon, sometime purveyor of 
 perfumes to her majesty Queen Marie-Antoinette, confided to 
 Cesar Birotteau his attachment to the fallen tyrants. This 
 confidence was an event of capital importance in Cesar's life. 
 The Tourangeau was transformed into a fanatical adherent of 
 royalty in the course of the evening conversations after the 
 shutters were put up, the books posted, and the streets quiet 
 without. Cesar was simply obeying his natural instincts. 
 His imagination kindled at the tale of the virtuous deeds of 
 Louis XVI., followed by anecdotes told by husband and wife 
 of the good qualities of the Queen whom they extolled. His 
 tender heart was revolted by the horrible fate of the two 
 crowned heads, struck off but a few paces from the store-door, 
 and he conceived a hatred for a system of government which 
 poured forth innocent blood that cost nothing to shed. 
 
 Commercial instincts made him quick to see the death of 
 trade in the law of maximum prices, and in political storms, 
 which always bode ill to business. In his quality of perfumer, 
 moreover, he loathed a Revolution that forbade powder and 
 was responsible for the fashion of wearing the hair cropped. 
 The tranquillity secured to the nation by an absolute monarchy 
 seemed to be the one possible condition in which life and 
 property would be safe, so he waxed zealous for a monarchy. 
 
 M. Ragon, finding so apt a disciple, made him his assistant 
 in the shop, and initiated him into the secrets of the Queen 
 of Roses. Some of the customers were the most active and
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 27 
 
 devoted of the secret agents of the Bourbons and kept up a 
 correspondence between Paris and the west. Carried away 
 by youthful enthusiasm, electrified by contact with such men 
 as Georges, La Billardiere, Montauran, Bauvan, Longuy, 
 Manda, Bernier, du Gu6nic, and Fontaine, Cesar flung him- 
 self into the conspiracy of the i3th Vendemiaire, when Roy- 
 alists and Terrorists combined against the dying Convention. 
 
 Cesar had the honor of warring against Napoleon on the 
 steps of the church of Saint-Roch, and was wounded at the 
 beginning of the action. Every one knows the result of this 
 attempt. The obscurity from which Barras' aide-de-camp 
 then emerged was Birotteau's salvation. A few friends carried 
 the bellicose counterhand home to the Queen of Roses, where 
 he lay in hiding in the garret, nursed by Mme. Ragon, and 
 lucky to be forgotten. Cesar's military courage had been 
 nothing but a flash. During his month of convalescence he 
 came to some sound conclusions as to the ludicrous alliance 
 of politics and perfumery. If a Royalist he remained, he 
 made up his mind that he would be simply and solely a Roy- 
 alist perfumer, that he would never compromise himself again, 
 and he threw himself body and soul into his calling. 
 
 After the i8th Brumaire, M. and Mme. Ragon, despairing 
 of the Royalist cause, determined to retire from the perfumery 
 trade, to live like respectable private citizens, and to cease 
 to meddle in politics. If they were to receive the full value 
 of their business, it behooved them to find a man who had 
 more honesty than ambition, and more homely sense than 
 brilliancy, so Ragon broached the matter to his first assistant. 
 Birottean hesitated. He was twenty years old, with a thou- 
 sand francs a year invested in the public funds; it was his 
 ambition to go to live near Chinon as soon as he should have 
 fifteen hundred francs a year, and the First Consul, after con- 
 solidating his position at the Tuileries, should have consoli- 
 dated the national debt. He asked himself why he should 
 risk his little honestly earned independence in business. He
 
 28 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 had never expected to make so much wealth ; it was entirely 
 owing to chances which are only embraced in youth; and 
 now he was thinking of taking a wife in Touraine, a woman 
 who should have an equal fortune, so that he might buy and 
 cultivate a little property called the Treasury Farm, a bit of 
 land on which he had set longing eyes since he had come 
 to man's estate. He dreamed of adding more land to the 
 Treasury Farm, of making a thousand crowns a year, of lead- 
 ing a happy and obscure life there. He was on the point of 
 refusing the perfumer's offer when love suddenly altered his 
 former resolutions and multiplied the sum-total of his ambi- 
 tions by ten. 
 
 Since Ursule's base desertion, Cesar had led a steady life ; 
 this was partly a consequence of hard work, partly a dread of 
 the risks run in pursuit of pleasure in Paris. Desire that re- 
 mains unsatisfied becomes a craving, and marriage for the 
 lower middle classes becomes a fixed idea, for it is the one 
 way open to them of winning and appropriating a woman. 
 Cesar Birotteau was in this case. The first assistant was the 
 responsible person at the Queen of Roses ; he had not a mo- 
 ment to spare for amusement. In such a life the craving is 
 still more imperatively felt ; so it happened that the apparition 
 of a handsome girl, to whom a dissipated young fellow would 
 scarcely have given a thought, was bound to make the greatest 
 impression on the steady Cesar. 
 
 One fine June day, as he was about to cross the Pont Marie 
 to the He Saint-Louis, he saw a girl standing in the doorway 
 of a corner store on the Quai d' Anjou. Constance Pillerault 
 was a forewoman in a dry goods establishment, at the sign of 
 the Little Sailor, a pioneer instance of a kind of store which 
 has since spread all over Paris, with painted signboards more 
 or less in evidence, flying flags, much display. Shawls are 
 suspended in the windows, and piles of cravats erected like 
 card castles, together with countless devices to attract custom, 
 ribbon streamers, showcards, notices of fixed prices ; optical
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 29 
 
 illusions and effects carried to the pitch of perfection which 
 has made of store windows the fairyland of commerce. 
 
 The low prices asked at the sign of the Little Sailor for the 
 goods described as " novelties " had brought this store, in 
 one of the quietest and least fashionable quarters of Paris, an 
 unheard-of influx of custom. 
 
 The aforesaid young lady behind the counter was as cele- 
 brated for her beauty as "La belle Limonadiere " of the 
 Cafe des Milles Colonnes at a later day, and not a few others 
 whose unfortunate lot it has been to attract faces, young and 
 old, more numerous than the paving-stones of Paris, to the 
 windows of milliners' stores and cafes. The first assistant 
 from the Queen of Roses, whose life was spent between Saint- 
 Roch and the Rue de la Sourdiere, in the daily routine of 
 the perfumery business, did not so much as suspect the exist- 
 ence of the Little Sailor, for retailers in Paris know very 
 little of each other. 
 
 Cesar was so violently smitten with the beautiful Constance 
 that he hurried tempestuously into the Little Sailor to bargain 
 for a half-dozen linen shirts. Long did he haggle over the 
 price, bale after bale of linen was displayed for his inspection ; 
 he behaved exactly like an Englishwoman in a humor for 
 shopping. The young lady condescended to interest herself 
 in Cesar's purchase ; perceiving, by certain signs which women 
 understand, that he had come to the shop more for the sake 
 of the saleswoman than for her goods. He gave his name 
 and address to the young lady, who became quite indifferent 
 to the customer's admiration as soon as he had made his pur- 
 chase. The poor assistant had done but little to gain Ursule's 
 good graces ; if he had been sheepish then, love now made 
 him more sheepish still ; he did not dare to say a syllable, 
 and was, moreover, too much dazzled to note the indifference 
 which succeeded to the smiles of this siren of commerce. 
 
 Every evening for a week he took up his post before the 
 Little Sailor, hanging about for a glance as a dog waits for a
 
 30 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 bone at a kitchen-door ; regardless of the gibes in which the 
 clerks and saleswomen indulged at his expense ; making way 
 meekly for customers or passers-by, watchful of every little 
 change that took place in the store. A few days later, he 
 again entered the paradise where his angel dwelt, not so 
 much to purchase pocket-handkerchiefs of her as with a view 
 of communicating a luminous idea to the angel's mind. 
 
 "If you should require any perfumery, mademoiselle," he 
 remarked, as he paid the bill, " I could supply you in the 
 same way." 
 
 Constance Pillerault daily received brilliant proposals in 
 which there was never any mention of marriage ; and though 
 her heart was as pure as her white forehead, it was not until 
 the indefatigable Cesar had proved his love by six months of 
 strategical operations that she deigned to receive his atten- 
 tions. Even then she would not cotnmit herself. Prudence 
 had been demanded of her by the multitudinous number of 
 her admirers wholesale wine merchants, well-to-do bar- 
 keepers, and others, who made eyes at her. The lover found 
 a supporter in her guardian, M. Claude- Joseph Pillerault, an 
 iron-monger on the Quai de la Ferraille, a discovery made by 
 the secret espionage which is pre-eminently a lover's shift. 
 
 In this rapid sketch, it is impossible to describe the delights 
 of this harmless Parisian love-intrigue ; the little extravagances 
 characteristic of the clerk the first melons of the season, the 
 little dinners at V6nua's, followed by the theatre, the drives 
 into the country in a cab on Sunday must be passed over in 
 silence. C6sar was not a positively handsome young fellow, 
 but there was nothing in his appearance to repel love. Life 
 in Paris and days spent in a dark store had toned down the 
 high color natural to the peasant lad. His thick, black hair, 
 his Norman breadth of shoulder, his sturdy limbs, his simple, 
 straightforward look, all contributed to prepossess people in 
 his favor. Uncle Pillerault, the responsible guardian of his 
 brother's child, made various inquiries about the Tourangeau,
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 31 
 
 and gave his consent; and, in the fair month of May, 1800, 
 Mile. Pillerault promised to marry Cesar Birotteau. He 
 nearly fainted with joy when Constance-Barbe-Josephine 
 accepted him as her husband under a lime tree at Sceaux. 
 
 "You will have a good husband, my little girl," said M. 
 Pillerault. " He has a warm heart and sentiments of honor. 
 He is as straight as a line, and as good as the Child Jesus ; 
 he is a king of men, in short." 
 
 Constance put away once and for all the dreams of a 
 brilliant future, which, like most store-girls, she had some- 
 times indulged. She meant to be a faithful wife and a good 
 mother, and took up this life in accordance with the religious 
 programme of the middle classes. After all, this part suited 
 her ideas much better than the dangerous vanities tempting 
 to a youthful Parisian imagination. Constance's intelligence 
 was a narrow one ; she was the typical small tradesman's wife, 
 who always grumbles a little over her work, who refuses a 
 thing at the outset, and is vexed when she is taken at her 
 word ; whose restless activity takes all things, from cash-box 
 to kitchen, as its province, and supervises everything, from 
 the weightiest business transactions down to almost invisible 
 darns in the household linen. Such a woman scolds while 
 she loves, and can only conceive ideas of the very simplest ; 
 only the small change, as it were, of thought passes current 
 with her ; she argues about everything, lives in chronic fear 
 of the unknown, makes constant forecasts, and is always 
 thinking of the future. Her statuesque yet girlish beauty, 
 her engaging looks, her freshness, prevented Cesar from think- 
 ing of her shortcomings ; and, moreover, she made up for 
 them by a woman's sensitive conscientiousness, an excessive 
 thrift, by her fanatical love of work, and genius as a sales- 
 woman. 
 
 Constance was just eighteen years old, and the possessor of 
 eleven thousand francs. C6sar, in whom love had developed 
 the most unbounded ambition, bought the perfumery business,
 
 32 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 and transplanted the Queen of Roses to a handsome store 
 near the Place Vendome. He was only twenty-one years of age, 
 married to a beautiful and adored wife, and almost the owner 
 of his establishment, for he had paid three-fourths of the 
 amount. He saw (how should he have seen otherwise ?) the 
 future in fair colors, which seemed fairer still as he measured 
 his career from its starting-point. 
 
 Roguin (Ragon's notary) drew up the marriage-contract, and 
 gave sage counsels to the young perfumer ; he it was who in- 
 terfered when the latter was about to complete the purchase 
 of the business with his wife's money. " Just keep the money 
 by you, my boy ; ready money is sometimes a handy thing in 
 a business," he had said. 
 
 Birotteau gazed at the notary in admiration, fell into the 
 habit of consulting him, and made a friend of Roguin. Like 
 Ragon and Pillerault, he had so much faith in notaries as a 
 class that he placed himself in Roguin's hands without admit- 
 ting a doubt of him. Thanks to this advice, Cesar started 
 business with the eleven thousand francs brought him by Con- 
 stance; and would not have "changed places" with the 
 First Consul, however brilliant Napoleon's lot might seem 
 to be. 
 
 At first the Birotteau establishment had but one servant- 
 maid. They lodged on the mezzanine floor above the store. 
 In this sort of den, passably furnished by an upholsterer, the 
 newly wedded pair entered upon a perennial honeymoon. 
 Mme. Cesar at her cash desk was a marvel to see. Her 
 famous beauty exercised an enormous influence on the sales ; 
 the dandies of the Empire talked of nothing but the lovely 
 Mme. Birotteau. If Cesar's political principles were tainted 
 with royalism, it was acknowledged that his business princi- 
 ples were above suspicion ; and if some of his fellow-tradesmen 
 envied him his luck, he was believed to deserve it. That 
 shot on the steps of the church of Saint-Roch had gained him 
 a certain reputation he was looked upon as a brave man, and
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 33 
 
 a man deep in political secrets ; though he had nothing of a 
 soldier's courage in his composition, and not even a rudi- 
 mentary political notion in his head. 
 
 On these data the good folk of the arrondissement made 
 him a captain of the National Guard, but he was cashiered by 
 Napoleon (according to Birotteau, that matter of Vendmiaire 
 still rankled in the First Consul's mind), and thenceforward 
 Cesar was invested with a certain halo of martyrdom, cheaply 
 acquired, which made him interesting to opponents and gave 
 him a certain importance. 
 
 Here, in brief, is the history of this household, so happy in 
 itself, and disturbed by none but the ever-recurring business 
 cares. 
 
 During the first year, Cesar instructed his wife in all the 
 ins and outs of the perfumery business, which she was ad- 
 mirably quick to grasp ; she might have been brought into the 
 world for that sole purpose, so well did she adapt herself to 
 her customers. The result of the stocktaking at the end of 
 the year alarmed the ambitious perfumer. After deducting all 
 expenses, he might perhaps hope, in twenty years' time, to 
 make the modest sum of a hundred thousand francs, the price 
 of his felicity. He determined then and there to find some 
 speedier road to fortune, and, by way of a beginning, to be a 
 manufacturer as well as a retailer. 
 
 Acting against his wife's counsel, he took the lease of a 
 shed on some building land in the Faubourg du Temple, and 
 painted up thereon, in huge letters, CSAR BIROTTEAU'S FAC- 
 TORY. He enticed a workman from Grasse, and with him 
 began to manufacture several kinds of soap, essences, and 
 eau-de-cologne, on the system of half-profits. The partnership 
 only lasted six months and ended in a loss, which he had to 
 sustain alone ; but Birotteau did not lose heart. He meant to 
 obtain a result at any price, if it were only to escape a scold- 
 ing from his wife; and, indeed, he confessed to her afterward 
 that, in those days of despair, his head used to boil like a pot 
 3
 
 34 CESAR BIROTTEAff. 
 
 on the fire, and that many a time, but for his religious princi- 
 ples, he would have thrown himself into the Seine. 
 
 One day, depressed by several unsuccessful experiments, 
 he was sauntering home to dinner along the boulevards (the 
 lounger in Paris is a man in despair quite as often as a genuine 
 idler), when a book among a basketful at six sous a piece 
 caught his attention ; his eyes were attracted by the yellow, 
 dusty title-page. It ran, "Abdeker, or the Art of Preserving 
 Beauty." 
 
 Birotteau took up the work. It claimed to be a transla- 
 tion from the Arabic, but in reality it was a sort of romance 
 written by a physician in the previous century. Cesar hap- 
 pened to stumble upon a passage therein which treated of per- 
 fumes, and, with his back against a tree in the boulevard, he 
 turned the pages over till he reached a footnote, wherein the 
 learned author discoursed of the nature of the dermis and 
 epidermis. The writer showed conclusively that such and 
 such an unguent or soap often produced an effect exactly op- 
 posite to that intended, and the ointment, or the soap, acted 
 as a tonic upon a skin that required a lenitive treatment, or 
 vice vers&. 
 
 Birotteau saw a fortune in the book, and bought it. Yet, 
 feeling little confidence in his unaided lights, he went to Vau- 
 quelin, the celebrated chemist, and in all simplicity asked 
 him how to compose a double cosmetic which should produce 
 the required effect upon the human epidermis in either case. 
 The really learned men so truly great in this sense that they 
 can never receive in their lifetime all the fame that should 
 reward vast labors like theirs are almost always helpful and 
 kindly to the poor in intellect. So it was with Vauquelin. 
 He came to the assistance of the perfumer, gave him a formula 
 for a paste to whiten the hands, and allowed him to style him- 
 self its inventor. It was this cosmetic that Birotteau called 
 the Superfine Pate des Sultanes. The more thoroughly to 
 accomplish his purpose, he used the recipe for the paste for a
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 35 
 
 wash for the complexion, which he called the Carminative 
 Toilet Lotion. 
 
 He took a hint from the Little Sailor, and was the first 
 among perfumers to make the lavish use of placards, hand- 
 bills, and divers kinds of advertisements, which, perhaps not 
 undeservedly, are called quackery. The Pate des Sultanes 
 and the Carminative Toilet Lotion were introduced to the 
 polite world and to commerce by gorgeous placards, with the 
 words APPROVED BY THE INSTITUTE at the head. The effect 
 of this formula, employed thus for the first time, was magical. 
 Not France only, but the face of Europe was covered with 
 flaming proclamations, yellow, scarlet, and blue, which in- 
 formed the world that the sovereign lord of the Queen of 
 Roses manufactured, kept in stock, and supplied everything 
 in his line of business at moderate charges. 
 
 At a time when the east was the one topic of conversation, 
 in a country where every man has a natural turn for the part 
 of a sultan, and every woman is no less minded to become a 
 sultana, the idea of giving to any cosmetic such a name as the 
 Pate des Sultanes might have occurred to any ordinary man, 
 it needed no cleverness to foresee its fascination ; but the 
 public always judges by results, and Birotteau's reputation 
 for business ability but grew the more when he indited a pros- 
 pectus, and the very absurdity of its language contributed to 
 its success. In France we only laugh at men and things who 
 are talked about, and those who fail to make any mark are not 
 talked about. So although Birotteau's stupidity was real and 
 not feigned, people gave him credit for playing the fool on 
 purpose. 
 
 A copy of the prospectus has been procured, not without 
 difficulty, by the house of Popinot & Co., druggists in the 
 Rue des Lombards. In a more elevated connection this 
 curious piece of rhetoric would be styled an historical docu- 
 ment, and valued for the light that it sheds on contemporary 
 manners. Here, therefore, it is given :
 
 36 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU'S 
 
 SUPERFINE PATE DES SULTANES 
 
 AND 
 
 CARMINATIVE TOILET LOTION. 
 
 A MARVELOUS DISCOVERY ! 
 
 Approved by the Institute. 
 
 " For some time past a preparation for the hands and a toilet lotion 
 more efficacious than Eau-de-Cologne have been generally desired by 
 both sexes throughout Europe. After devoting long nights to the study 
 of the dermis and epidermis of both sexes for both attach, and with 
 reason, the greatest importance to the softness, suppleness, bloom, and 
 delicate surface of the skin M. Birotteau, a perfumer of high standing 
 and well known in the capital and abroad, has invented two preparations, 
 which from their first appearance have been deservedly called ' marvel- 
 ous ' by people of the highest fashion in Paris. Both preparations possess 
 astonishing properties, and act upon the skin without bringing about pre- 
 mature wrinkles, the inevitable result of the rash use of the drugs hitherto 
 compounded by ignorance and cupidity. 
 
 " These inventions are based upon the difference of temperaments, 
 which are divided into two great classes, are indicated by the difference 
 of color in the pate and the lotion ; the rose-colored preparations being 
 intended for the dermis and epidermis of persons of lymphatic constitu- 
 tion, and the white for those endowed with a sanguine temperament. 
 
 " The pate is called the PATE DES SULTANES, because the specific was 
 in the first instance invented for the Seraglio by an Arab physician. It 
 has been approved by the Institute on the report of our illustrious chemist 
 Vauquelin, and the lotion, likewise approved, is compounded upon the 
 same principles. 
 
 " The Pate des Sultanes, an invaluable preparation, which exhales the 
 sweetest fragrance, dissipates the most obstinate freckles, whitens the skin 
 in the most stubborn cases, and represses the perspiration of the hand 
 from which women suffer no less than men. 
 
 " THE CARMINATIVE TOILET LOTION removes the slight pimples
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 87 
 
 which sometimes appear inopportunely on ladies' faces and contravene 
 their projects for the ball ; it refreshes and revives the color by opening 
 or closing the pores of the skin in accordance with the exigencies of the 
 temperament, while its efficacy in arresting the ravages of time is so well 
 known already that many ladies, out of gratitude, call it the FRIEND OF 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 " Eau-de-Cologne is purely and simply an ordinary perfume without 
 special efficacy, while the Superfine Pate des Sultanes and the Carmina- 
 tive Toilet Lotion are two active remedies, powerful agents, perfectly 
 harmless in their operation of seconding the efforts of nature ; their per- 
 fumes, essentially balsamic and exhilarating, admirably refresh the animal 
 spirits, and charm and revive ideas. Their merits are as marvelous as 
 their simplicity; in short, to woman they offer an added charm, while a 
 means of attraction is put within the reach of man. 
 
 " The daily use of the Carminative Toilet Lotion allays the smarting 
 sensation caused by shaving, while it keeps the lips red and smooth, and 
 prevents chapping; it gradually dissipates freckles by natural means; 
 and, finally, it restores tone to the complexion. These results are the signs 
 of that perfect equilibrium of the humors of the body, which insures 
 immunity from the migraine to those who are subject to that distressing 
 complaint. In short, the Carminative Toilet Lotion, which may be used 
 in all the operations of the toilet, is a preventive of cutaneous affections, 
 by permitting free transpiration through the tissues, while imparting a per- 
 manent bloom to the skin. 
 
 " All communications should be prepaid and addressed to M. C6sar 
 Birotteau (late Ragon), Perfumer to her late majesty Queen Marie- Antoin- 
 ette, at the Queen of Roses, Rue Saint-Honor6, near the Place Venddme, 
 Paris. 
 
 " The price of the P&te is three livres per tablet, and of the Toilet lotion, 
 
 six livres per bottle. 
 
 " To prevent fraudulent imitations, M. Birotteau warns the public that 
 the wrapper of every tablet bears his signature, and that his name is 
 stamped on every bottle of the Toilet Lotion." 
 
 The success of this scheme was due, as a matter of fact 
 (though Csar did not suspect it), to Constance, who pro- 
 posed that they should send sample cases of the Carminative 
 Toilet Lotion and the Superfine Pate des Sultanes to every
 
 38 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 perfumer in France or abroad, offering, at the same time, a 
 discount of thirty per cent, as an inducement to take a gross 
 of either article at a time? 
 
 The P&te and the Lotion were really better than similar 
 cosmetics, and the simple were attracted by that distinction 
 made between the two temperaments. The discount was 
 tempting to hundreds of perfumers all over France, and each 
 would take annually three hundred gross or more of both 
 preparations ; and, if the profits on each article were small, 
 the demand was great and the output enormous. Cesar was 
 able to buy the sheds and the plot of land in the Faubourg du 
 Temple. He built a large factory there, and had the Queen 
 of Roses magnificently decorated. The household began to 
 feel the small comforts of an easier existence, and the wife 
 quaked less than heretofore. 
 
 In 1810 Mme. C6sar predicted a rise in house rents. At 
 her instance her husband took the lease of the whole house 
 above the store, and they removed from the mezzanine floor 
 (where they had begun housekeeping together) to the second 
 floor. A piece of luck which befell them about that time 
 decided Constance to shut her eyes to Birotteau's follies in 
 the matter of decorating a room for her. The perfumer was 
 made a judge of the Tribunal of Commerce. It was his char- 
 acter for integrity and conscientiousness, together with the 
 esteem in which he was held, that gained this dignity for 
 him ; thenceforward he must be considered as a notable among 
 the tradesmen of Paris. 
 
 He used to rise at five o'clock in the morning to read 
 handbooks on jurisprudence and works which treated of 
 commercial law. With his instinct for fair dealing, his up- 
 rightness, his readiness to take trouble all qualities essential 
 for the appreciation of the knotty points submitted to arbitra- 
 tion he was one of the most highly esteemed judges in the 
 Tribunal. His faults contributed no less to his reputation. 
 Cesar was so conscious of his inferiority that he was ready
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 39 
 
 and willing to take his colleagues' opinion, and they were 
 flattered by the attention with which he listened to them. 
 Some of them thought a good deal of the silent approbation 
 of such a listener, reputed to be a hard-headed man ; others 
 were delighted with his amiability and modesty, and extolled 
 him on those grounds. Those amenable to his jurisdiction 
 lauded his benevolence and conciliatory spirit, and he was 
 often called in to act as arbitrator in disputes wherein his 
 homely sense suggested to him a kind of Cadi's justice. 
 
 He managed to invent and use throughout his term of office 
 a style of his own ; it was stuffed with platitudes, interspersed 
 with trite sayings, and pieces of reasoning rounded into 
 phrases which came out without effort, and sounded like 
 eloquence in the ears of shallow people. In this way he com- 
 mended himself to the naturally mediocre majority, con- 
 demned to penal servitude for life and to views of the earth 
 earthy. 
 
 Cesar lost so much time at the Tribunal that his wife put 
 pressure upon him, and thenceforward he declined the costly 
 honor. 
 
 In the year 1813 this household, thanks to its constant 
 unity, after plodding along through life in a humdrum fashion, 
 entered upon an era of prosperity which nothing seemingly 
 ought to check. 
 
 M. and Mme. Ragon (their predecessors), Uncle Pillerault, 
 Roguin the notary, the Matifats (druggists in the Rue des 
 Lombards who supplied the Queen of Roses), Joseph Lebas 
 (a retail draper, a leading light in the Rue Saint-Denis, suc- 
 cessor to Guillaume at the Cat and Racket), Judge Popinot 
 (Mme. Ragon's brother), Chiffreville (of the firm of Protez 
 & Chiffreville), M. Cochin (a clerk of the Treasury, and a 
 sleeping partner in Matifat's business), his wife, Mme. Cochin, 
 and the Abbe Loraux (confessor and director of the devout 
 among this little circle) made up, with one or two others, the 
 number of their acquaintance. C6sar Birotteau might be a
 
 40 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Royalist, but public opinion at that time was in his favor ; 
 and, though he had scarcely a hundred thousand francs beside 
 his business, was looked upon as a very wealthy man. His 
 steady-going ways, his punctuality, his habit of paying ready 
 money for everything, of never discounting bills, while he 
 would take paper to oblige a customer of whom he was sure 
 all these things, together with his readiness to oblige, had 
 brought him a great reputation. And not only so ; he had 
 really made a good deal of money, but the building of his 
 factories had absorbed most of it, and he paid nearly twenty 
 thousand francs a year in rent. The education of their only 
 daughter, whom Constance and Cesar both idolized, had been 
 a heavy expense. Neither the husband nor the wife thought 
 of money where Cesarine's pleasure was concerned, and they 
 had never brought themselves to part with her. 
 
 Imagine the delight of the poor peasant-parvenu when he 
 heard his charming Cesarine play a sonata by Steibelt or sing 
 a ballad ; when he saw her writing French correctly, or mak- 
 ing sepia drawings of landscape, or listened while she read 
 aloud from the Racines, father and son, and explained the 
 beauties of the poetry. What happiness it was for him to live 
 again in this fair, innocent flower, not yet plucked from the 
 parent stem ; this angel, over whose growing graces and ear- 
 liest development they had watched with such passionate ten- 
 derness ; this only child, incapable of despising her father or 
 of laughing at his want of education, so much was she his 
 little daughter. 
 
 When Cesar came to Paris he had known how to read, 
 write, and cipher, and at that point his education had been 
 arrested. There had been no opportunity in his hard-working 
 life of acquiring new ideas and information beyond the per- 
 fumery trade. He had spent his time among folk to whom 
 science and literature were matters of indifference, and whose 
 knowledge was of a limited and special kind ; he himself, 
 having no time to spare for loftier studies, became perforce a
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 41 
 
 practical man. He adopted (how should he have done other- 
 wise ?) the language, errors, and opinions of the Parisian 
 tradesman who admires Moliere, Voltaire, and Rousseau on 
 hearsay, and buys their works, but never opens them ; who 
 will have it that the proper way to pronounce armoire is 
 ormoire : or means gold and moire means silk, and women's 
 dresses used almost always to be made of silk, and in their 
 cupboards they locked up silk and gold therefore, ormoire is 
 right and armoire (closet) is an innovation. Talma, Mile. 
 Mars, and other actors and actresses were millionaires ten 
 times over, and did not live like ordinary mortals : the great 
 tragedian lived on raw meat, and Mile. Mars would have a 
 fricassee of pearls now and then an idea she had taken from 
 some celebrated Egyptian actress. As to the Emperor, his 
 vest pockets were lined with leather, so that he could take a 
 handful of snuff at a time ; he used to ride at full gallop up 
 the staircase of the orangery at Versailles. Authors and artists 
 ended in the workhouse, the natural close to their eccentric 
 careers ; they were, every one of them, atheists into the bar- 
 gain, so that you had to be very careful not to admit anybody 
 of that sort into your house. Joseph Lebas used to advert 
 with horror to the story of his sister-in-law Augustine who 
 married the artist Sommervieux. Astronomers lived on spiders. 
 These bright examples of the attitude of the bourgeois mind 
 toward philology, the drama, politics, and science will throw 
 light upon its breadth of view and powers of comprehension. 
 
 Let a poet pass along the Rue des Lombards, and some 
 stray sweet scent shall set him dreaming of the east ; for him, 
 with the odor of the Khuskus grass, would come a vision of 
 Nautch girls in an eastern bath. The brilliant red lac would 
 call up thoughts of Vedic hymns, of alien creeds and castes ; 
 and at a chance contact with an ivory tusk, he would mount 
 an elephant and make love, like the king of Lahore, in a 
 muslin-curtained howdah. 
 
 But the petty tradesman does not so much as know whence
 
 42 CESAR B1ROTTEAU. 
 
 the raw materials of his business are brought. Of natural 
 history or of chemistry, Birotteau the perfumer, for instance, 
 knew nothing whatever. It is true that he regarded Vauquelin 
 as a great man, but Vauquelin was an exception. Cesar him- 
 self was about on a par with the retired grocer, who summed 
 up a discussion on the ways of growing tea by announcing 
 with a knowing air that " there are only two ways of obtain- 
 ing tea from Havre or by the overland route." And Bi- 
 rotteau thought that aloes and opium were only to be found in 
 the Rue des Lombards. People told you that attar of roses 
 came from Constantinople, but, like Eau-de-Cologne, it was 
 made in Paris. These names of foreign places were humbug ; 
 they had been invented to amuse the French nation, who 
 cannot abide anything that is made in France. A French 
 merchant has to call his discovery an English invention, or 
 people will not buy it ; it is just the same in England, the 
 druggists there tell you that things come from France. 
 
 Yet Cesar was not altogether a fool or a dunce ; an honest 
 and kind heart shed a lustre over everything that he did and 
 made his a worthy life, and a kindly deed absolves all possible 
 forms of ignorance. His unvarying success gave him assur- 
 ance ; and, in Paris, assurance, the sign of power, is taken 
 for power itself. 
 
 Cesar's wife, who had learned to know her husband's char- 
 acter during the early years of their marriage, led a life of 
 perpetual terror; she represented sound sense and foresight 
 in the partnership; she was doubt, opposition, and fear; 
 while Cesar represented boldness, ambition, activity, the 
 element of chance and undreamed-of good-luck. In spite of 
 appearances, the merchant was the weaker vessel, and it was 
 the wife who really had the patience and courage. So it had 
 come to pass trJfet a timid mediocrity, without education, 
 knowledge, or strength of character, a being who could in no- 
 wise have succeeded in the world's slipperiest places, was taken 
 for a remarkable man, a man of spirit and resolution, thanks
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 48 
 
 to his instinctive uprightness and sense of justice, to the good- 
 ness of a truly Christian soul, and love for the one woman 
 who had been his. 
 
 The public only sees results. Of all Cesar's circle, only 
 Pillerault and Judge Popinot saw beneath the surface; none 
 of the rest could pronounce on his character. Those twenty 
 or thirty friends, moreover, who met at one another's houses, 
 retailed the same platitudes, repeated the same stale common- 
 places, and each one among them regarded himself as superior 
 to his company. There was a rivalry among the women in 
 dinners and dress ; each one summed up her husband in some 
 contemptuous word. 
 
 Mme. Birotteau alone had the good sense to show respect 
 and deference to her husband in public. She saw in him the 
 man who, in spite of his private weaknesses, had made the 
 wealth and earned the esteem which she shared along with him ; 
 though she sometimes privately wondered if all men who 
 were spoken of as superior intellects were like her husband. 
 This attitude of hers contributed not a little to maintain the 
 respect and esteem shown by others to the merchant, in a 
 country where wives are quick-witted enough to belittle their 
 husbands and to complain of them. 
 
 The first days of the year 1814, so fatal to Imperial France, 
 were memorable in the Birotteau household for two events, 
 which would have passed almost unnoticed anywhere else; 
 but they were of a kind to leave a deep impression on simple 
 souls like Cesar and his wife, who, looking back upon their 
 past, found no painful memories. 
 
 They had engaged a young man of two-and-twenty, Fer- 
 dinand du Tillet by name, as first assistant. The lad had 
 come to them from another house in the perfumery trade, 
 where they had declined to give him a percentage on the 
 profits. He was thought to be a genius, and he had been very 
 anxious to go to the Queen of Roses, knowing the place, and 
 the people, and their ways. Birotteau had engaged him at a
 
 44 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 salary of a thousand francs, meaning that du Tillet should be 
 his successor. This Ferdinand du Tillet was destined to ex- 
 ercise so great an influence over the family fortunes that a few 
 words must be said about him. 
 
 He had begun life simply on his Christian name of Ferdi- 
 nand. There was an immense advantage in anonymity, he 
 thought, at a time when Napoleon was pressing the young men 
 of every family into the army; but if he had no name, he had 
 been born somewhere, and owed his birth to some cruel or 
 voluptuous fancy. Here, in brief, are the few facts known as 
 to his name and designation. 
 
 In 1793 a poor girl of Tillet, a little hamlet near the An- 
 delys, bore a child one night in the cure's garden at Tillet, 
 tapped on the shutters, and then drowned herself. The good 
 man received the child, named him after the saint of that day 
 in the calendar, and reared him as if he had been his own son. 
 In 1804 the cure died, and the little property that he left was 
 insufficient to complete the education thus begun. Ferdinand, 
 thrown upon Paris, there led the life of a freebooter, amid 
 chances that might bring him to the scaffold or to fortune, to 
 the bar, the army, commerce, or private life. Ferdinand, 
 compelled to live like a very Figaro, first became a commer- 
 cial traveler, then, after traveling round France and seeing 
 life, became a perfumer's assistant, with a fixed determination 
 to make his way at all costs. In 1813 he considered it ex- 
 pedient to ascertain his age and to acquire a status as a citizen ; 
 he, therefore, petitioned the Tribunal of the Andelys to 
 transfer the entry of his baptism from the church records to 
 the mayor's register; and, further, he asked that they should 
 insert the surname of du Tillet, which he had assumed, on 
 the ground of his exposure at birth in the commune of that 
 name. 
 
 He had neither father nor mother; he had no guardian save 
 the procureur-imperial ; he was alone in the world, and owed 
 no account of himself to any one ; society was to him a harsh
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 45 
 
 stepdame, and he showed no mercy in his dealings with so- 
 ciety, knew no guide but his own interests, found all means 
 of success permissible. The Norman, armed with these dan- 
 gerous capacities, combined with his desire to succeed the 
 crabbed faults for which the natives of his province are, rightly 
 or wrongly, blamed. Beneath his insinuating manner there 
 was a contentious spirit ; he was a most formidable antagonist 
 a blustering litigant, disputing another's least rights auda- 
 ciously, while he never yielded a point himself. He had time 
 on his side, and wearied out his opponents by his inflexible 
 pertinacity. His principal merits were those of the Scapins 
 of old comedy ; he possessed their fertility of resource, their 
 skill in sailing near the wind, their itch to seize on what seems 
 good to have and hold. Indeed, he meant to apply to his 
 poverty a motto which the Abbe Terray applied in statecraft ; 
 he would make a clean record by turning honest at some 
 time later on. 
 
 He was endowed with strenuous energy, with the military 
 intrepidity which demands good deeds or bad indifferently of 
 everybody, justifying his demand by the theory of personal 
 interest ; he was bound to succeed ; he had too great a scorn 
 of human nature ; he believed too firmly that all men have 
 their price ; he was too little troubled by scruples as to the 
 choice of means, when all were alike permissible ; his eyes 
 were too fixedly set upon the success and wealth that should 
 purchase absolution for a system of morals which worked thus 
 not to be successful. 
 
 Such a man, between the convict's prison on the one hand 
 and millions upon the other, must of necessity become vindic- 
 tive, domineering, swift in his decisions, a dissembling Crom- 
 well scheming to cut off the head of probity. A light, mock- 
 ing wit concealed the depth of his character; mere clerk 
 though he was, his ambition knew no bounds ; he had com- 
 prehended society in one glance of hatred, and said to himself, 
 " You are in my power." He had vowed that he would not
 
 46 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 marry before he was forty years old. He kept his word with 
 himself. 
 
 As to Ferdinand's outward appearance, he was a slim, well- 
 shaped young fellow, with adaptable manners that enabled 
 him at need .to take any tone through the whole gamut of 
 society. At first sight his weasel face was not displeasing ; 
 but, after more observation, you detected the strange expres- 
 sions which are visible on the surface of those who are not at 
 peace with themselves, or who hear at times the warning 
 voice of conscience. His hard, high color glowed under the 
 soft Norman skin. There was a furtive look in the wall-eyes, 
 lined with silver leaf, which grew terrible when they were 
 fixed full on his victim. His voice was husky, as if he had 
 been speaking for long. The thin lips were not unpleasing, 
 but the sharply-pointed nose and slightly-rounded forehead 
 revealed a defect of race. Indeed, the coloring of his hair, 
 which looked as if it had been dyed black, indicated the 
 social half-breed, who had his cleverness from a dissolute 
 great lord, his low ideas from the peasant girl, the victim of 
 seduction ; who owed his knowledge to an incomplete educa- 
 tion ; whose vices were those of the waif and stray. 
 
 Birotteau learned, to his unbounded amazement, that his 
 assistant went out very elegantly arrayed, came in very late, 
 and went to balls at bankers' and notaries' houses. These 
 habits found no favor with Cesar. To his way of thinking 
 an assistant should study the ledgers and think of nothing 
 but the business. The perfumer had no patience with folly. 
 He spoke gently to du Tillet about wearing such fine linen, 
 about visiting cards, which bore the name F. du Tillet 
 manners and customs which, according to his commercial 
 jurisprudence, should be confined to the fashionable world. 
 
 But Ferdinand had established himself in this house to play 
 Tartuflfe to Birotteau's Orgon ; he paid court to Mme. Cesar, 
 tried to seduce her, and, gauging his employer with appalling 
 quickness, judged him as his wife had previously judged. Du
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU, 47 
 
 Tillet only said what he meant to say, and was both reserved 
 and discreet ; but he unveiled opinions of mankind and views 
 of life in a fashion that dismayed a timorous, conscientious 
 woman, who thought it a sin to do the slightest wrong to her 
 neighbor. In spite of the tact which Mme. Birotteau em- 
 ployed, du Tillet felt her contempt for him ; and Constance, 
 to whom Ferdinand had written several amorous epistles, soon 
 noticed a change in the manners of her assistant. He began 
 to behave presumptuously, to give others the impression that 
 there was an understanding between them. Without inform- 
 ing her husband of her private reasons, she recommended him 
 to dismiss the man, and Birotteau was of his wife's opinion 
 on this head. Du Tillet's dismissal was resolved upon ; but 
 one evening, on the Saturday before he gave notice, Birotteau 
 balanced his books, as he was wont to do every month, and 
 found that he was three thousand francs short. He was in 
 terrible consternation. It was not so much the actual loss 
 that affected him as the suspicion that hung over his three 
 assistants and the servant, the errand boy, and the workmen. 
 On whom was he to lay the blame? Mme. Birotteau was 
 never away from the cash desk. The book-keeper, who 
 lodged in the house, was a young man of eighteen, Popinot 
 by name, a nephew of M. Ragon, and honesty itself. Indeed, 
 on Popinot's own showing the money was missing, for the 
 cash did not agree with the balance. Husband and wife 
 agreed to say nothing, and to watch every one in the house. 
 
 Monday came, and their friends came to spend the evening. 
 Every family in this set entertained in turn. While they 
 played at cards, Roguin the notary put down on the table 
 one old louis-d'or which Mme. Cesar had taken some days 
 before of a bride, Mme. d'Espart. 
 
 " Have you been robbing the poor-box?" asked the per- 
 fumer, laughing. 
 
 Roguin said that he had won the money of du Tillet at a 
 banker's house on the previous evening, and du Tillet bore
 
 48 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 him out in this without a blush. As for the perfumer, he 
 turned crimson. When the visitors had gone, and Ferdinand 
 was about to go to bed, Birotteau called him down into the 
 shop, on pretense of business to discuss. 
 
 " We are three thousand francs short in the cash, du Tillet," 
 the good man said, " and I cannot suspect anybody. The 
 matter of the old louis-d'or seems to be too much against you 
 to be passed over entirely, so we will not go to bed till we 
 have found out the mistake, for, after all, it can be nothing 
 but a mistake. Very likely you took the louis on account of 
 your salary." 
 
 Du Tillet owned to having taken the louis. The perfumer 
 thereupon opened the ledger ; the assistant's account had not 
 yet been debited with the sum. 
 
 " I was in a hurry. I ought to have asked Popinot to enter 
 it," said Ferdinand. 
 
 " Quite true," said Birotteau, disconcerted by this off-hand 
 coolness. The Norman had taken the measure of the good 
 folk among whom he had come with a view to making his 
 fortune. 
 
 The perfumer and his assistant spent the night in checking 
 the books, the worthy merchant knowing all the while that it 
 was trouble thrown away. As he came and went he slipped 
 three bank-notes of a thousand francs each into the safe, 
 pressing them between the side of the drawer and the groove 
 in the safe ; then he pretended to be tired out, seemed to be 
 fast asleep, and snored. Du Tillet awakened him in triumph, 
 and showed exaggerated delight over the discovery of the 
 mistake. 
 
 The next morning Birotteau scolded little Popinot and 
 Mme. Cesar in public, and waxed wrathful over their care- 
 lessness. 
 
 A fortnight later, Ferdinand du Tillet entered a stock- 
 broker's office. The perfumery trade did not suit him, he 
 said ; he wanted to study banking. At the same time, he
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 49 
 
 spoke of Mme. Cesar in a way that gave the impression that 
 motives of jealousy had procured his dismissal. 
 
 A few months later du Tillet came to see his late employer, 
 and asked him to be his surety for twenty thousand francs, to 
 complete the guarantees required in a matter which was to 
 put him in the way of making his fortune. Seeing Birotteau's 
 surprise at this piece of effrontery, du Tillet scowled and 
 asked the perfumer whether he had no confidence in him. 
 Matifat and two men with whom Birotteau did business were 
 there at the time ; his indignation did not escape them, 
 though he controlled his anger in their presence. Perhaps 
 du Tillet had returned to honesty; a gambling debt or some 
 woman in distress might have been at the root of that error 
 of his ; and the fact that an honest man publicly declined 
 to have anything to do with him might launch a man, still 
 young, and perhaps penitent, on a career of crime and mis- 
 fortune. The angel of mercy took up the pen and set his 
 signature on du Tillet's papers, saying as he did so that he 
 was heartily glad to do a small service for a lad who had 
 been very useful to him. The color came into the good 
 man's face as he told that kindly lie. Du Tillet could not 
 meet his eyes, and doubtless at that moment vowed an eternal 
 enmity, the truceless hate that the angels of darkness bear the 
 angels of light. 
 
 Du Tillet kept his balance so skillfully upon the tight-rope 
 of speculation that he was always fashionably dressed, and 
 was apparently rich long before he was rich in reality. When 
 he set up a cabriolet he never put it down again ; he held 
 his own in the lofty spheres where pleasure and business are 
 mingled, among the Turcarets of the epoch for whom the 
 crush-room of the opera is a branch of the Stock Exchange. 
 
 Thanks to Mme. Roguin, whom he had met among the 
 Birotteaus' circle, he became rapidly known in high financial 
 regions. Ferdinand du Tillet had attained a prosperity in 
 nowise delusive ; he was on an excellent footing with the firm
 
 50 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 of Nucingen, to whom Roguin had introduced him ; and he 
 had not been slow to secure the Keller connection and to 
 make friends among the upper banking world. Nobody knew 
 where the young fellow found the vast capital which he could 
 command, but they set down his luck to his intelligence and 
 honesty. 
 
 The Restoration made a personage of Cesar Birotteau, and, 
 in the vortex of political crises, he not unnaturally forgot 
 these two cross-events in his household. The tenacity with 
 which he had held to his opinions for though since his 
 wound it had been a strictly passive tenacity, he still held to 
 his principles for decency's sake had brought him patronage 
 in high quarters, precisely because he had asked for nothing. 
 He received an appointment as major in the National Guard, 
 though he did not so much as know a single word of com- 
 mand. 
 
 In 1815 Napoleon, inimical as ever to Birotteau, ejected 
 him from his post. During the Hundred Days, Birotteau be- 
 came the bete noire (wild boar; i.e., butt) of the Liberals in 
 his quarter ; for party feeling began to run high in that year 
 among the commercial class, who hitherto had been unani- 
 mous in voting for peace for business reasons. 
 
 After the second Restoration, the Royalist government 
 found it necessary to manipulate the municipal body. The 
 prefect wanted to transform Birotteau into a mayor, but, 
 thanks to his wife, the perfumer accepted the less conspicuous 
 position of deputy-mayor. His modesty added not a little 
 to his reputation, and brought him the friendship of the 
 mayor, M. Flamet de la Billardiere. Birotteau, who had 
 seen him in the Queen of Roses in the days when Royalist 
 plotters used to meet at Ragon's store, suggested his name to 
 the prefect of the Seine, who consulted the perfumer on the 
 choice. M. and Mme. Birotteau were never forgotten in 
 the mayor's invitations, and Mme. Birotteau often asked for 
 charitable subscriptions at Saint-Roch in good society.
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 61 
 
 La Billardiere warmly supported Birotteau when it was 
 proposed to distribute the crosses awarded to the municipal 
 body ; when names were being weighed he laid stress upon 
 Cesar's wound received at Saint-Roch, on his attachment to 
 the Bourbons, and on the respect in which Birotteau was 
 held. So the minister who, while he endeavored to undo the 
 work of Napoleon, was wishful to make creatures of his own, 
 and, to secure partisans for the Bourbons from the ranks of 
 commerce and among men of art and science, included Bi- 
 rotteau in the list of those to be distinguished. 
 
 This favor, together with the glory which C6sar already 
 shed around him in his arrondissement, put him in a position 
 that was bound to magnify the ideas of a man who had met 
 hitherto with nothing but success ; and when the mayor told 
 him of the approaching distinction, it was the final argument 
 which urged the perfumer into the speculation which he had 
 just disclosed to his wife; for it opened up a way of quitting 
 the perfumery trade and of rising to the upper ranks of the 
 Parisian bourgeoisie. 
 
 Cesar was forty years old. Hard work at his factory had 
 set one or two premature wrinkles in his face and slightly 
 silvered the long, bushy hair, on which the constant pressure 
 of his hat had impressed a glossy ring. The outlines of his 
 hair described five points on the forehead, which told a story 
 of simplicity of life. There was nothing alarming about the 
 bushy eyebrows, for the blue eyes, with their clear, straight- 
 forward expression, were in keeping with the honest man's 
 brow. His nose, broken at his birth and blunt at the tip, 
 gave him the astonished look of the typical Parisian cockney. 
 His lips were very thick, his chin heavy and straight. It was 
 a high-colored face with square outlines, and a peculiar dispo- 
 sition of the wrinkles altogether it was of the ingenuous, 
 shrewd, peasant type; and his evident physical strength, his 
 sturdy limbs, broad shoulders, and big feet, all denoted the 
 countryman transported to Paris. The large hands, covered
 
 52 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 with hair, the creases in the plump finger-joints, and broad, 
 square-shaped nails at the tips, would alone have attested his 
 origin if there had not been signs of it about his whole 
 person. 
 
 He always wore the bland smile with which a storekeeper 
 welcomes a customer; but this smile, assumed for business 
 purposes in his case, was the outward and visible expression 
 of inward content and reflected the serenity of a kindly soul. 
 His distrust of his species was strictly confined to the busi- 
 ness; he parted company with his shrewdness as he came away 
 from the Exchange or shut his ledger. Suspicion for him was 
 one of the exigencies of business, like his printed bill-heads. 
 
 There was a comical mixture of assurance, fatuity, and good- 
 nature in his face, which gave it a certain character of its own, 
 and redeemed it, to some extent, from the vapid uniformity 
 of Parisian bourgeois countenances. But for that expression 
 of artless wonder and trustfulness, people would have stood 
 too much in awe of him ; it was thus that he paid his quota 
 of absurdity that put him on a footing of equality with his 
 kind. 
 
 It was a habit of his to cross his hands behind him while 
 speaking ; and, when he meant to say something particularly 
 civil or striking, he gradually raised himself on tiptoe once or 
 twice, and came down heavily upon his heels, as if to em- 
 phasize his remark. Sometimes in the height of a discussion 
 he would suddenly swing himself round, take a step or two as 
 if in search of objections, and then turn abruptly upon his 
 opponent. He never interrupted anybody, and not seldom 
 fell a victim to his finer punctilious observance of good man- 
 ners, for others did not scruple to take the words out of his 
 mouth, and when the worthy man came away he had been 
 unable to put in a word. 
 
 In his wide experience of business he had acquired habits 
 which others sometimes described as a mania. For instance, 
 if a bill had not been met, he would put it in the hands of the
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 53 
 
 process-server and gave himself no further trouble about it, 
 save to receive the capital, interest, and court expenses. The 
 matter might drive the customer into bankruptcy, and then 
 Cesar went no further. He never attended a meeting of 
 creditors ; his name never appeared in any list ; he kept his 
 claims. This system, together with an implacable contempt 
 for bankrupts, had been handed down to him by old M. 
 Ragon, who, after a long commercial experience, had come 
 to the conclusion that the meagre and uncertain dividend 
 paid under the circumstances was a very poor return for the 
 time wasted in law proceedings, and held that he could spend 
 his time to better purpose than in running about after excuses 
 for dishonesty. 
 
 " If the bankrupt is an honest man and makes his way again, 
 he will pay you," M. Ragon was wont to say. "If he has 
 nothing, and is simply unfortunate, what is the good of tor- 
 menting him? And if he is a rogue, you will get nothing in 
 any case. If you have a name for being hard on people, they 
 will not try to make terms with you ; and so long as they can 
 pay at all, you are the man whom they will pay." 
 
 C6sar kept his appointments punctually ; he would wait for 
 ten minutes, and nothing would induce him to stay any 
 longer, a characteristic which was a cause of punctuality in 
 others who had to do with him. 
 
 His dress was in keeping with his appearance and habits. 
 No power on earth would have induced him to resign the white 
 lawn neck-cloths with drooping ends, embroidered by his wife 
 or daughter. His white drill vests, adorned with a double row 
 of buttons, descended low upon his prominent abdomen, for 
 Birotteau was inclined to corpulence. He wore blue breeches, 
 black silk stockings, and walking-shoes adorned with ribbon 
 bows that were apt to come unfastened. Out of doors his 
 too ample green overcoat and broad-brimmed hat gave him a 
 somewhat Quakerly appearance. On Sunday evenings he 
 wore a coat of chestnut-brown cloth, with long tails and ample
 
 54 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 skirts, and black silk breeches ; the corners of the inevitable 
 vest were turned down a little to display the pleated shirt- 
 front beneath, and there were gold buckles on his shoes. 
 Until the year 1819 his person was further adorned by two 
 parallel lines of watch-chain, but he only wore the second 
 when in full dress. 
 
 Such was Cesar Birotteau a worthy soul, from whom the 
 mysterious powers that preside at the making of man had 
 withheld the faculty of seeing life or politics as a whole, and 
 the capacity of rising above the social level of the lower 
 middle class ; in all things he was destined to follow in the 
 ruts of the old road ; he had caught his opinions like an in- 
 fection, and he put them in practice without examining into 
 them. But if he was blind, he was a good man ; if he was 
 not very clever, he was deeply religious, and his heart was 
 pure. In that heart there shone but one love, the light of 
 his life and its motive-power; for his desire to rise in the 
 world, like the meagre knowledge that he had learned in it, 
 had its source in his love for his wife and daughter. 
 
 As for Mme. C6sar, at that time, at the age of thirty-seven, 
 she so exactly resembled the Venus of Milo that, when the 
 Due de Riviere sent the beautiful statue to France, all her 
 acquaintance recognized the likeness. A few short months, 
 and trouble so swiftly spread its sallow tinge over the dazzling 
 fairness of her face, so ruthlessly darkened and hollowed the 
 blue-veined circles in which the beautiful hazel eyes were set, 
 that she came to look like an aged Madonna ; for in the wreck 
 of her beauty she never lost her sweet ingenuousness, though 
 there was a sad expression in the clear eyes ; and it was im- 
 possible not to see in her a still beautiful woman, staid in her 
 demeanor and full of dignity. Moreover, during this ball of 
 Cesar's planning, her beauty was to shine forth radiantly and 
 exquisitely adorned for the last time to the admiration of 
 beholders. 
 
 Every life has its apogee ; there is a time in every existence
 
 CESAR B1ROTTEAU. 65 
 
 when active causes bring about exactly proportionate results. 
 This high-noon of life, when the vital forces are evenly bal- 
 anced and put forth in all the glory of their strength, is com- 
 mon not only to organic life ; you will find it even in the 
 history of cities and nations and institutions and ideas, in 
 commerce, and in every kind of human effort, for, like noble 
 families and dynasties, these too have their birth and rise and 
 fall. 
 
 How comes it that this argument of waxing and waning is 
 applied so inexorably to everything throughout the system of 
 things ? to death as to life ; for in times of pestilence death 
 runs his course abates, returns again, lies dormant. Who 
 knows but that our globe itself is a rocket somewhat longer 
 lived than other fireworks ? 
 
 History, telling over and over again the reasons of the rise 
 and fall of all that has been in the world in the past, might 
 be a warning to man that there is a moment when the active 
 play of all his faculties must cease ; but neither conquerors, 
 nor actors, nor women, nor writers heed the wholesome ad- 
 monition. Cesar Birotteau, who should have looked upon 
 himself as having reached the apogee of his career, mistook 
 the summit for the starting-point. He did not know the 
 reason of the downfalls of which history is full ; nay, neither 
 kings nor peoples have made any effort to engrave in imper- 
 ishable characters the causes of the catastrophes of which the 
 history of royal and of commercial houses affords such con- 
 spicuous examples. Why should not pyramids be reared anew 
 to put us constantly in mind of the immutable law which should 
 govern the affairs of nations as well as of individuals : When 
 the effect produced is no longer in direct relation with nor in 
 exact proportion to the cause, disorganization sets in ? And yet 
 these monuments are all about us in legends, in the stones 
 that cry out to us of a past, and bear perpetual record to the 
 freaks of a stubborn Fate whose hand sweeps away our illu- 
 sions, and makes it clear to us that the greatest events resolve
 
 56 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 themselves at last into an Idea, and the " Tale of Troy " and 
 the " Story of Napoleon " are poems and nothing more. 
 
 Would that this story might be the Epic of the Bourgeoisie ; 
 there are dealings of fate with man which inspire no voice, 
 because they lack grandeur, yet are even for that very reason 
 immense : for this is not the story of an isolated soul, but of 
 a whole nation of sorrows. 
 
 Cesar as he dropped off to sleep feared that his wife might 
 bring forward some peremptory objection in the morning, 
 and laid it upon himself to wake betimes and settle every- 
 thing. As soon as it grew light, he rose noiselessly, leaving 
 his wife asleep, dressed quickly, and went down into the shop 
 just as the boy was taking down the numbered shutters. 
 Birotteau, finding himself in solitary possession, stood wait- 
 ing in the doorway for the assistants, watching critically mean- 
 while the way in which Raguet the errand boy discharged his 
 duties, for Birotteau was an old hand. The weather was 
 magnificent in spite of the cold. 
 
 " Popinot, fetch your hat and your walking shoes, and tell 
 Monsieur Celestin to come down ; you and I will go to the 
 Tuileries and have a little talk together," said he, when 
 Anselme came. 
 
 Popinot, that admirable foil to du Tillet, whom one of 
 those happy chances which induce a belief in a protecting 
 providence had established in Cesar's houshold, will play so 
 great a part in this story that it is necessary to give a sketch 
 of him here. 
 
 Mme. Ragon's maiden name was Popinot. She had two 
 brothers. One of them, the youngest of the family, was at 
 the present time a judge in the Tribunal of First Instance of 
 the Seine. The elder had gone into the wool-trade, had lost 
 his patrimony, and died, leaving his only son to the Ragons 
 and his brother the judge, who had no children. The child's 
 mother had died at his birth. 
 
 Mme. Ragon had found this situation for her nephew, and
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 57 
 
 hoped to see him succeed to Birotteau. Anselme Popinot 
 (for that was his name) was short and club-footed, a dispensa- 
 tion common to Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and Talleyrand, 
 lest others thus afflicted should be too much discouraged. He 
 had the brilliant complexion covered with freckles which 
 usually distinguishes red-haired people ; but a clear forehead, 
 eyes like agates streaked with gray, a pretty mouth, a pale 
 face, the charm of youthful diffidence, and a want of confi- 
 dence in himself, due to his physical deformity, aroused a 
 kindly feeling toward him in others. We love the weak, and 
 people felt interested in Popinot. 
 
 Little Popinot, as everybody called him, took after his 
 family. They were people essentially religious, whose virtues 
 were informed by intelligence, whose quiet lives were full of 
 good deeds. So the child, brought up by his uncle the judge, 
 united all the qualities pleasing in youth ; he was a good and 
 affectionate boy, a little bashful, but full of enthusiasm ; 
 docile as a lamb, but hard-working, faithful, and steady; 
 endowed with all the virtues of a Christian in the early days 
 of the church. 
 
 When Popinot heard of the proposed walk to the Tuileries, 
 the most unlooked-for remark that his awe-inspiring employer 
 could have made at that time of day, his thoughts went to his 
 own settlement in life, and thence all at once to Cesarine, the 
 real queen of roses, the living sign of the house. He had 
 fallen in love on his very first day in the shop, two months 
 before du Tillet's departure. He was obliged to stop more 
 than once on his way upstairs, his heart so swelled and his 
 pulses beat so hard. 
 
 In another moment he came down, followed by Celestin, 
 the first assistant. Then Anselme and his employer set out 
 without a word for the Tuileries. 
 
 Anselme Popinot was just twenty-one years of age ; Birotteau 
 had married at one-and-twenty, so Anselme saw no hindrance 
 to his marriage with Cesarine on that score. It was her beauty
 
 58 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 and her father's wealth that set enormous obstacles in the 
 way of such ambitious wishes as his, but love grows with every 
 up-leaping of hope ; the wilder the hopes, the more he clung 
 to them, and his longings grew the stronger for the distance 
 between him and his love. Happy boy, who in a time when 
 all and sundry are brought down to the same level, when 
 every head is crowned with a precisely similar hat, can still 
 contrive to create a distance between a perfumer's daughter 
 and himself the scion of an old Parisian family ! And he 
 was happy, in spite of his doubts and fears : every day of his 
 life he sat next to Cesarine at dinner ; he set about his busi- 
 ness with a zeal and enthusiasm that left no element of 
 drudgery in his work ; he did everything in the name of 
 Cesarine, and never wearied. At one-and-twenty devotion is 
 food sufficient for love. 
 
 " He will be a merchant some of these days ; he will get 
 on," Cesar would say, speaking of Anselme to Mme. Ragon, 
 and he would praise Anselme's activity in the filling-out de- 
 partment, extolling his quickness at comprehending the mys- 
 teries of the craft, relating how that, when goods were to be 
 sent off in a hurry, Anselme would roll up his sleeves and work 
 bare-armed at packing the cases and nailing down the lids, 
 and the lame lad would do more than all the rest of them put 
 together. 
 
 There was another serious obstacle in the way of the or- 
 phan's success. It was a well-known and recognized fact that 
 Alexandre Crottat, Roguin's head clerk, the son of a rich 
 farmer of la Brie, hoped to marry Cesarine ; and there were 
 other difficulties yet more formidable. In the depths of 
 Popinot's heart there lay buried sad secrets which set a yet 
 wider gulf between him and Cesarine. The Ragons, on whom 
 he might have counted, were in difficulties ; the orphan boy 
 was happy to take them his scanty salary to help them to eke out 
 a living. But, in spite of all these things, he hoped to suc- 
 ceed ! More than once he had caught a glance from Cesarine,
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 5 
 
 and beneath her apparent pride he had dared to read a secret 
 thought full of tender hopes in the depths of her blue eyes. 
 So he worked on, set in a ferment by that gleam of hope, 
 tremulous and mute, like all young men in a like case when 
 life is breaking into blossom. 
 
 "Popinot," the good man began, "is your aunt quite 
 well?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Somehow she has seemed to me to have an anxious look for 
 some time past ; can something have gone askew with them ? 
 Look here, my boy, you must not make a stranger of me, that 
 am almost like one of the family, for I have known your Uncle 
 Ragon these five-and-twenty years. When I first came to 
 him I was fresh from the country and wore a pair of hob- 
 nailed boots. They call the place the Treasury Farm, but all 
 I brought away with me was one gold louis which my god- 
 mother gave me, Madame the late Marquise d'Uxelles, who 
 was related to le Due and la Duchesse de Lenoncourt, who 
 are among our patrons. So I always say a prayer every Sun- 
 day for her and all the family ; and her niece, Madame de 
 Mortsauf, in Touraine, has all her perfumery from us. Cus- 
 tomers are always coming to me through them. There is 
 Monsieur de Vandenesse, for example, who spends twelve 
 hundred francs with us every year. One ought to be grateful 
 from prudence, if one is not grateful by nature ; but I am a 
 well-wisher to you, without an after-thought and for your own 
 sake." 
 
 " Ah, sir, if you will allow me to say so, you had a level 
 head." 
 
 " No, my boy, no ; that won't do everything. I don't say 
 that my headpiece isn't as good as another's, but I stuck to 
 honesty through thick and thin ; I was steady, and I never 
 loved any one but my wife. Love is a fine vehicle, a neat 
 expression of Monsieur de Villele's yesterday at the Tribune." 
 
 " Love ! " cried Popinot. " Oh ! sir, do you ? "
 
 60 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 " Stop a bit, stop a bit ! There is old Roguin coming 
 along the further side of the Place Louis XV. at eight o'clock 
 in the morning. What can the old boy be about?" said 
 Cesar to himself, and he forgot Anselme Popinot and the 
 hazelnut oil. 
 
 His wife's theories came up in his memory, and, instead of 
 turning into the garden of the Tuileries, he walked on to meet 
 the notary. Anselme followed at a distance, quite at a loss 
 to explain the sudden interest which Birotteau appeared to 
 take in a matter so unimportant ; but very happy in the en- 
 couragement which he derived from his employer's little 
 speech about hobnailed boots and louis-d'or, and love. 
 
 Roguin, a tall, burly man, with a pimpled face, an almost 
 bald forehead, and black hair, had not formerly been lacking 
 in comeliness ; and he had been young and ambitious once, 
 too, and from a mere clerk had come to be a notary ; but now 
 a keen observer would have read in his face the exhaustion 
 and fatigue of a jaded seeker after pleasure. When a man 
 plunges into the mire of excess, his face hardly escapes with- 
 out a splash, and the lines engraved on Roguin's countenance 
 and its florid color were alike ignoble. Instead of the pure 
 glow which suffuses the tissues of men of temperate life and 
 imparts a bloom of health, there was visible in Roguin the 
 tainted blood inflamed by a strain against which the body 
 rebelled. His nose was meanly turned up at the end, as is 
 apt to be the case with those in whom humors taking this 
 channel induce an internal affection, which a virtuous Queen 
 of France innocently believed to be a misfortune common to 
 the species, never having approached any man but the King 
 sufficiently close to discover her mistake. Roguin's efforts 
 to disguise his infirmity by taking quantities of Spanish snuff 
 served rather to aggravate the troublesome symptoms, which 
 had been the principal cause of his misfortunes. 
 
 Is it not carrying flattery of society somewhat too far to 
 paint individuals always in false colors, to conceal in certain
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 61 
 
 cases the real causes of their vicissitudes, so often brought 
 about by disease ? Physical ills, in their moral aspects and 
 the influences that they bring to bear on the mechanism of 
 life, have perhaps been too much neglected hitherto by the 
 historian of manners. Mme. Cesar had rightly guessed the 
 secret of Roguin's married life. 
 
 His wife, a charming girl, the only daughter of Chevrel, 
 the banker, felt an unconquerable repugnance for the poor 
 notary, which dated from the night of her marriage, and had 
 been determined to demand an immediate divorce. But 
 Roguin, too happy to have a wife who brought him five hun- 
 dred thousand francs, to say nothing of her expectations, had 
 implored her not to enter her plea, leaving her her liberty, 
 and accepting all the consequences of such a compact. Mme. 
 Roguin, mistress of the situation, treated her husband as a 
 courtesan treats an elderly adorer. Roguin soon found his 
 wife too dear, and, like many another Parisian, had a second 
 establishment in the town. At first the expenditure did not 
 exceed a moderate limit. 
 
 For a while Roguin found, at no great outlay, grisettes who 
 were too glad of his protection ; but at the end of three years 
 he fell a prey to a violent sexagenarian passion for one of the 
 most magnificent creatures of the time, known as the Beau- 
 tiful Dutchwoman in the calendars of the demi-monde, for she 
 shortly afterward fell back into that gulf, which her death 
 made illustrious. One of Roguin's clients had formerly 
 brought her to Paris from Bruges; and when, in 1815, politi- 
 cal considerations forced him to fly he made her over to the 
 notary. Roguin had taken a little house in the Champs- 
 Elyse"es for his enchantress ; he had furnished it handsomely, 
 and had allowed himself to be led by her, until he had squan- 
 dered away his fortune to satisfy her extravagant whims. 
 
 The gloomy expression, which vanished from Roguin's 
 countenance at the sight of his client, was connected with 
 mysterious events, wherein laid the secret of du Tillet's rapid
 
 62 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 success. While du Tillet was still under Birotteau's roof, on 
 the first Sunday which gave him an opportunity of observing 
 how M. and Mme. Roguin were situated with regard to each 
 other, his plans had undergone a change. His designs upon 
 Mme. Cesar had been subordinated to another purpose ; he had 
 meant to compel an offer of Cesarine's hand as compensation 
 for repulsed advances ; but it cost him the less to give up this 
 marriage since he had discovered that Cesar was not rich, as 
 he had believed. Then du Tillet played the spy on the 
 notary, insinuated himself into his confidence, obtained an 
 introduction to the Beautiful Dutchwoman, ascertained the 
 terms on which she stood with Roguin, and learned that 
 she was threatening to dismiss her adorer if he curtailed her 
 extravagance. The Beautiful Dutchwoman was one of those 
 scatterbrained creatures who take money without disturbing 
 themselves as to how it was made or how they come by it ; 
 women who would give a banquet with a parricide's dollars. 
 She took no thought for the morrow and was careless of yes- 
 terday. The future for her meant after dinner, and eternity 
 lay between the present moment and the end of the month, 
 even when she had bills to fall due. Du Tillet was delighted 
 to find a first lever to his hand, and began his campaign by 
 obtaining a reduction from the Beautiful Dutchwoman, who 
 agreed to solace Roguin's existence for thirty thousand francs 
 instead of fifty thousand, a kind of service which sexagenarian 
 passion rarely forgets. 
 
 At length, one night after deep potations, Roguin opened 
 out his financial position to du Tillet in an after-supper confi- 
 dence. His real estate was mortgaged to its full value under 
 his wife's marriage settlement, and in his infatuation he had 
 appropriated moneys deposited with him by his clients ; more 
 than half the value of his practice had been embezzled in this 
 way. When he had run through the rest, the unfortunate 
 Roguin would blow his brains out, for he thought he should 
 diminish the scandal of his failure by exciting the pity of
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 63 
 
 the public. Du Tillet, listening, beheld success, rapid and 
 assured, gleaming like a flash of lightning through the ob- 
 scurity of drunkenness. He reassured Roguin, and repaid 
 his confidence by persuading him to fire his pistols into the 
 air. 
 
 "When a man of your calibre takes such risks upon him- 
 self," said he, " he ought not to flounder about like a fool; 
 he should set to work boldly." 
 
 Du Tillet counseled Roguin to help himself to a large sum 
 of money, and to intrust it to him (du Tillet) to speculate 
 boldly with it on the Stock Exchange, or in some other en- 
 terprise among the hundreds that were being started at that 
 speculative epoch. If the stroke was successful, the two of 
 them should found a bank, speculate with the deposits, and 
 with the profits the notary should satisfy his cravings. If the 
 luck went against them, Roguin should go abroad, instead of 
 killing himself, for his devoted du Tillet would be faithful to 
 the last penny. It was a rope flung out to a drowning man, 
 and Roguin did not see that the perfumer's salesman was 
 fastening it around his neck. 
 
 Du Tillet, master of Roguin's secret, used it to establish 
 his power over the wife, the husband, and the mistress. Mme. 
 Roguin, to whom he gave warning of a disaster, which she 
 was far from suspecting, accepted du Tillet's assiduities, and 
 then it was that the latter left the perfumer's shop, feeling 
 that his future was secure. It was not difficult to persuade 
 the mistress to risk a sum of money that in case of need she 
 might not be obliged to go on the street. The wife looked 
 into her affairs, and accumulated a small amount of capital, 
 which she handed over to the man in whom her husband 
 placed confidence, for at the outset the notary put a hundred 
 thousand francs into the hands of his accomplice. Brought 
 in this way into close contact with Mme. Roguin, du Tillet 
 contrived to transform interest into affection and to inspire a 
 violent passion in that handsome woman. In his speculations
 
 64 CSAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 on the Stock Exchange he naturally shared in the profits of 
 his three associates, but this was not enough for him ; he had 
 the audacity to come to an understanding with an opponent, 
 who refunded to him the amount of fictitious losses, for he 
 played for his own hand as well as for his clients. 
 
 As soon as he had fifty thousand francs, he was sure of 
 making a large fortune. He watched with the eagle's eye, 
 that was one of his characteristics, over the phases of political 
 life in France ; he speculated for a fall in the funds during 
 the campaign of France, and for a rise when the Bourbons 
 came back. 
 
 Two months after the return of Louis XVIII., Mme. Ro- 
 guin possessed two hundred thousand francs and du Tillet a 
 hundred thousand crowns. In the notary's eyes this young 
 man was an angel ; he had restored order in his affairs. But 
 the Beautiful Dutchwoman fell a victim to a wasting com- 
 plaint which nothing could cure, a virulent cancer called 
 Maxime de Trailles, one of the late Emperor's pages. Du 
 Tillet discovered the woman's real name from her signature 
 to a document. It was Sarah Gobseck. Then he remem- 
 bered that he had heard of a money-lender of the name of 
 Gobseck ; and, struck by the coincidence, paid a visit to that 
 aged discounter of bills and providence of young men with 
 prospects, to find out how this female relative's credit stood 
 with him. The bill-broking Brutus proved inexorable where 
 his grandniece was concerned, but du Tillet himself managed 
 to find favor in his eyes by posing as Sarah's banker with 
 capital to invest. The Norman and the money-lender found 
 each other congenial. 
 
 Gobseck wanted a clever young fellow who could look after 
 a bit of business abroad for him just then. The return of the 
 Bourbons had taken a State auditor by surprise. To this 
 financier, wishful to stand well at Court, it had occurred that 
 he might buy up the debts contracted by the Princes in Ger- 
 many during the emigration. He offered the profits of the
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 65 
 
 affair, which for him was purely a matter of policy, to any 
 one who would advance the necessary money. Old Gobseck 
 had no mind to disburse moneys over and above the market 
 value of the debts, into which a shrewd representative must 
 first examine. Money-lenders trust nobody ; they must always 
 have a guarantee ; the occasion is omnipotent with them ; 
 they are ice when they have no need of a man, affable and 
 obliging when he is likely to be useful. Du Tillet knew the 
 immense part played, below the surface, in the Paris money 
 market by Werbrust and Gigonnet, discount brokers of the 
 Rue Saint-Denis and Rue Saint-Martin, and by Palma, a 
 banker in the Faubourg Poissonniere, who was almost always 
 associated with Gobseck. He therefore offered to pay down 
 caution money, requiring on his own side a share in the profits 
 of the transaction, and asking that these gentlemen should 
 employ in the money-lending business the capital which he 
 should deposit with them. In this way he secured supporters. 
 Then he accompanied M. Clement Chardin des Lupeaulx on 
 a trip to Germany during the Hundred Days, and came back 
 with the Second Restoration, with some added knowledge 
 that should lead to success rather than with actual wealth. 
 He had had an initiation into the secrets of one of the clever- 
 est schemers in Paris ; he had won the good-will of the man 
 whom he had been set to watch ; a dexterous juggler had laid 
 bare for him the springs of political intrigue and the rules of 
 the game. 
 
 Du Tillet's intelligence was of the order which understands 
 at half a word ; this journey formed him. On his return he 
 found Mme. Roguin still faithful ; but the poor notary was 
 expecting Ferdinand with quite as much impatience as his 
 wife. The Beautiful Dutchwoman had ruined him again ! 
 
 Du Tillet, questioning the Beautiful Dutchwoman, could 
 not elicit from her an account that represented all the money 
 which she had squandered. And then it was that he dis- 
 covered the secret so carefully kept from him Sarah Gob- 
 5
 
 66 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 seck's infatuation for Maxima de Trailles, known at the very 
 outset of his career of vice and debauchery for a political 
 hanger-on of a kind indispensable to all good government, 
 and for an insatiable gambler. After this discovery du Tillet 
 understood old Gobseck's indifference to his grandniece. 
 
 At this critical juncture du Tillet the banker (for by this 
 time he was a banker) strongly recommended Roguin to put 
 by something for a rainy day ; to engage some of his richest 
 clients in a business speculation, and then to keep back con- 
 siderable sums out of the money paid over to him, in case he 
 should be compelled to become a bankrupt in the course of a 
 second career of speculation. After various rises and falls in 
 the price of stocks, which brought luck only to du Tillet and 
 Mme. Roguin, the notary's hour struck. He was insolvent, 
 and thereupon, in his extremity, his closest friend exploited 
 him, and du Tillet discovered that speculation in building 
 land in the neighborhood of the Madeleine. Naturally one 
 hundred thousand francs which Birotteau had deposited with 
 Roguin until an investment should be found for them were 
 paid over to du Tillet, who, bent upon compassing the per- 
 fumer's ruin, made Roguin understand that he ran less risk by 
 ensnaring his own intimate friends in his toils. 
 
 "A friend," said du Tillet, "will not go all lengths even 
 in anger." 
 
 There are not many people at this present day who know 
 how little land was worth per foot in the district of the Mad- 
 eleine at this time ; but the building lots must necessarily 
 shortly be sold for more than their momentary depreciation, 
 caused by the necessity of finding purchasers who would profit 
 by the opportunity. Now it was du Tillet's idea to reap the 
 benefit without keeping his money locked up in a lengthy 
 speculation. In other words, he meant to kill the affair, so 
 that a corpse which he knew how to resuscitate might be 
 knocked down to him. 
 
 In such emergencies as this, the Gobsecks, Palmas, Wer-
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 67 
 
 brusts, and Gigonnets all lent each other a hand, but du Tillet 
 did not know them well enough to ask them to help him; and, 
 beside, he meant to hide his action in the matter so thoroughly 
 that, while he steered the whole business, he might receive all 
 the profits and none of the disgrace of the robbery. So he 
 saw the necessity of one of those animated lay figures termed 
 "men of straw" in commercial phrase. The man who had 
 once before acted the part of a stock-jobber for him seemed to 
 be a suitable tool to his hand, and he infringed the divine rights 
 by creating a man. Of a former commercial traveler, without 
 a centime on this earth, with no ability, no capacity save for 
 empty rambling talk on all sorts of subjects, and but just suf- 
 ficient wit to suffer himself to be drilled in a part and to play 
 it without compromising the piece, and yet endowed with the 
 rarest sense of honor that is to say, a faculty for silently 
 accepting the dishonor of his principal of him, du Tillet 
 made a banker, the originator and promoter of commercial en- 
 terprises on the largest scale; him he metamorphosed into 
 the head of the firm of Claparon. 
 
 Should the exigencies of du Tillet's affairs at any time de- 
 mand a bankruptcy, it was to be Charles Claparon's fate to 
 be delivered over to Jews and Pharisees, and Claparon knew 
 it. Still, for the present, the scraps and pickings that fell to 
 his share were an El Dorado for a poor devil who, when his 
 chum du Tillet came across him, was sauntering along the 
 boulevards with no prospects beyond the two-franc piece in 
 his pockets ; so his friendship for and devotion to du Tillet, 
 swelled by a gratitude that did not look to the future and 
 stimulated by the cravings of a dissolute and disreputable life, 
 led him to say Amen to everything. 
 
 When he had once sold his honor he saw that it was risked 
 with so much prudence that at length he came to have a sort 
 of dog-like attachment for his old comrade du Tillet. Clap- 
 aron was a very ugly performing poodle, but he was ready at 
 any moment to make the leap of Curtius for his master.
 
 68 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 In the present scheme Claparon was to represent one-half 
 of the purchasers of the lots, as Birotteau represented the 
 other half. Then the bills which Claparon would receive 
 from Birotteau should be discounted by some money-lender, 
 whose name du Tillet would borrow ; so that, when Roguin 
 absconded with the rest of the purchase-money, Birotteau 
 would be left on the brink of ruin. Du Tillet meant to direct 
 the action of the assignees ; there should be a forced sale of 
 the building land, and du Tillet meant to be the purchaser ; 
 he would buy it for about half its value, and pay for it with 
 Roguin's money and the dividend of the bankruptcy; so 
 under different names he was in possession of the money paid 
 down by the perfumer and his creditor to boot. 
 
 It was a prospect of a goodly share of the spoils that led 
 Roguin to meddle in this scheme; but he had practically 
 surrendered himself at discretion to a man who could and 
 did take the lion's part. It was impossible to bring du Tillet 
 into a court of law, and the notary in a remote part of Swit- 
 zerland, where he found beauties of a less expensive kind, 
 was lucky to have a bone flung to him once a month or so. 
 
 The ugly scheme was no deliberate invention, no outcome 
 of the breedings of a tragedian weaving a plot, but the result 
 of circumstance. Hatred, unaccompanied by a desire for 
 revenge, is as seed sown upon the granite rock: du Tillet 
 swore to be revenged upon Cesar Birotteau, and the prompt- 
 ing was one of the most natural things in the world ; if it 
 had been otherwise, there had been no quarrel between angels 
 of darkness and the angels of light. 
 
 Du Tillet could not, without great inconvenience, murder 
 the one man in Paris who knew that he had been guilty of 
 petty theft ; but he could sully his old master's name and 
 crush him until his testimony was no longer admissible. For 
 a long time past the thought of vengeance had been germin- 
 ating in his mind ; but it had come to nothing. The rush 
 of life in Paris is so swift and so full of stir, chance counts
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 69 
 
 for so much in it, that even the most energetic haters do not 
 look very far ahead ; yet, on the other hand, if the constant 
 ebb and flow is unfavorable to premeditated action, it affords 
 excellent opportunities for carrying out projects that lurk in 
 politic brains, clever enough to lie in wait for the chances 
 that come with the tide. Du Tillet had had a dim inkling 
 of the possibility of ruining Cesar from the moment when 
 Roguin first opened out his case to him ; and he had not 
 miscalculated. 
 
 Roguin, meanwhile, on the very point of leaving his idol, 
 drained the rest of the philtre from the broken cup, going 
 daily to the Champs-Elysees and returning home in the small 
 hours. There were good grounds, therefore, for Madame 
 Cesar's suspicious theories. When a man has made up his 
 mind to play such a part as du Tillet had assigned to Roguin, 
 he perforce acquires the talents of a great actor ; he has the 
 eyes of a lynx and the penetration of a seer ; he finds ways 
 of magnetizing his dupe ; so the notary had seen Birotteau 
 long before Birotteau set eyes on him ; and when he saw that 
 he was recognized, he held out a hand while he was still at 
 some distance. 
 
 " I have just been making the will of a great person who 
 has not a week to live," said he, with the most natural air in 
 the world, " but they have treated me like a village doctor 
 sent their carriage to fetch me and let me go home from 
 thence afoot." 
 
 A slight cloud of suspicion which had darkened the per- 
 fumer's brows cleared away at these words ; but Roguin had 
 noticed it and took good care not to be the first to speak 
 about the building land, for he meant to give his victim the 
 finishing stroke. 
 
 "After a will come marriage-contracts," said Birotteau; 
 " such is life. Ah ! by-the-by, Roguin, old fellow, when do 
 we make a match of it with the Madeleine, eh?" and he 
 tapped the other on the chest. Among men, the best-con-
 
 70 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 ducted bourgeois will try to appear a bit of a rogue with the 
 women. 
 
 "Well, it is to-day or never," returned the notary with a 
 diplomatic look. "We are afraid that the affair will get 
 noised abroad ; already two of my richest clients want to go 
 into the speculation, and are very keen about it. So you can 
 take it or leave it. After twelve o'clock this morning I shall 
 draw up the deeds, and till one o'clock it is open to you to 
 join us if you choose. Good-by. Xandrot made a rough 
 draft of the documents for me last night, and I am about to 
 read them through this very minute." 
 
 "All right, the thing is settled, you have my word," cried 
 Birotteau, hurrying after the notary, and striking hands upon 
 it. " Take the hundred thousand francs that were to have 
 been my daughter's portion." 
 
 " Good," said Roguin, as he walked away. 
 
 In the brief interval as Birotteau returned to young Popinot 
 he felt a sensation of feverish heat run through him, his dia- 
 phragm contracted, sounds rang in his ears. 
 
 "What is the matter, sir?" asked the assistant, looking at 
 his employer's pale face. 
 
 " Ah, my boy, I have just concluded a big piece of business 
 with a single word. No one in such a position can help feel- 
 ing some emotion. You know all about it, however ; and, 
 beside, I brought you here so that we could talk comfortably 
 where no one will listen to us. Your aunt is pinched ; what 
 did she lose her money in ? Tell me about it." 
 
 " My uncle and aunt put their capital into Nucingen's 
 bank, and were obliged to take over shares in the Worstchin 
 mines in settlement of their claims ; no dividends have been 
 paid on them as yet, and at their time of life it is difficult to 
 live on hope." 
 
 " Then how do they live? " 
 
 " They have been so good as to accept my salary." 
 
 "Good, Anselme, good," said the perfumer, looking up
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 71 
 
 with a tear in his eyes ; " you are worthy of the attachment I 
 feel for you. And you shall be well rewarded for your appli- 
 cation in my service." 
 
 As he spoke, the merchant grew greater in his own estima- 
 tion as well as in Popinot's eyes ; a sense of his adventitious 
 superiority was artlessly revealed in his homely and paternal 
 way of speaking. 
 
 " What ! Can you have guessed my passion for ? " 
 
 " For whom ? " askeoTthe perfumer. 
 
 "For Mademoiselle Cdsarine." 
 
 "Boy!" cried Birotteau, "you are very bold. But keep 
 your secret carefully ; I promise to forget it, and you shall go 
 out of the house to-morrow. I don't blame you; the devil, 
 no ! In your place I should have done just the same. She 
 is so pretty." 
 
 "Ah, sir ! " cried the assistant, in such a perspiration that 
 his shirt felt damp. 
 
 "This cannot be settled in a day, my boy. C6sarine is 
 her own mistress, and her mother has her ideas. So keep 
 yourself to yourself, wipe your eyes, hold your heart well in 
 hand, and we will say no more about it. I should not blush 
 to have you for a son-in-law. As the nephew of Monsieur 
 Popinot, judge of a Tribunal of First Instance, and as the 
 Ragons' nephew, you have as good a right to make your way 
 as another, but there are ifs and buts and ands ! What a 
 devil of a notion you have sprung upon me in the middle of 
 a talk about business ! There, sit you down on that bench, 
 and business first and love affairs after. Now, Popinot, is 
 there mettle in you?" said Birotteau, looking at his assistant. 
 " Do you feel that you have courage enough to wrestle with 
 those that are much stronger than you ? for a hand-to-hand 
 fight, eh?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " To keep up a long and dangerous combat ?" 
 
 "What is it?"
 
 72 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 " To drive Macassar Oil from the field ! " cried Birotteau, 
 drawing himself up like one of Plutarch's heroes. " We must 
 not undervalue the enemy ; he is strong, well intrenched, and 
 formidable. Macassar Oil has been well pushed. It is a 
 clever idea, and the shape of the bottles is out of the com- 
 mon. I had thoughts of a triangular bottle for this plan of 
 mine, but, after mature reflection, I am inclined for little 
 blown glass flasks covered with wicker work ; they would look 
 mysterious, and the public like anything that tickles their 
 curiosity." 
 
 " It would cost a good deal," said Popinot. " Everything 
 ought to be on the cheapest possible footing, so as to allow a 
 heavy discount to the trade." 
 
 "Right, my boy; those are sound principles of business. 
 Bear in mind that Macassar Oil will show fight ! 'Tis a spe- 
 cious thing ; the name is attractive. It is put before the public 
 as a foreign importation, and we, unluckily, are in our own 
 country. Look here, Popinot, do you feel strong enough to 
 do for Macassar? To begin with, you will oust it from the 
 export trade ; it seems that Macassar really does come from 
 the Indies, so it is more natural to send French goods to the 
 Indians than to ship them back the stuff that they are sup- 
 posed to send to us. So there's the export trade for you ! 
 But it will have to be fought out abroad, and all over the 
 country ; and Macassar Oil has been so well advertised that 
 it is no use blinking the fact that it has a hold ; it is pushed 
 everywhere, and the public is familiar with it." 
 
 " I will do for it ! " cried Popinot, with eyes on fire. 
 
 "And how?" returned Birotteau. "It is like the impetu- 
 osity of these young people ! Just hear me out." 
 
 Anselme looked like a soldier presenting arms to a marshal 
 of France. 
 
 " I have invented an oil, Popinot, an oil which invigorates 
 the scalp, stimulates the growth of the hair, and preserves its 
 color an oil for both sexes. The essence should have no
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 73 
 
 less success than the Pate and the Lotion, but I do not want 
 to exploit the secret by myself; I am thinking of retiring 
 from business. I want you, my boy, to bring out the Coma- 
 gen from the Latin word coma, which means hair (so Mon- 
 sieur Alibert, physician to the King, told me). In ' Bere- 
 nice,' Racine's tragedy, too, there is a king of Comagene, a 
 lover of the beautiful queen who was so famous for her hair ; 
 no doubt it was out of compliment to her that he called his 
 kingdom Comagene. How clever these great men of genius 
 are ! they descend to the smallest details." 
 
 Little Popinot listened to these incongruities, evidently 
 meant for his benefit, who had had some education, and yet 
 kept his countenance. 
 
 "Anselme," continued Birotteau, "I have cast my eyes on 
 you as the founder of a wholesale druggist's business in the 
 Rue des Lombards. I will be a sleeping-partner, and find 
 you the capital to start it with. When we have begun with 
 the Comagen, we will try essence of vanilla and essence of 
 peppermint. In short, by degrees we will go into the drug 
 trade and revolutionize it, by selling articles in a concentrated 
 form instead of the raw products. Are you satisfied, ambi- 
 tious young man?" 
 
 Anselme was so overcome that he could not reply, but his 
 tear-filled eyes made answer for him. It seemed to him that 
 this offer was the outcome of a fatherly indulgence which took 
 this means of saying, "Deserve Cesarine by earning wealth 
 and respect." 
 
 "I, too, will succeed, sir," he said at last, taking Birot- 
 teau' s emotion for astonishment. 
 
 " Just what I was at your age," cried the perfumer; " those 
 were just the very words I used ! Whether you have my 
 daughter or not, at any rate you will have a fortune. Well, 
 my boy, what has come to you ? " 
 
 "Let me hope that by gaining the one I may win the 
 other."
 
 74 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 " 1 do not forbid you to hope, my dear fellow," said Birot- 
 teau, touched by Anselme's tone. 
 
 " Very well, sir ; may I begin to look out at once for a store, 
 so as to begin as soon as possible ? " 
 
 "Yes, my boy. To-morrow we will shut ourselves up in 
 the factory. You might look in at Livingston's on your way 
 to the Rue des Lombards and see if my hydraulic press will 
 be in working order by to-morrow. To-night, at dinner-time, 
 we will go to see that great man, kind Monsieur Vauquelin, 
 and ask him about this. He has been investigating the com- 
 position of hair quite lately, trying to find out its coloring 
 matter, and where it comes from, and what hair is made of. 
 It all lies in that, Popinot. You shall know my secret, and 
 all that remains to do is to exploit it intelligently. Look in 
 at Fieri Berard's before you go round to Livingston. My 
 boy, Monsieur Vauquelin's disinterestedness is one of the great 
 troubles of my life. You cannot get him to accept anything. 
 Luckily, I found out from Chiffreville that he wanted a 
 Madonna at Dresden, engraved by one Miiller, and, after two 
 years of inquiry for it in Germany, Berard has found a copy 
 at last a proof before letters on India paper ; it cost fifteen 
 hundred francs, my boy. And now to-day our benefactor 
 shall see it in the antechamber when he comes to the door 
 with us ; framed, of course, you will make sure of that. So in 
 that way we shall recall ourselves to his memory, my wife and 
 I ; for, as to gratitude, we have put his name in our prayers 
 every day these sixteen years. For my part, I shall never for- 
 get him ; but, you know, Popinot, these men of science are so 
 deep in their work that they forget everything, wife and chil- 
 dren, and those they have done a good turn to. As for the 
 like of us, our little intelligence permits us to have warm hearts 
 at any rate. That is some comfort for not being a great man. 
 These gentlemen at the Institute are all brain, as you will see; 
 you will never come across one of them in a church. There 
 is Monsieur Vauquelin, always in his study when he isn't in
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 75 
 
 his laboratory ; I like to believe though that he thinks of God 
 while he analyzes His works. This is the understanding : I 
 am to find the capital, I will put you in possession of my 
 secret, and we will divide the profits equally, so there will be 
 no need to draw up a deed. Good success to us both ! We 
 will tune our pipes. Off with you, my boy ; I have affairs of 
 my own to see after. One moment, Popinot ; in three weeks' 
 time I am going to give a grand ball, have a suit of clothes 
 made, and come to it like a merchant already in a good way 
 of business " 
 
 This last piece of kindness touched Popinot so much that 
 he grasped Cesar's large hand in his and kissed it. The good 
 man's confidence had flattered the lover, and a man in love 
 is capable of anything. 
 
 "Poor fellow ! " said Birotteau, as he watched his assistant 
 hurrying across the gardens of the Tuileries, "if Cesarine 
 only cared about him ! But he limps, his hair is the color of 
 a basin, and girls are such queer things ! I can scarcely be- 
 lieve that Cesarine And her mother would like to see 
 
 her a notary's wife. Alexandre Crottat would make her a rich 
 woman ; money makes anything endurable, while there is no 
 happiness that will stand the test of poverty. After all, I have 
 made up my mind that my girl shall be mistress of herself, so 
 that she stops short of folly." 
 
 Birotteau's next-door neighbor, Cayron by name, was a 
 dealer in umbrellas, sunshades, and walking-sticks. He came 
 from Languedoc, his business was not doing well, and C6sar 
 had helped him several times. Cayron asked nothing better 
 than to contract his limits and to effect a proportionate saving 
 in house rent by giving up two second-floor rooms to the 
 wealthy perfumer. 
 
 "Well, neighbor," said Birotteau familiarly as he entered 
 the umbrella store, "my wife consents to the enlargement of 
 our place. If you like, we will go round and see Monsieur 
 Molineux at eleven o'clock."
 
 76 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "My dear Monsieur Birotteau," returned he of the um- 
 brella store, " I have never asked anything for the concession 
 on my part, but you know that a good man of business ought 
 to turn everything to money." 
 
 " The deuce ! " cried the perfumer ; " I have no money to 
 throw away, and I am waiting to know if my architect thinks 
 the thing feasible. ' Before you settle anything,' so he said, 
 ' we must know whether the floors are on a level ; and then we 
 must have Monsieur Molineux's leave to make an opening in 
 the wall, and is it a party wall ? ' And after that I shall have 
 to turn the staircase in my house, so as to alter the landing 
 and have the whole place level from end to end. There will 
 be a lot of expense, and I don't want to ruin myself." 
 
 "Ah, sir," cried the Languedocien, "when you are ruined, 
 heaven and earth will come together and have a family." 
 
 Birotteau stroked his chin, raised himself on tiptoe, and 
 came down again. 
 
 "Beside," Cayron went on, "I only ask you to take this 
 
 paper of me " and he held out a little statement for five 
 
 thousand francs and sixteen bills. 
 
 "Ah!" said the perfumer, turning them over, "all for 
 small amounts, at two months and three months " 
 
 "Take them of me, and don't charge me more than six 
 per cent.," pleaded the umbrella dealer humbly. 
 
 "Am I a Jew?" asked the perfumer reproachfully. 
 
 "Goodness, sir, I took them to du Tillet that used to be 
 your assistant, and he would not have them at any price; 
 he wanted to know how much I would consent to lose, no 
 doubt." 
 
 "I know none of these signatures," said the perfumer. 
 
 "Well, we have funny names in the cane and umbrella 
 trade ; they are hawkers." 
 
 "Well, well; I do not say that I will take the lot, but I 
 might manage to take all at the shortest dates." 
 
 " Don't leave me to run after those horse-leeches that drain
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 77 
 
 us of the best part of the profits, for a thousand francs at four 
 months ; take the lot, sir ! I do so little discounting that no 
 one gives me credit ; that is the death of us poor retailers in a 
 small way." 
 
 "Well, well, I will take your little bills. Celestin shall 
 settle it with you. Be ready at eleven. Here comes my 
 architect, Monsieur Grindot," added the perfumer, as he saw 
 the young man whom he had met by appointment at Monsieur 
 de la Billardiere's house on the previous evening. " Unlike 
 most men of talent, you are punctual, sir," said Cesar, in his 
 most genteel manner. 
 
 " If punctuality in the phrase of a king who was a clever 
 man as well as a great statesman is the courtesy of kings, it 
 is no less the fortune of architects. Time time is money; 
 most of all for your artists. Architecture combines all the 
 other arts, I permit myself to say. We will not go through 
 the store," he added, as he showed the way to the sham car- 
 riage entrance. 
 
 Four years ago M. Grindot had taken the Grand Prize 
 for architecture ; and now he had just returned from a three 
 years' sojourn in Rome at the expense of the State. While he 
 was in Italy the young artist had thought of his art ; in Paris 
 he turned his attention to money-making. Governments 
 alone can give the necessary millions to erect public buildings 
 and monuments to an architect's enduring fame ; and it is 
 so natural, when fresh from Rome, to take one's self for a 
 Fontaine or a Percier, that every ambitious young architect 
 has a leaning toward ministerialism ; so the subsidized Liberal, 
 metamorphosed into a Royalist, sought to find patrons in 
 power ; and when a Grand Prize conducts himself after this 
 fashion, his comrades call him a sycophant. 
 
 Two courses lay open to the youthful architect he might 
 serve the perfumer or make as much as he could out of him. 
 But Birotteau the deputy-mayor ; Birotteau, the future pos- 
 sessor of half of that building estate near the Madeleine,
 
 78 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 where a quarter full of handsome houses was sure to be built 
 sooner or later, was a man worth humoring, so Grindot sacri- 
 ficed present gain to future opportunities. Patiently he lis- 
 tened to the plans, ideas, and vain repetitions of this store- 
 keeping Philistine, the artist's butt and laughing-stock, and 
 the particular object of his scorn, and followed the perfumer 
 about his house, bowing respectfully to his ideas. When 
 Birotteau had said all that he had to say, the young architect 
 tried to give a summary of his own views. 
 
 "You have three windows looking out upon the street in 
 your own house," he said, "as well as the window that is 
 wasted on the stairs and required for the landing. To these 
 four windows you add two on the same floor in the next house, 
 by turning the staircase so that you can walk on level from 
 one end to the other on the side nearest the street." 
 
 "You have understood me exactly," said the amazed per- 
 fumer. 
 
 "To carry out your plan, we shall have to light the new 
 staircase from above, and contrive a porter's lodge in the 
 plinth." 
 
 "Plinth?" 
 
 "Yes ; the part of the wall under the " 
 
 "I see, sir." 
 
 "As to your rooms, and their arrangements and decora- 
 tion, give me carte-blanche. I should like to make them 
 worthy " 
 
 " Worthy ! You have said the very word, sir." 
 
 " How long can you give me to carry out this scheme of 
 decoration ? " 
 
 "Twenty days." 
 
 "What are you prepared to put down for the workmen ? " 
 
 " Well, what are the repairs likely to mount up to ? " 
 
 "An architect can estimate the cost of a new building al- 
 most to a centime," said the other ; " but as I have not under- 
 taken a bourgeois job as yet (pardon me, sir, the word slipped
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 79 
 
 out), I ought to tell you beforehand that it is impossible for 
 me to give estimates for alterations and repairs. In a week's 
 time I might be able to make a rough guess. Put your confi- 
 dence in me; you shall have a charming staircase lighted 
 from above, and a pretty vestibule, and in the plinth " 
 
 " The plinth again ! " 
 
 " Do not be anxious. I will find room for a little porter's 
 lodge. The alteration and decoration of your rooms will be 
 a labor of love. Yes, sir, I am thinking of art and not of 
 making money. Above all things, if I am to succeed, I must 
 be talked about, must I not? So, in my opinion, the best 
 way is not to haggle with tradesmen, but to obtain a good 
 effect cheaply." 
 
 " With such ideas, young man," Birotteau said patroniz- 
 ingly, " you will succeed." 
 
 " So you will yourself arrange with the bricklayers, 
 painters, locksmiths, carpenters, and cabinet-makers; and I, 
 for my part, undertake to check their accounts. You will 
 simply agree to pay me a fee of two thousand francs; it will 
 be money well laid out. Put the whole place into my hands 
 by twelve o'clock to-morrow and tell me whom you mean to 
 employ." 
 
 " What is it likely to cost at first sight ? " asked the elated 
 Birotteau. 
 
 "Ten to twelve thousand francs," said Grindot, "without 
 counting the furniture ; for, of course, you will refurnish the 
 rooms. Will you give me the address of your carpet manu- 
 facturer ? I ought to come to an understanding with him 
 about the colors, so as to have a harmonious unity." 
 
 "Monsieur Braschon in the Rue Saint-Antoine has my 
 order," said the perfumer, assuming a ducal air. 
 
 The architect made a note of the address on one of those 
 little tablets which are unmistakably a pretty woman's gift. 
 
 "Well," said Birotteau, " I leave it all to you, sir. Still, 
 wait until I have arranged to take over the lease of the two
 
 80 CXSAti BIROTTEAU. 
 
 rooms next door, and obtained permission to make an open- 
 ing through the wall." 
 
 "Send me a note this evening," said the architect. "I 
 must spend the night in drawing plans. We architects would 
 rather work for a city merchant than for the King of Prussia ; 
 that is to say, as far as our own taste is concerned. In any 
 case, I will set about taking measurements, the height of the 
 rooms, the dimensions of the door and window embrasures, 
 and the size of the windows." 
 
 " It must be finished by the date I have given, or it is no 
 good." 
 
 "It certainly must," returned the architect. "The men 
 shall work day and night, and we will employ processes for 
 drying the paint ; but do not let builders swindle you, make 
 them quote beforehand, and have the agreement in writing." 
 
 " Paris is the only place in the world where one can make 
 such strokes of the wand," said Birotteau, indulging in a 
 flourish worthy of some Asiatic potentate in the " Arabian 
 Nights." "Do me the honor of coming to my ball, sir. 
 All men of talent do not feel the contempt for trade which 
 some heap upon it ; and I expect you will meet one scientific 
 man of the highest rank Monsieur Vauquelin of the Institute ! 
 beside Monsieur de la Billardiere, Messieurs le Comte 3e 
 Fontaine, Lebas, a judge, and president of the Tribunal of 
 Commerce; and several magistrates, le Comte de Granville 
 of the Court Royal, and Popinot of the Court of First In- 
 stance, Camusot of the Tribunal of Commerce, and his father- 
 in-law Cardot. Perhaps, even le Due de Lenoncourt, First 
 Gentleman of the Bedchamber. It is a gathering of my 
 friends, quite as much in honor of er the liberation of the 
 soil as to celebrate my promotion to the order of the 
 Legion of Honor." 
 
 Grindot's gesture was peculiar. 
 
 " Possibly I have deserved this signal mark of royal 
 .favor by the discharge of my functions at the Consular Tribu-
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 81 
 
 nal, and by fighting for the Bourbons on the steps of Saint- 
 Roch's church on the i3th Venddmiaire, when I was wounded 
 by Napoleon. These claims to " 
 
 Constance, in morning dress, came out of Cesarine's bed- 
 room, where she had been dressing ; her first glance stopped 
 her husband's fervid eloquence ; he cast about for some every- 
 day phrase which should modestly convey the tidings of the 
 glory awaiting him on the morrow. 
 
 " Here, pet, this is M. de Grindot, a distinguished young 
 man of great talent. This gentleman is the architect whom 
 Monsieur de la Billardiere recommended ; he will superintend 
 our little alterations here." 
 
 The perfumer placed himself so that his wife could not see 
 him, and put his finger on his lips as he uttered the word 
 little. The architect understood. 
 
 "Constance, this gentleman will take the dimensions of 
 the rooms. Let him do it, dear," said Birotteau, and he 
 whisked out into the street. 
 
 "Will it cost a great deal?" Constance asked the archi- 
 tect. 
 
 " No, madame ; six thousand francs, roughly speaking " 
 
 " Roughly speaking ! " cried Mme. Birotteau. " Sir, I 
 beg of you not to begin without an estimate, and to do noth- 
 ing until a contract has been signed. I know the way of 
 those gentlemen the builders six thousand means twenty 
 thousand. We are not in a position to squander money. I 
 beg of you, sir, although my husband is certainly master in 
 his own house, to leave him time to think this over." 
 
 " Monsieur told me, madame, that he must have the rooms 
 finished in twenty days ; if we make a delay, you may incur 
 the expense without obtaining the result." 
 
 " There is expense and expense," said the fair mistress of 
 the Queen of Roses. 
 
 " Eh ! madame ; is it so very glorious, do you think, for 
 an architect who would like to erect public monuments to 
 6
 
 82 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 superintend alterations in a private house ? I only undertook 
 the little commission to oblige Monsieur de la Billardiere, 
 and if you are alarmed " 
 
 He made as if he would withdraw. 
 
 "Well, well, sir," said Constance, going back to her room. 
 Once there, she hid her head on her daughter's shoulder. 
 "My child," she cried, "your father is ruining himself! 
 He has engaged an architect who wears mustaches and an 
 imperial on his chin, and talks about erecting public monu- 
 ments ! He will fling the house out of the windows to build 
 us a Louvre. Cesar is always in a hurry when there is any- 
 thing crazy to be done ; he only told me about the plan last 
 night, and he is setting about it this morning." 
 
 " Bah ! mamma, never mind papa ; Providence has always 
 taken care of you," said C6sarine, putting her arms about her 
 mother. Then she (the demoiselle) went to the piano, to 
 show the architect that a perfumer's daughter was no stranger 
 to the fine arts. 
 
 When the architect came into the room, he was surprised 
 by Cesarine's beauty, and stood almost dum founded. For 
 the artist saw before him Cesarine just come from her little 
 room, in her loose morning-gown, bright and blooming with 
 the freshness and the bloom of eighteen years, blue-eyed, 
 and slender, and fair-haired. Youth gave the elasticity (so 
 rare in Paris) which lends firmness to the most delicate tissues; 
 youth tinted the blue network of veins throbbing beneath the 
 transparent skin with the color adored by painters. For 
 though she lived in the relaxing atmosphere of a Parisian 
 store, where the fresh air can scarcely penetrate and the sun- 
 light seldom comes, the outdoor life of Roman Trasteverine 
 could not have been a more successful beautifier than Cesar- 
 ine's manner of living. Her thick hair grew erect like her 
 father's, and, being dressed high, afforded a view of a well-set 
 neck among a shower of curls the elaborate coiffure of the 
 damsels of the counter, in whom a desire to shine inspires a
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 83 
 
 more than English attention to trifling details in matters of 
 the toilet. 
 
 Cesarine's beauty was neither that of an English court lady 
 nor of a French duchess, but the plump and auburn-haired 
 comeliness of Rubens' Flemish women. She had inherited 
 her father's turned-up nose, but its delicacy of outline gave a 
 sprightly charm to a face of the essentially French type so 
 well rendered by Largilliere. The rich silken tissue of the 
 skin indicated the abundant vitality of girlhood. Her mother's 
 broad brow was lightened by a girlish serenity, untroubled by 
 care, and there was a tender grace in the expression of the 
 blue liquid eyes of the happy-hearted, fair-haired maid. If 
 happiness had taken from her face the romantic interest which 
 painters inevitably give to their compositions by an expres- 
 sion somewhat too pensive, the vague, wistful instincts of the 
 young girl who has never left her mother's wing made an 
 approach to this ideal. With all her apparent slenderness, 
 she was strongly made. Her feet indicated her father's peas- 
 ant origin, a racial defect, like the redness of her hands the 
 sign-manual of a purely bourgeois descent. Sooner or later 
 she was sure to grow stout. Occasionally young and fashion- 
 able women had come within her ken ; and in course of time 
 she had acquired from them the instinct of dress, certain ways 
 of carrying her head, and manners of speaking and moving, 
 thus copied, which turned the heads of the assistants and 
 other young men ; in their eyes she seemed to have a distin- 
 guished air. 
 
 Popinot had vowed to himself that no woman but Cesarine 
 should be his wife. This mobile blonde, whom a glance 
 seemed to read, who seemed ready to melt into tears at a harsh 
 word, was the one woman in whose presence he could feel 
 conscious of masculine superiority. This charming girl in- 
 spired love, without leaving time to consider whether or not 
 she had sufficient soul to insure that the love should be last- 
 ing ; but what need is there for what we in Paris call esprit, in a
 
 84 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 class where the essential elements of happiness are good-sense 
 and virtue ? 
 
 In character, C^sarine was a second edition of her mother, 
 slightly improved by an education which had taught her 
 superfluous accomplishments. She was fond of music, and 
 had made a crayon drawing of the " Madonna of the Chair; " 
 she perused the works of Mesdames Cottin and Riccoboni, 
 and the writings of Fenelon, Racine, and Bernardin de Saint- 
 Pierre. She never appeared at her mother's side at the cash 
 desk save for a few moments before dinner, or when, on rare 
 occasions, she took her place. Her father and mother, like 
 all self-made people, who hasten to plant the seeds of ingrat- 
 itude in their children by putting the younger generation on a 
 higher level, delighted to make an idol of Cesarine, who, 
 happily, possessed the good qualities of her class and did not 
 take advantage of their weakness. 
 
 Mme. Birotteau followed the architect's movements with 
 earnest, anxious eyes; looking on in consternation, calling 
 her daughter's attention to the strange gyrations of the foot- 
 rule, as Grindot took his measurements after the manner of 
 architects and builders. For her, each one of those strokes 
 of the wand seemed to lay the place under an evil enchant- 
 ment and boded ill to the house ; she would fain have had 
 the walls less lofty and the rooms smaller, and dared not put 
 any questions to the young man as to the results of this 
 sorcery. 
 
 "Be easy, madame," he said, with a smile; "I shall not 
 carry anything away. ' ' 
 
 Cesarine could not help laughing. 
 
 "Sir," pleaded Constance, who did not so much as notice 
 the architect's quip, " aim at economy; some day we may be 
 able to make you a return ' ' 
 
 Before Cesar went to M. Molineux, the landlord of the 
 next house, he asked Roguin for the transfer of the lease
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 85 
 
 which Alexandra Crottat was to have drawn up. As he came 
 away from the notary's house, he saw du Tillet at Roguin's 
 study window. Although the liaison between his sometime 
 assistant and Mme. Roguin was a sufficient explanation of du 
 Tillet's presence in the house at a time when the negotiations 
 for the building land were impending, Birotteau, trustful 
 though he was, felt uncomfortable. Du Tillet's animated 
 face suggested that a discussion was going on. 
 
 "Suppose that he should be in the business !" he asked 
 himself, in an access of his commercial prudence. 
 
 The suspicion flashed like lightning across his mind. 
 He turned again and saw Mme. Roguin at the window ; 
 and then the banker's presence no longer looked so suspi- 
 cious. 
 
 "Still, how if Constance was right?" he asked himself. 
 " How stupid I am to pay any attention to a woman's no- 
 tions ! However, I will talk it over this morning with our 
 uncle. It is only a step from the Cour Batave, where Moli- 
 neux lives, to the Rue des Bourdonnais." 
 
 A suspicious onlooker, a man of business with some experi- 
 ence of rogues, would have been warned; but Birotteau's 
 previous career, together with his lack of mental grasp (for he 
 was but little fitted for retracing a chain of inductions, a pro- 
 cess by which an able man arrives at a cause), all led to his 
 ruin. He found the umbrella dealer dressed in his best, and 
 was starting away with him to the landlord, when Virginie, 
 the servant, caught her master by the arm. 
 
 " The mistress hopes you will not go out again, sir " 
 
 "Come!" cried Birotteau; "some more women's no- 
 tions! " 
 
 "Without taking your cup of coffee. It is ready for you." 
 
 " Oh ! all right. I have so many things in my head, 
 neighbor," said Birotteau, turning to Cayron, " that I do not 
 listen to my stomach. Be so good as to walk on ; we shall 
 meet each other at Monsieur Molineux's door, unless you go
 
 86 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 up and explain the matter to him first. We should save time 
 that way." 
 
 M. Molineux was an eccentric person of independent means, 
 a specimen of a kind of humanity which you will no more find 
 out of Paris than you will find Iceland moss growing anywhere 
 out of Iceland. The comparison is but so much the more apt, 
 for that the man in question belonged to that doubtful border- 
 land between the animal and vegetable kingdoms which awaits 
 the Mercier, who shall classify the various cryplogamia which 
 strike root, thrive, or die among the plaster walls of the 
 strange unwholesome old houses affected by the species. 
 
 This particular human plant was an umbellifer, to judge by 
 the blue tubular cap which crowned a stem sheathed in a pair 
 of greenish-colored breeches, and terminated by bulbous roots 
 enveloped in list slippers. At first sight the plant seems 
 harmless and colorless enough ; there is certainly nothing to 
 suggest poison in its appearance. In this strange freak of 
 nature you would have recognized the typical shareholder, 
 who believes in all the news which the daily press baptizes 
 with printer's ink, whose "Look at the paper" is a final ap- 
 peal to authority ; this (you would have thought) was the 
 bourgeois, essentially a lover of order, always (in theory) in 
 rebellion against the powers that be, to whom in practice he 
 punctually yields obedience ; a ferocious creature, take him 
 singly, who grows tame in a crowd of his like. The man 
 who is obdurate as a bailiff where his dues are concerned, 
 gives fresh groundsel to his birds, and saves the fish-bones for 
 the cat ; he looks up in the middle of making out a receipt to 
 whistle to the canary ; he is suspicious as a turnkey, but will 
 hurry to invest his money in some doubtful undertaking, and 
 then try to recover his losses by the most sordid meanness. 
 The noxious qualities of this hybrid growth are only discov- 
 ered by use ; its nauseous bitterness requires the coction of 
 some piece of business wherein its interests are mingled with 
 those of men.
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 87 
 
 Like all Parisians, Molineux felt a need to make his power 
 felt. He craved that particular privilege of a sovereignty 
 more or less exercised by every creature, down to the very 
 porter, over a larger or smaller number of victims a woman, 
 a child, a clerk, or lodger, a horse, a dog, or monkey that 
 part of domination which consists in handing on to another 
 the mortifications received by an aspirant to higher spheres. 
 The tiresome little old person in question, having neither 
 wife, nor child, nor niece, nor nephew, treated his charwoman 
 so harshly that she gave him no opportunity of venting his 
 spleen upon her, and avoided all collision with him by a 
 rigorous discharge of her duties. 
 
 So his appetite for domestic tyranny being thus balked, he 
 was fain to find other ways of satisfying it. He had made a 
 patient study of the law of landlord and tenant and of the legal 
 aspects of the party-wall ; he had fathomed the mysteries 
 of jurisprudence with regard to house-property in Paris, and 
 was learned in its infinitely minute intricacies with regard to 
 boundaries and abutments, easements, rates, charges, regula- 
 tions for the cleansing of the street, hangings for Fete-Dieu 
 processions, waste-pipes, lights, projections over the public 
 way, and the near proximity of insanitary dwellings. All his 
 mental and physical energies, all his intelligence, was de- 
 voted to maintaining his authority as a landlord with a high 
 hand ; he had made a hobby of his occupation, and the hobby 
 was becoming a mania. 
 
 He loved to protect citizens against encroachments on their 
 rights, but opportunities occurred so seldom that his thwarted 
 passion expended itself upon his tenants. A tenant became 
 his enemy, his inferior, his subject, his vassal. He felt that 
 their homage was a due, and regarded those who passed him 
 without a salutation on the stairs as boors. He made out his 
 receipts himself, and sent them at noon on the quarter-day ; 
 and those who were behindhand received a summons by a 
 certain hour. Then followed a distraint and costs, and all
 
 88 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 the cavalry of the law came into the field with the celerity of 
 "the machine," as the headsman calls his instrument of ex- 
 ecution. Molineux gave no grace and no delay ; his heart 
 was indurated on the side of rents. 
 
 " I will lend you the money if you want it," he would say 
 to a solvent tenant, " but pay me my rent ; any getting be- 
 hindhand with the rent means a loss of interest for which the 
 law provides no remedy." 
 
 After a prolonged study of the skittish humors of successive 
 tenants who conformed to no standard, and, like successive 
 dynasties, nor more nor less, invariably overturned the insti- 
 tutions of their predecessors, Molineux had promulgated a 
 charter which he observed religiously. By virtue of it the 
 good man never did any repairs; none of his chimneys 
 smoked, his staircases were always in order, his ceilings white, 
 his cornices above reproach, his floors held securely to the 
 joists, and there was no fault to find with the paint. All the 
 locks had been put in within the last three years, every win- 
 dow-pane was whole, and as for cracks in the walls they did 
 not exist; he could see no broken tiles in the floors till the 
 tenants were leaving the house. He usually appeared upon 
 the scene to receive the incoming tenants with a locksmith 
 and a painter and glazier, very handy fellows, he said. The 
 tenant was doubtless at liberty to make improvements; but if 
 the thriftless creature redecorated his rooms, old Molineux set 
 his wits to work and pondered night and day how to dis- 
 lodge him and let the newly papered and painted abode to 
 another comer. He set his snares, bided his time, and began 
 the whole series of his unhallowed devices. There was no 
 subtlety in the regulations of Paris with regard to leases that 
 he did not know. He indited polite and amiable communi- 
 cations to his victims ; but beneath the manner, as beneath the 
 harmless and obliging expression of the pettifogging scribbler 
 himself, lurked the spirit of a Shylock. 
 
 He must always be paid six months in advance, to be de-
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 89 
 
 ducted from the last half-year's rent, subject to a host of 
 thorny conditions of his own invention. He assured himself 
 that the value of the tenant's furniture was sufficient to cover 
 the rent, and reconnoitred every new tenant like a detective 
 when he came in. There were some occupations which he 
 did not like, and the least sound of a hammer frightened him. 
 When the time came for handing over a lease, he kept it back 
 for a week, conning it over for fear it should contain what he 
 denominated " notary's et ceteras." 
 
 Apart from his character of landlord, Jean-Baptiste Moli- 
 neux was apparently good-natured and obliging. He could 
 play a game of boston without complaining of being badly 
 seconded by his partner ; his stock subjects for conversation 
 were of the ordinary bourgeois kind, and he found the same 
 things laughable the arbitrary acts of bakers (the rascals), 
 who give short weights, which are winked at by the police, 
 the heroic seventeen deputies of the Left. He read the Cure" 
 Meslier's "Bon Sens" (Free Thinker), yet went to mass, 
 halting between Deism and Christianity ; but he subscribed 
 nothing for sacramental bread, under the plea that you must 
 resist the encroachments of the priesthood. The indefati- 
 gable redresser of grievances would write to this effect to the 
 newspapers, though the newspapers neither inserted his letters 
 nor replied to them. Molineux was, in short, in many re- 
 spects the ordinary estimable citizen who burns a yule-log at 
 Christmas, draws for king on Twelfth Night, plays tricks on 
 the First of April, makes the rounds of the boulevards when 
 the weather is fine, goes to watch the skating ; and on days 
 when there are to be fireworks in the Place Louis XV. will 
 take his place there at two o'clock in the afternoon with a 
 piece of bread in his pocket, so as to be "in the front row." 
 The Cour Batave, where the little old man lived, is a result 
 of one of those freaks of the speculative builder which cannot 
 be explained after they have taken substantial form. It is a 
 cloister-like building with its freestone arcading, its covered
 
 90 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 galleries surrounding the court with a fountain in the middle 
 a thirsty fountain with its lion jaws agape, not to supply, 
 but to ask for water of every passer-by. Possibly it was in- 
 tended for a sort of Palais-Royal to adorn the Faubourg Saint- 
 Denis. There is a little light and stir of life during the day 
 in the unwholesome pile shut in on all four sides by tall 
 houses; it lies in the centre of a labyrinth of dank alleys, 
 where the rheumatism lurks for the hurrying foot-passenger, a 
 maze of dark, narrow passages which converge here and con- 
 nect the Quartier des Halles and the Quartier Saint-Martin 
 by the famous Rue Quincampoix ; but at night there is no 
 spot in Paris more deserted, and these little slums might be 
 called the catacombs of commerce. It is the sink of several 
 industries; and if there are few natives of Batavia proper, 
 there are plenty of small tradesmen. 
 
 Naturally, all the suites of rooms in this merchant's palace 
 have but one outlook into the central courtyard and for 
 this and other reasons the rents asked are of the lowest. M. 
 Molineux inhabited one of the angles of the building. Con- 
 siderations of health had prompted the choice of a sixth-floor 
 lodging; for fresh air was only to be had at a height of 
 seventy feet from the ground. From the leads, where the 
 worthy owner of house-property was wont to take exercise, he 
 enjoyed a charming view of the windmills of Montmartre. 
 He grew flowers up there, too, in defiance of police regula- 
 tions against these hanging-gardens of the modern Babylon. 
 His sixth-floor establishment consisted of four rooms, without 
 counting the water-closets on the floor above, a valuable prop- 
 erty to which his claim was incontestable ; he had the key, he 
 had established them. On a first entrance, an indecent bare- 
 ness at once revealed the miserly nature of the man. Half-a- 
 dozen straw-bottomed chairs stood in the lobby ; there was a 
 glazed earthenware stove ; and on the walls, covered with a 
 bottle-green paper, hung four prints bought at sales. In the 
 dining-room you beheld a couple of sideboards, two cages full
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 91 
 
 of birds, a table covered with oilcloth, a weather-glass, mahog- 
 any chairs with horsehair cushions, and through a French 
 window a view of the aforesaid hanging-gardens. Short, 
 antiquated, green silk curtains adorned the sitting-room, and 
 the white-painted wooden furniture was upholstered in green 
 Utrecht velvet. As for the furniture of the old bachelor's 
 room, it was of the period of Louis XV.; disfigured by pro- 
 longed wear, and so dirty that a woman in a white gown 
 would have shrunk from contact with it. The mantel boasted 
 a clock ; the dial, between two columns, served as a pediment 
 beneath a statuette of Pallas brandishing a lance a fabulous 
 personage of antiquity. The tiled floor was so littered over 
 with plates full of scraps for the cats that it was scarcely pos- 
 sible to move about without setting a foot in one of them. 
 Above the rosewood chest of drawers hung a pastel Moli- 
 neux in his youth. Add a few books, tables covered with 
 shabby, green cardboard boxes, a case full of the stuffed forms 
 of some departed canaries on a console table, and, to com- 
 plete the list, a bed so chilly-looking that it might have been 
 a rebuke to a Carmelite. 
 
 C6sar Birotteau was charmed with Molineux's exquisite 
 politeness. He found the latter in his gray flannel dressing- 
 gown, keeping an eye on the milk set on a little cast-iron 
 plate warmer, in a corner of the hearth, while he poured the 
 contents of a brown earthen pipkin, in which he had been 
 boiling coffee-grounds, into his coffee-pot by spoonfuls at a 
 time. The umbrella dealer had opened the door, lest his 
 landlord should be disturbed in this occupation ; but Moli- 
 neux, holding mayors and deputy-mayors (" our municipal 
 officers," as he called them) in great veneration, rose at first 
 sight of the magistrate, and stood cap in hand until the great 
 Birotteau should be seated. 
 
 " No, sir Yes, sir Ah, sir, if I had known that I 
 
 was to have the honor of housing a member of the municipal 
 government of Paris amid my humble Penates, pray believe
 
 92 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 that I should have made it my business to repair to your 
 house ; although I am your landlord, or on the point of 
 being " 
 
 Here Birotteau by a gesture entreated him to put on his 
 cap. 
 
 "I shall do nothing of the kind; I shall remain bare- 
 headed until you are seated, and have put on your hat if you 
 have a cold. My room is rather chilly ; my narrow means 
 do not permit God bless you, Mr. Deputy-mayor ! " 
 
 Birotteau had sneezed while fumbling for his papers. He 
 held them out, not without remarking that to save any delay 
 he had had them made out at his own expense by M. Roguin 
 his notary. 
 
 " I do not call Monsieur Roguin's knowledge in question ; 
 'tis an old name, well known in the Parisian notarial ; but I 
 have my little ways of doing things, and I look after my 
 affairs myself, a hobby excusable enough ; and, then, my 
 notary is " 
 
 "But this is such a simple matter," said the perfumer, 
 accustomed to prompt decisions on the part of buyers and 
 sellers. 
 
 "Simple /" echoed Molineux. "Nothing is simple where 
 house-property is concerned. Ah ! you are not a landlord, 
 sir ; so much the happier, you ! If you but knew the lengths 
 to which a tenant will push ingratitude and what precautions 
 we have to take ! Now just listen to this, sir ; I have a tenant 
 
 that " and for fifteen minutes he held forth, relating 
 
 how that M. Gendrin, a draughtsman, had eluded the vigi- 
 lance of the caretaker in the Rue Saint-Honor^. M. Gendrin 
 had perpetrated scandals worthy of a Marat, obscene draw- 
 ings ! and the police tolerated it ; nay, they were made with 
 the connivance of the police ! Then this Gendrin, an artist 
 of thoroughly immoral character, had gone back to the house 
 with loose women, and made it impossible to go up and down 
 the stairs, a prank worthy of a man who drew caricatures to
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 93 
 
 ridicule the Government. And why all these misdeeds ? Be- 
 cause he was asked to pay his rent on the i5th. Gendrin 
 and Molineux were about to go to law about it ; for, while the 
 artist did not pay, he insisted on occupying the empty rooms. 
 Molineux received anonymous letters from Gendrin, no 
 doubt threatening to murder him some night in the alleys 
 about the Cour Batave. 
 
 "Things have arrived at such a pitch, sir," he went on, 
 " that the prefect of police, to whom in confidence I related 
 my difficulty (at the same time I took the opportunity of saying 
 a word or two touching the alterations that ought to be made in 
 the provisions of the law for such cases), gave me an authori- 
 zation to carry firearms in self-defense." 
 
 The little old man got up to look for his pistols. 
 
 " Here they are, sir ! " cried he. 
 
 " But you have nothing of that kind to fear from me, sir," 
 said Birotteau, glancing at Cayron with a smile that plainly 
 expressed his pity for such a man. 
 
 Molineux caught the glance, and was shocked to see such 
 a look on the countenance of a "municipal officer," whose 
 duty it was to see to the safety of those in his district. He 
 could have forgiven it in anybody else, but in Birotteau it was 
 unpardonable. 
 
 "Sir," Molineux answered drily, "one of the most highly 
 respected judges in the Consular Tribune, a deputy-mayor, 
 and an honorable merchant, would not condescend to such 
 baseness, for baseness it is ! But in this particular case you 
 want the consent of your landlord, Monsieur le Comte de 
 Granville, before you make a hole in the wall, and stipulations 
 must be made in the agreement touching the restoration of the 
 wall on the expiration of the lease. As a matter of fact, 
 too, the rent is a great deal lower than it will be ; rents will 
 go up all about the Place Vendome; they are going up 
 already ! The Rue Castiglione is about to be built. I am 
 binding myself down I am binding myself "
 
 94 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "Let us have done with it," said Birotteau. "What do 
 you want? I have had enough experience of business to 
 guess that your reasonings can be silenced by the great argu- 
 ment money ! Well, how much do you want? " 
 
 " Nothing but what is fair, sir. How long has your lease 
 to run?" 
 
 "Seven years," answered Birotteau. 
 
 "What may not my second floor be worth in seven years' 
 time ? " cried Molineux. " What will two furnished rooms let 
 for over in your quarter ? More than two hundred francs a 
 month very likely! I am binding myself; binding myself 
 down by a lease. So we will set down the rent at fifteen 
 hundred francs. At that figure I will consent to receive you 
 as a tenant for the two rooms instead of M. Cayron here," 
 giving the dealer a sly wink, "and let you have them on 
 lease for seven consecutive years. The opening in the wall 
 you will make at your own charges, subject to your bringing 
 to me proof that Monsieur le Comte de Granville sanctions it 
 and waives all his rights in the matter. Whatever happens in 
 consequence of the small opening, the responsibility will rest 
 upon you ; but you shall be in nowise bound to reinstate the 
 wall so far as I am concerned ; you shall pay me down five 
 hundred francs now instead; we never can tell what may 
 happen ; and I don't want to run about after anybody to put 
 up my wall again for me." 
 
 " The conditions seem to me scarcely fair," put in Birotteau. 
 
 "Then you must pay me down seven hundred and fifty 
 francs hie et nunc, to be carried forward till the last six months 
 of possession ; the lease will be a sufficient discharge. Oh ! 
 I will take bills of exchange for value received in rent, at any 
 date you please, so that I have my guarantee. I am a plain- 
 dealing man, and go straight to the point in business. We 
 will stipulate that you shall wall up the door on my staircase, 
 where you have no right of way at your own expense in 
 brick and mortar. Reassure yourself, I shall not call upon you
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 95 
 
 to make it good when the lease expires; I shall regard the 
 five hundred francs as an indemnity. You will always find me 
 reasonable, sir." 
 
 " We in business are not so particular," said the perfumer ; 
 " if we had all these formalities, we should do no business at 
 all." 
 
 " Oh, in business, that is quite another thing, especially in 
 the perfumery line, where everything slips off and on like a 
 glove," said the little old man, with a sour smile. "But 
 with house-property in Paris, sir, you cannot be too particular. 
 Why, I had a tenant in the Rue Montorgueil " 
 
 " I should be very sorry to delay your breakfast, sir," said 
 Birotteau ; " here are the deeds, set them right, all that you 
 ask me is agreed to ; let us sign the documents to-morrow, 
 and give our promises by word of mouth to-day, for to-mor- 
 row my architect must be put in possession of the place." 
 
 Molineux looked again at the umbrella dealer. " There is 
 part of the term expired, sir ; Monsieur Cayron has no mind 
 to pay for it ; we will add the amount to the little bills, so 
 that the agreement will run from January to January. That 
 will be more business-like." 
 
 " So be it," said Birotteau. 
 
 " There is the sou in the franc for the porter " 
 
 "Why, you are not allowing me to use the staircase and 
 the doorway; it is not right that " 
 
 "Oh ! but you are a tenant ! " cried little Molineux in 
 peremptory tones, up .in arms for the principle involved. 
 " You must pay door and window taxes and your share of the 
 others. If once we clearly understand each other, sir, there 
 will be no difficulties hereafter. Is your business rapidly in- 
 creasing, sir ; are you doing well ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Birotteau, " but that is not my reason. I am 
 inviting a few of my friends, partly to celebrate the evacuation 
 of the foreign troops, partly on the occasion of my own pro- 
 motion to the Legion of Honor "
 
 96 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "Aha!" said the flattering Molineux, "a well-deserved 
 honor." 
 
 "Yes," said Birotteau. "It may be that I have shown 
 myself not unworthy of this signal mark of royal favor by act- 
 ing in my capacity at the Consular Tribunal, and by fighting 
 for the Bourbons on the steps of Saint-Roch, on the i3th 
 of Venddmiaire, where I was wounded by Napoleon ; these 
 claims " 
 
 " Equal those of our heroes in the late army. The ribbon 
 is red, because it has been dyed in blood shed for France." 
 
 At these words, a quotation from the " Constitutional," 
 Birotteau could not resist the impulse to invite little Molineux, 
 who grew quite incoherent in his thanks, and was almost 
 ready to forgive the slight which had been put upon him. 
 The old man went as far as the stairhead with his new tenant, 
 overwhelming him with civilities. 
 
 As soon as they were outside in the Cour Batave, Birotteau 
 looked at Cayron with an amused expression. 
 
 " I did not think that there was such a weak-minded crea- 
 ture in existence," he said ; " idiot " had been on the tip of 
 his tongue, but he suppressed it in time. 
 
 "Ah, sir!" said Cayron, " everybody is not so clever as 
 you are." 
 
 Birotteau might be excused for thinking himself a clever 
 man compared with Molineux ; the umbrella-dealer's reply 
 drew a pleasant smile from him ; he took leave of his com- 
 panion with a regal air. 
 
 " Here am I at the Market," he said to himself; "let us 
 arrange about the hazelnuts." 
 
 After an hour spent in making inquiries, the market-women 
 referred Birotteau to the Rue des Lombards, the headquarters 
 of the trade in nuts for confectionery, and there his friends 
 the Matifats informed him that the only wholesale dealer in 
 hazelnuts was one Mme. Angdlique Madou, resident in the 
 Rue Perrin-Gasselin ; and that this was the one house in the
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 97 
 
 trade for genuine Provencal filberts and white Alpine hazel- 
 nuts. 
 
 The Rue Perrin-Gasselin lies in a quadrangle bounded by 
 the quay, the Rue Saint-Denis, the Rue de la Ferronnerie, 
 and the Rue de la Monnaie, a labyrinth of slums which are, 
 as it were, the entrails of Paris. Here countless numbers of 
 heterogeneous and nondescript industries are carried on ; evil- 
 smelling trades, and the manufacture of the daintiest finery, 
 herrings and lawn, silk and honey, butter and tulle, jostle 
 each other in its squalid precincts. Here are the headquarters 
 of those multitudinous small trades which Paris no more sus- 
 pects in its midst than a man surmises the functions performed 
 by the pancreas in the human economy. In this congested 
 district, in which one Bidault of the Rue Grenetat (otherwise 
 known as Gigonnet the pawnbroker) played the part of leech, 
 the whole stock of goods sold in the Great Market is kept. 
 The ancient stables are warehouses where tons of oil are 
 stored ; the old coach-houses hold thousands of pairs of cot- 
 ton stockings. 
 
 Mme. Madou, sometime a fish-wife, had gone into the 
 "dry-fruit line" some ten years before this present year of 
 grace, on her entrance into a partnership with the late owner 
 of the business, who had an old-established connection among 
 the ladies of the Great Market. Her beauty, of a vigorous 
 and provocative order, had disappeared in excessive stoutness. 
 She lived on the first floor of a yellow, dilapidated house, held 
 together by iron clamps at every story. The departed dealer 
 in dry-fruit had succeeded in ridding himself of competitors 
 and had secured a monopoly of the trade ; so that, in spite of 
 some slight defects of education, his successor could continue 
 in the same groove, and came and went in her warehouses, 
 old out-buildings, stables, and workshops, where she waged 
 war against insect life with some success. 
 
 Mme. Angelique Madou dispensed with counting-house, 
 safe, and book-keeping (for she could neither read nor write), 
 7
 
 98 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 and answered a letter by blows of the fist, for she looked upon 
 it as an insult. In other respects she was a good-natured 
 soul, with a high-colored countenance, and a bandanna hand- 
 kerchief tied about her head beneath her cap, and a trumpet 
 voice which won the respect of the carmen who brought goods 
 to the Rue Perrin-Gasselin, and whose "rows" with her 
 usually ended in a small bottle of white wine. She could not 
 well have any trouble with the growers who supplied her, for 
 she always paid cash on delivery, the only way of carrying on 
 such a business as hers, and Mother Madou went into the 
 country to see them in the summer-time. 
 
 Birotteau found this shrewish saleswoman among her sacks 
 of hazelnuts, chestnuts, and walnuts. 
 
 "Good-day, my dear lady," said the jaunty Birotteau flip- 
 pantly. 
 
 " Your dear!" returned she. "So you have pleasant 
 recollections of your dealings with me, have you ? Have we 
 met each other at court ? " 
 
 " I am a perfumer, and, what is more, deputy-mayor of the 
 Second Arrondissement of Paris, and I have a right to expect 
 a different tone from you." 
 
 "I marry when I have a mind," said the virago; "I am 
 no customer at the mayor's office, and don't trouble deputy- 
 mayors much. And as for my customers they adore me, and 
 I talk to 'em as I please. If they don't like it, they may take 
 themselves somewhere else." 
 
 " See what comes of a monopoly," muttered Birotteau. 
 
 " Popole? that's my godson ; he has been up to some foolery 
 perhaps ; have you come for him, your worship ? " she asked, 
 in milder tones. 
 
 " No. I have the honor to inform you that I come to you 
 as a customer." 
 
 "All right. What is your name, my lad ? I haven't seen 
 you here before." 
 
 " If that is the way you talk, you ought to sell your nuts
 
 "GOOD-DAY. MY DEAR LADY,-' SAID BIKOTTEAU FLIPPANTLY
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 99 
 
 cheap," said Birotteau, and he mentioned his name and 
 designation. 
 
 " Oh ! you are the famous Birotteau with the handsome 
 wife. Well, and what weight do you want of these little dears 
 of hazelnuts, honey?" 
 
 " Six thousand pounds weight." 
 
 "It is as much as I have," said the saleswoman, with a 
 voice like a cracked flute. "You are not in the do-nothing 
 line, marrying the girls, and making scent for them. Lord, 
 bless you ! you do a trade, you do ! Sorry I have so little 
 for you ! You will be a fine customer, and your name will 
 be written on the heart of the woman that I love best in the 
 world " 
 
 " Who may that be ?" 
 
 "Who but dear Madame Madou." 
 
 " What do you want for the nuts? " 
 
 "Twenty-five francs the hundredweight to you, mister, if 
 you take the lot." 
 
 "Twenty-five francs," said Birotteau. "That is fifteen 
 hundred francs ! And I shall very likely take a hundred 
 thousand pounds weight in a year ! " 
 
 "But just look at the quality; no husks!" cried she, 
 plunging a red arm into a sack of filberts. " Sound kernels, 
 my dear sir. Just think, now, the grocers sell their mixed 
 dessert fruits at twenty-four sous the pound, and in every four 
 pounds they put more than a pound of hazelnuts. Am I to lose 
 money on the goods to please you ? You are a nice man, but 
 I don't care enough about you yet to do that. As you are 
 taking such a quantity, we might let you have them at twenty 
 francs, for it won't do to send away a deputy-mayor ; it would 
 bring bad luck to the young couples ! A good article ; just 
 feel the weight of them ! They wouldn't go fifty to the 
 pound ! Sound nuts they are, not one single maggot among 
 them!" 
 
 "Well, send six thousand pounds weight early to-morrow
 
 100 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 morning to my factory in the Rue Faubourg du Temple, for 
 two thousand francs at ninety days." 
 
 " They shall be punctual as a bride at a wedding. Well, 
 good-by, Monsieur le Maire ; we part good friends. But if it 
 is all the same to you," following Birotteau into the court, " I 
 would rather have a bill at forty days, for I have let you have 
 them too cheap, and I can't afford to lose the interest on the 
 money too. For all his sentimental ways, old Gigonnet sucks 
 the life out of us, as a spider sucks a fly. " 
 
 "Very well, yes, fifty days. But I'll have the nuts by 
 weight, so as not to lose on the hollow ones. They must be 
 weighed or I'll have nothing to do with them." 
 
 " Oh, the fox ; he knows that dodge, does he ? " said Mme. 
 Madou ; " you can't catch him napping. Those beggars in 
 the Rue des Lombards put him up to that 1 Those great 
 wolves yonder are all in a league to devour us poor lambs." 
 
 The lamb was five feet high and three feet around ; she had 
 not a vestige of a waist, and looked like a post in a striped 
 cotton gown. 
 
 As he went along the Rue Saint-Honor6, the perfumer, 
 lost in his schemes, meditated on his duel with Macassar 
 Oil. He designed the labels, decided on the shape of the 
 bottles, the quality of the corks, the color of the placards. 
 And people say that there is no poetry in business! Newton 
 did not make more calculations over the discovery of the 
 famous binomial theorem than Birotteau made for the " Com- 
 agen Essence" (for it was an essence now; the words oil 
 and essence possessed no definite meaning for him, and he 
 went from the one to the other). All these combinations 
 were seething in his head, and he mistook the ferment of an 
 empty brain for the germination of an idea. So absorbed was 
 he in his meditations that he went past the Rue des Bourdon- 
 nais, and, bethinking himself of his uncle, was obliged to re- 
 trace his steps. 
 
 Claude-Joseph Pillerault, formerly a retail hardware dealer
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 101 
 
 at the sign of the Golden Bell, was one of those human beings 
 whose exterior is the outward and visible expression of a 
 beautiful nature ; and heart and brain, language and thought, 
 his manner and the clothes that he wore, were all in harmony. 
 He was the only relation that Mme. Birotteau had in the 
 world, and upon her and on Cesarine Pillerault had centred 
 all his affections ; for in the course of his business career he 
 had lost his wife and his son, and a boy whom he had adopted, 
 the son of his cook. 
 
 These cruel bereavements had given to the good man's 
 thoughts a cast of Christian stoicism, a lofty doctrine which 
 was the informing spirit of his life, and shed the radiance of a 
 winter sunset over his last years, a glow that brings no warmth. 
 There was a tinge of asceticism about the thin, worn face, 
 where sallow and swarthy tones were harmoniously blended ; 
 you saw in it a striking resemblance to typical presentments 
 of Time ; but the every-day cares of a retail business had 
 touched this face, there was less of the monumental quality, 
 less of the grimness insisted upon by painters, sculptors, and 
 designers of bronze figures for clocks. 
 
 Pillerault was of middle Jieight, and thick-set rather than 
 stout. Nature had fashioned him for hard work and a long 
 life; he was strongly built, as his square shoulders indicated; 
 a man of phlegmatic temper, whose feelings, though he could 
 feel, did not lie on the surface. His quiet manner and reso- 
 lute face indicated that he was little given to the expression 
 of his emotions ; but, reserved and undemonstrative though he 
 was, there were depths of tenderness in Pillerault's nature. 
 The principal characteristic of the hazel eyes, with dark 
 specks in them, was their unvarying clearness. There were 
 deep furrows in a forehead sallowed by time, narrow, con- 
 tracted, and stern, and covered with gray hair, cut so short 
 that it looked like felt. Prudence, not avarice, was expressed 
 in the lines of the thin lips. The brightness of the eyes told 
 of a temperate life ; and, indeed, sincerity, a sense of duty, and
 
 102 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 a real humility glorified his features and set off his face, as 
 health does. 
 
 For sixty years he had led a hard and dreary existence, a 
 constant struggle for a livelihood. It was the same story as 
 Cesar's own, with Cesar's luck omitted. Pillerault had re- 
 mained an assistant till he was thirty years old ; he had em- 
 barked his capital in business at an age when Cesar was 
 investing his savings in rentes ; then the law of the maximum 
 had hit him hard, and his pickaxes and spades had been req- 
 uisitioned. His taciturn wisdom, his foresight, and logical 
 clear-headedness had had their effect on his "ways of doing 
 business." His bargains were concluded, as a rule, by 
 word of mouth, and difficulties seldom arose. Like most 
 meditative people, he was an observer ; he said little, and 
 studied those who talked ; often he had declined good bar- 
 gains of which his neighbors had availed themselves, and sub- 
 sequently repented, and vowed that Pillerault could smell out 
 a rogue. He preferred sure gains, if of the smallest, to bold 
 strokes of business involving heavy sums. 
 
 His stock of hardware consisted of grates, gridirons, cast- 
 iron fire-dogs, boilers, and copper caldrons, hoes, and such 
 agricultural implements as laborers use; somewhat unremuner- 
 ative branches of a business that involves continual drudgery. 
 Hardware is ponderous, awkward to handle, and difficult to 
 store, and the profits are not heavy in proportion ; so Pillerault 
 had nailed up many a case, sent off many packages, and un- 
 loaded many vans. Never had a competence been more 
 honorably earned, more thoroughly deserved, more to the 
 credit of the man who had made it. He had never asked too 
 much, had never run after business. Toward the end of the 
 time, you might have seen him smoking his pipe in the door- 
 way and watching his assistants at work. In 1814, when he 
 retired, his actual capital at first consisted of seventy thousand 
 francs, which he invested in Government stock that brought 
 him in five thousand and some odd hundred francs a year,
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 103 
 
 with a further forty thousand francs due in five years' time, 
 when the assistant to whom he had sold the business was to 
 pay for it. On this amount, meanwhile, no interest was paid. 
 For thirty years he had annually made seven per cent, on a 
 turnover of a hundred thousand francs, and had lived on half 
 his income. Such was his balance-sheet. 
 
 His neighbors, but little jealous of this by no means brilliant 
 success, extolled his wisdom without comprehending it. 
 
 At the corner of the Rue de la Monnaie and the Rue Saint- 
 Honore stands the Cafe David, where a few retired trades- 
 men, such as Pillerault, congregate of an evening to take 
 their coffee. At one time, Pillerault's adoption of his cook's 
 son had occasioned a few jokes among its frequenters, such 
 jokes as are addressed to a man looked up to among his 
 fellows, for the hardware man received a respect for which he 
 had not sought ; his own self-respect sufficed him. So when 
 Pillerault lost the poor young fellow there were more than 
 two hundred people at the funeral who followed his adopted 
 child to the grave. He behaved heroically in those days, 
 making no parade of his grief, bearing it as a brave man 
 bears sorrow. This increased the sympathy felt in the quarter 
 for] the "good man," as they called him, and the accent in 
 which the words were spoken gave the words a wider and 
 ennobled meaning when they applied to Pillerault. 
 
 Claude Pillerault had become so accustomed to the sober 
 even tenor of his life that, when he retired from business and 
 entered upon the time of leisure, which hangs so heavily on 
 many a Parisian tradesman's hands, he could not unbend and 
 divert himself with the amusements of an idle life ; he made 
 no change in his housekeeping ; and his old age was enlivened 
 by his political opinions, which, let us admit it at once, were 
 those of the extreme Left. 
 
 Pillerault belonged to the artisan class, which the Revolu- 
 tion had brought into cooperation with the small storekeepers. 
 The one blot on his character was the importance which he
 
 104 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 attached to the victory of his principles ; he dwelt fondly on 
 his rights, on liberty, on the great results of the Revolution ; 
 he firmly believed that his political freedom and existence 
 were being undermined by the Jesuits, whose underhand 
 power the Liberals discovered, and threatened by the ideas 
 with which the " Constitutionnel " credited Monsieur the 
 King's brother. He was, however, consistent in his life and 
 in his ideas ; there was nothing narrow in his political views ; 
 he never abused his adversaries, he held courtiers in suspicion, 
 and believed in Republican virtues. He imagined that Manuel 
 was guiltless of any excesses, that General Foy was a great 
 man, and Casimir P6rier without ambition ; to his thinking, 
 Lafayette was a political prophet, Courier a good man. In 
 short, he beheld noble chimerical visions. 
 
 The good man was domestic in his habits ; he made part of 
 the family circle in which his niece lived the Ragons, Judge 
 Popinot, Joseph Lebas, and the Matifats. Fifteen hundred 
 francs a year supplied his needs ; the rest of his income was 
 spent in charitable deeds and in presents to his grandniece ; 
 four times a year he gave a dinner to his friends at Roland's 
 in the Rue du Hasard, and took them afterward to the play. 
 He played the part of the old bachelor friend on whom 
 married women draw bills at sight for their fancies; for a 
 country excursion, a party for the opera or the Montagnes- 
 Beaujon ; and Pillerault would be very happy at such times in 
 the pleasure which he was giving, and felt the gladness in other 
 hearts. 
 
 If Molineux's character was written at large in his queer 
 furniture, Pillerault's pure heart and simple life were no less 
 revealed by his surroundings. His abode consisted of a lobby, 
 a sitting-room, and bedroom. But for the difference in size, 
 it might have been a Carthusian's cell. The lobby, floored 
 with red tiles, which were beeswaxed, boasted but one window, 
 hung with dimity curtains edged with scarlet ; mahogany 
 chairs, with red leather cushions and studded with brass nails,
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 105 
 
 stood against the wall, which was covered with an olive-green 
 paper, and adorned with pictures a " Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence," a portrait of Bonaparte as First Consul, and a 
 "Battle of Austerlitz." The furniture of the sitting-room, 
 doubtless left to the upholsterer, was yellow, and covered with 
 a flowered pattern ; there was a carpet on the floor ; the 
 bronze ornaments on the mantel were not gilded. There was 
 a painted fire-screen before the grate ; a vase of artificial 
 flowers under a glass shade stood on a console, and a liqueur 
 stand on a round table covered with a cloth. It was evident 
 from the unused look of the room that it was a concession to 
 convention on the part of the retired hardware dealer, who 
 rarely received visitors. 
 
 His own room was as bare as that of a monk or an old sol- 
 dier, the two men who make the truest estimate of life. In the 
 alcove a holy-water stoup caught the eye, a profoundly touch- 
 ing confession of faith in a Republican stoic and a strict anti- 
 Jesuit. 
 
 An old woman came in to do the work of the establishment ; 
 but, so great was Pillerault's reverence for womankind, that he 
 would not allow her to clean his shoes and made an arrange- 
 ment with a bootblack. 
 
 His costume was plain and never varied. He always wore 
 a coat and breeches of blue cloth, a cotton vest, a white cravat, 
 and very low walking shoes ; and on high-days and holidays a 
 coat with metal buttons. He rose, breakfasted, went out, 
 dined, and returned home when the evening was over with the 
 strictest regularity, for a methodical life conduces to health 
 and length of days. Cdsar, the Ragons, and the Abbe Loraux 
 always avoided the subject of politics ; those of his own circle 
 knew better than to court attack by trying to convert him. 
 Like his nephew and the Ragons, he put great faith in Roguin ; 
 for him a notary of Paris was always a being to be venerated 
 and probity incarnate. In the matter of the building land, 
 Pillerault had examined it so thoroughly that the remembrance
 
 106 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 of his investigations had given Cesar moral support in the 
 combat with his wife's forebodings. 
 
 As Cesar climbed the seventy-two steps of the stairs which 
 led to the low, brown doorway of his uncle's rooms, he thought 
 within himself that the old man must be very hale to go up 
 and down them daily without a murmur. He found the coat 
 and breeches hanging on a peg outside, and Mme. Vaillant 
 busy rubbing and brushing them ; while the philosopher him- 
 self, in his gray flannel dressing-gown, was breakfasting by the 
 fireside, and conning the reports of parliamentary debates in 
 the " Constitutionnel " or the " Journal du Commerce." 
 
 "The affair is settled, uncle," said Cesar, " they are just 
 about to draft the documents ; but if you have any doubts or 
 regret about it, there is still time to cry off." 
 
 " Why should I cry off? It is a good piece of business, 
 but it takes some time to realize, like everything that is safe. 
 My fifty thousand francs are lying at the bank ; the last install- 
 ment of five thousand francs for my business was paid in yes- 
 terday. As for the Ragons, they are putting all that they have 
 into it." 
 
 " Why, how do they live ? " 
 
 "Never mind ; they live, at all events." 
 
 " I understand you, uncle," said Birotteau, deeply touched, 
 and he grasped the austere old man's hands tightly in his. 
 
 " What are you going to do about this business? " Pillerault 
 asked abruptly. 
 
 "I shall take three-eighths; you and the Ragons will take 
 an eighth between you ; I shall credit you with the amount in 
 my books until they decide the question of the deeds." 
 
 " Good ! Are you so very rich, my boy, that you pay down 
 three hundred thousand francs? It looks to me as though you 
 were risking a good deal of money outside your business ; 
 won't the business suffer? After all, it is your own affair. If 
 you are pulled up, here are the funds at ninety ; I could sell 
 out two thousand francs in consols. Take care, though, my
 
 CJESAR BIROTTEAU. 107 
 
 boy; if you come to me you will be laying hands on your 
 girl's fortune." 
 
 " Uncle, you say the kindest things as if they were a matter 
 of course ; it goes to my heart to hear you." 
 
 " General Foy touched me after another fashion just now ! 
 There, at all events, it is settled. The building lots won't 
 fly away ; we shall have them for half their value ; and, even if 
 we should have to wait six years, there will still be something 
 in the way of interest ; lumber yards would pay rent, so we can- 
 not lose. There is only one thing, and that is impossible 
 Roguin will not run away with our capital " 
 
 " But that is what my wife said last night ; she is afraid- 
 
 "That Roguin will run off with our money," said Piller- 
 ault, laughing ; " and why ? " 
 
 "Well, she says she doesn't like the cut of his features ; 
 and, like all men who cannot have women, he is frantic 
 for " 
 
 An incredulous smile stole over Pillerault's face ; he tore a 
 leaf out of a little book, filled in the amount, and signed his 
 name. 
 
 " Here, this is an order on the bank for a hundred thousand 
 francs, for Ragon's share and mine. Those poor people, 
 though, to make up the money, sold out their fifteen shares in 
 the Wortschin mines to your worthless rogue of a du Tillet. 
 Good people in sore straits; it goes to one's heart to see it. 
 And such good people they are, such noble people, the flower 
 of the old-fashioned bourgeoisie, in fact ! Their brother Pop- 
 inot, the judge, knows nothing about it ; they are hiding 
 their affairs from him, lest they should hinder him from giving 
 free course to his benevolence. People who have worked as 
 I did for thirty years " 
 
 " God grant that the Comagen Oil succeeds ! " cried Birot- 
 teau, "and I shall be doubly pleased. Good-day, uncle; you 
 are coming to dine with us on Sunday with the Ragons and 
 Roguin ; and Monsieur Claparon is coming, for we are all
 
 108 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 going to sign the papers the day after to-morrow ; to-morrow 
 will be Friday, and I don't want to do bus " 
 
 " Do you really believe in those superstitions?" 
 
 " I shall never believe that the day when the Son of God 
 was put to death by men can be a lucky day, uncle. Why ? 
 people stop all business even on the 2ist of January." 
 
 "Good-by till Sunday," said Pillerault abruptly. 
 
 " If it weren't for his political opinions," said Birotteau to 
 himself, as he went downstairs again, " I do not know where 
 they would find his equal here below. What are politics to 
 him? He would get on very nicely without thinking of them 
 at all. His infatuation shows that no one is perfect. Three 
 o'clock already ! " said Cesar, as he entered his store. 
 
 "Are you going to take these bills, sir?" asked Celestin, 
 holding out the umbrella-dealer's collection of bills. 
 
 "Yes, at six per cent., no commission. Wife, put out all 
 my things ready for me; I am going to call on Monsieur 
 Vauquelin, you know why. Above all things, a white cravat." 
 
 Birotteau gave some orders to his assistants ; he did not see 
 Popinot, guessed that his future partner had gone to dress for 
 the visit, and went up at once to his own room, where the 
 Dresden Madonna met his eyes in a magnificent frame, ac- 
 cording to his orders. 
 
 " Well, it looks fine, doesn't it ? " 
 
 " Why, papa, say it is beautiful, or people will laugh at 
 you." 
 
 " Here is a girl for you that scolds her father ! Well, 
 
 for my own part, I like ' Hero and Leander ' quite as much. 
 The ' Madonna ' is a religious subject, which could be hung 
 up in an oratory ; but ' Hero and Leander ! ' Ah ! I will 
 buy it, for the flask of oil suggested some ideas to me." 
 
 "But I don't understand, papa." 
 
 " Virginie, call a cab!" shouted C6sar, in a voice that 
 rang through the house. He had finished shaving, and the 
 shy Anselme Popinot appeared, dragging his feet, for he
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 109 
 
 thought of C6sarine. He had not discovered, as yet, that he 
 was not lame in the eyes of his lady-love, a sweet proof of love, 
 which only those to whom fate has given some bodily defor- 
 mity can receive. 
 
 "The press will be in working order to-morrow, sir," he 
 said. 
 
 " Very well. What is the matter, Popinot? " asked Cesar, 
 seeing Anselme's flushed face. 
 
 " I am so glad, sir ; I have found a place, a front and back 
 store, and a kitchen, and the rooms above, and a wareroom, 
 all for twelve hundred francs a year, in the Rue des Cinq- 
 Diamants." 
 
 "We must have an eighteen years' lease of it," said Bi- 
 rotteau. " But let us go to Monsieur Vauquelin and we can 
 talk on the way," and Cesar and* Popinot drove away under 
 the eyes of the assistants, who were at a loss what to think 
 of such magnificent attire and so unusual a portent as a cab, 
 ignorant as they were of the mighty matters that occupied the 
 owner of the Queen of Roses. 
 
 "So we shall soon know the truth about the hazelnuts!" 
 said the perfumer. 
 
 "Hazelnuts?" queried Popinot. 
 
 "You have my secret, Popinot," said the perfumer; "I 
 let slip the word ' hazelnuts,' and that tells everything. 
 Hazelnut oil is the only oil which produces any effect on the 
 hair ; no other house has thought of it. When I saw the 
 print of 'Hero and Leander,' I said to myself, 'If the an- 
 cients put so much oil on their heads, there must have been 
 some reason for it,' for the ancients are the ancients ! In 
 spite of modern pretensions, I am of Boileau's opinion about 
 the ancients. From that I came to the idea of hazelnuts, 
 thanks to young Bianchon, the medical student, your relative; 
 he told me that the students at the Ecole put hazelnut oil on 
 their mustaches and whiskers to make them grow. All we 
 want now is the illustrious Monsieur Vauquelin's approval.
 
 110 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Enlightened by him, we shall not deceive the public. Only 
 just now I was over in the market buying the raw material of 
 a saleswoman there ; and in another moment I shall be in the 
 presence of one of the greatest scientific men in France for 
 the quintessence of the matter. There's sense in proverbs 
 extremes meet. Trade is the intermediary between vegetable 
 products and science, you see, my boy. Angelique Ma- 
 dou collects the material, Vauquelin distills it, and we 
 sell an essence. Hazelnuts are worth five sous the pound, 
 Monsieur Vauquelin will increase their value a hundredfold, 
 and we shall perhaps do a service to humanity ; for, if vanity 
 is a plague of man, a good cosmetic is a benefit." 
 
 The devout admiration with which Popinot listened to the 
 father of his Cesarine stimulated Birotteau's eloquence; he 
 indulged in the crudest rhetorical display that a Philistine's 
 brain can devise. 
 
 "Be reverent, Anselme," he said, as they reached the 
 street in which Vauquelin lived ; "we are about to enter the 
 sanctuary of science. Put the ' Madonna ' in evidence, but 
 without making any parade of it, on a chair in the dining- 
 room. If only I can manage to say what I want to say without 
 making a muddle of it! " cried Birotteau artlessly. "Popi- 
 not, that man produces a chemical effect on me, the sound of 
 his voice makes me quite hot inside, and even gives me a 
 slight colic. He is my benefactor, Anselme, and in a few 
 minutes he will be your benefactor too." 
 
 Popinot turned cold at the words, set down his feet as if 
 he were treading on eggs, and looked uneasily around the 
 room. 
 
 M. Vauquelin was in his study when Birotteau was an- 
 nounced. The roan of science knew that the perfumer was 
 a deputy-mayor and in high favor ; he received his visitor. 
 
 " So you do not forget me now that you are so high up in 
 the world," he said; "well, between a chemist and a per- 
 fumer there is but a hand's-breadth."
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. Ill 
 
 " Alas ! there is a great distance between your genius and 
 a plain man like me, sir ; and, as for what you call ' being 
 high up in the world,' it is all owing to you, and I shall 
 never forget it in this world or the next." 
 
 " Oh ! in the next we shall all be equal, they say, cobblers 
 and kings." 
 
 " That is to say, those kings and cobblers who have lived 
 piously," remarked Birotteau. 
 
 "Is this your son?" asked Vauquelin, looking at little 
 Popinot, who was beyond expression amazed to find nothing 
 extraordinary in the study. He had expected to see prodig- 
 ious marvels, giant engines, vivified substances, and metals 
 flying about. 
 
 " No, sir ; but he is a young man in whom I am very 
 much interested, and he has come to entreat your goodness, 
 which is equal to your talent, and is it not infinite?" re- 
 marked Birotteau diplomatically. "We have come, after an 
 interval of sixteen years, to consult you a second time on a 
 matter of importance, concerning which I am as ignorant as 
 a perfumer." 
 
 " Let us hear about it. What is it ? " 
 
 " I know that the subject of hair occupies your nights, and 
 that you are devoting yourself to the analysis of the substance ! 
 While you have been thinking for glory, I have been thinking, 
 too, for trade." 
 
 " Dear Monsieur Birotteau, what do you want of me an 
 analysis of hair?" 
 
 He took up a loose sheet. 
 
 "I am about to read a paper before the Academic des 
 Sciences," he went on. " Hair is composed of a somewhat 
 large proportion of mucus, a little colorless oil, a larger pro- 
 portion of dark-greenish oil, and iron ; I find a certain amount 
 of oxide of manganese, and of phosphate of lime, and traces 
 of carbonate of lime, and silica ; sulphur enters largely into 
 its composition. The proportions in which these different
 
 112 CESAX BIROTTEAU. 
 
 substances are present vary, and so cause the different color- 
 ings of hair. Red hair, for example, on analysis yields much 
 more of the dark-green oil than the other kinds give." 
 
 Cesar and Popinot opened their eyes ludicrously wide. 
 
 " Nine things," cried Birotteau. " What, are there metals 
 and oils in hair ? It takes the word of a man like you, whom 
 I venerate, to make me believe it. How extraordinary ! 
 God is great, M. Vauquelin." 
 
 " Hair is produced by a follicular organ," the great chemist 
 continued ; "a follicle is a sort of bag open at both ends ; at 
 the one end it is connected with nerves and bloodvessels, 
 and the hair issues from the other. According to some of 
 our learned associates, one of whom is Monsieur de Blainville, 
 the hair is dead matter expelled from the sac or secreting 
 gland, which is full of a pulpy tissue." 
 
 "It is like perspiration in sticks, as you might say," cried 
 Popinot, for which the perfumer promptly kicked his shins. 
 
 Vauquelin smiled at Popinot's notion. On this, " He has 
 capacity, hasn't he? " said C6sar, looking at Popinot. " But 
 if hair is dead, to begin with, sir, you can't possibly restore 
 it, and it is all over with us ! the prospectus is nonsense ! 
 You don't know how funny the public is; you can't go and 
 tell people " 
 
 " That there is a rubbish heap on their heads," said Popi- 
 not, trying to make Vauquelin laugh again. 
 
 "An aerial catacomb," returned the chemist, keeping up 
 the joke. 
 
 "And the nuts that are bought! " cried Birotteau, with a 
 lively sense of the pecuniary loss. " But why do they sell 
 such ?" 
 
 " Reassure yourself," said Vauquelin, smiling. " I see some 
 secret for preventing the hair from falling out or turning gray 
 is the matter in question. Listen ; here are my conclusions 
 after all my researches." 
 
 Popinot pricked up his ears at this like a startled leveret.
 
 CSAR B1ROTTEAU. 113 
 
 "The blanching of the fibres, dead or alive, is, in my 
 opinion, produced by an interruption of the secretion of the 
 coloring matter ; this theory would explain the fact that some 
 fur-bearing animals in cold climates turn white, or some lighter 
 color, at the beginning of winter." 
 
 "Hm! Popinot." 
 
 "It is evident," Vauquelin continued, "that the change 
 of color is due to sudden change in the temperature of the 
 circumambient air " 
 
 " Circumambient, Popinot mind that ! mind that ! " cried 
 Cesar. 
 
 "Yes," said Vauquelin, "to alternations of cold or heat, 
 or to interior phenomena, which produce the same effect. So, 
 in all probability, headaches and other local affections dissi- 
 pate the fluid or derange the secretions. The inside of the 
 head is the doctors' province. As for the outside, put on 
 your cosmetics by all means." 
 
 "Well, sir," said Birotteau, "now I can breathe again 
 after what you say. I thought of selling the oil of hazelnuts, 
 remembering the use the ancients made of oil for their hair ; 
 and the ancients are the ancients, I am of Boileau's opinion. 
 Why did wrestlers oil themselves ?" 
 
 " Olive oil would do quite as well as oil of hazelnuts," said 
 Vauquelin, who had paid no attention to Birotteau's remarks. 
 " Any oil will do to protect the hair-bulbs from outside in- 
 fluences injurious to the substances which it contains in pro- 
 cess of formation ; in course of deposit, we chemists would 
 say. Perhaps you are right ; the essential oil of hazelnuts is 
 an irritant, so Dupuytren once told me. I will try to find 
 out the difference between walnut and beechnut oils, colza, 
 olive, and so forth." 
 
 "Then I am not mistaken," Birotteau exclaimed triumph- 
 antly, "and a great man bears me out in my opinion. Ma- 
 cassar is done for ! Macassar, sir, is a cosmetic they give you, 
 that is, sell you, and sell very dear, to make your hair grow."
 
 114 C&SAR BIKOTTEAU. 
 
 "My dear Monsieur Birotteau," said Vauquelin, "there 
 are not two ounces of oil of Macassar in Europe. Oil of 
 Macassar produces not the slightest effect on hair. The 
 Malays will pay its weight in gold for it, because of its sup- 
 posed preservative action on the hair, not knowing that whale 
 oil is quite as good. No possible power whether chemical or 
 divine " 
 
 "Oh ! divine do not say that, Monsieur Vauquelin." 
 
 "Why, my dear sir, God's first law is conformity with 
 Himself; without unity there is no power " 
 
 "Oh, looked at in that way " 
 
 " No power whatever can make the hair grow on a bald 
 head, and you cannot dye white or red hair without danger ; 
 but you will do no harm, and there will be no fraud in extol- 
 ling your oil, and I think that those who use it might preserve 
 their hair." 
 
 " Do you think that the Royal Academy of Science would 
 approve it?" 
 
 "Oh! it is no discovery," said M. Vauquelin. "And, 
 beside, quacks have taken the name of the Academy in vain 
 so often that it would not help you at all. My conscience 
 will not allow me to look on oil of hazelnuts as a prodigy." 
 
 " What would be the best way of extracting it, by pressure 
 or by decoction ? " asked Birotteau. 
 
 " You will obtain the most oil by pressure between two hot 
 plates ; but if the plates are cold, it will be of better quality. 
 It ought to be applied to the skin itself, and not rubbed into 
 the hair," continued Vauquelin very good-naturedly, " or the 
 effect will be lost." 
 
 "Mind you remember this, Popinot," said Birotteau, as 
 his face flushed up with enthusiasm. "You see in him, sir, a 
 young man who will reckon this day among the great days of 
 his life. He knew and revered you before he had seen you. 
 Ah ! we often talk of you at home ; a name that is always in 
 the heart comes often to the lips. We pray every day for
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 115 
 
 you, my wife and daughter and I, as we ought to do for our 
 benefactor. ' ' 
 
 "It is too much for so little," said Vauquelin, embarrassed 
 by the perfumer's voluble gratitude. 
 
 " Tut, tut, tut ! " said Birotteau. "You cannot hinder us 
 from loving you, you who will accept nothing from me. You 
 are like the sun ; you shed light around you, and those on 
 whom it shines can do nothing for you in return." 
 
 The man of science rose, smiling, to his feet; Birotteau 
 and Anselme Popinot rose also. 
 
 " Look around, Anselme; take a good look at this study. 
 If you will allow him, sir ? Your time is so valuable, perhaps 
 he will never come here again." 
 
 "Well, are you satisfied with your business?" asked 
 Vauquelin, turning to Birotteau; "for, after all, we are both 
 of us men of business " 
 
 " Pretty well, sir," said Birotteau, going toward the dining- 
 room, whither Vauquelin followed him; "but it will take a 
 great deal of capital to start this oil under the name of 
 Comagen Essence " 
 
 " ' Essence ' and ' Comagen ' are two words that clash. 
 Call your cosmetic Birotteau's Oil ; or, if you have no mind 
 
 to blaze your name abroad, take another Why, there is 
 
 the Dresden Madonna Ah ! Monsieur Birotteau, you 
 
 mean us to fall out at parting." 
 
 " Monsieur Vauquelin," said the perfumer, taking both the 
 chemist's hands in his, " the scarce print has no value save 
 for the persistent efforts which I have made to find it ; all 
 Germany has been ransacked for a proof before letters on 
 India paper; I knew you wished to have it, you were too 
 busy to procure it yourself, so I have taken it upon myself 
 to be your agent. Please accept, not a paltry print, but the 
 earnest efforts, the care, and pains which prove a boundless 
 devotion. I should have been glad if you had wanted some 
 substances that could only be found in the depths of an abyss,
 
 116 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 that I might come to tell you, ' Here they are ! ' We have 
 so many chances to be forgotten, let me put myself, my 
 wife, and daughter, and the son-in-law whom I shall have one 
 day, all before your eyes ; and say to yourself when you see 
 the Madonna, ' There are honest folk who think of me.' " 
 
 "I accept it," said Vauquelin. 
 
 Popinot and Birotteau wiped their eyes, so much moved 
 were they by the kind tone in which the chemist spoke. 
 
 "Will you carry your kindness yet further?" asked the 
 perfumer. 
 
 " What is it ? " asked Vauquelin. 
 
 " I am inviting a few of my friends (here he raised him- 
 self on tiptoe, but his face assumed a humble expression) 
 partly to celebrate the liberation of the soil, and partly on the 
 occasion of my own promotion to the Legion of Honor." 
 
 "Aha! " said Vauquelin in astonishment. 
 
 " It may be that I have shown myself worthy of this signal 
 mark of royal favor by discharging my functions at the Con- 
 sular Tribunal and by fighting for the Bourbons on the steps 
 of Saint-Roch's church on the i3th of Vend6miaire, when I 
 was wounded by Napoleon. My wife is giving a ball on Sun- 
 day in twenty days' time ; will you come to it, sir ? Do us 
 the honor of dining with us on that day ; and, for my own 
 part, it will be as if they had given me the cross twice. I 
 will write to you in good time." 
 
 "Very well, yes," said Vauquelin. 
 
 " My heart is swelling with pleasure," cried the perfumer 
 when they were in the street. " He will come to my house ! 
 I am afraid that I have forgotten what he said about hair; do 
 you remember it, Popinot ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir, and in twenty years' time I shall still remember 
 it." 
 
 "A great man, that he is ! What insight and what penetra- 
 tion ! " exclaimed Birotteau. " He went straight to the 
 point, he read our thoughts at once, and showed us how to
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU: 117 
 
 make a clean sweep of Macassar Oil. Ah ! nothing can make 
 hair grow, Macassar, so that is a lie ! Popinot, there is a 
 fortune within our grasp. So let us be at the factory by seven 
 o'clock to-morrow morning, the nuts will come in, and we 
 will make the oil. There is no use in his saying that any oil 
 will do ; it would be all over with us if the public knew that. 
 If there were not a little hazelnut oil and scent in this compo- 
 sition of ours, what excuse should we have for selling it at 
 three or four francs for as many ounces? " 
 
 "And you are to be decorated, sir ? " said Popinot. " What 
 glory for " 
 
 " For commerce, isn't it, my boy? " 
 
 Cesar Birotteau, sure of a fortune, looked so triumphant 
 that the assistants noticed his expression and made signs to 
 each other ; for the appearance of a cab, and the fact that 
 their employer and his cashier had changed their clothes, had 
 given rise to the wildest imaginings. The very evident satis- 
 faction of the pair, revealed by the diplomatic glances ex- 
 changed between them, and the hopeful eyes that Popinot 
 turned once or twice on Cdsarine, announced that some im- 
 portant event was imminent, and confirmed the assistants' 
 suspicions. The smallest chance events in their busy and 
 almost monastic lives were as interesting to them as to any 
 prisoner in solitary confinement. Mme. Cesar's face (for she 
 responded doubtfully to the Olympian looks her husband 
 turned on her) portended some new development in the busi- 
 ness, for at any other time Mme. Cesar would have been 
 serenely content Mme. Cesar, who was so blithe over a 
 good day, and to-day the takings had amounted to the extra- 
 ordinary sum of six thousand francs; some old outstanding 
 accounts had been paid. 
 
 The dining-room and the kitchen were both on the mez- 
 zanine floor, where Cesar and Constance had lived during the 
 first years of their married life. This dining-room, where 
 their honeymoon had been spent, looked like a little drawing-
 
 118 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 room. The kitchen windows looked out into a little yard ; a 
 passage separated the two rooms and gave access to the stair- 
 case, contrived in a corner of the back-shop. 
 
 Raguet, the errand boy, looked after the store while they 
 sat at dinner ; but, when dessert appeared, the assistants went 
 downstairs again and left Cesar and his wife and daughter to 
 finish their meal by the fireside. This tradition had been 
 handed down from the days of the Ragons, who had kept up 
 all the old-fashioned customs and usages in full vigor, and set 
 the same enormous distance between themselves and the as- 
 sistants that formerly existed between masters and apprentices. 
 C6sarine or Constance would then prepare the cup of coffee, 
 which the perfumer took in a low chair by the fire. It was 
 the hour when Cesar told his wife all the small news of the 
 day ; he would tell her anything that he had seen in Paris, or 
 what they were doing in the Faubourg du Temple, and about 
 the difficulties that arose there. 
 
 " This is certainly one of the most memorable days in our 
 lives, wife ! " he began, when the assistants had gone down- 
 stairs. "The hazelnuts have been bought, the hydraulic press 
 will be ready for work to-morrow, the matter of the building 
 lands has been concluded. And, while I think of it, just put 
 away this order on the bank," he went on, handing over to 
 her Pillerault's draft. " The redecoration of the rooms, our 
 new rooms, has been settled. Dear me ! I saw a very queer 
 man to-day in the Cour Batave ! " 
 
 And he told the women about M. Molineux. 
 
 "I see," his wife broke in, in the middle of a tirade, 
 "that you will have to pay two hundred thousand francs ! " 
 
 " True, my wife," said the perfumer, with mock humility. 
 " Good Lord ! and how are we to pay it ? for the building 
 lands near the Madeleine, that will be the finest quarter of 
 Paris some day, must be taken as worth nothing." 
 
 " Some day, Cdsar." 
 
 "Dear, dear ! " he continued his joke "my three-eighths
 
 C&SAR B2ROTTEAU. 119 
 
 will only be worth a million in six years' time. And how 
 shall we pay two hundred thousand francs?" asked Cesar, 
 making as though he were aghast. " Well, we will pay it 
 with this," and he drew from his pocket one of Mme. 
 Madou's hazelnuts, which he had carefully kept. 
 
 He held it up between his thumb and finger. Constance 
 said nothing ; but Cesarine, whose curiosity was tickled, 
 brought her father his cup of coffee with a " Come, now, 
 papa, are you joking? " 
 
 The perfumer, like his assistants, had noticed the glances 
 Popinot had given Cdsarine during dinner ; he meant to clear 
 up his suspicions. 
 
 "Well, little girl, this hazelnut is to work a revolution in 
 the house. There will be one less under our roof after to- 
 night." 
 
 Cesarine looked straight at her father, as who should say, 
 "What is that to me?" 
 
 " Popinot is going away." 
 
 Although Cesar was a poor observer, although his remark 
 had been meant to prepare the way for the announcement of 
 the new firm of A. Popinot and Company, as well as for a 
 trap for his daughter, his father's tenderness told him the 
 secret of the vague emotions which sprang up in the girl's 
 heart, and blossomed in red upon her cheek and brow, bright- 
 ening her eyes before they fell. Cesar thought at once that 
 some word had been exchanged between Cesarine and Popi- 
 not. Nothing of the kind had happened ; the boy and girl 
 understood each other, after the fashion of shy young lovers, 
 without a word. 
 
 There are moralists who hold that love is the most involun- 
 tary, the most disinterested and least calculating of all passions, 
 a mother's love always excepted, a doctrine which contains a 
 gross error. The larger part of mankind may be ignorant of 
 their motives ; but any sympathy, physical or mental, is none 
 the less based upon calculations made by brain or heart or
 
 120 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 animal instincts. Love is essentially an egoistical affection, 
 and egoism implies profound calculation. For the order of 
 mind which is only impressed by outward and visible results, 
 it may seem an improbable or unusual thing that a poor, lame, 
 red-haired lad should find favor in the eyes of a beautiful 
 girl like Cesarine ; and yet it was only what might be ex- 
 pected from the workings of the bourgeois mind in matters 
 of sentiment. The explanation would account for other 
 marriages that are a constant source of amazement to on- 
 lookers, between tall or beautiful women and insignificant 
 men, or when some well-grown stripling marries some ugly 
 little creature. 
 
 For a man afflicted with any physical deformity, be it a 
 club-foot, lameness, a hunch-back, excessive ugliness, spot, 
 blemish, or disfigurement, Roguin's infirmity, or other anom- 
 alous affection for which his progenitors are not responsible, 
 there are but two courses open : he must either make himself 
 feared or cultivate an exquisite goodness he cannot afford to 
 steer an undecided middle course between the two extremes 
 like the rest of humanity. The first alternative requires talent, 
 genius, or force of character; for a man can only inspire 
 terror by his power to do harm, impose respect by his genius, 
 or compel fear by his prodigious wit. In the second he 
 studies to be adored ; he lends himself admirably to feminine 
 tyranny, and is wiser in love than others of irreproachable 
 physical proportions. 
 
 Anselme Popinet had been brought up by the good Ra- 
 gons, upright citizens of the best type, and by his uncle 
 the judge a course of training which, with his ingenuous 
 and religious nature, had led him to redeem his slight defor- 
 mity by the perfection of his character. Constance and 
 Cesar, struck by a disposition which makes youth so attract- 
 ive, had often praised Anselme in Cesarine' s hearing. With 
 all their narrowness in other respects, this storekeeper and his 
 wife possessed nobility of soul, and hearts that were quick to
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 121 
 
 comprehend. Their praises found an echo in the girl's own 
 heart ; in spite of her inexperience she read in Anselme's 
 frank eyes a passion that is always flattering, no matter what 
 the age, rank, or figure of the lover may be. 
 
 Little Popinot, not being a well-shaped man, had all the 
 more reasons for loving a woman. Should she be fair, he 
 would be her lover till his dying day ; love would give him 
 ambition ; he would work himself to death to make his wife 
 happy; he would suffer her to be the sovereign mistress of 
 his home ; and her empire over him would be without change 
 and boundless. 
 
 This, crudely stated, is perhaps what Cesarine thought, un- 
 consciously within herself; she had had a bird's-eye glimpse 
 of the harvests of love, and she had drawn her own infer- 
 ences; her mother's happiness was under her eyes, she wished 
 no other life for herself; instinctively she discerned in An- 
 selme another Cesar, polished by education, as she herself 
 had been. In her dreams, Popinot was the mayor of an 
 arrondissement, and she liked to imagine herself asking for 
 subscriptions to charities in her district, as her own mother 
 did in the parish of Saint-Roch. And so at length she forgot 
 that one of Popinot's legs was shorter than the other, and 
 would have been quite capable of asking, " Does he really 
 limp ? " She liked the clear eyes ; she liked to see the change 
 that came over them when, at a glance from her, they lighted 
 up at once with a flash of timid love, and then fell despond- 
 ently again. 
 
 Roguin's head clerk, Alexandre Crottat, gifted with a pre- 
 cocious knowledge of the world, acquired by professional 
 experience, disgusted Cesarine with his half-cynical, half- 
 good-natured air, after putting her out of patience with his 
 commonplace talk. Popinot's silence revealed a gentle na- 
 ture ; she liked to watch the half-sad smile with which he 
 endured meaningless trivialities ; the babble which made him
 
 122 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 smile always roused a feeling of annoyance in her; they 
 smiled or looked condolence at each other. 
 
 Anselme's mental superiority did not prevent him from 
 working hard with his hands ; the way in which he threw 
 himself into everything that he did also pleased Cesarine ; 
 she guessed that while all the other assistants said, " Cesarine 
 is going to be married to Monsieur Roguin's head clerk," 
 Anselme, lame and poor and red-haired, did not despair of 
 winning her. The strength of a hope proves the strength of 
 a love. 
 
 "Where is he going?" Cesarine asked, trying to look in- 
 different. 
 
 "He is going to set up for himself in the Rue des Cinq- 
 
 Diamants ! And, upon my word, by the grace of God ! " 
 
 But neither his wife nor daughter understood the ejaculation. 
 When Birotteau's mind encountered any difficulty, he behaved 
 like an insect that encounters an obstacle, he swerved to left 
 or right ; so now he changed the subject, promising himself to 
 speak of Cesarine to his wife. 
 
 " I told uncle your notions about Roguin and your fears; 
 he began to laugh," he went on, addressing Constance. 
 
 " You ought never to repeat things that we say between 
 ourselves," she cried. " Poor Roguin ! he may be the most 
 honest man in the world ; he is fifty-eight years old, and I 
 expect he no more thinks " 
 
 She too broke off; she saw that Cesarine was listening, and 
 warned Cesar of that fact by a glance. 
 
 " So I did well to strike the bargain." 
 
 "Why, you are the master," returned she. 
 
 Cesar took both his wife's hands in his and kissed her on 
 the forehead. That answer had always been her passive form 
 of assent to her husband's projects. And, with that, Birotteau 
 went downstairs into the store. 
 
 " Come ! " he cried, speaking to the assistants, "we will 
 put up the shutters at ten o'clock. We must do a stroke of
 
 C&SAR B1ROTTEAU. 123 
 
 work, gentlemen ! We must set about moving all the furni- 
 ture from the second floor to the third to-night ! We shall 
 have to put the little pots into the big ones, as the saying is, 
 so as to give my architect elbow-room to-morrow. Popinot 
 has gone out without leave," said Cesar, looking round. 
 " Oh ! I forgot, he does not sleep here. He has gone to see 
 about the store, or else he is putting down Monsieur Vauque- 
 lin's ideas," he thought. 
 
 "We know why the furniture is being moved, sir," said 
 Celestin, spokesman for the two assistants and Raguet, who 
 stood by him. " May we be allowed to congratulate you on 
 an honor which reflects glory on the whole establishment? 
 Popinot told us " 
 
 "Well, boys, it can't be helped; I have been decorated. 
 So we are inviting a few friends, partly to celebrate the libera- 
 tion of the soil and partly on the occasion of my own promo- 
 tion to the Legion of Honor. It may be that I have shown 
 myself worthy of this signal mark of royal favor by the dis- 
 charge of my functions at the Consular Tribunal and by 
 fighting for the Royalist cause when I was your age on the 
 steps of Saint-Roch, on the i3th of Venddmiaire ; and, on 
 my word, Napoleon the Emperor, as they called him, gave 
 me my wound. For I was wounded, and on the thigh, what 
 is more, and Madame Ragon nursed me. Be brave, and you 
 will be rewarded ! So there, you see, my children, that a 
 mishap is never all loss." 
 
 " People don't fight in the streets nowadays," said Celestin. 
 
 "Well, we must hope," said C6sar, and thereupon he took 
 occasion to read his assistants a little homily, which he 
 rounded off with an invitation. 
 
 The prospect of a dance put new life into the three assist- 
 ants ; under the stimulus of the excitement, the three, with 
 Virginie and Raguet, performed acrobatic feats. They came 
 and went up and down the stairs with their loads, and nothing 
 was broken, nothing was upset. By two o'clock in the morn-
 
 124 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 ing the removal was accomplished ; Cesar and his wife slept 
 on the third floor, Celestin and the second assistant occupied 
 Popinot's room. The fourth floor was converted, for the time 
 being, into a furniture warehouse. 
 
 When the assistants had gone down into the shop after din- 
 ner, Popinot, usually so quiet and equable, had been as fidgety 
 as a race-horse just arrived upon the course. A burning desire 
 to do something great was upon him, induced by a super- 
 abundance of nervous fluid, which turns the diaphragm of the 
 lover or the man of restless ambition into a furnace. 
 
 " What can be the matter with you ? " Celestin had asked. 
 
 "What a day! I am setting up for myself, my dear fel- 
 low," he whispered in Celestin's ear, "and Monsieur Cesar is 
 to be decorated." 
 
 "You are very lucky; the governor is helping you," ex- 
 claimed the assistant. 
 
 Popinot gave him no answer ; he vanished, whirled away 
 by the wind the wind of success. 
 
 " Oh, as to lucky ! " said an assistant, as he sorted gloves 
 in dozens, to his neighbor, who was busy checking the prices 
 on the tickets. " The governor has seen the eyes that Popinot 
 has been making at Mademoiselle C6sarine ; he is a shrewd 
 one, the governor, so he is getting rid of Anselme ; it would 
 be difficult to refuse outright, because of the relatives. Celes- 
 tin takes the trick by this generosity." 
 
 Anselme Popinot meanwhile had turned down the Rue 
 Saint-Honor^ and hurried along the Rue des Deux-Ecus to 
 secure some one in whom his commercial second-sight beheld 
 the principal instrument of success. Judge Popinot had once 
 done a service to this young man, the cleverest commercial 
 traveler in Paris, whose activity and triumphant gift of the gab 
 was to earn for him at a later day the title of " The Illustrious. " 
 At this time the great commercial traveler was devoting his 
 energies to the hat-trade and the " fancy-goods line ;" he was 
 simply Gaudissart as yet, without the prefix, but at the age of
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 125 
 
 twenty-two he had already distinguished himself; his magnetic 
 influence upon customers was beginning to be recognized. 
 He was thin and bright-eyed at that time; he had an elo- 
 quent face, an indefatigable memory, a quick perception of 
 the taste of those with whom he came in contact ; he deserved 
 to be, what he afterward became the king of commercial 
 travelers, the Frenchman par excellence. 
 
 Popinot had come across Gaudissart some days previously, 
 and the latter had announced that he was about to go on a 
 journey ; the hope of finding him still in Paris had sent 
 Popinot flying down the Rue des Deux-Ecus. At the coach- 
 office he learned that the commercial traveler had taken his 
 place. Gaudissart's leave-taking of his beloved city had taken 
 the shape of an evening at the Vaudeville, where there was a 
 new play. Popinot resolved to wait for him. To confide 
 the agency of the hazelnut oil to this invaluable launcher of 
 commercial enterprise, already courted and cherished by the 
 best houses, was exactly like drawing a bill of exchange on 
 fortune ! 
 
 Popinot had claims on Gaudissart. The commercial trav- 
 eler, so skilled in the art of entangling that forward race, the 
 petty country storekeepers, in his toils, had once allowed 
 himself to become entangled in a political web, in the first 
 conspiracy against the Bourbons after the Hundred Days; 
 and Gaudissart, to whom open air was a vital necessity, found 
 himself in prison with a capital charge hanging over him. 
 Judge Popinot, the examining magistrate, saw that it was a 
 piece of youthful folly that implicated Gaudissart in the affair, 
 and set him at liberty ; but if the young man had chanced 
 upon a magistrate eager to commend himself to the authori- 
 ties, or upon a rabid Royalist, the luckless pioneer of com- 
 merce might have mounted the scaffold. Gaudissart, who 
 knew that he owed his life to the judge, was in despair, be- 
 cause a barren gratitude was all the return he could make ; 
 and, as it was impossible to thank a judge for doing justice,
 
 126 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 he had betaken himself to the Ragons, and there sworn fealty 
 to the family of Popinot. 
 
 While Popinot waited he naturally spent the time in going 
 to see his store in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants once more. 
 He asked for the landlord's address, so as to come to terms 
 with him about the lease. Then, wandering through the 
 murky labyrinth about the Great Market, with his thoughts 
 full of ways and means of making a rapid fortune, Popinot 
 came into the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, and there met with a 
 wonderful and auspicious opportunity, with which Cesar's 
 heart should be gladdened on the morrow. Then he took up 
 his post at the door of the Hotel du Commerce, at the end of 
 the Rue des Deux-Ecus ; and toward midnight heard, afar off, 
 a voice uplifted in the Rue de Crenelle ; it was Gaudissart 
 singing a bit of the last song in the piece, to the accompani- 
 ment of the sound of a walking-stick, trailed with expression 
 upon the pavement. 
 
 "Sir," cried Anselme, suddenly emerging from the door- 
 way, " can I have a couple of words with you? " 
 
 " Eleven, if you like," said the other, raising a loaded cane. 
 
 " I am Popinot," said poor Anselme. 
 
 " Right," said Gaudissart, recognizing his friend. " What 
 do you want ? Money ? Absent on leave, but there is some 
 somewhere. An arm for a duel ? I am at your service from 
 heel to head. 
 
 " ' You see him where he stands 
 Every inch a Frenchman and a soldier ! ' " 
 
 " Come and have ten minutes' talk with me, not in your 
 
 room, we might be overheard, but on the Quai de 1'Horloge ; 
 
 there is nobody there at this time of night," said Popinot, 
 
 " it is a question of the greatest importance." 
 " You are in a hurry, are you ? Come along ! " 
 Ten minutes later, Gaudissart, now put in possession of 
 
 Popinot 's secrets, recognized the importance of the matter.
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 127 
 
 "Approach, ye hairdressers and retail perfumers," cried 
 Gaudissart, mimicking Lafon in the Cid. "I will get hold 
 of all the perfumers of France and Navarre. Oh ! I have it ! 
 I was going away, but I shall stop here now and take agencies 
 from the Parisian perfumery trade. ' ' 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " To choke off your competitors, innocent ! By taking on 
 their agencies, I can make their perfidious cosmetics drink to 
 their own confusion in your oil, for I shall talk of nothing 
 else and push no other kind. A fine commercial traveler's 
 dodge ! Aha ! we are the diplomatists of commerce. Fa- 
 mous ! As for your prospectus, I will see to it. I have known 
 Andoche Finot since we were boys ; his father is a hatter in the 
 Rue du Coq, the old fellow started me ; it was through him 
 that I began to travel in the hat line. Andoche is a very 
 clever fellow ; he has the cleverness of all the heads that his 
 father ever fitted with hats. He is in the literary line; he 
 does the minor theatres for the ' Courrier des Spectacles.' 
 His father, an old fox, has abundant reason for not liking 
 cleverness ; he doesn't believe in cleverness ; it is impossible 
 to make him see that cleverness will sell, and that a young man 
 of spirit can make a fortune by his wits ; indeed, as to spirit, 
 the only spirit he approves of is proof-spirit. Old Finot is 
 reducing young Finot by famine. Andoche can do anything, 
 and he is my friend, moreover, and I don't rub against fools 
 (except in the way of business). Finot does mottoes for the 
 ' Fidele Berger,' which pays him, while the newspapers, for 
 which he works like a galley-slave, snub him right and left. 
 How jealous they are in that line ! It is just like it is in the 
 fancy article trade. 
 
 " Finot wrote a splendid one-act comedy for Mademoiselle 
 Mars, the greatest of the great. (Ah ! there's a woman that I 
 admire !) Well, and to see it put on the stage at all, he had 
 to take it to the Gaite". Andoche understands prospectuses ; 
 he enters into a man's ideas about business, he is not proud,
 
 128 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 he will block out our prospectus gratis. Goodness ! we will 
 treat him to a bowl of punch and little cakes ; for no non- 
 sense, Popinot ; I will travel for you without commission or 
 expenses; your competitors shall pay me, I will bamboozle 
 them. Let us understand each other clearly. The success 
 of this thing is a point of honor with me ; my reward shall 
 be to be best-man at your wedding ! I will go to Italy, 
 Germany, and England ! I will take placards in every lan- 
 guage with me and have them posted up everywhere, in the 
 villages, at church-doors, and in all good situations that I 
 know in country towns ! The oil shall make a blaze ; it 
 shall be on every head ! Ah ! your marriage will not be a 
 marriage in water-colors ; it shall be done in oils ! You shall 
 have your Cesarine, or I am not 'The Illustrious,' a nickname 
 old Finot gave me because I made a success of his gray hats. 
 I shall be sticking to my own line, too, the human head ; oil 
 and hats, as is well known, are meant to preserve the hair of 
 the public." 
 
 Popinot went to his aunt's house, where he was to spend 
 the night, in such a fever, brought on by visions of success, 
 that the streets seemed to him to be rivers of oil. He scarcely 
 slept at all, dreamed that his hair was growing at a furious 
 rate, and beheld two angels, who unrolled above his head a 
 scroll (as in a pantomime), whereon the words " Cesarian 
 Oil" were written; and he awoke, but remembered his 
 dream, and determined to give the name to the oil of hazel- 
 nuts. He saw the will of heaven revealed in this fancy. 
 
 Cesar and Popinot were both at the factory in the Faubourg 
 du Temple long before the hazelnuts arrived. While they 
 waited for Mme. Madou's porters, Popinot in high-glee told 
 the whole history of his treaty of alliance with Gaudissart the 
 Great. 
 
 " We have the illustrious Gaudissart for us ; we shall be 
 millionaires ! " cried the perfumer, holding out a hand to his
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 129 
 
 cashier, with the air of Louis XIV. receiving a Marechal de 
 Villairs after Denain. 
 
 "And yet another thing," said the happy assistant, drawing 
 a bottle from his pocket, a gourd-shaped flask, flattened so as 
 to present several sides. " I have found ten thousand bottles 
 like this one, ready made and washed, at four sous and six 
 months' credit." 
 
 "Anselme," said Birotteau, beholding this marvel, " yes- 
 terday " (here his voice grew solemn), "yesterday, in the 
 garden of the Tuileries yes, no longer ago than yesterday 
 your words to me were, ' I shall succeed.' To-day I myself 
 say to you, ' You will succeed ! ' Four sous ! Six months ! 
 An entirely new shape! Macassar is shaking in his shoes; 
 what a death-blow for Macassar ! What a good thing that I 
 have bought up all the nuts I could lay my hands on in Paris ! 
 But where did you find these bottles ? " 
 
 "I was waiting to speak to Gaudissart, and sauntering 
 about " 
 
 "Just as I once did ! " exclaimed Birotteau. 
 
 "And as I went down the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, I saw a 
 wholesale glass-merchant's place, a dealer in bell-glasses and 
 
 glass shades, who has a very large stock ; I saw this bottle 
 
 Oh ! it stared me in the face like a flash of light ; something 
 said, ' Here is the thing for you ! ' " 
 
 "A born merchant ! He shall have my daughter," mut- 
 tered Cesar. 
 
 " In I went, and saw thousands of the bottles standing there 
 in boxes." 
 
 " Did you ask him about them ? " 
 
 "You do not think me such a ninny!" cried Anselme, 
 grieved at the thought. 
 
 "Born merchant ! " repeated Birotteau. 
 
 " I went in to ask for glass shades for little wax statuettes. 
 While I was bargaining for the glass shades, I found fault with 
 the shape of these bottles. That led to a general confession ; 
 9
 
 130 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 my bottle merchant went from one thing to another, and told 
 me that Faille and Bouchot, who failed lately, were about to 
 bring out a cosmetic, and wanted an out-of-the-way shape. 
 He distrusted them ; he wanted half the money down ; Faille 
 and Bouchot, hoping for a success, parted with the money, 
 and the failure came out while the bottles were being made. 
 When they put in a claim to the trustees for the rest, the 
 trustees compromised the matter by leaving them with all the 
 bottles and half the money that had been paid, as an indemnity 
 for goods which they said were absurdly shaped and im- 
 possible to dispose of. The bottles cost him eight sous, and 
 he would be glad to let any one have them for four. He 
 might have them on his hands for heaven knew how long ; 
 there was no sale for such a shape. ' Will you engage to supply 
 ten thousand at four sous ? I can take the bottles off your 
 hands ; I am Monsieur Birotteau's assistant.' And so I opened 
 up the subject, and drew him out, led him on, and put pres- 
 sure on my man, and he is ours." 
 
 "Four sous! " said Birotteau. "Do you know that we 
 can bring out the oil at three francs, and make thirty sous, 
 leaving twenty to the retailers? " 
 
 " The Cesar ian Oil ! " cried Popinot. 
 
 " Cesarian Oil? Ah, master lover, you have a mind 
 
 to flatter father and daughter. Very well ; let it be Cesarian 
 Oil if you like. The Caesars conquered the world ; they 
 must have had famous heads of hair." 
 
 " Csesar was bald," said Popinot. 
 
 "Because he did not use our oil, people will say. The 
 Cesarian Oil at three francs ; Macassar Oil costs twice as 
 much. Gaudissart is in it; we shall make a hundred thousand 
 francs a year, for we will set down all heads that respect them- 
 selves for a dozen bottles every twelvemonth ; eighteen francs 
 of profit ! Say there are eighteen thousand heads a hundred 
 and forty-four thousand francs. We shall be millionaires." 
 
 When the hazelnuts arrived, Raguet and the work-people,
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 131 
 
 with Popinot and Cesar, cracked the shells, and a sufficient 
 quantity was pressed. In four hours' time they had several 
 pounds weight of oil. Popinot took some of it to Vauquelin, 
 who presented him with a formula for diluting the essential 
 oil with a less expensive medium and for perfuming it. Pop- 
 inot straightway took steps for taking out a patent for the in- 
 vention and the improvement. It was Popinot's ambition to 
 pay his share of the expense of starting the enterprise, and 
 the devoted Gaudissart lent the money for the deposit. 
 
 Prosperity has an intoxicating effect, which always turns 
 weak heads. One result of this uplifted state of mind is 
 readily foreseen. Grindot came. He brought with him a 
 sketch in water-colors of a charming interior, the design for 
 the future rooms when furnished. Birotteau was carried away 
 by it. He agreed to everything, and the workmen began at 
 once; every stroke of the pickaxe drew groans from the 
 house and from Constance. The painter, M. Lourdois, a 
 very wealthy contractor, who engaged to leave nothing un- 
 done, talked of gilding the drawing-room. Constance inter- 
 posed at this. 
 
 " Monsieur Lourdois," said she, " you have thirty thousand 
 francs a year of your own ; you live in your own house, and 
 you can do what you like in it ; but for people like us " 
 
 " Madame, commerce ought to shine; it should not suffer 
 itself to be eclipsed by the aristocracy. Beside, here is Mon- 
 sieur Birotteau in the Government ; he is a public man " 
 
 "Yes, but he is still in the store," said Constance aloud, 
 before the assistants and her five auditors ; " neither he, nor 
 I, nor his friends, nor his enemies will forget that." 
 
 Birotteau raised himself on tiptoe several times, with his 
 hands clasped behind his back. 
 
 " My wife is right," said he. " We will be modest in 
 prosperity. Beside, so long as a man is in business, he ought 
 to be careful of his expenses and to keep them within 
 bounds; indeed, he is bound by law not to indulge in 'ex-
 
 132 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 cessive expenditure.' If the enlargement of my premises 
 and the amount spent on the alterations exceed a certain 
 limit, it would be imprudent in me to go beyond it ; you 
 yourself would blame me, Lourdois. The quarter has its eyes 
 upon me; successful people are looked upon jealously and 
 envied. Ah ! you will soon know that, young man," he said, 
 addressing Grindot ; " if they slander us, at any rate let us 
 give them no cause to say evil of us." 
 
 "Neither slander nor spite can touch you," said Lourdois; 
 "your position makes an exception of you; and you have 
 had such a great experience of business that you know how 
 to always keep your affairs within due limits. You are very 
 shrewd, monsieur." 
 
 "I have had some experience of business it is true; do 
 you know the reason why we are enlarging our house ? If I 
 exact a heavy penalty to secure punctuality it is " 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Well, then, my wife and I are inviting a few friends, 
 partly to celebrate the liberation of the soil, partly on the 
 occasion of my promotion to the Order of the Legion of 
 Honor." 
 
 "What, what?" cried Lourdois. "Have they given you 
 the cross ? ' ' 
 
 " Yes. It may be that I have shown myself worthy of this 
 signal mark of royal favor by discharging my functions at 
 the Consular Tribunal and by fighting for the Royalist cause 
 on the 1 3th of Vendemiaire at Saint-Roch, when I was 
 wounded by Napoleon. Will you come and bring your wife 
 and your young lady ?" 
 
 " Enchanted by the honor you condescend to bestow upon 
 me," said Lourdois, a Liberal. " But you are a droll fellow, 
 Birotteau ; you mean to make sure that I shall keep my word, 
 and that is why you ask me to come. Well, well ; I will set 
 my best workmen on to it ; we will have roaring fires to dry 
 the paint and use drying processes, for it will not do to dance
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 133 
 
 in a room full of steam from the damp plaster. The surface 
 shall be varnished, so that there shall be no smell." 
 
 Three days later, the announcement of Birotteau's forth- 
 coming ball created a flutter in the commercial world of that 
 quarter. And not only so, every one could see for himself 
 the timber props, necessitated by the hurried alteration of the 
 staircase, and the square wooden shaft-holes, through which 
 the rubbish was shot into the carts beneath. The men in 
 their haste worked by torchlight, for they had a night-and- 
 day shift, and this collected idlers and inquisitive gazers in 
 the street. On such preparations as these, the gossip of the 
 neighborhood reared sumptuous fabrics of conjecture. 
 
 On the Sunday, when the documents relative to the, build- 
 ing land were to be signed, M. and Mme. Ragon and Uncle 
 Pillerault came at four o'clock, after vespers. C6sar said that, 
 as the house was so much pulled to pieces, he could only ask 
 Charles Claparon, Roguin, and Crottat for that day. The 
 notary brought a copy of the " Journal des Debats," in 
 which M. de la Billardidre had inserted the following para- 
 graph : 
 
 " We hear that the liberation of the soil will be celebrated 
 with enthusiasm throughout France ; but, in Paris, the mem- 
 bers of the municipal administration have felt that the time 
 had come for reviving the splendor of the capital, which has 
 been eclipsed during the foreign occupation from a feeling of 
 patriotism. Each of the mayors and deputy-mayors proposes 
 to give a ball, so that the winter season promises to be a very 
 brilliant one, and the National movement will be followed up. 
 Among the many fgtes about to take place is the much-talked- 
 of ball to be given by M. Birotteau, recently nominated for 
 the Legion of Honor, and so widely known for his devotion 
 to the Royalist cause. M. Birotteau, wounded in the affair 
 of Saint-Roch on the i3th of Vendemiaire, and one of the
 
 134 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 most highly respected judges of the Consular Tribunal, has 
 doubly deserved this distinction." 
 
 "How well they write nowadays!" exclaimed Csar. 
 " They are talking about us in the paper," he added, turning 
 to Pillerault. 
 
 "Well, and what of that?" returned the uncle, who par- 
 ticularly detested the "Journal des Debats." 
 
 " Perhaps the paragraph may sell some of the Pate des Sul- 
 tanes and the Toilet Lotion," said Mme. Cesar in a low voice 
 to Mme. Ragon. Mme. Birotteau did not share her husband's 
 exhilaration. 
 
 Mme. Ragon, a tall, thin woman, with a sharp nose and 
 thin lips, looked a very fair imitation of a marquise of the 
 ancien regime. A somewhat wide margin of red encircled her 
 eyes, as sometimes happens with aged women who have known 
 many troubles. Her fine austere face, in spite of its kindli- 
 ness, was dignified, and there was, moreover, a quaint some- 
 thing about her which struck beholders, yet did not excite a 
 smile, a something interpreted by her manner and her dress. 
 She wore mittens ; she carried in all weathers a cane umbrella, 
 such as Marie Antoinette used at the Trianon ; her favorite 
 color was that particular pale shade of brown known i&feuille- 
 morte (dead leaves) ; her skirts hung from her waist in folds, 
 which will never be seen again, for the dowager ladies of a 
 bygone day have taken their secret with them. Mme. Ragon 
 had not given up the black mantilla bordered with square- 
 meshed black lace ; the ornaments in her old-fashioned caps 
 reminded you of the filigree work on old picture-frames. She 
 took snuff with the dainty neatness and the little gestures 
 which a younger generation may recall, if they have been so 
 fortunate as to see their great-aunt or grandmother solemnly 
 set her gold snuff-box on the table beside her, and shake the 
 stray grains from her fichu. 
 
 The Sieur Ragon was a little man, five feet high at the
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 135 
 
 most, with a countenance of the nutcracker type. Two eyes 
 were visible, two prominent cheek-bones, a nose, and a chin. 
 As he had lost his teeth, he mumbled half his words, but he 
 talked like a brook, politely, somewhat pompously, and always 
 with a smile the same smile with which he had greeted the 
 fair ladies of quality whom one chance or another brought to 
 his store. His hair, tightly scraped back from his forehead 
 and powdered, described a snowy half-moon on his head, with 
 a pair of "pigeon's wings" on either side of a neat queue 
 tied with ribbon. He wore a cornflower-blue coat, a white 
 vest, silk breeches and stockings, black silk gloves, and shoes 
 with gold buckles to them. The most peculiar thing about 
 him was his habit of walking out in the street hat in hand. 
 He looked rather like a messenger of the Chamber of Peers 
 or some usher-in-waiting at the palace one of those attendant 
 satellites of some great power, which shine with a reflected 
 glory and remain intrinsically insignificant. 
 
 "Well, Birotteau," he remarked, and from his tone he 
 might have been addressing an assistant, " are you sorry now, 
 my boy, that you took our advice in those days? Did we 
 ever doubt the gratitude of our beloved royal family?" 
 
 "You must be very happy, my dear," said Mme. Ragon, 
 addressing Mme. Birotteau. 
 
 "Yes, indeed," returned the fair Constance, who always 
 fell under the charm of that cane umbrella, those butterfly 
 caps, those tight-fitting sleeves, and the ample fichu a la Julie 
 that Mme. Ragon wore. 
 
 "Cesarine looks charming. Come here, pretty child," 
 said Mme. Ragon. She spoke in a patronizing manner and 
 with a high head-voice. 
 
 " Shall we settle the business before dinner ? " asked Uncle 
 Pillerault. 
 
 "We are waiting for Monsieur Claparon," said Roguinj 
 "he was dressing when I left him." 
 
 " Monsieur Roguin," Cesar began, "does he quite tin-
 
 136 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 derstand that we are to dine to-day in a wretched little entre- 
 sol " 
 
 ("Sixteen years ago he thought it magnificent," murmured 
 Constance.) 
 
 "Among the rubbish, and with all the workmen about?" 
 
 " Pooh ! you will find him a good fellow, and not hard to 
 please," said Roguin. 
 
 "I have left Raguet to look after the store; we cannot 
 come in and out of our own door now ; as you have seen, it 
 has all been pulled down," C6sar returned. 
 
 "Why did you not bring your nephew?" asked Pillerault 
 of Mme. Ragon. 
 
 "Shall we see him later?" suggested Cesarine. 
 
 "No, darling," said Mme. Ragon. "Anselme, dear boy, 
 is working himself to death. I am afraid of that close street 
 where the sun never shines, that vile-smelling Rue des Cinq- 
 Diamants ; the gutter is always black or blue or green. I 
 am afraid he may die there. But when young people set their 
 
 minds upon anything !" she said, turning to Cesarine 
 
 with a gesture that interpreted "mind" as "heart." 
 
 "Then, has the lease been signed?" asked Cesar. 
 
 "Yesterday, before a notary," Ragon replied. " He has 
 taken the place for eighteen years, but he pays the rent six 
 months in advance." 
 
 "Well, Monsieur Ragon, are you satisfied with me?" 
 Birotteau asked. " I have given him the secret of a new dis- 
 covery in fact ! ' ' 
 
 "We know you by heart, Csar," said little Ragon, taking 
 Cesar's hands and pressing them with devout friendliness. 
 
 Roguin meanwhile was not without inward qualms. Cla- 
 paron was about to appear on the scene, and his habits and 
 manner of talking might be something of a shock to these re- 
 spectable citizens. He thought it necessary to prepare their 
 minds, and spoke, addressing Ragon, Pillerault, and the 
 women.
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 137 
 
 " You will see an eccentric character," he said ; "he hides 
 his talents beneath shocking bad manners; his ideas have 
 raised him from a very low position. No doubt he will ac- 
 quire better tastes in the society of bankers. You might 
 come across him slouching half-fuddled along the boulevard 
 or in a cafe playing at billiards ; he looks like a great hulking 
 idiot. But nothing of the kind ; he is thinking all the time, 
 pondering how to put life into trade by new ideas." 
 
 "I can understand that," said Birotteau ; "my best ideas 
 came to me while I was sauntering about, didn't they, dear?" 
 
 " Claparon makes up for lost time at night, after spending 
 the daytime in meditating over business combinations. All 
 these very clever people lead queer inexplicable lives," Roguin 
 continued. "Well, with all his desultory ways, he gains his 
 end, as I can testify. He made all the owners of our build- 
 ing land give way at last ; they were not willing, they de- 
 murred at this and that ; he mystified them tired them out ; 
 day after day he went to see them, and this time the lots are 
 ours." 
 
 A peculiar sounding broum ! broum ! characteristic of drink- 
 ers of strong waters and spirits, announced the arrival of the 
 most grotesque personage in this story who was in the future 
 to enact the part of the arbiter of Cesar's destinies. The 
 perfumer hurried down the narrow, dark staircase, partly to 
 tell Raguet to close the store, partly to make his excuses for 
 receiving Claparon in the dining-room. 
 
 "Eh, what? Oh, it will do very well for stowing the 
 vict , I mean for doing business in." 
 
 In spite of Roguin's skillful opening, the entrance of the 
 sham great banker at once produced an unpleasant impression 
 upon those well-bred citizens, M. and Mme. Ragon, upon 
 the observant Pillerault, and upon Cesarine and her mother. 
 
 At the age of twenty-eight, or thereabouts, the former com- 
 mercial traveler had not a hair on his head, and wore a wig 
 of corkscrew curls. Such a manner of dressing the hair de-
 
 138 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 mands a girlish freshness, a milk-white skin, and the daintiest 
 feminine charm ; so it brought out all the vulgarity of a 
 pimpled countenance, a dark-red complexion, flushed like that 
 of a stage coachman, and covered with premature wrinkles 
 and deeply-cut grotesque lines which told of a dissolute life ; 
 its ill effects could be read only too plainly in the bad state 
 of his teeth and the black specks dotted over the shriveled 
 skin. 
 
 There was something about Claparon that suggested the 
 provincial actor who frequents fairs, and is prepared to play 
 any and every part, to whose worn, shrunken cheeks and 
 flabby lips the paint refuses to adhere ; the tongue always 
 wagging even when the man is drunk ; the shameless eyes, 
 the compromising gestures. Such a face as this, lighted up 
 by the hilarious flames of punch, little befitted a man accus- 
 tomed to important business. Indeed, only after prolonged 
 and necessary studies in mimicry had Claparon succeeded in 
 adopting a manner not wholly out of keeping with his sup- 
 posed importance. Du Tillet had assisted personally at Cla- 
 paron's toilet, anxious as a nervous manager over the first ap- 
 pearance of his principal actor, for he trembled lest the vicious 
 habits of a reckless life should appear through the veneer of 
 the banker. 
 
 "Say as little as you can," said his mentor; "a banker 
 never babbles; he acts, thinks, meditates, listens, and pon- 
 ders. So, to look like a real banker, you must either not 
 speak at all or say insignificant things. Keep these ribald 
 eyes of yours quiet; look solemn at the risk of looking stupid. 
 In politics, be for the Government, but keep to generalities, 
 such as ' There is a heavy budget ; compromise as parties 
 stand is out of the question ; Liberalism is dangerous ; the 
 Bourbons ought to avoid all collisions ; Liberalism is a cloak 
 to hide the schemes of the coalition ; the Bourbons are inau- 
 gurating an epoch of prosperity, so let us give them our sup- 
 port, whether we are well affected to them or not ; France
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 139 
 
 has had enough of political experiments, 1 and the like. And 
 don't sprawl over all the tables; remember that you have to 
 sustain the dignity of a millionaire. Don't snort like a pen- 
 sioner when you take snuff; play with your snuff-box and look 
 at your boots or at the ceiling before you give an answer; look 
 as wise as you can, in fact. Above all things, rid yourself of 
 your unlucky habit of fingering everything. In society a 
 banker ought to look as if he were glad to let his fingers rest. 
 And look here ! you work at night, you are stupid with 
 making calculations, there are so many things to consider in 
 the starting of an enterprise ! so much thinking is involved ! 
 Grumble, above all things, and say that trade is very bad. 
 Trade is dull, slow, hard to move, perplexing. Keep to that, 
 and let particulars alone. Don't begin to sing drolleries of 
 Beranger's at table, and don't drink too much ; you will ruin 
 your prospects if you get tipsy. Roguin will keep an eye on 
 you ; you are going among moral people, respectable, steady- 
 going folk, don't frighten them by letting out some of your 
 pot-house principles." 
 
 This homily produced on Charles Claparon's mind an effect 
 very similar to the strange sensation of his new suit of clothes. 
 The rollicking prodigal, hail-fellow-well-met with everybody, 
 accustomed to the comfortable, disreputable garments in 
 which his outer man was as much at home as his thoughts in 
 the language that clothed them, held himself upright, stiff as 
 a poker in the new clothes for which the tailor had kept him 
 waiting to the last minute, and was as ill at ease in his move- 
 ments as in this new phraseology. He put out a hand un- 
 thinkingly toward a flask or a box, then, hurriedly recollect- 
 ing himself, drew it in again, and in the same way he began a 
 sentence and stopped short in the middle, distinguishing him- 
 self by a ludicrous incoherence, which did not escape the 
 observant Pillerault. His round face, like the rakish-looking 
 corkscrew ringlets of his wig, were totally out of keeping 
 with his manner, and he seemed to think one thing and say
 
 140 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 another. But the good folk concluded that his inconsequence 
 was the result of preoccupation. 
 
 "He does so much business," said Roguin. 
 
 " Business has given him very little breeding," Mme. Ra- 
 gon said to Cesarine. 
 
 M. Roguin overheard her, and laid a finger on his lips. 
 " He is rich, clever, and honorable to a fault," he said, bend- 
 ing to Mme. Ragon. 
 
 " He may be excused something for such qualities as those," 
 said Pillerault to Ragon. 
 
 "Let us read over the papers before dinner," said Roguin. 
 "We are alone." 
 
 Mme. Ragon, Cesarine, and Constance left the contracting 
 parties, Pillerault, Ragon, Cesar, Roguin, and Claparon, to 
 listen to the reading of the documents by Alexandre Crottat. 
 Cesar signed a mortgage bond for forty thousand francs se- 
 cured on the land and the factory in the Faubourg du Temple 
 (the money had been lent by one of Roguin's clients); he 
 paid over to Roguin Pillerault' s order on the bank, gave 
 (without taking a receipt) twenty thousand francs worth of 
 bills from his portfolio, and drew another bill for the remain- 
 ing hundred and forty thousand francs on Charles Claparon. 
 
 "I have no receipt to give you," said that gentleman. 
 " You are acting for your own side with Monsieur Roguin, as 
 we are doing for our share. Our vendors will receive their 
 money from him in coin ; I only undertake to complete your 
 payment by paying a hundred and forty thousand francs for 
 your bills " 
 
 "That is right," said Pillerault. 
 
 "Well, then, gentlemen, let us call in the ladies again, for 
 it is cold without them," said Claparon, with a look at Ro- 
 guin to see whether he had gone too far. 
 
 " Ladies ! Ah ! mademoiselle is your young lady, of 
 
 course," said Claparon, looking at Birotteau and straighten- 
 ing himself up. " Well, well, you are not a bungler. Not
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 141 
 
 one of the roses that you have distilled can be compared with 
 her, and, perhaps, it is because you have distilled roses 
 that " 
 
 " Faith! " said Roguin, interrupting him, "I own that I 
 am hungry." 
 
 " Very well, let us have dinner," said Birotteau. 
 
 " We are to have dinner in the presence of a notary," said 
 Claparon, with an important air. 
 
 " You do a great deal of business, do you not ? " said Pil- 
 lerault, purposely seating himself next to the banker. 
 
 "A tremendous amount, wholesale," replied Claparon; 
 " but trade is dull, hard to move there are canals now. Oh, 
 canals ! You have no idea how busy we are with canals. 
 That is comprehensible. The Government wants canals. A 
 canal is a want generally felt. All the trade of a department 
 is interested in a canal, you know ! A stream, said Pascal, 
 is a moving highway. The next thing is a market, and mar- 
 kets depend on embankments, for there are a frightful lot of 
 embankments, and the embankments interest the poorer 
 classes, and that means a loan, which finally benefits the 
 poor! Voltaire said, 'Canal, canard, canaille /' But Gov- 
 ernment depends for information on its own engineers ; it is 
 difficult to meddle in the matter at least, it is difficult to 
 
 come to an understanding with them ; for the Chamber 
 
 Oh ! sir, the Chamber gives us trouble ! The Chamber does 
 not want to grapple with the political question hidden be- 
 neath the financial question. There is bad faith on all sides. 
 Would you believe this ? There are the Kellers well, then, 
 Francois Keller is a public speaker, he attacks the measures 
 of the Government as to the funds and canals. He comes 
 home, and then my fine gentleman finds us with our proposi- 
 tions ; they are favorable, and he has to make it up with the 
 aforesaid Government, which he attacked so insolently an 
 hour ago. The interests of the public speaker clash with the 
 interests of the banker ; we are between two fires. Now you
 
 142 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 understand how thorny affairs become ; you have to satisfy 
 everybody the clerks, the people in the chambers, and the 
 people in the ante-chambers, and the ministers " 
 
 "The ministers?" asked Pillerault, who wished to probe 
 this partner's mind thoroughly. 
 
 "Yes, sir, the ministers." 
 
 "Well, then, the newspapers are right," said Pillerault. 
 
 "Here is uncle on politics," said Birotteau; "Monsieur 
 Claparon has set him off." 
 
 "Newspapers!" said Claparon, "there are some more 
 confounded humbugs ! Newspapers throw us all into confu- 
 sion ; they do us a good turn now and then, but the cruel 
 nights they make me spend ! I would as lief be without 
 them ; they are the ruin of my eyes, in fact, poring over them 
 and working out calculations." 
 
 "But to return to the ministers," said Pillerault, hoping 
 for revelations. 
 
 " Ministers have exigencies which are purely governmental. 
 But what am I eating ; is it ambrosia ? ' ' asked Claparon, in- 
 terrupting himself. " Here is a sort of sauce that you only 
 have in citizens' houses ; you never get it at grub-shops " 
 
 At that word, the ornaments on Mme. Ragon's cap skipped 
 like rams. Claparon gathered that the expression was low, 
 and tried to retrieve his error. 
 
 "That is what the heads of large banking firms call the 
 high-class taverns Very and the Freres Provencaux. Well, 
 neither those vile grub-shops nor our most accomplished 
 cooks make you a soft, mellow sauce ; some give you water 
 with lemon-juice in it, and others give you chemical concoc- 
 tions." 
 
 The conversation at dinner chiefly consisted in attacks from 
 Pillerault, who tried to plumb his man, and only found empti- 
 ness ; he looked upon him as a dangerous person. 
 
 "It is going on all right," said Roguin in Charles Cla- 
 paron 's ear.
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 143 
 
 "Oh ! I shall get out of my clothes to-night, I suppose," 
 answered Claparon, who was gasping for breath. 
 
 " We are obliged to use our dining-room as a sitting-room, 
 sir," said Birotteau, "because we are looking forward to a 
 little gathering of our friends in eighteen days' time, partly 
 to celebrate the liberation of the soil " 
 
 "Right, sir; I myself am also for the Government. 
 My political convictions incline me to the statu quo of the 
 great man who guides the destinies of the house of Austria, a 
 fine fellow ! Keep what you have, to get more ; and, in the 
 first place, get more, to keep what you have. So now you 
 know the bottom of my opinions, which have the honor to be 
 those of Prince Metternich ! " 
 
 " Partly on the occasion of my promotion to the Order of 
 the Legion of Honor," Cesar went on. 
 
 " Why, yes, I know. Now who was telling me about that? 
 Was it the Kellers or Nucingen ? " 
 
 Roguin, amazed at so much presence of mind, signified his 
 admiration. 
 
 " Oh, no; it was at the Chamber." 
 
 "At the Chamber. Was it Monsieur de la Billardiere ? " 
 asked Cesar. 
 
 " The very man." 
 
 "He is charming," said C6sar, addressing his uncle. 
 
 "He pours out talk, talk, talk, till you are drowned in 
 talk," said Pillerault. 
 
 "It may be," resumed Birotteau, "that I have shown 
 myself worthy of this favor " 
 
 " By your achievements in perfumery ; the Bourbons know 
 how to reward merit of every kind. Ah ! let us stand by our 
 generous legitimate Princes, to whom we shall owe unheard-of 
 prosperity about to be. For, you may be sure of it, the 
 Restoration feels that she must enter the lists with the Empire, 
 and the Restoration will make peaceful conquests ; you will 
 see conquests ! "
 
 144 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "You will no doubt honor us by coming to our ball, sir," 
 said Mme. Cesar. 
 
 " To spend an evening with you, madame, I would miss a 
 chance of making millions." 
 
 " He certainly is a babbler," said Cesar in his uncle's ear. 
 
 While the waning glory of the Queen of Roses was about 
 to shed abroad its parting rays, a faint star was rising above 
 the commercial horizon ; at that very hour, little Popinot was 
 laying the foundations of his fortune in the Rue des Cinq- 
 Diamants. The Rue des Cinq-Diamants, a short, narrow 
 thoroughfare, where loaded wagons can scarcely pass each 
 other, runs between the Rue des Lombards and the Rue 
 Aubry-le-Boucher, into which it opens just opposite the end 
 of the Rue Quincampoix, that street so famous in the history 
 of France and of old Paris. 
 
 In spite of this narrowness, the near neighborhood of the 
 druggists' quarter made the place convenient ; and from that 
 point of view Popinot had not made a bad choice. The house 
 (the second from the end nearest the Rue des Lombards) was 
 so dark that at times it was necessary to work by artificial 
 light in the daytime. Popinot had taken possession the even- 
 ing before of all its darkest and most unsavory recesses. His 
 predecessor, a dealer in molasses and raw sugars, had left his 
 mark on the place; the walls, the yard, and the warehouse 
 bore unmistakable traces of his occupation. 
 
 Imagine a large and roomy store, the huge doors barred 
 with iron and painted dragon-green, the solid iron scroll-work, 
 with bolt-heads as large as mushrooms by way of ornament. 
 The store was adorned and protected, as bakers' stores used 
 to be, by wire-work lattices, which bulged at the bottom, and 
 was paved with great slabs of white stone, cracked for the 
 most part. The walls of a guard-house are not yellower nor 
 barer. Further on came the back-shop and kitchen, which 
 looked out into the yard ; and behind these again a second
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 145 
 
 wareroom, which must at one time have been a stable. An 
 inside staircase had been contrived in the back-shop, by which 
 you gained two rooms that looked out upon the street ; here 
 Popinot meant to have his counting-house and his ledgers. 
 Above the warehouse there were three small rooms, all backed 
 against the party-wall, and lighted by windows on the side of 
 the yard. It was in these dilapidated rooms that Popinot pro- 
 posed to live. 
 
 The view from the windows was shut in by the high walls 
 that rose about the dingy, crooked yard, walls so damp that 
 even in the driest weather they looked as if they had been 
 newly distempered. The cracks in the paving-stones were 
 choked with black, malodorous filth, deposited there during 
 the tenancy of the dealer in molasses and raw sugars. So 
 much for the outlook. As to the rooms themselves, only one 
 of them boasted a fireplace ; the floors were of brick, the walls 
 were unpapered. 
 
 Gaudissart and Popinot had been busy there ever since the 
 morning, putting up a cheap wall-paper with their own hands 
 in the ugly room ; a journeyman paperhanger whom Gaudissart 
 ferreted out had varnished it for them. The furniture con- 
 sisted of a student's mattress, a wooden bedstead painted red, 
 a rickety nightstand, a venerable chest of drawers, a table, a 
 couple of armchairs, and half-a-dozen ordinary chairs, a 
 present from Popinet the judge to his nephew. Gaudissart 
 had put a cheap pier-glass over the mantel. It was almost 
 eight o'clock in the evening, and the two friends, sitting 
 before a blazing fire, were about to discuss the remains of their 
 breakfast. 
 
 "Away with the cold mutton ! It is out of character in a 
 house-warming," cried Gaudissart. 
 
 Popinot held up his last twenty-franc piece, which was to 
 pay for the prospectus. " But I " he began. 
 
 "I?" retorted Gaudissart, sticking a forty-franc piece into 
 his eye. 
 10
 
 146 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 A knock at the street-door reverberated through the yard. 
 It was Sunday. The workpeople were taking their holiday 
 away from their workshops, and the idle echoes greeted every 
 sound. 
 
 "There is my trusty man from the Ruede la Poterie," Gau- 
 dissart went on. " For my own part, it is not simply ' I,' but 
 'I have.'" 
 
 And, in fact, a waiter appeared, followed by two kitchen- 
 boys, carrying between them three wicker baskets, containing 
 a dinner, and crowned by six bottles of wine selected with 
 discrimination. 
 
 "But how are we to eat such a lot of things?" asked 
 Popinot. 
 
 "There is the man of letters," cried Gaudissart. " Finot 
 understands the pomps and vanities. The artless youth will 
 be here directly with a prospectus fit to make your hair stand 
 on end (neat that, eh?), and prospectuses are always dry work. 
 You must water the seeds if you mean to have flowers. Here, 
 minions," he added, striking an attitude for the benefit of the 
 kitchen-boys, "here's gold for you." 
 
 He held out six sous with a gesture worthy of his idol, 
 Napoleon. 
 
 "Thank you, Monsieur Gaudissart," said the scullions, 
 more pleased with the joke than with the few centimes of 
 money. 
 
 "As for thee, my son," he continued, turning to the waiter 
 who remained, " there is a portress here. She crouches in 
 the depths of a cave, where at times she does some cooking, 
 as erewhile Nausicaa did the washing, simply by way of re- 
 laxation. Hie thee to her, work on her trustful nature ; in- 
 terest her, young man, in the temperature of thy hot dishes. 
 Say to her that she shall be blessed, and above all things re- 
 spected, highly respected, by Felix Gaudissart, son of Jean- 
 Francois Gaudissart, and grandson of Gaudissart, vile prole- 
 taries of remote lineage, his ancestors. Off with you, and act
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 147 
 
 in such a sort that everything shall be good ; for if it isn't I 
 will make you laugh on the wrong side of your face." 
 
 There was another knock at the door. 
 
 "That is the ingenious Andoche," said Gaudissart. 
 
 A stout young fellow suddenly entered. He had somewhat 
 chubby cheeks, was of middle height, and from head to foot 
 looked like the hatter's son. A certain shrewdness lurked 
 beneath the air of constraint that sat on his rounded features. 
 The habitual dejection of a man who is tired of poverty left 
 him, and a hilarious expression crossed his countenance at 
 the sight of the preparations on the table and the significant 
 seals on the bottle-corks. At Gaudissart's shout, a twinkle 
 came into the pale-blue eyes, the big head, on which a 
 Kalmuck physiognomy had been carved, rolled from side to 
 side, and he gave Popinot a distant greeting, in which there 
 was neither servility nor respect, like a man who feels out of 
 his element and stands on his dignity. 
 
 Finot was just beginning to discover that he had no sort of 
 talent for literature; he did not think of quitting his calling; 
 he meant to exploit literature by raising himself on the shoul- 
 ders of men who possessed the talent which he lacked. In- 
 stead of doing ill-paid work himself he would turn his business 
 capacities to account. He was just at the turning-point ; he 
 had exhausted the expedients of humility ; he had experienced 
 to the full the humiliations of failure ; and, like those who 
 take a wide outlook over the financial world, he resolved to 
 change his tactics and to be insolent in future. He needed 
 capital in the first instance, and Gaudissart had opened out a 
 prospect of making the money by putting Popinot's oil before 
 the public. 
 
 "You will make his arrangements with the newspapers," 
 Gaudissart had said, " but don't swindle him ; if you do there 
 will be a duel to the death between us ; give him value for 
 his money ! " 
 
 Popinot looked uneasily at the "author." Your true man
 
 148 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 of business regards an author with mixed feelings, in which 
 alarm and curiosity are blended with compassion ; and though 
 Popinot had been well educated, his relations' attitude of 
 mind and ways of thinking, together with a course of drudgery 
 in a store, had produced their effect on his intelligence, and 
 he bent beneath the yoke of use and wont. You can see this 
 by noticing the metamorphoses which ten years will effect 
 among a hundred boys, who when they left school or college 
 were almost exactly alike. 
 
 Andoche mistook the impression which he had made for 
 admiration. 
 
 "Very well. Let us run through the prospectus before 
 dinner, then it will be off our minds, and we can drink," 
 said Gaudissart. "It is uncomfortable to read after dinner; 
 the tongue is digesting too." 
 
 "Sir," said Popinot, "a prospectus often means a whole 
 fortune." 
 
 "And for nobodies like me," said Andoche, "fortune is 
 nothing but a prospectus." 
 
 "Ah! very good," said Gaudissart. "That droll fellow 
 of an Andoche has wit enough for the Forty." 
 
 " For a hundred," said Popinot, awestruck with the idea. 
 
 Gaudissart snatched up the manuscript, and read aloud, 
 and with emphasis, the first two words " Cephalic Oil ! " 
 
 " I like Cesarian Oil better," said Popinot. 
 
 "You don't know them in the provinces, my friend," said 
 Gaudissart. "There is a surgical operation known by that 
 name, and they are so stupid that they will think your oil is 
 meant to facilitate childbirth ; and if they start off with the 
 notion, it would be too hard work to bring them all the way 
 back to hair again." 
 
 "Without defending the name," observed the author, "I 
 would call your attention to the fact that Cephalic Oil means 
 oil for the head, and resumes your ideas." 
 
 " Go on ! " said Popinot impatiently.
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU: 149 
 
 And here follows a second historical document, a pros- 
 pectus, which even at this day is circulating by thousands 
 among retail perfumers : 
 
 GOLD MEDAL, PARIS, 1824.* 
 
 CEPHALIC OIL 
 
 (Improved Patent). 
 
 No cosmetic can make the hair grow ; and in the same way, it cannot 
 be dyed by chemical preparations without danger to the seat of the intelli- 
 gence. Science has recently proclaimed that the hair is not a living sub- 
 stance, and that there is no means of preventing it from blanching or falling 
 out. To prevent xerasia and baldness, the bulb at the roots should be pre- 
 served from all atmospheric influences and the natural temperature of the 
 head evenly maintained. The Cephalic Oil, based on these principles 
 established by the Royal Academy of Sciences, induces the important 
 result so highly prized by the ancients, the Romans and Greeks, and the 
 nations of the North a fine head of hair. Learned research has brought 
 to light the fact that the nobles of olden times, who were distinguished by 
 their long, flowing locks, used no other means than these; their recipe, 
 long lost, has been ingeniously rediscovered by A. POPINOT, inventor of 
 Cephalic Oil. 
 
 To preserve the glands, and not to provoke an impossible or hurtful 
 stimulation of the dermis which contains them, is, therefore, the function 
 of Cephalic Oil. This oil, which exhales a delicious fragrance, prevents 
 the exfoliation of the pellicle ; while the substances of which it is com- 
 posed (the essential oil of the hazelnut being the principal element) coun- 
 teract the effects of atmospheric air upon the head, thus preventing chills, 
 catarrh, and all unpleasant encephalic affections by maintaining the natural 
 temperature. In this manner the glands, which contain the hair-producing 
 secretions, are never attacked by heat or cold. A fine head of hair that 
 glorious product so highly valued by either sex may be retained to ex- 
 treme old age by the use of Cephalic Oil, which imparts to the hair the 
 
 * The next " Quinquennial Exhibition."
 
 150 CESAR B1ROTTEAU. 
 
 brilliancy, silkiness, and gloss which constitutes the charm of children's 
 heads. 
 
 Directions for use are issued on the wrapper of every bottle. 
 
 DIRECTIONS FOR USE. 
 
 It is perfectly useless to apply oil to the hair itself; beside being an 
 absurd superstition, it is an obnoxious practice, for the cosmetic leaves its 
 traces everywhere. 
 
 It is only necessary to part the hair with a comb, and to apply the oil 
 to the roots every morning with a small, fine sponge, proceeding thus until 
 the whole surface of the skin has received a slight application, the hair 
 having been previously combed and brushed. 
 
 To prevent spurious imitations, each bottle bears the signature of the 
 inventor. Sold at the price of THREE FRANCS by A. POPINOT, Rue des 
 Cinq-Diamants, Quartier des Lombards, Paris. 
 
 // is particularly requested that all communications by post should be 
 prepaid. 
 
 Note. A. POPINOT also supplies essences and pharmaceutical prepara- 
 tions, such as neroli, oil of spike-lavender, oil of sweet-almonds, cacao- 
 butter, caffein, castor oil, et catera. 
 
 " My dear fellow," said the illustrious Gaudissart, address- 
 ing Finot, " it is perfectly written ! Ye gods, how we plunge 
 into deep science ! No shuffling ; we go straight to the point ! 
 Ah ! I congratulate you heartily ; there is literature of some 
 practical use ! " 
 
 "A fine prospectus! " cried Popinot enthusiastically. 
 
 "The very first sentence is a death-blow to Macassar," said 
 Gaudissart, rising to his feet with a magisterial air, to pro- 
 claim with an oratorical gesture between each word, " ' You 
 cannot make hair grow. It cannot be dyed with- 
 out danger!' Aha! success lies in that. Modern science 
 corroborates the custom of the ancients. You can suit your- 
 self to old and young. You have to do with an old man. 
 'Aha, sir ! the Greeks and Romans, the ancients, were in the 
 right ; they were not such fools as some would make them out
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 151 
 
 to be ! ' Or if it is a young man. ' My dear fellow, another 
 discovery due to the progress of enlightenment ; we are pro- 
 gressing. What must we not expect from steam, and the 
 telegraph, and such like inventions? This oil is the outcome 
 of Monsieur Vauquelin's investigations ! ' How if we were to 
 print an extract from M. Vauquelin's paper, eh ? Capital ! 
 Come, Finot, draw up your chair ! Let us stow the victuals, 
 and tipple down the champagne to our young friend's suc- 
 cess ! " 
 
 "It seemed to me," said the author modestly, "that the 
 time for the light and playful prospectus has gone by ; we are 
 entering on an epoch of science, and must talk learnedly and 
 authoritatively to make an impression on the public." 
 
 "We will push the oil. My feet, and my tongue, too, are 
 hankering to go. I have agencies for all the houses that deal 
 in hairdressers' goods, not one of them gives more than thirty 
 per cent, of discount ; make up your mind to give forty, and 
 I will engage to sell a hundred thousand bottles in six months. 
 I will make a set on all the druggists, grocers, and hair- 
 dressers ! And if you will allow them forty per cent, on your 
 oil, they will all send their customers wild for it." 
 
 The three young men ate like lions, drank like Swiss, and 
 waxed merry over the future success of the Cephalic Oil. 
 
 "This oil goes to your head," said Finot, smiling, and 
 Gaudissart exhausted whole series of puns on the words oil, 
 head, and hair. 
 
 In the midst of their Homeric laughter over the dessert, 
 the knocker sounded, and, in spite of the toasts and the 
 wishes for luck exchanged among the three friends, they 
 heard it. 
 
 "It is my uncle ! He is capable of coming to see me," 
 cried Popinot. 
 
 "An uncle ? " asked Finot, " and we have not a glass ! " 
 
 " My friend Popinot's uncle is an examining magistrate," 
 said Gaudissart, by way of reply to Finot ; " there is no occa-
 
 152 CESAR BIROTTEAU, 
 
 sion to hoax him, he saved my life. Ah ! if you had found 
 yourself in the fix I was in, with the scaffold staring you in the 
 face, where, kouik, off goes your hair for good ! ' ' (and he im- 
 itated the fatal knife by a gesture), " you would be apt to 
 remember the righteous judge to whom you owe the preserva- 
 tion of the channel that the champagne goes down ! You 
 would remember him if you were dead drunk. You don't 
 know, Finot, but what you may want M. Popinot one day. 
 Saquerlotte / You must make your bow to him, and thirteen 
 to the dozen ! " 
 
 It was, as a matter of fact, the " righteous judge," who was 
 asking for his nephew of the woman who opened the door. 
 Anselme recognized the voice, and went down, candle in 
 hand, to light his way. 
 
 "Good-evening, gentlemen," said the magistrate. 
 
 The illustrious Gaudissart made a profound bow. Finot 
 looked the new-comer over with drunken eyes, and decided 
 that Popinot's uncle was tolerably wooden-headed. 
 
 " There is no luxury here," said the judge, gravely looking 
 round the room; "but, my boy, you must begin by being 
 nothing if you are to be something great." 
 
 "How profound he is ! " exclaimed Gaudissart, turning to 
 Finot. 
 
 "An idea for an article," said the journalist. 
 
 "Oh ! is that you, sir?" asked the judge, recognizing the 
 commercial traveler. " Eh ! what are you doing here ? " 
 
 " I want to do all my little part, sir, toward making your 
 dear nephew's fortune. We have just been pondering over 
 the prospectus for this oil of his, and this gentleman here is 
 the author of the prospectus, which seems to us to be one of 
 the finest things in the literature of periwigs." 
 
 The judge looked at Finot. 
 
 " This gentleman is Monsieur Andoche Finot," Gaudissart 
 said, "one of the most distinguished young men in literature; 
 he does political leaders and the minor theatres for the Gov-
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 153 
 
 ernment newspapers ; he is a minister who is by way of being 
 an author." 
 
 Here Finot tugged at Gaudissart's coat-tails. 
 
 "Very well, boys," said the judge, to whom these words 
 explained the appearance of the table covered with the rem- 
 nants of a feast very excusable under the circumstances. 
 
 "As for you, Anselme," he continued, turning to Popinot, 
 "get ready to pay a visit to Monsieur Birotteau ; I must go to 
 see him this evening. You will sign your deed of partnership; 
 I have gone through it very carefully. As you are going to 
 manufacture your oil in the Faubourg du Temple, I think that 
 he ought to make over the lease of the workshop to you, and 
 that he has power to sublet ; if things are all in order, it will 
 save disputes afterward. These walls look to me to be very 
 damp, Anselme ; bring up trusses of straw and put them round 
 about where your bed stands." 
 
 " Excuse me, sir," said Gaudissart with a courtier's supple- 
 ness, "we have just put up the wall-paper ourselves to-day, 
 and it is not quite dry." 
 
 " Economy ! good ! " said the judge. 
 
 "Listen," said Gaudissart in Finot's ear; "my friend 
 Popinot is a good young man ; he is going off with his uncle, 
 so come along and let us finish the evening with our fair 
 cousins." 
 
 The journalist turned out the lining of his vest pocket. 
 Popinot saw the manoeuvre, and slipped a twenty-franc piece 
 into the hand of the author of his prospectus. The judge had 
 a cab waiting at the corner of the street, and carried off his 
 nephew to call on Birotteau. 
 
 Pillerault, M. and Mme. Ragon, and Roguin were playing 
 at boston, and Cesarine was embroidering a fichu, when the 
 elder Popinot and Anselme appeared. Roguin, sitting op- 
 posite Mme. Ragon, could watch Cesarine, who sat by her 
 side, and saw the happy look on the girl's face when Anselme 
 came in, saw her flush up red as a pomegranate flower, and
 
 154 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 called his head clerk's attention to her by a significant 
 gesture. 
 
 " So this is to be a day of deeds, is it ? " said the perfumer, 
 when greetings had been exchanged, and the judge explained 
 the reason of the visit. 
 
 Cesar, Anselme, and the judge went up to the perfumer's 
 temporary quarters on the second floor to debate the matter 
 of the lease and the deed of partnership drawn up by the 
 elder Popinot. It was arranged that the lease should run for 
 eighteen years, so as to be conterminous with the lease of the 
 house in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants ; trifling matter as it 
 appeared at the time, it was destined later to serve Birotteau's 
 interests. 
 
 When they returned to the sitting-room, the elder Popinot, 
 surprised by the confusion and the men at work on a Sunday 
 in the house of so devout a man, asked the reason of it all. 
 This was the question for which C6sar was waiting. 
 
 ""Although you are not worldly, sir, you will not object to 
 our celebrating our deliverance ; and that is not all if we 
 are arranging for a little gathering of our friends, it is partly 
 also to celebrate my promotion to the Order of the Legion of 
 Honor." 
 
 " Ah ! " said the examining magistrate (who had not been 
 decorated). 
 
 " It may be that I have shown myself not unworthy of this 
 signal mark of royal favor by discharging my functions at the 
 
 Tribunal oh ! I mean to say Consular Tribunal, and by 
 
 fighting for the Royalist cause on the steps " 
 
 "Yes," said the magistrate. 
 
 "Steps of Saint-Roch, on the i3th of Venddmiaire, where 
 I was wounded by Napoleon." 
 
 "I shall be glad to come," said M. Popinet; "and if my 
 wife is well enough, I will bring her." 
 
 "Xandrot," said Roguin, on the doorstep, "give up all
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU, 155 
 
 thoughts of marrying Cesarine; in six weeks' time you will 
 see that I have given you sound counsel." 
 
 "Why?" asked Crottat. 
 
 " My dear fellow, Birotteau is about to spend a hundred 
 thousand francs over this ball of his, and he is embarking 
 his whole fortune, against my advice, in this building-land 
 scheme. In six weeks' time these people will not have bread 
 to eat. Marry Mademoiselle Lourdois, the house-painter's 
 daughter ; she has three hundred thousand francs to her for- 
 tune. I have planned this shift for you. If you will pay me 
 down the money, you can have my practice to-morrow for a 
 hundred thousand francs." 
 
 The splendors of the perfumer's forthcoming ball, an- 
 nounced to Europe by the newspapers, were very differently 
 announced in commercial circles by flying rumors of work- 
 people employed night and day on the perfumer's house. 
 The rumors took various forms ; here it was said that Cesar 
 had taken the house on either side ; there, that his drawing- 
 rooms were to be gilded ; some said that no tradespeople 
 would be invited, and that the ball was given to Government 
 officials only ; and the perfumer was severely blamed for his 
 ambition, they scoffed at his political aspirations, they denied 
 that he had been wounded ! More than one scheme was set 
 on foot, in the second arrondissement, in consequence of the 
 ball ; the friends of the family took things quietly, but the 
 claims of distant acquaintances were vast. 
 
 Those who have favor to bestow never lack courtiers ; and 
 a goodly number of the guests were at no little pains to pro- 
 cure their cards of invitation. The Birotteaus were amazed 
 to find so many friends whose existence they had not sus- 
 pected. This eagerness on their part alarmed Mme. Birot- 
 teau ; she looked more and more gloomy as the days went 
 by and the solemn festival came nearer. She had confessed 
 to Cesar from the very first that she should not know how to
 
 156 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 act her part as hostess, and the innumerable small details 
 frightened her. Where was the plate to come from ? How 
 about the glass, the refreshments, the forks and spoons ? And 
 who would look after it all ? She begged Birotteau to stand 
 near the door and see that no one came who had not been 
 asked to the ball ; she had heard strange things about people 
 who came to dances claiming acquaintance with people whom 
 they did not know by name. 
 
 One evening, ten days before the famous Sunday, Messieurs 
 Braschon, Grindot, Lourdois, and Chaffaroux the contractor 
 having given their word that the rooms should be ready for 
 the 1 7th of December, there had been a laughable conference 
 after dinner in the humble little sitting-room on the mezza- 
 nine floor C6sar and his wife and daughter were making a 
 list of guests and writing the cards of invitation, which had 
 been sent in only that morning, nicely printed in the English 
 fashion on rose-colored paper, in accordance with the precepts 
 laid down in the " Complete Guide to Etiquette." 
 
 "Look here ! " said Cesar; "we must not leave anybody 
 out." 
 
 "If we forget any one," remarked Constance, "we shall 
 be reminded of it. Madame Derville, who never called upon 
 us before, sailed in yesterday evening in great state." 
 
 "She was very pretty; I liked her," said Cesarine. 
 
 "Yet before she was married she was even worse off than 
 was I," said Constance ; " she used to do plain needlework in 
 the Rue Montmartre ; she has made shirts for your father." 
 
 " Well, let us put the great people down at the top of the 
 list," said Cesar. " Write ' M. le Due and Mme. la Duchesse 
 de Lenoncourt,' Cesarine." 
 
 "Goodness! Cesar," cried Constance, " pray don't begin 
 to send invitations to people whom you only know through 
 the business. Are you going to ask the Princesse de Blamont- 
 Chauvry ? She is more nearly related to your late godmother, 
 the Marquise d'Uxelles, than even the Due de Lenoncourt.
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 157 
 
 And shall you ask the two Messieurs Vandenesse, de Marsay, 
 de Ronquerolles, de 1'Aiglemont; in short, all your cus- 
 tomers? You are mad; honors are turning your head " 
 
 " Yes ! but Monsieur le Comte de Fontaine and his family. 
 Eh? He used to come to the Queen of Roses under the 
 name of Grand-Jacques with the Gars (M. le Marquis de 
 Montauran that was) and Monsieur de la Billardiere, whom 
 they called the Nantais in the days before the great affair of 
 the ijth of Vendemiaire. And they would shake hands with 
 you then, and it was, ' My dear Birotteau, keep your heart 
 up, and give your life, like the rest of us, for the good cause ! ' 
 We are old fellow-conspirators." 
 
 "Put him down," said Constance; "if Monsieur de la 
 Billardiere and his son are coming they must have somebody 
 to speak to." 
 
 "Set down his name, Cesarine," said Birotteau. "Impri- 
 mis, his worship the prefect of the Seine ; he may or may not 
 come, but he is the head of the municipal corporation, and 
 ' honor to whom honor is due.' Monsieur de la Billardiere, 
 the mayor, and his son. (Write down the number of the 
 people after every name.) My colleague, Monsieur Granet, 
 and his wife. She is very ugly, but, all the same, we cannot 
 leave her out. Monsieur Curel, the goldsmith, colonel of the 
 National Guard, and his wife and two daughters. Those are 
 what I call the authorities. Now for the big-wigs ! Monsieur 
 le Comte and Madame la Comtesse de Fontaine and their 
 daughter, Mademoiselle Emilie de Fontaine." 
 
 " An insolent girl, who makes me come out of the store to 
 speak to her at her carriage-door in all weathers," said Mme. 
 Cesar. " If she comes at all, it will be to make fun of us." 
 
 " In that case, perhaps, she will come," said Cesar, who 
 meant to fill his rooms at all costs. " Go on, Cesarine 
 Monsieur le Comte and Madame la Comtesse de Granville, my 
 landlord, the hardest head in the Court of Appeal, Derville 
 says. Oh ! by-the-by, Monsieur de la Billardiere has arranged
 
 158 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 for me to be presented to-morrow by Monsieur le Comte de 
 Lacepede himself; it is only polite to ask the grand chan- 
 cellor to dinner and to the ball. Monsieur Vauquelin. Put 
 him down for the dinner and for the ball too, Cesarine. And, 
 while we remember it, all the Chiffrevilles and the Protez 
 family. Monsieur Popinot, judge of the Tribunal of the 
 Seine, and Madame Popinot. Monsieur and Madame Thi- 
 rion, he is an usher of the Privy Chamber and a friend 
 of the Ragons ; it is said that their daughter is to be married 
 to one of Monsieur Camusot's sons by his first marriage." 
 
 " Cesar, do not forget young Horace Bianchon ; he is Popi- 
 not's nephew and Anselme's cousin," put in Constance. 
 
 "Ah, to be sure? Cesarine has put a figure four very 
 plainly after the Popinots. Monsieur and Madame Ra- 
 bourdin ; Rabourdin is at the head of one of the departments 
 in de la Billardiere's division. Monsieur Cochin of the same 
 department, and his wife and son ; they are sleeping-partners 
 in Matifat's concern ; and, while we are about it, put down 
 Monsieur and Madame and Mademoiselle Matifat." 
 
 " The Matifats have been making overtures for their friends, 
 Monsieur and Madame Colleville, Monsieur and Madame 
 Thuillier, and the Saillards." 
 
 "We shall see," said Csar. "Our stockbroker, Jules 
 Desmarets, and his wife." 
 
 "She will be the prettiest woman in the room!" cried 
 Cesarine. "I like her, oh ! more than any one ! " 
 
 " Derville and his wife." 
 
 "Just put down Monsieur and Madame Coquelin, who 
 took over Uncle Pillerault's business," said Constance. "They 
 made so sure of being asked that the poor little thing is 
 having a grand ball-dress made by my dressmaker a white 
 satin overskirt covered with tulle, embroidered with blue 
 chicory flowers. It would not have taken much to persuade 
 her to have a gold-embroidered court-dress. If we left them 
 out, we should make two bitter enemies."
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 159 
 
 " Put them down, Cesarine ; we must show our respect for 
 trade, for we are tradespeople ourselves. Monsieur and 
 Madame Roguin." 
 
 "Mamma, Madame Roguin will wear her necklace, all her 
 diamonds, and her mechlin-lace gown." 
 
 " Monsieur and Madame Lebas," Cesar continued. " And 
 next, the president of the Tribunal of Commerce and his wife 
 and two daughters (I forgot to put them among the authorities). 
 Monsieur and Madame Lourdois and their daughter. Cla- 
 paron the banker ; du Tillet, Grindot, Monsieur Molineux ; 
 Pillerault and his landlord ; Monsieur and Madame Camusot, 
 the rich silk mercer, and all their family, the one at the 
 Ecole Polytechnique and the advocate; he will receive an 
 appointment as judge he is the one that is engaged to be 
 married to Mademoiselle Thirion." 
 
 "It will only be a provincial appointment," said Made- 
 moiselle Cesarine. 
 
 " Monsieur Cardot, Camusot's father-in-law, and all the 
 young Cardots. Stay ! there are the Guillaumes in the Rue 
 du Colombier, Lebas' wife's people, two old folk who will 
 be wall-flowers. Alexandre Crottat Celestin " 
 
 " Papa, do not forget Andoche Finot and Gaudissart, two 
 young men who have been so useful to Anselme." 
 
 "Gaudissart? He got himself into trouble. But never 
 mind, he is going away in a few days, and will travel for our 
 oil so put him down ! As for Master Andoche Finot, what 
 is he to us?" 
 
 ' ' Anselme says that he will be a great man ; he is as clever 
 as Voltaire." 
 
 " An author is he? They are all of them atheists." 
 
 "Put him down, papa; so far there are not so very many 
 men who dance. Beside, your nice prospectus for the oil was 
 his doing." 
 
 "He believes in our oil, does he?" said Cesar. "Put 
 him down, dear child."
 
 160 CASAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "So I, too, have my proteges on the list," commented 
 CSsarine. 
 
 "Put Mitral, my process-server, and our doctor, Monsieur 
 Haudry ; it is for form's sake, he will not come." 
 
 " He will come for his game of cards," said Cesarine. 
 
 " Ah ! by-the-by, Cesar, I hope that you will ask Monsieur 
 l'Abb6 Loraux to dinner ! " 
 
 "I have written to him already," said Cesar. 
 
 " Oh ! we must not forget Lebas' sister-in-law, Madame 
 Augustine de Sommervieux," said Cesarine. "Poor little 
 thing ! she is very unwell ; Lebas said that she was dying of 
 grief." 
 
 " See what comes of marrying an artist," cried the per- 
 fumer. "Just look at your mother; she has fallen asleep," 
 he said, in a low voice, to his daughter. " By-by sleep 
 softly, Madame Cesar. Well, now," said C6sar, turning to 
 his daughter, "how about your mother's dress?" 
 
 " Yes, papa, everything will be ready. Mamma thinks 
 that she is to have a Canton crepe gown like mine, and the 
 dressmaker is sure that there is no need to try it on." 
 
 "How many are there altogether?" Cdsar went on aloud, 
 as his wife opened her eyes. 
 
 " A hundred and nine, with the assistants," said Cesarine. 
 
 "Where are we going to put all those people?" asked 
 Mme. Birotteau. " And when all is over, after the Sunday 
 comes Monday," she said naively. 
 
 Nothing can be done simply when people aspire to rise 
 from one social rank to another. Neither Mme. Birotteau, 
 nor C6sar, nor any one else might venture on any pretext 
 whatsoever on to the second floor. Cesar had promised the 
 errand-boy Raguet a new suit of clothes if he kept watch 
 faithfully and carried out his orders properly. Like the Em- 
 peror Napoleon at Compiegne, when he had the chateau 
 restored for his marriage with Marie-Louise of Austria, Birot- 
 teau wanted to see nothing until the whole was finished ; he
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 161 
 
 meant to enjoy " the surprise." So all unconsciously the 
 old enemies met, this time not on the field of battle, but on 
 the common ground of bourgeois vanity. M. Grindot was to 
 take Cesar over the new rooms like a cicerone exhibiting a 
 gallery to a tourist. 
 
 Every one in the house, moreover, had his or her own 
 "surprise." Cesarine, the dear child, had spent a hundred 
 louis, all her little hoard, on books for her father. M. Grindot 
 had confided to her one morning that there were two fitted 
 bookcases in her father's room, which was to be a study ; this 
 was the architect's surprise ; and Cesarine spent all her savings 
 with a bookseller. She had bought the works of Bossuet, 
 Racine, Voltaire, Jean -Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, Mo- 
 liere, Buffon, Fenelon, Delille, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, La 
 Fontaine, Corneille, Pascal, and La Harpe ; in short, the 
 ordinary collection of classics to be seen everywhere, books 
 which her father would never read. A terrible bookbinder's 
 bill must of necessity be the result. Thouvenin, that great 
 and unpunctual artist and binder, had undertaken to send the 
 books home on the i8th at midday. Cesarine had told her 
 uncle in confidence of her difficulty, and he had undertaken 
 the bill. Cesar's surprise for his wife took the shape of a 
 cherry-colored velvet gown trimmed with lace ; it was of this 
 dress that he had just spoken to the daughter, who had been 
 his accomplice. Mme. Birotteau's surprise for the new 
 Chevalier of Honor consisted of a pair of gold buckles and a 
 solitaire-pin. Finally, there was the surprise of the new rooms 
 for the whole family, to be followed in a fortnight by the 
 great surprise of the bills to be paid. 
 
 After mature reflection, Cesar decided that some of the 
 invitations must be given in person, and some might be de- 
 livered by Raguet in the evening. He took a cab and handed 
 his wife into it (his wife, whose beauty suffered a temporary 
 eclipse from a hat and feathers and the last new shawl, the 
 cashmere shawl for which she had longed for fifteen years), 
 11
 
 162 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 and away went the perfumers dressed in their best to acquit 
 themselves of twenty-two calls in a morning. 
 
 Cesar spared his wife the difficulties attendant on straining 
 the resources of a bourgeois household to prepare the various 
 confections which the splendor of the occasion demanded. 
 A treaty was arranged between Birotteau and the great Chevet. 
 Chevet would furnish the dinner and the wines ; he would 
 provide a splendid service of plate (which brings in as much 
 as an estate to its owner), and a retinue of servants under the 
 command of a sufficiently imposing chief steward, all of them 
 responsible for their sayings and doings. Chevet was to take 
 up his quarters in the kitchen and dining-room on the mezza- 
 nine floor, and not to quit possession until he had served up 
 a dinner for twenty persons at six o'clock, and a grand colla- 
 tion an hour after midnight. The ices, to be served in pretty 
 cups with silver-gilt spoons on silver trays, would be supplied 
 by Foy's Cafe, and the refreshments by Tanrade an added 
 lustre to the feast. 
 
 " Be easy," Cesar said to his wife, who looked somewhat 
 over-anxious on the day before the great day, " Chevet, Tan- 
 rade, and the people from Foy's Cafe will occupy the mezza- 
 nine floor, Virginie will be on guard above, and the store 
 shall be shut up. There is nothing left for us to do but to 
 strut about on the second floor." 
 
 On the 1 6th, at two o'clock, M. de la Billardiere came for 
 Cesar. They were to go together to the Chancellerie de la 
 Legion d'honneur, where Birotteau, with some ten others, was 
 to be received as a Chevalier by M. le Comte de Lacepede. 
 The perfumer had tears in his eyes when the mayor came for 
 him ; the surprise which Constance had planned had just 
 taken place, and C6sar had been presented with the gold 
 buckles and solitaire. 
 
 "It is very sweet to be so loved," said he, as he stepped 
 into the cab; Constance and Cesarine standing on the thresh-
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 163 
 
 old, and the assistants gathered in a group to see him go. 
 All of them gazed at Cesar in his silk stockings and black- 
 silk breeches, and the new coat of cornflower-blue on which 
 the ribbon was about to blaze the red ribbon which, accord- 
 ing to Molineux, had been steeped in blood. 
 
 When Cesar came back at dinner-time, he was pale with 
 joy. He looked at his cross in every looking-glass, for in his 
 first intoxication he could not be content to wear the ribbon 
 only ; there was no tinge of false modesty about his elation. 
 
 "The grand chancellor is charming, dear," said he; "at 
 a word from Monsieur de la Billardiere, he accepted my in- 
 vitation ; he is coming with Monsieur Vauquelin. De Lace- 
 pede is a great man, yes, as great as Vauquelin. He has 
 written forty volumes. And then he is a peer of France as 
 well as an author. We must not forget to say ' Your Lord- 
 ship ' or ' Monsieur le Comte ' when we address him." 
 
 " Do eat your dinner," remarked his wife. "Your father 
 is worse than a child," Constance added, looking at C6sarine. 
 
 " How nice that looks at your button-hole ! " said Cesarine. 
 "They will present arms when you pass ; we will go out to- 
 gether ! " 
 
 " All the sentries will present arms to me." 
 
 Grindot and Braschon came downstairs as he spoke. " After 
 dinner, sir, you and madame and mademoiselle may like to 
 look over the rooms ; Braschon 's foreman is just putting up a 
 few curtain brackets, and three men are lighting the candles." 
 
 "You will need a hundred and twenty candles," said 
 Braschon. 
 
 "A bill for two hundred francs from Trudon," began 
 Mme. C6sar, but a look from the chevalier checked her 
 lamentations. 
 
 "Your fete will be magnificent, Monsieur le Chevalier," 
 put in Braschon. 
 
 " Flatterers already ! " Cesar thought within himself. "The 
 good Abbe Loraux enjoined it upon me not to fall into their
 
 164 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 snares and to remain humble ; I will always keep my origin 
 in mind." 
 
 But Cesar did not understand the drift of the remark let 
 fall by the rich upholsterer of the Rue Saint-Antoine. 
 Braschon had made a dozen futile efforts to secure invita- 
 tions for himself and his wife, his daughter, aunt, and 
 mother-in-law. And so Cesar made an enemy. On the 
 threshold, Braschon did not call him again " Monsieur le 
 Chevalier." 
 
 Then came the private view. Cesar and his wife and 
 Cesarine went out through the store and came in from the 
 street. The door had been reconstructed in a grand style, 
 the two leaves were divided up into square panels, and in 
 the centre of each panel was a cast-iron ornament, duly 
 painted. This kind of door, which is now so common in 
 Paris, was at that time the very newest thing. Beneath 
 the double staircase in the vestibule, opposite the door, in 
 the plinth which had so disturbed Cesar's mind, a sort of 
 box had been contrived where an old woman could be en- 
 sconced. The vestibule, with its black-and-white marble 
 floor and its walls painted to look like marble, was lighted 
 by a lamp of antique pattern, with four sockets for the 
 wicks. The architect had combined a rich effect with ap- 
 parent simplicity. A narrow crimson carpet relieved the 
 whiteness of the stone. The first landing gave access to the 
 mezzanine floor. The door on the staircase, which gave 
 access to the second-floor rooms, was in the same style as 
 the street-door, but this was a piece of cabinet-work. 
 
 " How charming ! " said Cesarine. "And yet there is noth- 
 ing which catches the eye." 
 
 " Exactly, mademoiselle, the effect is produced by the exact 
 proportions of the stylobates, the plinths, the cornice, and 
 the ornaments ; and then I have not employed gilding any- 
 where ; the colors are subdued, and there are no glaring 
 tones."
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. . 165 
 
 "It is a science," said Cesarine. 
 
 Then they entered the anteroom ; it was simple, spacious, 
 and tastefully decorated ; a parquet floor had been laid down. 
 The drawing-room was lighted by three windows, which 
 looked upon the street ; here the colors were white and 
 red ; the outlines of the cornices were delicate, so was the 
 paint. There was nothing to dazzle the eyes. The orna- 
 ments on the mantel, of white marble supported on white 
 marble columns, had been carefully chosen ; there was noth- 
 ing tawdry about them, and they were in keeping with the 
 details of the furniture. In fact, throughout the room a subtle 
 harmony prevailed, such as none but an artist can establish, 
 by subordinating everything, down to the least accessories, to 
 the general scheme of decoration ; a harmony which strikes 
 the philistine, though he cannot account for it. The light 
 of twenty-four wax-candles in the chandelier displayed the 
 glories of the crimson-silk curtains ; the parquet floor tempted 
 Cesarine to dance. Through a green-and-white boudoir they 
 reached Cesar's study. 
 
 "I have put a bed here," said Grindot, throwing open the 
 doors of an alcove, cleverly concealed between the two book- 
 cases. " Either you or Madame Birotteau may fall ill, and an 
 invalid requires a separate room." 
 
 " But the bookcase is full of bound books ! Oh ! wife, 
 wife ! ' ' cried Cesar. 
 
 "No, this is Cesarine's surprise." 
 
 "Pardon a father's emotion," exclaimed Birotteau, em- 
 bracing his daughter. 
 
 " Of course, of course, sir," said Grindot. "You are in 
 your own house." 
 
 The prevailing tone of the study was brown, relieved by 
 green ; for by skillful modulations all the rooms were brought 
 into harmony with each other. Thus the prevailing color of 
 one room was more sparingly introduced as a subsidiary in 
 another, and vice versd. The print of " Hero and Le-
 
 166 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 ander " shone conspicuous from a fine panel in Cesar's new 
 sanctum. 
 
 "And you are to pay for all this? " Cesar said merrily. 
 
 " That beautiful engraving is Monsieur Anselme's gift to 
 you," said Cesar inc. 
 
 (Anselme, like the others, had managed to afford his sur- 
 prise.) 
 
 " Poor boy ! he has done as I did for Monsieur Vau- 
 quelin." 
 
 Mme. Birotteau's room came next in order. Here the ar- 
 chitect had lavished splendors to please the good folk whom 
 he wished to use to his own ends. He had promised to make 
 a study of this redecoration, and he had kept his word. The 
 room was hung with blue silk, but the cords and tassels were 
 white ; while the furniture, covered with white cashmere, was 
 relieved with blue. The clock on the white marble mantel 
 took the form of a marble slab, on which Venus reclined. 
 The pretty Wilton carpet, of Eastern design, was the keynote 
 of Csarine's apartment, a dainty little bedroom hung with 
 chintz ; there stood her piano, a pretty wardrobe with a mirror 
 in it, a small white bed with plain curtains, and all the little 
 possessions that girls love. 
 
 The dining-room lay behind Cesar's study and the blue- 
 and-white bedroom, and was entered by a door on the stair- 
 case. Here the decorations were in the style known as Louis 
 XIV. The sideboards were inlaid with brass and tortoise- 
 shell ; there was a boule clock ; and the walls were hung with 
 stuffs and adorned with gilt studs. 
 
 No words can describe the joy of these three human beings, 
 which reached its height when Mme. Birotteau, returning to 
 her room, found her new dress lying there on the bed ; the 
 cherry-colored velvet gown, trimmed with lace, which her 
 husband had given her. Virgin ie had stolen in on tiptoe to 
 lay it there. 
 
 "The rooms do you great credit, sir," Constance said, ad-
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 167 
 
 dressing Grindot. " More than a hundred people will be here 
 to-morrow evening, and you will be complimented by every- 
 body." 
 
 "I shall recommend you," said Cesar. "You will meet 
 all the first-rate people, and you will be better known in a 
 single evening than if you had built a hundred houses." 
 
 Constance, touched by what had happened, no longer 
 thought of the expense or of criticising her husband, and for 
 the following reasons : That morning, when Popinot had 
 brought the " Hero and Leander," he had assured her that 
 the Cephalic Oil would be a success ; Constance had always 
 had a high opinion of Popinot's abilities and intelligence, and 
 Popinot was working with unheard-of enthusiasm. The 
 money lavished by Birotteau on these extravagancies might 
 amount to a good round sum ; but the young lover had 
 promised that, in six months' time, Birotteau' s share of the 
 profits on the sales of the oil would cover them. After nine- 
 teen years of apprehension, it was so sweet to put doubts 
 aside for a single day ; and Constance promised her daughter 
 that she would not spoil her husband's joy by any after-thought, 
 but would give herself up entirely to gladness. So when M. 
 Grindot left them about eleven o'clock, she flung her arms 
 about her husband's neck and shed a few tears of joy. 
 
 "Ah, Cesar," she said, "you make me very silly and very 
 happy." 
 
 " If it will only last, you mean, do you not ? " C6sar asked, 
 smiling. 
 
 "It will last ; I have no fear now," said Mme. Cesar. 
 
 "That is right; you appreciate me at last." 
 
 Those who have sufficient greatness of character to know 
 their weaknesses will confess that a poor orphan girl who, 
 eighteen years ago, had been earning her living behind the 
 counter of the Little Sailor in the He Saint-Louis, and a poor 
 peasant-lad who had come on foot from Touraine, stick in hand 
 and with hobnailed shoes on his feet, might well feel gratified
 
 168 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 and happy to give such a fete on an occasion so much to their 
 credit. 
 
 " My God, I would willingly give a hundred francs for a 
 visitor," cried Cesar. 
 
 "Monsieur 1'Abbe Loraux," announced Virginie, and the 
 abb6 appeared. The priest was at this time curate of Saint- 
 Sulpice. Never has the power of the soul been more plainly 
 revealed than in this reverend ecclesiastic, who left a pro- 
 found impression on the minds of all those with whom he 
 came in contact. The exercise of Catholic virtues had given 
 sublimity to a harsh face, almost repellent in its ugliness ; it 
 was as if something of the light of heaven shone from it before 
 the time. The influences of a simple and sincere life, passing 
 into the blood, had modified those rugged features, the fires 
 of charity had chastened their uncouth outlines. In Cla- 
 paron's case, the nature of the man had stamped itself on his 
 face and degraded and brutalized it, but here the grace of the 
 three fair human virtues, Hope, Faith, and Charity, hovered 
 about the wrinkled lines. There was a penetrating power in 
 his words, slowly and gently spoken. He dressed like other 
 priests in Paris, and allowed himself a chestnut-brown over- 
 coat. No trace of ambition had sullied the pure heart, which 
 the angels would surely bear to God in its primitive inno- 
 cence ; it had required all the kindly urgency of the daughter 
 of Louis XVI. to induce the Abbe Loraux to accept a benefice 
 in Paris, and then he had taken one of the poorest. 
 
 Just now he looked somewhat disquieted as he surveyed 
 all these splendors; he smiled at the three before him and 
 shook his head. 
 
 "Children," he said, " it is my part to comfort those that 
 mourn, and not to be present at festivals. I have come to 
 thank Monsieur C6sar and to congratulate you. There is only 
 one festival that will bring me here the marriage of this 
 pretty maid." 
 
 A quarter of an hour later the abb6 took his leave, and
 
 CESAR B1KOT1EAU. 169 
 
 neither Cesar nor his wife had dared to show him the new 
 arrangements. The sober apparition threw a few drops of 
 cold water on Cesar's joyous ebullitions. 
 
 They slept that night amid the new glories, each taking 
 possession of the little luxuries and pretty furniture for which 
 they had longed. Cesarine helped her mother to undress 
 before the mirror of the white marble toilet table; Cesar was 
 fain to use his newly acquired superfluities at once ; and the 
 heads of all the three were filled with visions of the joys of the 
 morrow. 
 
 The next day, at four o'clock, they had been to mass and 
 had read vespers; the mezzanine floor had been delivered over 
 to the secular arm, in the shape of Chevet's people, and Ce- 
 sarine and her mother betook themselves to their toilets. 
 Never was costume more becoming to Mme. Cesar than the 
 cherry-colored velvet gown with the lace about it, the short 
 sleeves adorned with lappets ; the rich stuff and the glowing 
 color set off the youthful freshness of her shapely arms, the 
 dazzling whiteness of her skin, the gracious outlines of her 
 neck and shoulders. The naive happiness felt by every 
 woman when she is conscious that she looks at her best lent a 
 vague sweetness to Mme. Birotteau's Grecian profile; and the 
 outlines of her face, finely cut as a cameo, appeared in all their 
 delicate beauty. Cesarine, in her white crepe dress, with a 
 wreath of white roses in her hair and a rose at her waist, her 
 shoulders and the outlines of her bodice modestly covered by 
 a scarf, turned Popinot's head. 
 
 " These people are eclipsing us," said Mme. Roguin to her 
 husband, as she went through the rooms. 
 
 The notary's wife was furious. A woman can always 
 measure the superiority or inferiority of a rival, and Mme. 
 Roguin felt that she was not as beautiful as Mme. C6sar. 
 
 "Pooh, not for long. In a little while the poor thing will 
 be ruined, and your carriage will splash the mud on her as 
 she goes afoot through the streets."
 
 170 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Vauquelin's manner was perfect. He came with M. de 
 Lacepede, who had brought his colleague in his carriage. To 
 Mme. Cesar, in her radiant beauty, the two learned Acade- 
 micians paid compliments in scientific language. 
 
 "You possess the secret, unknown to chemistry, of retain- 
 ing youth and beauty, madame." 
 
 "You are in your own house, so to speak, Monsieur 
 1' Academician," said Birottcau. " Yes, Monsieur le Comte," 
 he went on, turning to the Grand Chancellor of the Legion 
 of Honor, " I owe my success to Monsieur Vauquelin. I 
 have the honor of presenting to your lordship Monsieur le 
 President (of the Tribunal of Commerce). That is Monsieur 
 le Comte de Lacepede, a peer of France, and one of the 
 greatest men in France beside ; he has written forty volumes," 
 he added, for the benefit of Joseph Lebas, who came with the 
 president. 
 
 The guests were punctual. The ordinary tradesman's 
 dinner-party followed, abundant in good humor and merri- 
 ment, and enlivened by the homely jokes that never fail to 
 provoke laughter. Ample justice was done to the excellent 
 dishes, and the wines were thoroughly appreciated. It was 
 half-past nine before they went into the drawing-room for 
 coffee, and cabs had already begun to arrive with impatient 
 dancers. An hour later the rooms were full, and the dance 
 had become a crush. M. de Lacepede and M. Vauquelin 
 went, in spite of entreaties from C6sar, who followed them 
 despairingly to the staircase. He had better fortune with the 
 elder Popinot and M. de la Billardiere, who remained. 
 
 With the exception of three women, Mile. Fontaine, Mme. 
 Jules, and Mme. Rabourdin, who severally represented aris- 
 tocracy, finance, and official dignities, and by their brilliant 
 beauty, dress, and manner presented a striking contrast to the 
 rest of the assembly, the toilets of the remainder were of the 
 heavy and substantial order, too suggestive of a well-lined 
 purse, which gives to a crowd of citizens' wives and daughters
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 171 
 
 a certain air of vulgarity, made cruelly prominent in the present 
 case by the daintiness and grace of the three ladies. 
 
 The bourgeoisie of the Rue Saint-Denis displayed itself 
 majestically in the full glory of its absurdities carried to the 
 burlesque point. It was that same bourgeoisie, nor more nor 
 less, which tricks its offspring out in the uniform of the Lancers 
 or of the National Guard, that buys " Victories and Con- 
 quests," " The Old Soldier at the Plough," and admires " The 
 Pauper's Funeral," which rejoices to go on guard, goes on 
 Sundays to the inevitable country-house, is at pains to acquire 
 a distinguished air, and dreams of municipal honors ; the 
 bourgeoisie that looks on every one with jealous eyes, and yet 
 is kindly, helpful, devoted, warm-hearted, and compassionate, 
 ready to subscribe for the orphan children of a General Foy, 
 for the Greeks (all unwitting of their piracies), for the Champ 
 d'Asile when it no longer exists ; a bourgeoisie that falls a 
 victim to its own good qualities, and is flouted by a social 
 superiority which marks a real inferiority, for an ignorance of 
 social conventions fosters that native kindliness of heart ; a 
 bourgeoisie which brings up frank-hearted daughters inured to 
 work, full of good qualities, which are lost at once if they 
 mingle with the classes above them ; a commonsense, matter- 
 of-fact womankind, from among whom the worthy Chrysale 
 should have taken a wife ; that bourgeoisie, in short, so admir- 
 ably represented by the Matifats, the druggists in the Rue des 
 Lombards, who had supplied the Queen of Roses for sixty 
 years. 
 
 Mme. Matifat, anxious to appear stately, wore a turban on 
 her head, and was dancing in a heavy poppy-red gown em- 
 broidered with gold, a toilet that harmonized with a haughty 
 countenance, a Roman nose, and the splendors of a crimson 
 complexion. Even M. Matifat, so glorious when the National 
 Guard was reviewed, when you might see the chain and bunch 
 of seals blazing on his portly person fifty paces away, was 
 obscured by this Catherine II. of the counting-house ; yet her
 
 172 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 short, stout, spectacled consort, with his shirt collar almost up 
 to his ears, distinguished himself by his deep bass voice and 
 by the richness of his vocabulary. 
 
 He never said " Corneille," but " the sublime Corneille." 
 Racine was the "tender Racine;" Voltaire, oh! Voltaire, 
 " takes the second place in every class, more of a wit than a 
 genius, but nevertheless a man of genius!" Rousseau, "a 
 gloomy, suspicious nature, a man overbrimming with pride, 
 who ended by hanging himself." He related tedious stock 
 anecdotes about Piron, who is looked upon as a prodigious 
 personage among the bourgeoisie. There was a slight ten- 
 dency to obscenity in Matifat's conversation ; he was an in- 
 fatuated admirer of theatrical divinities ; and it was even said 
 of him that, in imitation of old Cardot and the wealthy Cam- 
 usot, he kept a mistress. Now and then Mme. Matifat would 
 hastily interrupt him on the brink of an anecdote by crying, 
 at the top of her voice, " Mind what you are going to tell us, 
 old man ! " In familiar conversation she always addressed 
 him as "old man." The voluminous lady of the Rue des 
 Lombards caused Mile, de Fontaine's aristocratic coun- 
 tenance to lose its repose ; the haughty damsel could not help 
 smiling when she overheard Mme. Matifat say to her husband, 
 " Don't make a rush for the ices, old man ; it is bad style ! " 
 
 It is harder to explain the differences which distinguish 
 the great world from the bourgeoisie than it is for the bour- 
 geoisie to efface them. The women, conscious of their toil- 
 ets, felt that this was a holiday ; they made no attempt to 
 conceal an enjoyment which plainly showed that this ball was 
 a great event in their busy lives ; while the three women, each 
 of whom represented a different higher social sphere, were at 
 that moment as they would be on the morrow. They did not 
 seem to be dressed for the occasion, had no desire to behold 
 themselves amid the unaccustomed marvels of their costume, 
 and showed no uneasiness as to its effect, which they had 
 ascertained once and for all as they put the last touches to
 
 C&SAX BIROTTEAU. 173 
 
 their ball-dresses before the mirror ; there was no excitement 
 in their faces ; they danced with the grace and ease of move- 
 ment which the forgotten sculptors of a bygone age caught 
 and recorded in their statues. But the others bore the im- 
 press of daily toil toil showed itself in their attitude, in their 
 exaggerated enjoyment ; their glances were nai'vely curious, 
 their voices were not subdued to the key of the low murmur 
 which gives such an inimitable piquancy to ballroom conver- 
 sations; and, above all things, they lacked the impertinent 
 gravity which contains the germ of epigram, the repose of 
 manner which marks those whose self-command is perfect. 
 So Mme. Rabourdin, Mme. Jules, and Mile, de Fontaine, 
 who had expected infinite amusement from this perfumer's 
 ball, stood out against the background of citizens' wives and 
 daughters, conspicuous by their languid grace, by the exquisite 
 taste displayed in their toilets, and by their manner of dan- 
 cing, even as three principal performers at the opera are set 
 off by the rank and file of supernumeraries on the stage. Jeal- 
 ous and astonished eyes watched them. Mme. Roguin, Con- 
 stance, and Cesarine formed a link, as it were, between these 
 three aristocratic types and the tradesmen's womankind. 
 
 At every ball a moment comes when excitement or the 
 torrents of light, the gaiety, the music, and the movement of 
 the dance carries away the dancers, and all the shades of dif- 
 ference are drowned in the crescendo of the tutti. In a little 
 while the ball would become a romp. Mile, de Fontaine de- 
 termined to go ; but, as she sought the venerable Vendean 
 leader's arm, Birotteau and his wife and daughter hastened to 
 prevent the defection of the aristocracy of their assembly. 
 
 "There is a perfume of good taste about the rooms which 
 really surprises me; I congratulate you upon it," said the 
 insolent girl, addressing the perfumer. 
 
 Birotteau was too much intoxicated by the compliments 
 publicly addressed to him to understand this speech ; but his 
 wife flushed up and did not know what to answer.
 
 174 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 11 This is a national festival which does you honor," Camu- 
 sot said. 
 
 " I have seldom seen so fine a ball," said Monsieur de la 
 Billardiere, an official fib that cost him nothing. 
 
 Birotteau took all the congratulations seriously. 
 
 " What a charming sight, and how good the band is ! Shall 
 you often give us balls?" asked Mme. Lebas. 
 
 "What beautiful rooms ! Did you plan them yourself?" 
 inquired Mme. Desmarets, and Cesar ventured on a lie, and 
 allowed it to be thought that he was the originator of the 
 scheme of decoration. Cesarine, whose list of partners for 
 the quadrilles was of course filled up, learned how much 
 delicacy there was in Anselme's nature. 
 
 " If I only listened to my own wishes," he had said in her 
 ear as they arose from dinner, " I would entreat the favor of 
 a quadrille with you, but my happiness would cost our self- 
 love too dear." 
 
 Cesarine, who thought all men who walked straight ungrace- 
 ful in their gait, determined to open the ball with Popinot. 
 Popinot, encouraged by his aunt, who had bade him be 
 bold, dared to speak of his love during the quadrille to the 
 charming girl at his side, but in the roundabout ways that 
 timid lovers take. 
 
 " My fortune depends on you, mademoiselle." 
 
 "And how?" 
 
 "There is but one hope which can give me the power to 
 make it." 
 
 "Then hope." 
 
 " Do you really know all that you have said in those two 
 words?" asked Popinot. 
 
 "Hope for fortune," said Cesarine, with a mischievous 
 smile. 
 
 As soon as the quadrille was over, Anselme rushed to his 
 friend. " Gaudissart ! Gaudissart ! succeed, or I shall blow 
 my brains out ! " He squeezed his friend's arm in a Hercu-
 
 CSAR BIROTTEAU. 175 
 
 lean grasp. "Success means that I shall marry Cesarine. 
 She has told me so; and see how beautiful she is ! " 
 
 "Yes, she is prettily rigged out," said Gaudissart; "and 
 she is rich. We will do her in oil." 
 
 The good understanding between Mile. Lourdois and 
 Alexandre Crottat (Roguin's successor-designate) did not 
 escape Mme. Birotteau, who could not give up without a pang 
 the prospect of seeing her daughter the wife of a Paris notary. 
 Uncle Pillerault, after exchanging a greeting with little Mol- 
 ineux, took up his quarters in an easy-chair near the bookcase. 
 Hence he watched the card-players, listened to the talk about 
 him, and went from time to time to the door to look at the 
 moving flower-garden as the dancers' heads swayed in the 
 figures of the quadrille. He turned a truly philosophical 
 countenance on it all. The men were unspeakable, with the 
 exception of du Tillet, who had already learned something of 
 the manners of the fashionable world ; of young Billardiere, 
 an incipient dandy ; M. Jules Desmartes, and the official per- 
 sonages. But among the faces, all more or less comical, which 
 gave the assembly its character, there was one in particular, 
 worn into meaningless smoothness, like the head on a five- 
 franc piece issued by the Republic, but curious by reason of 
 its association with a suit of clothes. This person, it will 
 have been guessed, was none other than the petty tyrant of 
 the Cour Batave, arrayed in fine linen, yellowed with lying- 
 by in the press, displaying a shirt frill of venerable lace, 
 secured by a pin with a bluish cameo. Short breeches of 
 black silk treacherously revealed the spindle shanks on which 
 he dared to repose his weight. Cesar triumphantly took him 
 around the four apartments devised by the architect on the 
 second floor of his house. 
 
 "Hey! hey! it is your own affair, shy' said Molineux. 
 " My second floor done up in this way will be worth another 
 thousand crowns." 
 
 Birotteau turned this off with a joke, but the little old
 
 176 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 man's words and tone had been like the prick of a needle. 
 " I shall soon have my second floor again ; this man is ruin- 
 ing himself! " that was the underlying sense of that " will be 
 worth, 11 which had been a sudden revelation of Molineux's 
 claws. 
 
 The pale, meagre face and cruel eyes struck du Tillet, whose 
 attention had been called to the landlord in the first instance 
 by the watch-chain from which a pound weight of trinkets 
 hung and jingled, the green coat with white threads in it, and 
 the odd-looking, turned-up collar, which gave the old man 
 somewhat the appearance of a rattlesnake. So the banker 
 went over to the little money-lender to learn how he came to 
 be at a merry-making. 
 
 " Here, sir," said Molineux, putting a foot into the boudoir, 
 " I am on Monsieur le Comte de Granville's property, but 
 here " (he pointed to the other foot) " I am on my own, for 
 this house belongs to me." 
 
 And Molineux, more than willing to gratify the only one 
 who had a mind to listen to him, was so charmed with du 
 Tillet's attentive attitude that he described himself and gave 
 an account of his habits, together with a complete history of 
 the sauciness of Master Gendrin and an exact relation of his 
 transactions with the perfumer, without which transaction the 
 ball would not have taken place. 
 
 "Ah! so Monsieur Cesar has paid his rent beforehand," 
 said du Tillet ; "nothing is more contrary to his habits." 
 
 " Oh ! I asked him to do so ; I am so accommodating with 
 my tenants ! " 
 
 " If old Birotteau goes bankrupt," thought du Tillet, " that 
 little rogue will certainly make a capital assignee. Such cap- 
 tiousness is not often met with ; he must amuse himself at 
 home, like Domitian, by killing flies when he is alone." 
 
 Du Tillet betook himself to the card-tables, where Claparon 
 (by his orders) had already taken his post. Du Tillet thought 
 that, screened by a lamp-shade, at bouillotte, his dummy-
 
 CESAR B1ROTTEAU. 177 
 
 banker would escape all scrutiny. As they sat opposite one 
 another, they looked such perfect strangers that the most sus- 
 picious observer could have discovered no sign of an under- 
 standing between them. Gaudissart, who knew that Claparon 
 had risen in the world, did not dare to approach him ; the 
 wealthy ex-commercial traveler had given him the portentously 
 cool stare of an upstart who does not care to be claimed by 
 an old acquaintance. 
 
 Toward five o'clock in the morning the ball came to an 
 end, like a spent rocket. By that time there only remained 
 some forty cabs out of a hundred or more which had filled 
 the Rue Saint-Honor6 ; and in the ballroom they were dan- 
 cing the boulangere, which later was succeeded by the cotillon 
 and the English galop. Du Tillet, Roguin, young Cardot, 
 Jules Desmarets, and the Comte de Granville were playing 
 bouillotte. Du Tillet had won three thousand francs. The 
 light of the wax-candles was growing pale in the dawn when 
 the card-players rose to join in the last quadrille. 
 
 In bourgeois houses this supreme enjoyment never comes to 
 an end without some enormities. Those who imposed awe 
 or restraint on the others are gone ; the intoxication of move- 
 ment, the hot rooms, the spirits that lurk in the most harm- 
 less beverages, relax the stiffness of the dowagers, who allow 
 themselves to be drawn into the quadrilles, and yield to the 
 excitement of the moment ; men are heated, the lank hair 
 comes down over their faces, and their grotesque appearance 
 provokes laughter; the younger women grow frivolous, flowers 
 have fallen here and there from their hair. Then it is that 
 the bourgeois Momus enters, followed by his antic crew ! 
 Laughter breaks out in peals, and every one gives himself up 
 to the merriment, thinking that with morning labor will re- 
 sume its sway over him. Matifat was dancing with a woman's 
 hat on his head ; Celestin was indulging in burlesque move- 
 ments. A few of the ladies clapped their hands noisily when 
 they changed the figures of the interminable quadrille. 
 12
 
 178 CJ&SAX BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "How they are enjoying themselves!" said the happy 
 Birotteau. 
 
 "If only they break nothing," said Constance, who stood 
 by Uncle Pillerault. 
 
 " You have given the most magnificent ball that I have 
 seen, and I have seen many," said du Tillet, with a bow to 
 his late employer. 
 
 There is in one of Beethoven's eight symphonies a fantasia 
 like a great poem ; it is the culminating point of the finale 
 of the symphony in C minor. When, after the slow prep- 
 aration of the mighty magician, so well understood by 
 Habeneck, the rich curtain rises on this scene; when the 
 bow of the enthusiastic leader of the orchestra calls forth the 
 dazzling ntottf, through which the whole gathered force of the 
 music flows, the poet, as his heart beats fast, will understand 
 that this ball was in Birotteau's life like this moment when 
 his own imagination feels the quickening power of the music, 
 of this motif, which in itself, perhaps, raises the symphony in 
 C minor above its glorious sisters. For a radiant fairy springs 
 up and waves her wand, and you hear the rustling of the 
 purple silken curtains raised by angels; the golden doors, 
 carved like the bronze gates of the baptistery in Florence, 
 turn upon their hinges of adamant, and your eyes wander 
 over far-off" glories and vistas of fairy palaces. Forms not 
 of this earth glide among them, the incense of prosperity 
 rises, the fire is kindled on the altar of fortune, the scented 
 air circles about it. Beings clad in white blue-bordered tunics 
 smile divinely as they float before your eyes, shapes delicate 
 and ethereal beyond expression turn faces of unearthly beauty 
 upon you. The Loves hover in the air, filling it with the 
 flames of their torches. You feel that you are loved ; you 
 are glad with a joy that you drink in without comprehending 
 it as you bathe in the floods of a torrent of harmony which 
 pours out for each the nectar of his choice ; for, as the music
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEA&. 179 
 
 slides into your inmost soul, its desires are realized for a 
 moment. Then when you have walked for a while in heaven, 
 the enchanter plunges you back, by some deep and mysterious 
 transition of the bass, into the morass of chill reality, only 
 to draw you thence when he has awakened in you a thirst for 
 his divine melodies, and your soul cries out to hear those 
 sounds again. The history of the soul at the most glorious 
 point in that beautiful finale is the history of the sensations 
 which this festival brought in abundance for Constance and 
 Cesar. But it was no Beethoven, but a Collinet, who had 
 composed upon his flute the finale of their commercial 
 symphony. 
 
 The three Birotteaus, tired but happy, slept that morning 
 with the sounds of the festival ringing in their ears. The 
 building, repairs, furniture, banquets, toilets, and Cesarine's 
 library (for the money had been repaid her) had altogether 
 raised the expense of that entertainment, without Cesar hav- 
 ing a suspicion of it, to sixty thousand francs. So much 
 did that luckless red ribbon, fastened by the King to a per- 
 fumer's button-hole, cost the wearer. If any misfortune 
 should befall Cesar Birotteau, this extravagance of his was 
 like to bring him into serious trouble at the police court ; a 
 merchant lays himself open to a term of two years' imprison- 
 ment if, on examination, his expenses are considered excessive. 
 It is, perhaps, more unpleasant to go to the sixth chamber for 
 simple bad management or for a foolish trifle, than to come 
 before a court of assize for a gigantic fraud ; and in some 
 people's eyes it is better to be a knave than a fool.
 
 n. 
 
 CESAR STRUGGLES WITH MISFORTUNE. 
 
 A week after the ball, that final flare of the straw-fire of a 
 prosperity which had lasted for eighteen years and now was 
 about to die out in darkness, Cesar stood watching the passers- 
 by through his store window. He was thinking of the wide 
 extent of his business affairs, and found them almost more 
 than he could manage. Hitherto his life had been quite 
 simple ; he manufactured and sold his goods, or he bought to 
 sell again. But now there was the speculation in building 
 land, and his own share in the enterprise of A. Popinot & 
 Company, beside a hundred and sixty thousand francs' worth 
 of bills to meet. Before long he would be compelled to 
 discount some of his customers' bills (and his wife would not 
 like it), or there must be an unheard-of success on Popinot's 
 part ; altogether, the poor man had so many things to think 
 of that he felt as if he had more skeins to wind than he 
 could hold. 
 
 How would Anselme steer his course ? Birotteau treated 
 Popinot much as a professor of rhetoric treats a student ; he 
 felt little confidence in his capacity, and was sorry that he 
 could not be always on hand to look after him. The admon- 
 itory kick bestowed on Anselme's shins by way of a recom- 
 mendation to hold his tongue in Vauquelin's presence will 
 illustrate the fears which the perfumer felt as to the newly 
 started business. Birotteau was very careful to hide his thoughts 
 from his wife and daughter and from his assistant ; but within 
 himself he felt as a Seine boatman might feel if by some freak 
 of fortune a minister should give him the command of a 
 frigate. Such thoughts as these, rising like a fog in his brain, 
 (180)
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 181 
 
 were but little favorable to clear thinking ; he stood, there- 
 fore, trying to see things distinctly in his own mind. 
 
 Just at that moment a figure, for which he felt an intense 
 aversion, appeared in the street ; he beheld his second land- 
 lord, little Molineux. Everybody knows those dreams in 
 which events are so crowded together that we pass through a 
 whole lifetime, dreams in which a fantastical being reappears 
 from time to time, always as the bearer of bad-tidings the 
 villain of the piece. It seemed to Birotteau that fate had 
 sent Molineux to play a similar part in his waking life. That 
 countenance had grinned diabolically at him when the feast 
 was at its height, and had turned an evil eye on the splendor; 
 and now, when Cesar saw it again, he remembered the impres- 
 sion which the "little curmudgeon" (to use his own expres- 
 sion) had given him but so much the more vividly, because 
 Molineux had given him a fresh feeling of repulsion by sud- 
 denly breaking in upon his musings. 
 
 "Sir," said the little old man in his vampire's voice, "we 
 did this business in such an off-hand fashion that you forgot 
 to approve the additions to this little private covenant of 
 ours." 
 
 As Birotteau took up the lease to repair the omission, the 
 architect came in, bowed to the perfumer, and hovered about 
 him with a diplomatic air. 
 
 "You know, sir, the difficulties at the outset when you are 
 starting in business," he said at last in Birotteau's ear; " you 
 are satisfied with me ; you would oblige me very much by 
 paying my honorarium at once." 
 
 Birotteau, who had paid away all his ready money and 
 emptied his portfolio, told Celestin to draw a bill for two 
 thousand francs at three months and a form of receipt. 
 
 "It is a very lucky thing for me that you undertook to pay 
 the quarter which your next-door neighbor owed," said Mol- 
 ineux, with malicious cunning in his smile. " My porter has 
 been around to tell me that the authorities have been affixing
 
 182 CESAR BIROTTEAU, 
 
 seals to his property, because Master Cayron has disappeared 
 from the scene." 
 
 " If only they don't come down on me for the five thousand 
 francs! " thought Birotteau. 
 
 "People thought that he was doing very well," said 
 Lourdois, who had just come in to hand his statement to 
 the perfumer. 
 
 " No one in business is quite safe from reverses until he 
 retires," remarked little Molineux, folding up his document 
 with punctilious neatness. 
 
 The architect watched the little old creature with the 
 pleasure that every artist feels at the sight of a living caricature 
 which confirms his prejudices against the bourgeoisie. 
 
 " When you hold an umbrella over your head, you generally 
 suppose that it is sheltered if it rains," he observed. 
 
 Molineux looked harder at the architect's mustache and 
 "imperial" than at his face, and the contempt that he felt 
 for Grindot quite equaled Grindot's contempt for him. He 
 stayed on to give the architect a parting scratch. By dint of 
 living with his cats there had come to be something feline in 
 Molineux' s ways as well as in his eyes. 
 
 Just at that moment Ragon and Pillerault came in together. 
 
 " We have been talking over this business with the judge," 
 Ragon said in Cesar's ear. " He says that in a speculation 
 of this kind we must actually complete the purchase and have 
 a receipt from the vendors if we are really to be severally 
 propriet " 
 
 "Oh! are you in the affair of the Madeleine?" asked 
 Lourdois. " People are talking about it ; there will be houses 
 to build ! " 
 
 The house-painter had come to ask for a prompt settlement, 
 but he found it to his interest not to press the perfumer. 
 
 " I have sent in my statement because it is the end of the 
 year," he said in a low voice for Cdsar's benefit; "I do not 
 want anything."
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAV. 183 
 
 "Well, what is it, Cesar?" asked Pillerault, noticing his 
 nephew's surprise ; for Cesar, overcome by the sight of the 
 statement, made no answer to either Ragon or Lourdois. 
 
 "Oh ! a trifle; I took five thousand francs of bills from a 
 neighbor, the umbrella dealer, who is bankrupt. If he has 
 given me bad paper, I shall be caught like a simpleton." 
 
 " Why, I told you so long ago," cried Ragon ; "a drown- 
 ing man will catch hold of his father's leg to save himself, 
 and drag him down with him. I have seen so much of bank- 
 ruptcies ! A man is not exactly a rogue to begin with ; but, 
 when he gets into trouble, he is forced to become one." 
 
 "True," said Pillerault. 
 
 " Ah ! if I ever get as far as the Chamber of Deputies, or 
 
 have some influence with Government " said Birotteau, 
 
 rising on tiptoe and sinking back again on his heels. 
 
 " What will you do? " asked Lourdois. " You are a wise 
 man." 
 
 Molineux, always interested by a discussion on law, stayed 
 in the store to listen ; and, as the attention paid by others is 
 infectious, Pillerault and Ragon, who knew Cesar's opinions, 
 listened none the less with as much gravity as the three 
 strangers. 
 
 "I should have a Tribunal and a permanent bench of 
 judges," said Cesar, "and a public prosecutor for criminal 
 cases. After an examination, made by a judge who should 
 discharge the functions of agents by procuration trustees and 
 registrar, the trader should be declared temporarily insolvent 
 or a fraudulent bankrupt. In the first case, he should be 
 bound over to pay his creditors in full ; to that end, he should 
 be trustee for his own and his wife's property (for everything 
 he had, or might inherit, would belong to his creditors) ; he 
 should manage his estate for their benefit and under their in- 
 spection ; in fact, he should carry on the business for them, 
 signing his name, in every case, as ' such a one, in liquidation,' 
 until everybody was paid in full. But if he were made a bank-
 
 184 C&SAR B1ROTTEAU. 
 
 rupt, he should be condemned to stand in the pillory in the 
 Exchange for a couple of hours, as they used to do, with a 
 green cap on his head. His own property and his wife's, and 
 his interest in any other estate, should be forfeit to his 
 creditors, and he should be banished the kingdom." 
 
 "Business would be a little safer," said Lourdois ; " people 
 would think twice before going into a speculation." 
 
 " The law as it stands is never carried out," cried Cesar, 
 lashing himself up; "more than fifty merchants out of a hun- 
 dred could only pay seventy-five per cent., or they sell goods 
 at twenty-five per cent, below invoice price and spoil trade in 
 that way." 
 
 " Monsieur Birotteau is in the right," said Molineux; " the 
 law allows far too much latitude. The entire estate should 
 be made over to the creditors, or the man should be dis- 
 graced." 
 
 " Bother take it," said Cesar, " at the rate at which things 
 are going, a merchant will become a licensed robber. By 
 signing his name he can dip in any one's purse." 
 
 "You are severe, Monsieur Birotteau," said Lourdois. 
 
 " He is right," said old Ragon. 
 
 "Every man who fails is a suspicious character," C6sar 
 went on, exasperated by the little loss which rang in his ears ; 
 it was like the huntsman's first distant halloo to a stag. 
 
 As he spoke, Chevet's steward brought his invoice, a pastry- 
 cook's boy from Felix and the Cafe Foy arrived, together 
 with the clarionet-player of Collinet's band, each with an 
 account. 
 
 "The 'Rabelais' quarter-of-an-hour,' " smiled Ragon. 
 
 " My word, that was a splendid fete of yours," said Lourdois. 
 
 " I am busy," Cesar said, and the messengers departed, 
 leaving their invoices. 
 
 "Monsieur Grindot," said Lourdois, who noticed that the 
 architect was folding up a bill which bore Cesar's signature, 
 "you will check my account and see that it is all in order;
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 185 
 
 you need do nothing more than run through it, all the prices 
 have been agreed to on Monsieur Birotteau's behalf." 
 
 Pillerault looked at Lourdois and Grindot. 
 
 " If architect and contractor settle the prices between them, 
 you are being robbed," he said in his nephew's ear. 
 
 Grindot went out. Molineux followed and came up to him 
 with a mysterious expression. 
 
 " Sir," he remarked, " you heard what I said, but you did 
 not take my meaning ; I wish you an umbrella when it comes 
 on to rain." 
 
 Fear seized on Grindot. A man clings all the more tightly 
 to gain which is not lawfully his ; such is human nature. As 
 a matter of fact, too, this had been a labor of love for the 
 artist ; he had given all his time and his utmost skill to the 
 alterations of the rooms ; he had done five times as much as 
 he had been paid for, and had fallen a victim to his own self- 
 love. The contractors had had little difficulty in tempting 
 him. And, beside the irresistible argument, there was a 
 menace, understood though not expressed, of doing him an 
 injury by slandering him, and there was a yet more cogent 
 reason for yielding the remark that Lourdois made as to the 
 building land near the Madeleine. Clearly, Birotteau did 
 not mean to put up a single house ; he was only speculating in 
 land. 
 
 Architects and contractors are in somewhat the same rela- 
 tive positions as actors and dramatists ; they are dependent 
 on each other. Grindot, to whom Birotteau left the settle- 
 ment of the charges, was for the handicraftsman as against 
 the citizen-householder. So the end of it was that three large 
 contractors Lourdois, Chaffaroux, and Thorien the carpenter 
 declared him to be "one of those good fellows for whom 
 it is a pleasure to work." Grindot foresaw that the accounts 
 on which he was to have his share would be paid, like his own 
 fee, by bills ; and this little old man had given him doubts as 
 to whether those bills would be met. Grindot was prepared
 
 186 CESAR B1ROTTEAU. 
 
 to show no mercy ; after the manner of artists, the most ruth- 
 less enemies of the bourgeois. 
 
 By the end of December, Cesar had invoices for sixty thou- 
 sand francs. Felix, the Cafe Foy, Tanrade, and others, to 
 whom small amounts were owing which must be paid in cash, 
 had sent three times for the money. In business these small 
 trifles do more harm than a heavy loss ; they set rumors in 
 circulation. A loss which every one knows is a definite thing, 
 but panic knows no limits. Birotteau's safe was empty. 
 
 Then fear seized on the perfumer. Such a thing had never 
 happened before in his business career. Like all people who 
 have almost forgotten their struggles with poverty, and have 
 little strength of character, this incident a daily occurrence 
 in the lives of most petty storekeepers in Paris troubled 
 Cesar's brain. 
 
 He told Celestin to send in invoices to his own customers ; 
 such an unheard-of order had to be repeated twice before the 
 astonished first assistant understood it. The "clients" 
 the grand name that storekeepers used to apply to their cus- 
 tomers, and retained by C6sar in speaking of them, in spite 
 of his wife, who had yielded at last with a " Call them what 
 you like, so long as they pay us" the "clients" were 
 wealthy people, who paid when they pleased ; in Cesar's busi- 
 ness there were no bad debts, though the outstanding accounts 
 often amounted to fifty or sixty thousand francs. The second 
 assistant took the invoice-book and began to copy out the 
 largest amounts. Cesar stood in fear of his wife. He did 
 not wish her to see his prostration beneath the simoom of mis- 
 fortune, so he determined to go out. 
 
 "Good-day, sir," said Grindot, coming in with the careless 
 air that artists assume when they talk of business matters, to 
 which they say they are entirely unaccustomed. "I cannot 
 obtain ready money of any sort or description for your paper, 
 so I am compelled to ask you to give me cash instead. It is 
 a most unfortunate thing for me that I must take this step;
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 187 
 
 but I have not been to the money-lenders about it ; I should 
 not like to hawk your name about ; I know enough of busi- 
 ness to know that it would be casting a slur on it ; so it is 
 to your own interest to 
 
 "Speak lower, sir, if you please," said Birotteau in bewil- 
 derment. " I am very much surprised at this." 
 
 Lourdois came in. 
 
 "Here, Lourdois," said Birotteau with a smile, "do you 
 
 know about this? " he stopped short. With the good 
 
 faith of a merchant who feels secure, the poor man had been 
 about to ask Lourdois to take Grindot's bill, by way of 
 laughing at the architect ; but he saw a cloud on Lourdois' 
 brow, and trembled at his own imprudence. The harmless 
 joke was the death-knell of a credit not above suspicion. In 
 such a case a rich merchant takes back his bill ; he does not 
 offer it. Birotteau felt dizzy ; it was as if a stroke of a pick- 
 axe had laid open the pit which yawned at his feet. 
 
 " My dear Monsieur Birotteau," said Lourdois, retiring 
 with him to the back of the store, " my account has been 
 checked and passed ; I must ask you to have the money ready 
 for me by to-morrow. My daughter is going to be married 
 to young Crottat ; he wants money, and notaries will not wait 
 and bargain ; beside, no one has ever seen my name on a 
 bill." 
 
 "You can send round the day after to-morrow," said Birot- 
 teau stiffly (he counted on the payment of the invoices). 
 "And you also, sir," he spoke to Grindot. 
 
 " Why can I not have it at once ? " asked the architect. 
 
 " I have my men's wages to pay in the Faubourg," said 
 Cesar, who had never told a lie. 
 
 He took up his hat to go with them ; but the bricklayer 
 came in with Thorien and Chaffaroux, and stopped him just 
 as he shut the door. 
 
 " We really want the money, sir," said Chaffaroux. 
 
 " Eh ! I haven't the wealth of the Indies," cried Cesar,
 
 188 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 out of patience ; and he quickly put a hundred paces between 
 himself and the three visitors. " There is something under- 
 neath all this. Confound the ball ! Everybody takes you 
 for a millionaire. Still, there was something very strange 
 about Lourdois," he thought; "there is some snake in the 
 hedge." 
 
 He went along the Rue Saint-Honor6 without thinking 
 where he was going, feeling at a very low ebb, when at a 
 corner of the street he ran up against Alexandre Crottat, like 
 a battering-ram, or as one mathematician absorbed in the 
 working of a problem might collide with another. 
 
 "Ah ! sir," exclaimed the future notary, " one word with 
 you ! Did Roguin pay over your four hundred thousand 
 francs to Monsieur Claparon ? ' ' 
 
 "You were there when the thing was done. Claparon 
 gave me no receipt of any kind ; my bills were to be nego- 
 tiated. Roguin ought to have paid them to him my two 
 
 hundred and forty thousand francs in coin. He was told that 
 the money was to be paid down and the transaction com- 
 pleted. Popinot of the Tribunal says The vendor's 
 
 receipt ! But what makes you ask the question ? " 
 
 "What makes me ask you such a question? To know 
 whether your two hundred thousand francs are in Claparon's 
 hands or Roguin 's. Roguin is such an old acquaintance of 
 yours that he might have scrupled to take your money, and 
 handed it over to Claparon ; if so, you will have had a narrow 
 escape ! But how stupid I am ! He has made off with them, 
 for he has Claparon's money ; luckily, Claparon had only paid 
 a hundred thousand francs. Roguin has absconded ; I myself 
 paid him a hundred thousand francs for his practice without 
 taking a receipt ; I gave it him as I might give my purse to 
 you to keep for me. Your vendors have not been paid a 
 stiver ; they have just been round to see me. The money 
 you raised on your land has no existence for you, nor for the 
 man of whom you borrowed it ; Roguin had swallowed it like
 
 CESAR B1ROTTEAU. 189 
 
 your hundred thousand francs ; which er he has not had 
 this long while. And he has taken your last payment of a 
 hundred thousand francs with him too ; I remember going to 
 the bank for the money." 
 
 The pupils of Cesar's eyes dilated so widely that he could 
 see nothing but red flames before him. 
 
 "Your draft on the bank for a hundred thousand francs, a 
 hundred thousand francs of mine paid for the practice, and 
 a hundred thousand francs belonging to M. Claparon three 
 hundred thousand francs gone like smoke, to say nothing of 
 the defalcations that have yet to be found out," the young 
 notary went on. " They feared for Madame Roguin's life ; 
 Monsieur du Tillet spent the night beside her. Du Tillet 
 himself has had a narrow escape ! Roguin has been pestering 
 him this month past to draw him into the Madeleine specula- 
 tion, but, luckily, all his capital was locked up in some pro- 
 ject of the Nucingens. Roguin wrote his wife a frightful 
 letter. I have just seen it. For five years he has been gam- 
 bling with his clients' money, and why? To spend it on a 
 mistress the Beautiful Dutchwoman ; he left her a fortnight 
 before he made this stroke. She had squandered till she had 
 not a farthing ; her furniture was sold ; she had put her name 
 on bills of exchange. Then she hid from her creditors in a 
 house in the Palais-Royal, and was murdered there last even- 
 ing by an officer in the army. Heaven soon dealt the punish- 
 ment to her who, beyond a doubt, had run through Roguin's 
 fortune. There are women to whom nothing is sacred ; think 
 of squandering away a notary's practice ! 
 
 " Madame Roguin will having nothing except what has 
 been secured to her by her legal mortgage, and all the 
 scoundrel's property has been mortgaged beyond its value. 
 The practice is to be sold for three hundred thousand francs ! 
 And I, who thought I was doing a good stroke of business, 
 must begin by paying an extra hundred thousand francs for 
 my practice ; I hold no receipt ; and there are defalcations
 
 190 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 which will eat up the value of the practice and the deposit of 
 caution-money. The creditors will think that I am in it if I 
 say anything about my hundred thousand francs, and you 
 have to be very careful of your reputation when you are be- 
 ginning for yourself. You will hardly get thirty per cent. 
 Such a brew to drink of at my age ! That a man of fifty- 
 nine should take up with a woman. The old rogue ! Three 
 weeks ago he told me not to marry Cesarine, and said that 
 before long you would not have bread to eat, the monster ! " 
 
 Alexandre might have talked on for a long while ; Birotteau 
 stood like a man turned to stone. Each sentence fell like a 
 stunning blow. He heard nothing in the sounds but his 
 death-knell ; just as when Alexandre first began to speak, he 
 had seemed to see his own house in flames. He looked so 
 white and stood so motionless that Alexandre Crottat, who 
 had taken the worthy perfumer for a clear-headed, capable 
 man of business, was frightened at last. Roguin's successor 
 did not know that this stroke had swept away Cesar's whole 
 fortune. A swift thought of suicide flashed through the brain 
 of the merchant, so profoundly religious by nature. In such 
 a case suicide is a way of escape from a thousand deaths, and 
 it seems logical to accept but one. Alexandre Crottat lent 
 his arm and tried to walk with him, but it was impossible 
 Cesar tottered as if he had been drunk. 
 
 "Why, what is the matter with you?" asked Crottat. 
 " My good Monsieur Cesar, pluck up heart a little ! It takes 
 more than this to kill a man ! Beside you will recover forty 
 thousand francs ; the man who lent you the money had not 
 the money to lend, and did not pay it over to you; you 
 might plead that the contract was void." 
 
 " My ball. My cross. Two hundred thousand francs' 
 worth of my paper on the market, and not anything in the 
 
 safe to The Ragons, Pillerault And my wife, who 
 
 saw it all! " 
 
 A shower of confused words, which called up ideas that
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 191 
 
 overwhelmed him and caused unspeakable pangs, fell like hail 
 laying waste the flower-beds of the Queen of Roses. 
 
 "If only my head were cut of," Birotteau cried at last; 
 " it is so heavy that it weighs me down, and it is good for 
 nothing in this " 
 
 " Poor old Birotteau ! " said Alexandre ; " then are you in 
 difficulties?" 
 
 "Difficulties! " 
 
 " Very well; keep up your heart and struggle with them." 
 
 "Struggle ! " echoed the perfumer. 
 
 " Du Tillet used to be your assistant; he has a level head, 
 he will help you." 
 
 "Du Tillet?" 
 
 "Come along!" 
 
 "Good heavens! I don't like to go home like this," 
 cried Birotteau. "You that are my friend, if friends there 
 are, you who have dined with me, you in whom I have taken 
 an interest, call a cab for me, for my wife's sake ; and come 
 with me, Xandrot " 
 
 With no little difficulty Crottat put the inert mechanism, 
 called Cesar, into a cab. 
 
 "Xandrot," he said, in a voice broken with tears, for the 
 tears had begun to fall and the iron band about his head 
 seemed to be loosened a little, "let us call at the store. 
 Speak to Celestin for me. My friend, tell him that it is a 
 matter of life and death for me and for my wife. And let 
 no one prattle about Roguin's disappearance on any pretext 
 whatever. Ask Cesarine to come down, and beg her to allow 
 no one to say anything about it to her mother. You must 
 beware of your best friends, Pillerault, the Ragons, every- 
 body " 
 
 The change in Birotteau's voice made a deep impression on 
 Crottat, who understood the importance of the request. On 
 their way to the magistrate they stopped at the house in the 
 Rue Saint-Honore. Celestin and Cesarine were horrified to
 
 192 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 see Birotteau lying back in white and speechless hebetude, 
 as it were, in the cab- 
 
 "Keep the affair a secret for me," said the perfumer. 
 
 "Ah ! " said Xandrot to himself, "he is coming round; I 
 thought it was all over with him." 
 
 The conference between Alexandre and the magistrate 
 lasted long. The president of the Chamber of Notaries was 
 sent for ; C6sar was taken hither and thither like a parcel ; 
 he did not stir, he did not utter a word. Toward seven 
 o'clock in the evening Alexandre Crottat took the perfumer 
 home again, and the thought of appearing before his wife had 
 a bracing effect upon Cesar. The young notary had the 
 charity to precede him, to tell Mme. Birotteau that her hus- 
 band had had a sort of fit. 
 
 "His ideas are confused," he said, making a gesture to de- 
 scribe a bewildered state of the brain ; " perhaps he should 
 be bled or leeches ought to be put on him." 
 
 "I knew how it would be," said Constance nothing was 
 further from her thoughts than the actual disaster "he did 
 not take his medicine as usual at the beginning of winter, 
 and for these two months he has been working like a galley 
 slave, as if he had to earn his daily bread." 
 
 So Cesar's wife and daughter begged him to go to bed, and 
 Dr. Haudry, Birotteau's doctor, was sent for. Old Haudry 
 was a doctor of the school of Moliere ; he had a large prac- 
 tice, and adhered to old-fashioned methods and out-of-date 
 formulae ; consulting-physician though he was, he drugged his 
 patients like any quack doctor. He came, made his diag- 
 nosis, and ordered the immediate application'of a sinapism to 
 the soles of Cesar's feet ; he detected symptoms of cerebral 
 congestion. 
 
 " What can have brought it on ? " asked Constance. 
 
 "The damp weather," said the doctor. Cesarine had 
 given him a hint. 
 
 A doctor is often obliged professionally to talk nonsense
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 193 
 
 with a learned air, to save the honor or the life of persons in 
 health who stand about the patient's bed. The old physician 
 had seen so much that half a word sufficed for him. Ce- 
 sarine went out with the doctor on to the stairs to ask about 
 the treatment. 
 
 "Rest and quiet; then when there is less pressure on the 
 head, we will venture on tonics." 
 
 For two days Mme. Cesar sat by her husband's bedside. 
 Often she thought that he was delirious. As he lay in his 
 wife's pretty blue-chamber he said many things, which were 
 enigmas for Constance, at the sight of the hangings, the 
 furniture, and the costly magnificence of the room. 
 
 " He is light-headed," she said to Cesar ine, when Cesar 
 sat upright in bed and began solemnly to repeat scraps of the 
 Code. "If the personal or household expenses are considered 
 excessive Take away those curtains ! " he cried. 
 
 After three dreadful days of anxiety for Cesar's reason, the 
 Tourangeau's strong peasant constitution triumphed, the 
 pressure on the brain- ceased. M. Haudry ordered cordials 
 and a strengthening diet, and, after a cup of coffee seasonably 
 administered, Cesar was on his feet again. Constance, worn 
 out, took her husband's place. 
 
 "Poor thing!" said Cesar, when he saw her sleeping. 
 
 " Come, papa, take courage ! You have so much talent, 
 that you will triumph over this. Never mind. Monsieur 
 Anselme will help you," and Cesarine murmured the sweet, 
 vague words, made still sweeter by tenderness, which put 
 courage into the most sorely defeated, as a mother's croon- 
 ing songs soothe the pain of a teething infant. 
 
 "Yes, child, I will struggle. But not a word of this to 
 any one whatever; not to Popinot, who loves us, nor to 
 your uncle. In the first place, I will write to my brother ; 
 he is a canon, I believe, a priest attached to a cathedral. 
 He spends nothing, so he must have saved something. 
 Five thousand francs put by every year for twenty years 
 13
 
 194 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 he ought to have a hundred thousand francs. Priests have 
 credit in country places." 
 
 Cesarine, in her hurry to set a little table and the neces- 
 saries for writing a letter before her father, brought the 
 remainder of the rose- colored cards for the ball. 
 
 "Burn them all!" cried the merchant. "The devil 
 alone could have put the notion of that ball into my head. 
 If I fail, it will look as if I were a rogue. Come, let us 
 go straight to the point." 
 
 Cesar 1 s Letter to Francois Birotteau. 
 
 "My DEAR BROTHER: My business is passing through a 
 crisis so difficult that I implore you to send me all the 
 money at your disposal, even if you are obliged to borrow. 
 Yours truly, CESAR. 
 
 "Your niece, Cesarine, who is with me as I write this 
 letter, while my poor wife is asleep, desires to be remembered 
 to you, and sends her love." 
 
 This postscript was added at Cesarine's instance. She gave 
 the letter to Raguet. 
 
 "Father," said she when she came up again, "here is 
 Monsieur Lebas, who wants to speak to you." 
 
 " M. Lebas! " cried Cesar, starting as though misfortune 
 had made a criminal of him, " a judge ! " 
 
 " Dear Monsieur Birotteau," said the stout merchant-draper 
 as he came in, " I take too deep an interest in you knowing 
 each other so long as we have, and being elected judges to- 
 gether, as we were, for the first time not to let you know 
 that one Bidault, otherwise Gigonnet, has bills of yours made 
 payable to his order, without guarantee, by the firm of Cla- 
 paron. Those two words are not merely an insult; they give 
 a fatal shake to your credit."
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 195 
 
 " Monsieur Claparon would like to speak with you," said 
 Cdlestin, putting in his head ; " am I to show him up ? " 
 
 " We shall soon hear the why and wherefore of this af- 
 front," remarked Lebas. 
 
 "This is Monsieur Lebas, sir," said Cesar, as Claparon 
 came in ; " he is a judge of the Tribunal of Commerce, and 
 my friend " 
 
 "Oh! the gentleman is Monsieur Lebas, is he?" said 
 Claparon, interrupting Cesar; "delighted to make his ac- 
 quaintance ; Monsieur Lebas of the Tribunal, there are so 
 many Lebas,* to say nothing of the hauts (high) and the bas 
 (low) " 
 
 " He has seen the bills which I gave to you, and which 
 (so you told me) should not be negotiated," Birotteau 
 went on, interrupting the rattle in his turn; "he has seen 
 them, too, with the words ' without guarantee ' written upon 
 them." 
 
 " Well," said Claparon, "and as a matter of fact they will 
 not be negotiated ; they are in the hands of a man with 
 whom I do a great deal of business old Bidault. That is 
 why I put ' without guarantee ' on them. If the bills had 
 been meant to be put in circulation, you would have made 
 them to his order in the first place. Monsieur Lebas, as a judge, 
 will understand my position. What do the bills represent? 
 The price of some landed property. To be paid by whom ? 
 By Birotteau. Why would you have me guarantee Birotteau 
 by my signature ? We must, each of us, pay our share of the 
 aforesaid price. Now isn't it enough to be jointly and sev- 
 erally responsible to the vendors ? I have made an inflexible 
 rule in business : I no more give my signature for nothing 
 than I give a receipt for money that is still to be paid. I as- 
 sume the worst. Who signs, pays. I don't want to be laid 
 open to pay three times over." 
 
 "Three times," said Cesar. 
 
 * Le bas : the low.
 
 196 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Claparon. " I have already guaranteed 
 Birotteau to the vendors ; why should I guarantee him again 
 to the bill-discounter ? Our case is a hard one ; Roguin goes 
 off with a hundred thousand francs of mine ; so, even now, 
 my half of the land is costing me five hundred thousand in- 
 stead of four. Roguin has taken two hundred and forty 
 thousand francs belonging to Birotteau. What would you do 
 in my place, Monsieur Lebas? Put yourself in my shoes. I 
 have not the honor of being known to you, any more than I 
 know Monsieur Birotteau. Do you take me ? We go halves 
 in a business speculation. You pay down all your share of 
 the money in cash ; and, as for me, I give bills for my share. 
 I offer you the bills, and out of excessive benevolence you take 
 them and give money for them. You learn that Claparon, 
 the rich banker, looked up to by every one I accept all the 
 virtues in the world that the virtuous Claparon is in diffi- 
 culties for a matter of six millions ; would you select that 
 moment to give your name as a guarantee for mine ? You 
 would be mad ! Well now, Monsieur Lebas, Birotteau is in 
 the position in which I imagined Claparon to be. Don't you 
 see that in that case, being jointly and severally responsible, 
 I may be made to pay the purchasers ; that I can be called 
 upon to pay a second time for Birotteau's share to the extent 
 of his bills; that is, if I back them, without having " 
 
 " Pay whom? " interrupted the perfumer. 
 
 "Without having his half of the land," pursued Claparon, 
 heedless of the interruption, " for I should have no hold on 
 him ; so I should have to buy it over again. So I might pay 
 three times over." 
 
 " Repay whom?" insisted Birotteau, 
 
 " Why, the holder of the bills ; if I endorsed them, and you 
 came to grief." 
 
 " I shall not fail, sir," said Birotteau. 
 
 "All right," said Claparon. " You have been a judge, you 
 are a clever man of business, you know that we ought to pro-
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 197 
 
 vide for all contingencies, so do not be astonished if I act in 
 a business-like way." 
 
 "Monsieur Claparon is right," said Joseph Lebas. 
 
 " I am right," continued Claparon, " right from a business 
 point of view. But this is a question of landed property. 
 Now, what ought I myself to receive ? Money, for the ven- 
 dors must be paid in coin. Let us set aside the two hundred 
 and forty thousand francs, which Monsieur Birotteau will find, 
 I am sure," said Claparon, looking at Lebas. " I came to 
 ask you for the trifling sum of twenty-five thousand francs," 
 he added, looking at Birotteau. 
 
 " Twenty-five thousand francs ! " cried C6sar, and it seemed 
 to him that the blood turned to ice in his veins. "But, sir, 
 what for?" 
 
 "Eh ! my dear sir, we are bound to sign, seal, and deliver 
 the deeds in the presence of a notary. Now, as to paying for 
 the land, we may arrange that among ourselves, but when the 
 Treasury comes in your humble servant ! The Treasury does 
 not amuse itself with idle words ; it allows you credit from 
 your hand to your pocket, and we shall have to come down 
 with the money forty-four thousand francs this week in law 
 expenses. I was far from expecting reproaches when I came 
 here ; for, thinking that you might find it inconvenient to pay 
 twenty-five thousand francs, I was going to tell you that by 
 the merest chance I had saved for you " 
 
 "What?" asked Birotteau, giving in that word that cry 
 of distress which no man can mistake. 
 
 "A trifle! Twenty-five thousand francs in bills given to 
 you by one and another, which Roguin gave me to discount. 
 I have credited you with the amount as against the registration 
 and other expenses ; I will send you the account ; there is a 
 little matter to deduct for discounting them, and six or seven 
 thousand francs will still be owing to me." 
 
 "This all seems to me to be perfectly fair," said Lebas. 
 *' In the place of this gentleman, who appears to me to un-
 
 198 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 derstand business very well, I should act the same toward a 
 stranger." 
 
 "This will not be the death of Monsieur Birotteau," said 
 Claparon ; "it takes more than one blow to kill an old wolf; 
 I have seen wolves with bullets in their heads running about 
 like Lord, yes, like wolves." 
 
 " Who could have foreseen such rascality on Roguin's 
 part ? " asked Lebas, as much alarmed by Cesar's dumbness 
 as by so vast a speculation outside the perfumery trade. 
 
 "A little more, and I should have given this gentleman a 
 receipt for four hundred thousand francs," said Claparon, 
 " and I was in a stew. I had paid over a hundred thousand 
 francs to Roguin the night before. Our mutual confidence 
 saved me. It would have seemed to us all a matter of indiffer- 
 ence whether the money should be lying at his office or in my 
 possession till the day when the contracts were completed." 
 
 " It would have been much better if each had deposited his 
 money with the Bank of France till the time came for paying 
 it over," said Lebas. 
 
 " Roguin was as good as the bank, I thought," said Cesar. 
 " But he, too, is in this business," he added, looking at Cla- 
 paron. 
 
 " Yes, for a fourth, and in name only," answered Claparon. 
 "After the imbecility of allowing him to go off with my 
 money, there is but one thing more out-and-out idiotic and 
 that would be to make him a present of some more. If he 
 sends me back my hundred thousand francs, and two hundred 
 thousand more on his own account, then we shall see ! But 
 he will take good care not to put the money into an affair 
 that must simmer for four years before you have a spoonful of 
 soup. If he has only gone off with three hundred thousand 
 francs, as they say, he will want quite fifty thousand livres a 
 year to live decently abroad." 
 " The bandit ! " 
 " Eh ! goodness ! An infatuation for a woman brought
 
 CESAR BTROTTEAU. 199 
 
 Roguin to that pass," said Claparon. "What man at his 
 age can answer for it that he will not be mastered and carried 
 away by a last fancy ? Not one of us, sober as we are, can 
 tell where it will end. A last love is the most violent. Look 
 at Cardot, and Camusot, and Matifat every one of them has 
 a mistress ! And if all of us are gulled, is it not our own 
 fault ? How was it that we did not suspect a notary who 
 speculated on his own account? Any notary, any bill-broker, 
 or stock-broker who does business on his own account, is not 
 to be trusted. Failure for them is fraudulent bankruptcy; 
 they are sent up to the court of assize for trial ; so, of course, 
 they prefer a foreign court. I shall not make that blunder 
 again. Well, well, we are all too weak to pass judgment by 
 default on a man with whom we have dined, who has given 
 grand balls, a man in society, in fact ! Nobody complains ; 
 it is wrong." 
 
 "Very wrong," said Birotteau. "The provisions of the 
 law with regard to liquidations and insolvency ought to be 
 revised throughout." 
 
 "If you should happen to need me," said Lebas, turning 
 himself to and addressing Birotteau, " I am quite at your 
 service." 
 
 "Monsieur Birotteau has need of no one," said the inde- 
 fatigable prattler (du Tillet had opened the sluices after pour- 
 ing in the water, and Claparon was repeating a lesson which 
 du Tillet had very skillfully taught him). "His position is 
 clear. Roguin's estate will pay a dividend of fifty per cent., 
 from what young Crottat tells me. Beside the dividend, 
 Monsieur Cesar will come by the forty thousand francs which 
 the lender on the mortgage did not pay over ; he can raise 
 more money on his property ; and we have four months in 
 which to pay two hundred thousand francs to the vendors. 
 Between now and then Monsieur Birotteau will meet his bills 
 (for he ought not to reckon on meeting them with the money 
 which Roguin made off with). But if Monsieur Birotteau
 
 200 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 should find himself a little pinched well, with one or two 
 
 accommodation bills, he will pull through." 
 
 The perfumer took heart as he listened. Claparon analyzed 
 the business, summed it up, and traced out a plan of action, 
 as it were, for him. Gradually his expression grew decided 
 and resolute, and he conceived a great respect for the ex-com- 
 mercial traveler's business capacity. Du Tillet had thought 
 it expedient to make Claparon believe that he was one of 
 Roguin's victims. He had given Claparon a hundred thou- 
 sand francs to give to Roguin, who returned them to du 
 Tillet. Claparon, being uneasy, played his part to the life ; 
 he told anybody who cared to listen to him that Roguin had 
 mulcted him of a hundred thousand francs. Du Tillet 
 doubted Claparon's strength of mind ; he fancied that prin- 
 ciples of honesty and conscientious scruples still lingered in 
 his puppet, and would not confide the whole of his plans to 
 him ; he knew, moreover, that his instrument was incapable 
 of guessing at them. 
 
 A day came when his commercial go-between reproached 
 him. "If our first friend is not our first dupe, we should 
 never find the second," said du Tillet to the dissipated Clap- 
 aron, and he broke in pieces the tool which was no longer 
 useful. 
 
 M. Lebas and Claparon went out together, and Birotteau 
 was left alone. 
 
 " I can pull through," he said to himself. " My liabilities, 
 in the shape of bills to be met, amount to two hundred and 
 thirty-five thousand francs. That is to say seventy-five thou- 
 sand francs for the house and a hundred and seventy-five 
 thousand francs for the building land. Now, to cover this, I 
 have Roguin's dividend, which will amount may be to a 
 hundred thousand francs ; and I can cancel the loan on my 
 land, that is a hundred and forty thousand francs in all. 
 The thing to be done is to make a hundred thousand francs 
 by the Cephalic Oil; and a few accommodation bills or a
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU: 201 
 
 loan from a banker will tide me over until I can make good 
 the loss and the building land reaches its enhanced value." 
 
 When a man in misfortune can once weave a romance of 
 hope out of the more or less solid reasonings with which he 
 fills the pillow on which he lays his head, he is often saved. 
 Many a one has taken the confidence given by an illusion for 
 energy. Perhaps the half of courage is really hope, and the 
 Catholic religion reckons hope among the virtues. Has not 
 hope buoyed up many a weakling, giving him time to await 
 the chances which life brings? 
 
 Birotteau made up his mind to apply, in the first place, to 
 his wife's uncle, and to disclose his position to his relative 
 before going elsewhere. He went down the Rue Saint- 
 Honor6 and reached the Rue Bourdonnais, not without ex- 
 periencing inward pangs, which caused such violent internal 
 disturbance that he thought his health was deranged. There 
 was a fire in his vitals. As a matter of fact, those whose sen- 
 tience is keenest in the diaphragm suffer in that region ; just 
 as those whose faculty of perception resides in the brain suffer 
 in the head. In grave crises the system is attacked at the 
 point where the temperament locates the seat of life in the 
 individual ; weaklings have the colic, a Napoleon grows 
 drowsy. 
 
 Before a man of honor can storm a confidence and over- 
 leap the barriers of pride, he must have felt the prick of the 
 spur of Necessity, that hard rider, more than once. So for 
 two days Birotteau had borne that spurring before he went to 
 see Pillerault, and then family reasons decided him however 
 things might go, he must explain the position to the stern 
 hardware man. Yet, for all that, when he reached the door he 
 felt in his inmost soul as a child feels on a visit to the dentist, 
 that his courage was sinking away ; and Birotteau was not about 
 to face a momentary pang, he quailed before a whole lifetime 
 to come. Slowly he went up the stairs, and found the old 
 man reading the " Constitutionnel " by the fireside; on a
 
 202 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 little round table his frugal breakfast was set a roll, butter, 
 Brie cheese, and a cup of coffee. 
 
 " There is real wisdom," said Birotteau to himself, and he 
 envied his uncle's life. 
 
 " Well," said Pillerault, laying down his spectacles, " I 
 heard about Roguin's affair yesterday at the Cafe David; so 
 his mistress, the Beautiful Dutchwoman, is murdered ! I hope 
 that, warned by us who want to be actual proprietors, you 
 have been to Claparon and taken a receipt?" 
 
 " Alas ! uncle, that is just it ; you have laid your finger on 
 the spot. No." 
 
 "Oh, bother! you are ruined," said Pillerault, dropping 
 his paper ; and Birotteau picked it up, although it was the 
 " Constitutionnel." 
 
 This thought was such a shock that Pillerault's stern feat- 
 ures, always like a profile on a coin, grew hard as if they had 
 been struck in bronze. He stared with steady eyes that saw 
 nothing, through the windows, at the opposite wall, and lis- 
 tened while Birotteau poured out a long discourse. Evidently 
 while he heard he deliberated ; he was pondering the case 
 with the inflexibility of a Minos who crossed the Styx of com- 
 merce, when he left the Quai des Morfondos for his little 
 fourth-floor dwelling. 
 
 "Well, uncle?" asked Birotteau at last, expecting some 
 answer to a final entreaty to sell rentes worth sixty thousand 
 francs a year. 
 
 "Well, my poor nephew, I cannot do it. Things have 
 gone too far. We, the Ragons and I, shall both lose fifty 
 thousand francs. It was by my advice that the good folk sold 
 their shares in the Worstchin Mines. I feel myself bound, if 
 they lose the money, not to replace their capital, but to give 
 them a helping hand, and to help my niece and Cesarine. 
 You might, perhaps, all of you want bread, and you must come 
 to me " 
 
 "Bread, uncle?"
 
 C^SAR BIROTTEAU. 203 
 
 "Well, yes, bread. Just look the facts in the face: you 
 will not pull through ! Out of five thousand six hundred 
 francs a year, I will set aside four thousand to divide between 
 you and the Ragons. When your disaster comes, I know 
 Constance, she will slave and deny herself everything and 
 so will you, Cesar ! " 
 
 " There is yet hope, uncle." 
 
 " I do not see it as you do." 
 
 " I will prove the contrary." 
 
 " Nothing would please me better." 
 
 Birotteau went without an answer for Pillerault. He had 
 come to find comfort and encouragement, he had received a 
 second blow ; a blow less heavy than the first one, it is true ; 
 but whereas the first had been dealt at his head, this thrust had 
 gone to his heart, and the poor man's life lay in his affections. 
 He had gone down part of the way, and then he turned and 
 went up again. 
 
 " Sir," he said, in a constrained voice, " Constance knows 
 nothing of this, keep the secret for me at least ; and beg the 
 Ragons not to disturb the peace that I need if I am to fight 
 against misfortune." 
 
 Pillerault made a sign of assent. 
 
 "Take courage, C6sar," he said. "I see that you are 
 angry with me, but some day you will acknowledge that I am 
 right, when you think of your wife and daughter." 
 
 Discouraged by this opinion given by his uncle, whose 
 clear-headedness he acknowledged, Cesar suddenly dropped 
 from the heights of hope into the miry slough of uncertainty. 
 When a man's affairs take an ugly turn like this he is apt to 
 become the plaything of circumstances, unless he is of Piller- 
 ault's temper; he follows other people's ideas, or his own, much 
 as a wayfarer pursues a will-o'-the-wisp. He allows himself to 
 be swept away by the whirlwind when he should either lie 
 prostrate with his eyes shut, and let it pass over him, or rise 
 and watch the direction that it takes, to escape the blast. In
 
 204 CESAR B1ROTTEAU. 
 
 the midst of his anguish, Birotteau bethought himself of the 
 necessary steps to be taken with regard to his loan. He went 
 to see Derville, a consulting barrister in the Rue Vivienne, so 
 as to set about it the sooner, if Derville should see any 
 chance of canceling the contract. Him he found sitting, 
 wrapped in his white flannel dressing-gown, by the fireside, 
 staid and self-possessed, as is the wont of men of law, accus- 
 tomed as they are to the most harrowing disclosures. Bi- 
 rotteau felt, as a new thing in his experience, this necessary 
 coolness ; it was like ice to an excited man like Birotteau 
 telling the story of his misfortunes, smarting from the wounds 
 that he had received, stricken with the fever induced by the 
 risks his fortunes were running, and cruelly beset, since honor 
 and life and wife and child were all imperiled. 
 
 "If it is proved," said Derville, when he had heard him 
 out, " that the lender no longer had in Roguin's keeping the 
 sum of money which Roguin induced you to borrow of him, 
 as there has been no transfer of the actual money, the con- 
 tract might be annulled, and the lender will have his remedy 
 (as you also will have for your hundred thousand francs) in 
 Roguin's caution-money. In that case, I will answer for your 
 lawsuit, so far as it is possible to answer for any action at law, 
 for no action is a foregone conclusion." 
 
 The opinion of so learned an expert put a little heart into 
 Birotteau. He begged Derville to obtain a judgment within 
 a fortnight. The advocate answered to the effect that Birot- 
 teau might be obliged to wait three months before the contract 
 would be annulled. 
 
 "Three months!" cried Birotteau, who thought that he 
 had found an expedient for raising money at once. 
 
 " Well, if you yourself succeed in gaining a prompt hearing 
 for your case, we cannot hurry your opponent to suit your 
 pace ; he will take advantage of the delays of procedure ; 
 advocates are not always at the Palais ; who knows but that 
 the other party will let judgment go against him by default ?
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 205 
 
 And he will appeal. You can't set your own pace, my dear 
 sir! " said Derville, smiling. 
 
 "But at the Tribunal of Commerce " 
 
 " Oh ! " said the advocate, " the Consular Tribunal is one 
 thing and the Tribunal of First Instance is another. You 
 do things in a slashing way over yonder. Now, at the Palais 
 de Justice there are formalities to be gone through. These 
 formalities are the bulwarks of justice. How would you like 
 it if a demand for forty thousand francs was suddenly fired off 
 at you? Well, your opponent, who will see that amount 
 compromised, will dispute it. Delays are the spiked wall of 
 the law." 
 
 "You are right," said Birotteau, and he took leave of 
 Derville with a deadly chill at his heart. " They are all 
 right. Money ! Money ! " cried the perfumer, out in the 
 street, talking to himself, as is the wont of busy men in this 
 turbulent, seething Paris, which a modern poet calls "a vat." 
 
 As he came into his store, one of the assistants, who had 
 been out delivering invoices to the customers, told him that, 
 as the New Year was at hand, every one had torn off the 
 receipt-form at the foot and kept the invoices. 
 
 " Then there is no money anywhere ! " Birotteau exclaimed 
 aloud in the store. All the assistants looked up at this, and 
 he bit his lips. 
 
 In this way five days went by ; and during those five days 
 Braschon, Lourdois, Thorien, Grindot, Chaffaroux, and all 
 the creditors whose bills remained unpaid, passed through the 
 chameleon's intermediate transitions of tone, from the serene 
 hues of confidence to the wrathful red of the commercial 
 Bellona. In Paris, in such crises, suspicion is as quick to 
 reach the panic stage as confidence is slow to show expansive 
 symptoms ; and, when a creditor once adopts the restringent 
 system of doubts and precautions in business relations, he is 
 apt to descend to underhand villainies that put him below his 
 debtor's level. From cringing civility the creditors passed
 
 206 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 successively through the inflammatory phase, the red of im- 
 patience, the lurid coruscations of importunity, to outbursts 
 of disappointment, and from the cold-blue stage of making 
 up their minds to the black insolence of threatening to serve 
 a writ. 
 
 Braschon, the rich furniture dealer of the Faubourg Saint- 
 Antoine, who had not been included in the invitations to the 
 ball, sounded to arms in his quality of the creditor whose self- 
 love has been wounded. Paid he meant to be, and within 
 twenty-four hours ; he required security, not deposits of furni- 
 ture, but a second mortgage, the mortgage for forty thousand 
 francs on the property in the Faubourg du Temple. In spite 
 of their furious recriminations, these gentry still left Cesar 
 occasional intervals of peace when he might breathe ; but in- 
 stead of bringing a resolute will to carry these outworks of an 
 awkward position, and so putting an end to them, Birotteau 
 was taxing all his wits to keep the state of things from the 
 knowledge of his wife, and the one person who could give 
 him counsel knew nothing of his difficulties. He stood sen- 
 tinel on the threshold of his store. He confided his mo- 
 mentary inconvenience to Celestin, who watched his employer 
 with curious and astonished eyes; already Cesar had fallen 
 somewhat in his esteem, as men accustomed to prosperity 
 are apt to dwindle when evil days discover that all their 
 power consists in the increased facility of dealing with mat- 
 ters of every-day experience, acquired by an ordinary intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 But if C6sar lacked the mental energy required for defend- 
 ing himself when attacked at so many points at once, he had 
 sufficient courage to face his position. Before the i5th of 
 January he required the sum of sixty thousand francs, and 
 thirty thousand of these were due on the 315! of December. 
 Part of this sum was owing for the house, part for rent and 
 accounts to be paid in ready money, part of it in bills to 
 be met ; with all his efforts he could only collect twenty
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 207 
 
 thousand francs, so that there was a deficit of ten thousand to 
 be made up by the end of the month. Nothing seemed hope- 
 less to him, for he had already ceased to look beyond the 
 present moment, and, like an adventurer, had begun to live 
 from day to day. At length he resolved to make what for 
 him was a bold stroke. Before it was known that he was in 
 difficulties, he would apply to Francois Keller, banker, orator, 
 and philanthropist, widely known for his beneficence, and for 
 his desire to stand well with the mercantile world of Paris, 
 always with a view to representing their interests one day as a 
 deputy in the Chamber. In politics the banker was a Liberal, 
 and Cesar was a Royalist ; but the perfumer decided that the 
 capitalist was a man after his own heart, and that a difference 
 of opinion in politics was but one reason the more for opening 
 an account. If paper should be necessary, he did not doubt 
 Popinot's devotion, and counted upon obtaining from him 
 some thirty bills of a thousand francs each ; with these he 
 might hold out until he gained his lawsuit, the forty thousand 
 francs involved in it being offered as security to the most 
 urgent creditors. 
 
 The effusive soul, who was wont to confide to the pillow of 
 his dear Constance the least emotions of his existence, who 
 drew his courage from her, and was wont to seek of her the 
 light thrown by contradiction on all topics, was cut off from 
 all exchange of ideas with his first assistant, his uncle, and 
 his wife, and found that the weight of his cares was thereby 
 doubled. Yet this self-sacrificing martyr preferred suffering 
 alone to the alternative of casting his wife's soul into the fiery 
 furnace ; he would tell her about the danger when it was past. 
 Perhaps, too, he shrank from telling her the hideous secret ; 
 he stood in some fear of his wife, and this fear lent him cour- 
 age. He went every morning to low mass at Saint-Roch and 
 told his troubles to God. 
 
 " If I do not meet a soldier on my way back from Saint- 
 Roch, I will take it as a sign that my prayer is heard. It
 
 208 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 shall be God's answer to me," he said to himself, after he had 
 prayed for deliverance. 
 
 And, for his happiness, he did not meet a soldier. Yet, 
 nevertheless, his heart was overfull, and he needed another 
 human heart to whom he could make moan. Cesarine, to 
 whom he had already told the fatal news, learned the whole 
 truth, and stolen glances were exchanged between them, 
 glances fraught with despair or repressed hope, passionate 
 invocations, appeals, and sympathetic responses, answering 
 gleams of intelligence between soul and soul. For his wife 
 Cesar put on high spirits and mirth. If Constance asked any 
 question "Pshaw, everything was all right. Popinot " (to 
 whom Cesar gave not a thought) " was doing well ! The Oil 
 was selling ! Claparon's bills would be met ; there was noth- 
 ing to fear." The hollow merriment was ghastly. When his 
 wife lay sleeping amid the splendors, Birotteau would rise 
 and fall to thinking over his misfortunes ; and more than once 
 Cdsarine came in, in her night-dress, barefooted, with a shawl 
 about her white shoulders. 
 
 "Papa, you are crying; I can hear you," she would say, 
 and she would cry herself as she spoke. 
 
 When C6sar had written to ask the great Francois Keller 
 to make an appointment with him he fell into such a state of 
 torpor that Cesarine persuaded him to walk out with her. In 
 the streets of Paris he saw nothing but huge red placards, and 
 the words CEPHALIC OIL in staring letters everywhere met his 
 eyes. 
 
 While the glory of the Queen of Roses was thus waning in 
 disastrous gloom, the firm of A. Popinot was dawning radiant 
 with the sunrise splendors of success. Anselme had taken 
 counsel of Gaudissart and Finot, and had launched his oil 
 boldly. During the past three days two thousand placards 
 had been posted in the most conspicuous situations in Paris. 
 Every one in the streets was confronted with the Cephalic Oil, 
 and willy-nilly must read the pithy remarks from Finot's pen
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 209 
 
 as to the impossibility of stimulating the growth of the hair, 
 and the perils attendant on dyeing it, together with an extract 
 from a paper read before the Academic des Sciences by Vau- 
 quelin. It was as good as a certificate of existence for dead 
 hair, thus held out to those who should use the Cephalic Oil. 
 The store-doors of every perfumer, hair-dresser, and wigmaker 
 in Paris were made glorious with gilded frames, containing a 
 beautiful design, printed on vellum paper, with a reduced 
 fac-simile of the picture of " Hero and Leander " at the top, 
 and beneath it ran the motto : The ancient peoples of antiquity 
 preserved their hair by the use of CEPHALIC OIL. 
 
 " He has thought of permanent frames ; he has found an 
 advertisement that will last for ever ! " said Birotteau to him- 
 self, as he stood staring in dull amazement at the store-front 
 of the Silver Bell. 
 
 "Then you did not see a frame on your own door?" 
 asked his daughter. " Monsieur Anselme brought it himself, 
 and left three hundred bottles of the oil with Celestin." 
 
 "No, I did not see it," he answered. 
 
 " And Celestin has already sold fifty to chance-comers and 
 sixty to our own customers." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Cesar. 
 
 The sound of n?yriad bells that misery sets ringing in the 
 ears of her victims had made the perfumer dizzy ; his head 
 seemed to spin round and round in those days. Popinot had 
 waited a whole hour to speak with him on the day before, 
 and had gone away after chatting with Constance and 
 Cesarine ; the women told him that C6sar was very busy 
 over his great scheme. 
 
 " Oh yes, the building land ! " Popinot had said. 
 
 Luckily, Popinot had not left the Rue des Cinq-Diamants 
 for a month ; he had worked day and night at his business, 
 and had seen neither Ragon, nor Pillerault, nor his uncle. 
 The poor lad was never in bed before two o'clock in the 
 morning ; he had only two assistants, and at the rate at which 
 14
 
 210 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 things were going he would soon have work enough for 
 four. Opportunity is everything in business; success is a 
 horse which, if caught by the mane and ridden by a bold 
 rider, will carry him on to fortune. Popinot told himself 
 that he should receive a welcome when, at the end of six 
 months, he could carry the news to his aunt and uncle " I 
 am saved; my fortune is made!" a welcome, too, from 
 Birotteau when, at the end of the first half-year, he should 
 bring him his share of the profits thirty or forty thousand 
 francs! He had not heard of Roguin's disappearance, nor 
 of Cesar's consequent disasters and difficulties ; so that he 
 could not let fall any indiscreet remarks in Madame Birot- 
 teau's presence. 
 
 Popinot had promised Finot five hundred francs for each 
 of the leading newspapers (ten in all), and three hundred 
 francs for each second-rate paper (and of these, too, there 
 were ten), if the Cephalic Oil was mentioned three times a 
 month in each. Of those eight thousand francs, Finot be- 
 held three thousand as his own, his first stake to lay on the 
 vast green table of speculation. So he had sprung like a lion 
 upon his friends and acquaintances ; he haunted newspaper 
 offices ; writers of newspaper articles awoke from slumber to 
 find him sitting by their pillows ; and the evening found him 
 pacing the lobbies of all the theatres. " Remember my oil, 
 my dear fellow ; it is nothing to me ; a matter of good-fel- 
 lowship, you know; Gaudissart, a jolly dog." With this 
 formula, his harangues always began and ended. He filled 
 up spaces at the foot of the last columns in the papers, and 
 left the money to those upon the staff. He was as cunning 
 as any super who is minded to transform himself into an 
 actor, and as active as an errand boy on sixty francs a month; 
 he wrote insinuating letters, he worked on the vanity of all 
 and sundry, he did dirty work for editors, to the end that his 
 paragraphs might be inserted in their papers. His enthusi- 
 astic energy left no means untried money, dinners, plati-
 
 CSAR BIROTTEAU. 211 
 
 tudes. By means of tickets for the play he corrupted the 
 men who finish off the columns toward midnight with short 
 paragraphs of small news items already set up ; hanging about 
 the printing-office for that purpose, as if he had proofs to 
 revise. 
 
 So by dint of making every one his friend, Finot secured 
 the triumph of the Cephalic Oil over the Pdte de Regnault 
 and the Mixture Bresilienne, over all the inventions, in fact, 
 whose promoters had the wit to comprehend the influence of 
 journalism and the effect produced upon the public mind by 
 the piston-stroke of the reiterated paragraph. In that age 
 of innocence, journalists, like draught-oxen, were unaware of 
 their strength ; their heads ran on actresses Mesdemoiselles 
 Florine, Tullia, Mariette they lorded it over all creation, 
 and made no practical use of their powers. In Andoche's 
 propositions there was no actress to be applauded, no drama 
 to be put upon the stage ; he did not ask them to make a 
 success of his vaudevilles, nor to pay him for his paragraphs ; 
 on the contrary, he offered money in season and opportune 
 breakfasts ; so there was not a newspaper that did not men- 
 tion the Cephalic Oil, and how that it was in accordance with 
 Vauquelin's investigations; not a journal that did not scoff 
 at the superstition that the hair could be induced to grow 
 and proclaim the danger of dyeing it. 
 
 These paragraphs rejoiced Gaudissart's heart. He laid in 
 a supply of papers wherewith to demolish prejudice in the 
 provinces, and accomplished the manoeuvre known among 
 speculators since his time as "taking the public by storm." 
 In those days newspapers from Paris exercised a great influ- 
 ence in the departments, the hapless country districts being 
 still "without organs." The Paris newspaper, therefore, was 
 taken up as a serious study, and read through from the head- 
 ing to the printer's name on the last line of the last page, 
 where the irony of persecuted opinion might be supposed 
 to lurk.
 
 212 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Gaudissart, thus supported by the press, had a brilliant suc- 
 cess from the very first in every town where his tongue had 
 play. Every provincial storekeeper was anxious for a frame 
 and copies of "Hero and Leander." Finot devised that 
 charming joke against Macassar Oil, which drew such laughter 
 at the Funambules, when Pierrot takes up an old house -brush, 
 visibly worn down to the holes, and rubs it with Macassar Oil, 
 and, lo, the stump becomes a mop a piece of irony which 
 brought down the house. In later days Finot would gaily re- 
 late how that but for those three thousand francs he must 
 have died of want and misery. For him three thousand francs 
 was a fortune. In this campaign he discovered the power 
 of advertising, which he was to wield so wisely and so much 
 to his own profit. Three months later this pioneer was the 
 editor of a small paper, of which after a time he became the 
 proprietor, and so laid the foundation of his fortune. Even 
 as the illustrious Gaudissart, that Murat among commercial 
 travelers, "took the public by storm," and gained brilliant 
 victories along the frontiers and in the provinces for the house 
 of Popinot, so did the cause gain ground in public opinion in 
 Paris, thanks to the desperate assault upon the newspapers, 
 which gave it the prompt publicity likewise secured by the 
 Mixture Bresilienne and the P&te de Regnault. Three for- 
 tunes were made by this means, and then began the descent 
 of the thousands of ambitious tradesmen who have since gone 
 down by battalions into the arena of journalism, and there 
 called advertising into being. A mighty revolution was 
 wrought. 
 
 At that moment the words "Popinot & Company" were 
 flaunting on every wall and store-door ; and Birotteau, unable 
 to measure the enormous area over which these announcements 
 were displayed, contented himself with saying to Cesarine, 
 "Little Popinot is following in my footsteps," without com- 
 prehending the difference of the times, without appreciation 
 of the new methods and improved means of communication
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 213 
 
 which spread intelligence much more rapidly than hereto- 
 fore. 
 
 Birotteau had not set foot in his factory since the ball ; he 
 did not know how busy and energetic Popinot had been. 
 Anselme had set all Birotteau's operatives on the work, and 
 slept in the place. He saw Cesarine sitting on every packing- 
 case and reclining on every package ; her face looked at him 
 from each new invoice. " She will be my wife ! " he said to 
 himself, as, with coat thrown off and shirt-sleeves rolled above 
 the elbows, he hammered in the nails with all his might, 
 while his assistants were sent out on business. 
 
 The next day, after spending the whole night in pondering 
 what to say and what not to say to the great banker, C6sar 
 reached the Rue du Houssaye and entered, with a heart that 
 beat painfully fast, the mansion of the Liberal financier, the 
 adherent of a political party accused, and not unjustly, of 
 desiring the downfall of the Bourbons. To Birotteau, as to 
 most small merchants in Paris, the manners and customs and 
 the personality of those who move in high financial circles 
 were quite unknown ; for the smaller traders usually deal with 
 lesser houses, which form a sort of intermediate term, a highly 
 satisfactory arrangement for the great capitalists, who find in 
 them one guarantee the more. 
 
 Constance and Birotteau, who had never overdrawn their 
 balance, who had never known what it was to have no money 
 in the safe and no bills in the portfolio, had not had recourse 
 to these banks of the second order ; and, for the best reasons, 
 were entirely unknown in the higher financial world. Per- 
 haps it is a mistaken policy seduously to abstain from borrow- 
 ing even though you may not require the money; opinions 
 differ on this head ; but be that as it may, Birotteau at that 
 moment deeply regretted that he had never put his signature 
 to a piece of paper. Yet, as he was known as a deputy-mayor 
 and a shrewd man of business, he imagined that he would 
 only have to mention his name, and he should see the banker
 
 214 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 at once ; he did not know that men flocked to the Kellers' 
 audiences as to the court of a king. In the antechamber of 
 the study occupied by the man with so many claims to great- 
 ness, Birotteau found himself among a crowd composed of 
 deputies, writers, journalists, stockbrokers, great merchants, 
 men of business, engineers, and, above all, of familiars, who 
 made their way through the groups of speakers and knocked 
 in a particular manner at the door of the study, where they 
 had the privilege of entry. 
 
 "What am I in the middle of this machinery?" Birotteau 
 asked himself, quite bewildered by the stir and bustle in this 
 factory, where so much brain-power was at work furnishing 
 daily bread for the camp of the Opposition ; this theatre where 
 rehearsals of the grand tragi-comedy played by the Left were 
 wont to take place. 
 
 On one hand he heard a discussion relative to a loan that 
 was being negotiated to complete the construction of the 
 principal lines of canal recommended by the Department of 
 Roads and Bridges ; a question of millions ! On the other, 
 journalists, the bankers' jackals, were talking of yesterday's 
 sitting and of their patron's extempore speech. During the 
 two hours while he waited, he saw the banker-politician 
 thrice emerge from his cabinet, accompanying some visitor of 
 importance for a few paces through the antechamber. Keller 
 went as far as the door with the last General Foy. 
 
 " It is all over with me ! " Birotteau said to himself, and 
 something clutched at his heart. 
 
 As the great banker returned to his cabinet, the whole troop 
 of courtiers, friends, and followers crowded after him, like 
 the canine race about some attractive female of the species. 
 One or two bolder curs slipped in spite of him into the audi- 
 ence chamber. The conferences lasted for five minutes, ten 
 minutes, a quarter of an hour. Some went away visibly chop- 
 fallen ; some with a satisfied look ; some assumed important 
 airs. Time went by, and Birotteau looked anxiously at the
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 215 
 
 clock. No one paid the slightest attention to the man with 
 a secret care, sighing restlessly in the gilded chair by the 
 hearth, at the very door of the closet that contained that 
 panacea for all troubles credit. 
 
 Dolefully Cesar thought how that he, too, in his own house, 
 and for a little while, had been a king, as this man was, 
 morning after morning ; and he fathomed the depths of the 
 abyss into which he was falling. He had bitter thoughts ! 
 How many unshed tears were crowded in those two hours ! 
 How many petitions he put up that this man might incline 
 a favorable ear ; for, beneath the husk of popularity-seeking 
 good-nature, Birotteau instinctively felt that there lurked in 
 Keller an insolent, tyrannous, and violent temper, a brutal 
 craving to domineer, which alarmed his meek nature. At 
 length, when but ten or a dozen people were left, Birotteau 
 determined to start up when the outer door of the audience 
 chamber creaked on its hinges, and to put himself on a level 
 with the great public speaker with the remark, "I am Birot- 
 teau ! " The first grenadier who flung himself into the re- 
 doubt at Borodino did not display more courage than the per- 
 fumer when he made up his mind to carry out this manoeuvre. 
 
 " After all," said he to himself, " I am his deputy-mayor," 
 and he rose to give his name. 
 
 Francois Keller's countenance took on an amiable expres- 
 sion ; clearly he meant to be civil ; he glanced at Birotteau's 
 red ribbon, turned, opened the door of his cabinet, and indi- 
 cated the way ; but stayed behind himself for a while to speak 
 with two new-comers who sprang up the staircase with tem- 
 pestuous speed. 
 
 " Decazes would like to speak with you," said one of these 
 two. 
 
 " It is a question of making an end of the Pavilion Marsan ! 
 The King sees clearly. He is coming over to us ! " cried the 
 other. 
 
 " We will all go to the Chambers," returned the banker,
 
 216 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 and he entered his cabinet with the air of the frog that would 
 fain be an ox. 
 
 " How can he think of his own affairs?" thought Cesar, 
 overwhelmed. 
 
 The radiance of the sun of superiority dazzled the per- 
 fumer, as the light blinds those insects which can only exist 
 in the shade or in the dusk of a summer night. 
 
 Birotteau saw a copy of the Budget lying on a vast table, 
 among piles of pamphlets and volumes of the "Moniteur," 
 which lay open, displaying marked passages, past utterances 
 of a minister, which were shortly to be hurled at his head ; he 
 was to be made to eat his words amid the plaudits of a crowd 
 of dunces, incapable of comprehending that events modify 
 everything. On another table stood a collection of boxes 
 full of papers, a heap of memorials and projects, the thousand 
 and one reports confided to a man in whose exchequer every 
 nascent industry endeavors to dip. 
 
 The regal splendor of the cabinet, filled with pictures and 
 statues and works of art ; the litter on the mantel ; the accum- 
 ulations of documents relating to business concerns at home 
 and abroad, heaped up like bales of goods all these things 
 impressed Birotteau; he dwindled in his own eyes, his ner- 
 vousness increased, the blood ran cold in his veins. 
 
 On Francois Keller's desk there lay some bundles of bills, 
 letters of exchange, and circular-letters. To these the great 
 man addressed himself; and, as he swiftly put his signature to 
 those that required no examination, " To what do I owe the 
 honor of your visit, sir? " asked he. 
 
 At these words addressed to him alone, by the voice that 
 spoke to all Europe, while the restless hand never ceased to 
 traverse the paper, the poor perfumer felt as if a red-hot iron 
 had been thrust through his vitals. His face forthwith as- 
 sumed that ingratiating expression with which the banker had 
 grown familiar during ten years of experience ; the expres- 
 sion always meant that the wearers desired to involve the
 
 "TO WHAT DC I OWE THE HONOR OF YOUR VISIT, SIR?'
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 217 
 
 house of Keller in some affair of great importance to the 
 would-be borrowers and to no one else, an expression which 
 shuts the banker's doors upon them at once. So Francois 
 Keller shot a glance at Cesar, a Napoleonic glance, which 
 seemed to go through the perfumer's head. This imitation 
 of their Emperor was a slight piece of affectation which 
 certain parvenus permitted themselves, though the false coin 
 was scarcely a passable copy of the true. For C6sar, of the 
 extreme Right in politics, the fanatical partisan of the Govern- 
 ment, the factor in the monarchical election, that glance was 
 like the stamp which a custom-house officer sets on a bale of 
 goods. 
 
 " I do not want to take up your minutes unduly, sir ; I will 
 be brief. I have come on a simple matter of private business, 
 to know if you will open a loan account with me. As an ex- 
 judge of the Tribunal of Commerce and a man well-known 
 at the Bank of France, you can understand that if I had bills 
 to discount I should only have to apply to the bank where 
 you are a governor. I have had the honor of being associ- 
 ated in my functions at the Tribunal with Monsieur le Baron 
 Thibon, the head of the bill-discounting department, and he 
 certainly would not refuse me. But, as I have never tried to 
 borrow money nor accepted a bill, my signature is unknown, 
 and you know how many difficulties lie in the way of nego- 
 tiating a loan in such a case " 
 
 Keller moved his head ; and Birotteau, construing this as a 
 sign of impatience, continued 
 
 "The fact is, sir, that I have engaged in a speculation in 
 land, outside my own line of business " 
 
 Francois Keller, still signing and reading, and, to all ap- 
 pearance, paying no attention to Cesar's remarks, turned at 
 this, with a sign that he was following what was said. Birot- 
 teau took heart ; his affair was in a promising way, he thought, 
 he breathed more freely. 
 
 " Go on ; I understand," said Keller good-humoredly.
 
 218 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 " I am the purchaser of one-half of the building land near 
 the Madeleine." 
 
 "Yes. I heard from Nucingen of the big affair that the 
 firm of Claparon is negotiating." 
 
 " Well," the perfumer went on, "a loan of a hundred thou- 
 sand francs, secured on my share of the land or on my busi- 
 ness, would suffice to tide me over until I can touch the 
 profits which must shortly accrue from a venture in my own 
 way of business. If necessary, I would cover the amount by 
 bills drawn on a new firm Popinot & Company a young 
 house which " 
 
 Keller seemed to be very little interested in this description 
 of the firm of Popinot, and Birotteau gathered that he had 
 somehow taken a wrong turn ; he stopped ; then, in dismay at 
 the pause, he went on again 
 
 "As for the interest, we " 
 
 " Yes, yes," said the banker ; " the thing may be arranged, 
 and do not doubt my desire to meet you in the matter. Oc- 
 cupied as I am, I have all the finances of Europe on my 
 hands, and the Chamber absorbs every moment of my time, 
 so you will not be surprised to hear that I leave the investiga- 
 tion of a vast amount of regular business to my managers. Go 
 downstairs and see my brother Adolphe ; explain the nature 
 of your guarantees to him ; and, if he assents, return here with 
 him to-morrow or the day after, at the time when I look into 
 affairs of this kind, at five o'clock in the morning. We shall 
 be proud and happy to receive your confidence ; you are one 
 of the consistent Royalists; and your esteem is the more flat- 
 tering, since that politically we may find ourselves at enmity." 
 
 "Sir," said the perfumer, elated by this oratorical flourish, 
 " I am as deserving of the honor you do me as of the signal 
 
 mark of royal favor not unmerited by the discharge of 
 
 my functions at the Consular Tribunal, and by fighting for 
 the " 
 
 "Yes," continued the banker, "the reputation which you
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 219 
 
 enjoy is a passport, Monsieur Birotteau. You are sure to 
 propose nothing that is not feasible, and you can reckon upon 
 our cooperation," 
 
 A door, which Birotteau had not noticed, was opened, and 
 a woman entered ; it was Mme. Keller, one of the two daugh- 
 ters of the Comte de Gondreville, a peer of France. 
 
 " I hope I shall see you, dear, before you go to the Cham- 
 ber," said she. 
 
 "It is two o'clock," exclaimed the banker; "the battle 
 has begun. Excuse me, sir, -the question is one of upsetting a 
 
 ministry " he went as far as the door of the salon with the 
 
 perfumer, and bade a man in livery : "Take this gentleman to 
 Monsieur Adolphe." 
 
 Birotteau traversed a labyrinth of staircases on the way to 
 a private office, less sumptuous than the cabinet of the head 
 of the firm, but more business-like in appearance ; he was 
 borne along by an if, that easiest pacing mount that hope can 
 furnish ; he stroked his chin, and thought that the great man's 
 compliments augured excellently well for his plans. It was 
 regrettable that a man so amiable, so capable, so great an 
 orator, should be inimical to the Bourbons. 
 
 Still full of these illusions, he entered M. Adolphe Keller's 
 sanctum, a bare, chilly-looking room. Dingy curtains hung 
 in the windows, the floor was covered with a much-worn 
 carpet, and the furniture consisted of a couple of cylinder 
 desks and one or two office chairs. This cabinet was to the 
 first as the kitchen to the dining-room, as the factory to the 
 store. Here matters of business were penetrated to the core, 
 here enterprises were analyzed, and preliminary charges levied 
 by the bank on all promising undertakings. Here originated 
 all those bold strokes for which the Kellers were so well known 
 in the highest commercial regions, when they would secure 
 and rapidly exploit a monopoly in a few days. Here, too, 
 omissions on the part of the legislature received careful atten- 
 tion, and unblushing demands were made for "sops in the
 
 220 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 pan " (in the language of the Stock Exchange) ; that is to say, 
 for money paid in consideration for small indefinable services, 
 for standing godfather to an infant enterprise, and so accred- 
 iting it. Here were woven those tissues of fraud after a legal 
 pattern, which consist in investing money as a sleeping- 
 partner in some concern in temporary difficulties, with a view 
 to slaughtering the affair as soon as it succeeds ; the brothers 
 would lie in wait, call in their capital at a critical moment 
 an ugly manoeuvre that put the whole thing in their own 
 hands and involved the hapless active partner in their covet- 
 ous toils. 
 
 The two brothers adopted separate rdles. On high stood 
 Francois, the politician, the man of brilliant parts; he bore 
 himself like a king, he distributed favors and promises, he 
 made himself agreeable to every one. Everything was easy 
 when you spoke with him; he did business royally; he poured 
 out the heady wine of fair words, which intoxicated inexperi- 
 enced speculators and promoters of new schemes ; lae devel- 
 oped their own ideas for them. But Adolphe below absolved 
 his brother on the score of political preoccupations, and clev- 
 erly raked in the winnings ; he was the responsible brother, 
 the one who was hard to persuade, so that there were two 
 words to every bargain concluded with that treacherous house, 
 and not seldom the gracious Yes of the sumptuous cabinet was 
 transmuted into a dry No in Adolphe's office. 
 
 This manoeuvre of delay gained time for reflection, and 
 often served to amuse less skillful competitors. 
 
 Adolphe Keller was chatting with the famous Palma, the 
 trusted counselor of the house, who withdrew as Birotteau 
 came in. The perfumer explained his errand ; and Adolphe, 
 the more cunning of the two brothers, lynx-natured, keen- 
 eyed, thin-lipped, hard-favored, listened to him with lowered 
 head, watching the applicant over his spectacles, eying him 
 the while with what must be called the banker's gaze, in 
 which there is something of the vulture, something of the
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 221 
 
 attorney ; a gaze at once covetous and cold, clear and inscru- 
 table, sombre and ablaze with light. 
 
 " Will you be so good as to send me the documents relative 
 to this Madeleine affair," said he, "since therein lies the 
 guarantee of the account ; they must be examined into before 
 we begin to discuss the case on its merits. If the affair is 
 satisfactory, we might possibly, to avoid encumbering you, be 
 content to take part of the profits instead of discount." 
 
 "Come," said Birotteau to himself, as he went home 
 again, " I see his drift. Like the hunted beaver, I must part 
 with some of my skin. It is better to lose your fleece than to 
 lose your life." 
 
 He went upstairs in high spirits, and his mirth had a 
 genuine ring. 
 
 " I am saved," he told Cesarine ; " Keller will open a loan 
 account with me." 
 
 But not until the zgih of December could Birotteau gain 
 admittance a second time to Adolphe Keller's office. On the 
 occasion of his first call, Adolphe was six leagues away from 
 Paris, looking at some property which the great orator had a 
 mind to buy. The next time both the Kellers were closeted 
 together, and could see no one that morning ; it was a ques- 
 tion of a tender for a loan proposed by the Chambers, and 
 they begged M. Birotteau to return on the following Friday. 
 These delays were heartbreaking to the perfumer ; but Friday 
 came at last, and Birotteau sat by the fire in the office, with 
 the daylight falling full on his face, and Adolphe Keller, 
 sitting opposite, was saying, as he held up the notarial deeds, 
 " These are all right, sir ; but what proportion of the pur- 
 chase-money have you paid ? " 
 
 "A hundred and forty thousand francs." 
 
 " In money?" 
 
 "In bills." 
 
 " Have they been met? " 
 
 " They have not fallen due."
 
 222 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 " But suppose that you have given more for the land than 
 it is actually worth (taking it at its present value), where is 
 our guarantee ? We should have no security but the good 
 opinion which you inspire and the esteem in which you are 
 held. Business is not based on sentiment. If you had paid 
 two hundred thousand francs, supposing that you have 
 given too much by a hundred thousand francs to get pos- 
 session of the land, we should in that case have at any rate 
 a guarantee of a hundred thousand francs for the hundred 
 thousand you want to borrow. The result for us would 
 be that we should be owners of the land in your place, by 
 paying your share ; in that case we must know if it is a 
 good piece of business. For if we are to wait five years to 
 double our capital, it would better to put the money out to 
 interest through the bank. So many things may happen. 
 You want to draw an accommodation bill to meet your bills 
 when they fall due ? It is a risky thing to do ! You go back 
 to take a leap better. This is not in our way of business." 
 
 For Birotteau, it was as if the executioner had touched his 
 shoulder with the branding-iron. He lost his head. 
 
 "Let us see," said Adolphe, "my brother takes a warm 
 interest in you; he spoke of you to me. Let us look into 
 your affairs," he added, and he glanced at the perfumer with 
 the expression of a courtesan pressed for a quarter's rent. 
 
 Birotteau became a Molineux, and acted the part of the 
 man at whom he had laughed so loftily. Kept in play by the 
 banker, who took a pleasure in unwinding the skein of the 
 poor man's thoughts, and showed himself as expert in the art 
 of examining a merchant as the elder Popinot was skilled in 
 unloosing a criminal's tongue, Cesar told the story of his 
 business career ; he brought the Pate des Sultanes and the 
 Toilet Lotion upon the scene ; he gave a complete account of 
 his dealings with Roguin, and, finally, of the lawsuit with 
 regard to that mortgage from which he had reaped no benefit. 
 He saw Keller's musing smile and jerk of the head from time
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 223 
 
 to time, and said to himself, "He is giving an ear to me! 
 He is interested; I shall have my loan!" and Adolphe 
 Keller was laughing at Birotteau, as Birotteau himself had 
 laughed at Molineux. Carried away by the impulse of loqua- 
 city peculiar to those people on whom misfortune has an 
 intoxicating effect, Cesar showed himself as he really was; he 
 helped the banker to take his measure when he suggested as his 
 final expedient the Cephalic Oil and the firm of Popinot by 
 way of a guarantee. Led away by a delusive hope, he allowed 
 Adolphe Keller to fathom him and examine into his affairs, 
 until Adolphe Keller saw in the man before him a Royalist 
 blockhead on the brink of bankruptcy. Then, delighted at 
 the prospect of this failure of the deputy-mayor of his arron- 
 dissement, of a man whose party was in power, who had been 
 but lately decorated, Adolphe told Birotteau plainly that he 
 could neither open a loan account with him nor speak on his 
 behalf to the orator brother, the great Francois. If Francois 
 were inclined to extend an imbecile generosity to a political 
 adversary, and to come to the aid of a man who held opinions 
 diametrically opposed to his own, he, Adolphe, had no mind 
 that his brother should be a dupe ; he would do all that in 
 him lay to prevent his brother from holding out a helping 
 hand to one of Napoleon's old antagonists, to a man who was 
 wounded at Saint-Roch. Birotteau, exasperated at this, tried 
 to say something about covetousness in the high-places of the 
 financial world, of hard-heartedness and sham philanthropy ; 
 but he was overcome with such terrible distress that he could 
 scarcely stammer out a few words about the institution of the 
 Bank of France, to which the Kellers had recourse. 
 
 "But the Bank of France will never make an advance 
 which a private bank declines," said Adolphe Keller. 
 
 "It has always seemed to me," said Birotteau, "that the 
 bank was not fulfilling the purpose for which it was estab- 
 lished, when the governors congratulate themselves on a 
 balance-sheet in which they have only lost one or two hun-
 
 224 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 dred thousand francs in transactions with the mercantile 
 world of Paris ; it is the province of the bank to watch over 
 and foster trade." 
 
 Adolphe began to smile, and rose to his feet like a man 
 who is bored. 
 
 " If the bank began to finance all the men in difficulties 
 on 'Change, where rascality congregates in the slipperiest 
 places of the financial world, the bank would file her schedule 
 before a year was out. The bank is hard put to it as it is to 
 guard against accommodation bills and fraudulent letters of 
 exchange, and how would it be possible to examine into the 
 affairs of every one who should be minded to apply for assist- 
 ance?" 
 
 " I want ten thousand francs for to-morrow, Saturday the 
 3oth ; and where are they to come from ?" Birotteau asked 
 himself, as he crossed the court. 
 
 When the 3ist is a holiday, payment is due on the 3oth, 
 according to custom. Cesar's eyes were so full of tears that, 
 as he reached the great gateway, he scarcely saw a handsome 
 English horse, covered with foam, that pulled up sharply at 
 the gate, and one of the neatest cabriolets to be seen in the 
 streets of Paris. He would fain have been run over by the 
 cabriolet ; it would be an accidental death, and the confusion 
 in his affairs would have been set down to the suddenness of 
 the catastrophe. He did not recognize du Tillet's slender 
 figure in faultless morning dress, or see him fling the reins to 
 his servant and put a rug over the back of the thoroughbred. 
 
 "What brings you here?" asked du Tillet, addressing his 
 old master. 
 
 Du Tillet knew quite well why Birotteau had come. The 
 Kellers had made inquiries of Claparon, and Claparon, taking 
 his cue from du Tillet, had blighted the perfumer's old- 
 established business reputation. The tears in the unlucky 
 merchant's eyes told the tale sufficiently plain, in spite of 
 his sudden effort to keep them back.
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 225 
 
 " Perhaps you have been asking these Turks to oblige you 
 in some way," said du Tillet, "cut-throats of commerce that 
 they are, who have played many a mean trick ; they will 
 make a corner in indigo, for instance ; they lower rice, for- 
 cing holders to sell cheap, so that they can get the game into 
 their own hands and control the market ; they are inhuman 
 pirates, who know neither law, nor faith, nor conscience. 
 You cannot know what things they are capable of doing. 
 They will open a loan account with you if you have some 
 promising bit of business ; and, as soon as you have gone too 
 far to draw back, they will pull you up and put pressure upon 
 you till you make the whole affair over to them for next to noth- 
 ing. Pretty stories they could tell you at Havre and Bordeaux 
 and Marseilles about the Kellers ! Politics are a cloak that 
 covers a lot of dirty doings, I can tell you ! So I make them 
 useful without scruple. Let us take a turn or two, my dear 
 Birotteau. Joseph, walk the horse up and down, he is over- 
 heated, and a thousand crowns is a big investment in horse- 
 flesh." 
 
 He turned toward the boulevard. 
 
 " Now, my dear master (for you used to be my master), is 
 it money that you need ? And they have asked you for secu- 
 rity, the wretches ! Well, for my own part, I know you ; and 
 I can offer to give you cash against your bills. I have made 
 my money honorably and with unheard-of toil. I went in 
 quest of fortune to Germany ! At this time of day, I may tell 
 you this that I bought up the King's debts there for forty 
 per cent, of their value ; your guarantee was very useful to me 
 then, and I am grateful. If you want ten thousand francs, 
 they are at your service." 
 
 " What ! du Tillet," cried C6sar, " do you really mean it? 
 Are you not making game of me ? Yes, I am a little pressed 
 for money, just for the moment " 
 
 " I know ; Roguin's affair," returned du Tillet. "Eh! yes. 
 I myself have been let in there for ten thousand francs, which 
 15
 
 226 CESAR B1ROTTEAU. 
 
 the old rogue borrowed of me to run away with ; but Madame 
 Roguin will repay the money out of her claims on his estate. 
 I advised her, poor thing, not to be so foolish as to give up 
 her fortune to pay debts contracted for a mistress ; it would be 
 very well if she could pay them all, but how is she to make 
 distinctions in favor of this or that creditor to the prejudice 
 of others? You are no Roguin ; I know you," continued du 
 Tillet ; "you would rather blow your brains out than cause 
 me to lose a sou. Here we are in the Rue de la Chaussee- 
 d'Antin ; come up and see me." 
 
 It pleased the young upstart to take his old employer, not 
 through the offices, but by way of the private entry, and to walk 
 deliberately, so as to give him a full view of a handsome and 
 luxuriously furnished dining-room, adorned with pictures 
 bought in Germany ; through two drawing-rooms, more splen- 
 did and elegant than any rooms that Birotteau had yet seen 
 save in the Due de Lenoncourt's house. The good citizen 
 was dazzled by the gilding, the works of art, the costly knick- 
 knacks, precious vases, and countless little details. All the 
 glories of Constance's rooms paled before this display ; and 
 knowing, as he did, the cost of his own extravagance 
 " Where can he have found all these millions? " said he to 
 himself. 
 
 Then they entered a bedroom, which as much surpassed his 
 wife's as the mansion of a great singer at the opera surpasses 
 the third-floor dwelling of some supernumerary. The ceiling 
 was covered with violet satin relieved with silken folds of white, 
 and the white fur of an ermine rug beside the bed brought out 
 in contrast all the violet tints of a carpet from the Levant. 
 The furniture and the accessories were novel in form, and 
 exhibited the very refinement of extravagance. Birotteau 
 stopped in front of an exquisite timepiece, with a Cupid and 
 Psyche upon it, a replica of one which had just been made 
 for a celebrated banker. At length master and assistant 
 reached a cabinet, the dainty sanctum of a fashionable dandy,
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 227 
 
 redolent rather of love than of finance. It was Mme. Roguin, 
 doubtless, who, in hci gratitude for the care and thought given 
 to her fortune, had bestowed, Dy Wct 7 of ^ thank-offering, the 
 paper-cutter of wrought gold, the carved malacuu^ ^aoer- 
 weights, and all the costly gewgaws of unbridled luxury. The 
 carpet, one of the richest products of the Belgian loom, was 
 as great a surprise to the eyes as its soft, thick pile to the tread. 
 Du Tillet drew a chair to the fire for the poor dazzled and be- 
 wildered perfumer. 
 
 " Will you breakfast with me ? " He rang the bell ; it was 
 answered by a servant, who was better dressed than the visitor. 
 
 "Ask Monsieur Legras to come up and then tell Joseph to 
 return, you will find him at the door of Keller's bank ; and 
 you can go to Adolphe Keller's house and say that, instead 
 of seeing him now, I shall wait till he goes on 'Change. 
 Send up breakfast, and be quick about it." 
 
 This talk dazed the perfumer. 
 
 " So he, du Tillet, makes that formidable Adolphe Keller 
 come to him at his whistle, as if he were a dog ! " 
 
 A hop-o'-my-thumb of a page came in and spread a table 
 so slender that it had escaped Birotteau's notice, setting 
 thereon a Strasbourg pie, a bottle of Bordeaux wine, and 
 various luxuries which did not appear on Birotteau's table 
 twice in a quarter, on high-days and holidays. Du Tillet 
 was enjoying himself. His feeling of hatred for the one man 
 who had a right to despise him diffused itself like a warm 
 glow through his veins, till the sight of Birotteau stirred in 
 the depths of his nature the same sensations that the spectacle 
 of a sheep struggling for its life against a tiger might give. 
 A generous thought flashed across him ; he asked himself 
 whether he had not carried his vengeance far enough ; he 
 hesitated between the counsels of a newly awakened pity and 
 those of a hate grown drowsy. 
 
 " Commercially speaking, I can annihilate the man," he 
 thought ; " I have power of life and death over him, over his
 
 228 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 wife, who kept me on the rack, and his daughter, whose hand 
 once seemed to me to grasp * wftole fortune'. I have his 
 money as it '*> - iet us ^ e content to l et tne poor simpleton 
 ...mi to the end of his tether, which I shall hold." 
 
 But honest folk are wanting in tact ; they do what seems 
 good to them without calculating its effect on others, because 
 they themselves are straightforward, and have no after- 
 thoughts. So Birotteau filled up the measure of his own mis- 
 fortune ; he irritated the tiger; all unwittingly he sent a shaft 
 home, and made an implacable enemy of him at a word, by 
 his praise, by giving expression to his honest thoughts, by the 
 sheer light-heartedness which is the gift of a blameless con- 
 science. The cashier came in ; and du Tillet said, looking 
 toward Cesar, " Monsieur Legras, bring me ten thousand 
 francs in cash, and a bill for the amount payable to my order 
 in ninety days by this gentleman, who is Monsieur Birotteau, 
 as you know." 
 
 Du Tillet waited on his guest, and poured out a glass of 
 Bordeaux wine for him ; and Birotteau, who thought himself 
 saved, laughed convulsively, fingered his watch-chain, and 
 did not touch the food until his ex-assistant said, " You do 
 not eat." In this way he laid bare the depths of the gulf 
 into which du Tillet's hand had plunged him, while the hand 
 which had drawn him out was still stretched over him, and 
 might yet plunge him back again. When the cashier re- 
 turned, and the bill had been accepted, and Cesar felt the ten 
 bank-notes in his pocket, he could no longer contain his joy. 
 But a moment ago the news that he could not meet his en- 
 gagements seemed about to be published abroad through his 
 quarter, the bank must know it, he must confess that he was 
 ruined to his wife; now everything was safe! The joy of 
 his deliverance was as keen as the torture of impending bank- 
 ruptcy had been. Tears filled the poor man's eyes in spite 
 of himself. 
 
 "What can be the matter, my dear master?" asked du
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 229 
 
 Tillet. "Would you not do to-morrow for me what I am 
 doing to-day for you? Isn't it as simple as saying good- 
 day?" 
 
 " Du Tillet," said the worthy man, with solemn emphasis, 
 as he rose and took his ex-assistant by the hand, " I restore 
 you to your old place in my esteem." 
 
 " What ! had I forfeited it ? " asked du Tillet ; and, for all 
 his prosperity, he felt this rude home-thrust, and his color 
 rose. 
 
 " Forfeited not exactly that," said Birotteau, thunder- 
 struck by his folly ; " people talked about you and Madame 
 Roguin. The devil ! another man's wife " 
 
 "You are beating about the bush, old boy," thought du 
 Tillet, in an old phrase learned in his earlier days. 
 
 And even as that thought crossed his mind, he returned to 
 his old design. He would lay this virtue low, he would 
 trample it under foot ; all Paris should point the finger of 
 scorn at the honest and honorable man who had caught him, 
 du Tillet, with his hand in the till. Every hatred of every 
 kind, political or private, between woman and woman, or be- 
 tween man and man, dates from some similar detection. There 
 is no cause for hate in compromised interests, in a wound, nor 
 even in a box on the ear ; such injuries as these are not irre- 
 parable. But to be found out in some base piece of iniquity, 
 
 to be caught in the act ! The duel that ensues between 
 
 the criminal and the discoverer of the crime cannot but be to 
 the death. 
 
 "Oh ! Madame Roguin," said du Tillet laughingly, "but 
 isn't that rather a feather in a young man's cap? I under- 
 stand you, my dear master, they must have told you that he 
 lent me money. Well, on the contrary, it is I who have re- 
 established her finances, which were curiously involved in her 
 husband's affairs. My fortune has been honestly made, as I 
 have just told you. I had nothing, as you know. Young 
 .men sometimes find themselves in terrible straits, and in dire
 
 230 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 need one may strain a point ; but if, like the Republic, one 
 has made a forced loan now and again, why, one returns it 
 afterward, and is as honest as France herself." 
 
 " Just so," said C6sar. " My boy God Isn't it Voltaire 
 who says 
 
 " ' He made of repentance the virtue of mortals ? ' " 
 
 "So long as one does not take his neighbor's money in a 
 base and cowardly way," du Tillet continued, smarting once 
 more under this application of verse ; " as if you, for instance, 
 were to fail before the three months are out, and it would 
 be all up with my ten thousand francs " 
 
 "I fail?" cried Birotteau (he had taken three glasses of 
 wine, and happiness had gone to his head). " My opinions 
 of bankruptcy are well known. A failure is commercial 
 death. I should die." 
 
 " Long life to you ! " said du Tillet. 
 
 " To your prosperity ! " returned the perfumer. " Why do 
 you not come to me for your perfumery ? " 
 
 " Upon my word," said du Tillet, " I confess that I am 
 afraid to meet Madame Cesar, she always made an impression 
 upon me ; and if you were not my master, faith, I " 
 
 " Oh ! you are not the first who has thought her handsome, 
 and wanted her, but she loves me ! Well, du Tillet, my 
 friend, do not do things by halves ! " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 Birotteau explained the affair of the building land, and du 
 Tillet opened his eyes, complimented C6sar upon his acumen 
 and foresight, and spoke highly of the prospects. 
 
 " Oh, well, I am much pleased to have your approbation ; 
 you are supposed to have one of the longest heads in the bank- 
 ing line, du Tillet ! You can negotiate a loan from the Bank 
 of France for me until the Cephalic Oil has made its way." 
 
 "I can send you to the firm of Nucingen," answered du 
 Tillet, inwardly vowing that his victim should dance the whole
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 231 
 
 mazy round of bankruptcy. He sat down to his desk to write 
 the following letter to the Baron de Nucingen : 
 
 " MY DEAR BARON : The bearer of this letter is M. Cesar 
 Birotteau, deputy-mayor of the second arrondissement, and 
 one of the best known manufacturing perfumers in Paris. He 
 desires to be put in communication with you ; you need not 
 hesitate to do anything that he asks of you, and by obliging 
 him you oblige your friend, 
 
 "F. DU TlLLET." 
 
 Du Tillet put no dot over the * in his name. Among his 
 business associates this clerical error was a sign which they all 
 understood, and it was always made of set purpose; it an- 
 nulled the heartiest recommendations, the warmest praise and 
 instance in the body of the letter. On receiving such a note 
 as this, where the very exclamation-marks breathed entreaty, 
 in which du Tillet, figuratively speaking, went down on his 
 knees, his associates knew that the writer had been unable to 
 refuse the letter which was to be regarded as null and void. 
 At sight of that undotted /, the receiver of the letter forth- 
 with dismissed the applicant with empty compliments and 
 vain promises. Not a few men of considerable reputation in 
 the world are put off like children by this trick ; for men of 
 business, bankers, bill-discounters, and advocates have one 
 and all two methods of signing their names ; one is a dead 
 letter, the other living. The shrewdest are deceived by it. 
 You must have felt the double effect of a cold communication 
 and a warm one to discover the stratagem. 
 
 "You are saving me, du Tillet," said Cesar, as he read the 
 present specimen. 
 
 " Oh dear me," said du Tillet, "just ask Nucingen for the 
 money, and when he has read my letter he will let you have 
 all that you want. Unluckily, my own capital is locked up 
 at present, or I would not send you to the prince of bankers,
 
 232 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 for the Kellers are dwarfs compared with Nucingen. He is a 
 second Law. With my bill of exchange, you will be ready 
 for the 1 5th, and after that we will see. Nucingen and I are 
 the best friends in the world ; he would not disoblige me for 
 a million." 
 
 "It is as good as a guarantee," said Birotteau to himself, 
 and as he went away his heart thrilled with gratitude for du 
 Tillet. "Ah, well," he thought, "a good deed never loses 
 its reward," and he fell incontinently to moralizing. Yet 
 there was one bitter drop in his cup of happiness. He had, 
 it is true, prevented his wife from looking into the ledgers for 
 several days. Celestin must undertake the book-keeping in 
 addition to his work, with some help from his master; he 
 could have wished his wife and daughter to remain upstairs in 
 possession of the beautiful rooms which he had arranged and 
 furnished for them ; but when the first little glow of enjoy- 
 ment was over, Mme. C6sar would have died sooner than re- 
 nounce the personal supervision of the details of the business, 
 "the handle of the frying-pan," to use her own Tourangeau 
 expression. 
 
 Birotteau was at his wits' end ; he had done everything that 
 he could think of to conceal the symptoms of his embarrass- 
 ment from her eyes. Constance had strongly disapproved of 
 sending in the accounts ; she had scolded the assistants, and 
 asked Celestin if he meant to ruin the house, believing that 
 the idea was Celestin's own. And Celestin meekly bore the 
 blame by Birotteau's orders. In the assistant's opinion, Mme. 
 Cesar governed the perfumer; and, though it is possible to 
 deceive the public, those of the household always know who 
 is the real power in it. The confession was bound to come, 
 and that soon, for du Tillet's loan would appear in the books, 
 and must be accounted for. 
 
 As Birotteau came in at the door he saw, not without a 
 shudder, that Constance was at her post, going through the 
 amounts due to be paid, and doubtless balancing the books.
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 233 
 
 " How will you pay these to-morrow?" she asked in his 
 ear, when he took his place beside her. 
 
 "With money," he replied, drawing the bank-notes from 
 his pocket, with a sign to Celestin to take them. 
 
 " But where do those notes come from ? " 
 
 "I will tell you the whole story to-night. Celestin, enter 
 in the bill-book a bill for ten thousand francs due at the end 
 of March, to order of du Tillet." 
 
 " Du Tillet ! " echoed Constance, terror-stricken. 
 
 "I am just going to Popinot," said Cesar. "It is too 
 bad of me ; I have not been round to see him yet. Is his oil 
 selling?" 
 
 " The three hundred bottles which he brought are all sold 
 out." 
 
 " Birotteau, do not go out again ; I have something to say 
 to you," said Constance. She caught her husband's arm, 
 and drew him to her room in a hurry, which, under any 
 other circumstances, would have been ludicrous. " Du Til- 
 let!" she exclaimed, when the husband and wife were to- 
 gether, and she had made sure that there was no one but 
 Cesarine present ; " Du Tillet robbed us of three thousand 
 francs ! And you are doing business with du Tillet ! A 
 monster who who tried to seduce me," she said in his ear. 
 
 "A bit of boyish folly," said Birotteau, suddenly trans- 
 formed into a freethinker. 
 
 " Listen to me, Birotteau ; you are falling out of your old 
 ways ; you never go to the factory now. There is something, 
 I can feel it. Tell me about it ; I want to know everything." 
 
 "Well, then," said Birotteau, "we have nearly been ruined ; 
 we were ruined, in fact, this very morning, but everything is 
 set straight again," and he told the dreadful story of the past 
 two weeks. 
 
 " So that was the cause of your illness ! " exclaimed Con- 
 stance. 
 
 "Yes, mamma," cried Cesarine. "Father has been very
 
 234 CESAR &IROTTEAU. 
 
 brave, I am sure. If I were loved as he loves you, I would 
 not wish more. He thought of nothing but your trouble." 
 
 " My dream has come true," said the poor wife, and pale, 
 haggard, and terror-stricken, she sank down upon the sofa by 
 the fireside. "I foresaw all this. I told you so that fatal 
 night, in the old room which you have pulled down ; we shall 
 have nothing left but our eyes to cry over our losses. Poor 
 Cesarine, I " 
 
 " Come, now ; so that is what you say ! " cried Birotteau. 
 " I stand in need of courage, and you are damping it ! " 
 
 "Forgive me, dear," said Constance, grasping Cesar's 
 hand in hers, with a tender pressure that went to the poor 
 man's heart. "I was wrong; the misfortune has befallen us, 
 I will be dumb, resigned, and strong to bear it. No, Cesar, 
 you shall never hear a complaint from me." 
 
 She sprang into Cesar's arms, and said, while her tears fell 
 fast, "Take courage, dear. I should have courage enough 
 for two, if it were needed." 
 
 " There is the Oil, dear wife; the Oil will save us." 
 
 "May God protect us ! " cried Constance. 
 
 "Will not Anselme come to father's assistance?" asked 
 Cesarine. 
 
 " I will go to him now," exclaimed Cesar. His wife's heart- 
 breaking tone had been too much for his feelings ; it seemed 
 that he did not know her yet, after nineteen years of married 
 life. "Do not be afraid, Constance; there is no fear now. 
 Here, read Monsieur du Tillet's letter to Monsieur de Nu- 
 cingen ; he is sure to lend us the money. Between then and 
 now I shall have gained my lawsuit. Beside," he added (a 
 lying hope to fit the circumstances), " there is your Uncle 
 Pillerault. Courage is all that is wanted." 
 
 "If that were all?" said Constance, smiling. 
 
 Birotteau, with the great weight taken off his mind, walked 
 like a man set free from prison ; but within himself he felt the 
 indefinable exhaustion consequent on mental exertion which
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 235 
 
 had made heavy demands upon his nervous system and re- 
 quired more than the daily allowance of will-power ; he was 
 conscious of the deficit when a man has drawn, as it were, 
 on the capital of his vitality. Birotteau was growing old 
 already. 
 
 Popinot's store in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants had under- 
 gone great changes in the last two months. It had been re- 
 painted. The rows of bottles ensconced in the pigeon-hole 
 shelves, touched up with paint, rejoiced the eyes of every mer- 
 chant who knows the signs of prosperity. The floor of the 
 store was covered with packing-paper. The warehouse con- 
 tained certain casks of oil, for which the devoted Gaudissart 
 had procured an agency for Popinot. The books were kept 
 upstairs in the counting-room. An old servant had been in- 
 stalled as housekeeper to Popinot and his three assistants. 
 
 Popinot himself, penned in a cash desk in the corner of the 
 store screened off by a green partition,. was usually arrayed in 
 a green baize apron and a pair of green-cloth oversleeves, 
 when he was not buried, as at this moment, in a pile of papers. 
 The post had just come in, and Popinot, with a pen behind 
 his ear, was taking in handfuls of business letters and orders, 
 when at the words, "Well, my boy?" he raised his head, 
 saw his late employer, locked his cash desk, and came for- 
 ward joyously. The tip of the young man's nose was red, 
 for there was no fire in the store and the street-door stood 
 wide open. 
 
 "I began to fear that you were never coming to see me," 
 he answered respectfully. 
 
 The assistants hurried in, eager to see the great man of the 
 perfumery trade, their own master's partner, the deputy-mayor 
 who wore the red ribbon. Cesar was flattered by this mute 
 homage, and he who had felt so small in the Kellers' bank 
 must needs imitate the Kellers. He stroked his chin, raised 
 himself on tiptoe once or twice with an air, and poured forth 
 his commonplaces.
 
 236 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 " Well, my dear fellow, are you always up early in the morn- 
 ings?" asked he. 
 
 "No, we don't always go to bed," said Popinot; "one 
 must succeed by hook or by crook." 
 
 " Well, what did I tell you? My Oil is a fortune." 
 
 " Yes, sir, but the method of selling it counts for something; 
 I have given your diamond a worthy setting." 
 
 "As a matter of fact," said the perfumer, "how are we 
 getting on ? Have any profits been made ? ' ' 
 
 "At the end of a month ! " cried Popinot. " Did you ex- 
 pect it ? My friend Gaudissart has not been gone much more 
 than three weeks. He took a post-chaise without telling me 
 about it. Oh ! he has thrown himself into this. We shall owe a 
 good deal to my uncle ! The newspapers will cost us twelve 
 thousand francs," he added in Birotteau's ear. 
 
 " The newspapers ! " cried the deputy-mayor. 
 
 " Have you not seen them ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Then you know nothing of this," said Popinot. " Twenty 
 thousand francs in placards, frames, and prints ! A hundred 
 thousand bottles paid for ! Oh ! it is nothing but sacrifice at 
 this moment. We are bringing out the Oil on a large scale. 
 If you had stepped over to the Faubourg, where I have often 
 been at work all night, you would have seen a little con- 
 trivance of mine for cracking the nuts, which is not to be 
 sneezed at. For my own part, during the last five days I 
 have made three thousand francs in commission on the drug- 
 gists' oils." 
 
 "What a good head ! " said Birotteau, laying his hand on 
 little Popinot's hair, and stroking it as if the young man had 
 been a little child, " I foresaw how it would be." 
 
 Several people came into the store. 
 
 " Good-by till Sunday; we are going to dine then with 
 your aunt, Madame Ragon," said Birotteau, and he left 
 Popinot to his own affairs. Evidently the roast which he had
 
 C&SAR B1ROTTEAU. 237 
 
 scented was not yet ready to carve. " How extraordinary it 
 is ! An assistant becomes a merchant in twenty-four hours," he 
 thought, and Birotteau was as much taken aback by Popinot's 
 prosperity and self-possession as by du Tillet's luxurious rooms. 
 " Here is Anselme drawing himself up a bit when I put my 
 hand on his head, as if he were a Francois Keller already." 
 
 It did not occur to Birotteau that the assistants were look- 
 ing on, and that the head of an establishment must preserve 
 his dignity in his own house. Here, as in du Tillet's case, the 
 good man had made a blunder in the kindness of his heart, 
 and the real feeling expressed in that homely familiar way 
 would have mortified any one but Anselme. 
 
 The Sunday dinner-party at the Ragons' house was destined 
 to be the last festivity in the nineteen years of Cesar's married 
 life, the life which had been so completely happy. The 
 Ragons lived on the third floor of a quaint and rather stately 
 old house in the Rue du Petit-Bourbon-Saint-Sulpice. Over 
 the paneled walls of their rooms danced eighteen-century 
 shepherdesses in hooped petticoats, amid browsing eighteen- 
 century sheep ; and the old people themselves belonged to 
 the bourgeoisie of that bygone century, with its solemn 
 gravity, its quaint habits and customs, its respectful attitude 
 to the noblesse, its loyal devotion to church and King. 
 
 The timepieces, the linen, the plates and dishes, all the fur- 
 niture, in fact, had such an old-world air, that by very rea- 
 son of its antiquity it seemed new. The sitting-room, hung 
 with brocatelle damask curtains, contained a collection of 
 " duchesse " chairs and whatnots; and from the wall a 
 superb Popinot, Mme. Ragon's father, the alderman of San- 
 cerre, painted by Latour, smiled down upon the room like a 
 parvenu in all his glory. Mme. Ragon at home was incom- 
 plete without her tiny King Charles, who reposed with mar- 
 velous effect on her hard little rococo sofa, a piece of furni- 
 ture which certainly had never played the part of Crebillon's 
 sofa.
 
 238 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Among the Ragons' many virtues, the possession of old 
 wines arrived at perfect maturity was by no means the least 
 endearing ; to say nothing of certain liqueurs of Mme. 
 Anfoux's, brought from the West Indies by the lovely Mme. 
 Ragon's admirers, sufficiently dogged to love on without 
 hope (so it was said). Wherefore the Ragons' little dinners 
 were highly appreciated. Jeannette, the old cook, served the 
 two old folk with a blind devotion ; for them she would have 
 stolen fruit to make preserves ; and, so far from investing her 
 money in the savings bank, she prudently put it in the lottery, 
 hoping one day to carry home the great prize to her master 
 and mistress. In spite of her sixty years, Jeannette, on 
 Sundays when they had company, superintended the dishes in 
 the kitchen and waited at table with a deft quickness which 
 would have given hints to Mile. Contat as Suzanne in the 
 "Marriage of Figaro." 
 
 This time the guests were ten in number the elder Popinot, 
 Uncle Pillerault, Anselme, Cesar and his wife and daughter, 
 the three Matifats, and the Abbe Loraux. Mme. Matifat, first 
 introduced arrayed for the dance in her turban, now wore a 
 gown of blue velvet, thick cotton stockings, kid slippers, 
 green-fringed chamois-leather gloves, and a hat lined with 
 pink and adorned with blossoming auriculas. 
 
 Every one had arrived by five o'clock. The Ragons used 
 to beg their guests to be punctual ; and when the good folk 
 themselves were asked out to dinner, their friends were careful 
 to dine at the same hour, for at the age of seventy the diges- 
 tion does not take kindly to the new-fangled times and seasons 
 ordained by fashionable society. 
 
 Cesarine knew that Mme. Ragon would seat Anselme beside 
 her ; all women, even devotees, or the feeblest feminine in- 
 tellects, understand each other in the matter of a love affair. 
 The toilet of the perfumer's daughter was designed to turn 
 young Popinot's head. Constance, who had given up, not 
 without a pang, the idea of the notary, who for her was an
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 239 
 
 heir-presumptive to a throne, had helped Cesarine to dress, 
 certain bitter reflections mingling with her thoughts the while. 
 Foreseeing the future, she lowered the modest gauze kerchief 
 somewhat on Cesarine's shoulders, so as to display rather 
 more of their outline, as well as the throat on which the young 
 girl's head was set with striking grace. The Grecian bodice, 
 four or five folds crossing from left to right, gave short 
 glimpses of delicately rounded contours beneath ; and the 
 leaden-gray merino gown, with its flounces trimmed with 
 green ornaments, clearly defined a shape which had never 
 seemed so slender and so lissome. Gold filigree earrings hung 
 from her ears. Her hair, dressed high in Chinese style, was 
 drawn back from her face, so that the delicate freshness of its 
 surface and the dim tracery of the veins which suffused the 
 white velvet with the purest glow of life were apparent at a 
 glance. Indeed, Cesarine was so coquettishly lovely that 
 Mme. Matifat could not help saying so, without perceiving 
 that the mother and daughter had felt the necessity of be- 
 witching young Popinot. 
 
 Neither Birotteau, nor his wife, nor Mme. Matifat, nor any 
 one else, broke in upon the delicious talk between the two 
 young people ; love glowed within them as they spoke with 
 lowered voices in the draughty window-seat, where the cold 
 made a miniature northeaster. Moreover, the conversation 
 of their seniors grew animated when the elder Popinot let 
 something drop concerning Roguin's flight, saying that this 
 was the second notary-defaulter, and that hitherto such a 
 thing had been unknown. Mme. Ragon had touched her 
 brother's foot at the mention of Roguin, Pillerault had spoken 
 aloud to cover the judge's remark, and both looked signifi- 
 cantly from him to Mme. Birotteau. 
 
 " I know all," Constance said, and in her gentle voice there 
 was a note of pain. 
 
 " Oh, well then," said Mme. Matifat, addressing herself to 
 Birotteau, who humbly bent his head, "how much of your
 
 240 CSAK BIROTTEAU. 
 
 money did he run away with ? To listen to the gossip, you 
 might be ruined." 
 
 " He had two hundred thousand francs of mine. As for 
 the forty thousand which he pretended to borrow for me from 
 one of his clients whose money he had squandered, we are 
 going to law about it." 
 
 "You will see that settled this coming week," said the 
 elder Popinot. " I thought that you would not mind my 
 explaining your position to the president ; he has ordered 
 Roguin's papers to be brought into the Council Chamber ; 
 on examination it will be discovered when the lender's capital 
 was embezzled, and Derville's allegations can be proved or 
 disproved. Derville is pleading in person, to save expense 
 to you." 
 
 " Shall we gain the day?" asked Mme. Birotteau. 
 
 "I do not know," Popinot answered. "Although I be- 
 long to the Chamber before which the case will come, I shall 
 refrain from deliberating upon it, even if I should be called 
 upon to do so." 
 
 "But can there be any doubt about such a straightforward 
 case?" asked Pillerault. "Ought not the deed to state that 
 the money was actually paid down, and must not the notaries 
 declare that they have seen it handed over? Roguin would 
 go to the galleys if he fell into the hands of justice." 
 
 " In my opinion," the judge answered, " the lender should 
 look to Roguin's caution-money and the amount paid for the 
 practice for his remedy ; but sometimes, in still simpler cases 
 than this, the councilors at the Court-Royal have been divided 
 six against six." 
 
 "What is this, mademoiselle; has Monsieur Roguin run 
 away?" asked Anselme, overhearing at last what was being 
 said. " Monsieur C6sar said nothing about it to me to me 
 who would give my life for him " 
 
 Cesarine felt that the whole family was included in that 
 " for him ; " for if the girl's inexperience had not understood
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 241 
 
 the tone, she could not mistake the look that wrapped her in 
 a rosy flame. 
 
 " I was sure of it ; I told him so, but he hid it all from 
 mother, and told his secret to no one but me." 
 
 " You spoke to him of me in this matter," said Anselme; 
 " you read my heart, but do you read all that is there ? " 
 
 " Perhaps." 
 
 " Oh ! I am very happy," said Anselme. " If you will re- 
 move all my fears, in a year's time I shall be so rich that your 
 father will not receive me so badly when I shall speak to him 
 then of our marriage. Five hours of sleep shall be enough 
 for me now of a night " 
 
 "Do not make yourself ill," said Cesarine, and no words 
 can reproduce the tones of her voice as she gave Anselme a 
 glance wherein all her thoughts might be read. 
 
 "Wife," said C6sar, as they rose from table, "I think 
 those young people are in love." 
 
 "Oh, well, so much the better," said Constance gravely; 
 " my daughter will be the wife of a man who has a head on 
 his shoulders and plenty of energy. Brains are the best en- 
 dowment in a marriage." 
 
 She hurried away into Mme. Ragon's room. During dinner, 
 C6sar had let fall several remarks which had drawn a smile 
 from Pillerault and the judge, so plainly did they exhibit the 
 speaker's ignorance ; and it was borne in upon the unfortunate 
 woman how little fitted her husband was to struggle with mis- 
 fortune. Constance's heart was heavy with unshed tears. 
 Instinctively she mistrusted du Tillet, for all mothers under- 
 stand timeo Danaos et dona ferentes without learning Latin. 
 She wept, and her daughter and Mme. Ragon, with their 
 arms about her, could not learn the cause of her trouble. 
 
 "It is the nerves," she said. 
 
 The rest of the evening was spent over the card-table by 
 the old people, and the younger ones played the blithe child- 
 ish games styled " innocent amusements," because they cover 
 16
 
 242 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 the innocent mischief of bourgeois lovers. The Matifats 
 joined the young people. 
 
 "Cesar," said Constance, as they went home again, "go 
 to Monsieur le Baron de Nucingen some time about the 8th, 
 so as to be sure some days beforehand that you can meet your 
 engagements on the i5th. If there should be any hitch in 
 your arrangements, would you raise a loan one day to pay 
 your debts between one day and the next? " 
 
 "I will go, wife," Cesar answered, and he grasped her 
 hand and Cesarine's in his as he added, " My darlings, I have 
 given you bitter New Year's gifts ! " And in the darkness 
 inside the cab the two women, who could not see the poor 
 perfumer, felt hot tears falling on their hands. 
 
 " Hope, dear," said Constance. 
 
 "Everything will go well, papa; Monsieur Popinot told 
 me that he would give his life for you." 
 
 "Forme and for my family; that is it, is it not?" an- 
 swered Cesar, trying to speak gaily. 
 
 Cesarine pressed her father's hand in a way which told him 
 that Anselme was her betrothed. 
 
 Two hundred cards arrived for Birotteau on New Year's 
 Day and the two following days. This influx of tokens of 
 favor and of false friendship is a painful thing for people who 
 are being swept away by the current of misfortune. Three 
 times C6sar presented himself at the Baron de Nucingen's 
 hotel, and each time in vain. The New Year's festivities 
 sufficiently excused the banker's absence. But on the last 
 visit Birotteau went as far as the banker's private office and 
 learned from a German, the head clerk, that M. de Nucingen 
 had only returned from a ball given by the Kellers at five 
 o'clock that morning, and that he would not be visible until 
 half-past nine. Birotteau chatted with this man for nearly 
 half an hour, and contrived to interest the German in his 
 affairs. So, during the day, this cabinet minister of the 
 house of Nucingen wrote to tell Cesar that the Baron would
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 243 
 
 see him at twelve o'clock the following morning, January the 
 third. Although every hour brought its drop of bitterness, that 
 day went by with dreadful swiftness. The perfumer took a 
 cab and drove to the hotel ; the courtyard was already blocked 
 with carriages, and the poor honest man's heart was oppressed 
 by the splendors of that celebrated house. 
 
 "Yet he has failed twice," he said to himself, as he went 
 up the handsome staircase, with flowers on either side, and 
 through the luxuriously furnished rooms by which the Bar- 
 oness, Delphine de Nucingen, had made a name for herself. 
 The Baroness strove to rival the most splendid houses in the 
 Faubourg Saint-Germain the houses of a circle into which 
 as yet she had no right of entry. 
 
 The Baron and his wife were at breakfast. In spite of the 
 number of those who were waiting in his offices for him, he 
 said that he would see du Tillet's friends at any hour. 
 Birotteau trembled with hope at the change which the 
 Baron's message produced on the contemptuous lackey's in- 
 solent face. 
 
 "Bardon me, my tear," said the Baron, addressing his 
 wife, as he rose to his feet and bowed slightly to Birotteau, 
 "dees shentleman ees ein goot Royaleest and de indimate 
 frient of du Tillet. Meinnesir Pirodot is teputy-mayor of de 
 second arrontussement, and gifs palls of Asiatic magnifi- 
 cence ; you vill make, no doubt, his agquaintance rait 
 Measure." 
 
 " I should be delighted to take lessons of Madame Birotteau, 
 
 for Ferdinand " (" Come," thought the perfumer, "she 
 
 calls him Ferdinand, plump and plain.") " Ferdinand spoke 
 of the ball to us with an admiration which says the more, 
 because Ferdinand is very critical ; everything must have 
 been perfect. Shall you soon give another ?" asked Mme. 
 de Nucingen, with a most amiable expression. 
 
 "Madame, poor folk like us seldom amuse ourselves," an- 
 swered the perfumer, doubtful whether the Baroness was
 
 244 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 laughing at him, or if her words were simply an empty com- 
 pliment. 
 
 " Meinnesir Crintod suberindended de alderations in your 
 house," said the Baron. 
 
 " Oh ! Grindot ! is he that nice young architect who has 
 just come back from Rome? " asked Delphine de Nucingen. 
 "I am quite wild about him; he is making lovely sketches 
 for my album." 
 
 No conspirator in the hands of the executioner in the 
 torture chamber of the Venetian Republic could have felt 
 less at his ease in the boots* than Birotteau in his ordinary 
 clothes at that moment. Every word had for him an ironical 
 sound. 
 
 "Ve too gif liddle palls here," the Baron continued, 
 giving the visitor a searching glance. "Eferypody does it, 
 you see ! " 
 
 "Will Monsieur Birotteau join us at breakfast?" asked 
 Delphine, and indicated the luxuriously furnished table. 
 
 " I am here on business, Madame la Baronne, and " 
 
 " Yes ! " said the Baron. " Matame, vill you bermit us to 
 talk pizness ? ' ' 
 
 Delphine made a little gesture of assent. "Are you about 
 to buy some perfumery?" she asked of the Baron, who 
 shrugged his shoulders, and turned in despair to C6sar. 
 
 " Du Dillet take de greatest inderest in you," said he. 
 
 "At last we are coming to the point," thought the hapless 
 merchant. 
 
 " Mit his ledder, your gretid mil my house is only limited 
 py de pounds of my own fortune." 
 
 The life-giving draught which the angel bore to Hagar in 
 the wilderness must surely have been like the dew which these 
 outlandish words effused through Birotteau's veins. The cun- 
 ning Baron clung of set purpose to the horrible accent of the 
 German Jew, who flatters himself that he has mastered an 
 
 * An instrument of torture in which the legs were crushed.
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 245 
 
 alien tongue ; for this system led to misapprehensions highly 
 useful to him in the way of business. 
 
 "And you shall have ein gurrent aggount, dat is how we 
 vill do it," remarked the good, the great, and venerable 
 financier, with Alsatian geniality. 
 
 Birotteau's doubts were all laid to rest ; he had had experi- 
 ence of business, and he knew that a man never goes into 
 details unless he is disposed to oblige you and to carry out a 
 plan. 
 
 "I neet not say to you that the pank demands dree zigna- 
 tures off eferypody, gif de amount is large or small. So you 
 shall make all your pills to de order off our friend du Dillet, 
 who vill send dem de same day to de pank mit my zignature, 
 and py four o'glock you shall have de amount of de pills dat you 
 haf accept in de morning, and at pank rate. I do not vant gom- 
 mission nor discount nor nossing ; for I shall haf de bleasure 
 
 of peing agreeable to you But I make one gondition ! " 
 
 he added, touching his nose with the forefinger of his left 
 hand and putting an indescribable cunning into the gesture. 
 
 "It is granted before you ask it, Monsieur le Baron," said 
 Birotteau, imagining that the banker meant to stipulate for a 
 share in the profits. 
 
 "Ein gondition to vich I addach de greatest price, because 
 I should like Montame de Nichinguenne to take, as she has 
 said, some lessons of Montame Pirodot." 
 
 " Monsieur le Baron, do not laugh at me, I beg." 
 
 " Meinnesir Pirodot," said the financier seriously, "it is 
 an agreement ; you are to infite us to your next pall. My 
 wife is chealous ; she would like to see your house, of vich 
 eferypody says such great dings." 
 
 " Monsieur le Baron ! " 
 
 "Oh! if you refuse me, no loan aggount! You are in 
 great favor. Yes ! I know dat de brefect of de Seine was 
 go to you." 
 
 " Monsieur le Baron ! "
 
 246 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "You had La Pillartiere, ein shentleman-in-ordinary to de 
 King; and de goot Fenteheine, for you were wounded at 
 Sainte " 
 
 "On the i3th of Vendemiaire, Monsieur le Baron." 
 
 " You had Meinnesir de Lassebette, Meinnesir Fauqueleine 
 of de Agademie " 
 
 " Monsieur le Baron ! " 
 
 " Eh ! der teufel, do not be so modest, Meester Teputy- 
 Mayor; I haf heard dat de King said dat your pall " 
 
 "The King?" asked Birotteau, destined to learn no more, 
 for at this moment a young man came into the room ; the 
 sound of his footsteps, heard at a distance, had brought a 
 bright color into Delphine de Nucingen's fair and beautiful 
 face. 
 
 "Goot-tay, my tear de Marsay," said the Baron. "Take 
 my blace; dere are a lot of beoples in my office, dey say. 
 Who knows why? De mines off Wortschinne are baying two 
 hunderd ber cent. ! Yes. I have receifed de aggounts. You 
 haf a hunderd tousand francs more of ingom dis year, Mon- 
 tame de Nichinguenne ; you could buy girdles and kew-kaws 
 to make yourself pretty, as if you neeted dem ! " 
 
 "Good heavens!" exclaimed Birotteau. "The Ragons 
 have sold their shares ! " 
 
 "Who may these gentlemen be?" asked the young dandy 
 with a smile. 
 
 " Dere ! " said Nucingen, who had gone as far as the door 
 
 already, " it looks to me as if dose bersons Te Marsay, 
 
 dis is Meinnesir Pirodot, your berfumer, who gifs palls mit 
 Asiatic magnificence, and has been degoraded py de King 
 and " 
 
 De Marsay, taking up his eyeglass, remarked, "Ah ! to be 
 sure. I thought that the face was familiar. Then are you 
 about to perfume your affairs with some efficacious oil, to make 
 them run smoothly ? " 
 
 "Ach! veil, dose Rakkons had an aggount mit me," the
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 247 
 
 Baron went on. " I put dem in de vay of ein fortune, and 
 dey could not vait one more day for it." 
 
 "Monsieur le Baron ! " cried Birotteau. 
 
 The worthy perfumer found himself very much in the dark 
 about his affairs, and fled after the banker without taking 
 leave of the Baroness or of de Marsay. M. de Nucingen was 
 on the lowest step of the stairs, but even as he reached the 
 door of his office, Birotteau was beside him. As he turned 
 the handle he saw the despairing gesture of the poor creature, 
 for whom the gulf was yawning, and said 
 
 "Eh! it is understood, is it not? See du Billet, and 
 arranche it all mit him." 
 
 It occurred to Birotteau that de Marsay might have some 
 influence with the Baron ; he darted upstairs with the speed 
 of a swallow, and slipped into the dining-room where, by 
 rights, the Baroness and de Marsay should have been, for he 
 had left Delphine waiting for her coffee and cream. The 
 coffee indeed was now waiting, but the Baroness and the young 
 dandy had vanished; the servant looked amused at Birotteau's 
 astonishment, and there was nothing for it but to go more 
 leisurely downstairs again. From the Nucingens' hotel he 
 went at once to du Tillet, only to hear that he was at Mme. 
 Roguin's house in the country. He took a cab, and paid an 
 extra fare to be driven to Nogent-sur-Marne as quickly as if he 
 had traveled post. But at Nogent-sur-Marne the porter told 
 him that Monsieur and Madame had set out for Paris, and 
 Birotteau returned quite tired out. 
 
 When he told his wife and daughter the story of his excur- 
 sion, he was amazed to receive the sweetest consolation and 
 assurances that all would go well from Constance, who had 
 always taken all the little ups and downs of business as occa- 
 sions on which to utter her boding cries. 
 
 At seven o'clock the next morning, Birotteau took up his 
 position before du Tillet'sdoor in the dim light. He begged 
 the porter to put him into communication with du Tillet's
 
 248 C&SAR BIROTTEAU: 
 
 man, and, by dint of slipping ten francs into the porter's 
 hands, obtained the favor of an interview with du Tillet's 
 man ; of him he asked to give him an interview with du Til- 
 let as soon as du Tillet should be visible, and to that end a 
 couple of gold-pieces found their way into the possession of 
 du Tillet's men. By way of these little sacrifices and great 
 humiliations, common to courtiers and petitioners, he attained 
 his end. At half-past eight, when his ex-assistant had slipped 
 on a dressing-gown and shaken off the confused ideas of a 
 man awakened from sleep, had yawned, stretched himself, 
 and asked pardon of his old master, Birotteau found himself 
 face to face with the tiger thirsting for revenge, the man 
 whom he was fain to consider as his one friend in the world. 
 " Do not mind me," said Birotteau, replying to the apology. 
 "What do you want, my good Cesar?" asked du Tillet; 
 and Csar, not without terrible palpitations, gave the Baron 
 de Nucingen's answer and demands to an inattentive listener, 
 who looked about for the bellows, and scolded his manservant 
 for taking so long over lighting the fire. 
 
 Cesar did not notice at first that, if the master was not 
 heedful, the man was interested ; but seeing this at last he 
 grew confused and broke off, to begin again, spurred on by a 
 " Go on, go on ; I am listening," from the abstracted banker. 
 The good man's shirt was soaked with perspiration, which 
 turned icy cold when du Tillet looked full and steadily at 
 him, and he could see those eyes of silver streaked with a few 
 gold threads; there was a diabolical light in them which 
 pierced him to the heart. 
 
 " My dear master, the bank refused your paper, passed on 
 to Gigonnet without guarantee by the firm of Claparon ; is 
 that my fault ? What ! you have been a judge at the Con- 
 sular Tribunal, how could you make such blunders? I am, 
 before all things, a banker. I will give you my money, but I 
 could not expose my signature to a refusal from the bank. I 
 live by credit. So do we all. Do you want money?"
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU: 249 
 
 " Can you let me have all that I need in cash ? " 
 " That depends upon the amount to be paid. How much 
 do you want ? " 
 
 "Thirty thousand francs." 
 
 "Plenty of chimney-pots tumbling about my ears!" ex- 
 claimed du Tillet, and he burst into a laugh. 
 
 The perfumer, misled by the splendor of du Tillet's sur- 
 roundings, chose to regard that laugh as a sign that the sum 
 was a mere trifle. He breathed again. Du Tillet rang the 
 bell. 
 
 " Tell the cashier to come up." 
 " He is not here yet, sir," the servant answered. 
 " Those rogues are laughing at me ! It is half-past eight; 
 they ought to have done a million francs' worth of business 
 by now." 
 
 Five minutes later M. Legras came upstairs. 
 " How much have we in the safe ? " 
 
 " Only twenty thousand francs. Your orders were to buy 
 thirty thousand livres per annum in rentes, at present price, 
 payable on the i5th." 
 
 " That is right ; I am still asleep." 
 The cashier gave Birotteau a sly glance, and went. 
 "If truth were banished from the earth she would leave 
 her last word with a cashier," said du Tillet. " But have you 
 not an interest in little Popinot's business, now that he has just 
 set up for himself?" he added, after a horrible pause in 
 which the sweat gathered in drops on Birotteau's forehead. 
 
 "Yes," said Cesar innocently. " Do you think you could 
 discount his signature for a fair amount?" 
 
 "Bring me fifty thousand francs' worth of his acceptances, 
 and I will get them negotiated for you at a reasonable rate by 
 one Gobseck ; very easy to do business with when he has plenty 
 of uncalled-for capital on his hands, and he has a good deal 
 just now." 
 
 Birotteau went home again heartbroken. He did not see
 
 250 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 that bankers and bill-discounters were sending him backward 
 and forward in a game of battledore and shuttlecock ; but 
 Constance guessed even then that it would be impossible to 
 obtain a loan of any sort. If three bankers had already re- 
 fused credit to a man so well known as the deputy-mayor 
 every one would hear of it, and the Bank of France was no 
 longer to be thought of. 
 
 "Try to renew" (this was Constance's advice). "Go to 
 your co-associate, Monsieur Claparon, to every one, in fact, 
 whose bills fall due on the i5th, and ask them to renew. 
 There will be time enough then to go to bill-discounters with 
 Popinot's bills." 
 
 " To-morrow will be the i3th ! " exclaimed Birotteau, worn 
 out with anxiety. 
 
 He was " endowed with a sanguine temperament," to quote 
 his own prospectus ; a temperament upon which the wear 
 and tear of emotion and of thought tell so enormously that 
 sleep is imperatively needed to repair the waste. Cesarine 
 brought her father into the drawing-room, and played " Rous- 
 seau's Dream," that charming composition of Herold's, while 
 Constance sat sewing by her husband's side. The poor man 
 lay back on the ottoman couch. Every time his eyes rested 
 on his wife he saw a sweet smile on her lips, and so he fell 
 asleep. 
 
 " Poor man ! " said Constance. " What torture is in store 
 for him ! If only he can endure it ! " 
 
 "Oh, mamma, what is it?" asked Cesarine, seeing her 
 mother in tears. 
 
 " I see bankruptcy ahead, darling. If your father is obliged 
 to file his schedule there must be no asking for pity of any 
 one. You must be prepared to be an ordinary store-girl, my 
 dear. If I see you doing your part bravely, I shall have 
 strength to begin life again. I know your father ; he will 
 not keep back one centime ; I shall give up my claims, all 
 that we have will be sold. Take your clothes and trinkets
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 251 
 
 to-morrow to Uncle Pillerault ; you are not bound to lose 
 anything, my child." 
 
 At these words, spoken with such devout sincerity, Cesar- 
 ine's terror knew no bounds. She thought of going to An- 
 selme, but a feeling of delicacy withheld her. 
 
 The next morning found Birotteau in the Rue de Provence 
 at nine o'clock. He had fallen a victim to fresh anxieties of 
 a totally different kind. To borrow money is not necessarily a 
 complicated process in business ; it is a matter of daily oc- 
 currence, for capital must always be found wherever a new 
 enterprise is started ; but to ask a man to renew a bill is in 
 commercial circles what the police court is to the court of 
 assize ; it is a first step to bankruptcy, even as a misde- 
 meanor is half-way to a crime. The secret of your weakness 
 and your embarrassment passes out of your own keeping. A 
 merchant delivers himself up, bound hand and foot, to another 
 merchant, and charity is not a virtue much practiced on the 
 Stock Exchange. 
 
 The perfumer, who hitherto had walked the streets of Paris 
 with bright confident eyes, now cast down by doubts, hesi- 
 tated to go to Claparon ; he was beginning to understand 
 that with bankers the heart is merely a portion of the internal 
 economy. Claparon had seemed to him so brutal in his coarse 
 hilarity, and he had felt so much vulgarity in the man, that 
 he shrank from approaching this creditor. 
 
 " He is nearer the people, perhaps he will have more soul ! " 
 This was the first word of accusation which the anguish of his 
 position wrung from him. 
 
 Cesar glanced up at the windows and at the green curtains 
 yellowed by the sun ; then he drew the last of his stock of 
 courage up from the depths of his soul, and climbed the stairs 
 that led to a shabby mezzanine floor. He read the word 
 "Office," engraven in black letters on an oval brass-plate 
 upon the door, and knocked. No one answered, so he went in. 
 
 The whole place was something more than humble ; it sav-
 
 252 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 ored of dire poverty, avarice, or neglect. No clerk showed 
 his face behind the barrier of unpainted pine, surmounted at 
 elbow-height by a brass-wire lattice, an arrangement which 
 screened off an inner space occupied by tables and desks of 
 blackened wood. Scattered about the deserted offices lay 
 inkstands in which mold was growing, quill-pens touzled 
 like a street urchin's head, twisted up into suns with rays ; 
 the rooms were littered with cardboard cases, papers, and cir- 
 culars, useless no doubt. The floor of the lobby was as worn, 
 as damp and gritty as the floor of a lodging-house parlor. 
 Through a door on which the word " Counting-room " was 
 inscribed, the visitor entered a second room, where every- 
 thing was in keeping with the sinister waggery displayed in 
 the first. In one corner stood a large cage of oak with a grill 
 of copper- wire, and a cashier's sliding window. An enor- 
 mous iron letter-box had doubtless been abandoned to the rats 
 for a playground. The open door of this cage gave a view 
 of yet another of these whimsical offices, and of a shabby and 
 worm-eaten green chair, a mass of horsehair escaping through 
 a hole underneath this piece of furniture in countless cork- 
 screw curls that called its owner's wig in mind. Evidently 
 this room had been the drawing-room of the house before it 
 had been converted into offices, but the only attempt at orna- 
 mental furniture was a round table covered with a green cloth, 
 and some old chairs covered with black leather and adorned 
 with gilt nail-heads which stood about it. The mantel had 
 some pretensions to elegance, the hearthstone was un black- 
 ened, and there were no visible signs that a fire had been 
 lighted there. The pier-glass above it, tarnished with fly- 
 spots, had a mean look ; so had a mahogany clock-case bought 
 at the sale of some departed notary's office furniture, a dreary 
 object which enhanced the depressing effect of the pair of 
 empty candlesticks and the all-pervading sticky grime. The 
 dinginess of the paper on the walls, drab with a rose-colored 
 border, spoke plainly of the habitual presence of smokers and
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAV. 253 
 
 absence of ventilation. The whole stale-looking room re- 
 sembled nothing so much as a newspaper editor's office. 
 Birotteau, afraid of intruding on the banker's privacy, gave 
 three sharp taps on the door opposite the one by which he 
 had entered. 
 
 " Come in ! " cried Claparon, and the sound of his voice 
 evidently came from a room beyond. The perfumer could 
 hear a good fire crackling on the hearth, but the banker was 
 not there. This apartment did duty, as a matter of fact, for 
 a private office. Franois Keller's elegantly furnished sanc- 
 tum differed from the grotesque neglect of this sham capi- 
 talist's surroundings as widely as Versailles differs from the 
 wigwam of a Huron chief; and Birotteau, who had beheld 
 the glories of the banking world, was about to be introduced 
 to its blackguardism. 
 
 In a sort of oblong den, contrived behind the private office, 
 where the whole of the furniture, scarcely elegant in its prime, 
 had been battered, broken, covered with grease, slit to rags, 
 soiled and spoiled by the slovenly habits of the occupier, 
 reclined Claparon, who, at sight of Birotteau, flung on a filthy 
 dressing-gown, laid down his pipe, and drew the bed-curtains 
 with a haste that seemed suspicious even to the innocent 
 perfumer. 
 
 " Take a seat, sir," said du Tillet's banker puppet. 
 
 Claparon without his wig, his head tied up in a bandanna 
 handkerchief all awry, was to Birotteau's thinking the more 
 repulsive in that his loose dressing-gown gave glimpses of a 
 nondescript knitted woolen garment, once white, but now a 
 dingy brown, from indefinitely prolonged wear. 
 
 "Will you breakfast with me?" asked Claparon, bethink- 
 ing himself of the ball, and prompted partly by a wish to turn 
 the tables on his host, partly by anxiety to put Birotteau off 
 the scent. And, in point of fact, a round table, hastily cleared 
 of papers, was suspiciously suggestive ; for it displayed a p&td, 
 oysters, white wine, and a dish of vulgar kidneys, sautts au inn
 
 254 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 de Champagne, cooling in their gravy, while an omelette with 
 truffles was browning before the sea-coal fire. The table was 
 set for two persons] two table-napkins, soiled at supper on 
 the previous evening, would have enlightened the purest inno- 
 cence. Claparon, in the character of a man who has a belief 
 in his own adroitness, insisted in spite of Birotteau's polite 
 refusals. 
 
 " I should by rights have had somebody to breakfast, but 
 that somebody has not kept the appointment," cried the cun- 
 ning commercial traveler, speaking loud, so that the words 
 might reach the ears of an auditor hiding under the blankets. 
 
 "I have come on business pure and simple, sir," said 
 Birotteau, "and I shall not detain you long." 
 
 "I am overwhelmed with business," returned Claparon, 
 pointing to a cylinder-desk and to the tables, which were heaped 
 up with papers; " not a poor little minute may I have to my- 
 self. I never see people except on Saturdays ; but for you, my 
 dear sir, I am always at home. I have no time left nowadays 
 for love affairs or lounging about ; I am losing the business in- 
 stinct, which takes intervals of carefully timed idleness, if it 
 is to keep its freshness. Nobody sees me busy doing nothing 
 in the boulevards. Pshaw ! business bores me, I don't care 
 to hear any more about business at present ; I have money 
 enough, and I shall never have pleasure enough. My word, 
 I have a mind to turn tourist and see Italy. Ah ! beloved 
 Italy ! fair even amid her adversity, adorable land, where, 
 doubtless, I shall find some magnificent, indolent Italian 
 beauty; I have always admired Italian women! Have you 
 ever had an Italian mistress? No? Oh, well, come to Italy 
 with me. We will see Venice, the city of the Doges, fallen, 
 more's the pity, into the hands of those Philistines the Aus- 
 trians, who know nothing of art. Pooh ! let us leave business, 
 and canals, and loans, and governments in peace. I am a 
 prince when my pockets are well lined. Let us travel, by 
 Jove!"
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 255 
 
 "Just one word, sir, and I will go," said Birotteau. "You 
 passed my bills on to Monsieur Bidault." 
 
 " Gigonnet, you mean ; nice little fellow, Gigonnet ; a man 
 as easy-going as a as a slip-knot." 
 
 " Yes," said Cesar. " I should be glad and in this mat- 
 ter I am relying on your integrity and honor" (Claparon 
 bowed) " I should be glad if I could renew " 
 
 "Impossible," said the banker roundly "impossible. I 
 am not the only man in the affair. We are all in council, 
 'tis a regular Chamber; but that we are all on good terms 
 among ourselves, like rashers in a pan. Oh, we deliberate, 
 that we do ! The building land by the Madeleine is nothing; 
 we are doing other things elsewhere. Eh ! my good sir, if 
 we were not busy in the Champs-Elysees, near the new Ex- 
 change which has just been finished, in the Quartier Saint- 
 Lazare and about the Tivoli, we should not be vinancters, as 
 old Nucingen says. So what is the Madeleine ? A little 
 speck of a business. Prrr ! we do not dabble, my good sir," 
 he said, tapping Birotteau's chest, and giving him a hug. 
 "There, come and have your breakfast, and we will have a 
 talk," Claparon continued, by way of softening his refusal. 
 
 "By all means," said Birotteau. "So much the worse for 
 the other," thought he. He would wait till the wine went to 
 Claparon's head, and find out then who his partners really 
 were in this affair, which began to have a very shady look. 
 
 "That is right! Victoire ! " shouted the banker, and at 
 the call appeared a genuine Leonarda, tricked out like a fish- 
 wife. 
 
 "Tell the clerks that I cannot see anybody, not even 
 Nucingen, Keller, Gigonnet, and the rest of them ! " 
 
 " There is no one here but Monsieur Lempereur." 
 
 "He can receive the fashionables," said Claparon, "and 
 the small fry need not go beyond the public office. They 
 can be told that I am meditating how to get a pull at a 
 bottle of champagne."
 
 256 C&SAR B1ROTTEAU. 
 
 To make an old commercial traveler tipsy is to achieve the 
 impossible. Cesar had mistaken his boon companion's symp- 
 toms, and thought his boisterous vulgarity was due to intoxi- 
 cation, when he tried to shrive him. 
 
 " There is that rascal Roguin still in it with you," said 
 Birotteau; " ought you not to write and tell him to help out 
 a friend whom he has left in the lurch, a friend with whom 
 he dined every Sunday, and whom he has known for twenty 
 years ? ' ' 
 
 " Roguin ? A fool ; we have his share. Don't be down- 
 hearted, my good friend, it will be all right. Pay on the 
 i5th, and that done, we shall see! I say, 'we shall see' 
 (a glass of wine ! ) but the capital is no concern of mine 
 whatever. Oh ! if you should not pay at all, / should not 
 give you black looks ; my share in the affair is limited to a 
 percentage on the purchase-money and something down on 
 completion of the contract, in consideration of which I 
 brought round the vendors. Do you understand ? Your asso- 
 ciates are good men, so I am not afraid, my dear sir. Business is 
 so divided up nowadays. Every business requires the co- 
 operation of so many specialists ! Do you join the rest of us? 
 Then do not dabble in combs and pomade-pots a paltry way 
 of doing business ; fleece the public, and go in for the specu- 
 lation." 
 
 "A speculation?" asked the perfumer; "what sort of 
 business is it ? " 
 
 "It is commerce in the abstract," replied Claparon, "an 
 affair which will only come to light in ten years' time at the 
 bidding of the great Nucingen, the Napoleon of finance, a 
 scheme by which a man embraces sum-totals and skims the 
 cream of profits yet to be made ; a gigantic conception, a 
 method of marking expectations like timber for annual fell- 
 ing ; it is a new cabal, in short. There are but ten or twelve 
 of us as yet, long-headed men, all initiated into the cabalistic 
 secrets of these magnificent combinations."
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 257 
 
 Cesar opened his eyes and ears, trying to comprehend these 
 mixed metaphors. 
 
 " Listen to me," Claparon continued, after a pause ; " such 
 strokes as these need very capable men. Now, there is the 
 man who has ideas but has not a penny, like all men with 
 ideas. That sort of man spends and is spent, and cares for 
 nothing. Imagine a pig roaming about a wood for truffles, 
 and a knowing fellow on his tracks ; that is the man with the 
 money, who waits till he hears a grunt over a find. When 
 the man with the ideas has hit upon a good notion, the man 
 with the money taps him on the shoulder with a * What is 
 this? You are putting yourself in the furnace-mouth, my 
 good friend ; your back is not strong enough to carry this ; 
 here are a thousand francs for you, and let me put this affair 
 in working order.' Good! Then the banker summons the 
 manufacturers ' Set to work, my friends ! Out with your 
 prospectuses ! Blarney to the death ! ' Out come the hunt- 
 ing-horns, and they pipe up with 'A hundred thousand 
 francs for five sous ! ' or five sous for a hundred thousand 
 francs, gold-mines, coal-mines ; all the flourishes and alarums 
 of commerce, in short. Art and science are paid to give 
 their opinion, the affair is paraded about, the public rushes 
 into it and receives paper for its money, and our takings are 
 in our hands. The pig is safe in his stye with his potatoes, 
 and the rest of them are wallowing in bills of exchange. 
 That is how it is done, my dear sir. Go in for speculation. 
 What do you want to be ? A pig or a gull, a clown or a 
 millionaire ? Think it over. I have summed up the modern 
 theory of loans for you. Come to see me ; you will find a 
 good fellow, always jolly. French joviality, at once grave 
 and gay, does no harm in business, quite the contrary ! Men 
 who can drink are made to understand each other. Come ! 
 another glass of champagne ? It is choice wine, eh ? It was 
 sent me by a man at Epernay, for whom I have sold a good 
 deal of it, and at good prices too (I used to be in the wine 
 17
 
 258 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 trade). He shows his gratitude and remembers me in my 
 prosperity. A rare trait." 
 
 Birotteau, bewildered by this flippancy and careless tone 
 in a man whom everybody credited with such astonishing 
 profundity and breadth, did not dare to question him any 
 further. But, in spite of the confusion and excitement in- 
 duced by unwonted potations of champagne, a name let fall 
 by du Tillet came up in his mind, and he asked for the ad- 
 dress of a bill-discounter named Gobseck. 
 
 "Is that what you are after, my dear sir?" asked Claparon. 
 " Gobseck is a bill-discounter in the same sense that the 
 hangman is a doctor. The first thing that he says to you is 
 'Fifty per cent.' He belongs to the school of Harpagon ; 
 he will supply you with canary birds and stuffed boa-con- 
 strictors, with furs in summer and nankeen in winter. And 
 whose bills are you going to offer him ? He will want you to 
 deposit your wife, your daughter, your umbrella, and every- 
 thing that is yours, down to your hat-box, your clogs (do you 
 wear hinged clogs ?), poker and tongs, and the firewood in 
 your cellar, before he will take your bills with your bare name 
 to them ! Gobseck ! Gobseck ! In the name of mis- 
 fortune, who sent you to the guillotine of commerce?" 
 
 "M. du Tillet." 
 
 "Oh! the rogue; just like him. We used to be friends 
 once upon a time ; and if the quarrel has gone so far that we 
 do not speak to each other now, I have good reason for dis- 
 liking him, believe me ! He let me see to the bottom of his 
 soul of mud, and he made me uncomfortable at that fine ball you 
 gave. I cannot bear him, with the coxcomb's airs he gives 
 himself, because he has the good graces of a notaresse ! I 
 could have marquises myself if I had a mind ; he will never 
 have my esteem, I know. Ah ! my esteem is a princess who 
 will never take up too much room on his pillow. I say 
 though, old man, you are a funny one to give us a ball and 
 then come and ask us to renew two months afterward ! You
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 259 
 
 are likely to go far. Let us go into speculation together. 
 You have a character ; it would be useful to me. Oh ! du 
 Tillet was born to understand Gobseck. Du Tillet will come 
 to a bad end in the Place de Greve. If, as they say, he is one 
 of Gobseck's lambs, he will soon come to the length of his 
 tether. Gobseck squats in a corner of his web like an old 
 spider who has seen the world. Sooner or later, zut ! and the 
 money-lender sucks in his man like a glass of wine. So 
 much the better ! Du Tillet played me a trick oh! a scurvy 
 trick! " 
 
 After an hour and a half spent in listening to meaningless 
 prate, Birotteau determined to go, for the commercial trav- 
 eler was preparing to relate the adventure of a representative 
 of the people at Marseilles, who had fallen in love with an 
 actress who played the part of " La belle Arsene." The Roy- 
 alist pit hissed the lady. 
 
 " Up he gets," said Claparon, "and stands bolt upright in 
 
 his box. 'Arte qui /'a siblee ? ' says he ; ' eu ! Si c'est 
 
 ounefemme,je V amprise ; si c* est mine homtne, nous se verrons ; 
 
 si c'est ni I'un ni I'autte, que le troun di Diou le cure ? ' 
 
 How do you think the adventure ended ? " 
 
 "Good-day, sir," said Birotteau. 
 
 "You will have to come and see me," said Claparon at 
 this. " Cayron's first bill has come back protested, and I am 
 the indorser ; I have reimbursed the money, and I shall send 
 it on to you, for business is business." 
 
 Birotteau felt this cold affectation of a readiness to oblige, 
 as he had already felt Keller's hardness and Nucingen's Teu- 
 tonic banter, in his very heart. The man's familiarity, his 
 grotesque confidences made in the generous glow of cham- 
 pagne, had been like a blight to the perfumer ; he felt as if he 
 were leaving some evil haunt in the world financial. 
 
 He walked downstairs ; he found himself in the street and 
 went, not knowing whither he went. He followed the boule- 
 vard till he reached the Rue Saint-Denis then he bethought
 
 260 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 himself of Molineux, and turned to go toward the Cour 
 Batave. He mounted the same dirty tortuous staircase which 
 he had ascended but lately in the pride of his glory. He 
 remembered Molineux's peevish meanness, and winced at the 
 thought of asking a favor of him. As on the occasion of his 
 previous visit, he found the owner of house-property by the 
 fireside, but this time he had eaten his breakfast. Birotteau 
 formulated his demand. 
 
 " Renew a bill for twelve hundred francs? " said Molineux, 
 with an incredulous smile. "You do not mean it, sir. If 
 you have not twelve hundred francs on the 15111 to meet my 
 bill, will you please to send me back my receipt for rent that 
 has not been paid? Ah ! I should be angry; I do not use the 
 slightest ceremony in money matters ; my rents are my income. 
 If I acted otherwise, how should I pay my way ? A man in 
 business will not disapprove of that wholesome rule. Money 
 knows nobody; money has no ears; money has no heart. It 
 is a cold winter, and here is firewood dearer again. If you 
 do not pay on the i5th, you will receive a little summons by 
 noon on the i6th. Pshaw! old Mitral, who serves your pro- 
 cesses, acts for me too ; he will send you your summons in an 
 envelope, with due regard for your high position." 
 
 "A writ has never yet been served on me, sir," said Birot- 
 teau. 
 
 "Everything must have a beginning," retorted Molineux. 
 
 The perfumer was taken aback by the little old man's frank 
 ferocity ; the knell of credit rang in his ears ; and every fresh 
 stroke awoke memories of his own sayings as to bankruptcies, 
 prompted by his remorseless jurisprudence. Those opinions 
 of his seemed to be traced in letters of fire on the soft sub- 
 stance of his brain. 
 
 " By-the-by," Molineux was saying, " you forgot to write 
 ' For value received in rent ' across your bills ; that might 
 give me a preferential claim." 
 
 " My position forbids me to do anything to the prejudice
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 261 
 
 of my creditors," said Birotteau, dazed by that glimpse into 
 the gulf before him. 
 
 " Good, sir, very good. I thought that I had nothing left 
 to learn in my dealings with messieurs my tenants. You have 
 taught me never to take bills in payment. Oh ! I will take 
 the thing into court, for your answer as good as tells me that 
 you will not meet your engagements. The case touches every 
 landlord in Paris." 
 
 Birotteau went out, sick of life. Feeble and tender natures 
 lose heart at the first rebuff, just as a first success puts courage 
 into them. Cesar's only hope now lay in little Popinot's 
 devotion ; his thoughts naturally turned to him as he passed 
 the Marche des Innocents. 
 
 " Poor boy ! who would have told me this when I started 
 him six weeks ago at the Tuileries ! " 
 
 It was nearly four o'clock, the time when the magistrates 
 leave the palais. As it fell out, the elder Popinot had gone 
 to see his nephew. The examining magistrate, who in moral 
 questions had a kind of second-sight which laid bare the 
 secret motives of others, who discerned the underlying signifi- 
 cance of the most commonplace actions of daily life, the 
 germs of crime, the roots of a misdemeanor, was watching 
 Birotteau, though Birotteau did not suspect it. Birotteau 
 seemed to be put out by finding the uncle with the nephew; 
 the perfumer's manner was constrained, he was preoccupied 
 and thoughtful. Little Popinot, busy as usual with his pen 
 behind his ear, always fell flat, figuratively speaking, before 
 Cesarine's father. Cesar's meaningless remarks to his partner, 
 to the judge's thinking, were merely screens, some important 
 demand was about to be made. Instead of leaving the shop, 
 therefore, the shrewd man of law stayed with his nephew in 
 spite of his nephew, for he thought that Cesar would try to 
 get rid of him by making a move himself. And so it was. 
 When Birotteau had gone the judge followed, but he noticed 
 Cesar lounging along the Rue des Cinq-Diamants in the
 
 262 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 direction of the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher. This infinitely small 
 matter bred suspicion in the mind of Popinot the elder ; he 
 mistrusted Cesar's intentions, went along the Rue des Lom- 
 bards, watched the perfumer go back to Anselme's shop, and 
 promptly repaired thither. 
 
 " My dear Popinot," Cesar had begun, "I have come to 
 ask you to do me a service. ' ' 
 
 "What is there to be done?" asked Popinot, with gener- 
 ous eagerness. 
 
 "Ah! you give me life!" cried the good man, rejoicing 
 in this warmth from the heart that sent a glow through him 
 after those twenty-five days of glacial cold. " It is this, to 
 allow me to draw a bill on you on account of my share of the 
 profits; we will settle between ourselves." 
 
 Popinot looked steadily at Cesar ; Cesar lowered his eyes. 
 Just at that moment the magistrate reappeared. 
 
 " My boy Oh ! I beg your pardon, Monsieur Birotteau 
 
 my boy, I forgot to say that " and with the imperative 
 
 gesture learned in the exercise of his profession, the elder 
 Popinot drew his nephew out into the street and marched 
 him, bareheaded and in shirt-sleeves as he was, in the direc- 
 tion of the Rue des Lombards. 
 
 "Your old master will very likely find himself in such 
 straits that he may be forced to file his schedule, nephew. 
 Before a man comes to that, a man who, may be, has a record 
 of forty years of upright dealing, nay the very best of men, 
 in his anxiety to save his honor, will behave like the most 
 frantic gambler. Men in that predicament will do anything. 
 They will sell their wives and traffic in their daughters ; they 
 will bring their best friends into the scrape and pawn property 
 which is not theirs; they will go to the gaming-table, turn 
 actors nay, liars ; they will shed tears at need. In short, I 
 have known them do the most extraordinary things. You 
 yourself know how good-natured Roguin was, a man who 
 looked as though butter would not melt in his mouth. I do
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 263 
 
 not press these conclusions home in Monsieur Birotteau's 
 case; I believe that he is honest; but if he should ask you to 
 do anything at all irregular, no matter what it is; if he should 
 want you, for instance, to accept accommodation bills and so 
 start you in a system which, to my way of thinking, is the 
 beginning of all sorts of rascality (for it is counterfeit paper- 
 money), promise me that you will sign nothing without first 
 consulting me. You must remember that if you love his 
 daughter, even for your own sake and hers, you must not spoil 
 your future. If Monsieur Birotteau must come to grief, what 
 is the use of going with him ? What is it but cutting your- 
 selves off from all chance of escape through your business, 
 which will be his refuge?" 
 
 "Thank you, uncle; a word to the wise is sufficient," said 
 Anselme; his uncle's words explained that heartrending cry 
 from his master. 
 
 The merchant who dealt in druggists' oils and sundries 
 looked thoughtful as he entered his dark store. Birotteau 
 saw the change. 
 
 "Will you honor me by coming up to my room? we can 
 talk more at our ease there than here. The assistants, busy as 
 they are, might overhear us." 
 
 Birotteau followed Popinot, a victim to such cruel suspense 
 as the condemned man knows, while he waits for a reprieve 
 or the rejection of his appeal. 
 
 "My dear benefactor," Anselme began, "you do not 
 doubt my devotion ; it is blind. Permit me to ask but one 
 thing, will this sum of money save you once and for all ? Or 
 will it merely put off some catastrophe? in which case, what 
 is the use of carrying me with you ? You want bills at ninety 
 days. Very well, but I am sure that I myself shall not be able 
 to meet them in three months' time." 
 
 Birotteau, white and grave, rose to his feet, and looked into 
 Popinot's face. 
 
 Popinot, in alarm, cried, "I will do it if you wish it."
 
 264 CESAR B1RO1TEAU. 
 
 "Ungrateful boy!" cried the perfumer, gathering all his 
 strength to hurl at Anselme the words which should brand him 
 as infamous. 
 
 Birotteau walked to the door and went. Popinot, recover- 
 ing from the sensation which the terrible words had produced 
 in him, darted downstairs and rushed into the street, but saw 
 no sign of the perfumer. The dreadful words of doom rang 
 in the ears of Cesarine's lover, poor Cesar's face of anguish 
 was always before his eyes; he lived, indeed, like Hamlet, 
 haunted by a ghastly spectre. 
 
 Birotteau staggered along the streets like a drunken man. 
 He found himself at last on the quay, and followed its course 
 to Sevres, where he spent the night in an inn, stupefied with 
 sorrow; and his frightened wife dared not make any inquiries 
 for him. Under such circumstances it is fatal to give the 
 alarm rashly. Constance wisely immolated her anxiety to her 
 husband's business reputation ; she sat up all night for him, 
 mingling prayers with her fears. Was Cesar dead ? Had he 
 left Paris in the pursuit of some last hope ? When morning 
 came she behaved as though she knew the cause of his ab- 
 sence; but when at five o'clock C6sar had not returned, she 
 sent word to her uncle and begged him to go to the morgue. 
 All through that day the brave woman sat at her desk, her 
 daughter doing her embroidery by her side, and, neither sad 
 nor smiling, both confronted the public with quiet faces. 
 
 When Pillerault came, he brought Csar with him ; he had 
 met his niece's husband after 'Change in the Palais Royal, 
 hesitating to enter a gaming-house. That day was the i4th. 
 
 Csar could eat nothing at dinner. His stomach, too vio- 
 lently contracted, rejected food. It was a miserable meal ; 
 but it was not so bad as the evening that came after it. For 
 the hundredth time, the merchant experienced one of the 
 hideous alternations of despair and hope which wear out weak 
 natures, when the soul passes through the whole scale of sen- 
 sations, from the highest pitch of joy to the lowest depths of de-
 
 CESAR BIKOTTEAU. 265 
 
 spair. Derville, the consulting barrister, rushed into the splen- 
 did drawing-room. Mme. Cesar had done everything in her 
 power to keep her poor husband there; he had wanted to sleep 
 in the attic, "so as not to see the monuments of my folly," 
 he said. 
 
 " We have gained the day ! " cried Derville. 
 
 At'those words the lines in Cesar's face were smoothed out, 
 but his joy alarmed Pillerault and Derville. The two fright- 
 ened women went away to cry in Cesarine's room. 
 
 " Now I can borrow on the property ! " exclaimed the per- 
 fumer. 
 
 " It would not be wise to do so," said Derville ; " they have 
 given notice of appeal, the Court-Royal may reverse the de- 
 cision, but we shall know in a month's time." 
 
 1 'A month ! " 
 
 Cesar sank into a lethargy, from which no one attempted 
 to rouse him. This species of intermittent catalepsy, during 
 which the body lives and suffers while the action of the mind 
 is suspended, this fortuitous respite from mental anguish, was 
 regarded as a godsend by Constance, Cesarine, Pillerault, and 
 Derville and they were right. In this way Birotteau was 
 able to recover from the wear and tear of the night's emotions. 
 He lay in a low chair by the fireside ; over against him sat 
 his wife, who watched him closely, with a sweet smile on her 
 lips one of those smiles which prove that women are nearer 
 to the angels than men, in that they can blend infinite ten- 
 derness with the most sincere compassion, a secret known 
 only to the angels whose presence is revealed to us in the 
 dreams providentially scattered at long intervals in the course 
 of human life. Cesarine, sitting on a footstool at her 
 mother's feet, now and again bent her head over her father's 
 hands and brushed them lightly with her hair, as if by this 
 caress she would fain communicate through the sense of touch 
 the thoughts which at such a time are importunate when ren- 
 dered by articulate speech.
 
 266 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Pillerault, that philosopher prepared for every emergency, 
 sat in his armchair, like the statue of the chancellor of the 
 hopital in the peristyle of the Chamber of Deputies, wearing 
 the same look of intelligence which is stamped on the features 
 of an Egyptian sphinx, and talked in a low voice with Der- 
 ville. Constance had recommended that the lawyer, whose 
 discretion was above suspicion, should be consulted. With 
 the schedule already drafted in her mind, she laid the situation 
 before Derville ; and after an hour's consultation or there- 
 about, held in the presence of the dozing perfumer, Derville 
 looked at Pillerault and shook his head. 
 
 "Madame," said he, with the pitiless coolness of a man 
 of business, " you must file your petition. Suppose that by 
 some means or other you should contrive to meet your 
 bills to-morrow, you must eventually pay at least three thou- 
 sand francs before you can borrow on the whole of your landed 
 property. To your liabilities, amounting to five hundred and 
 fifty thousand francs, you oppose assets consisting of a very 
 valuable and very promising piece of property which cannot 
 be realized you must give up in a given time, and it is better, 
 in my opinion, to jump from the window than to roll down 
 the stairs." 
 
 "I am of that opinion, too, my child," said Pillerault. 
 
 Mme. Cdsar and Pillerault both went to the door with Der- 
 ville. 
 
 "Poor father! " said Cesarine, rising softly to put a kiss 
 on Cesar's forehead. "Then could Anselme do nothing?" 
 she asked, when her mother and uncle came in again. 
 
 "The ungrateful boy!" cried Cesar. The name had 
 touched the one sensitive spot in his memory, like the string 
 of a piano resonant to the stroke of the hammer. 
 
 Little Popinot, meanwhile, since those words had been 
 hurled at him like an anathema, had not had a moment's 
 peace nor a wink of sleep. The hapless youth called down 
 maledictions on his uncle, and went in search of him. To in-
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 267 
 
 duce experience and legal acumen to capitulate, young Popi- 
 not poured forth all a lover's eloquence, hoping to work on 
 the feelings of a judge, but his words slid over the man of 
 law like water over oilcloth. 
 
 " Commercial usage," pleaded Anselme, " permits a sleep- 
 ing partner to draw to a certain extent upon his co-associate 
 on account of profits ; and in our partnership we ought to 
 put it in practice. After looking into my business all round, 
 I feel sure that I am good to pay forty thousand francs in 
 three months' time. Birotteau's honesty permits me to feel 
 confident that he will use the forty thousand francs to meet 
 his bills. So, if he fails, the creditors will have no reason 
 to complain of this action on our part. And, beside, uncle, I 
 would rather lose forty thousand francs than give up Cesarine. 
 At this moment, while I am speaking, she will have heard of 
 my refusal and I shall be lowered in her eyes. I said that I 
 would give my life for my benefactor ! I am in the case of 
 the young sailor who must go to the bottom with his captain 
 or the soldier who is bound to perish with his general." 
 
 "A good heart and a bad man of business; you will not 
 be lowered in my eyes," said the judge, grasping his nephew's 
 hand. " I have thought a good deal about this," he con- 
 tinued ; "I know that you love Cesarine to distraction; I 
 think that you can obey the laws of your heart without break- 
 ing the laws of commerce." 
 
 " Oh ! uncle, if you have found out a way, you will save 
 my honor." 
 
 " Lend Birotteau fifty thousand francs on his proprietary 
 interest in your Oil ; it has become, as it were, a piece of 
 property ; I will draw up the document for you." 
 
 Anselme embraced his uncle, went home, made out bills 
 for fifty thousand francs, and ran all the way from the Rue 
 des Cinq-Diamants to the Place Vendome ; so that at the 
 very moment when Cesarine, her mother, and Pillerault were 
 gazing at the perfumer, amazed by the sepulchral tone in
 
 268 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 which the words, " Ungrateful boy ! " were uttered in answer 
 to the girl's question, the drawing-room door opened and 
 Popinot appeared. 
 
 " My dearly beloved master," he said, wiping the perspi- 
 ration from his forehead, " here is the thing for which you 
 asked me." 
 
 He held out the bills. 
 
 " Yes. I have thought carefully over my position ; I shall 
 meet them, never fear ! Save your honor ! " 
 
 "I was quite sure of him," cried Cesarine, grasping Popi- 
 not's hand convulsively. 
 
 Mme. Cesar embraced Popinot. The perfumer rose out of 
 his chair, like the righteous at the sound of the last trump ; 
 he too was issuing from a tomb. Then with frenzied eager- 
 ness he clutched the fifty stamped papers. 
 
 " One moment ! " cried the stern Uncle Pillerault, snatch- 
 ing up Popinot's bills. " One moment ! " 
 
 The four persons composing this family group C6sar and 
 his wife, Cesarine and Popinot bewildered by their uncle's 
 interposition and by the tone in which he spoke, looked on 
 in terror while he tore the bills to pieces and flung them into 
 the fire, where they blazed up before any one of them could 
 stop him. 
 
 "Uncle!" 
 
 " Uncle ! " 
 
 "Uncle!" 
 
 "Sir!" 
 
 There were four voices and four hearts in one, a formidable 
 unanimity. Uncle Pillerault put an arm around little Popinot, 
 held him tightly to his heart, and put a kiss on his forehead. 
 
 "You deserve to be adored by any one who has a heart at 
 all," said he. "If you loved my daughter, and she had a 
 million, and you had nothing but that" (he pointed to the 
 blackened scraps of paper), " you should marry her in a fort- 
 night if she loved you. Your master," indicating Cesar, "is
 
 CLSAR BIROTTEAU. 269 
 
 mad. Now, nephew," Pillerault began gravely, addressing 
 the perfumer, " no more illusions ! Business must be carried 
 on with hard coin, and not with sentiments. This is sublime, 
 but it is useless. I have been on 'Change for a couple of 
 hours. No one will give you credit for two centimes ; every- 
 body is talking about your disaster; everybody knows that 
 you could not get renewals, that you went to more than one 
 banker and that they would have nothing to say to you, and 
 all your other follies ; it is known that you climbed six pairs 
 of stairs to ask a landlord who chatters like a jackdaw to 
 renew a bill for twelve hundred francs ; everybody says that 
 you gave a ball to hide your embarrassment. They will say 
 directly that you had no money deposited with Roguin. 
 Roguin is a blind, according to your enemies. One of my 
 friends, commissioned to report everything, has brought con- 
 firmation of my suspicions. Every one expects that you will 
 try to put Popinot's bills on the market ; in fact, you set him 
 up on purpose to tide you over your difficulties. In short, all 
 the gossip and slander usually set in motion by any man who 
 tries to mount a step in the social scale is going the round of 
 business circles at this moment. You would spend a week in 
 hawking Popinot's bills from place to place, you would meet 
 with humiliating refusals, and nobody would have anything to 
 do with them. There is nothing to show how many of them 
 you are issuing, and people look to see you sacrificing this 
 poor boy to save yourself. You would ruin Popinot's credit 
 in pure waste. Do you know how much the most sanguine 
 bill-discounter would give you for your fifty thousand francs? 
 Twenty thousand ; twenty thousand, do you understand ? 
 There are times in business when you must contrive to hold 
 out for three days without food, as if you had the indigestion, 
 and the fourth brings admission to the pantry of credit. You 
 cannot hold out for the three days, and therein lies the whole 
 position. But take heart, my poor nephew, you must file your 
 schedule. Here is Popinot, and here am I \ as soon as your
 
 270 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 assistants have gone to bed we will set to work to spare you 
 the misery of it." 
 
 "Uncle! " cried the wretched perfumer, clasping his 
 
 hands. 
 
 " Cesar, do you really mean to arrive at a fraudulent bank- 
 ruptcy with assets nil? Your interest in Popinot's business 
 saves your honor." 
 
 This last fatal light thrown on his position made it clear 
 to Cesar ; he saw the full extent of the hideous truth ; he 
 sank down into his low chair, and then on to his knees; 
 his mind wandered, he became a child again. His wife 
 thought the shock had killed him and knelt to raise him, 
 but she clung close to him when she saw him clasp his 
 hands and raise his eyes; and in spite of the presence of 
 his uncle, his daughter, and Popinot, he began with remorse- 
 ful resignation to repeat the sublime prayer of the church 
 on earth 
 
 " Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy 
 name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, 
 as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And 
 forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass 
 against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver 
 us from evil. Amen." 
 
 Tears filled Pillerault's stoical eyes, and Cesarine stood, 
 white and rigid as marble, with her tear-stained face hidden 
 on Anselme's shoulder. Then the old merchant took the 
 young man's arm, " Let us go downstairs," he said. 
 
 At half-past eleven they left Cesar in the care of his 
 wife and daughter. Just at that moment Cdlestin, who had 
 looked after the business during this storm, came upstairs 
 and opened the drawing-room door. Cesarine heard his 
 footsteps and hurried forward to place herself so as to screen 
 the prostrate master of the house. 
 
 "Among this evening's letters," he said, " there was one 
 from Tours, the direction was not clear, it has been delayed.
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 271 
 
 I thought it might be from the master's brother, so I did 
 not open it." 
 
 "Father," cried Cesarine, "there is a letter from uncle 
 at Tours." 
 
 "Ah! I am saved!" exclaimed Cesar. "My brother! 
 my brother ! ' ' and he kissed the letter, which ran thus : 
 
 Francois Birotteau to Cesar Birotteau. 
 
 " TOURS, 1 7th. 
 
 " MY BELOVED BROTHER: Your letter has given me the 
 keenest distress; and so when I had read it, I offered up 
 to God on your behalf the holy sacrifice of the mass, pray- 
 ing Him, by the blood shed for us by our divine Redeemer, 
 to look mercifully upon you in your affliction. And now 
 that I have put up my prayer pro meo fratre Ccesare, my 
 eyes are filled with tears to think that by misfortune I am 
 separated from you at a time when you must need the 
 support of a brother's affection. But then I bethought me 
 that the worthy and venerated M. Pillerault will doubtless 
 fill my place. My dear Cesar, in the midst of your troubles, 
 do not forget that this life of ours is a life of trial and a 
 transition state ; that one day we shall be rewarded if we 
 have suffered for the holy name of God, for His Holy Church, 
 for putting in practice the doctrines of the Gospel, or for 
 leading a virtuous life ; if it were not so, the things of this 
 present world would be unintelligible. I repeat these words, 
 though I know how good and pious you are, because it may 
 happen to those who, like you, are tossed by the tempests of 
 this world and launched upon the perilous seas of human con- 
 cerns, to be led to blaspheme in their distresses, distracted as 
 they are by pain. Do not curse the men who will wound 
 you, nor God, who mingles bitterness with your life at His 
 will. Look not on the earth, but rather keep your eyes lifted 
 to heaven ; thence comes comfort for the weak, the riches of 
 the poor are there, and the fears of the rich "
 
 272 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 "Oh, Birotteau," interrupted his wife, "just miss that out 
 and see if he is sending us anything." 
 
 "We will often read it over," said her husband, drying his 
 eyes. He opened the letter and a draft on the Treasury fell 
 out. "I was quite sure of him, poor brother," said Birot- 
 teau, picking up the draft. 
 
 "I went to see Mme. de Listomere," he continued, reading 
 in a voice choked with tears, " and without giving a reason 
 for my request, I begged her to lend me all that she could 
 spare, so as to swell the amount of my savings. Her gen- 
 erosity enables me to make up the sum of a thousand francs, 
 which I send you in the form of a draft by the receiver- 
 general of Tours upon the Treasury. ' ' 
 
 "A handsome advance!" said Constance, looking at 
 C6sarine. 
 
 " By retrenching some superfluities in my way of living, I 
 shall be able to repay Mme. de Listomere the money I have 
 borrowed of her in three years' time ; so do not trouble about 
 it, my dear Cesar. I am sending you all that I have in the 
 world, with the wish that the sum may assist you to bring 
 your difficulties to a happy termination ; doubtless they are 
 but momentary. I know your delicacy, and wish to anticipate 
 your scruples. Do not dream of paying any interest on the 
 amount, nor of returning it in the day of prosperity, which 
 will dawn for you before long, if God deigns to grant the 
 petitions which I make daily for you. After your last letter, 
 received two years ago, I thought that you were rich, and 
 that I might give my savings to the poor; but now all that I 
 have belongs to you. When you have weathered this passing 
 squall, keep the money for my niece Cesarine, so that when 
 she is established in life she may spend it on some trifle which 
 will remind her of an old uncle whose hands are always
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 273 
 
 raised to heaven to implore God's blessing upon her, and for 
 all those who shall be dear to her. Bear in mind, in fact, 
 dear Cesar, that I am a poor priest, living by the grace of 
 God, as the wild-birds live in the fields, walking quietly in 
 my own path, striving to keep the commandments of our 
 divine Saviour, and consequently needing but little. So do 
 not have the least hesitation in your difficult position, and 
 think of me as one who loves you tenderly. Our excellent 
 Abbe Chapeloud (to whom I have not said a word about your 
 strait) knows that I am writing to you, and wishes me to send 
 the most kindly messages to all your family, with wishes for 
 your continued prosperity. May God vouchsafe to preserve 
 you and your wife and daughter in good health ; and I pray 
 for patience to you all and courage in the day of adversity. 
 
 " FRANCOIS BIROTTEAU. 
 
 " Priest of the Cathedral Church of Tours and Vicar of the 
 Parish Church of Saint-Gatien." 
 
 "A thousand francs! " cried Mme. Birotteau, in vehement 
 anger. 
 
 " Lock it up," C6sar said gravely ; " it is all he has. Beside, 
 it belongs to our Cesarine, and should enable us to live with- 
 out asking anything of our creditors." 
 
 "And then they will believe that you have taken away 
 large sums." 
 
 "I shall show them his letter." 
 
 " They will say that it is a fraud." 
 
 " Oh ! my God ! my God ! " cried Cesar, appalled at this; 
 " I have often thought that very thing of poor folk who, no 
 doubt, were just in my position." 
 
 Mother and daughter were both too anxious about Csar to 
 leave him, and they sewed on by his side. There was a deep 
 silence. At two o'clock in the morning the drawing-room 
 door was softly opened and Popinot beckoned to Mme. Cesar
 
 274 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 to come downstairs. At the sight of his niece, who had 
 followed him into the store, Uncle Pillerault took off his 
 spectacles. 
 
 " There is hope yet, my child," he said ; "all is not over; 
 but your husband could not stand the strain of the ups and 
 downs of this business, so Popinot and I will try to arrange 
 it. Do not leave the store to-morrow, and take down the 
 names of all the holders of the bills ; we have all the day till 
 four o'clock. This is my idea : There is nothing to fear from 
 Ragon or from me. Suppose now that Roguin had paid over 
 to the vendors the hundred thousand francs you deposited 
 with him in that case, you would no more have them than 
 you have them to-day. You have to meet bills to the amount 
 of a hundred and forty thousand francs, payable to Claparon's 
 order ; you must pay them anyhow, so it is not Roguin's 
 bankruptcy which is ruining you. Now, to meet your liabili- 
 ties, I see forty thousand francs to be borrowed sooner or 
 later on your factory, and sixty thousand francs in Popinot's 
 bills. So you may struggle through ; for, once through, you 
 can raise money on that building land by the Madeleine. If 
 your principal creditor agrees to help you, I shall not consider 
 my fortune ; I will sell my rentes; I shall be without bread ; 
 Popinot will be between life and death ; and, as for you, you 
 will be at the mercy of the smallest events. But the Oil will 
 give a good return, no doubt. Popinot and I have been con- 
 sulting together ; we will support you in this struggle. Oh, 
 I will eat my dry bread gaily, if success dawns on the hori- 
 zon. But everything depends on Gigonnet and on Claparon 
 and his associates. We are going to see Gigonnet between 
 seven and eight, Popinot and I, and then we shall know what 
 to make of their intentions." 
 
 Constance, carried away by her feelings, put her arms about 
 her uncle, and could not speak for tears and sobs. Neither 
 Popinot nor Pillerault could know that Bidault, alias Gigon- 
 net, and Claparon were but two of du Tillet's doubles, and
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 275 
 
 that du Tillet had set his heart upon reading this terrible 
 paragraph in the " Gazette: " 
 
 " Decree of the Tribunal of Commerce. M. Cesar Birot- 
 teau, wholesale perfumer, of 397 Rue Saint-Honore, Paris, 
 declared a bankrupt, date provisionally fixed, i6th of January, 
 1819. Registrar: M. Gobenheim-Keller. Agent: M. Moli- 
 neux." 
 
 Anselme and Pillerault studied Cesar's affairs till daylight 
 came, and at eight o'clock that morning the two heroic com- 
 rades, the old veteran and the subaltern of yesterday, neither 
 of whom was destined to experience on his own account the 
 dreadful agony of mind endured by those who go up and 
 down the stairs of Bidault, otherwise Gigonnet, betook them- 
 selves without a word to the Rue Grenetat. It was a painful 
 time for both of them. More than once Pillerault passed his 
 hand over his forehead. 
 
 In the Rue Grenetat multifarious small trades are carried 
 on in every overcrowded house. Every building has a repul- 
 sive aspect. The hideousness of these houses has a distinct 
 quality of its own, in which the mean squalor of a poor indus- 
 trial neighborhood predominates. 
 
 Old Gigonnet inhabited the fourth floor in one of these 
 houses. All the windows, with their dirty, square panes of 
 glass, were secured to the frames by pivots, and tilted to 
 admit the air ; you walked straight up the staircase from the 
 street, and the porter lived in the box on the mezzanine floor 
 lighted from the staircase. Every one in the house, except 
 Gigonnet, plied some handicraft ; workmen came and went 
 all day long. Every step on the stairs, where filth was al- 
 lowed to accumulate, was plastered over with a coating of 
 mud, hard or soft, according to the state of the weather. 
 Each landing on this fetid stair displayed the name of some 
 craftsman painted in gilt letters on a sheet of iron, which was
 
 276 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 painted red and varnished, and some sample of the man's 
 achievements in his trade. The doors, for the most part, 
 stood ajar, affording glimpses of grotesque combinations of 
 industry and domestic life ; the sounds which issued thence, 
 snatches of song, yells, whistlings, and uncouth growls re- 
 called the noises heard at the Jardin des Plantes toward four 
 o'clock. The smartest braces for the trade in the article Paris 
 were being made in a loathsome den on the first floor ; on 
 the second, among heaps of the most unsavory litter, the 
 manufacture of the dantiest cardboard boxes, displayed at 
 the New Year in store windows, was carried on. Gigonnet, 
 who was worth eighteen hundred thousand francs, lived and 
 died on the fourth floor in this house. Nothing would induce 
 him to leave it, although his niece, Mme. Saillard, offered 
 him rooms in a mansion in the Place Royale. 
 
 "Courage!" said Pillerault, as he jerked the cord of the 
 lever bell-pull that hung by Gigonnet's neat gray-painted 
 door. 
 
 Gigonnet himself opened it, and the perfumer's two cham- 
 pions in the lists of bankruptcy went through a formal, chilly- 
 looking room, with curtainless windows, and entered a second, 
 where all three seated themselves. 
 
 The bill-discounter took up his position before a grate full 
 of ashes, in which the wood maintained a stubborn resistance 
 to the flames. The sight of his green cardboard cases and 
 the monastic austerity of the office, windy as a cave, sent a 
 cold chill through Popinot. His dazed eyes wandered over 
 the pattern of the cheap wall-paper tricolor flowers on a bluish 
 background which had been hung some five-and-twenty years 
 back ; and turned from that depressing sight to the ornaments 
 on the chimney-piece, a lyre-shaped clock and oval vases, blue 
 Sevres ware, handsomely mounted in gilt copper. This bit of 
 flotsam, recovered by Gigonnet from the wreck of Versailles, 
 when the palace was sacked by the populace, came from a 
 queen's boudoir, but the magnificent-looking ornaments were
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 277 
 
 flanked by a couple of wrought-iron candlesticks of the com- 
 monest description, a harsh contrast which continually re- 
 minded the beholder of the manner in which their owner had 
 come by those royal splendors. 
 
 " I know that you cannot come on your own account," said 
 Gigonnet, " but for the great Birotteau. Well, what is it, my 
 friends?" 
 
 "I know that you have nothing to learn, so we will be 
 brief," said Pillerault. " Have you his bills payable to Cla- 
 paron ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Will you exchange the first fifty thousand francs that will 
 fall due for bills accepted by Monsieur Popinot here, less the 
 discount, of course ? " 
 
 Gigonnet lifted the terrible green cap, which seemed to 
 have been born with him, and displayed a bald butter-colored 
 pate, then with a Voltairean grin 
 
 "You want to pay me in oil for hair," he remarked, "and 
 what should I do with it ? " 
 
 "When you joke, it is time for us to take ourselves off," 
 said Pillerault. 
 
 "You speak like the sensible man that you are," said 
 Gigonnet, with a flattering smile. 
 
 " Very well, and how if I back Monsieur Popinot's bills? " 
 asked Pillerault, making a final effort. 
 
 "You are as good as gold ingots, Monsieur Pillerault; 
 but I have no use for gold ingots, all that I want is current 
 coin." 
 
 Pillerault and Popinot took their leave and went. Even 
 at the foot of the staircase Popinot's knees still shook under 
 him. 
 
 " Is he a man ? " he asked of Pillerault. 
 
 " People say so," answered the older one. " Keep this 
 little interview always in mind, Anselme ! You have seen 
 what money-lending is, stripped of its masquerade and palaver.
 
 278 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Some unforeseen event turns the screw upon us, and we are 
 the grapes and bill-discounters the barrels. This specula- 
 tion in building land is a good piece of business, no doubt ; 
 Gigonnet, or somebody behind him, has a mind to cut Cesar's 
 throat and to step into his shoes. That is all ; there is no help 
 for it now. And this is what comes of borrowing money ; 
 never resort to it." 
 
 It had been a dreadful morning for Mme. Birotteau. For 
 the first time she had taken the addresses of those who came 
 for money, and had sent away the bank collector without 
 paying him ; yet the brave woman was glad to spare her hus- 
 band these humiliations. Toward eleven o'clock she saw 
 Pillerault and Anselme returning; she had been expecting 
 them with ever-increasing anxiety, and now she read her 
 doom in their faces. There was no help for it, the schedule 
 must be filed. 
 
 " He will die of grief," said the poor wife. 
 
 " I could wish that he might," said Pillerault gravely; "but 
 he is so devout that, as things stand, his director the Abb6 
 Loraux alone can save him." 
 
 Pillerault, Popinot, and Constance remained below, while 
 one of the assistants went for the Abbe Loraux. The abb6 
 should prepare Birotteau for the schedule which Celestin was 
 copying out fair for his master's signature. The assistants 
 were in despair ; they loved their employer. At four o'clock 
 the good priest came. Constance told him all the details of 
 the calamity which had befallen them, and the abb6 went up- 
 stairs like a soldier mounting to the breach. 
 
 "I know why you have come," C6sar exclaimed. 
 
 " My son," said the priest, " your sentiments of submission 
 to the divine will have long been known to me, now you are 
 called upon to put them in practice. Keep your eyes fixed 
 ever upon the cross, contemplate the cross without ceasing, 
 and think of the cup of humiliation of which the Saviour of 
 men was compelled to drink, think of the anguish of His
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 279 
 
 passion, and thus you may endure the mortifications sent to 
 you by God " 
 
 "My brother, the abbe, has already prepared me," said 
 Cesar, holding out the letter, which he read over again, to 
 his confessor. 
 
 "You have a good brother," said M. Loraux, "a virtuous 
 and sweet-natured wife, and a loving daughter, two real 
 friends in your uncle and dear Anselme, two indulgent 
 creditors in the Ragons. All these kind hearts will pour 
 balm into your wounds continually, and will help you to 
 carry your cross. Promise me to bear yourself with a 
 martyr's courage and to take the blow without wincing." 
 
 The abbe coughed, a signal to Pillerault in the next room. 
 
 "My submission is unlimited," said Cesar calmly. "Dis- 
 grace has come upon me ; I ought only to think of making 
 reparation." 
 
 C6sarine and the priest were both very much surprised by 
 poor Birotteau's tone and look. And yet nothing was more 
 natural. Every man bears a definitely known misfortune 
 better than suspense and constant alternations of excessive 
 joy at one moment, followed on the next by the last extremity 
 of anguish. 
 
 "I have been dreaming for twenty-two years," he said, 
 "and to-day I wake to find myself staff in hand again." 
 Cesar had once more become the Tourangeau peasant. 
 
 At these words Pillerault held his nephew tightly in his 
 arms. Cesar looked up and saw his wife and C6lestin, the 
 latter with significant documents in his hands; then he 
 glanced calmly round the group; all the eyes that met his 
 were sad but friendly. 
 
 " One moment ! " he said, and unfastening his cross of the 
 Legion of Honor, which he gave to the Abbe Loraux, "you 
 will give that back to me when I can wear it without a blush. 
 Celestin," he continued, turning to his assistant, "send in 
 my resignation ; I am no longer deputy-mayor. The abb6
 
 280 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 will dictate the letter to you, date it January i4th, and send 
 Raguet with it to Monsieur de la Billardiere." 
 
 Celestin and the Abbe Loraux went downstairs. For 
 nearly a quarter of an hour perfect silence prevailed in Cesar's 
 study. Such firmness took the family by surprise. Celestin 
 and the abbe came back again, and Cesar signed the letter of 
 resignation ; but when Pillerault laid the schedule before 
 him poor Birotteau could not repress a dreadful nervous 
 tremor. 
 
 " Oh, God ! have mercy upon us ! " he said, as he signed 
 the terrible instrument and handed it to Celestin. 
 
 Then Anselme Popinot spoke, and a gleam of light crossed 
 his clouded brow. " Monsieur and Madame," he said, "will 
 you grant me the honor of mademoiselle's hand ? " 
 
 This speech brought tears into the eyes of all who heard it ; 
 Cesar alone rose to his feet, took Anselme's hand, and said 
 in a hollow voice, but with dry eyes, " My boy, you shall 
 never marry a bankrupt's daughter." 
 
 Anselme looked Birotteau steadily in the face. 
 
 "Will you promise, sir, in the presence of your whole 
 family, to consent to our marriage, if mademoiselle will take 
 me for her husband, on the day when you shall have paid all 
 your creditors in full? " 
 
 There was a moment's pause. Every one felt the influence 
 of the emotion recorded in the perfumer's weary face. 
 
 "Yes," he said at last. 
 
 Anselme stretched out his hand to Cesarine with an inde- 
 scribable gesture ; she gave him hers, and he kissed it. 
 
 " Do you also consent ? " he asked her. 
 
 "Yes," she said. 
 
 "So, I'm really one of the family. I have a right to in- 
 terest myself in your affairs," was his comment, with an 
 enigmatical look. 
 
 Anselme hurried away lest he should betray a joy in too 
 great contrast with his master's trouble. Anselme was not
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 281 
 
 exactly delighted with the bankruptcy ; but so absolute, so 
 egoistical is love, that Cesarine herself in her inmost heart 
 felt a glow of happiness strangely at variance with her bitter 
 distress of mind. 
 
 " While we are about it, let us strike every blow at once," 
 said Pillerault in Constance's ear. 
 
 An involuntary gesture, a sign not of assent, but of sorrow, 
 was Mme. Birotteau's answer. 
 
 "What do you mean to do, nephew?" said Pillerault, 
 turning to Cesar. 
 
 "To continue the business." 
 
 "I am not of that opinion," said Pillerault. " Go into 
 liquidation, let your assets go to your creditors in the shape of 
 dividend, and go out of business altogether. I have often 
 thought what I should do if I were placed in a similar posi- 
 tion. (Oh! you must be prepared for everything! The 
 merchant who does not contemplate possible insolvency is 
 like a general who does not lay his account with a defeat ; he 
 is only half a merchant.) I myself should never have gone 
 on again. What ! Be compelled to blush before men whom 
 I should have wronged, to endure their suspicious looks and 
 unspoken reproaches? I can think of the guillotine in one 
 instant all is over ; but to carry a head on your shoulders to 
 have it cut off daily is a kind of torture from which I should 
 escape. Plenty of men begin again as though nothing had 
 happened ; so much the better for them ! they are braver 
 than Claude-Joseph Pillerault. If you pay your way (and pay 
 ready money you must) people will say that you managed to 
 save something for yourself; and if you have not a halfpenny, 
 you will never recover. 'Tis good-evening to you. Surren- 
 der your assets, let them sell you up, and do something else." 
 
 " But what ? " asked Cesar. 
 
 "Eh ! try for a place under the Government," said Piller- 
 ault] "you have influence, have you not? There are the 
 Due and Duchesse de Lenoncourt, Madame de Mortsauf,
 
 282 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Monsieur de Vandenesse ! Write to them, go to see them, 
 they will find you some post in the household, with a thou- 
 sand crowns or so hanging to it ; your wife will earn as much 
 again ; your daughter, perhaps, may do the same. The case 
 is not desperate. You three among you will earn something 
 like ten thousand francs a year. In ten years' time you will 
 be in a position to pay a hundred thousand francs, for you 
 will have no expenses meanwhile ; your womankind shall have 
 fifteen hundred francs from me ; and, as for you, we shall see." 
 
 It was Constance, and not Cesar, who pondered these wise 
 words, and Pillerault went on 'Change. At that time stock- 
 brokers used to congregate in a provisional structure of planks 
 and scaffolding, a large circular room, with an entrance in 
 the Rue Feydeau. The perfumer's failure was already known 
 and had created a sensation in high commercial circles, for 
 their prevailing politics were constitutional at that time. 
 Birotteau was a conspicuous personage, and envied by many. 
 Merchants, on the other hand, who leaned toward Liberalism, 
 regarded Birotteau's too celebrated ball as an audacious at- 
 tempt to trade on their sentiments, for the Opposition were 
 fain to monopolize patriotism. Royalists were allowed to 
 love the King, but the love of their country was the exclusive 
 privilege of the Left, the Left was for the people ; and those 
 in power had no right to rejoice thus vicariously through the 
 administration, in a national event which the Liberals meant 
 to exploit for their own benefit. For which reasons the fall 
 of a Ministerialist in favor at Court, of an incorrigible Roy- 
 alist who had insulted Liberty by fighting against the glorious 
 French Revolution on Vend6miaire i3th, set all tongues 
 wagging on 'Change, and was received with almost universal 
 applause. 
 
 Pillerault wanted to know what was being said, and to study 
 public opinion. He went up to one of the most eager groups ; 
 du Tillet, Gobenheim-Keller, Nucingen, old Guillaume and 
 his son-in-law Joseph Lebas, Claparon, Gigonnet, Mongenod,
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 283 
 
 Camusot, Gobseck, Adolphe Keller, Palma, Chiffreville, Mati- 
 fat, Grindot, and Lourdois were discussing the news. 
 
 "Well, well, how careful one had need to be!" said 
 Gobenheim, addressing du Tillet; "my brothers-in-law all 
 but opened an account with Birotteau, it was a near thing." 
 
 " I am let in for ten thousand francs myself," said du Tillet ; 
 " he came to me a fortnight ago and I let him have the money 
 on his bare signature. But he obliged me once, and I shall 
 lose it without regret." 
 
 "Your nephew is like the rest," said Lourdois, addressing 
 Pillerault. "Gave entertainments. I can imagine that a 
 rogue might try to throw dust in your eyes to induce confi- 
 dence ; but how could a man who passed for the cream of 
 honest folk descend to the stale mountebank's trickery that 
 never fails to catch us?" 
 
 "Like leeches," commented Gobseck. 
 
 " Only trust a man if he lives in a den like Claparon," said 
 Gigonnet. 
 
 "Veil," said the stout Baron Nucingen, for du Tillet's 
 benefit, " you haf dried to blay me a nice drick, sending 
 Pirodot to me. I do not know," he went . on, turning to 
 Gobenheim the manufacturer, "why he did not send rount to 
 me for vifty tousend vrancs ; I should haf led him haf dem." 
 
 "Oh! not you, Monsieur le Baron," said Joseph Lebas. 
 " You must have known quite well that the bank had refused 
 his paper ; you were on the Discount Committee which de- 
 clined it. This poor man, for whom I still feel a very great 
 respect, fails under singular circumstances " 
 
 Pillerault grasped Joseph Lebas' hand. 
 
 "It is, in fact, impossible to explain how the thing has 
 happened," said Mongenod, " except by the theory that there 
 is some one behind Gigonnet, some banker whose intention 
 it is to spoil the Madeleine speculation." 
 
 "The thing which has happened to him always happens to 
 people who go out of their own line," said Claparon, inter-
 
 284 CESAR BIRO'lTEAU. 
 
 rupting Mongenod. " If he had brought out his Cephalic Oil 
 himself, instead of sending up the price of building lots in 
 Paris by rushing into land speculation, he would have lost his 
 hundred thousand francs through Roguin, but he would not 
 have gone bankrupt. He will start afresh under the name of 
 Popinot." 
 
 "Keep an eye on Popinot," said Gigonnet. 
 
 According to this crowd of merchants, Roguin was " poor 
 Roguin;" the perfumer was that "unlucky Birotteau." A 
 great passion seemed to excuse the one, the other appeared 
 the more to blame on account of his pretensions. Gigonnet 
 left the Exchange and took the Rue Perrin-Gasselin on his 
 way home to the Rue Grentat. He looked in on Mme. 
 Madou, the dry-fruit saleswoman. 
 
 "Well, old lady," said he, with his cruel good humor, 
 " and how are we getting on in our way of business ? " 
 
 "Middling," said Mme. Madou respectfully, and she 
 offered the money-lender her only armchair with a friendly 
 officiousness which she had never shown to any one else but 
 the dear departed. 
 
 Mother Madou, who would fell a carman with a blow if he 
 were refractory or carried a joke too far, who had not feared 
 to assist at the storming of the Tuileries on the loth of Octo- 
 ber, who railed at her best customers (for that matter, she was 
 capable of heading a deputation of the Dames de la Halle, 
 and speaking to the King himself without a tremor) Ang6_ 
 lique Madou received Gigonnet with the utmost respect. She 
 was helpless in his presence ; she winced under his hard eyes. 
 It will be a long while yet before the executioner ceases to be 
 a terror to the people, and Gigonnet was the executioner of 
 the small traders. The man who sets money in circulation is 
 more looked up to in the Great Market than any other power ; 
 all other human institutions are as naught compared with him. 
 For them the Commissaire is Justice personified, and with the 
 Commissaire they of the Market become familiar. But the
 
 CSAX BIROTTEAU. 235 
 
 sight of the money-lender intrenched behind his green card- 
 board cases, of the usurer whom they implore with fear in 
 their hearts, dries up the sources of wit, parches the throat, 
 and abashes the bold eyes ; the people grow respectful in his 
 presence. 
 
 " Have you come to ask something of me? " said she. 
 
 " A mere trifle ; be prepared to refund the amount of Birot- 
 teau's bills, the old man has gone bankrupt, so all outstanding 
 claims must be sent in ; I shall send you in a statement to- 
 morrow." 
 
 The pupils of Mme. Madou's eyes first contracted like the 
 eyes of a cat, then flames leaped forth from them. 
 
 " O the beggar ! O the scamp ! and he came here himself 
 to tell me that he was deputy-mayor, piling on his lies. The 
 Lord ha* mercy ! That's just the way with business ; there 
 is no trusting mayors nowadays; the Government cheats us! 
 You wait, I will have the money out of them, I will " 
 
 " Eh ! every one comes out of this sort of thing the best 
 way he can, my little dear ! " said Gigonnet, lifting one leg 
 with the precise little gesture of a cat picking its way among 
 puddles, a trick to which he owed his nickname.* " Some 
 swells have been let in who mean to get themselves out of the 
 scrape " 
 
 " Good ! good ! I will get my hazelnuts out. Marie 
 Jeanne ! my clogs and my lamb's-wool shawl. Quick ! or I 
 will lend you a clout that will warm your cheeks." 
 
 "That will make it hot for them yonder up the street," 
 said Gigonnet to himself, as he rubbed his hands. " Du 
 Tillet will be satisfied ; there will be a scandal in the quarter. 
 What that poor devil of a perfumer can have done to him, I 
 don't know ; for my own part, I am as sorry for the man as 
 fora dog with a broken paw. He isn't a man ; he has no 
 fight in him." 
 
 Mme. Madou broke out like an insurrection in the Fau- 
 * Gigonnet, from Gigotter, to kick the legs about.
 
 286 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 bourg Saint-Antoine toward seven o'clock that evening, and 
 swept to the luckless Birotteau's door, which she opened with 
 unnecessary violence, for her walk had had an exciting effect. 
 
 "Brood of vermin, I must have my money, I want my 
 money ! You give me my money ! or I will have sachets and 
 satin gimcracks and fans till I have the worth of my two thou- 
 sand francs ! A mayor robbing the people ! Did any one 
 ever see the like? If you don't pay me, I will send him to 
 jail ; I will go for the public prosecutor ; I will put the whole 
 posse of them on his tracks ! I do not stir from here without 
 my money, in fact." 
 
 She looked as if she would open the glass-door of a cup- 
 board in which expensive goods were kept. 
 
 "The Madou is about helping herself," said Celestin in a 
 low voice to his neighbor. The lady overheard the remark, 
 for during a paroxysm of rage the senses are either deadened 
 or preternaturally alert, according to the temperament. She 
 bestowed on Celestin the most vigorous box on the ear ever 
 given and received in a perfumer's store. 
 
 " Learn to respect women, my cherub," quoth she, " and 
 not to bedraggle the names of the people you rob." 
 
 Mme. Birotteau came forward from the back-store. Her 
 husband by chance was also there ; in spite of Pillerault he 
 chose to remain, carrying his humility and obedience to the 
 law so far as to be ready to submit to be put in prison. 
 " Madame," said Constance, "for heaven's sake, do not bring 
 a crowd together in the street." 
 
 "Eh! let them come in," cried the saleswoman, "I will 
 tell them about it ; it will make them laugh ! Yes, my goods 
 and the francs I made by the sweat of my brow go for you to 
 give balls. You go dressed like a queen of France, forsooth, 
 and fleece poor lambs like me for the wool ! Jesus / stolen 
 goods would burn my shoulders, I know ! I have nothing but 
 shoddy on my carcase, but it is my own ! Bandits and thieves ! 
 my money, or "
 
 / MUST HAVE MY MONEY, / WAHT MY
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 287 
 
 She pounced upon a pretty inlaid case full of costly per- 
 fumery. 
 
 "Leave it alone, madame," said Cesar, appearing on the 
 scene ; " nothing here belongs to me, it is all the property of 
 my creditors. I have nothing left but myself; and if you have 
 a mind to seize me and put me in jail, I give you my word of 
 honor" (a tear overflowed his eyes at this) "that I will 
 wait here for your process-server, police-officer, and bailiffs 
 men." 
 
 From his tone and gesture, he evidently meant to do as he 
 said ; Mme. Madou's anger died down. 
 
 "A notary has absconded with my money, and the disasters 
 which I cause come through no fault of mine," Cesar went 
 on; "but in time you shall be paid, if I have to work 
 myself to death and earn the money by my hands as a market- 
 porter." 
 
 "Come, you are a good man," said the market-woman. 
 " Excuse my speaking, madame ; but I shall have to fling 
 myself into the river, for Gigonnet will be down upon me, and 
 I have nothing but bills at ten months to give for your cursed 
 paper. ' ' 
 
 " Come round and see me to-morrow morning," said Pille- 
 rault, coming forward ; " I will arrange the business for you at 
 five per cent, with a friend of mine." 
 
 "Well! that is good Father Pillerault ! Why, yes, he is 
 your uncle," she went on, turning to Constance. "Come, 
 now, you are honest folk; I shall not lose anything, shall I? 
 Good-by till to-morrow, old Brutus," she added, for the ben- 
 efit of the retired hardware merchant. 
 
 Cesar insisted on remaining amid the ruins of his glory and 
 would hear of no other course ; he said that by so doing he 
 could explain his position to all his creditors. In this deter- 
 mination Uncle Pillerault upheld Cesar in spite of the entreaties 
 of his niece. Cesar was persuaded to go upstairs, and then 
 the wily old man hurried to M. Haudry, put Cedar's case
 
 288 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 before him, obtained a prescription for a sleeping-draught, had 
 it made up, and went back to spend the evening in his nephew's 
 house. With Cesarine's assistance he constrained Cesar to 
 drink as they did ; the narcotic did its work ; and fourteen 
 hours later Birotteau awoke to find himself in Pillerault's own 
 bedroom in the Rue des Bourdonnais, a prisoner in the house 
 of his uncle, who slept on a camp bedstead put up in the 
 sitting-room. 
 
 When Pillerault had put Cesar into the cab, and Constance 
 had heard it roll away, then her courage failed her. Our 
 strength is often called forth by the necessity of sustaining 
 some one weaker than ourselves ; and the poor woman, now 
 that she was left alone with her daughter, wept as she would 
 have wept for Cesar if he had been lying dead. 
 
 "Mamma," said Cesarine, seating herself on her mother's 
 knee, with the gracious kitten-like ways that women only 
 display for each other, "you said that if I bore my part 
 bravely, you would be able to face adversity. So do not 
 cry, mother dear. I am ready to work in a store; I will 
 forget what we have been ; I will be a forewoman, as you were 
 when you were a girl ; you shall never hear a regret or a com- 
 plaint from me. And I have a hope. Did you not hear 
 Monsieur Popinot ?" 
 
 " Dear boy ! he shall not be my son-in-law." 
 
 "Oh! mamma " 
 
 " He will be my own son." 
 
 "There is this one good thing about trouble, it teaches us 
 to know our real friends," said Cesarine; and, changing 
 places with her mother, she at last comforted her and soothed 
 the poor woman's grief. 
 
 The next morning Constance left a note for the Due de 
 Lenoncourt, one of the first gentlemen of the bedchamber. 
 She asked for an interview at a certain hour. Meanwhile, 
 she went to M. dela Billardiere, told him of the predicament 
 in which Cesar found himself in consequence of Roguin's
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 289 
 
 flight from the country, and begged the mayor to give her 
 his support with the Duke and to speak for her, for she 
 feared that she might express herself ill. She wanted some 
 post for Birotteau. Birotteau would be the most honest of 
 cashiers, if there are degrees in the quality of honesty. 
 
 "The King has just appointed the Comte de Fontaine as 
 comptroller-general of the royal household ; there is no time 
 to be lost." 
 
 At two o'clock La Billardiere and Mme. Cesar ascended 
 the great staircase of the Hotel de Lenoncourt in the Rue 
 Saint-Dominique, and were brought into the presence of one 
 of the nobles highest in the King's favor, in so far as Louis 
 XVIII. could be said to have preferences. The gracious 
 reception accorded to her by a great noble, one of the little 
 group who formed a connecting link between the eighteenth- 
 century noblesse and those of the nineteenth, put hope into 
 Mme. Cesar. The perfumer's wife was great and simple in 
 her sorrow ; sorrow ennobles the most commonplace natures, 
 for it has a grandeur of its own, but only those who are true 
 and sincere can take its polish. Constance was essentially 
 sincere. It was a question of prompt application to the 
 King. 
 
 In the midst of the discussion, M. de Vandenesse was 
 announced. 
 
 " Here is your deliverer," exclaimed the Duke. 
 
 Mme. Birotteau was not unknown to the young man, who 
 had been once or twice to the perfumer's store for those trifles 
 which are as often of as much importance as great things. 
 The Duke explained La Billardiere's views ; and, when Van- 
 denesse learned the disasters, he went immediately with La 
 Billardiere to see the Comte de Fontaine on behalf of the 
 Marquise d'Uxelles' godson. Mme. Birotteau was asked to 
 await the result. 
 
 M. le Comte de Fontaine, like La Billardiere, was one of 
 the provincial noblesse, the almost unknown heroes of La 
 19
 
 290 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Vendee. Birotteau was no stranger to him, for he had seen 
 the perfumer at the Queen of Roses in former days. At that 
 time, those who had shed their blood for the Royalist cause 
 enjoyed privileges, which the King kept secret for fear of 
 hurting Liberal susceptibilities, and M. de Fontaine, one of 
 the King's favorites, was supposed to be in the confidence of 
 Louis XVIII. Not only did this influential person definitely 
 promise to obtain a post for the perfumer, but he went to the 
 Due de Lenoncourt, then in attendance, to ask him for a 
 moment's speech with the King that evening, and to entreat 
 for La Billardiere an audience with Monsieur the King's 
 brother, who had a particular regard for the old Vendean. 
 
 That very evening M. le Comte de Fontaine came from the 
 Tuileries to inform Mme. Birotteau that, as soon as her hus- 
 band had received his discharge, he would be appointed to a 
 post worth two thousand five hundred francs per annum in 
 the Sinking Fund Department, all places in the household 
 being at that time filled with noble supernumeraries to whom 
 the Royalist family were bound. 
 
 This success was but a part of the task undertaken by Mme. 
 Birotteau. The poor woman went to Joseph Lebas at the 
 sign of the Cat and Racket in the Rue Saint-Denis. On the 
 way thither she met Mme. Roguin in her showy carriage, 
 doubtless on a shopping expedition. Their eyes met, and the 
 visible confusion on the beautiful face of the notary's wife, at 
 this meeting with the woman who had been brought to ruin, 
 gave Constance courage. 
 
 " Never will I drive in a carriage paid for with other peo- 
 ple's money," said she to herself. 
 
 Welcomed by Joseph Lebas, she asked him to look for a 
 situation for her daughter in some respectable house of business. 
 Lebas made no promises, but a week later it was arranged that 
 Cesarine should be placed in a branch of one of the largest 
 dry goods establishments in Paris, which had just been opened 
 in the Quartier des Italiens. She was to live in the house,
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 291 
 
 and to take charge of the store and counting-room, with a 
 salary of three thousand francs. She would represent the 
 master and mistress, and the forewoman was to act under her 
 orders. 
 
 As for Mme. Cesar herself, she went on the same day to 
 ask Popinot to allow her to take charge of the books, the cor- 
 respondence, and the household. Popinot knew well that this 
 was the one commercial house in which the perfumer's wife 
 might take a subordinate position and still receive the respect 
 due her. The noble-hearted boy installed her in his house, 
 gave her a salary of three thousand francs, arranged to give 
 his own room to her, and went up into the attic. And so it 
 came to pass that the beautiful woman, after one short month 
 spent amid novel splendors, was compelled to take up her 
 abode in the poor room where Gaudissart, Anselme, and 
 Finot had inaugurated the Cephalic Oil. 
 
 The Tribunal of Commerce had appointed Molineux as 
 agent, and he came to take formal possession of Cesar's prop- 
 erty. Constance, with Celestin's help, went through the in- 
 ventory with him ; and then mother and daughter went to 
 stay with Pillerault. They went out on foot and simply 
 dressed, and without turning their heads, and this was their 
 leave-taking of the house in which they had spent the third 
 part of a lifetime. Silently they walked to the Rue des Bour- 
 donnais, and dined with Cesar, for the first time since their 
 separation. It was a melancholy dinner. They had each 
 had time to think over the position, to weigh the burden laid 
 upon them, to estimate their courage. All three were like 
 sailors, prepared to face the coming tempest without blinking 
 the danger. Birotteau took heart again when he heard that 
 great personages had interested themselves for him and pro- 
 vided for his future ; but he broke down when he heard of 
 the arrangement which had been made for his daughter. 
 Then hearing how bravely his wife had begun to work again, 
 he held out his hand to her.
 
 292 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Tears filled Pillerault's eyes for the last time in his life at 
 the sight of this pathetic picture of the father, mother, and 
 daughter united in one embrace; while Birotteau, the most 
 helpless and downcast of the three, held up his hand and cried, 
 "We must hope! " 
 
 "To save expense, you must live here with me; you shall 
 have my room and share my bread. For a long time past I 
 have been tired of living alone ; you will take the place of 
 that poor boy I lost. And it will only be a step from here to 
 your office in the Rue d'Oratoire." 
 
 "Merciful God!" cried Birotteau. "There is a star to 
 guide me when the storm is at its height." 
 
 By resignation to his fate, the victim of a misfortune con- 
 sumes his misfortune. Birotteau could fall no further; he 
 had accepted the position, he became strong again. 
 
 In France, when a merchant has filed his petition, the only 
 thing he need trouble himself to do is to retreat to some oasis 
 at home or abroad where he may passively exist like the child 
 that he is in the eye of the law; theoretically he is a minor, 
 and incapable of acting in any capacity as a citizen.* Prac- 
 tically, however, he is by no means a nullity. He does not, 
 indeed, show his face until he receives a "certificate of im- 
 munity from arrest " (which no registrar nor creditor has been 
 known to refuse), for if he is found at large without it he is 
 liable to be put in prison ; but once provided with his safe- 
 conduct, his flag of truce, he can take a stroll through the 
 enemy's camp, not from idle curiosity, but to counteract and 
 thwart the evil intentions of the law with regard to bankrupts. 
 
 A prodigious development of perverse ingenuity is the 
 direct result of any law which touches private interests. The 
 
 * In France a bankrupt loses his civil and political status ; he recovers 
 the right of administering his own affairs after his discharge ; but the dis- 
 abilities are only removed by rehabilitation. This is an order granted by 
 the court when it is proved that the bankrupt has paid debts and costs in 
 full.
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 293 
 
 one thought of a bankrupt, as of everybody else who finds his 
 purposes crossed in any way by the law of the land, is how to 
 evade it. The period of civil death, during which time a 
 bankrupt must be considered as a kind of commercial chrysalis, 
 lasts for three months or thereabouts, the interval required for 
 the formalities which must be gone through before creditors 
 and debtor sign a treaty of peace, otherwise known as a con- 
 cordat, a word which indicates very clearly that concord reigns 
 after the storm raised by the clashing of various interests which 
 run counter to one another. 
 
 Directly the schedule is deposited, the Tribunal of Com- 
 merce appoints a registrar to watch over the interests of the 
 throng of unascertained creditors on the one hand, and on the 
 other to protect the bankrupt from the vexatious importunities 
 and inroads of infuriated creditors, a double part which pre- 
 sents magnificent possibilities if registrars had but time to 
 develop them. The registrar authorizes an agent by procura- 
 tion to take formal possession of the bankrupt's property, 
 bills, and effects, and the agent checks the statement of assets 
 in the schedule ; lastly, the clerk of the court convenes a 
 meeting of creditors, by tuck of drum ; that is to say, by adver- 
 tisements in the newspapers. The creditors, genuine or other- 
 wise, are called upon to assemble and agree among themselves 
 to appoint provisional trustees, who shall replace the agent, 
 step into the bankrupt's shoes, and, by a legal fiction, become 
 indeed the bankrupt himself. These have power to realize 
 everything, to make compromises, or to sell outright; in 
 short, to wind up the whole business for the benefit of the 
 creditors, provided that the bankrupt makes no opposition. 
 As a rule, in Paris, the bankruptcy is not carried beyond the 
 stage of the provisional trustees, and for the following reasons : 
 
 The nomination of trustees is a proceeding calculated to 
 stir up more angry feeling than any other resolution which can 
 be passed by an assembly of men, deluded, baffled, befooled, 
 ensnared, bamboozled, robbed, cheated, and thirsting for ven-
 
 294 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 geance ; and albeit, as a general thing, the creditor is cheated, 
 robbed, bamboozled, ensnared, befooled, baffled, and deluded, 
 in Paris no commercial crisis, no feeling, however high, can 
 last for three mortal months. Nothing in commerce but a 
 bill of exchange is capable of starting up clamorous for pay- 
 ment at the expiration of ninety days. Before the three 
 months are out, all the creditors, exhausted by the wear and 
 tear, and worn out by the marches and countermarches of 
 the liquidation, sleep soundly by the side of their excellent 
 little wives. These facts may enable those who are not 
 Frenchmen to understand how it comes to pass that the ap- 
 pointment of provisional trustees is usually final ; out of a 
 thousand provisional trustees, there are not five who are ap- 
 pointed to carry the thing further. The reasons of the swift 
 abjuration of commercial enmity which has its source in a 
 failure may be imagined ; but for those who have not the good 
 fortune to be merchants, some explanation of the drama 
 known as bankruptcy is necessary if they are to comprehend 
 how it constitutes the most monstrous legal farce in Paris and 
 understand the ordinary rule to which Cesar's case was to be 
 so marked an exception : 
 
 A failure in business is a thrilling drama in three distinct 
 acts. Act the first may be called The Agent ; act the second, 
 The Trustees ; and act the third, The Concordat, or payment 
 of composition. The spectacle is twofold, as is the case with 
 plays performed on the stage ; for there is the spectacular 
 effect intended for the public, and the more or less invisible 
 mechanism by which the effects are produced, and the same 
 play if seen before and behind the scenes looks quite different 
 from different points of view. In the wings stand the bank- 
 rupt and his attorney (one of the advocates who practice at the 
 Tribunal of Commerce), and the trustees and agent and the 
 registrar complete the list. 
 
 Nobody outside Paris knows what no Parisian can fail to 
 know, that a registrar is the most extraordinary kind of magis-
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 295 
 
 trate which the freaks of civilization have devised. In the 
 first place he is a judge who, at every moment of his official 
 life, may go in fear that his own measure may be dealt to him 
 again. Paris has even seen the president of her Tribunal of 
 Commerce compelled to file his petition ; and the ordinary 
 judge, who is called upon to act as a registrar, is no venerable 
 merchant retired from business, whose magistracy is a tribute 
 to a stainless career, but the active senior partner of some 
 great house, a man burdened with the responsibility of vast 
 enterprises. It is a sine qua non that a judge who is bound to 
 give decisions on the torrents of commercial disputes which 
 pour incessantly upon the capital shall have as much or more 
 business of his own than he can manage. 
 
 Thus the Tribunal of Commerce, which might have been a 
 useful transition stage and half-way house between the trading 
 community and the regions of , the noblesse, is composed of 
 busy merchants, who may one day be made to suffer for un- 
 popular awards, and a Birotteau among them may find a du 
 Tillet. 
 
 The judge or registrar, therefore, is of necessity a personage 
 in whose presence a great deal is said to which perforce he 
 lends an ear, thinking the while of his private concerns. He 
 is very apt to leave public business in the hands of the trus- 
 tees and the attorneys who practice at the Tribunal of Com- 
 merce, unless some odd and unusual case turns up ; some 
 instance of theft under curious circumstances, to draw from 
 him the remark that either the creditor or the debtor must be 
 a clever fellow. This personage set on high above the scene, 
 like the portrait of a king in an audience-chamber, is to be 
 seen of a morning from five to seven o'clock in his yard if he 
 is a lumber merchant ; in his store, if, like Birotteau, he is a 
 perfumer; and again in the evening at dessert after dinner, 
 but always and in any case terribly busy. For these reasons 
 this functionary is usually dumb. 
 
 Let us do justice to the law ; the registrar's hands are tied
 
 296 C&SAR BIROTTBAU. 
 
 by the hasty legislation which provided for these matters; 
 and many a time he sanctions frauds which he is powerless to 
 hinder, as will shortly be seen. 
 
 The agent, instead of being the creditor's man, may play 
 into the debtor's hands. Each creditor hopes to swell his 
 share and in some way to make better terms for himself with 
 the bankrupt, whom every one suspects of a secret hoard. 
 The agent can make something out of both sides, by dealing 
 leniently with the bankrupt on the one hand, or, on the other, 
 by securing something for the more influential creditors, and 
 in this way can hold with the hare and run with the hounds. 
 Not unfrequently a crafty agent has annulled a judgment by 
 buying out the creditors and releasing the merchant, who 
 springs up again at a rebound like an india-rubber ball. 
 
 The agent turns to the best furnished crib ; he will, if nec- 
 essary, cover the largest creditors and let the debtor go bare, 
 or he will sacrifice the creditors to the merchant's future, as 
 suits him best. So the whole drama turns on the first act ; 
 and the agent, like the attorney of the Tribunal, is the utility- 
 man in a piece in which neither will play unless he is sure of 
 his fees beforehand. In nine hundred and ninety-nine cases 
 out of a thousand, the agent is for the debtor. 
 
 At the time when this story took place, it was the practice 
 of attorneys at the Tribunal of Commerce to go to the judge 
 who was to act as registrar and nominate a man of their own, 
 some one who knew something of the debtor's affairs and 
 could manage to reconcile the interests of the many and of 
 the one the honorable trader who had fallen into misfortune. 
 Of late years it has been the practice of shrewd judges to 
 wait till this has been done so as to avoid the nominee, and 
 to make an effort to appoint a man of passable integrity. 
 
 During this first act the creditors, genuine or presumed, 
 present themselves to select the provisional trustees, an ap- 
 pointment which, as has been said, is practically final. In 
 this electoral assembly every creditor has a voice, whether his
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 297 
 
 claim is for fifty sous or fifty thousand francs, and the votes 
 are reckoned by count and not by weight. The names of the 
 trustees are proposed at the meeting, packed by the debtor 
 with sham creditors (the only ones who never fail to put in an 
 appearance) ; and from the names thus sent in, the registrar, 
 the powerless president, is bound to choose those who shall 
 act. Naturally, therefore, the registrar takes the trustees from 
 the debtor's hands, another abuse which turns this catastrophe 
 into one of the most burlesque dramas sanctioned by a court 
 of justice. The "honorable trader fallen into misfortune" 
 is master of the situation, and proceeds to carry out a pre- 
 meditated robbery with the law at his back. In Paris, as a 
 rule, the petty tradesmen are blameless. Before a storekeeper 
 files his schedule, the poor honest fellow has left no stone 
 unturned ; he has sold his wife's shawl and pawned his 
 spoons and forks ; and when he gives in at last, it is with 
 empty hands, he is utterly ruined, and has not even money to 
 pay the attorney, who troubles himself very little about his 
 client. 
 
 The law demands that the concordat, which remits a part 
 of the debt and restores the debtor to the management of his 
 affairs, should be put to the vote and carried by a sufficient 
 majority, with due regard to the amounts claimed by the 
 voters. To secure the majority is a great feat which demands 
 the most skillful diplomacy on the part of the debtor, his 
 attorney, and the trustees amid the clash of conflicting inter- 
 ests. The ordinary commonplace stratagem consists in offer- 
 ing to such a body of the creditors as will represent the 
 majority required by the law a premium to be paid over and 
 above the dividend which the meeting of creditors is to consent 
 to accept. For this gigantic swindle there is no remedy. Suc- 
 cessive Tribunals of Commerce, familiar with it by dint of prac- 
 tice in non-official capacity and grown wise by experience, 
 have decided of late that all claims are made void where there 
 is a suspicion of fraud ; thus it is to the debtor's interest to
 
 298 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 complain of the " extortion," and the judges of the Tribunal 
 hope in this way to raise the moral tone of proceedings in 
 liquidation. But they will only succeed in making matters 
 worse; creditors will exercise their ingenuity to invent still 
 more rascally devices, which the judges will brand as regis- 
 trars and profit by as merchants. 
 
 Another extremely popular expedient, which gave rise to 
 the expression "serious and legitimate creditor," consists in 
 creating creditors, much as du Tillet created a firm of bankers. 
 By introducing a sufficient number of Claparons into the 
 meeting, the debtor, in these diverse manifestations, receives 
 a share of the spoils, and sensibly diminishes the dividends 
 of the real creditors. This plan has a double advantage : 
 The debtor obtains resources for the future, and at the same 
 time secures the proper number of votes representing (to all 
 appearance) a sufficient proportion of the claims upon the 
 estate, the majority necessary for his discharge. These " gay 
 bogus creditors " are like sham electors in the electoral col- 
 lege. What help has the " serious bonb-fidc creditor " against 
 his "gay bogus" compeer? He can rid himself of him by 
 attacking him ! Very good. But if the " serious and bon&- 
 fide" creditor means to oust the intruder, he must leave his 
 own business to take care of itself, and he must employ an 
 attorney; and, as the said attorney makes little or nothing out 
 of the case, he prefers to "conduct " bankruptcies, and does 
 not take a bit of pettifogging business too seriously. Then, 
 at the outset, before the "gay and bogus" one can be un- 
 earthed, a labyrinth of procedure must be entered upon, the 
 bankrupt's books must be gone through to some remote epoch, 
 and application must be made to the Court to require that the 
 books of the pretended creditor shall be likewise produced ; 
 the improbability of the fiction must be set forth and clearly 
 proved to the satisfaction of the judges of the Tribunal, and 
 the serious creditor must come and go and plead and arouse 
 interest in the indifferent. This Quixotic performance, more-
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 299 
 
 over, must be gone through afresh in each separate case ; and 
 each gay and bogus creditor, if fairly convicted of "gaiety," 
 makes his bow to the Court with an "Excuse me, there is 
 some mistake; I am very serious indeed." All this is done 
 without prejudice to the rights of the debtor, who may appeal 
 and bring Don Quixote into the Court-Royal. And in the 
 meantime Don Quixote's own affairs go askew, and he too 
 may be compelled to file his schedule. 
 
 Moral : Let the debtor choose his trustees, verify the claims, 
 and arrange the amount of composition himself. 
 
 Given these conditions, who cannot imagine the underhand 
 schemes, the tricks worthy of Sganarelle, stratagems that a 
 Frontin might have devised, the lies that would do credit to 
 a Mascarille, the empty wallets of a Scapin, and all the results 
 of these two systems? Any bankruptcy since insolvency came 
 into fashion would supply a writer with material sufficient to 
 fill the fourteen volumes of " Clarissa Harlowe." A single 
 example shall suffice : 
 
 The illustrious Gobseck, the master at whose feet the Pal- 
 mas, Gigonnets, Werbrusts, Kellers, and Nucingens of Paris 
 have sat, once found himself among the creditors of a bank- 
 rupt who had managed to swindle him, and whom, on that 
 account, he proposed to handle roughly. Of this person he 
 received bills to fall due after the discharge for a sum which 
 (taken together with the dividends received at the time) 
 should pay the amount owing to him (Gobseck) in full. Gob- 
 seck, in consequence, recommended that a final dividend of 
 twenty-five per cent, be paid. Behold the creditors swindled 
 for Gobseck's benefit ! But the merchant had signed the 
 illegal bills in the name of the insolvent firm ; and when the 
 time came, a dividend of twenty-five per cent, was all that he 
 could be made to pay upon them, and Gobseck, the great 
 Gobseck, received a bare fifty per cent. He always took off 
 his hat with ironical respect when he met that debtor. 
 
 As all transactions which take place within ten days before
 
 300 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 the time when a man files his schedule are open to question, 
 certain prudent prospective bankrupts are careful to break 
 ground early, and to approach some of their creditors, whose 
 interest it is, not less than their own, to arrive at a prompt 
 settlement. Then the more astute creditors will go in search 
 of the simple or of the very busy, paint the failure in the 
 darkest colors, and finally buy up their claims for half their 
 value. When the estate is liquidated, these shrewd folk come 
 by the dividend on their own share, and make fifty, thirty, or 
 twenty-five per cent, on the liabilities which they have pur- 
 chased, and in this way contrive to lose nothing. 
 
 After the failure is declared, the house in which a few bags of 
 money yet remain from the pillage is more or less hermetically 
 sealed. Happy the merchant who can effect an entrance by the 
 window, the roof, the cellar, or a hole in the wall, and secure a 
 bag to swell his share ! When things have come to this pass, 
 this Beresina, where the cry of " Each for himself" has been 
 raised, it is hard to say what is legal or illegal, true or false, 
 honest or dishonest. A creditor is thought a clever fellow if 
 he "covers himself;" that is to say, if he secures himself at 
 the expense of the rest. All France once rang with discussion 
 of a prodigious failure, which took place in a certain city 
 where there was a Court-Royal ; the magistrates therein being 
 all personally interested in the case arrayed their shoulders in 
 waterproof cloaks so heavy that the mantle of justice was 
 worn into holes, on which grounds it was necessary to transfer 
 the affair into another court. There was no registrar, no 
 agent, no final judgment possible in the bankrupt's own 
 district. 
 
 In Paris these commercial quicksands are so thoroughly well 
 appreciated that every merchant, however much time he may 
 have on his hands, accepts the loss as an uninsured accident; 
 and, unless he is involved for some very large sum, passes the 
 matter to the wrong side of his profit and loss account. He 
 is not so foolish as to waste time over wasted money ; he pre-
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 301 
 
 fers to keep his own pot boiling. As for the little trader, 
 hard put to it to pay his monthly accounts, and tied to the 
 narrow round of his own business, tedious law proceedings, 
 involving a heavy initial outlay, scare him ; he gives up the 
 attempt to see through the matter, follows the example of the 
 great merchant, and makes up his mind to his loss. Whole- 
 sale merchants do not file their schedule in these days ; they 
 liquidate by private arrangement ; their creditors take what is 
 offered them, and give a receipt in full ; a plan which saves 
 publicity, and the delays of the law, and solicitors' fees, and 
 depreciation of stock consequent on a sudden realization. It 
 is a common belief that it pays better to have a private arrange- 
 ment than to force the estate into bankruptcy, so private 
 arrangements are more frequent than failures in Paris. 
 
 The second act of the drama is intended to prove that a 
 trustee is incorruptible ; that there is not the slightest attempt 
 at collusion between them and the debtor. The audience, 
 who have most of them been at some time cast for the part of 
 trustees themselves, know that a trustee is another name for a 
 creditor whose claims are "covered." He listens, and be- 
 lieves as much as he pleases, till, after three months spent in 
 investigating liabilities and assets, the day comes when com- 
 position is offered and accepted. Then the provisional trus- 
 tees read a little report for the assembled creditors. The 
 following is a general formula : 
 
 "GENTLEMEN: The total amount owing to us was one 
 million. We have dismantled our man like a stranded frigate. 
 The sale of old iron, timber, and copper has brought in three 
 hundred thousand francs, the assets therefore amount to thirty 
 per cent, of the liabilities. In our joy at finding this sum, 
 when our debtor might have left us a bare hundred thousand 
 francs, we proclaim him to be an Aristides. We vote him 
 crowns and a premium by way of encouragement ! We pro- 
 pose to leave him his assets, and to give him ten or a dozen
 
 302 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 years in which to pay us the dividend of fifty per cent., which 
 he condescends to promise us. Here is the concordat, walk up 
 to the desk and put your names to it ! " 
 
 At these words the happy creditors fall on each other's 
 necks and congratulate one another. When the concordat has 
 been ratified by the Tribunal the merchant's assets are put at 
 his disposition, and he begins business again as if nothing had 
 happened. He is at liberty to fail once more over the pay- 
 ment of the promised dividends a sort of great-grandchild 
 of a failure, which not seldom appears like an infant borne 
 by a mother nine months after she had married her daughter. 
 
 If the concordat is not accepted, the creditors forthwith 
 make a final appointment of trustees. They resort to extreme 
 measures, and band themselves together to exploit the debtor's 
 property and business ; they lay their hands on everything he 
 has or may have, his reversionary rights in the property of 
 father and mother, uncles and aunts, and the like. This is a 
 desperate remedy found by a " union of the creditors." 
 
 If a man fails in business, therefore, there are two ways 
 open to him : by the first method, he takes things into his 
 own hands, and means to recover himself; in the second, 
 having fallen into the water, he is content to go to the bot- 
 tom. Pillerault knew the difference well. He was of Ragon's 
 opinion, that it was as hard to issue from the first experience 
 with clean hands as to emerge from the second a wealthy 
 man. He counseled surrender at discretion, and betook him- 
 self to the most upright attorney on 'Change, asking him to 
 conduct the liquidation and to put the proceeds at the dispo- 
 sition of the creditors. The law requires that the creditors 
 should make an allowance for the support of the debtor and 
 his family while the drama is in progress. Pillerault gave 
 notice to the registrar that he himself would maintain his 
 niece and nephew. 
 
 Du Tillet had planned everything with a view to prolong-
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 303 
 
 ing the agony of his old master's failure, and in the following 
 manner. Time is so valuable in Paris, that, though there are 
 usually two trustees appointed, one only acts in the case ; the 
 other is nominated for form's sake ; he approves the proceed- 
 ings, like the second notary in a notarial deed ; and the active 
 trustee as often as not leaves the work to the attorney em- 
 ployed by the bankrupt. By these means a failure of the first 
 kind is conducted so vigorously that everything is patched 
 up, fixed, settled, and arranged during the minimum time re- 
 quired by the legal procedure. In a hundred days the registrar 
 might repeat the cold-blooded epigram of the minister who 
 announced that "Order reigns in Warsaw." 
 
 Du Tillet meant to make an end of Cesar, commercially 
 speaking. So the names of the trustees appointed through 
 his influence had an ominous sound for Pillerault. M. 
 Bidault, otherwise Gigonnet, the principal creditor, was to do 
 nothing. Molineux, the fidgety little old person who had 
 lost nothing, was to do everything. Du Tillet had thrown 
 this noble corpse of a business to the little jackal to worry 
 before he devoured it. 
 
 Little Molineux went home after the meeting of creditors, 
 at which the trustees were appointed, "honored " (so he put 
 it) " by the suffrages of his fellow-citizens," and as happy in 
 the prospect of domineering over Birotteau as an urchin who 
 has an insect to torment. The owner of house-property, being 
 a stickler for the law, bought a copy of the " Code of Com- 
 merce," and asked du Tillet to give him the benefit of his 
 lights. Luckily, Joseph Lebas, forewarned by Pillerault, had, 
 at the outset, obtained a sagacious and benevolent registrar, 
 and Gobenheim-Keller (on whom du Tillet had fixed his 
 choice) was replaced by M. Camusot, an assistant judge, and 
 Pillerault's landlord, a Liberal, and a rich silk merchant, 
 spoken of as an honorable man. 
 
 One of the most dreadful scenes in Cesar's life was his en- 
 forced conference with little Molineux ; the creature whom
 
 304 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 he had looked upon as such a nullity had now, by a legal 
 fiction, become Cesar Birotteau. There was no help for it ; 
 so, accompanied by his uncle, he climbed the six flights of 
 stairs in the Cour Batave, reached the old man's dismal room, 
 and confronted his guardian, his quasi judge, the man who 
 represented the body of his creditors. 
 
 "What is the matter?" Pillerault asked on the stairs, 
 hearing a groan from Cesar. 
 
 " Oh ! uncle, you do not know what kind of a man this 
 Molineux is." 
 
 "I have seen him at the Cafe David these fifteen years; 
 he plays a game of dominoes there of an evening now and 
 then. That is why I came with you." 
 
 Molineux was prodigiously civil to Pillerault, and his man- 
 ner toward the bankrupt was contemptuously patronizing. 
 The little old man had thought out his course, studied his be- 
 havior down to the minutest details, and his ideas were ready 
 prepared. 
 
 "What information do you want?" asked Pillerault. 
 "None of the claims are disputed." 
 
 "Oh! the claims are all in order," said little Molineux; 
 " they are all verified. The creditors are serious and bond- 
 fide ! But there's the law, sir; there's the law ! The bank- 
 rupt's expenditure is out of proportion to his means. It ap- 
 pears that the ball " 
 
 "At which you were an invited guest," put in the adroit 
 Pillerault. 
 
 " Cost nearly sixty thousand francs ! At any rate, that 
 amount was spent on the occasion, and the debtor's capital at 
 the time only amounted to a hundred and some odd thousand 
 francs ! There is warrant sufficient for bringing the matter 
 before a registrar-extraordinary, as a case of bankruptcy caused 
 by serious mismanagement." 
 
 "Is that your opinion?" asked Pillerault, who noticed 
 Birotteau's despondency at those words.
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 305 
 
 " Sir, the said Birotteau was a municipal officer, that makes 
 a difference " 
 
 "You did not send for us, I suppose, to tell us that the 
 case was to be transferred to a criminal court?" said Pille- 
 rault. "The whole Cafe David would laugh this evening at 
 your conduct." 
 
 The little old man seemed to stand in some awe of the 
 opinion of the Cafe David ; he gave Pillerault a scared look. 
 He had reckoned upon dealing with Birotteau alone, and had 
 promised himself that he would pose as sovereign lord and 
 Jupiter. He had meant to strike terror into Birotteau's soul 
 by the thunderbolts of a formal indictment, to brandish the 
 axe above his head, to enjoy the spectacle of his anguish and 
 alarm, and then to relent at the prayer of his victim, and send 
 him away with eternal gratitude in his soul. But, instead of 
 the insect, he was confronted with this business-like old 
 sphinx. 
 
 " There is nothing whatever to laugh at, sir ! " said he. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," returned Pillerault. " You are con- 
 sulting Monsieur Claparon pretty freely ; you are neglecting 
 the interests of the other creditors to obtain a decision that 
 you have preferential claims. Now I, as a creditor, can in- 
 tervene. The registrar is there." 
 
 "Sir," said Molineux, "I am incorruptible." 
 
 " I know you are," said Pillerault ; " you are only getting 
 yourself out of the scrape, as the saying is. You are shrewd ; 
 you have done as you did in the case of that tenant of 
 yours " 
 
 " Oh ! sir, my lawsuit in the matter of the Rue Montorgueil 
 is not decided yet ! " cried the trustee, slipping back into the 
 landlord at the word, just as the cat who became a woman 
 pounced upon the mouse. "A new issue, as they say, has 
 been raised. It is not a sub-tenancy; he holds direct, and 
 the scamp says now that as he paid his rent a year in advance, 
 and there is only a year to run " (at this point Pillerault gave 
 20
 
 306 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 Cesar a glance which recommended the closest attention to 
 what should follow), "and the year's rent being prepaid, 
 he might clear his furniture out of the premises. So there 
 is a new lawsuit. As a matter of fact, I ought to look after 
 my guarantees until I am paid in full ; there may be repairs 
 for which the tenant ought to pay." 
 
 "But you cannot distrain except for rent," remarked 
 Pillerault. 
 
 " And accessories ! " cried Molineux, attacked in the centre. 
 "The article in the Code is interpreted by the light of de- 
 cisions; there are precedents. The law, however, certainly 
 wants mending in this respect. At this moment I am drafting 
 a petition to his lordship the keeper of the seals concerning 
 the hiatus. It would become the Government to consider 
 the interests of owners of property. The State depends upon 
 us, for we bear the brunt of the taxes." 
 
 "You are well qualified to enlighten the Government," 
 said Pillerault ; " but on what point in this business of ours 
 can we throw any light for you? " 
 
 " I want to know," said Molineux with imperious emphasis, 
 "whether Monsieur Birotteau has received any money from 
 Monsieur Popinot." 
 
 "No, sir," answered Birotteau. A discussion followed as 
 to Birotteau's interest in the firm of Popinot, in the course of 
 which it was decided that Popinot had a right to demand the 
 repayment of his advances in full without putting in his claim 
 under the bankruptcy as one of Birotteau's creditors for the 
 half of the expenses of starting his business, which Birotteau 
 ought to have paid. Gradually, under Pillerault's handling, 
 Molineux became more and more civil, a symptom which 
 proved that he set no little store on the opinion of the fre- 
 quenters of the Cafe David. Before the interview ended he 
 was condoling with Birotteau, and asked him no less than 
 Pillerault to share his humble dinner. If the ex-perfumer 
 had gone by himself, he would perhaps have exasperated
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 307 
 
 Molineux, and brought rancor into the business; and now, as 
 at some other times, old Pillerault played the part of guardian 
 angel. 
 
 One horrible form of torture the law inflicts upon bank- 
 rupts : they are bound to appear in person with the provisional 
 trustees and the registrar at the meeting of creditors which de- 
 cides their fate. For a man who can rise above it, as for the 
 merchant who is seeking his revenge, the dismal ceremony is 
 not very formidable ; but for any one like Cesar the whole 
 thing is an agony only paralleled by the last day in the con- 
 demned cell. Pillerault did all in his power to make that day 
 endurable to his nephew. 
 
 Molineux's proceedings, sanctioned by the bankrupt, had 
 been on this wise : The lawsuit concerning the mortgage on 
 the property in the Faubourg du Temple had been gained in 
 the Court of Appeal. The trustees decided to sell the land, 
 and Cesar made no objections. Du Tillet, knowing that the 
 Government meant to construct a canal to open communica- 
 tion between Saint-Denis and the upper Seine, and that the 
 canal would pass through the Faubourg du Temple, bought 
 Cesar's property for seventy thousand francs. Cesar's rights 
 in the Madeleine building land were abandoned to M. Cla- 
 paron, on condition that he on his side should make no de- 
 mand for half the registration fees, which Cesar should have 
 paid on the completion of the contract ; it was arranged that 
 Claparon should take over the land and pay for it, and receive 
 the dividend in the bankruptcy which was due to the vendors. 
 
 The perfumer's interest in the firm of Popinot & Company 
 was sold to the said Popinot for forty-eight thousand francs. 
 Celestin Crevel bought the business as a going concern for 
 fifty-seven thousand francs, together with the lease of the 
 premises, the stock, the fittings, the proprietary rights in the 
 Pate des Sultanes and Carminative Toilet Lotion, a twelve 
 years' lease of the factory and the plant being included in the 
 sale.
 
 308 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 The liquid assets reached a total of one hundred and ninety- 
 five thousand francs, to which the trustees added seventy 
 thousand francs from the liquidation of " that unlucky fellow 
 Roguin." Two hundred and sixty-five thousand francs in 
 all. The liabilities amounted to about four hundred and forty 
 thousand francs, so that there would be a dividend of more 
 than fifty per cent. 
 
 A liquidation is something like a chemical process, from 
 which the clever insolvent merchant endeavors to emerge as a 
 saturated solution. Birotteau, distilled entirely in this retort, 
 yielded a result which infuriated du Tillet. Du Tillet thought 
 that there would be a dishonoring bankruptcy, and behold a 
 liquidation highly creditable to his man. He cared very little 
 about the pecuniary gain, for he would have the building land 
 by the Madeleine without opening his purse ; he wished to see 
 the poor merchant disgraced, ruined, and humbled in the dust. 
 The meeting of creditors would doubtless carry out the per- 
 fumer in triumph on their shoulders. 
 
 As Birotteau's courage returned, his uncle, like a wise 
 physician, gradually told him the details of the proceedings 
 in bankruptcy. These rigorous measures were so many heavy 
 blows. A merchant cannot but feel depressed when the 
 things on which he has spent so much money and so much 
 thought are sold for so little. He was petrified with astonish- 
 ment at the tidings which Pillerault brought. 
 
 " Fifty-seven thousand francs for the Queen of Roses ! 
 Why, the stock is worth ten thousand francs ! We spent 
 forty thousand francs on the rooms and the fittings; the 
 plant, the moulds and boilers over at the factory cost thirty 
 thousand francs ! Why, if the things are sold for half their 
 value, there is the worth of ten thousand francs in the store, 
 and the Pate des Sultanes and the Lotion are as good as a 
 farm ! " 
 
 Poor ruined Cesar's jeremiads did not alarm Pillerault 
 very much. The old merchant took them much as a
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 309 
 
 horse takes a shower of rain ; but when he came to talk of 
 the meeting of creditors, Cesar's gloomy silence frightened 
 him. Those who understand the weakness and vanity of 
 human nature in every social sphere will understand that for 
 an ex-judge to return as a bankrupt to the Palais where he had 
 sat was a ghastly form of torture. He must receive his en- 
 emies in the very place where he had been so often thanked 
 for his services ; he, Birotteau, whose views as to bankruptcy 
 were so well known in Paris; he who had said, "A man who 
 files his schedule is an honest man still, but by the time he 
 comes out of a meeting of creditors he is a rogue. " His uncle 
 watched for favorable opportunities, and tried to accustom 
 him to the idea of appearing before his creditors assembled, as 
 the law requires. This condition was killing Birotteau. His 
 dumb resignation made a deep impression on Pillerault, who, 
 through the thin partition wall, used to hear him cry at night, 
 " Never ! never ! I will die sooner." 
 
 Pillerault, so strong himself by reason of his simple life, 
 understood weakness. He made up his mind to spare Birot- 
 teau the anguish to which his nephew might succumb, the 
 dreadful and inevitable meeting with his creditors ! The law 
 is precise, positive, and unflinching in this respect; the debtor 
 who refuses to appear is liable on these grounds alone to have 
 his case transferred out of the commercial into the criminal 
 court. But if the law compels the appearance of the debtor, 
 it exercises no such constraint upon the creditors. 
 
 A meeting of creditors is a mere formality except in certain 
 cases; when, for example, a rogue is to be ousted, or the 
 creditors unite to refuse the dividend offered, or cannot agree 
 among themselves because some of their number are privileged 
 to the prejudice of the rest, or the dividend offered is out- 
 rageously small, and the bankrupt is doubtful of obtaining a 
 majority to carry the resolution. But when the estate has 
 been honestly liquidated, or when a rascally debtor has 
 squared everybody, the meeting is only a matter of form. So
 
 310 CESAR B1ROTTEAU. 
 
 Pillerault went round to the creditors one after another and 
 asked each to empower his attorney to represent him on that 
 occasion. Every creditor, du Tillet excepted, was sorry for 
 Birotteau now that he had been brought low. All of them 
 knew how he had behaved, how well his books had been kept, 
 and how straightforward he had been in the matter. They 
 were well pleased to find not one "gay" creditor among 
 their number. Molineux, as agent in the first place, and 
 afterward as trustee, had found all that the poor man pos- 
 sessed, down to the print of "Hero and Leander " which 
 Popinot had given him. Birotteau had not taken away such 
 small matters as his gold-buckles, his pin, and the two watches, 
 which even an honest man might not have scrupled to keep. 
 This touching obedience to the law made a great sensation in 
 commercial circles. Birotteau's enemies represented these 
 things as conclusive signs of the man's stupidity ; but sensible 
 people saw them in their true light, as a magnificent excess of 
 honesty. In two months a change had been brought about in 
 opinion on 'Change. The most indifferent admitted that this 
 failure was one of the greatest curiosities of commerce ever 
 heard of. So when the creditors knew that they were to 
 receive sixty per cent., they agreed to do all that Pillerault 
 asked of them. There are but few attorneys practicing at the 
 Tribunal ; so several of the creditors deputed the same man to 
 represent them, and the whole formidable assemblage was 
 reduced to three attorneys, Ragon, the two trustees, and the 
 registrar. 
 
 "Cesar, you can go without fear to your meeting to-day; 
 you will find nobody there," Pillerault said on the morning 
 of that memorable day. 
 
 M. Ragon wished to go with his debtor. At the sound of 
 the thin elderly voice of the previous owner of the Queen of 
 Roses, all the color left his successor's face ; but the kind little 
 old man held out his arms, and Birotteau went to him like a 
 child to his father, and both shed tears. This indulgent
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 311 
 
 goodness put fresh heart into Cesar, and he followed his 
 uncle to the cab. 
 
 Punctually at half-past three they arrived in the Cloitre 
 Saint-Merri, where the Tribunal of Commerce then held its 
 sessions. The Salle des Faillites was deserted. The day and 
 the hour had been fixed to that end with the approbation of 
 the trustees and the registrar. The attorneys were there on 
 behalf of their clients ; there was nothing to fill Cesar's soul 
 with dread ; and yet the poor man could not enter M. Camu- 
 sot's room (which had once been his) without deep emotion, 
 and he shuddered as he went through the Salle des Faillites. 
 
 "It is cold," said M. Camusot, turning to Birotteau; 
 "these gentlemen will not be sorry to stay here instead of 
 being frozen in the Salle." (He would not say the Salle des 
 Faillites.*) "Seat yourselves, gentlemen." 
 
 Every one sat down ; the registrar put Cesar, still confused, 
 into his own armchair. Then trustees and attorneys signed 
 their names. 
 
 "In consideration of the abandonment of your estate," 
 said Camusot, again addressing Birotteau, " your creditors 
 unanimously agree to forego the remainder of their claims ; 
 your concordat is couched in language which may soften your 
 regrets ; your attorney will have it confirmed by the Tribunal 
 at once. So you are discharged. All the judges of the Tri- 
 bunal have felt sorry that you should be placed in such a 
 position, dear Monsieur Birotteau, without being surprised by 
 your courage," Camusot went on, taking Birotteau's hands, 
 " and there is no one but appreciates your integrity. Through 
 your disasters you have shown yourself worthy of the position 
 which you held here. I have been in business these twenty 
 years, and this is the second time that I have seen a merchant 
 rise in public esteem ' after his failure.' ' 
 
 Birotteau grasped the registrar's hand and squeezed it. 
 There were tears in his eyes. Camusot asked him what he 
 * Bankrupts' Hall.
 
 312 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 meant to do, and Birotteau answered that he was going to 
 work, and that he intended to pay his creditors in full. 
 
 " If you should be in want of a few thousand francs to 
 carry out your noble design, you will always find them if you 
 come to me," said Camusot ; " I would give them with great 
 pleasure to see a thing not often seen in Paris." 
 
 Pillerault, Ragon, and Birotteau left the Tribunal. 
 
 " Well, was it so bad after all ? " said Pillerault, when they 
 stood outside. 
 
 "I can see your hand in it, uncle," said Cesar, deeply 
 touched. 
 
 " And now that you are on your feet again, come and see 
 my nephew," said Ragon ; " it is only a step to the Rue des 
 Cinq-Diamants." 
 
 It was with a cruel pang that C6sar looked up and saw Con- 
 stance sitting at her desk in a room on the low, dark floor 
 above the store ; dark, for a signboard outside, on which the 
 name "A. Popinot " was painted, cutoff one-third of the 
 light from the window. 
 
 " Here is one of Alexander's lieutenants," said Birotteau, 
 pointing to the sign with the forced mirth of misfortune. 
 
 This constrained gaiety, the naive expression of Birotteau's 
 old belief in his superior talents, made Ragon shudder, de- 
 spite his seventy years. But Cesar's cheerfulness broke down 
 when his wife brought in letters for Popinot to sign, and his 
 face turned white in spite of himself. 
 
 " Good-evening, dear," she said, smiling at him. 
 
 " I need not ask whether you are comfortable here," Cdsar 
 said, and he looked at Popinot. 
 
 "I might be in my own son's house," she said, and her 
 husband was struck by the tender expression which crossed 
 her face. 
 
 Birotteau embraced Popinot, saying, " I have just lost for 
 ever the right to call you my son." 
 
 " Let us hope," said Popinot. "Your Oil is going well,
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 313 
 
 thanks to our efforts in the newspapers, and thanks to Gaud- 
 issart, who has been all over and flooded France with placards 
 and prospectuses. He is having prospectuses in German 
 printed at Strasbourg, and is just about to descend on Ger- 
 many like an invasion. We have orders for three thousand 
 gross. ' ' 
 
 " Three thousand gross ! " echoed Cdsar. 
 
 " And I have bought some land in the Faubourg Saint- 
 Marceau, not badly ; a factory is to be built there. I shall 
 keep on at the other place in the Faubourg du Temple." 
 
 "With a little help, wife," Birotteau said in Constance's 
 ear, " we shall pull through." 
 
 From that memorable day Cesar and his wife and daughter 
 understood one another. Poor clerk, as he was, he had set 
 himself a task which, if not impossible, was gigantic ; he 
 would pay his creditors in full ! The three, united by a 
 common bond of fierce independence, grew miserly and 
 denied themselves everything ; every centime was consecrated 
 to this end. Cesarine, with one object in her mind, threw 
 herself into her work with a young girl's devotion. She spent 
 her nights in devising schemes for increasing the prosperity 
 of the house ; she invented designs for materials, and brought 
 her inborn business faculties into play. Her employers were 
 obliged to check her ardor for work, and rewarded her with 
 presents, but she declined the ornaments and trinkets which 
 they offered ; it was money that she preferred. Every month 
 she took her salary, her little earnings, to her Uncle Pillerault, 
 and Cesar and Mme. Birotteau did the same. All three of them 
 recognized their lack of ability, and shrank from assuming the 
 responsible task of investing their savings. So the uncle went 
 into business again, and studied the money market. At a 
 later time it was known that Jules Desmarets and Joseph 
 Lebas had helped him with their counsel ; both had zealously 
 looked for safe investments. 
 
 Birotteau, living in his uncle's house, did not even dare to
 
 314 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 ask any questions about the uses to which the family savings 
 were put. He went through the streets with a bent head, 
 shrinking from all eyes, downcast, nervous, blind to all that 
 passed. It vexed him that he must wear fine cloth. 
 
 "At any rate, I am not eating my creditors' bread," he 
 said, with an angelic glance at the kind old man. "Your 
 bread is sweet " (he went on), " although you give it me out 
 of pity, when I think that, thanks to this sacred charity, I am 
 not robbing my creditors of my earnings." 
 
 The merchants who met the Birotteau of those days could 
 not see a trace of the Birotteau whom they used to know. 
 Vast thoughts were awakened in indifferent beholders at sight 
 of that face so dark with the blackest misery, of the man who 
 had never been thoughtful so bowed down beneath the weight 
 of a thought ; it was a revelation of the depths, in that this 
 being, dwelling on so ordinary a human level, could have had 
 so far to fall. To the man who would fain be wiped out comes 
 no extinction. Shallow natures who lack a conscience, and 
 are incapable of much feeling, can never furnish forth the 
 tragedy of man and fate. Religion alone sets its peculiar seal 
 on those who have sounded these depths; they believe in 
 a future and in a Providence ; a certain light shines in them, 
 a look of holy resignation, blended with hope, which touches 
 those who behold it ; they know all that they have lost, like 
 the exiled angel weeping at the gates of heaven. A bankrupt 
 cannot show his face on 'Change; and Cesar, thrust out from 
 the society of honest men, was like the angel sighing for 
 pardon. 
 
 For fourteen months Cesar refused all amusements; his 
 mind was full of religious thoughts, inspired by his fall. Sure 
 though he was of the Ragons' friendship, it was impossible to 
 induce him to dine with them ; nor would he visit the Lebas, 
 nor the Matifats, the Protez and Chiffrevilles, nor even M. 
 Vauquelin, though all were anxious to show their admiration 
 for Cesar's behavior. He would rather be alone in his own
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 315 
 
 room, where he could not meet the eyes of any one to whom 
 he owed money ; and the most cordial kindness on the part 
 of his friends recalled him to a sense of the bitterness of his 
 position. 
 
 Constance and Cesarine went nowhere. On Sundays and 
 holidays, the only times when they were free, the two women 
 went first to mass, and then home with Cesar after the service. 
 Pillerault used to ask the Abbe Loraux to come the Abb6 
 Loraux who had sustained Cesar in his trouble and they made 
 a family party. The old hardware merchant could not but 
 approve his nephew's scruples, his own sense of commercial 
 honor was too keen ; and therefore his mind was bent upon 
 increasing the number of people whom the bankrupt might 
 look in the face with a clear brow. 
 
 In May, 1821, the efforts of the family thus struggling with 
 adversity were rewarded by a holiday, contrived by the arbiter 
 of their destinies. The first Sunday in that month was the 
 anniversary of the betrothal of Cesar and Constance. Pil- 
 lerault and the Ragons had taken a little house in the country 
 at Sceaux, and the old hardware dealer wanted to make a 
 festival of the house-warming. 
 
 On the Saturday evening he spoke to his nephew. " We 
 are going into the country to-morrow, Cesar," he said, "and 
 you must come, too." 
 
 Cesar, who wrote a beautiful hand, copied documents for 
 Derville and several other lawyers in the evenings, and on 
 Sundays (with a dispensation from the cure) he worked like a 
 negro. 
 
 " No," he answered ; " Monsieur Derville is waiting for an 
 account of a guardianship." 
 
 " Your wife and daughter deserve a holiday, and there will 
 be no one but ours friends the Abbe Loraux, the Ragons, 
 and Popinot and his uncle. Beside, I want you to come." 
 
 Cesar and his wife, carried away by the daily round of their 
 busy lives, had never gone back to Sceaux, though from
 
 316 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 time to time they both had wished to see the garden again, 
 and the lime-tree beneath which Cesar had almost swooned 
 with joy, in the days when he was still an assistant at the 
 Queen of Roses. To-day, when Popinot drove them, and 
 Birotteau sat with Constance and their daughter, his wife's 
 eyes turned to his from time to time, but the look of intelli- 
 gence in them drew no answering smile from his lips. She 
 whispered a few words in his ear, but a shake of the head was 
 the only response. The sweet expressions of tenderness, un- 
 alterable, but now forced somewhat, brought no light into 
 Cesar's eyes ; his face grew gloomier, the tears which he had 
 kept back began to fill his eyes. Twenty years ago he had 
 been along this very road, when he was young and prosperous 
 and full of hope, the lover of a girl as lovely as Cesarine, 
 who was with them now. Then he had dreamed of happiness 
 to come ; to-day he saw his noble child's face, pale with long 
 hours of work, and his brave wife, of whose great beauty 
 there remained such traces as are left to a beautiful city after 
 the lava flood has poured over it. Of all that had been, love 
 alone was left. Cesar's attitude repressed the joy in the girl's 
 heart and in Anselme, the two who now represented the lovers 
 of that bygone day. 
 
 " Be happy, children ; you deserve to be happy," said the 
 poor father, in heartrending tones. " You can love each 
 other with no after-thoughts," added he; and as he spoke he 
 took both his wife's hands in his and kissed them with a rev- 
 erent, admiring affection which touched her more than the 
 brightest cheerfulness. Pillerault, the Ragons, the Abbe 
 Loraux, and Popinot the elder were all waiting for them at 
 the house ; there was an understanding among those five 
 kindly souls, and their manner, and looks, and words put 
 Cesar at his ease, for it went to their hearts to see him always 
 as if on the morrow of his failure. 
 
 "Take a walk in the Bois d'Aulnay," said Pillerault, 
 putting Cesar's hand into that of his wife's. " Go and
 
 CESAR B1ROTTEAU. 317 
 
 take Anselme and Cdsarine with you, and come back again at 
 four o'clock." 
 
 "Poor things, we are in the way," said Mme. Ragon, 
 touched by her debtor's unfeigned misery ; " he will be very 
 happy before long." 
 
 "It is a repentance without the sin," said the Abb6 
 Loraux. 
 
 " He could only have grown great through misfortune," 
 said the judge. 
 
 The power of forgetting is the great secret of strong and 
 creative natures ; they forget after the manner of nature, who 
 knows nothing of a past ; with every hour she begins afresh 
 the constant mysterious workings of fertility. But weak na- 
 tures, like Birotteau, take their sorrows into their lives instead 
 of transmuting them into the axioms of experience; and, 
 steeping themselves in their troubles, wear themselves out by 
 reverting daily to the old unhappiness. 
 
 When the two couples had found the footpath which leads to 
 the Bois d'Aulnay, set like a crown on one of the loveliest of 
 the low hills about Paris ; when the Vallee-aux-Loups lay below 
 them in its enchanting beauty, the bright day, the charm of 
 the view, the fresh green leaves about them, and delicious 
 memories of that fairest day of their youth, relaxed the chords 
 which grief had strung to resonance in Cesar's soul ; he held 
 his wife's arm tightly against his beating heart ; his eyes were 
 glazed no longer, a glad light shone in them. 
 
 "At last I see you again, my dear Cesar," Constance said. 
 "It seems to me that we are behaving well enough to allow 
 ourselves a little pleasure from time to time." 
 
 "How can I?" poor Birotteau answered. "Oh! Con- 
 stance, your love is the one good left to me. I have lost 
 everything, even the confidence that I used to have in myself. 
 I have no heart left in me ; I want to live long enough to pay 
 my dues on earth before I die, and that is all. You, dear, 
 who have been wisdom and prudence for me, who saw things
 
 318 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 clearly, you who are not to blame, may be glad. Among us 
 three, I am the only guilty one. Eighteen months ago, at 
 that unlucky ball, I saw this Constance of mine, the only 
 woman whom I have loved, more beautiful perhaps than the 
 young girl with whom I wandered along this path twenty years 
 ago, as our children are wandering together now. In less than 
 two years I have blighted that beauty, my pride, and I had a 
 right to be proud of it. I love you more as I know you better. 
 Oh ! dearest ! " and his tone gave the word an eloquence that 
 went to his wife's heart, " if only I might hear you scold me, 
 instead of soothing my distress." 
 
 "I did not think it possible," she said, " that a woman 
 could love her husband more after twenty years of life to- 
 gether." 
 
 For a moment Cesar forgot all his troubles at the words 
 that brought such a wealth of happiness to a heart like his. It 
 was with something like joy in his soul that he went toward 
 their tree, which by some chance had not been cut down. 
 Husband and wife sat down beneath it, and watched Anselme 
 and Cesarine, who walked to and fro on the same plot of 
 grass, unconscious of their movements, fancying perhaps that 
 they were still walking on and on. 
 
 " Mademoiselle," Anselme was saying, "do you think me 
 so base and so greedy as to take advantage of the fact that I 
 own your father's interest in the Cephalic Oil? I have care- 
 fully set aside his share of the profits ; I am keeping them for 
 him. I am adding interest to the money ; if there are any 
 doubtful debts, I pass them to my own account. We can only 
 belong to each other when your father has been rehabilitated ; 
 I am trying with all the strength that love gives me to bring 
 that day soon." 
 
 He had carefully kept his secret from Cesarine's mother ; 
 but the simplest lover is always anxious to be great in his 
 love's eyes. 
 
 "And will it come soon ?" she asked.
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 319 
 
 "Very soon," said Popinot. 
 
 The tone in which the answer was given was so penetrating 
 that the innocent and pure-hearted girl held up her forehead 
 for her lover's kiss, fervent and respectful, for Cesarine's noble 
 nature had spoken so plainly in the impulse. 
 
 " Everything is going well, papa," she said, with the air of 
 one who knows a great deal. " Be nice, and talk, and don't 
 look so sad any longer." 
 
 When these four people, so closely bound together, returned 
 to Pillerault's new house, Cesar, unobservant though he was, 
 felt from the Ragons' altered manner that something was im- 
 pending. Mme. Ragon was peculiarly gracious; her look 
 and tone said plainly to Cesar, " We are paid." 
 
 After dinner the notary of Sceaux appeared. Pillerault 
 asked him to be seated, and glanced at Birotteau, who began 
 to suspect some surprise, though he did not imagine how 
 great it would be. Pillerault began 
 
 "Your savings for eighteen months, nephew, and those of 
 your wife and daughter amount to twenty thousand francs. I 
 received thirty thousand francs in the shape of dividend, so 
 we have fifty thousand francs to divide among your creditors. 
 Monsieur Ragon has had thirty thousand francs as dividend ; 
 so this gentleman, who is the notary of Sceaux, is about to 
 hand you a receipt in full for principal and interest, paid 
 to your friends. The rest of the money is with Crottat for 
 Lourdois, Madame Madou, the builder, and the carpenter, 
 and the more pressing of your creditors. Next year we shall 
 see. One can go a long way with time and patience." 
 
 Birotteau's joy cannot be described ; he embraced his uncle, 
 and shed tears. 
 
 "Let him wear his cross to-day," said Ragon, addressing 
 the Abbe Loraux, and the confessor fastened the red ribbon 
 to Cesar's button-hole. A score of times that evening he 
 looked at himself in the mirrors on the walls of the sitting- 
 room with a delight which people who believe themselves to
 
 320 CESAR B1ROT1EAU. 
 
 be superior would laugh at ; but these good-hearted citizens 
 saw nothing unnatural in it. The next day Birotteau went to 
 see Mme. Madou. 
 
 " Oh ! is that you ! " she cried ; " I did not know you, 
 old man, you have grown so gray. Still, the like of you 
 don't come to grief; there are places under Government for 
 you. I myself am working as hard as a poodle that turns a 
 spit, and deserves to be christened." 
 
 " But, madame " 
 
 "Oh, I'm not blaming you," she said; "you had your 
 discharge." 
 
 " I have come to tell you that I will pay you the balance 
 to-day, at Maitre Crottat's office, and interest also " 
 
 "Really?" 
 
 " You must be there at half-past eleven." 
 
 "There's honesty for you ! good measure, and thirteen to 
 the dozen," cried she, in outspoken admiration. " Stop, sir, 
 I do a good trade with that red-haired youngster of yours ; he 
 is a nice young fellow; he lets me make my profit without 
 haggling over the price, so as to make up to me for the loss. 
 Well, then, I will give you the receipt ; keep your money, 
 poor old soul ! La Madou fires up like tinder, she hollers 
 out, but she has something here," and she tapped the most 
 ample cushion of live flesh ever known in the Great Market. 
 
 "Never!" said Birotteau, "the law is explicit; I mean 
 to pay you in full." 
 
 " Then there is no need to keep on begging and praying 
 of me. And to-morrow at the Market I will sound your 
 praises ; they shall all know about you. Oh ! it is a rare 
 joke ! " 
 
 The worthy man went through the same scene again with 
 the house-painter, Crottat's father-in-law, but with some varia- 
 tions. It was raining. Csar left his umbrella in a corner 
 by the door, and the well-to-do house-painter, sitting at 
 breakfast with his wife in a handsomely furnished room, saw
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 321 
 
 the stream of water trickle across the floor, and was not too 
 considerate. 
 
 " Halloo, poor old Birotteau, what do you want ? " he asked, 
 in the hard tone which people use to a tiresome beggar. 
 
 " Has not your son-in-law asked you, sir " 
 
 "What?" Lourdois broke in impatiently. Some request 
 was to follow, he thought. 
 
 " To go to his office this morning at half-past eleven, to 
 give me a receipt in full for the balance of your claim?" 
 
 " Oh ! that is another thing ! Just sit you down, Monsieur 
 Birotteau, and take a bite with us " 
 
 "Do us the honor of breakfasting with us," said Mme. 
 Lourdois. 
 
 " Doing pretty well? " asked her burly spouse. 
 
 " No, sir. I have had to lunch off a roll in my office to 
 get some money together, but I hope in time to repair the 
 wrong done to my neighbors." 
 
 "Really, you are a man of honor," remarked the house- 
 painter, as he swallowed a mouthful of bread and butter and 
 Strasbourg pie. 
 
 "And what is Madame Birotteau doing?" asked Mme. 
 Lourdois. 
 
 "She is keeping the books in Monsieur Anselme Popinot's 
 counting-house." 
 
 " Poor things ! " said Mme. Lourdois, in a low voice. 
 
 " If you should want me, come and see me, my dear Mon- 
 sieur Birotteau/' began Lourdois; "I might be of use " 
 
 "I want you at eleven o'clock, sir," said Birotteau, and 
 with that he went. 
 
 This first result gave Birotteau fresh courage, but it did not 
 give him peace of mind. The desire to redeem his character 
 perturbed him beyond all measure. He completely lost the 
 bloom which used to appear in his face, his eyes grew dull, 
 his cheeks hollow. Old acquaintances who met him at eight 
 o'clock in the morning, or after four in the afternoon on his
 
 322 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 way to and from the Rue de 1'Oratoire, saw a pale-faced, 
 nervous, white-haired man, wearing the same overcoat which 
 he had had at the time of the bankruptcy (for he was as care- 
 ful of it as a poor sub-lieutenant who economizes his uniform). 
 Sometimes they would stop him in spite of himself, for he 
 was quick-sighted, slinking home, keeping close to the wall 
 like a thief. 
 
 "People know how you have behaved, my friend," they 
 would say. " Everybody is sorry to see how hardly you live, 
 you and your wife and daughter." 
 
 "Take a little more time about it," others would suggest. 
 " A wound in the purse is not mortal." 
 
 "No, but a wound in the soul is deadly indeed," the poor 
 feeble Cesar said one day in answer to Matifat. 
 
 At the beginning of the year 1823 the Canal Saint-Martin 
 was decided upon, and land in the Faubourg du Temple 
 fetched fabulous prices. The canal would actually pass 
 through the property once Cesar's, now du Tillet's. The 
 company who had purchased the concessions were prepared to 
 pay du Tillet an exorbitant sum for the land if he would put 
 them in possession within a given time, and Popinot's lease 
 was the one obstacle in the way. So du Tillet went to see the 
 druggist in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants. 
 
 If Popinot himself regarded du Tillet with indifference, as 
 Cesarine's lover he felt an instinctive hatred of the man. He 
 knew nothing of the theft, nor of the disgraceful machinations 
 of the lucky banker, but a voice within him said, "This is a 
 thief who goes unpunished." Popinot had not had the slightest 
 transaction with du Tillet, whose presence was hateful to him, 
 and particularly hateful at that moment when he beheld du 
 Tillet enriched with the spoils of his employer's property, for 
 the building land at the Madeleine was beginning to command 
 prices which presaged the exorbitant sums which were asked 
 for lots in 1827. So when the banker explained the reason
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 323 
 
 of his visit, Popinot looked at him with concentrated indig- 
 nation. 
 
 "I do not mean to refuse outright to surrender my lease, 
 but I must have sixty thousand francs for it, and I will not 
 bate a centime." 
 
 "Sixty thousand francs!" cried du Tillet, making as 
 though he would go. 
 
 " The lease has fifteen years to run, and it will take another 
 three thousand francs per annum to replace the factory. So, 
 sixty thousand francs, or we will say no more about it," said 
 Popinot, turning into the store, whither du Tillet followed 
 him. 
 
 The discussion waxed warm, when Mme. Birotteau, hear- 
 ing her husband's name pronounced, came downstairs and 
 saw du Tillet for the first time since the famous ball. He, on 
 his side, could not avoid making a startled gesture at the sight 
 of the change wrought in her face he was frightened at his 
 work and lowered his eyes. 
 
 " This gentleman is receiving three hundred thousand francs 
 for your land," said Popinot, addressing Mme. Cesar, "and 
 he declines to pay us sixty thousand francs by way of indem- 
 nity for our lease " 
 
 " Three thousand francs per annum," said du Tillet, laying 
 stress on the words. 
 
 "Three thousand francs / " Madame Cesar repeated the 
 words quietly and significantly. 
 
 Du Tillet turned pale ; Popinot looked at Mme. Birotteau. 
 There was a pause and a deep silence, which made the scene 
 still more inexplicable to Anselme. 
 
 "Sign your surrender," said du Tillet; "I have had the 
 document drafted by Crottat," and he drew a stamped agree- 
 ment from a side-pocket. " I will give you a draft on the 
 bank for sixty thousand francs." 
 
 Popinot stared at Mme. Cesar with great and unfeigned 
 astonishment ; he thought that he was dreaming. While du
 
 324 C&SAR BIROTTEAIT. 
 
 Tillet was making out his draft at a desk, Mme. Cesar van- 
 ished upstairs again. The druggist and the banker exchanged 
 papers, and du Tillet went out with a very frigid bow to 
 Popinot. 
 
 "At last!" cried Popinot. "Only a few months now, 
 and I shall have my Cesarine, thanks to this queer business," 
 and he watched du Tillet turn into the Rue des Lombards, 
 where his cab was waiting for him. " My dear little wife 
 shall not wear herself to death at her work. What ! was a 
 look from Madame Cesar enough ? What is there between 
 her and that brigand? It is a very extraordinary thing." 
 
 Popinot sent the draft to be cashed at the bank and went 
 upstairs to speak to Mme. Birotteau ; but she was not in the 
 counting-house, doubtless she had gone to her room. Anselme 
 and Constance lived like a mother-in-law and son-in-law 
 when these are on good terms with each other, so he went to 
 Constance's room in all the haste natural in a lover who sees 
 happiness within his grasp. 
 
 Great was his astonishment to find his mother-in-law (whom 
 he surprised by springing into the room) reading a letter from 
 du Tillet, for Anselme recognized the handwriting at once. 
 The sight of a lighted candle and black phantom scraps of 
 burnt paper on the floor sent a shudder through Popinot, 
 whose long-sighted eyes had involuntarily read the words with 
 which the letter began, " I adore you ! You know it, angel 
 of my life, and why " 
 
 "What hold have you on du Tillet to make him conclude 
 such a bargain as this?" he asked, with the jerky laugh of 
 repressed suspicion. 
 
 " Let us not talk of it," she said, and he saw that she was 
 painfully agitated. 
 
 "Yes," answered Popinot, quite taken aback, "we must 
 talk of the end of your troubles." Anselme swung round on 
 his heels and drummed on the window-pane, staring out into 
 the yard. "Very well," said he to himself, "and suppose
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 325 
 
 that she loved du Tillet, is that any reason why I should not 
 behave like a man of honor? " 
 
 " What is it, my boy?" the poor woman asked. 
 
 "The net profits on the Cephalic Oil amount to two hun- 
 dred and forty-two thousand francs, and the half of two hun- 
 dred and forty-two is one hundred and twenty-one," said Pop- 
 inot abruptly. " If I deduct from that sum the forty-eight 
 thousand francs already paid to Monsieur Birotteau, there still 
 remain seventy-three thousand; add to it the sixty thousand 
 just paid for the surrender of the lease, and you will have one 
 hundred and thirty-three thousand francs." 
 
 Mme. Cesar listened in such glad excitement that Popinot 
 could hear the beating of her heart. 
 
 "Well, I have always looked on Monsieur Birotteau as my 
 partner," he continued; "we can employ the money in re- 
 paying his creditors. Your savings, twenty-eight thousand 
 francs, in Uncle Pillerault's keeping, will raise the sum to a 
 hundred and sixty-one thousand francs. Uncle will not refuse 
 to give us a receipt for his twenty-five thousand francs. No 
 power on earth can prevent my lending to my father-in-law, 
 on account of next year's profits, enough to pay off the re- 
 mainder of his creditors. And he will be rehabili- 
 tated " 
 
 " Rehabilitated ! " cried Mme. Cesar, kneeling before her 
 chair, and, clasping her hands, she repeated a prayer. The 
 letter had slipped from her fingers. She crossed herself. 
 "Dear Anselme ! " she said, "dear boy!" She took his 
 face in her hands, kissed him on the forehead, and held him 
 tightly in her arms. " Cesarine is yours, indeed," she cried. 
 " My daughter will be very happy. She will leave the house 
 where she is working herself to death." 
 
 "Through love," said Anselme. 
 
 "Yes," smiled the mother. 
 
 " Listen to a little secret," said Anselme, looking out of the 
 corner of his eye at the unlucky letter. " I obliged Celestin
 
 326 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 when he wanted capital to buy your business, but it was on 
 one condition : Your rooms are just as you left them. I had 
 my own idea, but I did not think then that fortune would 
 favor us so greatly. Celestin has undertaken to sub-let your 
 old rooms to you ; he has not set foot in them, and all the 
 furniture there is yours. I am reserving the third story, so 
 that C6sarine and I may live there ; she shall never leave you. 
 After we are married, I will spend the day here from eight 
 o'clock in the morning till six in the evening. Then I will 
 buy out Monsieur Cesar's interest in the business for a hundred 
 thousand francs, so that, with his post, you will have ten thou- 
 sand livres a year. Will you not be happy? " 
 
 " Do not say any more, Anselme, or I shall go mad with 
 joy." 
 
 Mme. Cdsar's angelic bearing, her pure eyes, the innocence 
 on her fair brow, gave the lie so magnificently to the countless 
 thoughts which surged up in the young lover's brain, that he 
 made up his mind to slay the chimeras of his fancy. The sin 
 was irreconcilable with the life and the sentiments of Pille- 
 rault's niece. 
 
 "My dear adored mother," he began, "a horrible doubt 
 has just crossed my mind. If you would see me happy, you 
 will set it at rest." 
 
 Popinot held out his hand as he spoke, and took possession 
 of the letter. 
 
 " Unintentionally I read the first words in du Tillet's hand- 
 writing," he said, alarmed at the consternation in her face. 
 "The words coincide so oddly with the effect you just pro- 
 duced upon the man, who complied at once with my extrava- 
 gant demands, that anybody would find the explanation which 
 the devil suggests to me in spite of myself. A glance from 
 you, and three words were enough " 
 
 " Stop," said Mme. Cesar, and, taking back the letter, she 
 burned it under Anselme's eyes. " I am cruelly punished for 
 a trifling fault, my child. And now you must know all, An-
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 327 
 
 selrae. The suspicion attaching to the mother must not do 
 her daughter an injury, and, beside, I may speak without a 
 blush ; I could tell my husband this that I am about to tell 
 you. Du Tillet tried to seduce me, my husband was warned 
 at once, and du Tillet was to be dismissed. The very day 
 that my husband was to discharge him du Tillet took three 
 thousand francs." 
 
 " I suspected it," said Popinot, with all his hatred of the 
 man in his tone. 
 
 "Anselme, your future and your happiness required this 
 confidence, but it must die in your own breast, as it had 
 died in Cesar's and mine. You surely remember the fuss my 
 husband made about the mistake in the books. Monsieur Birot- 
 teau, no doubt, put three thousand francs into the safe (the price 
 of the shawl, which was not given to me for three years), so 
 as to avoid ruining the young man by bringing him into a 
 police court. So there you have the explanation of my cry 
 of surprise. Alas, my dear boy, I will confess my childish 
 conduct. Du Tillet had written three love letters to me, 
 letters which showed his nature so plainly that I kept them 
 as a curiosity. I only read them once ; but, after all, it was 
 not wise to keep them. When I saw du Tillet, I thought of 
 them, and went up to my room to burn tkem. When you 
 came in, I was looking at the last one. That is all, my 
 dear." 
 
 Anselme knelt and kissed Mme. Cesar's hand. The ex- 
 pression in his eyes drew tears of admiring affection from 
 hers. Constance raised her son-in-law and clasped him to 
 her heart. 
 
 That day was destined to be a day of joy for Cesar. 
 The King's private secretary, M. de Vandenesse, came 
 to the office to speak with him. They went out together 
 into the little courtyard of the Sinking Fund Department. 
 
 "Monsieur Birotteau," said the Vicomte, "the story of 
 your struggle to pay your creditors came by chance to the
 
 328 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 King's knowledge. His majesty was touched by such un- 
 usual conduct ; and learning that, from motives of humility, 
 you were not wearing the cross of the Legion of Honor, 
 he has sent me to command you to resume it. His majesty 
 also wishes to assist you to discharge your obligations, and 
 has ordered me to pay this amount to you out of his own 
 privy purse, with regrets that he can do no more for you. 
 Let the matter remain a profound secret, for his majesty 
 thinks it little becomes a King to make official proclama- 
 tion of his good actions," and the private secretary paid 
 over six thousand francs to the employe, who heard these 
 words with indescribable emotions. 
 
 Birotteau could only stammer inarticulate thanks. Van- 
 denesse smiled and waved his hand. Cesar's principles are 
 so rarely seen in practice in Paris that by degrees his life 
 had won just admiration. Joseph Lebas, Popinot the elder, 
 Camusot, Ragon, the Abb Loraux, the head partner of the 
 firm which employed Cesarine, Lourdois, and M. de la Bil- 
 lardiere had spoken of it. The scale of opinion had already 
 turned in his favor, and people praised him to the skies. 
 
 " There goes a man of honor ! " The words had reached 
 Cedar's ears several times in the street ; he heard them 
 with the sensations of an author who hears his name pro- 
 nounced. This fair renown disgusted du Tillet. Cesar's 
 first thought on receiving the King's bank-notes was of repay- 
 ment to his ex-assistant. The good man betook himself to 
 the Rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin, and it so fell out that the 
 banker, returning home from business, met him upon the 
 staircase. 
 
 " Well, my poor Birotteau," said he, in a caressing tone. 
 
 "Poor?" the other cried proudly. "I am very rich. I 
 shall lay my head on the pillow to-night with the satisfaction 
 of knowing that I have paid you." 
 
 The words, so full of honesty, put du Tillet for a moment 
 on the rack. Every one respected him, but he had lost his
 
 CESAR BIKOTTEAU. 329 
 
 own self-respect ; a voice which could not be stifled cried 
 within him, " This man is heroic ! " But he spoke 
 
 " Pay me ! What business can you be in ? " he enviously 
 inquired. 
 
 Birotteau felt quite sure that du Tillet would not repeat the 
 story. 
 
 "I shall never start in business again, sir. No human 
 power could foresee the thing that befell me. Who knows 
 but what I might be the victim of another Roguin ? But my 
 conduct has been put before the King, his heart has deigned 
 to compassionate my struggles, and he has encouraged them 
 by sending me at once a fairly large sum, which " 
 
 " Do you want a receipt in full ? " du Tillet cut him short. 
 "Are you paying " 
 
 " In full, and interest beside. So I must beg you to come 
 to Monsieur Crottat's office, a step or two away." 
 
 " In the presence of a notary ! " 
 
 " Why, sir, there is nothing to prevent me from thinking 
 of my rehabilitation, and a document so authenticated is legal 
 evidence " 
 
 " Come, let us go," said du Tillet, and he went out with 
 Birotteau ; "it is only a step. But who will find you so 
 much money?" he went on. 
 
 " No one finds it for me," said C6sar. " I am earning it 
 by the sweat of my brow." 
 
 "You owe an enormous amount to Claparon." 
 
 "Alas ! yes, that is the heaviest of my debts ; I am afraid 
 the effort will be too much for me." 
 
 " Oh ! you will never be able to pay it all," said du Tillet 
 harshly. 
 
 " He is right," thought Birotteau. 
 
 He went home again by way of the Rue Saint-Honor6, a 
 piece of inadvertence, for he always went round some other 
 way that he might not see his shop, nor the windows of his 
 old home. For the first time since his fall, he saw the house
 
 330 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 where he had spent eighteen happy years, and three months 
 of anguish that effaced those memories. 
 
 " I used to count on ending my days there," he said to 
 himself; and he quickened his pace at the sight of a new 
 name on the store- front : 
 
 CELESTIN CREVEL 
 Formerly Cesar Birotteau. 
 
 " My eyes dazzle Is that Cesarine ?" he cried, think- 
 ing that he had seen a golden head at the window. 
 
 It was really Cesarine whom he saw, and his wife was there, 
 and so .was Popinot. The two lovers knew that Birotteau 
 never went past his old home ; and it was impossible that 
 they should imagine the great event in the Rue de 1'Oratoire, 
 so they had gone to make arrangements for the fete they were 
 planning to give in Birotteau's honor. The strange appari- 
 tion astonished Cesar so much that he stood stockstill. 
 
 "There is Monsieur Birotteau looking at his old house," 
 said M. Molineux to a storekeeper who lived over against the 
 Queen of Roses. 
 
 "Poor man!" returned Birotteau's old neighbor, "he 
 gave one of the grandest balls there there were two hundred 
 carriages in the street." 
 
 "I went to it; he went bankrupt three months afterward, 
 and I was trustee," said Molineux. 
 
 Birotteau fled, his legs trembling beneath him, and reached 
 Pillerault's house. 
 
 Pillerault knew what was passing in the Rue des Cinq-Dia- 
 mants, and it seemed to him that his nephew was scarcely fit 
 to bear the shock of a joy so great as his rehabilitation. He 
 had been a daily witness of Cesar's mental sufferings, knew 
 that Birotteau's own stern doctrine as to bankrupts was always 
 in his thoughts, and that he was living up to the very limit 
 of his strength. Dead honor might yet have its Easter Day
 
 C&SAR BIROTTEAU. 331 
 
 for him ; and it was this hope that gave him no respite from 
 pain. Pillerault undertook to prepare Cesar for the good 
 news ; so when he came in, his uncle was thinking how to 
 attain his end. Cesar began to tell the news of the interest 
 that the King had taken in him, his joy seemed to Pillerault 
 to be auspicious, and his amazement that Cesarine should be 
 at the window at the sign of the Queen of Roses afforded an 
 excellent opening. 
 
 "Well, Cesar," Pillerault began, "do you know what 
 brought it about? Popinot is impatient to marry C6sarine. 
 He will not and ought not to be bound any longer by your 
 extravagant ideas of honor, to spend his youth in eating dry 
 bread and smelling a good dinner. Popinot is determined to 
 pay off your creditors in full." 
 
 " He is going to buy his wife." 
 
 "Isn't it to his credit that he wants to rehabilitate his 
 father-in-law?" 
 
 " But questions might be raised, and, beside " 
 
 "And, beside," cried Uncle Pillerault in feigned anger, 
 "you may sacrifice yourself if you like, but you have no right 
 to sacrifice your daughter." 
 
 A lively discussion began, and Pillerault apparently worked 
 himself up. 
 
 "Eh ! If Popinot lent you nothing," cried he; "if he 
 had looked upon you as his partner ; if he chose to consider 
 the money that he paid over to your creditors for your interest 
 in the Oil as an advance on account of the profits, so that you 
 should not be robbed " 
 
 " It would look as though I had arranged with him to cheat 
 my creditors." 
 
 Pillerault pretended to be defeated by this logic. He knew 
 enough of human nature to guess that during the night the 
 good man would argue out the case with himself; and those 
 private reflections of his would accustom him to the idea of 
 rehabilitation.
 
 322 CESAR BTROTTEAU. 
 
 "But how came my wife and daughter to be in our old 
 house?" he asked at dinner. 
 
 " Anselme means to take one of the floors, and he and 
 Cesarine will set up housekeeping there. Your wife is on his 
 side. They have had the banns put up without telling you, 
 so as to compel you to give your consent. Popinot says that 
 there will be less merit in marrying Cesarine after you are 
 rehabilitated. You accept the King's six thousand francs, 
 and yet you will take nothing from your relatives ! Now, for 
 my own part, I am quite justified in giving you a receipt in 
 full ; would you refuse it ? " 
 
 "No," said Cesar. "But it would not hinder me from 
 saving the money to pay you, receipt or not." 
 
 "All this is splitting hairs," said Pillerault, "and when 
 honesty is in question, I ought to be allowed to know what is 
 right. What folly were you talking just now? When your 
 creditors are all paid in full, will you still persist that you have 
 cheated them ! " 
 
 Cesar looked full at Pillerault as he spoke, and it touched 
 the older man to see a bright smile on his nephew's face after 
 three years of dejection. 
 
 " You are right," he said, " they would be paid. But it is 
 like selling my daughter ! " 
 
 "And I wish to be bought," cried Cesarine, who came in 
 with Popinot. 
 
 The lovers stealing on tiptoe through the lobby had over- 
 heard the words. Mme. Birotteau was just behind them. 
 The three had made a round in a cab, asking all the creditors 
 to meet in Crottat's office that evening ; Popinot's lover's 
 logic bore down Cesar's scruples ; but he still persisted in 
 calling himself a debtor, and would have it that he was out- 
 flanking the law by a substitution. Conscience yielded to an 
 outburst from Popinot 
 
 " So you mean to kill your daughter, do you ? " 
 
 "Kill my daughter! " echoed C6sar, bewildered.
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 333 
 
 "Well, now," said Popinot, "what is there to prevent me 
 from making a deed of gift in your favor of a sum which on 
 my conscience I believe to be yours? Can you refuse?" 
 
 "No," said Cesar. 
 
 " Good. Then let us go to Alexandre Crottat this evening, 
 so that there shall be no going back upon it, and our marriage- 
 contract can be decided at the same time." 
 
 An application for reinstatement and all the necessary 
 certificates were duly deposited by Derville at the office of 
 the procureur-general of the Court of Appeal. 
 
 During the month which elapsed between the putting up of 
 the banns and the marriage, and during the progress of the 
 formalities, Cesar lived in a state of constant nervous excite- 
 ment. He was ill at ease. He feared that he might not live to 
 see the great day when his disabilities should be formally 
 removed. His pulse throbbed unaccountably, he said, and he 
 complained of a dull pain about the heart. He had been 
 exhausted by painful emotion and this supreme joy was 
 wearing him out. Decrees of rehabilitation are rare in 
 Paris ; there is scarcely one in ten years. 
 
 There is something indescribably solemn and imposing in 
 the ceremonial of justice for those who take society seriously. 
 An institution is to men as they consider it, and is invested 
 with dignity and grandeur by their thoughts. When a nation 
 has ceased, not to feel the religious instinct, but to believe ; 
 when primary education relaxes the bonds of union by teach- 
 ing children a habit of merciless anaylsis, a nation is dissolved; 
 for the only ties that are left to bind men together and make 
 of them one body are the ignoble ties of material interest 
 and the dictates of the selfish cult created by egoism well 
 carried out. Birotteau, sustained by religion, saw Justice as 
 Justice ought to be regarded among men, as the expression 
 of society itself; beneath the forms he saw the sovereign 
 will, the laws by which men have agreed to live. If the 
 magistrate is old, feeble, and white-haired, so much the more
 
 334 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 solemn does his priestly office appear, an office which demands 
 so profound a study of human nature and of things, an office 
 to which the heart is immolated, for of necessity it becomes 
 callous in a guardian of so many palpitating interests. 
 
 In these days the men who cannot ascend the staircase of 
 the Court of Appeal in the old Palais de Justice in Paris 
 without feeling deeply stirred are growing rare; but Birot- 
 teau was one of these men. There are not many who notice 
 the majestic grandeur of that staircase, so magnificently 
 planned to produce an effect. It rises at the further end of 
 the peristyle which adorns the Cour du Palais. The doorway 
 opens on the centre of the gallery which leads from the vast 
 Salle des Pas Perdus at its one end to the Sainte-Chapelle at 
 the other, two monuments which may well dwarf everything 
 about them into .insignificance. The church of St. Louis is 
 in itself one of the grandest buildings in Paris, and there is 
 an indescribable dim atmosphere of romance about it when 
 approached by way of this gallery ; while the vast Salle des 
 Pas Perdus is flooded with daylight, and it is hard to forget 
 memories of the history of France that cling about its walls. 
 So the staircase must have a grandeur of its own if it is not 
 utterly overshadowed by the glories of those two famous 
 buildings. Perhaps there is something to stir the soul at 
 the sight of the place where decrees are executed, beheld 
 through the rich scroll-work of the screen of the Palais. 
 The staircase gives entrance to a vast room, the Salle des 
 Pas Perdus of this court, beyond which lies the Hall of Audi- 
 ence. Imagine the feeling with which Birotteau (always so 
 much impressed by the circumstance of justice) mounted the 
 staircase among a little crowd of his friends Lebas, at that 
 time president of the Tribunal of Commerce ; Camusot, who 
 had acted as registrar ; Ragon, his old master ; and the Abbe 
 Loraux, his confessor. The presence of the good priest 
 enhanced these earthly honors by a reflection from heaven, 
 which gave them yet more value in Cesar's eyes.
 
 CESAR BIKOTTEAU. 335 
 
 Pillerault, that practical philosopher, had bethought him 
 of the expedient of dwelling upon and exaggerating the joy 
 of the release, so that the actual experience might not over- 
 whelm Cesar. Just as he finished dressing he found himself 
 surrounded by faithful friends, all anxious for the honor of 
 accompanying him to the bar of the court. The delight 
 which suffused the good man's soul at the sight of this group 
 raised him to a pitch of happiness necessary for him if he was 
 to endure the alarming ordeal. He found others of his friends 
 standing in the Great Hall of Audience, where a dozen coun- 
 cilors were sitting. 
 
 After the case had been called, Birotteau's attorney made 
 application in a brief formula. At a sign from the president, 
 the attorney-general rose to give his opinion. In the name 
 of the court, the attorney-general, the public accuser, was 
 about to make demand that the merchant's honor, which had 
 been pledged, should be vindicated ; a proceeding unique in 
 law, for a condemned man can only be pardoned. Those 
 who have hearts that feel can imagine Birotteau's feelings 
 when M. de Granville spoke somewhat as follows : 
 
 "Gentlemen," said the great lawyer, "on the i6th of 
 January, 1820, Birotteau was declared a bankrupt by the Tri- 
 bunal of Commerce of the Seine. The insolvency was not 
 occasioned by imprudence on the part of the merchant, nor 
 by dishonest speculation, nor any other cause which could 
 stain his honor. We feel that it is necessary to state it pub- 
 licly the calamity was brought about by one of those disas- 
 ters which occur from time to time, to the great affliction of 
 justice and of the city of Paris. It was reserved for this 
 present century, in which the evil leaven of subverted morals 
 and revolutionary ideas will long ferment, to behold the Paris- 
 ian notarial depart from the honorable traditions of its past; 
 there have been more cases of insolvency in that body during 
 the last few years than in two preceding centuries under the 
 ancient monarchy. The greed of gold rapidly acquired has
 
 336 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 seized upon officials, those guardians of the public welfare 
 and intermediary authorities." 
 
 Then followed a tirade based on this text, in the course of 
 which M. le Comte de Granville (speaking in character) took 
 occasion to incriminate Liberals, Bonapartists, and all and 
 sundry who were disaffected, as in duty bound. Events have 
 shown that there was good ground for the councilor's appre- 
 hensions. 
 
 "The immediate cause of the plaintiffs ruin was the action 
 of a Paris notary, who absconded with the money which 
 Birotteau deposited with him. The sentence passed by the 
 court in Roguin's case shows how shamefully he had betrayed 
 his client's trust. A concordat followed. We will observe, 
 for the honor of the applicant, that the proceedings were 
 characterized by honesty not to be met with in the scan- 
 dalous failures which daily occur in Paris. Birotteau's cred- 
 itors, gentlemen, found every trifle that he possessed, down to 
 trinkets and articles of wearing apparel belonging not only to 
 him, but to his wife, who, to swell the assets, gave up all that 
 she had. Birotteau at this juncture showed himself worthy 
 of the respect which he had won by the discharge of his muni- 
 cipal functions ; for he was at that time deputy-mayor of the 
 second arrondissement, and had just received the cross of the 
 Legion of Honor accorded to the devoted Royalist, who shed 
 his blood for the cause on the steps of Saint-Roch in Vende'- 
 miaire ; and, no less, to the consular judge, who had won 
 respect by his ability and popularity by his conciliatory 
 spirit ; to the modest municipal officer, who declined the 
 honors of the mayoralty for himself and put forward the 
 name of another as more worthy the honorable Baron de la 
 Billardiere, one of the noble Vendeans whom he had learned 
 to esteem in evil days." 
 
 " He put that better than I did," said Cesar in his uncle's 
 ear. 
 
 "The creditors, therefore, receiving sixty percent, of their
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 337 
 
 claims, thanks to the upright merchant and his wife and 
 daughter, who surrendered everything that they possessed, 
 gave expression to their respect in the concordat, by which 
 they forwent the remainder of their claims in consideration 
 of the dividend. The attention of the court is called to the 
 manner in which this record is worded." Here the attorney- 
 general read the concordat. " After such expressions of good- 
 will, gentlemen, many a trader would have considered him- 
 self free, and would have walked with head erect in public ; 
 but, so far from considering his liabilities to be discharged, 
 Birotteau would not give way to despair, but made an inward 
 resolution to hasten the coming of a glorious day which here 
 and now dawns for him. Nothing turned him aside from his 
 purpose. Our beloved sovereign gave a post to the man who 
 was wounded at Saint-Roch, and the bankrupt merchant set 
 by the whole of his salary for the benefit of his creditors, for 
 the devotion of his family did not fail him " 
 
 Tears came into Birotteau's eyes as he squeezed his uncle's 
 hand. 
 
 " His wife and daughter poured their earnings into the 
 common treasury ; they, too, had embraced Birotteau's loyal 
 purpose. They descended from their position to take a sub- 
 ordinate place. Such sacrifices as these, gentlemen, deserve 
 all honor, for they are the hardest of all. This was the task 
 which Birotteau laid upon himself." 
 
 The attorney read an abbreviated version of the schedule, 
 giving the names of the creditors and the balances due to 
 them. 
 
 " Every one of these amounts, gentlemen, has been paid, 
 interest included. The receipts have not been given by 
 notes of hand which demand investigation, but by certificates 
 of payment made in the presence of a notary, documents 
 which do not abuse the good faith of the court, though, never- 
 theless, the inquiries required by the law have been duly 
 made. You, therefore, restore to Birotteau not his honor, 
 22
 
 338 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 but the civil and political privileges of which he has been 
 deprived, and in so doing you do justice. Such cases come 
 so seldom before you that we cannot refrain from giving 
 expression to our admiration of the conduct of the applicant, 
 who has already received the encouragement of august patron- 
 age." 
 
 With that, he read the formal application. The court 
 deliberated without retiring, and the president rose to pro- 
 nounce the decree. 
 
 " The court charges me to inform Monsieur Birotteau of 
 the satisfaction with which the decree, granted under such 
 circumstances, is passed. Call the next case." 
 
 Birotteau, already invested with a caftan of honor by the 
 attorney-general's speech, was struck dumb with joy when 
 he heard these solemn words from the president of the highest 
 Court of Appeal in France, words which made those who 
 heard them feel that the impassive Themis had a heart. He 
 could not move from his place, he seemed to be glued to the 
 floor, and gazed with bewildered eyes at the councilors, who 
 seemed to him like angels who had opened the gates which 
 admitted him to life among his fellows. His uncle took him 
 by the arm and drew him away. Then Cesar, who had not 
 obeyed the desire of Louis XVIII., fastened the red ribbon 
 at his button-hole, like a man in a dream, and went down in 
 triumph with his friends about him to the hackney-cab. 
 
 "Where are you taking me? " he asked of Joseph Lebas, 
 Pillerault, and Ragon. 
 
 "Home." 
 
 " No. It is three o'clock ; I want to go on 'Change again, 
 now that I have the right." 
 
 "To the Exchange," Pillerault gave the order and looked 
 significantly at Lebas, for there were symptoms which made 
 him uneasy; he feared for Birotteau's reason. 
 
 So Birotteau went back on 'Change between his uncle and 
 Joseph Lebas; the two merchants whom every one respected
 
 CESA R BIRO TTEA U. L>39 
 
 linked their arms in his. The news of his rehabilitation was 
 abroad. Du Tillet was the first to see the three and old 
 Ragon, who followed behind. 
 
 "Ah! my dear master! Delighted to hear that you have 
 pulled through your difficulties. Perhaps I contributed to 
 bring about this happy termination by allowing little Popinot 
 to pluck me so easily. I am as glad of your happiness as if 
 it were my own." 
 
 " It is the only way open to you," said Pillerault, "for you 
 will never experience it yourself." 
 
 "What do you mean, sir?" asked du Tillet. 
 
 "A good dig in the ribs, by George," said Lebas, smiling 
 at Pillerault's malicious revenge. He knew nothing of the 
 part that du Tillet had played, but he looked on him as a 
 scoundrel. 
 
 Matifat saw Cdsar, and immediately all the most respected 
 merchants crowded about the perfumer ; he received an ovation 
 on 'Change, the most flattering congratulations and hand- 
 shakes, which caused here and there some heart-burnings and 
 here and there a pang of remorse, for fifty out of every hun- 
 dred present had been insolvent at some time or other. 
 
 Gigonnet and Gobseck, chatting in a corner, stared at 
 Ce"sar as the learned must have stared when the first electric 
 eel was brought for their inspection and they beheld that 
 strange curiosity, a living leyden jar. 
 
 Then, still breathing the incense of triumph, Cesar went 
 out to the cab and drove home to his house, where the mar- 
 riage-contract between his dear child Cesarine and the de- 
 voted Popinot was to be signed that evening. He laughed 
 nervously, in a way that alarmed his three old friends. 
 
 It is one of the mistakes of youth to imagine that every one 
 has the vitality of youth, a defect nearly akin to its best en- 
 dowment ; for youth does not behold life through a pair of 
 spectacles, but through the radiant hues of a reflected glow, 
 and age itself is credited with its own exuberant life. Popi-
 
 340 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 not, like Cesar and Constance, cherished memories of the 
 pomp and splendor of the ball : the strains of Collinet's 
 orchestra had often rung in his ears; he had seen the gay 
 throng of dancers, and tasted the joy so cruelly punished, as 
 Adam and Eve might have thought of the forbidden fruit 
 which banished them from the Garden, and brought Death 
 and Birth into the world, for it seems that the multiplication 
 of the angels is one of the mysteries of the Paradise above. 
 
 Popinot, however, could think of that night's festivity not 
 only without remorse, but with joy in his heart, for then it 
 was that Cesarine in all her glory had given her promise to 
 him in his poverty. That evening he had known beyond all 
 doubt that he was loved for himself alone. So when he paid 
 Celestin for the rooms which Grindot had restored, and stipu- 
 lated that everything should be left untouched ; when he had 
 carefully seen that the merest trifles belonging to Cesar and 
 Constance were in their place, he had dreamed of giving a 
 ball there on the day of his wedding. The preparations for 
 the fete had been a work of love. It should be exactly like 
 the previous one, except in the extravagances. Extravagance 
 was over and done with. Still, the dinner was to be served 
 by Chevet, and the guests were almost the same. The Abbe 
 Loraux took the place of the grand chancellor; and Lebas, 
 the president of the Tribunal of Commerce, was to be there. 
 Popinot added M. Camusot's name to the list, as an acknowl- 
 edgment of the kindness he had shown to Birotteau in so 
 many ways. M. de Vandenesse and M. de Fontaine took the 
 place of M. and Mme. Roguin. 
 
 Cesarine and Popinot had exercised their discretion in the 
 matter of invitations to the ball. They both shrank from 
 making a festival of their wedding, and had avoided the pub- 
 licity which jars on pure and tender hearts by giving the 
 dance on the occasion of the signing of the contract. Con- 
 stance had found the cherry-colored velvet dress in which she 
 had shone for the brief space of a single day; and Cdsarine
 
 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 341 
 
 had pleased herself by surprising Popinot in the ball-dress of 
 which he had talked times out of mind. So the house was to 
 wear the same air of an enchanted festival, and neither Con- 
 stance, nor Cesarine, nor Anselme thought that there was any 
 danger for Cesar in this joyful surprise. They waited till 
 four o'clock, and grew almost childish in their happiness. 
 
 After the hero of the hour had passed through the inde- 
 scribable emotions of returning to the Exchange, a fresh 
 shock awaited him in the Rue Saint-Honore. As he came up 
 the stairs, which still looked new, he saw his wife in the 
 cherry-colored velvet dress ; he saw Cesarine, the Comte de 
 Fontaine, the Vicomte de Vandenesse, the Baron de la Bil- 
 lardiere, and the great Vauquelin ; a light film spread over his 
 eyes, and Uncle Pillerault, on whose arm he leaned, felt the 
 shudder that ran through his nephew. 
 
 "It is too much for him," the old philosopher said to the 
 enamored Anselme; " he will not stand all the wine which you 
 have poured out for him." 
 
 But all hearts beat so high with joy that Cesar's emotion 
 and tottering steps were ascribed to an intoxication, very 
 natural, as they thought but not seldom fatal. When he 
 looked round the drawing-room and saw it filled with guests 
 and women in ball toilets, the sublime rhythm of the finale 
 of Beethoven's great symphony beat in his pulses and flooded 
 his brain. That imaginary music streamed in on him like 
 rays of light, sparkling from modulation to modulation ; it was 
 to be, indeed, the finale that rang clear and high through the 
 recesses of the tired brain. Overcome by the harmony that 
 swept through him, he laid his hand on his wife's arm, and 
 in tones, rendered almost inaudible by the effort to keep back 
 the flowing blood which filled his mouth 
 
 " I am not well," he said. 
 
 Constance, in alarm, led her husband to her room ; he was 
 barely able to reach the armchair, into which he sank, ex- 
 claiming, "Monsieur Haudry ! Monsieur Loraux ! "
 
 342 CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 The abbe came in, followed by the guests and women in 
 evening dress, who stood in consternation. Cesar, in the 
 midst of this brightly colored throng, grasped his confessor's 
 hand, and laid his head on the breast of the wife who knelt 
 beside him. A bloodvessel had been ruptured in the lungs 
 and the resulting aneurism was stopping his last breath. 
 
 "Behold the death of the righteous!" the Abbe Loraux 
 said solemnly, as he stretched his hand toward Cesar with one 
 of those divine gestures which Rembrandt's inspiration be- 
 held and recorded in his picture of Christ raising Lazarus 
 from the dead. 
 
 Christ bade Earth surrender her prey ; the good priest sped 
 a soul to heaven, where the martyr to commercial integrity 
 should receive an unfading palm.

 
 CAUDISSART THE GREAT.
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT 
 
 (L ' Illustre Gaudissart) . 
 PARISIANS IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 Translated by JAMBS WARING. 
 
 To Madame la Duchesse de Castries. 
 
 Is not the commercial traveler a being quite unknown in 
 earlier times one of the most curious types produced by 
 the manners and customs of this age ? And is it not his 
 peculiar function to carry out in a certain class of things 
 the immense transition which connects the age of material 
 development with that of intellectual development? Our 
 epoch will be the link between the age of isolated forces 
 rich in original creativeness and that of the uniform but 
 leveling force which gives monotony to its products, casting 
 them in masses, and following out one unifying idea the 
 ultimate expression of social communities. After the Satur- 
 nalia of intellectual communism, after the last struggles of 
 many civilizations concentrating all the treasures of the 
 world on a single spot, must not the darkness of barbarism 
 invariably supervene ? 
 
 The commercial traveler is to ideas what coaches are to 
 men and things. He carts them about ; he sets them 
 moving, brings them into impact. He loads himself at 
 the centre of enlightenment with a supply of beams which 
 he scatters among torpid communities. This human pyro- 
 phoros is an ignorant instructor, mystified and mystifying, 
 a disbelieving priest who talks all the more glibly of arcana 
 and dogmas. A strange figure ! The man has seen every- 
 
 (343)
 
 314 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 thing, he knows everything, he is acquainted with everybody. 
 Saturated in Parisian vice, he can assume the rusticity of the 
 countryman. Is he not the link that joins the village to the 
 capital, though himself not essentially either Parisian or pro- 
 vincial? 
 
 For he is a wanderer. He never sees to the bottom of 
 things; he learns only the names of men and places, only 
 the surface of things ; he has his own foot-rule and measures 
 everything by that standard ; his glance glides over all he 
 sees, and never penetrates the depths. He is inquisitive 
 about everything, and really cares for nothing. A scoffer, 
 always ready with a political song, and apparently equally 
 attached to all parties, he is generally patriotic at heart. A 
 good actor, he can assume by turns the smile of liking, satis- 
 faction, and obligingness, or cast it off and appear in his 
 true character, in the normal frame which is his state of 
 rest. 
 
 He is bound to be an observer or to renounce his calling. 
 Is he not constantly compelled to sound a man at a glance, 
 and guess his mode of action, his character, and, above all, 
 his solvency ; and, in order to save time, to calculate swiftly 
 the chances of profit ? This habit of deciding promptly in 
 matters of business makes him essentially dogmatic ; he settles 
 questions out of hand and talks, as a master, of the Paris 
 theatres and actors, and of those in the provinces. Beside, 
 he knows all the good and all the bad places in the kingdom, 
 by both doing and seeing. He would steer you with equal 
 confidence to the abode of virtue or of vice. Gifted as he is 
 with the eloquence of a hot-water tap turned on at will, he 
 can with equal readiness stop short or begin again, without a 
 mistake, his stream of ready-made phrases, flowing without 
 pause, and producing on the victim the effect of a moral 
 douche. He is full of pertinent anecdotes, he smokes, he 
 drinks. He wears a chain with seals and trinkets, he im- 
 presses the "small fry," is looked at as a milord in the vil-
 
 GAl'DlSSART THE GREAT. 345 
 
 lages, never allows himself to be " got over " a word of his 
 slang and knows exactly when to slap his pocket and make 
 the money jingle so as not to be taken for a "sneak" by 
 the women servants a suspicious race of the houses he 
 calls at. 
 
 As to his energy, is it not the least of the characteristics of 
 this human machine ? Not the kite pouncing on its prey, 
 not the stag inventing fresh doublings to escape the hounds 
 and put the hunter off the trail, not the dogs coursing the 
 game, can compare with the swiftness of his rush when he 
 scents a commission, the neatness with which he trips up a 
 rival to gain upon him, the keenness with which he feels, 
 sniffs, and spies out an opportunity for "doing business." 
 How many special talents must such a man possess ! And 
 how many will you find in any country of these diplomats of 
 the lower class, profound negotiators, representatives of the 
 calico, jewelry, cloth, or wine trades, and often with more 
 acumen than ambassadors, who are indeed for the most part 
 but superficial ? 
 
 Nobody in France suspects the immense power constantly 
 wielded by the commercial traveler, the bold pioneer of the 
 transactions which embody to the humblest hamlet the genius 
 of civilization and Parisian inventiveness in its struggle against 
 the commonsense, the ignorance, or the habits of rustic life. 
 We must not overlook these ingenious laborers, by whom the 
 intelligence of the masses is kneaded, moulding the most re- 
 fractory material by sheer talk, and resembling in this the per- 
 severing polishers whose file licks the hardest porphyry smooth. 
 Do you want to know the power of the tongue and the co- 
 ercive force of mere phrases on the most tenacious coin known 
 that of the country freeholder in his rustic lair? Then 
 listen to what some high dignitary of Paris industry can tell 
 you, for whose benefit these clever pistons of the steam-engine 
 called speculation work, and strike, and squeeze. 
 
 "Monsieur," said the director-cashier-manager-secretary-
 
 346 GAUD1SSART THE GREAT. 
 
 and-chairman of a famous fire insurance company to an ex- 
 perienced economist, " in the country, out of five hundred 
 thousand francs to be collected in renewing insurances, not 
 more than fifty thousand are paid willingly. The other four 
 hundred and fifty thousand are only extracted by the persist- 
 ency of our agents, who go to dun the customers who are in 
 arrears till they have renewed their policies, and frighten and 
 excite them by fearful tales of fires. Eloquence, the gift of 
 the gab, is, in fact, nine-tenths of the matter in the ways and 
 means of working our business." 
 
 To talk to make one's self heard is not this seduction ? 
 A nation with two Chambers, a woman with two ears, alike 
 are lost ! Eve and the serpent are the perennial myth of a 
 daily recurring fact which began and will probably only end 
 with the world. 
 
 "After two hours' talk you ought to have won a man over 
 to your side," said an attorney who had retired from business. 
 
 Walk round the commercial traveler ! Study the man. 
 Note his olive-green overcoat, his cloak, his morocco stock, 
 his pipe, his blue-striped cotton shirt. In that figure, so 
 genuinely original that it can stand friction, how many dif- 
 ferent natures you may discover. See ! What an athlete, 
 what a circus, and what a weapon ! He the world and his 
 tongue. 
 
 A daring seaman, he embarks with a stock of mere words 
 to go and fish for money, five or six hundred thousand francs, 
 say, in the frozen ocean, the land of savages, of Iroqnois in 
 France ! The task before him is to extract by a purely mental 
 process and painless operation the gold that lies buried in 
 rural hiding-places. The provincial fish will not stand the 
 harpoon or the torch ; it is only to be caught in the seine or 
 the landing-net the gentlest snare. 
 
 Can you ever think again without a shudder of the deluge 
 of phrases which begins anew every day at dawn in France ? 
 You know the genus ; now for the individual.
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 347 
 
 There dwells in Paris a matchless drummer, the paragon of 
 his kind, a man possessing in the highest degree every condi- 
 tion indispensable to success in his profession. In his words 
 vitriol mingles with bird-lime : bird-lime to catch the victim, 
 besmear it and stick it to the trapper, vitriol to dissolve the 
 hardest limestone. 
 
 His "line" was hats he traveled in hats; but his gifts, 
 and the skill with which he ensnared folk, had earned him 
 such commercial celebrity that dealers in I 1 Article Paris* the 
 dainty novelties invented in Paris workshops, positively courted 
 him to undertake their business. Thus, when he was in Paris, 
 on his return from some triumphant progress, he was perpetu- 
 ally being feasted ; in the provinces the agents made much of 
 him ; in Paris the largest houses were respectful to him. Wel- 
 comed, entertained, and fed wherever he went, to him a 
 breakfast or a dinner in solitude was a pleasure and a debauch. 
 He led the life of a sovereign nay, better, of a journalist. 
 And was he not the living organ of Paris trade? 
 
 His name was Gaudissart ; and his fame, his influence, and 
 the praises poured on him had gained him the epithet of 
 Gaudissart the Great. Wherever he made his appearance, 
 whether in a counting-house or an inn, in a drawing-room or 
 a diligence, in a garret or a bank, each one would exclaim on 
 seeing him, "Ah, ha ! here is Gaudissart the Great ! " 
 
 Never was a nickname better suited to the appearance, the 
 manners, the countenance, the voice, or the language of a 
 man. Everything smiled on the traveler, and he smiled on 
 all. Similia Similibus ; he was for homoeopathy: Puns, a 
 horse-laugh, the complexion of a jolly friar, a Rabelaisian 
 aspect ; dress, mien, character, and face combined to give his 
 whole person a stamp of jollification and ribaldry. 
 
 Blunt in business, good-natured and capital fun, you would 
 have known him at once for a favorite of the grisette a man 
 who can climb with a grace to the top of a coach, offer a hand 
 * Fancy notions.
 
 348 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 to a lady in difficulties over getting out, jest with the postillion 
 about his bandana, and sell him a hat; smile at the inn-maid, 
 taking her by the waist or by the fancy ; who at table will 
 imitate the gurgle of a bottle by tapping his cheek while put- 
 ting his tongue in it, knows how to make beer go off by draw- 
 ing the air between his lips, can hit a champagne glass a sharp 
 blow with a knife without breaking it, saying to the others, 
 "Can you do that?" who chaffs shy travelers, contradicts 
 well-informed men, is supreme at table, and secures all the 
 best bits. 
 
 A clever man, too, he could on occasion put aside all such 
 pleasantries and look very serious when, throwing away the 
 end of his cigar, he would look out on a town and say, "I 
 mean to see what the folk here are made of." Then Gaudis- 
 sart was the most cunning and shrewd of ambassadors. He 
 knew how to be the official with the prefect, the capitalist with 
 the banker, orthodox and monarchical with the Royalist, the 
 blunt citizen with the citizen in short, all things to all 
 men, just what he ought to be wherever he went, leaving 
 Gaudissart outside the door, and finding him again as he went 
 out. 
 
 Until 1830 Gaudissart the Great remained faithful to the 
 Article Paris. This line of business, in all its branches, ap- 
 pealing to the greater number of human fancies, had enabled 
 him to study the secrets of the heart, had taught him the uses 
 of his persuasive eloquence, the way to open the most closely 
 tied money-bags, to incite the fancy of wives and husbands, 
 of children and servants, and to persuade them to gratify it. 
 None so well as he knew how to lure a dealer by the tempta- 
 tions of a job, and to turn away at the moment when his desire 
 for the bait was at a climax. He acknowledged his indebted- 
 ness to the hatter's trade, saying that it was by studying the 
 outside of the head that he had learned to understand its in- 
 side, that he was accustomed to find caps to fit folk, to throw
 
 GALDISSART THE GREAT. 349 
 
 himself at their head, and so forth. His jests on hats were 
 inexhaustible. 
 
 Nevertheless, after the August and October of 1830, he 
 gave up traveling in hats and the Article Paris, and left off 
 trading in all things mechanical and visible to soar in the 
 loftier spheres of Parisian enterprise. He had given up matter 
 for mind, as he himself said, and manufactured products for 
 the infinitely more subtle outcome of the intellect. 
 
 This needs explanation. 
 
 The stir and upset of 1830 gave rise, as everybody knows, 
 to the new birth of various antiquated ideas which skillful 
 speculators strove to rejuvenate. After 1830 ideas were more 
 than ever a marketable commodity ; and, as was once said by 
 a writer who is clever enough to publish nothing, more ideas 
 than pocket-handkerchiefs are filched nowadays. Some day, 
 perhaps, there may be an Exchange for ideas ; but even now, 
 good or bad, ideas have their price, are regarded as a crop 
 imported, transferred, and sold, can be realized, and are 
 viewed as an investment. When there are no ideas in the 
 market, speculators try to bring words into fashion, to give 
 them the consistency of an idea, and live on those words as 
 birds live on millet. 
 
 Nay, do not laugh ! A word is as good as an idea in a 
 country where the ticket on the bale is thought more of than 
 the contents. Have we not seen the book -trade thriving on 
 the word "picturesque" when literature had sealed the doom 
 of the word " fantastic." 
 
 Consequently, the excise has levied a tax on the intellect ; 
 it has exactly measured the acreage of advertisements, has 
 assessed the prospectus, and weighed thought Rue de la Paix 
 Hdtel du Timbre (the Stamp Office). On being constituted 
 taxable goods, the intellect and its products were bound to 
 obey the method used in manufacturing undertakings. Thus 
 the ideas conceived after drinking in the brain of some of 
 those apparently idle Parisians who do battle on intellectual
 
 350 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 ground while emptying a bottle or carving a pheasant's thigh, 
 were handed over the day after their mental birth to com- 
 mercial travelers, whose business it was to set forth, with due 
 skill, urbi et orbi, the fried bacon of advertisement and pros- 
 pectus by which the departmental mouse is tempted into the 
 editor's trap, and becomes known in the vulgar tongue as a 
 subscriber, or a shareholder, a corresponding member, or, 
 perhaps, a backer or a part owner and being always a flat. 
 
 "What a flat I am!" has more than one poor investor 
 exclaimed after being tempted by the prospect of founding 
 something, which has finally proved to be the founding that 
 melts down some thousand or twelve hundred francs. 
 
 " Subscribers are the fools who cannot understand that it 
 costs more to forge ahead in the realm of intellect than to 
 travel all over Europe," is the speculator's view. 
 
 So there is a constant struggle going on between the dilatory 
 public which declines to pay the Paris taxes and the collectors 
 who, living on their percentages, baste that public with new 
 ideas, lard it with undertakings, roast it with prospectuses, 
 spit it on flattery, and at last eat it up with some new sauce 
 in which it gets caught and intoxicated like a fly in molasses. 
 What has not been done in France since 1830 to stimulate 
 the zeal, the conceit of the intelligent and progressive masses? 
 Titles, medals, diplomas, a sort of Legion of Honor, invented 
 for the vulgar martyrs, have crowded on each other's heels. 
 And then every manufacturer of intellectual commodities has 
 discovered a spice, a special condiment, his particular make- 
 weight. Hence the promises of premiums and of anticipated 
 dividends; hence the advertisements of celebrated names 
 without the knowledge of the hapless artists who own them, 
 and thus find themselves implicated unawares in more under- 
 takings than there are days in the year ; for the law could 
 not foresee this theft of names. Hence, too, this rape of 
 ideas which the contractors for public intelligence like the 
 slave merchants of the East snatch from the paternal brain
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 361 
 
 at a tender age, and strip and parade before the greenhorn, 
 their bewildered Sultan the terrible public, who, if not 
 amused, beheads them by stopping their rations of gold. 
 
 This mania of the day reacted on Gaudissart the Great, 
 and this was how : A company gotten up to effect insurances 
 on life and property heard of his irresistible eloquence and 
 offered him extraordinarily handsome terms, which he ac- 
 cepted. The bargain concluded, the compact signed, the 
 drummer was weaned of the past under the eye of the secre- 
 tary of the society, who freed Gaudissart's mind of its 
 swaddling-clothes, explained the dark corners of the business, 
 taught him its lingo, showed him all the mechanism bit by 
 bit, anatomized the particular class of the public on whom he 
 was to work, stuffed him with cant phrases, crammed him 
 with repartees, stocked him with peremptory arguments, and, 
 so to speak, put an edge on the tongue that was to operate on 
 life in France. The puppet responded admirably to the care 
 lavished on him by Monsieur the Secretary. 
 
 The directors of the insurance company were so loud in 
 their praises of Gaudissart the Great, showed him so much 
 attention, put the talents of this living prospectus in so favor- 
 able a light in the higher circles of banking and of intellec- 
 tual diplomacy, that the financial managers of two news- 
 papers, then living but since dead, thought of employing him 
 to tout for subscriptions. The "Globe," the organ of the 
 doctrines of Saint-Simon, and the " Mouvement," a Repub- 
 lican paper, invited Gaudissart the Great to their private 
 offices and promised him, each, ten francs a head on every 
 subscriber if he secured a thousand, but only five francs a 
 head if he could catch no more than five hundred. As the 
 line of the political paper did not interfere with that of the 
 insurance company, the bargain was concluded. At the 
 same time, Gaudissart demanded an indemnity of five hun- 
 dred francs for the week he must spend in "getting up " the 
 doctrine of Saint-Simon, pointing out what efforts of memory
 
 3o2 GAUDISSART THE GREAT, 
 
 and brain would be necessary to enable him to become thor- 
 oughly conversant with this article, and to talk of it so coher- 
 ently as to avoid, said he, " putting his foot in it." 
 
 He made no claim on the Republicans. In the first place, 
 he himself had a leaning to Republican notions the only 
 views according to the Gaudissart philosophy that could bring 
 about rational equality; and then Gaudissart had ere now 
 dabbled in the plots of the French carbonari (Nativists and 
 Extreme Democrats). He had even been arrested, but re- 
 leased for lack of evidence ; and, finally, he pointed out to 
 the backers of the paper that since July he had allowed his 
 mustache to grow, and that he now only needed a particular 
 shape of cap and long spurs to be representative of the Re- 
 public. 
 
 So for a week he went every morning to be Saint-Simonized 
 at the "Globe" office, and every evening he haunted the 
 bureau of the insurance company to learn the elegancies of 
 financial slang. His aptitude and memory were so good that 
 he was ready to start by the i5th of April, the date at which 
 he usually set out on his first annual circuit. 
 
 Two large commercial houses, alarmed at the downward 
 tendency of trade, tempted the ambitious Gaudissart still to 
 undertake their agency, and the King of Commercial Trav- 
 elers showed his clemency in consideration of old friendship 
 and of the enormous percentage he was to take. 
 
 " Listen to me, my little Jenny," said he, riding in a hack 
 with a pretty little flower-maker. 
 
 Every truly great man loves to be tyrannized over by some 
 feeble creature, and Jenny was Gaudissart's tyrant; he was 
 seeing her home at eleven o'clock from the Gymnase theatre, 
 where he had taken her in full dress to a private box on the 
 first tier. 
 
 " When I come back, Jenny, I will furnish your room quite 
 elegantly. That gawky Mathilde, who makes you sick with 
 her innuendoes, her real Indian shawls brought by the Rus-
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 353 
 
 sian ambassador's messengers, her silver-gilt, and her Russian 
 Prince who is, it strikes me, a rank humbug even she shall 
 not find a fault in it. I will devote all the ' Children ' I can 
 get in the provinces to the decoration of your room." 
 
 "Well, that is a nice story, I must say," cried the florist. 
 " What, you monster of a man, you talk to me so coolly of 
 your children ! Do you suppose that I will put up with any- 
 thing of that kind?" 
 
 " Pshaw ! Jenny, are you out of your wits ? It is a way of 
 talking in my line of business." 
 
 "A pretty line of business indeed ! " 
 
 " Well, but listen ; if you go on talking so much, you will 
 find yourself in the right." 
 
 " I choose always to be in the right ! I may say you are a 
 cool hand to-night." 
 
 "You will not let me say what I have to say? I have to 
 push a most capital idea, a magazine that is to be brought out 
 for children. In our walk of life a traveler, when he has 
 worked up a town and got, let us say, ten subscriptions to the 
 ' Children's Magazine,' says I have gotten ten ' Children ; ' just 
 as, if I had ten subscriptions to the 'Mouvement,' I should 
 simply say I have gotten ten ' Mouvements.' Now do you un- 
 derstand ?" 
 
 "A pretty thing too! So you are meddling in politics? 
 I can see you already in Sainte-Pelagie, and shall have to trot 
 there to see you every day. Oh, when we love a man, my 
 word ! If we knew what we are in for, we should leave you 
 to manage for yourselves, you men ! Well, well, you are 
 going to-morrow, don't let us get the black dog on our 
 shoulders ; it is too silly." 
 
 The cab drew up before a pretty house, newly built, in the 
 Rue d'Artois, where Gaudissart and Jenny went up to the 
 fourth floor. Here resided Mademoiselle Jenny Courand, 
 who was commonly supposed to have been privately married 
 to Gaudissart, a report which the traveler did not deny. To 
 23
 
 354 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 maintain her power over him, Jenny Courand compelled him 
 to pay her a thousand little attentions, always threatening to 
 abandon him to his fate if he failed in the least of them. 
 Gaudissart was to write to her from each town he stopped at 
 and give an account of every action. 
 
 "And how many ' Children ' will you want to furnish my 
 room?" said she, throwing off her shawl and sitting down 
 by a good fire. 
 
 " I get five sous on each subscription." 
 
 " A pretty joke ! Do you expect to make me a rich woman 
 five sous at a time ? Unless you are a wandering Jew and 
 have your pocket sewn up tight." 
 
 "But, Jenny, I shall get thousands of 'Children.' Just 
 think, the little ones have never had a paper of their own. 
 However, I am a great simpleton to try to explain the econ- 
 omy of business to you you understand nothing about such 
 matters." 
 
 " And pray, then, Gaudissart, if I am such a gaby, why do 
 you love me?" 
 
 " Because you are such a sublime gaby ! Listen, Jenny. 
 You see, if I can get people to take the ' Globe ' and the 
 ' Mouvement,' and to pay their insurances, instead of earning 
 a miserable eight or ten thousand francs a year by trundling 
 around like a man in a show, I may make twenty to thirty 
 thousand francs out of one round." 
 
 "Unlace my stays, Gaudissart, and pull straight don't 
 drag me askew." 
 
 " And then," said the commercial traveler, as he admired 
 the girl's satin shoulders, "I shall be a shareholder in the 
 papers, like Finot, a friend of mine, the son of a hatter, who 
 has thirty thousand francs a year, and will get himself made 
 a peer ! And when you think of little Popinot ! By the 
 way, I forgot to tell you that Monsieur Popinot was yesterday 
 made minister of commerce. Why should not I, too, be 
 ambitious ? Ah, ha ! I could easily catch the cant of the
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 355 
 
 Tribune, and I might be made a minister something like a 
 minister, too ! Just listen 
 
 " ' Gentlemen,' " and he took his stand behind an armchair, 
 " ' the press is not a mere tool, nor a mere trade. From the 
 point of view of the politician, the press is an institution. 
 Now we are absolutely required here to take the political view 
 of things, hence ' ' he paused for breath " ' hence we are 
 bound to inquire whether it is useful or mischievous, whether 
 it should be encouraged or repressed, whether it should be 
 taxed or free serious questions all. I believe I shall not be 
 wasting the precious moments of this Chamber by investigating 
 this article and showing you the conditions of the case. We 
 are walking on to a precipice. The laws indeed are not so 
 guarded as they should be ' 
 
 "How is that?" said he, looking at Jenny. "Every 
 orator says that France is marching toward a precipice ; they 
 either say that or they talk of the chariot of the State and 
 political tempest and clouds on the horizon. Don't I know 
 every shade of color ! I know the dodges of every trade. 
 And do you know why ? I was born with a caul on. My old 
 grandmother kept the caul, and I will give it to you. So, 
 you see, I shall soon be in power ! " 
 
 "You?" 
 
 " Why shouldn't I be Baron Gaudissart and Peer of France ? 
 Has not Monsieur Popinot been twice returned deputy for the 
 fourth arrondissement ? And he dines with Louis-Philippe. 
 Finot is to be a councilor of State, they say. Oh ! if only they 
 would send me to London as ambassador, I am the man to non- 
 plus the English, I can tell you. Nobody has ever caught Gaud- 
 issart napping Gaudissart the Great. No, no one has ever got- 
 ten the better of me, and no one ever shall in any line, politics 
 or impolitics, here or anywhere. But for the present I must 
 give my mind to insuring property, to the 'Globe,' to the 
 'Mouvement,' to the 'Children's' paper, and to the 'Article 
 de Paris.'"
 
 356 GAUDTSSART THE GREAT. 
 
 " You will be caught over your newspapers. I will lay a 
 wager that you will not get as far as Poitiers without being 
 done." 
 
 " I am ready to bet, my jewel." 
 
 "A shawl! " 
 
 " Done. If I lose the shawl, I will go back to trade and 
 hats. But, get the better of Gaudissart? Never! never ! " 
 
 And the illustrious commercial traveler struck an attitude in 
 front of Jenny, looking at her haughtily, one hand in his 
 vest, and his head half-turned in a Napoleonic pose. 
 
 " How absurd you are! What have you been eating this 
 evening ! " 
 
 Gaudissart was a man of eight-and-thirty, of middle height, 
 burly and fat, as a man is who is accustomed to go about in 
 mail-coaches ; his face was as round as a pumpkin, florid, and 
 with regular features, resembling the traditional type adopted 
 by sculptors in every country for their statues of Abundance, 
 of Law, Force, Commerce, and the like. His prominent 
 stomach was pear-shaped and his legs were thin, but he was 
 wiry and active. He picked up Jenny, who was half-undressed, 
 and carried her to her bed. 
 
 "Hold your tongue, free woman" said he. "Ah, you 
 don't know anything about the free woman and Saint-Simon- 
 ism, and antagonism, and Fourierism, and criticism, and de- 
 termined push well it is in short, it is ten francs on every 
 subscription, Madame Gaudissart." 
 
 "On my honor, you are going crazy, Gaudissart." 
 
 "Always more and more crazy about you," said he, tossing 
 his hat on to the sofa. 
 
 Next day, after breakfasting in style with Jenny Courand, 
 Gaudissart set out on horseback to call in all the market towns 
 which he had been particularly instructed to work up by the 
 various companies to whose success he was devoting his genius. 
 After spending forty-five days in beating the country lying 
 between Paris and Blois, he stayed for a fortnight in this little
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 357 
 
 city, devoting the time to writing letters and visiting the 
 neighboring towns. The day before leaving for Tours he 
 wrote to Mademoiselle Jenny Courand the following letter, of 
 which the fullness and charm cannot be matched by any narra- 
 tive, and which also serves to prove the peculiar legitimacy 
 of the ties that bound these two persons together : 
 
 Letter from Gaudissart to Jenny Courand. 
 
 " MY DEAR JENNY : I am afraid you will lose your bet. 
 Like Napoleon, Gaudissart has his star, but will know no 
 Waterloo. I have triumphed everywhere under the conditions 
 set forth. The insurance business is doing very well. Be- 
 tween Paris and Blois I secured near on two millions; but 
 toward the middle of France heads are remarkably hard, and 
 millions infinitely scarcer. The Article Paris toddles on 
 nicely, as usual ; it is a ring on your finger. With my usual 
 rattle, I can always come round the storekeepers. I got rid 
 of sixty-two Ternaux shawls at Orleans ; but, on my honor, I 
 don't know what they will do with them unless they put them 
 back on the sheep. 
 
 "As to the newspaper line, the deuce is in it ! that is quite 
 another pair of shoes. God above us ! what a deal of piping 
 those good people take before they have learned a new tune. 
 I have gotten no more than sixty-two 'Mouvements' so far; 
 and that in my whole journey is less than the Ternaux shawls 
 in one town. These rascally Republicans won't subscribe 
 at all ; you talk to them, and they talk ; they are quite of 
 your way of thinking, and you are soon all agreed to upset 
 everything that exists. Do you think the man will fork out ? 
 Not a bit of it. And if he has three square inches of ground, 
 enough to grow a dozen cabbages, or wood enough to cut a 
 toothpick, your man will talk of the settlement of landed 
 estate, of taxation, and crops, and compensation a pack of 
 nonsense, while I waste my time and spittle in patriotism.
 
 358 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 Business is bad, and the ' Mouvement ' generally is dull. I 
 am writing to the owners to say so. And I am very sorry as 
 a matter of opinion. 
 
 "As to the ' Globe,' that is another story. If I talk of the 
 new doctrines to men who seem likely to have a leaning to 
 such quirks, you might think it was a proposal to burn their 
 house down. I tell them that it is the coming thing, the most 
 advantageous to their interests, the principle of work by which 
 nothing is lost ; that men have oppressed men long enough, 
 that woman is a slave, that we must strive to secure the tri- 
 umph of the great Idea of thrift, and achieve a more rational 
 coordination of society in short, all the rhodomontade at 
 my command. All in vain ! As soon as I start on this sub- 
 ject, these country louts shut up their cupboards as if I had 
 come to steal something, and beg me to be off. 
 
 " What fools these owls are ! The ' Globe ' is nowhere. I 
 told them so. I said, ' You are too advanced. You are getting 
 forward, and that is all very well ; but you must have something 
 to show. In the provinces they want to see results. ' However, 
 I have gotten a hundred 'Globes ; ' and, seeing the density of 
 these country noodles, it is really a miracle. But I promise 
 them such a heap of fine things, that be hanged if I know how 
 the Globules, or Globists, or Globites, or Globians are ever 
 going to give them. However, as they assured me that they 
 would arrange the world far better than it is arranged at 
 present, I lead the way and prophesy good things at ten francs 
 per head. 
 
 " There is a farmer who thought it must have to do with 
 soils, by reason of the name, and I rammed the ' Globe ' 
 down his throat; he will take to it, I feel sure; he has a 
 prominent forehead, and men with prominent foreheads are 
 always ideologists. 
 
 " But as to the children ! give me the children. I got 
 two thousand children between Paris and Blois a nice little 
 turn ! And there is less waste of words. You show the pic-
 
 GAUD1SSART THE GREAT. S59 
 
 ture to the mother on the sly, so that the child wants to see ; 
 then, of course, the child sees; and he tugs at mamma's 
 skirts till he gets his paper, because ' Daddy has his'n paper.' 
 Mamma's gown cost twenty francs, and she does not want it 
 torn by the brat ; the paper costs but six francs, that is 
 cheaper ; so the subscription is dragged out. It is capital, 
 and meets a real want something between the sugar-plum 
 and the picture-book, the two eternal cravings of childhood. 
 And they can read, too, these frenzied brats. 
 
 "Here, at the table d'hote, I had a dispute about news- 
 papers and my opinions. I was sitting, peacefully eating, by 
 the side of a man in a white hat who was reading the ' De- 
 bats.' Said I to myself, ' I must give him a taste of my elo- 
 quence. Here is a man who is all for the dynasty ; I must 
 try to catch him. Such a triumph would be a splendid fore- 
 cast of success as a minister.' So I set to work, beginning by 
 praising his paper. It was a precious long job, I can tell 
 you. From one thing to another I began to overrule my 
 man, giving him four-horse speeches, arguments in F sharp, 
 and all the precious rhodomontade. Everybody was listening, 
 and I saw a man with ' July ' in his mustaches, ready to bite 
 for the ' Mouvement.' But, by ill-luck, I don't know how I 
 let slip the word ganache (old woman). Away went my 
 dynastic white hat and a bad hat too, a Lyons hat, half-silk 
 and half-cotton with the bit between his teeth in a fury. So 
 I put on my grand air you know it and I say to him, 
 ' Heyday, monsieur, you are a hot pot ! If you are vexed, 
 
 I am ready to answer for my words. I fought in July ' 
 
 ' Though I am the father of a family,' says he, ' I am 
 
 ready ' 'You are the father of a family, my dear sir,' 
 
 say I. 'You have children?' 'Yes, monsieur.' 'Of 
 eleven?' 'Thereabouts.' 'Well, then, monsieur, "The 
 Children's Magazine " is just about to be published six 
 francs per annum, one number a month, two columns, contrib- 
 utors of the highest literary rank, gotten up in the best style,
 
 360 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 good paper, illustrations from drawings by our first artists, 
 genuine India-paper proofs, and colors that will not fade.' 
 And then I give him a broadside. The father is overpowered ! 
 The squabble ends in a subscription. 
 
 " ' No one but Gaudissart can play that game,' cried little 
 tomtit Lamard to that long noodle Bulot when he told him 
 the story at the cafe. 
 
 " To-morrow I am off to Amboise. I shall do Amboise in 
 two days and write next from Tours, where I am going to try 
 my hand on the deadliest country from the point of view of 
 intelligence and speculation. But, on the honor of Gaudis- 
 sart, they will be done, they shall be done ! Done brown ! 
 By-by, little one ; love me long and always be true to me. 
 Fidelity through thick and thin is one of the characteristics 
 of the free woman. Who kisses your eyes ? 
 
 "Yours, FELIX for ever." 
 
 Five days later Gaudissart set out one morning from the 
 Faisan hotel, where he put up at Tours, and went to Vouvray, 
 a rich and populous district where the public mind seemed to 
 him to be open to conviction. He was trotting along the 
 river quay on his nag, thinking no more of the speeches he 
 was about to make than an actor thinks of the part he has 
 played a hundred times. Gaudissart the Great cantered on, 
 admiring the landscape, and thinking of nothing, never 
 dreaming that the happy valleys of Vouvray were to witness 
 the overthrow of his commercial infallibility. 
 
 It will here be necessary to give the reader some insight 
 into the public spirit of Touraine. The peculiar wit of a sly 
 romancer, full of banter and epigram, which stamps every 
 page of Rabelais' work, is the faithful expression of the Tou- 
 rangeau nature, of an intellect as keen and polished as it must 
 inevitably be in a province where the Kings of France long 
 held their court ; an ardent, artistic, poetical, and luxurious 
 nature, but prompt to forget its first impulse. The softness
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 361 
 
 of the atmosphere, the beauty of the climate, a certain ease 
 of living and simplicity of manners, soon stifle the feeling 
 for art, narrow the most expansive heart, and corrode the 
 most tenacious will. 
 
 Transplant the native of Touraine, and his qualities de- 
 velop and lead to great things, as has been proved in the most 
 dissimilar ways by Rabelais and by Semblancay ; by Plantin 
 the printer and by Descartes; by Boucicault, the Napoleon 
 of his day; by Pinaigrier, who painted the greater part of our 
 cathedral glass ; by Verville and Courier. But, left at home, 
 the countryman of Touraine, so remarkable elsewhere, re- 
 mains like the Indian on his rug, like the Turk on his divan. 
 He uses his wit to make fun of his neighbor, to amuse him- 
 self, and to live happy to the end of his days. Touraine is 
 the true Abbey of Thelema, so much praised in Gargantua's 
 book. Consenting nuns may be found there, as in the poet's 
 dream, and the good-cheer sung so loudly by Rabelais is 
 supreme. 
 
 As to his indolence, it is sublime, and well characterized in 
 the popular witticism : " Tourangeau, will you have some 
 broth?" "Yes." "Then bring your bowl." "I am no 
 longer hungry." 
 
 Is it to the glee of the vine-dresser, to the harmonious 
 beauty of the loveliest scenery in France, or to the perennial 
 peace of a province which has always escaped the invading 
 armies of the foreigner, that the soft indifference of those 
 mild and easy habits is due ? To this question there is no 
 answer. Go yourself to that Turkey in France, and there 
 you will stay, indolent, idle, and happy. Though you were 
 as ambitious as Napoleon or a poet like Byron, an irresistible, 
 indescribable influence would compel you to keep your poetry 
 to yourself and reduce your most ambitious schemes to day- 
 dreams. 
 
 Gaudissart the Great was fated to meet in Vouvray one of 
 those indigenous wags whose mockery is offensive only by
 
 362 GAUD1SSART THE GREAT. 
 
 its absolute perfection of fun, and with whom he had a deadly 
 battle. Rightly or wrongly, your Tourangeau likes to come 
 into his father's property. Hence the doctrines of Saint- 
 Simon were held particularly odious, and heartily abused in 
 those parts; still, only as things are hated and abused in 
 Touraine, with the disdain and lofty pleasantry worthy of the 
 land of good stories and jokes played between neighbors a 
 spirit which is vanishing day by day before what Lord Byron 
 called English cant. 
 
 After putting up his horse at the Soleil d'Or, kept by one 
 Mitouflet, a discharged grenadier of the Imperial Guard, who 
 had married a wealthy mistress of vinelands, and to whose 
 care he solemnly confided his steed, Gaudissart, for his 
 sins, went first to the prime wit of Vouvray, the life and 
 soul of the district, the jester whose reputation and nature 
 alike made it incumbent on him to keep his neighbors' 
 spirits up. This rustic Figaro, a retired dyer, was the happy 
 possessor of seven or eight thousand francs a year, of a pretty 
 house on the slope of a hill, of a plump little wife, and of 
 robust health. For ten years past he had had nothing to do 
 but to take care of his garden and his wife, to get his daughter 
 married, to play his game of an evening, to keep himself in- 
 formed of all the scandal that came within his jurisdiction, to 
 give trouble at elections, to squabble with the great land- 
 owners, and arrange big dinners ; to air himself on the quay, 
 inquire what was going on in the town, and bother the priest ; 
 and, for dramatic interest, to look out for the sale of a plot of 
 ground that cut into the ring fence of his vineyard. In short, 
 he lived the life of Touraine, the usual life of a small country 
 town. 
 
 At the same time, he was the most important of the minor 
 notabilities of the place and the leader of the small proprie- 
 tors a jealous and envious class, chewing the cud of slander 
 and calumny against the aristocracy, and repeating them with 
 relish, grinding everything down to one level, hostile to every
 
 GAUD1SSART THE GREAT. 363 
 
 form of superiority, scorning it, indeed, with the admirable 
 coolness of ignorance. 
 
 Monsieur Vernier so this little great man of the place was 
 named was finishing his breakfast, between his wife and his 
 daughter, when Gaudissart made his appearance in the dining- 
 room one of the most cheerful dining-rooms for miles around, 
 with a view from the windows over the Loire and the Cher. 
 
 " Is it to Monsieur Vernier himself that I now have the 
 
 honor ?" said the traveler, bending his vertebral column 
 
 with so much grace that it seemed to be elastic. 
 
 " Yes, monsieur," said the wily dyer, interrupting him with 
 a scrutinizing glance, by which he at once took the measure 
 of the man he had to do with. 
 
 " I have come, monsieur," Gaudissart went on, " to request 
 the assistance of your enlightenment to direct me in this dis- 
 trict where, as I learn from Mitouflet, you exert the greatest 
 influence. I am an emissary, monsieur, to this department 
 in behalf of an undertaking of the highest importance, backed 
 by bankers who are anxious " 
 
 "Anxious to swindle us!" said Vernier, laughing, long 
 since used to deal with the commercial traveler and to follow 
 his game. 
 
 "Just so," replied Gaudissart the Great with perfect impu- 
 dence. "But, as you very well know, sir, since you are so 
 clear-sighted, people are not to be swindled unless they think 
 it to their interest to allow themselves to be swindled. I beg 
 you will not take me for one of the common ruck of commer- 
 cial gentlemen who trust to cunning or importunity to win 
 success. I am no longer a traveler ; I was one, monsieur, and 
 I glory in it. But I have now a mission of supreme import- 
 ance, which ought to make every man of superior mind regard 
 me as devoted to the enlightenment of his fellow-countrymen. 
 Be kind enough to hear me, monsieur, and you will find that 
 you will have profited greatly by the half-hour's conversation 
 I beg you to grant me. The great Paris bankers have not
 
 364 GAUDISSAKT THE GREAT. 
 
 merely lent their names to this concern, as to certain dis- 
 creditable speculations such as I call mere rat-traps. No, no, 
 nothing of the kind. I can assure you, I would never allow 
 myself to engage in promoting such booby-traps. No, mon- 
 sieur, the soundest and most respectable houses in Paris are 
 concerned in the undertaking, both as shareholders and as 
 guarantors " 
 
 And Gaudissart unrolled the frippery of his phrases, while 
 Monsieur Vernier listened with an affectation of interest that 
 quite deceived the orator. But at the word guarantor, Vernier 
 had, in fact, ceased to heed this drummer's rhetoric ; he was 
 bent on playing him some sly trick, so as to clear off this kind 
 of Parisian caterpillar, once for all, from a district justly re- 
 garded as barbarian by speculators, who can get no footing 
 there. 
 
 At the head of a delightful valley, known as the Vallee 
 coquette (coquette's valley), from its curves and bends, new at 
 every step, and each more charming than the last, whether 
 you go up or down the winding slope, there dwelt, in a little 
 house surrounded by a vineyard, a more than half-crazy crea- 
 ture named Margaritis. This man, an Italian by birth, was 
 married, but had no children, and his wife took care of him 
 with a degree of courage that was universally admired ; for 
 Madame Margaritis certainly ran some risk in living with a 
 man who, among other manias, insisted on always having two 
 long knives about him, not unfrequently threatening her with 
 them. But who does not know the admirable devotion with 
 which country people care for afflicted creatures, perhaps in 
 consequence of the discredit that attaches to a middle-class 
 wife if she abandons her child or her husband to the tender 
 mercies of a public asylum ? Again, the aversion is well 
 known which country folk feel for paying a hundred louis, 
 or perhaps a thousand crowns, the price charged at Charenton 
 or in a private asylum. If any one spoke to Madame Mar- 
 garitis of Dubuisson, Esquirol, Blanche, or other mad-doctors,
 
 GAUD1SSART THE GREAT. 365 
 
 she preferred, with lofty indignation, to keep her three thou- 
 sand francs and her good man. 
 
 The inexplicable caprices of this worthy's insanity being 
 closely connected with the course of my story, it is needful 
 to mention some of his more conspicuous vagaries. Margaritis 
 would always go out as soon as it began to rain, to walk bare- 
 headed among his vines. Indoors he was perpetually asking 
 for the newspaper ; just to satisfy him, his wife or the maid- 
 servant would give him an old "Journal d'Indre-et-Loire," 
 and for seven years he had never discovered that it was al- 
 ways the same copy. A doctor might perhaps have found 
 it interesting to note the connection between his attacks of 
 asking for the paper and the variations in the weather. The 
 poor madman's constant occupation was to study the state of 
 the sky and its effect on the vines. 
 
 When his wife had company, which was almost every even- 
 ing for the neighbors, in pity for her position, came in to 
 play boston with her Margaritis sat in silence in a corner, 
 never moving ; but when ten o'clock struck by a clock in a 
 tall wooden case, he rose at the last stroke with the mechanical 
 precision of the figures moved by a spring in a German toy, 
 went slowly up to the card-players, looked at them with eyes 
 strangely like the automatic gaze of the Greeks and Turks to 
 be seen in the Boulevard du Temple in Paris, and said, " Go 
 away ! ' ' 
 
 At times, however, this man recovered his natural wits 
 and could then advise his wife very shrewdly as to the sale of 
 her wine ; but at those times he was exceedingly troublesome, 
 stealing dainties out of the cupboards and eating them in 
 secret. 
 
 Occasionally when the customary visitors came in he an- 
 swered their inquiries civily, but he more often replied quite 
 at random. To a lady who asked him, " How are you to- 
 day, Monsieur Margaritis?" "I have shaved," he would 
 reply, " and you?"
 
 366 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 "Are you better, monsieur?" another would say. "Jeru- 
 salem ! Jerusalem ! " was the answer. But he usually looked 
 at them with a blank face, not speaking a word, and then his 
 wife would say, "The goodman cannot hear anything to- 
 day." Twice or thrice in the course of five years, always 
 about the time of the equinox, he had flown into a rage at 
 this remark, had drawn a knife, and shrieked, "That hussy 
 disgraces me ! " 
 
 Still, he drank, ate, and walked out like any man in perfect 
 health ; and by degrees every one was accustomed to pay him 
 no more respect or attention than if he had been a clumsy 
 piece of furniture. 
 
 Of all his eccentricities, there was one to which no one had 
 ever been able to discover a clue ; for the wise heads of the 
 district had in the course of time accounted for, or explained, 
 most of the poor lunatic's maddest acts. He insisted on al- 
 ways having a sack of flour in the house, and on keeping two 
 casks of wine from the vintage, never allowing any one to 
 touch either the flour or the wine. But, when the month of 
 June came round, he began to be anxious to sell the sack and 
 the wine-barrels with all the fretfulness of a madman. Mad- 
 ame Margaritis generally told him that she had sold the two 
 puncheons at an exorbitant price, and gave him the money, 
 which he then hid without his wife or his servant ever having 
 succeeded, even by watching, in discovering the hiding-place. 
 
 The day before Gaudissart's visit to Vouvray, Madame 
 Margaritis had had more difficulty than ever in managing her 
 husband, who had an attack of lucid reason. 
 
 "I declare I do not know how I shall get through to- 
 morrow," said she to Madame Vernier. "Only fancy, my 
 old man insisted on seeing his two casks of wine. And he 
 gave me no peace all day till I showed him two full puncheons. 
 Our neighbor, Pierre Champlain, luckily had two casks he 
 had not been able to sell, and at my request he rolled them 
 into our cellar. And then what must he want, after seeing
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 367 
 
 the casks, but nothing will content him but selling them 
 himself." 
 
 Madame Vernier had just been telling her husband of this 
 difficult state of things when Gaudissart walked in. At the 
 commercial traveler's very first words Vernier determined to 
 let him loose on old Margaritis. 
 
 "Monsieur," replied the dyer, when Gaudissart the Great 
 had exhausted his first broadside, " I will not conceal from 
 you that your undertaking will meet with great obstacles 
 in this district. In our part of the world the good folk go 
 on, bodily, in a way of their own ; it is a country where no 
 new idea can ever take root. We live as our fathers did, 
 amusing ourselves by eating four meals a day, occupying our- 
 selves by looking after our vineyards, and selling our wine 
 at a good price. Our notion of business is, very honestly, to 
 sell things for more than they cost. We shall go on in that 
 rut, and neither God nor the devil can get us out of it. But 
 I will give you some good advice, and good advice is worth 
 an eye. We have in this neighborhood a retired banker, in 
 whose judgment I myself have the utmost confidence, and if 
 you win his support you shall have mine. If your proposals 
 offer any substantial prospects, and we are convinced of it, 
 Monsieur Margaritis' vote carries mine with it, and there are 
 twenty well-to-do houses in Vouvray where purses will be 
 opened and your panacea will be tried." 
 
 As she heard him mention the madman, Madame Vernier 
 looked up at her husband. 
 
 " By the way, I believe my wife was just going to call on 
 Madame Margaritis with a neighbor of ours. Wait a minute, 
 and the ladies will show you the way. You can go round 
 and pick up Madame Fontanieu," said the old dyer with a 
 wink at his wife. 
 
 This suggestion that she should take with her the merriest, 
 the most voluble, the most facetious of all the merry wives of 
 Vouvray, was as much as to tell Madame Vernier to secure a
 
 368 GAUDISSART THE GREAT, 
 
 witness to report the scene which would certainly take place 
 between the drummer and the lunatic, so as to amuse the 
 country with it for a month to come. Monsieur and Madame 
 Vernier played their parts so well that Gaudissart had no sus- 
 picions and rushed headlong into the snare. He politely 
 offered his arm to Madame Vernier and fancied he had quite 
 made a conquest of both ladies on the way, being dazzlingly 
 witty, and pelting them with waggery and puns which they 
 did not understand. 
 
 The so-called banker lived in the first house at the opening 
 into the Vallee coquette. It was called la Fuye, and was not 
 particularly remarkable. On the first floor was a large paneled 
 sitting-room, with a bedroom on each side for the master and 
 mistress. The entrance was through a hall, where they dined, 
 opening into the kitchen. This first floor, quite lacking the 
 external elegance for which even the humblest dwellings in 
 Touraine are noted, was crowned by attics, to which an out- 
 side stair led up, built against one of the gable ends, and 
 covered in by a lean-to roof. A small garden, full of mari- 
 golds, seringa, and alders, divided the house from the vine- 
 yard. Round the courtyard were the buildings for the wine- 
 presses and storage. 
 
 Margaritis, seated in a yellow Utrecht velvet chair by the 
 window in the drawing-room, did not rise as the ladies came 
 in with Gaudissart ; he was thinking of the sale of his butts of 
 wine. He was a lean man, with a pear-shaped head, bald 
 above the forehead, and furnished with a few hairs at the 
 back. His deep-set eyes, shaded by thick, black brows, 
 and with dark rings round them, his nose as thin as the blade 
 of a knife, his high cheek-bones and hollow cheeks, his gener- 
 ally oblong outline everything, down to his absurdly long 
 flat chin, contributed to give a strange look to his coun- 
 tenance, suggesting that of a professor of rhetoric or of a 
 ragpicker. 
 
 "Monsieur Margaritis," said Madame Vernier, "come,
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 369 
 
 wake up ! Here is a gentleman sent to you by my husband, 
 and you are to hear him with attention. Put aside your 
 mathematical calculations and talk to him." 
 
 At this speech the madman rose, looked at Gaudissart, waved 
 to him to be seated, and said 
 
 "Let us talk, monsieur." 
 
 The three women went into Madame Margaritis' room, 
 leaving the door open so as to hear all that went on, and in- 
 tervene in case of need. Hardly were they seated when Mon- 
 sieur Vernier came in quietly from the vineyard, and made 
 them let him in through the window without a sound. 
 
 "You were in business, monsieur?" Gaudissart fluently 
 began. 
 
 " Public business," replied Margaritis, interrupting him, 
 "I pacified Calabria when Murat was King." 
 
 " Heyday, he has been in Calabria now ! " said Vernier in 
 a whisper. 
 
 "Oh, indeed!" said Gaudissart. "Then, monsieur, we 
 cannot fail to come to an understanding." 
 
 " I am listening," replied Margaritis, settling himself in 
 the attitude of a man sitting for his portrait. 
 
 " Monsieur," said Gaudissart, fidgeting with his watch-key, 
 which he twisted round and round without thinking of what 
 he was doing, with a regular rotatory twirl which engaged the 
 madman's attention and, perhaps, helped to keep him quiet ; 
 " Monsieur, if you were not a man of superior intelligence " 
 Margaritis bowed "I should restrict myself to setting forth 
 the material advantages of this concern ; but its psychological 
 value is worthy of your attention. Mark me ! Of all forms 
 of social wealth, time is the most precious ; to save time is to 
 grow rich, is it not ? Now, is there anything which takes up 
 more time in our lives than anxiety as to what I may call 
 boiling the pot a homely metaphor, but clearly stating the 
 question ? Or is there anything which consumes more time 
 than the lack of a guarantee to offer as security to those of 
 24
 
 370 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 whom you ask money when, though impecunious for a time, 
 you yet are rich in prospects ? ' ' 
 
 " Money you have come to the point." 
 
 "Well, then, monsieur, I am the emissary to the depart- 
 ments of a company of bankers and capitalists who have 
 perceived what enormous loss of time, and consequently of 
 productive intelligence and activity, is thus entailed on men 
 with the future before them. Now, the idea has occurred to 
 us that, to such men, we may capitalize the future, we may 
 discount their talents, by discounting what ? why, their time, 
 and securing its value to their heirs. This is not merely to 
 economize time ; it is to price it, to value it, to represent in a 
 pecuniary form the products you may expect to obtain in a 
 certain unknown time by representing the moral qualities with 
 which you are gifted, and which are, monsieur, a living force, 
 like a waterfall, or a steam-engine of three, ten, twenty, fifty 
 horse-power. This is progress, a great movement toward a 
 better order of things, a movement due to the energy of our 
 age an essentially progressive age, as I can prove to you when 
 we come to the conception of a more logical coordination of 
 social interests. 
 
 " I will explain myself by tangible instances. I quit the 
 purely abstract argument which we, in our line, call the mathe- 
 matics of ideas. Supposing that instead of being a man of 
 property, living on your dividends, you are a painter, a musi- 
 cian, a poet " 
 
 "I am a painter," the other put in by way of parenthesis. 
 
 "Very good, so be it, since you take my metaphor; you 
 are a painter, you have a great future before you. But I am 
 going further " 
 
 At those words the lunatic studied Gaudissart uneasily to 
 see if he meant to go away, but was reassured on seeing him 
 remain seated. 
 
 "You are nothing at all," Gaudissart went on, "but you 
 feel yourself -"
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 371 
 
 "I feel myself," said Margaritis. 
 
 " You say to yourself, 'I shall be a minister; ' very good. 
 You, the painter, you, the artist, the man of letters, the future 
 minister, you calculate your prospects, you value them at so 
 much you estimate them, let us say at a hundred thousand 
 crowns " 
 
 "And you have brought me a hundred thousand crowns?" 
 said the lunatic. 
 
 "Yes, monsieur, you will see. Either your heirs will get 
 them without fail, in the event of your death, since the com- 
 pany pledges itself to pay, or, if you live, you get them by 
 your works of art or your fortunate speculations. Nay, if 
 you have made a mistake, you can begin all over again. But, 
 when once you have fixed the value, as I have had the honor 
 of explaining to you, of your intellectual capital for it is 
 intellectual capital, bear that clearly in mind, monsieur." 
 
 "I understand," said the madman. 
 
 "You sign a policy of insurance with this company, which 
 credits you with the value of a hundred thousand francs you, 
 the painter " 
 
 "I am a painter," said Margaritis. 
 
 " You the musician, the minister and promises to pay that 
 sum to your family, your heirs, if, in consequence of your 
 demise, the hopes of the income to be derived from your in- 
 tellectual capital should be lost. The payment of the premium 
 is thus all that is needed to consolidate your " 
 
 "Your cash-box," said the madman, interrupting him. 
 
 "Well, of course, monsieur; I see that you understand 
 business." 
 
 " Yes," said Margaritis, " I was the founder of the Banque 
 Territoriale, Rue des Foss6s-Montmartre in Paris, in 1798." 
 
 " For," Gaudissart went on, "in order to repay the intel- 
 lectual capital with which each of us credits himself, must not 
 all who insure pay a certain premium three per cent., an- 
 nually three per cent. ? And thus, by paying a very small
 
 372 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 sum, a mere nothing, you are protecting your family against 
 the disastrous effects of your death." 
 
 "But I am alive," objected the lunatic. 
 
 "Ah yes, and if you live to be old that is the objection 
 commonly raised, the objection of the vulgar, and you must 
 see that if we had not anticipated and annihilated it, we 
 should be unworthy to become what? What are we, in 
 fact ? The book-keepers of the great Bank of Intellect. 
 
 "Monsieur, I do not say this to you; but wherever I go, 
 I meet with men who pretend to teach something new, to 
 bring forward some fresh argument against those who have 
 grown pale with studying the business on my word of honor, 
 it is contemptible ! However, the world is made so, and I 
 have no hope of reforming it. Your objection, monsieur, is 
 absurd " 
 
 "Qutsaco? (What?)" said Margaritis. 
 
 "For this reason. If you should live, and if you have 
 the money credited to you in your policy of insurance against 
 the chances of death you follow me ' ' 
 
 "I follow." 
 
 "Well, then, it is because you have succeeded in your 
 undertakings ! And you will have succeeded solely in 
 consequence of that policy of insurance ; for, by ridding 
 yourself of all the anxieties which are involved in having a 
 wife at your heels, and children whom your death may re- 
 duce to beggary, you simply double your chances of success. 
 If you are at the top of the tree, you have grasped the intel- 
 lectual capital compared with which the insurance money is a 
 trifle, a mere trifle." 
 
 "An admirable idea ! " 
 
 "Is it not, monsieur? I call this beneficent institution 
 the Mutual Insurance against beggary ! or, if you prefer it, . 
 the Office for discounting Talent. For talent, sir, talent is a 
 bill of exchange, bestowed by nature on a man of genius, 
 and which is often at long date ha, hah ! "
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 373 
 
 "Very handsome usury," cried Margaritis. 
 
 " The deuce ! He is sharp enough, this old boy ! I have 
 made a mistake ; I must attack this man on higher grounds 
 with palaver Ai," thought Gaudissart. "Not at all," mon- 
 sieur," said he aloud. " To you who " 
 
 " Will you take a glass of wine? " asked Margaritis. 
 
 "With pleasure," said Gaudissart. 
 
 " Wife ! give us a bottle of the wine of which two casks 
 are left. You are here in the headquarters of Vouvray," 
 said the master, pointing to his vines. " The clos (vineyard) 
 Margaritis. ' ' 
 
 The maid brought in glasses and a bottle of the wine of 
 1819. The worthy lunatic filled a glass with scrupulous 
 care and solemnly presented it to Gaudissart, who drank it. 
 
 "But you are playing me some trick, monsieur," said 
 the commercial traveler. "This is Madeira, genuine Ma- 
 deira! " 
 
 "I should think it is!" replied the lunatic. "The only 
 fault of the Vouvray wine, monsieur, is that it cannot be used 
 as an ordinaire, as a table wine. It is too generous, too 
 strong ; and it is sold in Paris as Madeira after being doc- 
 tored with brandy. Our wine is so rich that many of the 
 Paris merchants, when the French crop is sufficient for Hol- 
 land and Belgium, buy our wine to mix with the wine grown 
 about Paris, and so manufacture a Bordeaux wine. But what 
 you are drinking at this moment, my dear and very amiable 
 sir, is fit for a king ; it is the head of Vouvray. I have two 
 casks, only two casks of it. Persons who appreciate the finest 
 wines, high-class wines, and like to put a wine on their table 
 which has a character not to be met with in the regular trade, 
 apply direct to us. Now, monsieur, do you happen to know 
 any one " 
 
 " Let us get back to our business," said Gaudissart. 
 
 "We are there, monsieur," replied the madman. "My 
 wine is heady, and you are talking of capital ; the etymology
 
 374 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 of capital is caput head. Heh ? The head of Vouvray 
 the connection is obvious." 
 
 "As I was saying," persisted Gaudissart, " either you have 
 realized your intellectual capital " 
 
 " I have realized, monsieur. Will you take my two punch- 
 eons ? I will give you favorable terms." 
 
 "No," said Gaudissart the Great, "I allude to the insur- 
 ance of intellectual capital and policies on life. I will resume 
 the thread of my argument." 
 
 The madman grew calmer, sat down, and looked at Gau- 
 dissart. 
 
 " I was saying, monsieur, that if you should die, the capital 
 is paid over to your family without difficulty." 
 
 "Without difficulty." 
 
 "Yes, excepting in the case of suicide " 
 
 " A question for the law." 
 
 " No, sir. As you know, suicide is an act that is always 
 easily proved." 
 
 "In France," said Margaritis. "But " 
 
 " But abroad," said Gaudissart. " Well, monsieur, to con- 
 clude that part of the question, I may say at once that death 
 abroad or on the field of battle is not included " 
 
 "What do you insure, then? Nothing whatever," cried 
 the other. " Now, my bank was based on " 
 
 "Nothing whatever, sir?" cried Gaudissart, interrupting 
 him. " Nothing whatever ? How about illness, grief, poverty, 
 and the passions ? But we need not discuss exceptional cases." 
 
 " No, we will not discuss them," said the madman. 
 
 " What, then, is the upshot of this transaction ? " exclaimed 
 Gaudissart. "To you, as a banker, I will simply state the 
 figures. You have a man, a man with a future, well dressed, 
 living on his art he wants money, he asks for it a blank. 
 Civilization at large will refuse to advance money to this 
 man, who, in thought, dominates over civilization, who will 
 some day dominate over it by his brush, his chisel, by words,
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 375 
 
 or ideas, or a system. Civilization is merciless. She has no 
 bread for the great men who provide her with luxuries ; she 
 feeds them on abuse and mockery, the gilded slut ! The ex- 
 pression is a strong one, but I will not retract it. Well, your 
 misprized great man comes to us; we recognize his greatness, 
 we bow to him respectfully, we listen to him, and he says 
 to us 
 
 " ' Gentlemen of the insurance company, my life is worth 
 so much ; I will pay you so much per cent, on my works.' 
 Well, what do we do ? At once, without grudging, we admit 
 him to the splendid banquet of civilization as an important 
 guest " 
 
 "Then you must have wine," said the madman. 
 
 " As an important guest. He signs his policy, he takes our 
 contemptible paper rags mere miserable rags, which, rags as 
 they are, have more power than his genius had. For, in fact, 
 if he wants money, everybody on seeing that sheet of paper is 
 ready to lend to him. On the Bourse, at the bankers', any- 
 where, even at the money-lenders', he can get money because 
 he can offer security. Well, sir, was not this a gulf that 
 needed filling in the social system ? 
 
 "But, sir, this is but a part of the business undertaken by 
 the life insurance company. We also insure debtors on a 
 different scale of premiums. We offer annuities on terms 
 graduated by age, on an infinitely more favorable calculation 
 than has yet been allowed in tontines based on tables of 
 mortality now known to be inaccurate. Our society, opera- 
 ting on the mass, our annuitants need have no fear of the 
 reflections that sadden their latter years, in themselves sad 
 enough ; such thoughts as must necessarily invade them when 
 their money is in private hands. So, you see, monsieur, we 
 have taken the measure of life under every aspect " 
 
 "Sucked it at every pore," said Margaritis. "But take a 
 glass of wine ; you have certainly earned it. You must lay 
 some velvet on your stomach if you want to keep your jaw in
 
 376 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 working order. And the wine of Vouvray, monsieur, is, when 
 old enough, pure velvet." 
 
 "And what do you think of it all?" said Gaudissart, 
 emptying his glass. 
 
 " It is all very fine, very new, very advantageous ; but I 
 think better of the system of loans on land that was in use in 
 my bank in the Rue des Fosses-Montmartre. " 
 
 "There you are right, monsieur," said Gaudissart, "that 
 has been worked and worked out, done and done again. We 
 now have the Mortgage Society which lends on real estate, 
 and works that system on a large scale. But is not that a mere 
 trifle in comparison with our idea of consolidating possibil- 
 ities. Consolidating hopes, coagulating financially each 
 man's desires for wealth, and securing their realization. It 
 remained for our age, sir, an age of transition of transition 
 and progress combined ! " 
 
 "Ay, of progress," said the lunatic. "I like progress, 
 especially such as brings good times for the wine-trade ' ' 
 
 "The 'Times le Temps' !" exclaimed Gaudissart, 
 
 not heeding the madman's meaning. "A poor paper, sir; 
 if you take it in, I pity you." 
 
 " The newspaper? " cried Margaritis. " To be sure, I am 
 devoted to the newspaper. Wife, wife ! where is the news- 
 paper?" he went on, turning toward the door. 
 
 "Very good, monsieur; if you take an interest in the 
 papers, we shall certainly agree." 
 
 " Yes, yes ; but before you hear the paper, confess that this 
 wine is " 
 
 "Delicious," said Gaudissart. 
 
 "Come on, then, we will finish the bottle between us." 
 The madman a quarter filled his own glass and poured out a 
 bumper for Gaudissart. 
 
 " As I say, sir, I have two casks of that very wine. If you 
 think it good, and are disposed to deal " 
 
 "The fathers of the Saint-Simonian doctrine have, in fact,
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 377 
 
 commissioned me to forward them such products as But 
 
 let me tell you of their splendid newspaper. You, who under- 
 stand the insurance business, and are ready to help me to ex- 
 tend it in this district " 
 
 "Certainly," said Margaritis, " if- 
 
 " Of course, if I take your wine. And your wine is very 
 good, monsieur; it goes to the spot." 
 
 " Champagne is made of it. There is a gentleman here, 
 from Paris, who has come to make champagne at Tours." 
 
 "I quite believe it. The 'Globe,' which you must have 
 heard mentioned " 
 
 " I know it well," said Margaritis. 
 
 " I was sure of it," said Gaudissart. " Monsieur, you have 
 a powerful head a bump which is known as the equine 
 head. There is something of the horse in the head of every 
 great man. Now a man can be a genius and live unknown. 
 It is a trick that has happened often enough to men who, in 
 spite of their talents, live in obscurity, and which nearly 
 befell the great Saint-Simon and Monsieur Vico, a man of 
 mark who is making his way. He is coming on well is Vico, 
 and I am glad. Here we enter on the new theory and for- 
 mula of the human race. Attention, monsieur " 
 
 "Attention ! " echoed Margaritis. 
 
 "The oppression of man by man ought to have ended, 
 monsieur, on the day when Christ I do not say Jesus Christ, 
 I say Christ came to proclaim the equality of men before 
 God. But has not this equality been hitherto the most illu- 
 sory chimera? Now, Saint-Simon supplements Christ. Christ 
 has served His time " 
 
 "Then, is He released?" asked Margaritis. 
 
 " He has served His time from the point of view of Liber- 
 alism. There is something stronger to guide us now the new 
 creed, free and individual creativeness, social coordination by 
 which each one shall receive his social reward equitably, in 
 accordance with his work, and no longer be the hireling of
 
 378 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 individuals who, incapable themselves, make all labor for 
 the benefit of one alone. Hence the doctrine " 
 
 "And what becomes of the servants?" asked Margaritis. 
 
 " They remain servants, monsieur, if they are only capable 
 of being servants." 
 
 " Then of what use is the doctrine ? " 
 
 " Oh, to judge of that, monsieur, you must take your stand 
 on the highest point of view whence you can clearly command 
 a general prospect of humanity. This brings us to Ballanche ! 
 Do you know Monsieur Ballanche?" 
 
 " It is my principal business," said the madman, who mis- 
 understood the name for la planche (boards or staves). 
 
 "Very good," said Gaudissart. " Then, sir, if the palin- 
 genesis and successive developments of the spiritualized 
 ' Globe ' touch you, delight you, appeal to you then, my 
 dear sir, the newspaper called the 'Globe,' a fine name, ac- 
 curately expressing its mission the ' Globe ' is the cicerone 
 who will explain to you every morning the fresh conditions 
 under which, in quite a short time, the world will undergo a 
 political and moral change." 
 
 "What is that? " asked Margaritis. 
 
 "I will explain the argument by a simile," said Gaudissart. 
 " If, as children, our nurses took us to Seraphin, do not we 
 older men need a presentment of the future ? These gentle- 
 men " 
 
 " Do they drink wine?" 
 
 "Yes, monsieur. Their house is established, I may say, 
 on an admirable footing a prophetic footing ; handsome re- 
 ceptions, all the bigwigs, splendid parties." 
 
 "To be sure," said the madman, "the laborers who pull 
 down must be fed as well as those who build." 
 
 "All the more so, monsieur, when they pull down with one 
 hand and build up with the other, as the apostles of the 
 'Globe' do." 
 
 " Then they must have wine, the wine of Vouvray ; the two
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT, 379 
 
 casks I have left three hundred bottles for a hundred francs 
 a mere song." 
 
 " How much a bottle does that come to? " said Gaudissart. 
 "Let me see ; there is the carriage, and the town dues not 
 seven sous a very good bargain." ("I have caught my 
 man," thought Gaudissart. " You want to sell me the wine, 
 which I want, and I can get the whip hand of you.") "They 
 pay more for other wine," he went on. " Well, monsieur, 
 men who haggle are sure to agree. Speak honestly ; you have 
 considerable influence in the district ? " 
 
 " I believe so," said the madman. " The head of Vouvray, 
 you see." 
 
 " Well, and you perfectly understand the working of the 
 intellectual capital insurance?" 
 
 "Perfectly." 
 
 " You have realized the vast proportions of the 'Globe? ' " 
 
 "Twice on foot." 
 
 Gaudissart did not heed him; he was entangled in the 
 maze of his own thoughts, and listening to his own words, 
 assured of success. 
 
 " Well, seeing the position you hold, I can understand that 
 at your age you have nothing to insure. But, monsieur, you 
 can persuade those persons in this district to insure who, 
 either by their personal merits or by the precarious position 
 of their families, may be anxious to provide for the future. 
 And so, if you will subscribe to the ' Globe,' and if you will 
 give me the support of your authority in this district to invite 
 the investment of capital in annuities for annuities are pop- 
 ular in the provinces well, we may come to an agreement as 
 to the purchase of the two casks of wine. Will you take in 
 the 'Globe?'" 
 
 "I live on the Globe." 
 
 " Will you support me with the influential residents in the 
 district?" 
 
 "I support "
 
 380 GAUD1SSART THE GREAT. 
 
 "And " 
 
 "And?- 
 
 "And I But you will pay your subscription to the 
 
 'Globe?'" 
 
 " The ' Globe ' a good paper an annuity? " 
 
 "An annuity, monsieur? Well, yes, you are right; for it 
 is full of life, of vitality, and learning ; choke full of learning ; 
 a handsome paper, well printed, a good color, thick paper. 
 Oh, it is none of your flimsy shoddy, mere waste-paper that 
 tears if you look at it. And it goes deep, gives you reasoning 
 that you may think over at leisure, and pleasant occupation 
 here in the depths of the country." 
 
 "That is the thing for me," said the madman. 
 
 "It costs a mere trifle eighty francs a year." 
 
 "That is not the thing for me," said Margaritis. 
 
 "Monsieur," said Gaudissart, " of course you have little 
 children?" 
 
 "Some," said Margaritis, who misunderstood have for love. 
 
 "Well, then, the 'Journal des Enfants/ seven francs a 
 year " 
 
 " Buy my two casks of wine," said Margaritis, " and I will 
 subscribe to your children's paper ; that is the thing for me ; 
 a fine idea. Intellectual tyranny a child heh ? Does not 
 man tyrannize over man ? ' ' 
 
 "Right you are," said Gaudissart. 
 
 "Right lam." 
 
 " And you consent to steer me round the district ? " 
 
 "Round the district." 
 
 " I have your approbation ? " 
 
 "You have." 
 
 " Well, then, sir, I will take your two casks of wine at a 
 hundred francs " 
 
 " No, no, a hundred and ten." 
 
 " Monsieur, a hundred and ten, I will say a hundred and 
 ten, but it is a hundred and ten to the gentlemen of the paper
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 381 
 
 and one hundred to me. If I find you a buyer, you owe me 
 a commission." 
 
 "A hundred and twenty to them. No commission to the 
 commissioners. ' ' 
 
 " Very neat. And not only witty, but spirited." 
 
 " No, spirituous." 
 
 "Better and better like Nicolet." 
 
 "That is my way," said the lunatic. " Come and look at 
 my vineyards ? " 
 
 "With pleasure," said Gaudissart. "That wine goes 
 strangely to the head." 
 
 And Gaudissart the Great went out with Monsieur Mar- 
 garitis, who led him from terrace to terrace, from vine to vine. 
 
 The three ladies and Monsieur Vernier could laugh now at 
 their ease, as they saw the two men from the window gesticu- 
 lating, haranguing, standing still, and going on again, talking 
 vehemently. 
 
 " Why did your good man take him out of hearing ? " said 
 Vernier. 
 
 At last Margaritis came in again with the commercial trav- 
 eler ; they were both walking at a great pace as if in a hurry 
 to conclude the business. 
 
 "And the countryman, I bet, has been too many for the 
 Parisian," said Vernier. 
 
 In point of fact, Gaudissart the Great, sitting at one end 
 of the card-table, to the great delight of Margaritis, wrote an 
 order for the delivery of two casks of wine. Then, after 
 reading through the contract, Margaritis paid him down seven 
 francs as a subscription to the children's paper. 
 
 "Till to-morrow, then, monsieur," said Gaudissart the 
 Great, twisting his watch-key ; " I shall have the honor of 
 calling for you to-morrow. You can send the wine to Paris 
 direct to the address I have given you, and forward it as soon 
 as you receive the money." 
 
 Gaudissart was from Normandy; there were two sides to
 
 382 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 every bargain he made, and he required an agreement from 
 Monsieur Margaritis, who with a madman's glee in gratifying 
 his favorite whim, signed, after reading, a contract to deliver 
 two casks of wine of " Clos Margaritis." 
 
 So Gaudissart went off in high spirits, humming Le roi des 
 mers, prends plus bas, to the Golden Sun inn, where he natu- 
 rally had a chat with the host while waiting for dinner. 
 Mitouflet was an old soldier, simple but cunning, as peasants 
 are, but never laughing at a joke, as being a man who is ac- 
 customed to the roar of cannon, and to passing a jest in the 
 ranks. 
 
 "You have some very tough customers hereabouts," said 
 Gaudissart, leaning against the door-post and lighting his 
 cigar at Mitouflet' s pipe. 
 
 "How is that? " asked Mitouflet. 
 
 " Well, men who ride roughshod over political and finan- 
 cial theories." 
 
 " Whom have you been talking to, if I may make so bold ? " 
 asked the innkeeper guilelessly, while he skillfully expectorated 
 after the manner of smokers. 
 
 "To a wideawake chap named Margaritis." 
 
 Mitouflet glanced at his customer, twice, with calm irony. 
 
 " Oh yes, he is wideawake, no doubt ! He knows too much 
 for most people; they don't follow him " 
 
 " I can quite believe it. He has a thorough knowledge 
 of the higher branches of finance." 
 
 "Yes, indeed," said Mitouflet ; "and, for my part, I have 
 always thought it a pity that he should be mad." 
 
 "Mad? How?" 
 
 "How? Why, mad, as a madman is mad," repeated the 
 tavern-keeper. " But he is not dangerous, and his wife looks 
 carefully after him. So you understood each other? That's 
 funny," said the relentless Mitouflet, with the utmost calm. 
 
 "Funny?" cried Gaudissart. "Funny? But your pre- 
 cious Monsieur Vernier was making a fool of me ! "
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 383 
 
 " Did he send you there ? " said Mitouflet. 
 
 ''Yes." 
 
 " I say, wife," cried the innkeeper, " listen to that ! Mon- 
 sieur Vernier actually sent monsieur here to talk to old Mar- 
 garitis " 
 
 "And what did you find to say to each other, my good 
 gentleman," said the woman, "since he is quite mad?" 
 
 " He sold me two casks of wine." 
 
 "And you bought them ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " But it is his mania to want to sell wine ; he has none." 
 
 " Very good ! " cried the drummer. " In the first place, I 
 will go and thank Monsieur Vernier." 
 
 Gaudissart, boiling with rage, went off to the house of the 
 ex-dyer, whom he found in his parlor laughing with the 
 neighbors, to whom he was already telling the story. 
 
 " Monsieur," said this Prince of Drummers, his eyes glar- 
 ing with wrath, " you are a sneak and a blackguard ; and if 
 you are not the lowest of turnkeys a class I rank below the 
 convicts you will give me satisfaction for the insult you have 
 done me by placing me in the power of a man whom you knew 
 to be mad. Do you hear me, Monsieur Vernier, the dyer?" 
 
 This was the speech Gaudissart had prepared, as a tragedian 
 prepares his entrance on the stage. 
 
 "What next?" retorted Vernier, encouraged by the pres- 
 ence of his neighbors. " Do you think we have not good 
 right to make game of a gentleman who arrives at Vouvray 
 with an air and a flourish, to get our money out of us under 
 pretense of being great men painters or verse-mongers 
 and who thus gratuitously places us on a level with a penniless 
 horde, out at elbows, homeless and roofless ? What have we 
 done to deserve it, we who are fathers of families? A rogue, 
 who asks us to subscribe to the ' Globe,' a paper which 
 preaches as the first law of God, if you please, that a man
 
 384 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 shall not inherit what his father and mother can leave him ? 
 On my sacred word of honor, old Margaritis can talk more 
 sense than that. 
 
 "And, after all, what have you to complain of? You were 
 quite of a mind, you and he. These gentlemen can bear wit- 
 ness that if you had speechified to all the people in the country- 
 side you would not have been so well understood." 
 
 " That is all very well to say, but I consider myself insulted, 
 monsieur, and I expect satisfaction." 
 
 " Very good, sir ; I consider you insulted if that will be 
 any comfort to you, and I will not give you satisfaction, for 
 there is not satisfaction enough in the whole silly business for 
 me to give you any. Is he absurd, I ask you ? ' ' 
 
 At these words Gaudissart rushed on the dyer to give him a 
 blow ; but the Vouvrillons were on the alert and threw them- 
 selves between them, so that Gaudissart the Great only hit 
 the dyer's wig, which flew off and alighted on the head of 
 Mademoiselle Claire Vernier. 
 
 " If you are not satisfied now, monsieur, I shall be at the 
 inn till to-morrow morning ; you will find me there, and ready 
 to show you what is meant by satisfaction for an insult. I 
 fought in July, monsieur ! " 
 
 "Very well," said the dyer, " you shall fight at Vouvray ; 
 and you will stay here rather longer than you bargained for." 
 
 Gaudissart departed, pondering on this reply, which seemed 
 to him ominous of mischief. For the first time in his life he 
 dined cheerlessly. 
 
 The whole borough of Vouvray was in a stir over the meet- 
 ing between Gaudissart and Monsieur Vernier. A duel was a 
 thing unheard of in this benign region. 
 
 " Monsieur Mitouflet, I am going to fight Monsieur Vernier 
 to-morrow morning," said Gaudissart to his host. "I know 
 nobody here ; will you be my second ? " 
 
 "With pleasure," said Mitouflet. 
 
 Gaudissart had hardly finished his dinner when Madame
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 385 
 
 Fontanieu and the mayor's deputy came 10 the Golden Sun, 
 took Mitouflet aside, and represented to him what a sad thing 
 it would be for the whole district if a violent death should 
 occur ; they described the frightful state of affairs for good 
 Madame Vernier, and implored him to patch the matter up so 
 as to save the honor of the community. 
 
 " I will see to it," said the innkeeper with a wink. 
 
 In the evening Mitouflet went up to Gaudissart's room, 
 carrying pens, ink, and paper. 
 
 "What is all that?" inquired Gaudissart of the tavern- 
 keeper. 
 
 " Well, as you are to fight to-morrow, I thought you might 
 be glad to leave some little instructions and that you might 
 wish to write some letters, for we all have some one who is 
 dear to us. Oh ! that will not kill you. Are you a good 
 fencer ? Would you like to practice a little ? I have some 
 foils." 
 
 " I should be glad to do so." 
 
 Mitouflet fetched the foils and two masks. 
 
 " Now, let us see." 
 
 The innkeeper and the drummer stood on guard. Mitouflet, 
 who had been an instructor of grenadiers, hit Gaudissart sixty- 
 eight times, driving him back to the wall. 
 
 " The devil ! you are good at the game ! " said Gaudissart, 
 out of breath. 
 
 "I am no match for Monsieur Vernier." 
 
 " The deuce ! Then I will fight with pistols." 
 
 " I advise you to. You see, if you use large horse-pistols 
 and load them to the muzzle, they are sure to kick and miss, 
 and each man withdraws with unblemished honor. Leave me 
 to arrange it. By the mass, two good men would be great 
 fools to kill each other for a jest." 
 
 "Are you sure the pistols will fire wide enough ? I should 
 be sorry to kill the man," said Gaudissart. 
 
 "Sleep easy." 
 25
 
 386 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 
 
 Next morning the adversaries, both rather pale, met at the 
 foot of the Pont de la Cise. 
 
 The worthy Vernier narrowly missed killing a cow that was 
 grazing by the roadside ten yards off. 
 
 "Ah! you fired in the air!" exclaimed Gaudissart, and 
 with these words the enemies fell into each other's arms. 
 
 "Monsieur," said the traveler, "your joke was a little 
 rough, but it was funny. I am sorry I spoke so strongly, but 
 I was beside myself. I hold you a man of honor." 
 
 " Monsieur, we will get you twenty subscribers to the chil- 
 dren's paper," replied the dyer, still rather pale. 
 
 "That being the case," said Gaudissart, " why should we 
 not breakfast together? Men who have fought are always 
 ready to understand each other." 
 
 "Monsieur Mitouflet," said Gaudissart, as they went in, 
 " there is a bailiff here, I suppose ? " 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 "I mean to serve a notice on my dear little Monsieur 
 Margaritis, requiring him to supply me with two casks of his 
 wine." 
 
 "But he has none," said Vernier. 
 
 " Well, monsieur, I will say no more about it for an indem- 
 nity of twenty francs. But I will not have it said in your 
 town that you stole a march on Gaudissart the Great. ' ' 
 
 Madame Margaritis, afraid of an action, which the plaintiff 
 would certainly gain, brought the twenty francs to the clement 
 drummer, who was also spared the pains of any further propa- 
 ganda in one of the most jovial districts of France, and at 
 the same time the least open to new ideas. 
 
 On his return from his tour in the southern provinces, 
 Gaudissart the Great was traveling in the coupe of the Laffite- 
 Caillard diligence, and had for a fellow-passenger a young 
 man to whom, having passed Angoul&me, he condescended 
 to expatiate on the mysteries of life, fancying him, no doubt, 
 but a baby.
 
 GAUDISSART THE GREAT. 387 
 
 On reaching Vouvray, the youth exclaimed 
 
 " What a lovely situation ! " 
 
 "Yes, monsieur," said Gaudissart, "but the land is unin- 
 habitable by reason of the inhabitants. You would have a 
 duel on your hands every day. Why, only three months ago 
 I fought on that very spot " and he pointed to the bridge 
 " with a confounded dyer pistols; but I fleeced him ! " 
 
 PARIS, November, 1832. 
 
 [Note. The book " Parisians in the Country " consists of " Gaudissart 
 the Great" and the " Muse of the Department." As they are not re- 
 lated to each other they are, for mechanical reasons, placed in separate 
 volumes. PUB.]
 
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