V

Claude-Joseph Pillerault, formerly an iron-monger at the sign of the Cloche d'Or, had one of those faces whose beauty shines from the inner to the outer; about him all things harmonized,—dress and manners, mind and heart, thought and speech, words and acts. He was the sole relation of Madame Birotteau, and had centred all his affections upon her and upon Cesarine, having lost, in the course of his commercial career, his wife and son, and also an adopted child, the son of his house-keeper. These heavy losses had driven the good man into a kind of Christian stoicism,—a noble doctrine, which gave life to his existence, and colored his latter days with the warm, and at the same time chilling, tones which gild the sunsets of winter. His head, thin and hollowed and swarthy, with ochre and bistre tints harmoniously blended, offered a striking likeness to that which artists bestow on Time, though it vulgarized it; for the habits of commercial life lowered the stern and monumental character which painters, sculptors, and clock-makers exaggerate. Of medium height, Pillerault was more thick-set than stout; Nature had built him for hard work and long life; his broad shoulders showed a strong frame; he was dry by temperament, and his skin had, as it were, no emotions, though it was not insensible. Little demonstrative, as was shown by his composed face and quiet attitude, the old man had an inward calm not expressed in phrases nor by emphasis. His eye, the pupil of which was green, mingled with black lines, was remarkable for its unalterable clearness. His forehead, wrinkled in straight lines and yellowed by time, was small and narrow, hard, and crowned with silver-gray hair cut so short that it looked like felt. His delicate mouth showed prudence, but not avarice. The vivacity of his eye showed the purity of his life. Integrity, a sense of duty, and true modesty made, as it were, a halo round his head, bringing his face into the relief of a sound and healthful existence.

For sixty years he had led the hard and sober life of a determined worker. His history was like Cesar's, except in happiness. A clerk till thirty years of age, his property was all in his business at the time when Cesar put his savings into the Funds; he had suffered, like others, under the Maximum, and the pickaxes and other implements of his trade had been requisitioned. His reserved and judicious nature, his forethought and mathematical reflection, were seen in his methods of work. The greater part of his business was conducted by word of mouth, and he seldom encountered difficulties. Like all thoughtful people he was a great observer; he let people talk, and then studied them. He often refused advantageous bargains on which his neighbors pounced; later, when they regretted them, they declared that Pillerault had "a nose for swindlers." He preferred small and certain gains to bold strokes which put large sums of money in jeopardy. He dealt in cast-iron chimney backs, gridirons, coarse fire-dogs, kettles and boilers in cast or wrought iron, hoes, and all the agricultural implements of the peasantry. This line, which was sufficiently unremunerative, required an immense mechanical toil. The gains were not in proportion to the labor; the profits on such heavy articles, difficult to move and expensive to store, were small. He himself had nailed up many a case, packed and unpacked many a bale, unloaded many a wagon. No fortune was ever more nobly won, more legitimate or more honorable, than his. He had never overcharged or sought to force a bargain. In his latter business days he might be seen smoking his pipe before the door of his shop looking at the passers-by, and watching his clerks as they worked. In 1814, the period at which he retired from business, his fortune consisted, in the first place, of seventy thousand francs, which he placed in the public Funds, and from which he derived an income of five thousand and some odd hundred francs a year; next of forty thousand francs, the value of his business, which he had sold to one of his clerks; this sum was to be paid in full at the end of five years, without interest. Engaged for thirty years in a business which amounted to a hundred thousand francs a year, he had made about seven per cent profit on the amount, and his living had absorbed one half of that profit. Such was his record. His neighbors, little envious of such mediocrity, praised his excellence without understanding it.

At the corner of the Rue de la Monnaie and the Rue Saint-Honore is the cafe David, where a few old merchants, like Pillerault, take their coffee in the evenings. There, the adoption of the son of his cook had been the subject of a few jests, such as might be addressed to a man much respected, for the iron-monger inspired respectful esteem, though he never sought it; his inward self-respect sufficed him. So when he lost the young man, two hundred friends followed the body to the cemetery. In those days he was heroic. His sorrow, restrained like that of all men who are strong without assumption, increased the sympathy felt in his neighborhood for the "worthy man,"—a term applied to Pillerault in a tone which broadened its meaning and ennobled it. The sobriety of Claude Pillerault, long become a habit, did not yield before the pleasures of an idle life when, on quitting his business, he sought the rest which drags down so many of the Parisian bourgeoisie. He kept up his former ways of life, and enlivened his old age by convictions and interests, which belonged, we must admit, to the extreme Left. Pillerault belonged to that working-men's party which the Revolution had fused with the bourgeoisie. The only blot upon his character was the importance he attached to the triumph of that party; he held to all the rights, to the liberty, and to the fruits of the Revolution; he believed that his peace of mind and his political stability were endangered by the Jesuits, whose secret power was proclaimed aloud by the Liberals, and menaced by the principles with which the "Constitutionnel" endowed Monsieur. He was quite consistent in his life and ideas; there was nothing narrow about his politics; he never insulted his adversaries, he dreaded courtiers and believed in republican virtues; he thought Manuel a pure man, General Foy a great one, Casimir Perier without ambition, Lafayette a political prophet, and Courier a worthy fellow. He had indeed some noble chimeras. The fine old man lived a family life; he went about among the Ragons, his niece Birotteau, the judge Popinot, Joseph Lebas, and his friend Matifat. Fifteen hundred francs a year sufficed for all his personal wants. As to the rest of his income he spent it on good deeds, and in presents to his great-niece; he gave a dinner four times a year to his friends, at Roland's, Rue du Hasard, and took them afterwards to the theatre. He played the part of those old bachelors on whom married women draw at sight for their amusements,—a country jaunt, the opera, the Montagnes-Beaujon, et caetera. Pillerault was made happy by the pleasure he gave; his joys were in the hearts of others. Though he had sold his business, he did not wish to leave the neighborhood to which all his habits tied him; and he took a small appartement of three rooms in the Rue des Bourdonnais on the fourth floor of an old house.

Just as the moral nature of Molineux could be seen in his strange interior, the pure and simple life of Pillerault was revealed by the arrangements of his modest home, consisting of an antechamber, a sitting-room, and a bed-room. Judged by dimensions, it was the cell of a Trappist. The antechamber, with a red-tiled floor, had only one window, screened by a cambric curtain with a red border; mahogany chairs, covered with reddish sheep's leather put on with gilt nails, walls hung with an olive-green paper, and otherwise decorated with the American Declaration of Independence, a portrait of Bonaparte as First Consul, and a representation of the battle of Austerlitz. The salon, decorated undoubtedly by an upholsterer, had a set of furniture with arched tops covered in yellow, a carpet, chimney ornaments of bronze without gilding, a painted chimney-board, a console bearing a vase of flowers under a glass case, a round table covered with a cloth, on which stood a liqueur-stand. The newness of this room proclaimed a sacrifice made by the old man to the conventions of the world; for he seldom received any one at home. In his bedroom, as plain as that of a monk or an old soldier (the two men best able to estimate life), a crucifix with a basin of holy-water first caught the eye. This profession of faith in a stoical old republican was strangely moving to the heart of a spectator.

An old woman came to do his household work; but his respect for women was so great that he would not let her black his boots, and he subscribed to a boot-black for that service. His dress was simple, and invariably the same. He wore a coat and trousers of dark-blue cloth, a waistcoat of some printed cotton fabric, a white cravat, high shoes, and on gala days he put on a coat with brass buttons. His habits of rising, breakfasting, going out, dining, his evening resorts, and his returning hours were all stamped with the strictest punctuality; for regular habits are the secret of long life and sound health. Politics never came to the surface in his intercourse with Cesar, the Ragons, or the Abbe Loraux; for the good people of that circle knew each other too well to care to enter the region of proselytism. Like his nephew and like the Ragons, he put implicit confidence in Roguin. To his mind the notary was a being worthy of veneration,—the living image of probity. In the affair of the lands about the Madeleine, Pillerault had undertaken a private examination, which was the real cause of the boldness with which Cesar had combated his wife's presentiments.

The perfumer went up the seventy-eight stairs which led to the little brown door of his uncle's appartement, thinking as he went that the old man must be very hale to mount them daily without complaining. He found a frock-coat and pair of trousers hanging on the hat-stand outside the door. Madame Vaillant brushed and cleaned them while this genuine philosopher, wrapped in a gray woollen garment, breakfasted in his chimney-corner and read the parliamentary debates in the "Constitutionnel" or the "Journal du Commerce."

"Uncle," said Cesar, "the matter is settled; they are drawing up their deeds; but you have any fears or regrets, there is still time to give it up."

"Why should I give it up? The thing is good; though it may be a long time before we realize anything, like all safe investments. My fifty thousand francs are in the bank. I received yesterday the last instalment, five thousand francs, from my business. As for the Ragons, they have put their whole fortune into the affair."

"How do they contrive to life?"

"Never mind how; they do live."

"Uncle, I understand!" said Birotteau, deeply moved, pressing the hand of the austere old man.

"How is the affair arranged?" asked Pillerault, brusquely.

"I am in for three eighths, you and the Ragons for one eighth. I shall credit you for that on my books until the question of registration is decided."

"Good! My boy, you must be getting rich to put three hundred thousand francs into it. It seems to me you are risking a good deal outside of your business. Won't the business suffer? However, that is your affair. If you get a set-back, why the Funds are at eighty, and I could sell two thousand francs worth of my consolidated stock. But take care, my lad; for if you have to come upon me, it will be your daughter's fortune that you will take."

"Ah! my uncle, how simply you say things! You touch my heart."

"General Foy was touching mine in quite another fashion just now. Well, go on; settle the business; lands can't fly away. We are getting them at half price. Suppose we do have to wait six years, there will always be some returns; there are wood-yards which will bring in a rent. We can't really lose anything. There is but one chance against us. Roguin might run off with the money."

"My wife told me so this very night. She fears—"

"That Roguin will carry off our funds?" said Pillerault, laughing. "Pray, why?"

"She says there is too much in his nose; and like men who can't have women, he is furious to—"

With a smile of incredulity, Pillerault tore a strip from a little book, wrote down an amount, and signed the paper.

"There," said he, "there's a cheque on the Bank of France for a hundred thousand francs for the Ragons and for me. Those poor folks have just sold to your scoundrel of a du Tillet their fifteen shares in the mines at Wortschin to make up the amount. Worthy people in trouble,—it wrings my heart; and such good, noble souls, the very flower of the old bourgeoisie! Their brother, Popinot, the judge, knows nothing about it; they hid it from him so that he may not feel obliged to give up his other works of charity. People who have worked, like me, for forty years!"

"God grant that the Oil of Comagene may triumph!" cried Birotteau. "I shall be doubly happy. Adieu; come and dine on Sunday with the Ragons, Roguin, and Monsieur Claparon. We shall sign the papers the day after to-morrow, for to-morrow is Friday, you know, and I shouldn't like—"

"You don't surely give in to such superstitions?"

"Uncle, I shall never believe that the day on which the Son of God was put to death by man can be a fortunate day. Why, we ourselves stop all business on the twenty-first of January."

"On Sunday, then," said Pillerault brusquely.

"If it were not for his political opinions," thought Birotteau as he went down stairs, "I don't believe he would have his equal here below. What are politics to him? He would be just as well off if he never thought of them. His obstinacy in that direction only shows that there can't be a perfect man."

"Three o'clock already!" cried Cesar, as he got back to "The Queen of Roses."

"Monsieur, do you mean to take these securities?" asked Celestin, showing him the notes of the umbrella-maker.

"Yes; at six per cent, without commission. Wife, get my dressing things all ready; I am going to see Monsieur Vauquelin,—you know why. A white cravat, of course."

Birotteau gave a few orders to the clerks. Not seeing Popinot, he concluded that his future partner had gone to dress; and he went gaily up to his room, where the Dresden Madonna, magnificently framed according to his orders, awaited him.

"Hey! that's pretty," he said to his daughter.

"Papa, you must say beautiful, or people will laugh at you."

"Upon my word! a daughter who scolds her father! Well, well! To my taste I like Hero and Leander quite as much. The Virgin is a religious subject, suitable for a chapel; but Hero and Leander, ah! I shall buy it, for that flask of oil gave me an idea—"

"Papa, I don't know what you are talking about."

"Virginie! a hackney-coach!" cried Cesar, in stentorian tones, as soon as he had trimmed his beard and seen little Popinot appear, who was dragging his foot timidly because Cesarine was there.

The lover had never yet perceived that his infirmity no longer existed in the eyes of his mistress. Delicious sign of love!—which they on whom chance has inflicted a bodily imperfection can alone obtain.

"Monsieur," he said, "the press will be ready to work to-morrow."

"Why, what's the matter, Popinot?" asked Cesar, as he saw Anselme blush.

"Monsieur, it is the joy of having found a shop, a back-shop, kitchen, chambers above them, and store-rooms,—all for twelve hundred francs a year, in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants."

"We must take a lease of eighteen years," said Birotteau. "But let us start for Monsieur Vauquelin's. We can talk as we go."

Cesar and Popinot got into the hackney-coach before the eyes of the astonished clerks, who did not know what to make of these gorgeous toilets and the abnormal coach, ignorant as they were of the great project revolving in the mind of the master of "The Queen of Roses."

"We are going to hear the truth about nuts," said Cesar, half to himself.

"Nuts?" said Popinot.

"There you have my secret," said the perfumer. "I've let loose the word nuts,—all is there. The oil of nuts is the only oil that has any real effect upon hair. No perfumer has ever dreamed of it. I saw an engraving of Hero and Leander, and I said to myself, If the ancients used all that oil on their heads they had some reason for it; for the ancients are the ancients, in spite of all the moderns may say; I stand by Boileau about the ancients. I took my departure from that point and got the oil of nuts, thanks to your relation, little Bianchon the medical student; he told me that at school his comrades used nut oil to promote the growth of their whiskers and mustachios. All we need is the approval of Monsieur Vauquelin; enlightened by his science, we shall mislead the public. I was in the markets just now, talking to a seller of nuts, so as to get hold of the raw material, and now I am about to meet one of the greatest scientific men in France, to get at the quintessence of that commodity. Proverbs are no fools; extremes meet. Now see, my boy, commerce is the intermediary between the productions of the vegetable kingdom and science. Angelique Madou gathers, Monsieur Vauquelin extracts, we sell an essence. Nuts are worth five sous a pound, Monsieur Vauquelin will increase their value one hundredfold, and we shall, perhaps, do a service to humanity; for if vanity is the cause of the greatest torments of mankind, a good cosmetic becomes a benefaction."

The religious admiration with which Popinot listened to the father of Cesarine stimulated Birotteau's eloquence, who allowed himself to expatiate in phrases which certainly were extremely wild for a bourgeois.

"Be respectful, Anselme," he said, as they reached the street where Monsieur Vauquelin lived, "we are about to enter the sanctuary of science. Put the Virgin in full sight, but not ostentatiously, in the dining-room, on a chair. Pray heaven, I may not get mixed up in what I have to say!" cried Cesar, naively. "Popinot, this man has a chemical effect upon me; his voice heats my stomach, and even gives me a slight colic. He is my benefactor, and in a few moments he will be yours."

These words struck Popinot with a cold chill, and he began to step as if he were walking on eggs, looking nervously at the wall. Monsieur Vauquelin was in his study when Birotteau was announced. The academician knew that the perfumer and deputy-mayor was high in favor, and he admitted him.

"You do not forget me in the midst of your distinctions," he said, "there is only a hand's-breadth, however, between a chemist and a perfumer."

"Ah, monsieur! between your genius and the plainness of a man like me there is infinity. I owe to you what you call my distinctions: I shall never forget it in this world, nor in the next."

"Oh! in the next they say we shall be all alike, kings and cobblers."

"Provided kings and cobblers lead a holy life here below," said Birotteau.

"Is that your son?" asked Vauquelin, looking at little Popinot, who was amazed at not seeing anything extraordinary in the sanctum, where he expected to find monstrosities, gigantic engines, flying-machines, and material substances all alive.

"No, monsieur, but a young man whom I love, and who comes to ask a kindness equal to your genius,—and that is infinite," said Cesar with shrewd courtesy. "We have come to consult you, a second time, on an important matter, about which I am ignorant as a perfumer can be."

"Let me hear what it is."

"I know that hair has lately occupied all your vigils, and that you have given yourself up to analyzing it; while you have thought of glory, I have thought of commerce."

"Dear Monsieur Birotteau, what is it you want of me,—the analysis of hair?" He took up a little paper. "I am about to read before the Academy of Sciences a monograph on that subject. Hair is composed of a rather large quantity of mucus, a small quantity of white oil, a great deal of greenish oil, iron, a few atoms of oxide of manganese, some phosphate of lime, a tiny quantity of carbonate of lime, a little silica, and a good deal of sulphur. The differing proportions of these component parts cause the differences in the color of the hair. Red hair, for instance, has more greenish oil than any other."

Cesar and Popinot opened their eyes to a laughable extent.

"Nine things!" cried Birotteau. "What! are there metals and oils in hair? Unless I heard it from you, a man I venerate, I could not believe it. How amazing! God is great, Monsieur Vauquelin."

"Hair is produced by a follicular organ," resumed the great chemist,—"a species of pocket, or sack, open at both extremities. By one end it is fastened to the nerves and the blood vessels; from the other springs the hair itself. According to some of our scientific brotherhood, among them Monsieur Blainville, the hair is really a dead matter expelled from that pouch, or crypt, which is filled with a species of pulp."

"Then hair is what you might call threads of sweat!" cried Popinot, to whom Cesar promptly administered a little kick on his heels.

Vauquelin smiled at Popinot's idea.

"He knows something, doesn't he?" said Cesar, looking at Popinot. "But, monsieur, if the hair is still-born, it is impossible to give it life, and I am lost! my prospectus will be ridiculous. You don't know how queer the public is; you can't go and tell it—"

"That it has got manure upon its head," said Popinot, wishing to make Vauquelin laugh again.

"Cephalic catacombs," said Vauquelin, continuing the joke.

"My nuts are bought!" cried Birotteau, alive to the commercial loss. "If this is so why do they sell—"

"Don't be frightened," said Vauquelin, smiling, "I see it is a question of some secret about making the hair grow or keeping it from turning gray. Listen! this is my opinion on the subject, as the result of my studies."

Here Popinot pricked up his ears like a frightened hare.

"The discoloration of this substance, be it living or dead, is, in my judgment, produced by a check to the secretion of the coloring matter; which explains why in certain cold climates the fur of animals loses all color and turns white in winter."

"Hein! Popinot."

"It is evident," resumed Vauquelin, "that alterations in the color of the hair come from changes in the circumjacent atmosphere—"

"Circumjacent, Popinot! recollect, hold fast to that," cried Cesar.

"Yes," said Vauquelin, "from hot and cold changes, or from internal phenomena which produce the same effect. Probably headaches and other cephalagic affections absorb, dissipate, or displace the generating fluids. However, the interior of the head concerns physicians. As for the exterior, bring on your cosmetics."

"Monsieur," said Birotteau, "you restore me to life! I have thought of selling an oil of nuts, believing that the ancients made use of that oil for their hair; and the ancients are the ancients, as you know: I agree with Boileau. Why did the gladiators oil themselves—"

"Olive oil is quite as good as nut oil," said Vauquelin, who was not listening to Birotteau. "All oil is good to preserve the bulb from receiving injury to the substances working within it, or, as we should say in chemistry, in liquefaction. Perhaps you are right; Dupuytren told me the oil of nuts had a stimulating property. I will look into the differences between the various oils, beech-nut, colza, olive, and hazel, etc."

"Then I am not mistaken," cried Birotteau, triumphantly. "I have coincided with a great man. Macassar is overthrown! Macassar, monsieur, is a cosmetic given—that is, sold, and sold dear—to make the hair grow."

"My dear Monsieur Birotteau," said Vauquelin, "there are not two ounces of Macassar oil in all Europe. Macassar oil has not the slightest action upon the hair; but the Malays buy it up for its weight in gold, thinking that it preserves the hair: they don't know that whale-oil is just as good. No power, chemical, or divine—"

"Divine! oh, don't say that, Monsieur Vauquelin."

"But, my dear monsieur, the first law of God is to be consistent with Himself; without unity, no power—"

"Ah! in that light—"

"No power, as I say, can make the hair grow on bald heads; just as you can never dye, without serious danger, red or white hair. But in advertising the benefits of oil you commit no mistake, you tell no falsehood, and I think that those who use it will probably preserve their hair."

"Do you think that the royal Academy of Sciences would approve of—"

"Oh! there is no discovery in all that," said Vauquelin. "Besides, charlatans have so abused the name of the Academy that it would not help you much. My conscience will not allow me to think the oil of nuts a prodigy."

"What would be the best way to extract it; by pressure, or decoction?" asked Birotteau.

"Pressure between two hot slabs will cause the oil to flow more abundantly; but if obtained by pressure between cold slabs it will be of better quality. It should be applied to the skin itself," added Vauquelin, kindly, "and not to the hair; otherwise the effect might be lost."

"Recollect all that, Popinot," said Birotteau, with an enthusiasm that sent a glow into his face. "You see before you, monsieur, a young man who will count this day among the finest in his life. He knew you, he venerated you, without ever having seen you. We often talk of you in our home: a name that is in the heart is often on the lips. We pray for you every day, my wife and daughter and I, as we ought to pray for our benefactor."

"Too much for so little," said Vauquelin, rather bored by the voluble gratitude of the perfumer.

"Ta, ta, ta!" exclaimed Birotteau, "you can't prevent our loving you, you who will take nothing from us. You are like the sun; you give light, and those whom you illuminate can give you nothing in return."

The man of science smiled and rose; the perfumer and Popinot rose also.

"Anselme, look well at this room. You permit it, monsieur? Your time is precious, I know, but he will never have another opportunity."

"Well, have you got all you wanted?" said Vauquelin to Birotteau. "After all, we are both commercial men."

"Pretty nearly, monsieur," said Birotteau, retreating towards the dining-room, Vauquelin following. "But to launch our Comagene Essence we need a good foundation—"

"'Comagene' and 'Essence' are two words that clash. Call your cosmetic 'Oil of Birotteau'; or, if you don't want to give your name to the world, find some other. Why, there's the Dresden Madonna! Ah, Monsieur Birotteau, do you mean that we shall quarrel?"

"Monsieur Vauquelin," said the perfumer, taking the chemist's hand. "This treasure has no value except the time that I have spent in finding it. We had to ransack all Germany to find it on China paper before lettering. I knew that you wished for it and that your occupations did not leave you time to search for it; I have been your commercial traveller, that is all. Accept therefore, not a paltry engraving, but efforts, anxieties, despatches to and fro, which are the evidence of my complete devotion. Would that you had wished for something growing on the sides of precipices, that I might have sought it and said to you, 'Here it is!' Do not refuse my gift. We have so much reason to be forgotten; allow me therefore to place myself, my wife, my daughter, and the son-in-law I expect to have, beneath your eyes. You must say when you look at the Virgin, 'There are some people in the world who are thinking of me.'"

"I accept," said Vauquelin.

Popinot and Birotteau wiped their eyes, so affected were they by the kindly tone in which the academician uttered the words.

"Will you crown your goodness?" said the perfumer.

"What's that?" exclaimed Vauquelin.

"I assemble my friends"—he rose from his heels, taking, nevertheless, a modest air—"as much to celebrate the emancipation of our territory as to commemorate my promotion to the order of the Legion of honor—"

"Ah!" exclaimed Vauquelin, surprised.

"Possibly I showed myself worthy of that signal and royal favor, by my services on the Bench of commerce, and by fighting for the Bourbons upon the steps of Saint-Roch, on the 13th Vendemiaire, where I was wounded by Napoleon. My wife gives a ball, three weeks from Sunday; pray come to it, monsieur. Do us the honor to dine with us on that day. Your presence would double the happiness with which I receive my cross. I will write you beforehand."

"Well, yes," said Vauquelin.

"My heart swells with joy!" cried the perfumer, when he got into the street. "He comes to my house! I am afraid I've forgotten what he said about hair: do you remember it, Popinot!"

"Yes, monsieur; and twenty years hence I shall remember it still."

"What a great man! what a glance, what penetration!" said Birotteau. "Ah! he made no bones about it; he guessed our thoughts at the first word; he has given us the means of annihilating Macassar oil. Yes! nothing can make the hair grow; Macassar, you lie! Popinot, our fortune is made. We'll go to the manufactory to-morrow morning at seven o'clock; the nuts will be there, and we will press out some oil. It is all very well for him to say that any oil is good; if the public knew that, we should be lost. If we didn't put some scent and the name of nuts into the oil, how could we sell it for three or four francs the four ounces?"

"You are about to be decorated, monsieur?" said Popinot, "what glory for—"

"Commerce; that is true, my boy."

Cesar's triumphant air, as if certain of fortune, was observed by the clerks, who made signs at each other; for the trip in the hackney-coach, and the full dress of the cashier and his master had thrown them all into the wildest regions of romance. The mutual satisfaction of Cesar and Anselme, betrayed by looks diplomatically exchanged, the glance full of hope which Popinot cast now and then at Cesarine, proclaimed some great event and gave color to the conjectures of the clerks. In their busy and half cloistral life the smallest events have the interest which a prisoner feels in those of his prison. The bearing of Madame Cesar, who replied to the Olympian looks of her lord with an air of distrust, seemed to point to some new enterprise; for in ordinary times Madame Cesar, delighted with the smallest routine success, would have shared his contentment. It happened, accidentally, that the receipts for the day amounted to more than six thousand francs; for several outstanding bills chanced to be paid.

The dining-room and the kitchen, lighted from a little court, and separated from the dining-room by a passage, from which the staircase, taken out of a corner of the backshop, opened up, was on the entresol where in former days Cesar and Constance had their appartement; in fact, the dining-room, where the honey-moon had been passed, still wore the look of a little salon. During dinner Raguet, the trusty boy of all work, took charge of the shop; but the clerks came down when the dessert was put on table, leaving Cesar, his wife and daughter to finish their dinner alone by the chimney corner. This habit was derived from the Ragons, who kept up the old-fashioned usages and customs of former commercial days, which placed an enormous distance between the masters and the apprentices. Cesarine or Constance then prepared for Birotteau his cup of coffee, which he took sitting on a sofa by the corner of the fire. At this hour he told his wife all the little events of the day, and related what he had seen in the streets, what was going on in the Faubourg du Temple, and the difficulties he had met with in the manufactory, et caetera.

"Wife," he said, when the clerks had gone down, "this is certainly one of the most important days in our life! The nuts are bought, the hydraulic press is ready to go to work, the land affair is settled. Here, lock up that cheque on the Bank of France," he added, handing her Pillerault's paper. "The improvements in the house are ordered, the dignity of our appartement is about to be increased. Bless me! I saw, down in the Cour Batave, a very singular man,"—and he told the tale of Monsieur Molineux.

"I see," said his wife, interrupting him in the middle of a tirade, "that you have gone in debt two hundred thousand francs."

"That is true, wife," said Cesar, with mock humility, "Good God, how shall we pay them? It counts for nothing that the lands about the Madeleine will some day become the finest quarter of Paris."

"Some day, Cesar!"

"Alas!" he said, going on with his joke, "my three eighths will only be worth a million in six years. How shall I ever pay that two hundred thousand francs?" said Cesar, with a gesture of alarm. "Well, we shall be reduced to pay them with that," he added, pulling from his pocket a nut, which he had taken from Madame Madou and carefully preserved.

He showed the nut between his fingers to Constance and Cesarine. His wife was silent, but Cesarine, much puzzled, said to her father, as she gave him his coffee, "What do you mean, papa,—are you joking?"

The perfumer, as well as the clerks, had detected during dinner the glances which Popinot had cast at Cesarine, and he resolved to clear up his suspicions.

"Well, my little daughter," he said, "this nut will revolutionize our home. From this day forth there will be one person the less under my roof."

Cesarine looked at her father with an eye which seemed to say, "What is that to me?"

"Popinot is going away."

Though Cesar was a poor observer, and had, moreover, prepared his phrase as much to herald the creation of the house of A. Popinot and Company, as to set a trap for his daughter, yet his paternal tenderness made him guess the confused feelings which rose in Cesarine's heart, blossomed in roses on her cheek, suffused her forehead and even her eyes as she lowered them. Cesar thought that words must have passed between Cesarine and Popinot. He was mistaken; the two children comprehended each other, like all timid lovers, without a word.

Some moralists hold that love is an involuntary passion, the most disinterested, the least calculating, of all the passions, except maternal love. This opinion carries with it a vulgar error. Though the majority of men may be ignorant of the causes of love, it is none the less true that all sympathy, moral or physical, is based upon calculations made either by the mind, or by sentiment or brutality. Love is an essentially selfish passion. Self means deep calculation. To every mind which looks only at results, it will seem at first sight singular and unlikely that a beautiful girl like Cesarine should love a poor lame fellow with red hair. Yet this phenomenon is completely in harmony with the arithmetic of middle-class sentiments. To explain it, would be to give the reason of marriages which are constantly looked upon with surprise,—marriages between tall and beautiful women and puny men, or between ugly little creatures and handsome men. Every man who is cursed with some bodily infirmity, no matter what it is,—club-feet, a halting-gait, a humped-back, excessive ugliness, claret stains upon the cheek, Roguin's species of deformity, and other monstrosities the result of causes beyond the control of the sufferer,—has but two courses open to him: either he must make himself feared, or he must practise the virtues of exquisite loving-kindness; he is not permitted to float in the middle currents of average conduct which are habitual to other men. If he takes the first course he probably has talent, genius, or strength of will; a man inspires terror only by the power of evil, respect by genius, fear through force of mind. If he chooses the second course, he makes himself adored; he submits to feminine tyranny, and knows better how to love than men of irreproachable bodily condition.

Anselme, brought up by virtuous people, by the Ragons, models of the honorable bourgeoisie, and by his uncle the judge, had been led, through his ingenuous nature and his deep religious sentiments, to redeem the slight deformity of his person by the perfection of his character. Constance and Cesar, struck by these tendencies, so attractive in youth, had repeatedly sung his praises before Cesarine. Petty as they might be in many ways, husband and wife were noble by nature, and understood the deep things of the heart. Their praises found an echo in the mind of the young girl, who, despite her innocence, had read in Anselme's pure eyes the violent feeling, which is always flattering whatever be the lover's age, or rank, or personal appearance. Little Popinot had far more reason to adore a woman than a handsome man could ever have. If she were beautiful, he would love her madly to her dying day; his fondness would inspire him with ambition; he would sacrifice his own life that his wife's might be happy; he would make her mistress of their home, and be himself the first to accept her sway. Thus thought Cesarine, involuntarily perhaps, yet not altogether crudely; she gave a bird's-eye glance at the harvest of love in her own home, and reasoned by induction; the happiness of her mother was before her eyes,—she wished for no better fate; her instinct told her that Anselme was another Cesar, improved by his education, as she had been improved by hers. She dreamed of Popinot as mayor of an arrondissement, and liked to picture herself taking up the collections in their parish church as her mother did at Saint-Roch. She had reached the point of no longer perceiving the difference between the left leg and the right leg of her lover, and was even capable of saying, in all sincerity, "Does he limp?" She loved those liquid eyes, and liked to watch the effect her own glance had upon them, as they lighted up for a moment with a chaste flame, and then fell, sadly.

Roguin's head-clerk, Alexandre Crottat, who was gifted with the precocious experience which comes from knowledge acquired in a lawyer's office, had an air and manner that was half cynical, half silly, which revolted Cesarine, already disgusted by the trite and commonplace character of his conversation. The silence of Popinot, on the other hand, revealed his gentle nature; she loved the smile, partly mournful, with which he listened to trivial vulgarities. The silly nonsense which made him smile filled her with repulsion; they were grave or gay in sympathy. This hidden vantage-ground did not hinder Anselme from plunging into his work, and his indefatigable ardor in it pleased Cesarine, for she guessed that when his comrades in the shop said, "Mademoiselle Cesarine will marry Roguin's head-clerk," the poor lame Anselme, with his red hair, did not despair of winning her himself. A high hope is the proof of a great love.

"Where is he going?" asked Cesarine of her father, trying to appear indifferent.

"He is to set up for himself in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants; and, my faith! by the grace of God!" cried Cesar, whose exclamations were not understood by his wife, nor by his daughter.

When Birotteau encountered a moral difficulty he did as the insects do when there is an obstacle in their way,—he turned either to the right or to the left. He therefore changed the conversation, resolving to talk over Cesarine with his wife.

"I told all your fears and fancies about Roguin to your uncle, and he laughed," he said to Constance.

"You should never tell what we say to each other!" cried Constance. "That poor Roguin may be the best man in the world; he is fifty-eight years old, and perhaps he thinks no longer of—"

She stopped short, seeing that Cesarine was listening attentively, and made a sign to Cesar.

"Then I have done right to agree to the affair," said Birotteau.

"You are the master," she answered.

Cesar took his wife by the hands and kissed her brow; that answer always conveyed her tacit assent to her husband's projects.

"Now, then," cried the perfumer, to his clerks, when he went back to them, "the shop will be closed at ten o'clock. Gentlemen, lend a hand! a great feat! We must move, during the night, all the furniture from the first floor to the second floor. We shall have, as they say, to put the little pots in the big pots, for my architect must have his elbows free to-morrow morning—Popinot has gone out without my permission," he cried, looking round and not seeing his cashier. "Ah, true, he does not sleep here any more, I forget that. He is gone," thought Cesar, "either to write down Monsieur Vauquelin's ideas, or else to hire the shop."

"We all know the cause of this household change," said Celestin, speaking in behalf of the two other clerks and Raguet, grouped behind him. "Is it allowable to congratulate monsieur upon an honor which reflects its light upon the whole establishment? Popinot has told us that monsieur—"

"Hey, hey! my children, it is all true. I have been decorated. I am about to assemble my friends, not only to celebrate the emancipation of our territory, but to commemorate my promotion to the order of the Legion of honor. I may, possibly, have shown myself worthy of that signal and royal favor by my services on the Bench of commerce, and by fighting for the royal cause; which I defended—at your age—upon the steps of Saint-Roch on the 13th Vendemiaire, and I give you my word that Napoleon, called emperor, wounded me himself! wounded me in the thigh; and Madame Ragon nursed me. Take courage! recompense comes to every man. Behold, my sons! misfortunes are never wasted."

"They will never fight in the streets again," said Celestin.

"Let us hope so," said Cesar, who thereupon went off into an harangue to the clerks, which he wound up by inviting them to the ball.

The vision of a ball inspired the three clerks, Raguet, and Virginie the cook with an ardor that gave them the strength of acrobats. They came and went up and down the stairs, carrying everything and breaking nothing. By two o'clock in the morning the removal was effected. Cesar and his wife slept on the second floor. Popinot's bedroom became that of Celestin and the second clerk. On the third floor the furniture was stored provisionally.

In the grasp of that magnetic ardor, produced by an influx of the nervous fluid, which lights a brazier in the midriff of ambitious men and lovers intent on high emprise, Popinot, so gentle and tranquil usually, pawed the earth like a thoroughbred before the race, when he came down into the shop after dinner.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Celestin.

"Oh, what a day! my dear fellow, what a day! I am set up in business, and Monsieur Cesar is decorated."

"You are very lucky if the master helps you," said Celestin.

Popinot did not answer; he disappeared, driven by a furious wind,—the wind of success.

"Lucky!" said one of the clerks, who was sorting gloves by the dozen, to another who was comparing prices on the tickets. "Lucky! the master has found out that Popinot is making eyes at Mademoiselle Cesarine, and, as the old fellow is pretty clever, he gets rid of Anselme; it would be difficult to refuse him point-blank, on account of his relations. Celestin thinks the trick is luck or generosity!"



VI

Anselme Popinot went down the Rue Saint-Honore and rushed along the Rue des Deux-Ecus to seize upon a young man whom his commercial second-sight pointed out to him as the principal instrument of his future fortune. Popinot the judge had once done a great service to the cleverest of all commercial travellers, to him whose triumphant loquacity and activity were to win him, in coming years, the title of The Illustrious. Devoted especially to the hat-trade and the article-Paris, this prince of travellers was called, at the time of which we write, purely and simply, Gaudissart. At the age of twenty-two he was already famous by the power of his commercial magnetism. In those days he was slim, with a joyous eye, expressive face, unwearied memory, and a glance that guessed the wants of every one; and he deserved to be, what in fact he became, the king of commercial travellers, the Frenchman par excellence. A few days earlier Popinot had met Gaudissart, who mentioned that he was on the point of departure; the hope of finding him still in Paris sent the lover flying into the Rue des Deux-Ecus, where he learned that the traveller had engaged his place at the Messageries-Royales. To bid adieu to his beloved capital, Gaudissart had gone to see a new piece at the Vaudeville; Popinot resolved to wait for him. Was it not drawing a cheque on fortune to entrust the launching of the oil of nuts to this incomparable steersman of mercantile inventions, already petted and courted by the richest firms? Popinot had reason to feel sure of Gaudissart. The commercial traveller, so knowing in the art of entangling that most wary of human beings, the little provincial trader, had himself become entangled in the first conspiracy attempted against the Bourbons after the Hundred Days. Gaudissart, to whom the open firmament of heaven was indispensable, found himself shut up in prison, under the weight of an accusation for a capital offence. Popinot the judge, who presided at the trial, released him on the ground that it was nothing worse than his imprudent folly which had mixed him up in the affair. A judge anxious to please the powers in office, or a rabid royalist, would have sent the luckless traveller to the scaffold. Gaudissart, who believed he owed his life to the judge, cherished the grief of being unable to make his savior any other return than that of sterile gratitude. As he could not thank a judge for doing justice, he went to the Ragons and declared himself liege-vassal forever to the house of Popinot.

While waiting about for Gaudissart, Anselme naturally went to look at the shop in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants, and got the address of the owner, for the purpose of negotiating a lease. As he sauntered through the dusky labyrinth of the great market, thinking how to achieve a rapid success, he suddenly came, in the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, upon a rare chance, and one of good omen, with which he resolved to regale Cesar on the morrow. Soon after, while standing about the door of the Hotel du Commerce, at the end of the Rue des Deux-Ecus, about midnight, he heard, in the far distance of the Rue de Grenelle, a vaudeville chorus sung by Gaudissart, with a cane accompaniment significantly rapped upon the pavement.

"Monsieur," said Anselme, suddenly appearing from the doorway, "two words?"

"Eleven, if you like," said the commercial traveller, brandishing his loaded cane over the aggressor.

"I am Popinot," said poor Anselme.

"Enough!" cried Gaudissart, recognizing him. "What do you need? Money?—absent, on leave, but we can get it. My arm for a duel?—all is yours, from my head to my heels," and he sang,—

"Behold! behold! A Frenchman true!"

"Come and talk with me for ten minutes; not in your room,—we might be overheard,—but on the Quai de l'Horloge; there's no one there at this hour," said Popinot. "It is about something important."

"Exciting, hey? Proceed."

In ten minutes Gaudissart, put in possession of Popinot's secret, saw its importance.

"Come forth! perfumers, hair-dressers, petty retailers!"

sang Gaudissart, mimicking Lafon in the role of the Cid. "I shall grab every shopkeeper in France and Navarre.—Oh, an idea! I was about to start; I remain; I shall take commissions from the Parisian perfumers."

"Why?"

"To strangle your rivals, simpleton! If I take their orders I can make their perfidious cosmetics drink oil, simply by talking and working for yours only. A first-rate traveller's trick! Ha! ha! we are the diplomatists of commerce. Famous! As for your prospectus, I'll take charge of that. I've got a friend—early childhood—Andoche Finot, son of the hat-maker in the Rue du Coq, the old buffer who launched me into travelling on hats. Andoche, who has a great deal of wit,—he got it all out of the heads tiled by his father,—he is in literature; he does the minor theatres in the 'Courrier des Spectacles.' His father, an old dog chock-full of reasons for not liking wit, won't believe in it; impossible to make him see that mind can be sold, sells itself in fact: he won't believe in anything but the three-sixes. Old Finot manages young Finot by famine. Andoche, a capable man, no fool,—I don't consort with fools, except commercially,—Andoche makes epigrams for the 'Fidele Berger,' which pays; while the other papers, for which he works like a galley-slave, keep him down on his marrow-bones in the dust. Are not they jealous, those fellows? Just the same in the article-Paris! Finot wrote a superb comedy in one act for Mademoiselle Mars, most glorious of the glorious!—ah, there's a woman I love!—Well, in order to get it played he had to take it to the Gaite. Andoche understands prospectuses, he worms himself into the mercantile mind; and he's not proud, he'll concoct it for us gratis. Damn it! with a bowl of punch and a few cakes we'll get it out of him; for, Popinot, no nonsense! I am to travel on your commission without pay: your competitors shall pay; I'll diddle it out of them. Let us understand each other clearly. As for me, this triumph is an affair of honor. My reward is to be best man at your wedding! I shall go to Italy, Germany, England! I shall carry with me placards in all languages, paste them everywhere, in villages, on doors of churches, all the best spots I can find in provincial towns! The oil shall sparkle, scintillate, glisten on every head. Ha! your marriage shall not be a sham; we'll make it a pageant, colors flying! You shall have your Cesarine, or my name shall not be ILLUSTRIOUS,—that is what Pere Finot calls me for having got off his gray hats. In selling your oil I keep to my own sphere, the human head; hats and oil are well-known preservatives of the public hair."

Popinot returned to his aunt's house, where he was to sleep, in such a fever, caused by his visions of success, that the streets seemed to him to be running oil. He slept little, dreamed that his hair was madly growing, and saw two angels who unfolded, as they do in melodramas, a scroll on which was written "Oil Cesarine." He woke, recollected the dream, and vowed to give the oil of nuts that sacred name, accepting the sleeping fancy as a celestial mandate.

* * * * *

Cesar and Popinot were at their work-shop in the Faubourg du Temple the next morning long before the arrival of the nuts. While waiting for Madame Madou's porters, Popinot triumphantly recounted his treaty of alliance with Gaudissart.

"Have we indeed the illustrious Gaudissart? Then are we millionaires!" cried the perfumer, extending his hand to his cashier with an air which Louis XIV. must have worn when he received the Marechal de Villars on his return from Denain.

"We have something besides," said the happy clerk, producing from his pocket a bottle of a squat shape, like a pumpkin, and ribbed on the sides. "I have found ten thousand bottles like that, all made ready to hand, at four sous, and six months' credit."

"Anselme," said Birotteau, contemplating the wondrous shape of the flask, "yesterday [here his tone of voice became solemn] in the Tuileries,—yes, no later than yesterday,—you said to me, 'I will succeed.' To-day I—I say to you, 'You will succeed.' Four sous! six months! an unparalleled shape! Macassar trembles to its foundations! Was I not right to seize upon the only nuts in Paris? Where did you find these bottles?"

"I was waiting to speak to Gaudissart, and sauntering—"

"Just like me, when I found the Arab book," cried Birotteau.

"Coming down the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, I saw in a wholesale glass place, where they make blown glass and cases,—an immense place,—I caught sight of this flask; it blinded my eyes like a sudden light; a voice cried to me, 'Here's your chance!'"

"Born merchant! he shall have my daughter!" muttered Cesar.

"I went in; I saw thousands of these bottles packed in cases."

"You asked about them?"

"Do you think me such a ninny?" cried Anselme, in a grieved tone.

"Born merchant!" repeated Birotteau.

"I asked for glass cases for the little wax Jesus; and while I was bargaining about them I found fault with the shape of the bottles. From one thing to another, I trapped the man into admitting that Faille and Bouchot, who lately failed, were starting a new cosmetic and wanted a peculiar style of bottle; he was doubtful about them and asked for half the money down. Faille and Bouchot, expecting to succeed, paid the money; they failed while the bottles were making. The assignees, when called upon to pay the bill, arranged to leave him the bottles and the money in hand, as an indemnity for the manufacture of articles thought to be ridiculous in shape, and quite unsalable. They cost originally eight sous; he was glad to get rid of them for four; for, as he said, God knows how long he might have on his hands a shape for which there was no sale! 'Are you willing,' I said to him, 'to furnish ten thousand at four sous? If so, I may perhaps relieve you of them. I am a clerk at Monsieur Birotteau's.' I caught him, I led him, I mastered him, I worked him up, and he is all ours."

"Four sous!" said Birotteau. "Do you know that we could use oil at three francs, and make a profit of thirty sous, and give twenty sous discount to retailers?"

"Oil Cesarine!" cried Popinot.

"Oil Cesarine?—Ah, lover! would you flatter both father and daughter? Well, well, so be it; Oil Cesarine! The Cesars owned the whole world. They must have had fine hair."

"Cesar was bald," said Popinot.

"Because he never used our oil. Three francs for the Oil Cesarine, while Macassar Oil costs double! Gaudissart to the fore! We shall make a hundred thousand francs this year, for we'll pour on every head that respects itself a dozen bottles a year,—eighteen francs; say eighteen thousand heads,—one hundred and eighty thousand francs. We are millionaires!"

The nuts delivered, Raguet, the workmen, Popinot, and Cesar shelled a sufficient quantity, and before four o'clock they had produced several pounds of oil. Popinot carried the product to show to Vauquelin, who made him a present of a recipe for mixing the essence of nuts with other and less costly oleaginous substances, and scenting it. Popinot went to work at once to take out a patent for the invention and all improvements thereon. The devoted Gaudissart lent him the money to pay the fees, for Popinot was ambitious to pay his share in the undertaking.

Prosperity brings with it an intoxication which inferior men are unable to resist. Cesar's exaltation of spirit had a result not difficult to foresee. Grindot came, and presented a colored sketch of a charming interior view of the proposed appartement. Birotteau, seduced, agreed to everything; and soon the house, and the heart of Constance, began to quiver under the blows of pick and hammer. The house-painter, Monsieur Lourdois, a very rich contractor, who had promised that nothing should be wanting, talked of gilding the salon. On hearing that word Constance interposed.

"Monsieur Lourdois," she said, "you have an income of thirty thousand francs, you occupy your own house, and you can do what you like to it; but the rest of us—"

"Madame, commerce ought to shine and not permit itself to be kept in the shade by the aristocracy. Besides, Monsieur Birotteau is in the government; he is before the eyes of the world—"

"Yes, but he still keeps a shop," said Constance, in the hearing of the clerks and the five persons who were listening to her. "Neither he, nor I, nor his friends, nor his enemies will forget that."

Birotteau rose upon the points of his toes and fell back upon his heels several times, his hands crossed behind him.

"My wife is right," he said; "we should be modest in prosperity. Moreover, as long as a man is in business he should be careful of his expenses, limited in his luxury; the law itself imposes the obligation,—he must not allow himself 'excessive expenditures.' If the enlargement of my home and its decoration were to go beyond due limits, it would be wrong in me to permit it; you yourself would blame me, Lourdois. The neighborhood has its eye upon me; successful men incur jealousy, envy. Ah! you will soon know that, young man," he said to Grindot; "if we are calumniated, at least let us give no handle to the calumny."

"Neither calumny nor evil-speaking can touch you," said Lourdois; "your position is unassailable. But your business habits are so strong that you must argue over every enterprise; you are a deep one—"

"True, I have some experience in business. You know, of course, why I make this enlargement? If I insist on punctuality in the completion of the work, it is—"

"No."

"Well, my wife and I are about to assemble our friends, as much to celebrate the emancipation of our territory as to commemorate my promotion to the order of the Legion of honor—"

"What do you say?" said Lourdois, "have they given you the cross?"

"Yes; I may possibly have shown myself worthy of that signal royal favor by my services on the Bench of commerce, and by fighting for the Bourbons upon the steps of Saint-Roch, on the 13th Vendemiaire, where I was wounded by Napoleon. Come to the ball, and bring your wife and daughter."

"Charmed with the honor you deign to pay me," said Lourdois (a liberal). "But you are a deep one, Papa Birotteau; you want to make sure that I shall not break my word,—that's the reason you invite me. Well, I'll employ my best workmen; we'll build the fires of hell and dry the paint. I must find some desiccating process; it would never do to dance in a fog from the wet plaster. We will varnish it to hide the smell."

Three days later the commercial circles of the quarter were in a flutter at the announcement of Birotteau's ball. Everybody could see for themselves the props and scaffoldings necessitated by the change of the staircase, the square wooden funnels down which the rubbish was thrown into the carts stationed in the street. The sight of men working by torchlight—for there were day workmen and night workmen—arrested all the idlers and busybodies in the street; gossip, based on these preparations, proclaimed a sumptuous forthcoming event.

On Sunday, the day Cesar had appointed to conclude the affair of the lands about the Madeleine, Monsieur and Madame Ragon, and uncle Pillerault arrived about four o'clock, just after vespers. In view of the demolition that was going on, so Cesar said, he could only invite Charles Claparon, Crottat, and Roguin. The notary brought with him the "Journal des Debats" in which Monsieur de la Billardiere had inserted the following article:—

"We learn that the deliverance of our territory will be feted with enthusiasm throughout France. In Paris the members of the municipal body feel that the time has come to restore the capital to that accustomed splendor which under a becoming sense of propriety was laid aside during the foreign occupation. The mayors and deputy-mayors each propose to give a ball; this national movement will no doubt be followed, and the winter promises to be a brilliant one. Among the fetes now preparing, the one most talked of is the ball of Monsieur Birotteau, lately named chevalier of the Legion of honor and well-known for his devotion to the royal cause. Monsieur Birotteau, wounded in the affair of Saint-Roch, judges in the department of commerce, and therefore has doubly merited this honor."

"How well they write nowadays," cried Cesar. "They are talking about us in the papers," he said to Pillerault.

"Well, what of it?" answered his uncle, who had a special antipathy to the "Journal des Debats."

"That article may help to sell the Paste of Sultans and the Carminative Balm," whispered Madame Cesar to Madame Ragon, not sharing the intoxication of her husband.

Madame Ragon, a tall woman, dry and wrinkled, with a pinched nose and thin lips, bore a spurious resemblance to a marquise of the old court. The circles round her eyes had spread to a wide circumference, like those of elderly women who have known sorrow. The severe and dignified, although affable, expression of her countenance inspired respect. She had, withal, a certain oddity about her, which excited notice, but never ridicule; and this was exhibited in her dress and habits. She wore mittens, and carried in all weathers a cane sunshade, like that used by Queen Marie-Antoinette at Trianon; her gown (the favorite color was pale-brown, the shade of dead leaves) fell from her hips in those inimitable folds the secret of which the dowagers of the olden time have carried away with them. She retained the black mantilla trimmed with black lace woven in large square meshes; her caps, old-fashioned in shape, had the quaint charm which we see in silhouettes relieved against a white background. She took snuff with exquisite nicety and with the gestures which young people of the present day who have had the happiness of seeing their grandmothers and great-aunts replacing their gold snuff-boxes solemnly on the tables beside them, and shaking off the grains which strayed upon their kerchiefs, will doubtless remember.

The Sieur Ragon was a little man, not over five feet high, with a face like a nut-cracker, in which could be seen only two eyes, two sharp cheek-bones, a nose and a chin. Having no teeth he swallowed half his words, though his style of conversation was effluent, gallant, pretentious, and smiling, with the smile he formerly wore when he received beautiful great ladies at the door of his shop. Powder, well raked off, defined upon his cranium a nebulous half-circle, flanked by two pigeon-wings, divided by a little queue tied with a ribbon. He wore a bottle-blue coat, a white waistcoat, small-clothes and silk stockings, shoes with gold buckles, and black silk gloves. The most marked feature of his behavior was his habit of going through the street holding his hat in his hand. He looked like a messenger of the Chamber of Peers, or an usher of the king's bedchamber, or any of those persons placed near to some form of power from which they get a reflected light, though of little account themselves.

"Well, Birotteau," he said, with a magisterial air, "do you repent, my boy, for having listened to us in the old times? Did we ever doubt the gratitude of our beloved sovereigns?"

"You have been very happy, dear child," said Madame Ragon to Madame Birotteau.

"Yes, indeed," answered Constance, always under the spell of the cane parasol, the butterfly cap, the tight sleeves, and the great kerchief a la Julie which Madame Ragon wore.

"Cesarine is charming. Come here, my love," said Madame Ragon, in her shrill voice and patronizing manner.

"Shall we do the business before dinner?" asked uncle Pillerault.

"We are waiting for Monsieur Claparon," said Roguin, "I left him dressing himself."

"Monsieur Roguin," said Cesar, "I hope you told him that we should dine in a wretched little room on the entresol—"

"He thought it superb sixteen years ago," murmured Constance.

"—among workmen and rubbish."

"Bah! you will find him a good fellow, with no pretension," said Roguin.

"I have put Raguet on guard in the shop. We can't go through our own door; everything is pulled down."

"Why did you not bring your nephew?" said Pillerault to Madame Ragon.

"Shall we not see him?" asked Cesarine.

"No, my love," said Madame Ragon; "Anselme, dear boy, is working himself to death. That bad-smelling Rue des Cinq-Diamants, without sun and without air, frightens me. The gutter is always blue or green or black. I am afraid he will die of it. But when a young man has something in his head—" and she looked at Cesarine with a gesture which explained that the word head meant heart.

"Has he got his lease?" asked Cesar.

"Yesterday, before a notary," replied Ragon. "He took the place for eighteen years, but they exacted six months' rent in advance."

"Well, Monsieur Ragon, are you satisfied with me?" said the perfumer. "I have given him the secret of a great discovery—"

"We know you by heart, Cesar," said little Ragon, taking Cesar's hands and pressing them with religious friendship.

Roguin was not without anxiety as to Claparon's entrance on the scene; for his tone and manners were quite likely to alarm these virtuous and worthy people; he therefore thought it advisable to prepare their minds.

"You are going to see," he said to Pillerault and the two ladies, "a thorough original, who hides his methods under a fearfully bad style of manners; from a very inferior position he has raised himself up by intelligence. He will acquire better manners through his intercourse with bankers. You may see him on the boulevard, or on a cafe tippling, disorderly, betting at billiards, and think him a mere idler; but he is not; he is thinking and studying all the time to keep industry alive by new projects."

"I understand that," said Birotteau; "I got my great ideas when sauntering on the boulevard; didn't I, Mimi?"

"Claparon," resumed Roguin, "makes up by night-work the time lost in looking about him in the daytime, and watching the current of affairs. All men of great talent lead curious lives, inexplicable lives; well, in spite of his desultory ways he attains his object, as I can testify. In this instance he has managed to make the owners of these lands give way: they were unwilling, doubtful, timid; he fooled them all, tired them out, went to see them every day,—and here we are, virtually masters of the property."

At this moment a curious broum! broum! peculiar to tipplers of brandy and other liquors, announced the arrival of the most fantastic personage of our story, and the arbiter in flesh and blood of the future destinies of Cesar Birotteau. The perfumer rushed headlong to the little dark staircase, as much to tell Raguet to close the shop as to pour out his excuses to Claparon for receiving him in the dining-room.

"What of that? It's the very place to juggle a—I mean to settle a piece of business."

In spite of Roguin's clever precautions, Monsieur and Madame Ragon, people of old-fashioned middle-class breeding, the observer Pillerault, Cesarine, and her mother were disagreeably impressed at first sight by this sham banker of high finance.

About twenty-eight years of age at the time of which we write, the late commercial traveller possessed not a hair on his head, and wore a wig curled in ringlets. This head-gear needed, by rights, a virgin freshness, a lacteal purity of complexion, and all the softer corresponding graces: as it was, however, it threw into ignoble relief a pimpled face, brownish-red in color, inflamed like that of the conductor of a diligence, and seamed with premature wrinkles, which betrayed in the puckers of their deep-cut lines a licentious life, whose misdeeds were still further evidenced by the badness of the man's teeth, and the black speckles which appeared here and there on his corrugated skin. Claparon had the air of a provincial comedian who knows all the roles, and plays the clown with a wink; his cheeks, where the rouge never stuck, were jaded by excesses, his lips clammy, though his tongue was forever wagging, especially when he was drunk; his glances were immodest, and his gestures compromising. Such a face, flushed with the jovial features of punch, was enough to turn grave business matters into a farce; so that the embryo banker had been forced to put himself through a long course of mimicry before he managed to acquire even the semblance of a manner that accorded with his fictitious importance.

Du Tillet assisted in dressing him for this occasion, like the manager of a theatre who is uneasy about the debut of his principal actor; he feared lest the vulgar habits of this devil-may-care life should crop up to the surface of the newly-fledged banker. "Talk as little as you can," he said to him. "No banker ever gabbles; he acts, thinks, reflects, listens, weighs. To seem like a banker you must say nothing, or, at any rate, mere nothings. Check that ribald eye of yours, and look serious, even if you have to look stupid. If you talk politics, go for the government, but keep to generalities. For instance: 'The budget is heavy'; 'No compromise is possible between the parties'; 'The Liberals are dangerous'; 'The Bourbons must avoid a conflict'; 'Liberalism is the cloak of a coalition'; 'The Bourbons are inaugurating an era of prosperity: let us sustain them, even if we do not like them'; 'France has had enough of politics,' etc. Don't gorge yourself at every table where you dine; recollect you are to maintain the dignity of a millionaire. Don't shovel in your snuff like an old Invalide; toy with your snuff-box, glance often at your feet, and sometimes at the ceiling, before you answer; try to look sagacious, if you can. Above all, get rid of your vile habit of touching everything; in society a banker ought to seem tired of seeing and touching things. Hang it! you are supposed to be passing wakeful nights; finance makes you brusque, so many elements must be brought together to launch an enterprise,—so much study! Remember to take gloomy views of business; it is heavy, dull, risky, unsettled. Now, don't go beyond that, and mind you specify nothing. Don't sing those songs of Beranger at table; and don't get fuddled. If you are drunk, your future is lost. Roguin will keep an eye on you. You are going now among moral people, virtuous people; and you are not to scare them with any of your pot-house principles."

This lecture produced upon the mind of Charles Claparon very much the effect that his new clothes produced upon his body. The jovial scapegrace, easy-going with all the world, and long used to a comfortable shabbiness, in which his body was no more shackled than his mind was shackled by language, was now encased in the new clothes his tailor had just sent home, rigid as a picket-stake, anxious about his motions as well as about his speech; drawing back his hand when it was imprudently thrust out to grasp a bottle, just as he stopped his tongue in the middle of a sentence. All this presented a laughable discrepancy to the keen observation of Pillerault. Claparon's red face, and his wig with its profligate ringlets, gave the lie to his apparel and pretended bearing, just as his thoughts clashed and jangled with his speech. But these worthy people ended by crediting such discordances to the preoccupation of his busy mind.

"He is so full of business," said Roguin.

"Business has given him little education," whispered Madame Ragon to Cesarine.

Monsieur Roguin overheard her, and put a finger on his lips:—

"He is rich, clever, and extremely honorable," he said, stooping to Madame Ragon's ear.

"Something may be forgiven in consideration of such qualities," said Pillerault to Ragon.

"Let us read the deeds before dinner," said Roguin; "we are all alone."

Madame Ragon, Cesarine, and Constance left the contracting parties to listen to the deeds read over to them by Alexandre Crottat. Cesar signed, in favor of one of Roguin's clients, a mortgage bond for forty thousand francs, on his grounds and manufactories in the Faubourg du Temple; he turned over to Roguin Pillerault's cheque on the Bank of France, and gave, without receipt, bills for twenty thousand francs from his current funds, and notes for one hundred and forty thousand francs payable to the order of Claparon.

"I have no receipt to give you," said Claparon; "you deal, for your half of the property, with Monsieur Roguin, as I do for ours. The sellers will get their pay from him in cash; all that I engage to do is to see that you get the equivalent of the hundred and forty thousand francs paid to my order."

"That is equitable," said Pillerault.

"Well, gentlemen, let us call in the ladies; it is cold without them," said Claparon, glancing at Roguin, as if to ask whether that jest were too broad.

"Ladies! Ah! mademoiselle is doubtless yours," said Claparon, holding himself very straight and looking at Birotteau; "hey! you are not a bungler. None of the roses you distil can be compared with her; and perhaps it is because you have distilled roses that—"

"Faith!" said Roguin, interrupting him, "I am very hungry."

"Let us go to dinner," said Birotteau.

"We shall dine before a notary," said Claparon, catching himself up.

"You do a great deal of business?" said Pillerault, seating himself intentionally next to Claparon.

"Quantities; by the gross," answered the banker. "But it is all heavy, dull; there are risks, canals. Oh, canals! you have no idea how canals occupy us; it is easy to explain. Government needs canals. Canals are a want especially felt in the departments; they concern commerce, you know. 'Rivers,' said Pascal, 'are walking markets.' We must have markets. Markets depend on embankments, tremendous earth-works; earth-works employ the laboring-classes; hence loans, which find their way back, in the end, to the pockets of the poor. Voltaire said, 'Canaux, canards, canaille!' But the government has its own engineers; you can't get a finger in the matter unless you get on the right side of them; for the Chamber,—oh, monsieur, the Chamber does us all the harm in the world! It won't take in the political question hidden under the financial question. There's bad faith on one side or the other. Would you believe it? there's Keller in the Chamber: now Francois Keller is an orator, he attacks the government about the budget, about canals. Well, when he gets home to the bank, and we go to him with proposals, canals, and so forth, the sly dog is all the other way: everything is right; we must arrange it with the government which he has just been been impudently attacking. The interests of the orator and the interests of the banker clash; we are between two fires! Now, you understand how it is that business is risky; we have got to please everybody,—clerks, chambers, antechambers, ministers—"

"Ministers?" said Pillerault, determined to get to the bottom of this co-associate.

"Yes, monsieur, ministers."

"Well, then the newspapers are right?" said Pillerault.

"There's my uncle talking politics," said Birotteau. "Monsieur Claparon has won his heart."

"Devilish rogues, the newspapers," said Claparon. "Monsieur, the newspapers do all the mischief. They are useful sometimes, but they keep me awake many a night. I wish they didn't. I have put my eyes out reading and ciphering."

"To go back to the ministers," said Pillerault, hoping for revelations.

"Ministers are a mere necessity of government. Ah! what am I eating? ambrosia?" said Claparon, breaking off. "This is a sauce you'll never find except at a tradesman's table, for the pot-houses—"

Here the flowers in Madame Ragon's cap skipped like young rams. Claparon perceived the word was low, and tried to catch himself up.

"In bank circles," he said, "we call the best cafes.—Very, and the Freres Provencaux,—pot-houses in jest. Well, neither those infamous pot-houses nor our most scientific cooks can make us a sauce like this; mellifluous! Some give you clear water soured with lemon, and the rest drugs, chemicals."

Pillerault tried throughout the dinner to fathom this extraordinary being; finding only a void, he began to think him dangerous.

"All's well," whispered Roguin to Claparon.

"I shall get out of these clothes to-night, at any rate," answered Claparon, who was choking.

"Monsieur," said Cesar, addressing him, "we are compelled to dine in this little room because we are preparing, eighteen days hence, to assemble our friends, as much to celebrate the emancipation of our territory—"

"Right, monsieur; I myself am for the government. I belong, in opinion, to the statu quo of the great man who guides the destinies of the house of Austria, jolly dog! Hold fast that you may acquire; and, above all, acquire that you may hold. Those are my opinions, which I have the honor to share with Prince Metternich."

"—as to commemorate my promotion to the order of the Legion of honor," continued Cesar.

"Yes, I know. Who told me of that,—the Kellers, or Nucingen?"

Roguin, surprised at such tact, made an admiring gesture.

"No, no; it was in the Chamber."

"In the Chamber? was it Monsieur de la Billardiere?" said Birotteau.

"Precisely."

"He is charming," whispered Cesar to his uncle.

"He pours out phrases, phrases, phrases," said Pillerault, "enough to drown you."

"Possibly I showed myself worthy of this signal, royal favor,—" resumed Birotteau.

"By your labors in perfumery; the Bourbons know how to reward all merit. Ah! let us support those generous princes, to whom we are about to owe unheard-of prosperity. Believe me, the Restoration feels that it must run a tilt against the Empire; the Bourbons have conquests to make, the conquests of peace. You will see their conquests!"

"Monsieur will perhaps do us the honor to be present at our ball?" said Madame Cesar.

"To pass an evening with you, Madame, I would sacrifice the making of millions."

"He certainly does chatter," said Cesar to his uncle.

* * * * *

While the declining glory of perfumery was about to send forth its setting rays, a star was rising with feeble light upon the commercial horizon. Anselme Popinot was laying the corner-stone of his fortune in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants. This narrow little street, where loaded wagons can scarcely pass each other, runs from the Rue des Lombards at one end, to the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher at the other, entering the latter opposite to the Rue Quincampoix, that famous thoroughfare of old Paris where French history has so often been enacted. In spite of this disadvantage, the congregation of druggists in that neighborhood made Popinot's choice of the little street a good one. The house, which stands second from the Rue des Lombards, was so dark that except at certain seasons it was necessary to use lights in open day. The embryo merchant had taken possession, the preceding evening, of the dingy and disgusting premises. His predecessor, who sold molasses and coarse sugars, had left the stains of his dirty business upon the walls, in the court, in the store-rooms. Imagine a large and spacious shop, with great iron-bound doors, painted a dragon-green, strengthened with long iron bars held on by nails whose heads looked like mushrooms, and covered with an iron trellis-work, which swelled out at the bottom after the fashion of the bakers'-shops in former days; the floor paved with large white stones, most of them broken, the walls yellow, and as bare as those of a guard-room. Next to the shop came the back-shop, and two other rooms lighted from the street, in which Popinot proposed to put his office, his books, and his own workroom. Above these rooms were three narrow little chambers pushed up against the party-wall, with an outlook into the court; here he intended to dwell. The three rooms were dilapidated, and had no view but that of the court, which was dark, irregular, and surrounded by high walls, to which perpetual dampness, even in dry weather, gave the look of being daubed with fresh plaster. Between the stones of this court was a filthy and stinking black substance, left by the sugars and the molasses that once occupied it. Only one of the bedrooms had a chimney, all the walls were without paper, and the floors were tiled with brick.

Since early morning Gaudissart and Popinot, helped by a journeyman whose services the commercial traveller had invoked, were busily employed in stretching a fifteen-sous paper on the walls of these horrible rooms, the workman pasting the lengths. A collegian's mattress on a bedstead of red wood, a shabby night-stand, an old-fashioned bureau, one table, two armchairs, and six common chairs, the gift of Popinot's uncle the judge, made up the furniture. Gaudissart had decked the chimney-piece with a frame in which was a mirror much defaced, and bought at a bargain. Towards eight o'clock in the evening the two friends, seated before the fireplace where a fagot of wood was blazing, were about to attack the remains of their breakfast.

"Down with the cold mutton!" cried Gaudissart, suddenly, "it is not worthy of such a housewarming."

"But," said Popinot, showing his solitary coin of twenty francs, which he was keeping to pay for the prospectus, "I—"

"I—" cried Gaudissart, sticking a forty-franc piece in his own eye.

A knock resounded throughout the court, naturally empty and echoing of a Sunday, when the workpeople were away from it and the laboratories empty.

"Here comes the faithful slave of the Rue de la Poterie!" cried the illustrious Gaudissart.

Sure enough, a waiter entered, followed by two scullions bearing in three baskets a dinner, and six bottles of wine selected with discernment.

"How shall we ever eat it all up?" said Popinot.

"The man of letters!" cried Gaudissart, "don't forget him. Finot loves the pomps and the vanities; he is coming, the innocent boy, armed with a dishevelled prospectus—the word is pat, hein? Prospectuses are always thirsty. We must water the seed if we want flowers. Depart, slaves!" he added, with a gorgeous air, "there is gold for you."

He gave them ten sous with a gesture worthy of Napoleon, his idol.

"Thank you, Monsieur Gaudissart," said the scullions, better pleased with the jest than with the money.

"As for you, my son," he said to the waiter, who stayed to serve the dinner, "below is a porter's wife; she lives in a lair where she sometimes cooks, as in other days Nausicaa washed, for pure amusement. Find her, implore her goodness; interest her, young man, in the warmth of these dishes. Tell her she shall be blessed, and above all, respected, most respected, by Felix Gaudissart, son of Jean-Francois Gaudissart, grandson of all the Gaudissarts, vile proletaries of ancient birth, his forefathers. March! and mind that everything is hot, or I'll deal retributive justice by a rap on your knuckles!"

Another knock sounded.

"Here comes the pungent Andoche!" shouted Gaudissart.

A stout, chubby-faced fellow of medium height, from head to foot the evident son of a hat-maker, with round features whose shrewdness was hidden under a restrained and subdued manner, suddenly appeared. His face, which was melancholy, like that of a man weary of poverty, lighted up hilariously when he caught sight of the table, and the bottles swathed in significant napkins. At Gaudissart's shout, his pale-blue eyes sparkled, his big head, hollowed like that of a Kalmuc Tartar, bobbed from right to left, and he bowed to Popinot with a queer manner, which meant neither servility nor respect, but was rather that of a man who feels he is not in his right place and will make no concessions. He was just beginning to find out that he possessed no literary talent whatever; he meant to stay in the profession, however, by living on the brains of others, and getting astride the shoulders of those more able than himself, making his profit there instead of struggling any longer at his own ill-paid work. At the present moment he had drunk to the dregs the humiliation of applications and appeals which constantly failed, and he was now, like people in the higher walks of finance, about to change his tone and become insolent, advisedly. But he needed a small sum in hand on which to start, and Gaudissart gave him a share in the present affair of ushering into the world the oil of Popinot.

"You are to negotiate on his account with the newspapers. But don't play double; if you do I'll fight you to the death. Give him his money's worth."

Popinot gazed at "the author" which much uneasiness. People who are purely commercial look upon an author with mingled sentiments of fear, compassion, and curiosity. Though Popinot had been well brought up, the habits of his relations, their ideas, and the obfuscating effect of a shop and a counting-room, had lowered his intelligence by bending it to the use and wont of his calling,—a phenomenon which may often be seen if we observe the transformations which take place in a hundred comrades, when ten years supervene between the time when they leave college or a public school, to all intents and purposes alike, and the period when they meet again after contact with the world. Andoche accepted Popinot's perturbation as a compliment.

"Now then, before dinner, let's get to the bottom of the prospectus; then we can drink without an afterthought," said Gaudissart. "After dinner one reads askew; the tongue digests."

"Monsieur," said Popinot, "a prospectus is often a fortune."

"And for plebeians like myself," said Andoche, "fortune is nothing more than a prospectus."

"Ha, very good!" cried Gaudissart, "that rogue of a Finot has the wit of the forty Academicians."

"Of a hundred Academicians," said Popinot, bewildered by these ideas.

The impatient Gaudissart seized the manuscript and began to read in a loud voice, with much emphasis, "CEPHALIC OIL."

"I should prefer Oil Cesarienne," said Popinot.

"My friend," said Gaudissart, "you don't know the provincials; there's a surgical operation called by that name, and they are such stupids that they'll think your oil is meant to facilitate childbirth. To drag them back from that to hair is beyond even my powers of persuasion."

"Without wishing to defend my term," said the author, "I must ask you to observe that 'Cephalic Oil' means oil for the head, and sums up your ideas in one word."

"Well, let us see," said Popinot impatiently.

Here follows the prospectus; the same which the trade receives, by the thousand, to the present day (another piece justificative):—

GOLD MEDAL EXPOSITION OF 1819

CEPHALIC OIL

Patents for Invention and Improvements.

"No cosmetic can make the hair grow, and no chemical preparation can dye it without peril to the seat of intelligence. Science has recently made known the fact that hair is a dead substance, and that no agent can prevent it from falling off or whitening. To prevent Baldness and Dandruff, it is necessary to protect the bulb from which the hair issues from all deteriorating atmospheric influences, and to maintain the temperature of the head at its right medium. CEPHALIC OIL, based upon principles laid down by the Academy of Sciences, produces this important result, sought by the ancients,—the Greeks, the Romans, and all Northern nations,—to whom the preservation of the hair was peculiarly precious. Certain scientific researches have demonstrated that nobles, formerly distinguished for the length of their hair, used no other remedy than this; their method of preparation, which had been lost in the lapse of ages, has been intelligently re-discovered by A. Popinot, the inventor of CEPHALIC OIL.

"To preserve, rather than provoke a useless and injurious stimulation of the instrument which contains the bulbs, is the mission of CEPHALIC OIL. In short, this oil, which counteracts the exfoliation of pellicular atoms, which exhales a soothing perfume, and arrests, by means of the substances of which it is composed (among them more especially the oil of nuts), the action of the outer air upon the scalp, also prevents influenzas, colds in the head, and other painful cephalic afflictions, by maintaining the normal temperature of the cranium. Consequently, the bulbs, which contain the generating fluids, are neither chilled by cold nor parched by heat. The hair of the head, that magnificent product, priceless alike to man and woman, will be preserved even to advanced age, in all the brilliancy and lustre which bestow their charm upon the heads of infancy, by those who make use of CEPHALIC OIL.

"DIRECTIONS FOR USE are furnished with each bottle, and serve as a wrapper.

"METHOD OF USING CEPHALIC OIL.—It is quite useless to oil the hair; this is not only a vulgar and foolish prejudice, but an untidy habit, for the reason that all cosmetics leave their trace. It suffices to wet a little sponge in the oil, and after parting the hair with the comb, to apply it at the roots in such a manner that the whole skin of the head may be enabled to imbibe it, after the scalp has received a preliminary cleansing with brush and comb.