I
During winter nights noise never ceases in the Rue Saint-Honore except
for a short interval. Kitchen-gardeners carrying their produce to market
continue the stir of carriages returning from theatres and balls. Near
the middle of this sustained pause in the grand symphony of Parisian
uproar, which occurs about one o’clock in the morning, the wife of
Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, a perfumer established near the Place Vendome,
was startled from her sleep by a frightful dream. She had seen her
double. She had appeared to herself clothed in rags, turning with a
shrivelled, withered hand the latch of her own shop-door, seeming to be
at the threshold, yet at the same time seated in her armchair behind the
counter. She was asking alms of herself, and heard herself speaking from
the doorway and also from her seat at the desk.
She tried to grasp her husband, but her hand fell on a cold place.
Her terror became so intense that she could not move her neck, which
stiffened as if petrified; the membranes of her throat became glued
together, her voice failed her. She remained sitting erect in the same
posture in the middle of the alcove, both panels of which were wide
open, her eyes staring and fixed, her hair quivering, her ears filled
with strange noises, her heart tightened yet palpitating, and her person
bathed in perspiration though chilled to the bone.
Fear is a half-diseased sentiment, which presses so violently upon the
human mechanism that the faculties are suddenly excited to the highest
degree of their power or driven to utter disorganization. Physiologists
have long wondered at this phenomenon, which overturns their systems
and upsets all theories; it is in fact a thunderbolt working within the
being, and, like all electric accidents, capricious and whimsical in its
course. This explanation will become a mere commonplace in the day
when scientific men are brought to recognize the immense part which
electricity plays in human thought.
Madame Birotteau now passed through several of the shocks, in some sort
electrical, which are produced by terrible explosions of the will forced
out, or held under, by some mysterious mechanism. Thus during a
period of time, very short if judged by a watch, but immeasurable when
calculated by the rapidity of her impressions, the poor woman had the
supernatural power of emitting more ideas and bringing to the surface
more recollections than, under any ordinary use of her faculties, she
could put forth in the course of a whole day. The poignant tale of her
monologue may be abridged into a few absurd sentences, as contradictory
and bare of meaning as the monologue itself.
“There is no reason why Birotteau should leave my bed! He has eaten so
much veal that he may be ill. But if he were ill he would have waked
me. For nineteen years that we have slept together in this bed, in this
house, it has never happened that he left his place without telling
me,--poor sheep! He never slept away except to pass the night in the
guard-room. Did he come to bed to-night? Why, of course; goodness! how
stupid I am.”
She cast her eyes upon the bed and saw her husband’s night-cap, which
still retained the almost conical shape of his head.
“Can he be dead? Has he killed himself? Why?” she went on. “For the
last two years, since they made him deputy-mayor, he is
_all-I-don’t-know-how_. To put him into public life! On the word of an
honest woman, isn’t it pitiable? His business is doing well, for he gave
me a shawl. But perhaps it isn’t doing well? Bah! I should know of
it. Does one ever know what a man has got in his head; or a woman
either?--there is no harm in that. Didn’t we sell five thousand francs’
worth to-day? Besides, a deputy mayor couldn’t kill himself; he knows
the laws too well. Where is he then?”
She could neither turn her neck, nor stretch out her hand to pull
the bell, which would have put in motion a cook, three clerks, and a
shop-boy. A prey to the nightmare, which still lasted though her
mind was wide awake, she forgot her daughter peacefully asleep in an
adjoining room, the door of which opened at the foot of her bed. At last
she cried “Birotteau!” but got no answer. She thought she had called the
name aloud, though in fact she had only uttered it mentally.
“Has he a mistress? He is too stupid,” she added. “Besides, he loves me
too well for that. Didn’t he tell Madame Roguin that he had never been
unfaithful to me, even in thought? He is virtue upon earth, that man. If
any one ever deserved paradise he does. What does he accuse himself of
to his confessor, I wonder? He must tell him a lot of fiddle-faddle.
Royalist as he is, though he doesn’t know why, he can’t froth up his
religion. Poor dear cat! he creeps to Mass at eight o’clock as slyly as
if he were going to a bad house. He fears God for God’s sake; hell
is nothing to him. How could he have a mistress? He is so tied to my
petticoat that he bores me. He loves me better than his own eyes; he
would put them out for my sake. For nineteen years he has never said to
me one word louder than another. His daughter is never considered before
me. But Cesarine is here--Cesarine! Cesarine!--Birotteau has never had
a thought which he did not tell me. He was right enough when he declared
to me at the Petit-Matelot that I should never know him till I tried
him. And _not here_! It is extraordinary!”
She turned her head with difficulty and glanced furtively about the
room, then filled with those picturesque effects which are the despair
of language and seem to belong exclusively to the painters of genre.
What words can picture the alarming zig-zags produced by falling
shadows, the fantastic appearance of curtains bulged out by the wind,
the flicker of uncertain light thrown by a night-lamp upon the folds of
red calico, the rays shed from a curtain-holder whose lurid centre
was like the eye of a burglar, the apparition of a kneeling dress,--in
short, all the grotesque effects which terrify the imagination at a
moment when it has no power except to foresee misfortunes and exaggerate
them? Madame Birotteau suddenly saw a strong light in the room beyond
her chamber, and thought of fire; but perceiving a red foulard which
looked like a pool of blood, her mind turned exclusively to burglars,
especially when she thought she saw traces of a struggle in the way the
furniture stood about the room. Recollecting the sum of money which
was in the desk, a generous fear put an end to the chill ferment of her
nightmare. She sprang terrified, and in her night-gown, into the very
centre of the room to help her husband, whom she supposed to be in the
grasp of assassins.
“Birotteau! Birotteau!” she cried at last in a voice full of anguish.
She then saw the perfumer in the middle of the next room, a yard-stick
in his hand measuring the air, and so ill wrapped up in his green cotton
dressing-gown with chocolate-colored spots that the cold had reddened
his legs without his feeling it, preoccupied as he was. When Cesar
turned about to say to his wife, “Well, what do you want, Constance?”
his air and manner, like those of a man absorbed in calculations, were
so prodigiously silly that Madame Birotteau began to laugh.
“Goodness! Cesar, if you are not an oddity like that!” she said. “Why
did you leave me alone without telling me? I have nearly died of terror;
I did not know what to imagine. What are you doing there, flying open
to all the winds? You’ll get as hoarse as a wolf. Do you hear me,
Birotteau?”
“Yes, wife, here I am,” answered the perfumer, coming into the bedroom.
“Come and warm yourself, and tell me what maggot you’ve got in your
head,” replied Madame Birotteau opening the ashes of the fire, which she
hastened to relight. “I am frozen. What a goose I was to get up in my
night-gown! But I really thought they were assassinating you.”
The shopkeeper put his candlestick on the chimney-piece, wrapped his
dressing-gown closer about him, and went mechanically to find a flannel
petticoat for his wife.
“Here, Mimi, cover yourself up,” he said. “Twenty-two by eighteen,” he
resumed, going on with his monologue; “we can get a superb salon.”
“Ah, ca! Birotteau, are you on the high road to insanity? Are you
dreaming?”
“No, wife, I am calculating.”
“You had better wait till daylight for your nonsense,” she cried,
fastening the petticoat beneath her short night-gown and going to the
door of the room where her daughter was in bed.
“Cesarine is asleep,” she said, “she won’t hear us. Come, Birotteau,
speak up. What is it?”
“We can give a ball.”
“Give a ball! we? On the word of an honest woman, you are dreaming, my
friend.”
“I am not dreaming, my beautiful white doe. Listen. People should
always do what their position in life demands. Government has brought
me forward into prominence. I belong to the government; it is my duty to
study its mind, and further its intentions by developing them. The Duc
de Richelieu has just put an end to the occupation of France by
the foreign armies. According to Monsieur de la Billardiere, the
functionaries who represent the city of Paris should make it their duty,
each in his own sphere of influence, to celebrate the liberation of our
territory. Let us show a true patriotism which shall put these liberals,
these damned intriguers, to the blush; hein? Do you think I don’t love
my country? I wish to show the liberals, my enemies, that to love the
king is to love France.”
“Do you think you have got any enemies, my poor Birotteau?”
“Why, yes, wife, we have enemies. Half our friends in the quarter are
our enemies. They all say, ‘Birotteau has had luck; Birotteau is a man
who came from nothing: yet here he is deputy-mayor; everything succeeds
with him.’ Well, they are going to be finely surprised. You are the
first to be told that I am made a chevalier of the Legion of honor. The
king signed the order yesterday.”
“Oh! then,” said Madame Birotteau, much moved, “of course we must give
the ball, my good friend. But what have you done to merit the cross?”
“Yesterday, when Monsieur de la Billardiere told me the news,” said
Birotteau, modestly, “I asked myself, as you do, what claims I had to
it; but I ended by seeing what they were, and in approving the action
of the government. In the first place, I am a royalist; I was wounded
at Saint-Roch in Vendemiaire: isn’t it something to have borne arms
in those days for the good cause? Then, according to the merchants, I
exercised my judicial functions in a way to give general satisfaction. I
am now deputy-mayor. The king grants four crosses to the municipality of
Paris; the prefect, selecting among the deputies suitable persons to be
thus decorated, has placed my name first on the list. The king moreover
knows me: thanks to old Ragon. I furnish him with the only powder he is
willing to use; we alone possess the receipt of the late queen,--poor,
dear, august victim! The mayor vehemently supported me. So there it is.
If the king gives me the cross without my asking for it, it seems to me
that I cannot refuse it without failing in my duty to him. Did I seek to
be deputy-mayor? So, wife, since we are sailing before the wind, as
your uncle Pillerault says when he is jovial, I have decided to put the
household on a footing in conformity with our high position. If I can
become anything, I’ll risk being whatever the good God wills that I
shall be,--sub-prefect, if such be my destiny. My wife, you are much
mistaken if you think a citizen has paid his debt to his country by
merely selling perfumery for twenty years to those who came to buy it.
If the State demands the help of our intelligence, we are as much bound
to give it as we are to pay the tax on personal property, on windows and
doors, _et caetera_. Do you want to stay forever behind your counter?
You have been there, thank God, a long time. This ball shall be our
fete,--yours and mine. Good-by to economy,--for your sake, be it
understood. I burn our sign, ‘The Queen of Roses’; I efface the name,
‘Cesar Birotteau, Perfumer, Successor to Ragon,’ and put simply,
‘Perfumery’ in big letters of gold. On the _entresol_ I place the
office, the counting-room, and a pretty little sanctum for you. I make
the shop out of the back-shop, the present dining-room, and kitchen. I
hire the first floor of the next house, and open a door into it through
the wall. I turn the staircase so as to pass from house to house on one
floor; and we shall thus get a grand appartement, furnished like a nest.
Yes, I shall refurnish your bedroom, and contrive a boudoir for you and
a pretty chamber for Cesarine. The shop-girl whom you will hire, our
head clerk, and your lady’s-maid (yes, Madame, you are to have one!)
will sleep on the second floor. On the third will be the kitchen and
rooms of the cook and the man-of-all-work. The fourth shall be a general
store-house for bottle, crystals, and porcelains. The workshop for our
people, in the attic! Passers-by shall no longer see them gumming on
the labels, making the bags, sorting the flasks, and corking the phials.
Very well for the Rue Saint-Denis, but for the Rue Saint-Honore--fy! bad
style! Our shop must be as comfortable as a drawing-room. Tell me, are
we the only perfumers who have reached public honors? Are there not
vinegar merchants and mustard men who command in the National Guard and
are very well received at the Palace? Let us imitate them; let us extend
our business, and at the same time press forward into higher society.”
“Goodness! Birotteau, do you know what I am thinking of as I listen to
you? You are like the man who looks for knots in a bulrush. Recollect
what I said when it was a question of making you deputy-mayor: ‘your
peace of mind before everything!’ You are as fit, I told you, ‘to be put
forward in public life as my arm is to turn a windmill. Honors will be
your ruin!’ You would not listen to me, and now the ruin has come. To
play a part in politics you must have money: have we any? What! would
you burn your sign, which cost six hundred francs, and renounce ‘The
Queen of Roses,’ your true glory? Leave ambition to others. He who puts
his hand in the fire gets burned,--isn’t that true? Politics burn in
these days. We have one hundred good thousand francs invested outside of
our business, our productions, our merchandise. If you want to increase
your fortune, do as they did in 1793. The Funds are at sixty-two:
buy into the Funds. You will get ten thousand francs’ income, and the
investment won’t hamper our property. Take advantage of the occasion to
marry our daughter; sell the business, and let us go and live in your
native place. Why! for fifteen years you have talked of nothing but
buying Les Tresorieres, that pretty little property near Chinon, where
there are woods and fields, and ponds and vineyards, and two dairies,
which bring in a thousand crowns a year, with a house which we both
like,--all of which we can have for sixty thousand francs; and, lo!
Monsieur now wants to become something under government! Recollect what
we are,--perfumers. If sixteen years before you invented the DOUBLE
PASTE OF SULTANS and the CARMINATIVE BALM some one had said, ‘You are
going to make enough money to buy Les Tresorieres,’ wouldn’t you have
been half sick with joy? Well, you can acquire that property which you
wanted so much that you hardly opened your mouth about anything else,
and now you talk of spending on nonsense money earned by the sweat of
our brow: I can say ours, for I’ve sat behind the desk through all that
time, like a poor dog in his kennel. Isn’t it much better to come and
visit our daughter after she is married to a notary of Paris, and live
eight months of the year at Chinon, than to begin here to make five sous
six blanks, and of six blanks nothing? Wait for a rise in the Funds, and
you can give eight thousand francs a year to your daughter and we can
keep two thousand for ourselves, and the proceeds of the business will
allow us to buy Les Tresorieres. There in your native place, my good
little cat, with our furniture, which is worth a great deal, we shall
live like princes; whereas here we want at least a million to make any
figure at all.”
“I expected you to say all this, wife,” said Cesar Birotteau. “I am not
quite such a fool (though you think me a great fool, you do) as not to
have thought of all that. Now, listen to me. Alexandre Crottat will fit
us like a glove for a son-in-law, and he will succeed Roguin; but do
you suppose he will be satisfied with a hundred thousand francs
_dot_?--supposing that we gave our whole property outside of the
business to establish our daughter, and I am willing; I would gladly
live on dry bread the rest of my days to see her happy as a queen, the
wife of a notary of Paris, as you say. Well, then, a hundred thousand
francs, or even eight thousand francs a year, is nothing at all towards
buying Roguin’s practice. Little Xandrot, as we call him, thinks,
like all the rest of the world, that we are richer than we are. If his
father, that big farmer who is as close as a snail, won’t sell a hundred
thousand francs worth of land Xandrot can’t be a notary, for Roguin’s
practice is worth four or five hundred thousand. If Crottat does not
pay half down, how could he negotiate the affair? Cesarine must have two
hundred thousand francs _dot_; and I mean that you and I shall retire
solid bourgeois of Paris, with fifteen thousand francs a year. Hein! If
I could make you see that as plain as day, wouldn’t it shut your mouth?”
“Oh, if you’ve got the mines of Peru--”
“Yes, I have, my lamb. Yes,” he said, taking his wife by the waist and
striking her with little taps, under an emotion of joy which lighted up
his features, “I did not wish to tell you of this matter till it was all
cooked; but to-morrow it will be done,--that is, perhaps it will. Here
it is then: Roguin has proposed a speculation to me, so safe that he has
gone into it with Ragon, with your uncle Pillerault, and two other of
his clients. We are to buy property near the Madeleine, which, according
to Roguin’s calculations, we shall get for a quarter of the value which
it will bring three years from now, at which time, the present leases
having expired, we shall manage it for ourselves. We have all six taken
certain shares. I furnish three hundred thousand francs,--that is,
three-eighths of the whole. If any one of us wants money, Roguin will
get it for him by hypothecating his share. To hold the gridiron and know
how the fish are fried, I have chosen to be nominally proprietor of one
half, which is, however, to be the common property of Pillerault and
the worthy Ragon and myself. Roguin will be, under the name of Monsieur
Charles Claparon, co-proprietor with me, and will give a reversionary
deed to his associates, as I shall to mine. The deeds of purchase are
made by promises of sale under private seal, until we are masters of
the whole property. Roguin will investigate as to which of the contracts
should be paid in money, for he is not sure that we can dispense with
registering and yet turn over the titles to those to whom we sell in
small parcels. But it takes too long to explain all this to you. The
ground once paid for, we have only to cross our arms and in three
years we shall be rich by a million. Cesarine will then be twenty, our
business will be sold, and we shall step, by the grace of God, modestly
to eminence.”
“Where will you get your three hundred thousand francs?” said Madame
Birotteau.
“You don’t understand business, my beloved little cat. I shall take the
hundred thousand francs which are now with Roguin; I shall borrow forty
thousand on the buildings and gardens where we now have our manufactory
in the Faubourg du Temple; we have twenty thousand francs here in
hand,--in all, one hundred and sixty thousand. There remain one hundred
and forty thousand more, for which I shall sign notes to the order
of Monsieur Charles Claparon, banker. He will pay the value, less the
discount. So there are the three hundred thousand francs provided for.
He who owns rents owes nothing. When the notes fall due we can pay them
off with our profits. If we cannot pay them in cash, Roguin will give
the money at five per cent, hypothecated on my share of the property.
But such loans will be unnecessary. I have discovered an essence which
will make the hair grow--an Oil Comagene, from Syria! Livingston has
just set up for me a hydraulic press to manufacture the oil from nuts,
which yield it readily under strong pressure. In a year, according to
my calculations, I shall have made a hundred thousand francs at least.
I meditate an advertisement which shall begin, ‘Down with wigs!’--the
effect will be prodigious. You have never found out my wakefulness,
Madame! For three months the success of Macassar Oil has kept me from
sleeping. I am resolved to take the shine out of Macassar!”
“So these are the fine projects you’ve been rolling in your noddle for
two months without choosing to tell me? I have just seen myself begging
at my own door,--a warning from heaven! Before long we shall have
nothing left but our eyes to weep with. Never while I live shall you do
it; do you hear me, Cesar? Underneath all this there is some plot
which you don’t perceive; you are too upright and loyal to suspect the
trickery of others. Why should they come and offer you millions? You are
giving up your property, you are going beyond your means; and if your
oil doesn’t succeed, if you don’t make the money, if the value of the
land can’t be realized, how will you pay your notes? With the shells of
your nuts? To rise in society you are going to hide your name, take down
your sign, ‘The Queen of Roses,’ and yet you mean to salaam and bow
and scrape in advertisements and prospectuses, which will placard Cesar
Birotteau at every corner, and on all the boards, wherever they are
building.”
“Oh! you are not up to it all. I shall have a branch establishment,
under the name of Popinot, in some house near the Rue des Lombards,
where I shall put little Anselme. I shall pay my debt of gratitude to
Monsieur and Madame Ragon by setting up their nephew, who can make his
fortune. The poor Ragonines look to me half-starved of late.”
“Bah! all those people want your money.”
“But what people, my treasure? Is it your uncle Pillerault, who loves
us like the apple of his eye, and dines with us every Sunday? Is it good
old Ragon, our predecessor, who has forty upright years in business
to boast of, and with whom we play our game of boston? Is it Roguin, a
notary, a man fifty-seven years old, twenty-five of which he has been in
office? A notary of Paris! he would be the flower of the lot, if honest
folk were not all worth the same price. If necessary, my associates will
help me. Where is the plot, my white doe? Look here, I must tell you
your defect. On the word of an honest man it lies on my heart. You are
as suspicious as a cat. As soon as we had two sous worth in the shop you
thought the customers were all thieves. I had to go down on my knees to
you to let me make you rich. For a Parisian girl you have no ambition!
If it hadn’t been for your perpetual fears, no man could have been
happier than I. If I had listened to you I should never have invented
the Paste of Sultans nor the Carminative Balm. Our shop has given us
a living, but these two discoveries have made the hundred and sixty
thousand francs which we possess, net and clear! Without my genius, for
I certainly have talent as a perfumer, we should now be petty retail
shopkeepers, pulling the devil’s tail to make both ends meet. I
shouldn’t be a distinguished merchant, competing in the election of
judges for the department of commerce; I should be neither a judge nor
a deputy-mayor. Do you know what I should be? A shopkeeper like Pere
Ragon,--be it said without offence, for I respect shopkeeping; the best
of our kidney are in it. After selling perfumery like him for forty
years, we should be worth three thousand francs a year; and at the price
things are now, for they have doubled in value, we should, like them,
have barely enough to live on. (Day after day that poor household wrings
my heart more and more. I must know more about it, and I’ll get the
truth from Popinot to-morrow!) If I had followed your advice--you who
have such uneasy happiness and are always asking whether you will have
to-morrow what you have got to-day--I should have no credit, I should
have no cross of the Legion of honor. I should not be on the highroad to
becoming a political personage. Yes, you may shake your head, but if our
affair succeeds I may become deputy of Paris. Ah! I am not named Cesar
for nothing; I succeed. It is unimaginable! outside every one credits
me with capacity, but here the only person whom I want so much to please
that I sweat blood and water to make her happy, is precisely the one who
takes me for a fool.”
These phrases, divided by eloquent pauses and delivered like shot, after
the manner of those who recriminate, expressed so deep and constant an
attachment that Madame Birotteau was inwardly touched, though, like all
women, she made use of the love she inspired to gain her end.
“Well! Birotteau,” she said, “if you love me, let me be happy in my own
way. Neither you nor I have education; we don’t know how to talk, nor
to play ‘your obedient servant’ like men of the world; how then do you
expect that we could succeed in government places? I shall be happy at
Les Tresorieres, indeed I shall. I have always loved birds and animals,
and I can pass my life very well taking care of the hens and the farm.
Let us sell the business, marry Cesarine, and give up your visions. We
can come and pass the winters in Paris with our son-in-law; we shall be
happy; nothing in politics or commerce can then change our way of life.
Why do you want to crush others? Isn’t our present fortune enough for
us? When you are a millionaire can you eat two dinners; will you want
two wives? Look at my uncle Pillerault! He is wisely content with his
little property, and spends his life in good deeds. Does he want fine
furniture? Not he! I know very well you have been ordering furniture for
me; I saw Braschon here, and it was not to buy perfumery.”
“Well, my beauty, yes! Your furniture is ordered; our improvements begin
to-morrow, and are superintended by an architect recommended to me by
Monsieur de la Billardiere.”
“My God!” she cried, “have pity upon us!”
“But you are not reasonable, my love. Do you think that at thirty-seven
years of age, fresh and pretty as you are, you can go and bury yourself
at Chinon? I, thank God, am only thirty-nine. Chance opens to me a fine
career; I enter upon it. If I conduct myself prudently I can make an
honorable house among the bourgeoisie of Paris, as was done in former
times. I can found the house of Birotteau, like the house of Keller,
or Jules Desmartes, or Roguin, Cochin, Guillaume, Lebas, Nucingen,
Saillard, Popinot, Matifat, who make their mark, or have made it, in
their respective quarters. Come now! If this affair were not as sure as
bars of gold--”
“Sure!”
“Yes, sure. For two months I have figured at it. Without seeming to do
so, I have been getting information on building from the department of
public works, from architects and contractors. Monsieur Grindot, the
young architect who is to alter our house, is in despair that he has no
money to put into the speculation.”
“He hopes for the work; he says that to screw something out of you.”
“Can he take in such men as Pillerault, as Charles Claparon, as Roguin?
The profit is as sure as that of the Paste of Sultans.”
“But, my dear friend, why should Roguin speculate? He gets his
commissions, and his fortune is made. I see him pass sometimes more full
of care than a minister of state, with an underhand look which I don’t
like; he hides some secret anxiety. His face has grown in five years to
look like that of an old rake. Who can be sure that he won’t kick over
the traces when he gets all your property into his own hands. Such
things happen. Do we know him well? He has only been a friend for
fifteen years, and I wouldn’t put my hand into the fire for him. Why! he
is not decent: he does not live with his wife. He must have mistresses
who ruin him; I don’t see any other cause for his anxiety. When I am
dressing I look through the blinds, and I often see him coming home in
the mornings: where from? Nobody knows. He seems to me like a man who
has an establishment in town, who spends on his pleasures, and Madame on
hers. Is that the life of a notary? If they make fifty thousand francs a
year and spend sixty thousand, in twenty years they will get to the end
of their property and be as naked as the little Saint John; and then, as
they can’t do without luxury, they will prey upon their friends without
compunction. Charity begins at home. He is intimate with that little
scamp du Tillet, our former clerk; and I see nothing good in that
friendship. If he doesn’t know how to judge du Tillet he must be blind;
and if he does know him, why does he pet him? You’ll tell me, because
his wife is fond of du Tillet. Well, I don’t look for any good in a man
who has no honor with respect to his wife. Besides, the present owners
of that land must be fools to sell for a hundred sous what is worth
a hundred francs. If you met a child who did not know the value of a
louis, wouldn’t you feel bound to tell him of it? Your affair looks to
me like a theft, be it said without offence.”
“Good God! how queer women are sometimes, and how they mix up ideas!
If Roguin were not in this business, you would say to me: ‘Look here,
Cesar, you are going into a thing without Roguin; therefore it is worth
nothing.’ But to-day he is in it, as security, and you tell me--”
“No, that is a Monsieur Claparon.”
“But a notary cannot put his own name into a speculation.”
“Then why is he doing a thing forbidden by law? How do you answer that,
you who are guided by law?”
“Let me go on. Roguin is in it, and you tell me the business is
worthless. Is that reasonable? You say, ‘He is acting against the law.’
But he would put himself openly in the business if it were necessary.
Can’t they say the same of me? Would Ragon and Pillerault come and say
to me: ‘Why do you have to do with this affair,--you who have made your
money as a merchant?’”
“Merchants are not in the same position as notaries,” said Madame
Birotteau.
“Well, my conscience is clear,” said Cesar, continuing; “the people who
sell, sell because they must; we do not steal from them any more than
you steal from others when you buy their stocks at seventy-five. We buy
the ground to-day at to-day’s price. In two years it will be another
thing; just so with stocks. Know then, Constance-Barbe-Josephine
Pillerault, that you will never catch Cesar Birotteau doing anything
against the most rigid honor, nor against the laws, nor against his
conscience, nor against delicacy. A man established and known for
eighteen years, to be suspected in his own household of dishonesty!”
“Come, be calm, Cesar! A woman who has lived with you all that time
knows down to the bottom of your soul. You are the master, after all.
You earned your fortune, didn’t you? It is yours, and you can spend it.
If we are reduced to the last straits of poverty, neither your daughter
nor I will make you a single reproach. But, listen; when you invented
your Paste of Sultans and Carminative Balm, what did you risk? Five or
six thousand francs. To-day you put all your fortune on a game of cards.
And you are not the only one to play; you have associates who may be
much cleverer than you. Give your ball, remodel the house, spend ten
thousand francs if you like,--it is useless but not ruinous. As to your
speculations near the Madeleine, I formally object. You are perfumer: be
a perfumer, and not a speculator in land. We women have instincts which
do not deceive us. I have warned you; now follow your own lead. You have
been judge in the department of commerce, you know the laws. So far,
you have guided the ship well, Cesar; I shall follow you! But I shall
tremble till I see our fortune solidly secure and Cesarine well married.
God grant that my dream be not a prophecy!”
This submission thwarted Birotteau, who now employed an innocent ruse to
which he had had recourse on similar occasions.
“Listen, Constance. I have not given my word; though it is the same as
if I had.”
“Oh, Cesar, all is said; let us say no more. Honor before fortune. Come,
go to bed, dear friend, there is no more wood. Besides, we shall talk
better in bed, if it amuses you. Oh! that horrid dream! My God! to see
one’s self! it was fearful! Cesarine and I will have to make a pretty
number of _neuvaines_ for the success of your speculations.”
“Doubtless the help of God can do no harm,” said Birotteau, gravely.
“But the oil in nuts is also powerful, wife. I made this discovery just
as I made that of the Double Paste of Sultans,--by chance. The first
time by opening a book; this time by looking at an engraving of Hero
and Leander: you know, the woman who pours oil on the head of her lover;
pretty, isn’t it? The safest speculations are those which depend on
vanity, on self-love, on the desire of appearing well. Those sentiments
never die.”
“Alas! I know it well.”
“At a certain age men will turn their souls inside out to get hair, if
they haven’t any. For some time past hair-dressers have told me that
they sell not only Macassar, but all the drugs which are said to dye
hair or make it grow. Since the peace, men are more with women, and
women don’t like bald-heads; hey! hey! Mimi? The demand for that article
grows out of the political situation. A composition which will keep the
hair in good health will sell like bread; all the more if it has the
sanction, as it will have, of the Academy of Sciences. My good Monsieur
Vauquelin will perhaps help me once more. I shall go to him to-morrow
and submit my idea; offering him at the same time that engraving which
I have at last found in Germany, after two years’ search. He is
now engaged in analyzing hair: Chiffreville, his associate in the
manufacture of chemical products, told me so. If my discovery should
jump with his, my essence will be bought by both sexes. The idea is
a fortune; I repeat it. Mon Dieu! I can’t sleep. Hey! luckily little
Popinot has the finest head of hair in the world. A shop-girl with hair
long enough to touch the ground, and who could say--if the thing were
possible without offence to God or my neighbor--that the Oil Comagene
(for it shall be an oil, decidedly) has had something to do with
it,--all the gray-heads in Paris will fling themselves upon the
invention like poverty upon the world. Hey! hey! Mignonne! how about the
ball? I am not wicked, but I should like to meet that little scamp du
Tillet, who swells out with his fortune and avoids me at the Bourse. He
knows that I know a thing about him which was not fine. Perhaps I have
been too kind to him. Isn’t it odd, wife, that we are always punished
for our good deeds?--here below, I mean. I behaved like a father to him;
you don’t know all I did for him.”
“You give me goose-flesh merely speaking of it. If you knew what he
wished to make of you, you would never have kept the secret of his
stealing that three thousand francs,--for I guessed just how the thing
was done. If you had sent him to the correctional police, perhaps you
would have done a service to a good many people.”
“What did he wish to make of me?”
“Nothing. If you were inclined to listen to me to-night, I would give
you a piece of good advice, Birotteau; and that is, to let your du
Tillet alone.”
“Won’t it seem strange if I exclude him from my house,--a clerk for whom
I endorsed to the amount of twenty thousand francs when he first went
into business? Come, let us do good for good’s sake. Besides, perhaps du
Tillet has mended his ways.”
“Everything is to be turned topsy-turvy, then?”
“What do you mean with your topsy-turvy? Everything will be ruled like a
sheet of music-paper. Have you forgotten what I have just told you
about turning the staircase and hiring the first floor of the next
house?--which is all settled with the umbrella-maker, Cayron. He and I
are going to-morrow to see his proprietor, Monsieur Molineux. To-morrow
I have as much to do as a minister of state.”
“You turn my brain with your projects,” said Constance. “I am all mixed
up. Besides, Birotteau, I’m asleep.”
“Good-day,” replied the husband. “Just listen; I say good-day because it
is morning, Mimi. Ah! there she is off, the dear child. Yes! you shall
be rich, _richissime_, or I’ll renounce my name of Cesar!”
A few moments later Constance and Cesar were peacefully snoring.