Approved by the Institute of France.
“For many years a paste for the hands and a lotion for the face
offering superior results to those obtained from Eau-de-Cologne in
the domain of the toilet, has been widely sought by both sexes in
Europe. Devoting long vigils to the study of the skin and cuticle
of the two sexes, each of whom, one as much as the other, attach
the utmost importance to the softness, suppleness, brilliancy, and
velvet texture of the complexion, the Sieur Birotteau, perfumer,
favorably known in this metropolis and abroad, has discovered a
Paste and a Lotion justly hailed as marvellous by the fashion and
elegance of Paris. In point of fact, this Paste and this Lotion
possess amazing properties which act upon the skin without
prematurely wrinkling it,--the inevitable result of drugs
thoughtlessly employed, and sold in these days by ignorance and
cupidity. This discovery rests upon diversities of temperament,
which divide themselves into two great classes, indicated by the
color of the Paste and the Lotion, which will be found _pink_ for
the skin and cuticle of persons of lymphatic habit, and _white_
for those possessed of a sanguine temperament.
“This Paste is named the ‘Paste of Sultans,’ because the discovery
was originally made for the Seraglio by an Arabian physician. It
has been approved by the Institute on the recommendation of our
illustrious chemist, Vauquelin; together with the Lotion,
fabricated on the same principles which govern the composition of
the Paste.
“This precious Paste, exhaling as it does the sweetest perfumes,
removes all blotches, even those that are obstinately rebellious,
whitens the most recalcitrant epidermis, and dissipates the
perspirations of the hand, of which both sexes equally complain.
“The Carminative Balm will disperse the little pimples which
appear inopportunely at certain times, and interfere with a lady’s
projects for a ball; it refreshes and revives the color by opening
or shutting the pores of the skin according to the exigencies of
the individual temperament. It is so well known already for its
effect in arresting the ravages of time that many, out of
gratitude, have called it the ‘Friend of Beauty.’
“Eau-de-Cologne is, purely and simply, a trivial perfume without
special efficacy of any kind; while the Double Paste of Sultans
and the Carminative Balm are two operative compounds, of a motive
power which acts without risk upon the internal energies and
seconds them. Their perfumes (essentially balsamic, and of a
stimulating character which admirably revives the heart and brain)
awake ideas and vivify them; they are as wonderful for their
simplicity as for their merits. In short, they offer one
attraction the more to women, and to men a means of seduction
which it is within their power to secure.
“The daily use of the Balm will relieve the smart occasioned by
the heat of the razor; it will protect the lips from chapping, and
restore their color; it dispels in time all discolorations, and
revives the natural tones of the skin. Such results demonstrate in
man a perfect equilibrium of the juices of life, which tends to
relieve all persons subject to headache from the sufferings of
that horrible malady. Finally, the Carminative Balm, which can be
employed by women in all stages of their toilet, will prevent
cutaneous diseases by facilitating the transpiration of the
tissues, and communicating to them a permanent texture like that
of velvet.
“Address, post-paid, Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, successor to Ragon,
former perfumer to the Queen Marie Antoinette, at The Queen of
Roses, Rue Saint-Honore, Paris, near the Place Vendome.
“The price of a cake of Paste is three francs; that of the bottle
six francs.
“Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, to avoid counterfeits, informs the
public that the Paste is wrapped in paper bearing his signature,
and that the bottles have a stamp blown in the glass.”
The success was owing, without Cesar’s suspecting it, to Constance,
who advised him to send cases of the Carminative Balm and the Paste of
Sultans to all perfumers in France and in foreign cities, offering them
at the same time a discount of thirty per cent if they would buy the two
articles by the gross. The Paste and the Balm were, in reality, worth
more than other cosmetics of the sort; and they captivated ignorant
people by the distinctions they set up among the temperaments. The
five hundred perfumers of France, allured by the discount, each bought
annually from Birotteau more than three hundred gross of the Paste and
the Lotion,--a consumption which, if it gave only a limited profit on
each article, became enormous considered in bulk. Cesar was then able
to buy the huts and the land in the Faubourg du Temple; he built large
manufactories, and decorated his shop at “The Queen of Roses” with
much magnificence; his household began to taste the little joys of
competence, and his wife no longer trembled as before.
In 1810 Madame Cesar, foreseeing a rise in rents, pushed her husband
into becoming chief tenant of the house where they had hitherto occupied
only the shop and the _entresol_, and advised him to remove their own
appartement to the first floor. A fortunate event induced Constance to
shut her eyes to the follies which Birotteau committed for her sake in
fitting up the new appartement. The perfumer had just been elected judge
in the commercial courts: his integrity, his well-known sense of honor,
and the respect he enjoyed, earned for him this dignity, which ranked
him henceforth among the leading merchants of Paris. To improve his
knowledge, he rose daily at five o’clock, and read law-reports and books
treating of commercial litigation. His sense of justice, his rectitude,
his conscientious intentions,--qualities essential to the understanding
of questions submitted for consular decision,--soon made him highly
esteemed among the judges. His defects contributed not a little to his
reputation. Conscious of his inferiority, Cesar subordinated his own
views to those of his colleagues, who were flattered in being thus
deferred to. Some sought the silent approbation of a man held to be
sagacious, in his capacity of listener; others, charmed with his modesty
and gentleness, praised him publicly. Plaintiffs and defendants extolled
his kindness, his conciliatory spirit; and he was often chosen umpire in
contests where his own good sense would have suggested the swift justice
of a Turkish cadi. During his whole period in office he contrived to
use language which was a medley of commonplaces mixed with maxims
and computations served up in flowing phrases mildly put forth, which
sounded to the ears of superficial people like eloquence. Thus he
pleased that great majority, mediocre by nature, who are condemned
to perpetual labor and to views which are of the earth earthy. Cesar,
however, lost so much time in court that his wife obliged him finally to
resign the expensive dignity.
Towards 1813, the Birotteau household, thanks to its constant harmony,
and after steadily plodding on through life, saw the dawn of an era of
prosperity which nothing seemed likely to interrupt. Monsieur and Madame
Ragon, their predecessors, the uncle Pillerault, Roguin the notary, the
Messrs. Matifat, druggists in the Rue des Lombards and purveyors to
“The Queen of Roses,” Joseph Lebas, woollen draper and successor to
the Messrs. Guillaume at the Maison du Chat-qui-pelote (one of the
luminaries of the Rue Saint-Denis), Popinot the judge, brother of Madame
Ragon, Chiffreville of the firm of Protez & Chiffreville, Monsieur and
Madame Cochin, employed in the treasury department and sleeping partners
in the house of Matifat, the Abbe Loraux, confessor and director of the
pious members of this coterie, with a few other persons, made up
the circle of their friends. In spite of the royalist sentiments of
Birotteau, public opinion was in his favor; he was considered very rich,
though in fact he possessed only a hundred thousand francs over and
above his business. The regularity of his affairs, his punctuality, his
habit of making no debts, of never discounting his paper, and of taking,
on the contrary, safe securities from those whom he could thus oblige,
together with his general amiability, won him enormous credit. His
household cost him nearly twenty thousand francs a year, and the
education of Cesarine, an only daughter, idolized by Constance as well
as by himself, necessitated heavy expenses. Neither husband nor wife
considered money when it was a question of giving pleasure to their
child, from whom they had never been willing to separate. Imagine the
happiness of the poor parvenu peasant as he listened to his charming
Cesarine playing a sonata of Steibelt’s on the piano, and singing a
ballad; or when he found her writing the French language correctly,
or reading Racine, father and son, and explaining their beauties, or
sketching a landscape, or painting in sepia! What joy to live again in
a flower so pure, so lovely, which had never left the maternal stem;
an angel whose budding graces and whose earliest developments he had
passionately watched; an only daughter, incapable of despising her
father, or of ridiculing his defective education, so truly was she an
ingenuous young girl.
When he first came to Paris, Cesar had known how to read, write, and
cipher, but his education stopped there; his laborious life had kept him
from acquiring ideas and knowledge outside the business of perfumery.
Mixing wholly with people to whom science and letters were of no
importance, and whose information did not go beyond their specialty,
having no time to give to higher studies, the perfumer had become a
merely practical man. He adopted necessarily the language, blunders, and
opinions of the bourgeois of Paris, who admires Moliere, Voltaire, and
Rousseau on faith, and buys their books without ever reading them; who
maintains that people should say _ormoires_, because women put away
their gold and their dresses and moire in those articles of furniture,
and that it is only a corruption of the language to say _armoires_.
Potier, Talma, and Mademoiselle Mars were ten times millionaires, and
did not live like other human beings; the great tragedian ate raw meat,
and Mademoiselle Mars sometimes drank dissolved pearls, in imitation of
a celebrated Egyptian actress. The Emperor had leather pockets in his
waistcoat, so that he could take his snuff by the handful; he rode on
horseback at full gallop up the stairway of the orangery at Versailles.
Writers and artists died in the hospital, as a natural consequence of
their eccentricities; they were, moreover, all atheists, and people
should be very careful not to admit them into their households. Joseph
Lebas cited with horror the history of his step-sister Augustine’s
marriage with the painter Sommervieux. Astronomers lived on spiders.
These striking points of information on the French language, on dramatic
art, politics, literature, and science, will explain the bearings of
the bourgeois intellect. A poet passing through the Rue des Lombards
may dream of Araby as he inhales certain perfumes. He may admire the
_danseuses_ in a _chauderie_, as he breathes the odors of an Indian
root. Dazzled by the blaze of cochineal, he recalls the poems of the
Veda, the religion of Brahma and its castes; brushing against piles of
ivory in the rough, he mounts the backs of elephants; seated in a muslin
cage, he makes love like the King of Lahore. But the little retail
merchant is ignorant from whence have come, or where may grow, the
products in which he deals. Birotteau, perfumer, did not know an iota of
natural history, nor of chemistry. Though regarding Vauquelin as a great
man, he thought him an exception,--of about the same capacity as the
retired grocer who summed up a discussion on the method of importing
teas, by remarking with a knowing air, “There are but two ways: tea
comes either by caravan, or by Havre.” According to Birotteau aloes and
opium were only to be found in the Rue des Lombards. Rosewater, said to
be brought from Constantinople, was made in Paris like eau-de-cologne.
The names of these places were shams, invented to please Frenchmen who
could not endure the things of their own country. A French merchant
must call his discoveries English to make them fashionable, just as in
England the druggists attribute theirs to France.
Nevertheless, Cesar was incapable of being wholly stupid or a fool.
Honesty and goodness cast upon all the acts of his life a light which
made them creditable; for noble conduct makes even ignorance seem
worthy. Success gave him confidence. In Paris confidence is accepted as
power, of which it is the outward sign. As for Madame Birotteau, having
measured Cesar during the first three years of their married life,
she was a prey to continual terror. She represented in their union the
sagacious and fore-casting side,--doubt, opposition, and fear; while
Cesar, on the other hand, was the embodiment of audacity, energy,
and the inexpressible delights of fatalism. Yet in spite of these
appearances the husband often quaked, while the wife, in reality, was
possessed of patience and true courage.
Thus it happened that a man who was both mediocre and pusillanimous,
without education, without ideas, without knowledge, without force of
character, and who might be expected not to succeed in the slipperiest
city in the world, came by his principles of conduct, by his sense
of justice, by the goodness of a heart that was truly Christian, and
through his love for the only woman he had really won, to be considered
as a remarkable man, courageous, and full of resolution. The public saw
results only. Excepting Pillerault and Popinot the judge, all the people
of his own circle knew him superficially, and were unable to judge him.
Moreover, the twenty or thirty friends he had collected about him talked
the same nonsense, repeated the same commonplaces, and all thought
themselves superior in their own line. The women vied with each other
in dress and good dinners; each had said her all when she dropped a
contemptuous word about her husband. Madame Birotteau alone had the good
sense to treat hers with honor and respect in public; she knew him to
be a man who, in spite of his secret disabilities, had earned their
fortune, and whose good name she shared. It is true that she sometimes
asked herself what sort of world this could be, if all the men who were
thought superior were like her husband. Such conduct contributed not a
little to maintain the respectful esteem bestowed upon the perfumer in
a community where women are much inclined to complain of their husbands
and bring them into discredit.
* * * * *
The first days of the year 1814, so fatal to imperial France, were
marked at the Birotteaus by two events, not especially remarkable in
other households, but of a nature to impress such simple souls as Cesar
and his wife, who casting their eyes along the past could find nothing
but tender memories. They had taken as head-clerk a young man twenty-two
years of age, named Ferdinand du Tillet. This lad--who had just left
a perfumery where he was refused a share in the business, and who was
reckoned a genius--had made great efforts to get employed at “The Queen
of Roses,” whose methods, facilities, and customs were well known to
him. Birotteau took him, and gave him a salary of a thousand francs,
intending to make him eventually his successor.
Ferdinand had so great an influence on the destinies of this family that
it is necessary to say a few words about him. In the first place he was
named simply Ferdinand, without surname. This anonymous condition seemed
to him an immense advantage at the time when Napoleon conscripted all
families to fill the ranks. He was, however, born somewhere, as the
result of some cruel and voluptuous caprice. The following are the
only facts preserved about his civil condition. In 1793 a poor girl of
Tillet, a village near Andelys, came by night and gave birth to a child
in the garden of the curate of the church at Tillet, and after rapping
on the window-shutters went away and drowned herself. The good priest
took the child, gave him the name of the saint inscribed on the calendar
for that day, and fed and brought him up as his own son. The curate died
in 1804, without leaving enough property to carry on the education he
had begun. Ferdinand, thrown upon Paris, led a filibustering life whose
chances might bring him to the scaffold, to fortune, the bar, the army,
commerce, or domestic life. Obliged to live like a Figaro, he was first
a commercial traveller, then a perfumer’s clerk in Paris, where he
turned up after traversing all France, having studied the world and made
up his mind to succeed at any price.
In 1813 Ferdinand thought it necessary to register his age, and obtain
a civil standing by applying to the courts at Andelys for a judgment,
which should enable his baptismal record to be transferred from the
registry of the parish to that of the mayor’s office; and he obtained
permission to rectify the document by inserting the name of du Tillet,
under which he was known, and which legally belonged to him through the
fact of his exposure and abandonment in that township. Without father,
mother, or other guardian than the _procureur imperial_, alone in the
world and owing no duty to any man, he found society a hard stepmother,
and he handled it, in his turn, without gloves,--as the Turks the Moors;
he knew no guide but his own interests, and any means to fortune he
considered good. This young Norman, gifted with dangerous abilities,
coupled his desires for success with the harsh defects which, justly
or unjustly, are attributed to the natives of his province. A wheedling
manner cloaked a quibbling mind, for he was in truth a hard judicial
wrangler. But if he boldly contested the rights of others, he certainly
yielded none of his own; he attacked his adversary at the right moment,
and wearied him out with his inflexible persistency. His merits were
those of the Scapins of ancient comedy; he had their fertility of
resource, their cleverness in skirting evil, their itching to lay hold
of all that was good to keep. In short, he applied to his own poverty a
saying which the Abbe Terray uttered in the name of the State,--he
kept a loophole to become in after years an honest man. Gifted with
passionate energy, with a boldness that was almost military in requiring
good as well as evil actions from those about him, and justifying such
demands on the theory of personal interest, he despised men too much,
believing them all corruptible, he was too unscrupulous in the choice of
means, thinking all equally good, he was too thoroughly convinced that
the success of money was the absolution of all moral mechanism, not to
attain his ends sooner or later.
Such a man, standing between the hulks and a vast fortune, was
necessarily vindictive, domineering, quick in decisions, yet as
dissimulating as a Cromwell planning to decapitate the head of
integrity. His real depth was hidden under a light and jesting
mind. Mere clerk as he was, his ambition knew no bounds. With one
comprehensive glance of hatred he had taken in the whole of society,
saying boldly to himself, “Thou shalt be mine!” He had vowed not to
marry till he was forty, and kept his word. Physically, Ferdinand was a
tall, slender young man, with a good figure and adaptive manners, which
enabled him to take, on occasion, the key-note of the various societies
in which he found himself. His ignoble face was rather pleasant at first
sight; but later, on closer acquaintance, expressions were caught such
as come to the surface of those who are ill at ease in their own minds,
and whose consciences groan at certain times. His complexion, which was
sanguine under the soft skin of a Norman, had a crude or acrid color.
The glance of his eye, whose iris was circled with a whitish rim as if
it were lined with silver, was evasive yet terrible when he fixed it
straight upon his victim. His voice had a hollow sound, like that of
a man worn out with much speaking. His thin lips were not wanting in
charm, but his pointed nose and slightly projecting forehead showed
defects of race; and his hair, of a tint like hair that has been dyed
black, indicated a mongrel descent, through which he derived his mental
qualities from some libertine lord, his low instincts from a seduced
peasant-girl, his knowledge from an incomplete education, and his vices
from his deserted and abandoned condition.
Birotteau discovered with much amazement that his clerk went out in
the evening very elegantly dressed, came home late, and was seen at the
balls of bankers and notaries. Such habits displeased Cesar, according
to whose ideas clerks should study the books of the firm and think only
of their business. The worthy man was shocked by trifles, and reproached
du Tillet gently for wearing linen that was too fine, for leaving cards
on which his name was inscribed, F. du Tillet,--a fashion, according
to commercial jurisprudence, which belonged only to the great world.
Ferdinand had entered the employ of this Orgon with the intentions of a
Tartuffe. He paid court to Madame Cesar, tried to seduce her, and
judged his master very much as the wife judged him herself, and all with
alarming rapidity. Though discreet, reserved, and accustomed to say only
what he meant to say, du Tillet unbosomed his opinions on men and life
in a way to shock a scrupulous woman who shared the religious feelings
of her husband, and who thought it a crime to do the least harm to a
neighbor. In spite of Madame Birotteau’s caution, du Tillet suspected
the contempt in which she held him. Constance, to whom Ferdinand had
written a few love-letters, soon noticed a change in his manners, which
grew presuming, as if intended to convey the idea of a mutual good
understanding. Without giving the secret reason to her husband, she
advised him to send Ferdinand away. Birotteau agreed with his wife, and
the dismissal was determined upon.
Two days before it was carried into effect, on a Saturday night when
Birotteau was making up his monthly accounts, three thousand francs were
found to be missing. His consternation was dreadful, less for the
loss than for the suspicions which fell upon three clerks, one cook, a
shop-boy, and several habitual workmen. On whom should he lay the blame?
Madame Birotteau never left her counter. The clerk who had charge of the
desk was a nephew of Monsieur Ragon named Popinot, a young man nineteen
years old, who lived with the Birotteaus and was integrity itself.
His figures, which disagreed with the money in the desk, revealed the
deficit, and showed that the abstraction had been made after the balance
had been added up. Husband and wife resolved to keep silence and watch
the house. On the following day, Sunday, they received their friends.
The families who made up their coterie met at each other’s houses for
little festivities, turn and turn about. While playing at _bouillote_,
Roguin the notary placed on the card-table some old louis d’or which
Madame Cesar had taken only a few days before from a bride, Madame
d’Espart.
“Have you been robbing the poor-box?” asked the perfumer, laughing.
Roguin replied that he had won the money, at the house of a banker,
from du Tillet, who confirmed the answer without blushing. Cesar, on
the other hand, grew scarlet. When the evening was over, and just
as Ferdinand was going to bed, Birotteau took him into the shop on a
pretext of business.
“Du Tillet,” said the worthy man, “three thousand francs are missing
from the desk. I suspect no one; but the circumstance of the old louis
seems too much against you not to oblige me to speak of it. We will not
go to bed till we have found where the error lies,--for, after all,
it may be only an error. Perhaps you took something on account of your
salary?”
Du Tillet said at once that he had taken the louis. The perfumer opened
his ledger and found that his clerk’s account had not been debited.
“I was in a hurry; but I ought to have made Popinot enter the sum,” said
Ferdinand.
“That is true,” said Birotteau, bewildered by the cool unconcern of the
Norman, who well knew the worthy people among whom he had come meaning
to make his fortune. The perfumer and his clerk passed the whole night
in examining accounts, a labor which the good man knew to be useless. In
coming and going about the desk Cesar slipped three bills of a thousand
francs each into the money-drawer, catching them against the top of it;
then he pretended to be much fatigued and to fall asleep and snore.
Du Tillet awoke him triumphantly, with an excessive show of joy at
discovering the error. The next day Birotteau scolded Popinot and his
little wife publicly, as if very angry with them for their negligence.
Fifteen days later Ferdinand du Tillet got a situation with a
stockbroker. He said perfumery did not suit him, and he wished to learn
banking. In leaving Birotteau, he spoke of Madame Cesar in a way to make
people suppose that his master had dismissed him out of jealousy. A few
months later, however, du Tillet went to see Birotteau and asked his
endorsement for twenty thousand francs, to enable him to make up the
securities he needed in an enterprise which was to put him on the
high-road to fortune. Observing the surprise which Cesar showed at this
impudence, du Tillet frowned, and asked if he had no confidence in
him. Matifat and two other merchants, who were present on business with
Birotteau, also observed the indignation of the perfumer, who repressed
his anger in their presence. Du Tillet, he thought, might have become
an honest man; his previous fault might have been committed for some
mistress in distress or from losses at cards; the public reprobation of
an honest man might drive one still young, and possibly repentant,
into a career of crime. So this angel took up his pen and endorsed du
Tillet’s notes, telling him that he was heartily willing thus to oblige
a lad who had been very useful to him. The blood rushed to his face as
he uttered the falsehood. Du Tillet could not meet his eye, and no doubt
vowed to him at that moment the undying hatred which the spirits of
darkness feel towards the angels of light.
From this time du Tillet held his balance-pole so well as he danced the
tight-rope of financial speculation, that he was rich and elegant in
appearance before he became so in reality. As soon as he got hold of
a cabriolet he was always in it; he kept himself in the high sphere
of those who mingle business with pleasure, and make the foyer of the
opera-house a branch of the Bourse,--in short, the Turcarets of the
period. Thanks to Madame Roguin, whom he had known at the Birotteau’s,
he was received at once among people of the highest standing in finance;
and, at the moment of which we write, he had reached a prosperity in
which there was nothing fictitious. He was on the best terms with
the house of Nucingen, to which Roguin had introduced him, and he had
promptly become connected with the brothers Keller and with several
other great banking-houses. No one knew from whence this youth had
derived the immense capital which he handled, but every one attributed
his success to his intelligence and his integrity.
* * * * *
The Restoration made Cesar a personage, and the turmoil of political
crises naturally lessened his recollection of these domestic
misadventures. The constancy of his royalist opinions (to which he
had become exceedingly indifferent since his wound, though he remained
faithful to them out of decency) and the memory of his devotion in
Vendemiaire won him very high patronage, precisely because he had asked
for none. He was appointed major in the National Guard, although he
was utterly incapable of giving the word of command. In 1815 Napoleon,
always his enemy, dismissed him. During the Hundred Days Birotteau was
the bugbear of the liberals of his quarter; for it was not until 1815
that differences of political opinion grew up among merchants, who had
hitherto been unanimous in their desires for public tranquillity, of
which, as they knew, business affairs stood much in need.
At the second Restoration the royal government was obliged to remodel
the municipality of Paris. The prefect wished to nominate Birotteau as
mayor. Thanks to his wife, the perfumer would only accept the place of
deputy-mayor, which brought him less before the public. Such modesty
increased the respect generally felt for him, and won him the friendship
of the new mayor, Monsieur Flamet de la Billardiere. Birotteau, who
had seen him in the shop in the days when “The Queen of Roses” was the
headquarters of royalist conspiracy, mentioned him to the prefect of
the Seine when that official consulted Cesar on the choice to be made.
Monsieur and Madame Birotteau were therefore never forgotten in the
invitations of the mayor. Madame Birotteau frequently took up the
collections at Saint-Roch in the best of good company. La Billardiere
warmly supported Birotteau when the question of bestowing the crosses
given to the municipality came up, and dwelt upon his wound at
Saint-Roch, his attachment to the Bourbons, and the respect which he
enjoyed. The government, wishing on the one hand to cheapen Napoleon’s
order by lavishing the cross of the Legion of honor, and on the other
to win adherents and rally to the Bourbons the various trades and men
of arts and sciences, included Birotteau in the coming promotion.
This honor, which suited well with the show that Cesar made in
his arrondissement, put him in a position where the ideas of a man
accustomed to succeed naturally enlarged themselves. The news which the
mayor had just given him of his preferment was the determining reason
that decided him to plunge into the scheme which he now for the first
time revealed to his wife; he believed it would enable him to give up
perfumery all the more quickly, and rise into the regions of the higher
bourgeoisie of Paris.
Cesar was now forty years old. The work he had undertaken in his
manufactories had given him a few premature wrinkles, and had slightly
silvered the thick tufts of hair on which the pressure of his hat left a
shining circle. His forehead, where the hair grew in a way to mark five
distinct points, showed the simplicity of his life. The heavy eyebrows
were not alarming because the limpid glance of his frank blue eyes
harmonized with the open forehead of an honest man. His nose, broken at
the bridge and thick at the end, gave him the wondering look of a gaby
in the streets of Paris. His lips were very thick, and his large chin
fell in a straight line below them. His face, high-colored and square
in outline, revealed, by the lines of its wrinkles and by the general
character of its expression, the ingenuous craftiness of a peasant. The
strength of his body, the stoutness of his limbs, the squareness of his
shoulders, the width of his feet,--all denoted the villager transplanted
to Paris. His powerful hairy hands, with their large square nails, would
alone have attested his origin if other vestiges had not remained in
various parts of his person. His lips wore the cordial smile which
shopkeepers put on when a customer enters; but this commercial sunshine
was really the image of his inward content, and pictured the state
of his kindly soul. His distrust never went beyond the lines of his
business, his craftiness left him on the steps of the Bourse, or when he
closed the pages of his ledger. Suspicion was to him very much what
his printed bill-heads were,--a necessity of the sale itself. His
countenance presented a sort of comical assurance and conceit mingled
with good nature, which gave it originality and saved it from too close
a resemblance to the insipid face of a Parisian bourgeois. Without this
air of naive self-admiration and faith in his own person, he would have
won too much respect; he drew nearer to his fellows by thus contributing
his quota of absurdity. When speaking, he habitually crossed his hands
behind his back. When he thought he had said something striking or
gallant, he rose imperceptibly on the points of his toes twice, and
dropped back heavily on his heels, as if to emphasize what he said. In
the midst of an argument he might be seen turning round upon himself and
walking off a few steps, as if he had gone to find objections with which
he returned upon his adversary brusquely. He never interrupted, and was
sometimes a victim to this careful observance of civility; for others
would take the words out of his mouth, and the good man had to yield
his ground without opening his lips. His great experience in commercial
matters had given him a few fixed habits, which some people called
eccentricities. If a note were overdue he sent for the bailiff, and
thought only of recovering capital, interest, and costs; and the bailiff
was ordered to pursue the matter until the debtor went into bankruptcy.
Cesar then stopped all proceedings, never appeared at any meeting of
creditors, and held on to his securities. He adopted this system and his
implacable contempt for bankrupts from Monsieur Ragon, who in the course
of his commercial life had seen such loss of time in litigation that
he had come to look upon the meagre and uncertain dividends obtained by
such compromises as fully counterbalanced by a better employment of the
time spent in coming and going, in making proposals, or in listening to
excuses for dishonesty.
“If the bankrupt is an honest man, and recovers himself, he will pay
you,” Ragon would say. “If he is without means and simply unfortunate,
why torment him? If he is a scoundrel, you will never get anything. Your
known severity will make you seem uncompromising; it will be impossible
to negotiate with you; consequently you are the one who will get paid as
long as there is anything to pay with.”
Cesar came to all appointments at the expected hour; but if he were kept
waiting, he left ten minutes later with an inflexibility which nothing
ever changed. Thus his punctuality compelled all persons who had
dealings with him to be punctual themselves.
The dress adopted by the worthy man was in keeping with his manners and
his countenance. No power could have made him give up the white muslin
cravats, with ends embroidered by his wife or daughter, which hung down
beneath his chin. His waistcoat of white pique, squarely buttoned, came
down low over his stomach, which was rather protuberant, for he was
somewhat fat. He wore blue trousers, black silk stockings, and shoes
with ribbon ties, which were often unfastened. His surtout coat,
olive-green and always too large, and his broad-brimmed hat gave him the
air of a Quaker. When he dressed for the Sunday evening festivities he
put on silk breeches, shoes with gold buckles, and the inevitable square
waistcoat, whose front edges opened sufficiently to show a pleated
shirt-frill. His coat, of maroon cloth, had wide flaps and long skirts.
Up to the year 1819 he kept up the habit of wearing two watch-chains,
which hung down in parallel lines; but he only put on the second when he
dressed for the evening.
* * * * *
Such was Cesar Birotteau; a worthy man, to whom the fates presiding at
the birth of men had denied the faculty of judging politics and life
in their entirety, and of rising above the social level of the middle
classes; who followed ignorantly the track of routine, whose opinions
were all imposed upon him from the outside and applied by him without
examination. Blind but good, not spiritual but deeply religious, he had
a pure heart. In that heart there shone one love, the light and strength
of his life; for his desire to rise in life, and the limited knowledge
he had gained of the world, both came from his affection for his wife
and for his daughter.
As for Madame Cesar, then thirty-seven years old, she bore so close a
resemblance to the Venus of Milo that all who knew her recognized the
likeness when the Duc de Riviere sent the beautiful statue to Paris.
In a few months sorrows were to dim with yellowing tints that dazzling
fairness, to hollow and blacken the bluish circle round the lovely
greenish-gray eyes so cruelly that she then wore the look of an old
Madonna; for amid the coming ruin she retained her gentle sincerity,
her pure though saddened glance; and no one ever thought her less than a
beautiful woman, whose bearing was virtuous and full of dignity. At the
ball now planned by Cesar she was to shine with a last lustre of beauty,
remarked upon at the time and long remembered.
Every life has its climax,--a period when causes are at work, and are in
exact relation to results. This mid-day of life, when living forces
find their equilibrium and put forth their productive powers with full
effect, is common not only to organized beings but to cities, nations,
ideas, institutions, commerce, and commercial enterprises, all of which,
like noble races and dynasties, are born and rise and fall. From whence
comes the vigor with which this law of growth and decay applies itself
to all organized things in this lower world? Death itself, in times
of scourge, has periods when it advances, slackens, sinks back, and
slumbers. Our globe is perhaps only a rocket a little more continuing
than the rest. History, recording the causes of the rise and fall of all
things here below, could enlighten man as to the moment when he might
arrest the play of all his faculties; but neither the conquerors, nor
the actors, nor the women, nor the writers in the great drama will
listen to the salutary voice.
Cesar Birotteau, who might with reason think himself at the apogee of
his fortunes, used this crucial pause as the point of a new departure.
He did not know, moreover neither nations nor kings have attempted to
make known in characters ineffaceable, the cause of the vast overthrows
with which history teems, and of which so many royal and commercial
houses offer signal examples. Why are there no modern pyramids to recall
ceaselessly the one principle which dominates the common-weal of nations
and of individual life? _When the effect produced is no longer in direct
relation nor in equal proportion to the cause, disorganization has
begun._ And yet such monuments stand everywhere; it is tradition and the
stones of the earth which tell us of the past, which set a seal upon the
caprices of indomitable destiny, whose hand wipes out our dreams, and
shows us that all great events are summed up in one idea. Troy and
Napoleon are but poems. May this present history be the poem of
middle-class vicissitudes, to which no voice has given utterance because
they have seemed poor in dignity, enormous as they are in volume. It is
not one man with whom we are now to deal, but a whole people, or world,
of sorrows.