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.