“He is rich, clever, and extremely honorable,” he said, stooping to
Madame Ragon’s ear.
“Something may be forgiven in consideration of such qualities,” said
Pillerault to Ragon.
“Let us read the deeds before dinner,” said Roguin; “we are all alone.”
Madame Ragon, Cesarine, and Constance left the contracting parties
to listen to the deeds read over to them by Alexandre Crottat. Cesar
signed, in favor of one of Roguin’s clients, a mortgage bond for forty
thousand francs, on his grounds and manufactories in the Faubourg du
Temple; he turned over to Roguin Pillerault’s cheque on the Bank of
France, and gave, without receipt, bills for twenty thousand francs from
his current funds, and notes for one hundred and forty thousand francs
payable to the order of Claparon.
“I have no receipt to give you,” said Claparon; “you deal, for your half
of the property, with Monsieur Roguin, as I do for ours. The sellers
will get their pay from him in cash; all that I engage to do is to see
that you get the equivalent of the hundred and forty thousand francs
paid to my order.”
“That is equitable,” said Pillerault.
“Well, gentlemen, let us call in the ladies; it is cold without them,”
said Claparon, glancing at Roguin, as if to ask whether that jest were
too broad.
“Ladies! Ah! mademoiselle is doubtless yours,” said Claparon, holding
himself very straight and looking at Birotteau; “hey! you are not a
bungler. None of the roses you distil can be compared with her; and
perhaps it is because you have distilled roses that--”
“Faith!” said Roguin, interrupting him, “I am very hungry.”
“Let us go to dinner,” said Birotteau.
“We shall dine before a notary,” said Claparon, catching himself up.
“You do a great deal of business?” said Pillerault, seating himself
intentionally next to Claparon.
“Quantities; by the gross,” answered the banker. “But it is all heavy,
dull; there are risks, canals. Oh, canals! you have no idea how canals
occupy us; it is easy to explain. Government needs canals. Canals are
a want especially felt in the departments; they concern commerce,
you know. ‘Rivers,’ said Pascal, ‘are walking markets.’ We must
have markets. Markets depend on embankments, tremendous earth-works;
earth-works employ the laboring-classes; hence loans, which find
their way back, in the end, to the pockets of the poor. Voltaire said,
‘Canaux, canards, canaille!’ But the government has its own engineers;
you can’t get a finger in the matter unless you get on the right side of
them; for the Chamber,--oh, monsieur, the Chamber does us all the harm
in the world! It won’t take in the political question hidden under the
financial question. There’s bad faith on one side or the other. Would
you believe it? there’s Keller in the Chamber: now Francois Keller is an
orator, he attacks the government about the budget, about canals. Well,
when he gets home to the bank, and we go to him with proposals, canals,
and so forth, the sly dog is all the other way: everything is right;
we must arrange it with the government which he has just been been
impudently attacking. The interests of the orator and the interests of
the banker clash; we are between two fires! Now, you understand how it
is that business is risky; we have got to please everybody,--clerks,
chambers, antechambers, ministers--”
“Ministers?” said Pillerault, determined to get to the bottom of this
co-associate.
“Yes, monsieur, ministers.”
“Well, then the newspapers are right?” said Pillerault.
“There’s my uncle talking politics,” said Birotteau. “Monsieur Claparon
has won his heart.”
“Devilish rogues, the newspapers,” said Claparon. “Monsieur, the
newspapers do all the mischief. They are useful sometimes, but they
keep me awake many a night. I wish they didn’t. I have put my eyes out
reading and ciphering.”
“To go back to the ministers,” said Pillerault, hoping for revelations.
“Ministers are a mere necessity of government. Ah! what am I eating?
ambrosia?” said Claparon, breaking off. “This is a sauce you’ll never
find except at a tradesman’s table, for the pot-houses--”
Here the flowers in Madame Ragon’s cap skipped like young rams. Claparon
perceived the word was low, and tried to catch himself up.
“In bank circles,” he said, “we call the best cafes.--Very, and the
Freres Provencaux,--pot-houses in jest. Well, neither those infamous
pot-houses nor our most scientific cooks can make us a sauce like this;
mellifluous! Some give you clear water soured with lemon, and the rest
drugs, chemicals.”
Pillerault tried throughout the dinner to fathom this extraordinary
being; finding only a void, he began to think him dangerous.
“All’s well,” whispered Roguin to Claparon.
“I shall get out of these clothes to-night, at any rate,” answered
Claparon, who was choking.
“Monsieur,” said Cesar, addressing him, “we are compelled to dine in
this little room because we are preparing, eighteen days hence, to
assemble our friends, as much to celebrate the emancipation of our
territory--”
“Right, monsieur; I myself am for the government. I belong, in opinion,
to the _statu quo_ of the great man who guides the destinies of the
house of Austria, jolly dog! Hold fast that you may acquire; and, above
all, acquire that you may hold. Those are my opinions, which I have the
honor to share with Prince Metternich.”
“--as to commemorate my promotion to the order of the Legion of honor,”
continued Cesar.
“Yes, I know. Who told me of that,--the Kellers, or Nucingen?”
Roguin, surprised at such tact, made an admiring gesture.
“No, no; it was in the Chamber.”
“In the Chamber? was it Monsieur de la Billardiere?” said Birotteau.
“Precisely.”
“He is charming,” whispered Cesar to his uncle.
“He pours out phrases, phrases, phrases,” said Pillerault, “enough to
drown you.”
“Possibly I showed myself worthy of this signal, royal favor,--” resumed
Birotteau.
“By your labors in perfumery; the Bourbons know how to reward all merit.
Ah! let us support those generous princes, to whom we are about to owe
unheard-of prosperity. Believe me, the Restoration feels that it must
run a tilt against the Empire; the Bourbons have conquests to make, the
conquests of peace. You will see their conquests!”
“Monsieur will perhaps do us the honor to be present at our ball?” said
Madame Cesar.
“To pass an evening with you, Madame, I would sacrifice the making of
millions.”
“He certainly does chatter,” said Cesar to his uncle.
* * * * *
While the declining glory of perfumery was about to send forth its
setting rays, a star was rising with feeble light upon the commercial
horizon. Anselme Popinot was laying the corner-stone of his fortune
in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants. This narrow little street, where loaded
wagons can scarcely pass each other, runs from the Rue des Lombards at
one end, to the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher at the other, entering the latter
opposite to the Rue Quincampoix, that famous thoroughfare of old
Paris where French history has so often been enacted. In spite of this
disadvantage, the congregation of druggists in that neighborhood made
Popinot’s choice of the little street a good one. The house, which
stands second from the Rue des Lombards, was so dark that except at
certain seasons it was necessary to use lights in open day. The embryo
merchant had taken possession, the preceding evening, of the dingy
and disgusting premises. His predecessor, who sold molasses and coarse
sugars, had left the stains of his dirty business upon the walls, in the
court, in the store-rooms. Imagine a large and spacious shop, with great
iron-bound doors, painted a dragon-green, strengthened with long iron
bars held on by nails whose heads looked like mushrooms, and covered
with an iron trellis-work, which swelled out at the bottom after the
fashion of the bakers’-shops in former days; the floor paved with large
white stones, most of them broken, the walls yellow, and as bare as
those of a guard-room. Next to the shop came the back-shop, and two
other rooms lighted from the street, in which Popinot proposed to put
his office, his books, and his own workroom. Above these rooms were
three narrow little chambers pushed up against the party-wall, with an
outlook into the court; here he intended to dwell. The three rooms were
dilapidated, and had no view but that of the court, which was dark,
irregular, and surrounded by high walls, to which perpetual dampness,
even in dry weather, gave the look of being daubed with fresh plaster.
Between the stones of this court was a filthy and stinking black
substance, left by the sugars and the molasses that once occupied it.
Only one of the bedrooms had a chimney, all the walls were without
paper, and the floors were tiled with brick.
Since early morning Gaudissart and Popinot, helped by a journeyman whose
services the commercial traveller had invoked, were busily employed in
stretching a fifteen-sous paper on the walls of these horrible rooms,
the workman pasting the lengths. A collegian’s mattress on a bedstead of
red wood, a shabby night-stand, an old-fashioned bureau, one table, two
armchairs, and six common chairs, the gift of Popinot’s uncle the judge,
made up the furniture. Gaudissart had decked the chimney-piece with
a frame in which was a mirror much defaced, and bought at a bargain.
Towards eight o’clock in the evening the two friends, seated before the
fireplace where a fagot of wood was blazing, were about to attack the
remains of their breakfast.
“Down with the cold mutton!” cried Gaudissart, suddenly, “it is not
worthy of such a housewarming.”
“But,” said Popinot, showing his solitary coin of twenty francs, which
he was keeping to pay for the prospectus, “I--”
“I--” cried Gaudissart, sticking a forty-franc piece in his own eye.
A knock resounded throughout the court, naturally empty and echoing of
a Sunday, when the workpeople were away from it and the laboratories
empty.
“Here comes the faithful slave of the Rue de la Poterie!” cried the
illustrious Gaudissart.
Sure enough, a waiter entered, followed by two scullions bearing
in three baskets a dinner, and six bottles of wine selected with
discernment.
“How shall we ever eat it all up?” said Popinot.
“The man of letters!” cried Gaudissart, “don’t forget him. Finot loves
the pomps and the vanities; he is coming, the innocent boy, armed with
a dishevelled prospectus--the word is pat, hein? Prospectuses are always
thirsty. We must water the seed if we want flowers. Depart, slaves!” he
added, with a gorgeous air, “there is gold for you.”
He gave them ten sous with a gesture worthy of Napoleon, his idol.
“Thank you, Monsieur Gaudissart,” said the scullions, better pleased
with the jest than with the money.
“As for you, my son,” he said to the waiter, who stayed to serve
the dinner, “below is a porter’s wife; she lives in a lair where she
sometimes cooks, as in other days Nausicaa washed, for pure amusement.
Find her, implore her goodness; interest her, young man, in the
warmth of these dishes. Tell her she shall be blessed, and above all,
respected, most respected, by Felix Gaudissart, son of Jean-Francois
Gaudissart, grandson of all the Gaudissarts, vile proletaries of ancient
birth, his forefathers. March! and mind that everything is hot, or I’ll
deal retributive justice by a rap on your knuckles!”
Another knock sounded.
“Here comes the pungent Andoche!” shouted Gaudissart.
A stout, chubby-faced fellow of medium height, from head to foot the
evident son of a hat-maker, with round features whose shrewdness was
hidden under a restrained and subdued manner, suddenly appeared. His
face, which was melancholy, like that of a man weary of poverty, lighted
up hilariously when he caught sight of the table, and the bottles
swathed in significant napkins. At Gaudissart’s shout, his pale-blue
eyes sparkled, his big head, hollowed like that of a Kalmuc Tartar,
bobbed from right to left, and he bowed to Popinot with a queer manner,
which meant neither servility nor respect, but was rather that of a man
who feels he is not in his right place and will make no concessions.
He was just beginning to find out that he possessed no literary talent
whatever; he meant to stay in the profession, however, by living on the
brains of others, and getting astride the shoulders of those more able
than himself, making his profit there instead of struggling any longer
at his own ill-paid work. At the present moment he had drunk to the
dregs the humiliation of applications and appeals which constantly
failed, and he was now, like people in the higher walks of finance,
about to change his tone and become insolent, advisedly. But he needed a
small sum in hand on which to start, and Gaudissart gave him a share in
the present affair of ushering into the world the oil of Popinot.
“You are to negotiate on his account with the newspapers. But don’t
play double; if you do I’ll fight you to the death. Give him his money’s
worth.”
Popinot gazed at “the author” which much uneasiness. People who are
purely commercial look upon an author with mingled sentiments of fear,
compassion, and curiosity. Though Popinot had been well brought up, the
habits of his relations, their ideas, and the obfuscating effect of a
shop and a counting-room, had lowered his intelligence by bending it to
the use and wont of his calling,--a phenomenon which may often be
seen if we observe the transformations which take place in a hundred
comrades, when ten years supervene between the time when they leave
college or a public school, to all intents and purposes alike, and
the period when they meet again after contact with the world. Andoche
accepted Popinot’s perturbation as a compliment.
“Now then, before dinner, let’s get to the bottom of the prospectus;
then we can drink without an afterthought,” said Gaudissart. “After
dinner one reads askew; the tongue digests.”
“Monsieur,” said Popinot, “a prospectus is often a fortune.”
“And for plebeians like myself,” said Andoche, “fortune is nothing more
than a prospectus.”
“Ha, very good!” cried Gaudissart, “that rogue of a Finot has the wit of
the forty Academicians.”
“Of a hundred Academicians,” said Popinot, bewildered by these ideas.
The impatient Gaudissart seized the manuscript and began to read in a
loud voice, with much emphasis, “CEPHALIC OIL.”
“I should prefer _Oil Cesarienne_,” said Popinot.
“My friend,” said Gaudissart, “you don’t know the provincials; there’s
a surgical operation called by that name, and they are such stupids that
they’ll think your oil is meant to facilitate childbirth. To drag them
back from that to hair is beyond even my powers of persuasion.”
“Without wishing to defend my term,” said the author, “I must ask you
to observe that ‘Cephalic Oil’ means oil for the head, and sums up your
ideas in one word.”
“Well, let us see,” said Popinot impatiently.
Here follows the prospectus; the same which the trade receives, by the
thousand, to the present day (another _piece justificative_):--
GOLD MEDAL
EXPOSITION OF 1819