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.