IV

Birotteau's neighbor was a small dealer in umbrellas, parasols, and

canes, named Cayron,--a man from Languedoc, doing a poor business,

whom Cesar had several times befriended. Cayron wished nothing better

than to confine himself to the ground-floor and let the rich perfumer

take the floor above it, thus diminishing his rent.

"Well, neighbor," said Birotteau familiarly, as he entered the man's

shop, "my wife consents to the enlargement of our premises. If you

like, we will go and see Monsieur Molineux at eleven o'clock."

"My dear Monsieur Birotteau," said the umbrella-man, "I have not asked

you any compensation for this cession; but you are aware that a good

merchant ought to make money out of everything."

"What the devil!" cried Birotteau. "I'm not made of money. I don't

know that my architect can do the thing at all. He told me that before

concluding my arrangements I must know whether the floors were on the

same level. Then, supposing Monsieur Molineux does allow me to cut a

door in the wall, is it a party-wall? Moreover, I have to turn my

staircase, and make a new landing, so as to get a passage-way on the

same floor. All that costs money, and I don't want to ruin myself."

"Oh, monsieur," said the southerner. "Before you are ruined, the sun

will have married the earth and they'll have had children."

Birotteau stroked his chin, rose on the points of his toes, and fell

back upon his heels.

"Besides," resumed Cayron, "all I ask you to do is to cash these

securities for me--"

And he held out sixteen notes amounting in all to five thousand

francs.

"Ah!" said the perfumer turning them over. "Small fry, two months,

three months--"

"Take them as low as six per cent," said the umbrella-man humbly.

"Am I a usurer?" asked the perfumer reproachfully.

"What can I do, monsieur? I went to your old clerk, du Tillet, and he

would not take them at any price. No doubt he wanted to find out how

much I'd be willing to lose on them."

"I don't know those signatures," said the perfumer.

"We have such queer names in canes and umbrellas; they belong to the

peddlers."

"Well, I won't say that I will take all; but I'll manage the short

ones."

"For the want of a thousand francs--sure to be repaid in four months--

don't throw me into the hands of the blood-suckers who get the best of

our profits; do take all, monsieur! I do so little in the way of

discount that I have no credit; that is what kills us little

retailers."

"Well, I'll cash your notes; Celestin will make out the account. Be

ready at eleven, will you? There's my architect, Monsieur Grindot,"

said the perfumer, catching sight of the young man, with whom he had

made an appointment at Monsieur de la Billardiere's the night before.

"Contrary to the custom of men of talent you are punctual, monsieur,"

said Cesar, displaying his finest commercial graces. "If punctuality,

in the words of our king,--a man of wit as well as a statesman,--is

the politeness of princes, it is also the wealth of merchants. Time,

time is gold, especially to you artists. I permit myself to say to you

that architecture is the union of all the arts. We will not enter

through the shop," he added, opening the private door of his house.

Four years earlier Monsieur Grindot had carried off the /grand prix/

in architecture, and had lately returned from Rome where he had spent

three years at the cost of the State. In Italy the young man had

dreamed of art; in Paris he thought of fortune. Government alone can

pay the needful millions to raise an architect to glory; it is

therefore natural that every ambitious youth of that calling,

returning from Rome and thinking himself a Fontaine or a Percier,

should bow before the administration. The liberal student became a

royalist, and sought to win the favor of influential persons. When a

/grand prix/ man behaves thus, his comrades call him a trimmer. The

young architect in question had two ways open to him,--either to serve

the perfumer well, or put him under contribution. Birotteau the

deputy-mayor, Birotteau the future possessor of half the lands about

the Madeleine, where he would sooner or later build up a fine

neighborhood, was a man to keep on good terms with. Grindot

accordingly resolved to sacrifice his immediate gains to his future

interests. He listened patiently to the plans, the repetitions, and

the ideas of this worthy specimen of the bourgeois class, the constant

butt of the witty shafts and ridicule of artists, and the object of

their everlasting contempt, nodding his head as if to show the

perfumer that he caught his ideas. When Cesar had thoroughly explained

everything, the young man proceeded to sum up for him his own plan.

"You have now three front windows on the first floor, besides the

window on the staircase which lights the landing; to these four

windows you mean to add two on the same level in the next house, by

turning the staircase, so as to open a way from one house to the other

on the street side."

"You have understood me perfectly," said the perfumer, surprised.

"To carry out your plan, you must light the new staircase from above,

and manage to get a porter's lodge beneath it."

"Beneath it?"

"Yes, the space over which it rests--"

"I understand, monsieur."

"As for your own appartement, give me carte-blanche to arrange and

decorate it. I wish to make it worthy--"

"Worthy! You have said the word, monsieur."

"How much time do you give me to complete the work?"

"Twenty days."

"What sum do you mean to put in the workmen's pockets?" asked Grindot.

"How much do you think it will cost?"

"An architect can estimate on a new building almost to a farthing,"

answered the young man; "but as I don't know how to deal with a

bourgeois--ah! excuse me, monsieur, the word slipped out--I must warn

you that it is impossible to calculate the costs of tearing down and

rebuilding. It will take at least eight days before I can give even an

approximate idea of them. Trust yourself to me: you shall have a

charming staircase, lighted from above, with a pretty vestibule

opening from the street, and in the space under the stairway--"

"Must that be used?"

"Don't be worried--I will find room for a little porter's lodge. Your

house shall be studied and remodelled /con amore/. Yes, monsieur, I

look to art and not to fortune. Above all things I do not want fame

before I have earned it. To my mind, the best means of winning credit

is not to play into the hands of contractors, but to get at good

effects cheaply."

"With such ideas, young man," said Birotteau in a patronizing tone,

"you will succeed."

"Therefore," resumed Grindot, "employ the masons, painters,

locksmiths, carpenters, and upholsterers yourself. I will simply look

over their accounts. Pay me only two thousand francs commission. It

will be money well laid out. Give me the premises to-morrow at twelve

o'clock, and have your workmen on the spot."

"How much it will cost, at a rough guess?" said Birotteau.

"From ten to twelve thousand francs," said Grindot. "That does not

count the furniture; of course you will renew that. Give me the

address of your cabinet-maker; I shall have to arrange with him about

the choice of colors, so as to have everything in keeping."

"Monsieur Braschon, Rue Saint-Antoine, takes my orders," said

Birotteau, assuming a ducal air.

The architect wrote down the address in one of those pretty note-books

which invariably come from women.

"Well," said Birotteau, "I trust to you, monsieur; only you must wait

till the lease of the adjoining house is made over to me, and I will

get permission to cut through the wall."

"Send me a note this evening," said the architect; "it will take me

all night to draw the plans--we would rather work for a bourgeois than

for the King of Prussia, that is to say for ourselves. I will now take

the dimensions, the pitch, the size of the widows, the pictures--"

"It must be finished on the appointed day," said Birotteau. "If not,

no pay."

"It shall be done," said the architect. "The workmen must do without

sleep; we will use drying oil in the paint. But don't let yourself be

taken in by the contractors; always ask their price in advance, and

have a written agreement."

"Paris is the only place in the world where you can wave a magic wand

like that," said Birotteau, with an Asiatic gesture worthy of the

Arabian Nights. "You will do me the honor to come to my ball,

monsieur? Men of talent are not all disdainful of commerce; and you

will meet a scientific man of the first order, Monsieur Vauquelin of

the Institute; also Monsieur de la Billardiere, Monsieur le comte de

Fontaine, Monsieur Lebas, judge and president of the Court of

commerce, various magistrates, Monsieur le comte de Grandville of the

royal suite, Monsieur Camusot of the Court of commerce, and Monsieur

Cardot, his father-in-law, and, perhaps, Monsieur le duc de

Lenoncourt, first gentleman of the bed-chamber to the king. I assemble

my friends as much--to celebrate the emancipation of our territory--as

to commemorate my--promotion to the order of the Legion of honor,"--

here Grindot made a curious gesture. "Possibly I showed myself worthy

of that--signal--and royal--favor, by my services on the bench, and by

fighting for the Bourbons upon the steps of Saint-Roch on the 13th

Vendemiaire, where I was wounded by Napoleon. These claims--"

Constance, in a morning gown, here came out of her daughter's bedroom,

where she had been dressing; her first glance cut short Cesar's

eloquence just as he was about to formulate in flowing phrase, though

modestly, the tale of his merits.

"/Tiens, Mimi/, this is Monsieur /de/ Grindot, a young man

distinguished in his own sphere of life, and the possessor of a great

talent. Monsieur is the architect recommended to us by Monsieur de la

Billardiere to superintend our /little/ alteration."

The perfumer slipped behind his wife and made a sign to the architect

to take notice of the word /little/, putting his finger on his lips.

Grindot took the cue.

"Will it be very expensive?" said Constance to the architect.

"Oh, no, madame; six thousand francs at a rough guess."

"A rough guess!" exclaimed Madame Birotteau. "Monsieur, I entreat you,

begin nothing without an estimate and the specifications signed. I

know the ways of contractors: six thousand francs means twenty

thousand. We are not in a position to commit such extravagance. I beg

you, monsieur,--though of course my husband is master in his own

house,--give him time to reflect."

"Madame, monsieur the deputy-mayor has ordered me to deliver the

premises, all finished, in twenty days. If we delay, you will be

likely to incur the expense without obtaining the looked-for result."

"There are expenses and expenses," said the handsome mistress of "The

Queen of Roses."

"Ah! madame, do you think an architect who seeks to put up public

buildings finds it glorious to decorate a mere appartement? I have

come down to such details merely to oblige Monsieur de la Billardiere;

and if you fear--"

Here he made a movement to retreat.

"Well, well, monsieur," said Constance re-entering her daughter's

room, where she threw her head on Cesarine's shoulder.

"Ah, my daughter!" she cried, "your father will ruin himself! He has

engaged an architect with mustachios, who talks about public

buildings! He is going to pitch the house out of windows and build us

a Louvre. Cesar is never idle about his follies; he only spoke to me

about it in the night, and he begins it in the morning!"

"Never mind, mamma; let papa do as he likes. The good God has always

taken care of him," said Cesarine, kissing her mother and sitting down

to the piano, to let the architect know that the perfumer's daughter

was not ignorant of the fine arts.

When Grindot came in to measure the bedroom he was surprised and taken

aback at the beauty of Cesarine. Just out of her dressing-room and

wearing a pretty morning-gown, fresh and rosy as a young girl is fresh

and rosy at eighteen, blond and slender, with blue eyes, Cesarine

seemed to the young artist a picture of the elasticity, so rare in

Paris, that fills and rounds the delicate cheek, and tints with the

color adored of painters, the tracery of blue veins throbbing beneath

the whiteness of her clear skin. Though she lived in the lymphatic

atmosphere of a Parisian shop, where the air stagnates and the sun

seldom shines, her habits gave her the same advantages which the open-

air life of Rome gives to the Transteverine peasant-woman. Her hair,--

which was abundant, and grew, like that of her father, in points upon

her forehead,--was caught up in a twist which showed the lines of a

well-set neck, and then rippled downward in curls that were

scrupulously cared for, after the fashion of young shop-women, whose

desire to attract attention inspires the truly English minutiae of

their toilet. The beauty of this young girl was not the beauty of an

English lady, nor of a French duchess, but the round and glowing

beauty of a Flemish Rubens. Cesarine had the turned-up nose of her

father, but it was piquant through the delicacy of its modelling,--

like those noses, essentially French, which have been so well

reproduced by Largilliere. Her skin, of a firm full texture, bespoke

the vitality of a virgin; she had the fine brow of her mother, but it

was clear with the serenity of a young girl who knows no care. Her

liquid blue eyes, bathed in rich fluid, expressed the tender grace of

a glowing happiness. If that happiness took from her head the poetry

which painters insist on giving to their pictures my making them a

shade too pensive, the vague physical languor of a young girl who has

never left her mother's side made up for it, and gave her a species of

ideality. Notwithstanding the graceful lines of her figure, she was

strongly built. Her feet betrayed the peasant origin of her father and

her own defects of race, as did the redness of her hands, the sign of

the thoroughly bourgeois life. Sooner or later she would grow stout.

She had caught the sentiment of dress from the elegant young women who

came to the shop, and had learned from them certain movements of the

head, certain ways of speaking and of moving; and she could play the

well-bred woman in a way that turned the heads of all the young men,

especially the clerks, in whose eyes she appeared truly distinguished.

Popinot swore that he would have no other wife than Cesarine. The

liquid brightness of that eye, which a look, or a tone of reproach,

might cause to overflow in tears, was all that kept him to a sense of

masculine superiority. The charming girl inspired love without leaving

time to ask whether she had mind enough to make it durable. But of

what value is the thing they call in Paris /mind/ to a class whose

principal element of happiness is virtue and good sense?

In her moral qualities Cesarine was like her mother, somewhat bettered

by the superfluities of education; she loved music, drew the Madonna

della Sedia in chalk, and read the works of Mmes. Cottin and

Riccoboni, of Bernadin de Saint-Pierre, Fenelon, and Racine. She was

never seen behind the counter with her mother except for a few moments

before sitting down to dinner, or on some special occasion when she

replaced her. Her father and mother, like all persons who have risen

from small beginnings, and who cultivate the ingratitude of their

children by putting them above themselves, delighted in deifying

Cesarine, who happily had the virtues of her class, and took no

advantage of their weakness.

Madame Birotteau followed the architect with an anxious and appealing

eye, watching with terror, and pointing out to her daughter, the

fantastic movements of the four-foot rule, that wand of architects and

builders, with which Grindot was measuring. She saw in those

mysterious weavings a conjuring spirit that augured evil; she wished

the walls were less high, the rooms less large, and dared not question

the young man on the effects of his sorcery.

"Do not be afraid, madame, I shall carry nothing off," said the

artist, smiling.

Cesarine could not help smiling.

"Monsieur," said Constance, in a supplicating voice, not even noticing

the tit-for-tat of the young man, "consider economy, and later we may

be able to serve you--"

*****

Before starting to see Monsieur Molineux, the owner of the adjoining

house, Cesar wished to get from Roguin the private deed about the

transference of the lease which Alexandre Crottat had been ordered to

draw up. As he left the notary's house, he saw du Tillet at the window

of Roguin's study. Although the /liaison/ of his former clerk with the

lawyer's wife made it not unlikely that he should see du Tillet there

at this hour when the negotiations about the Madeleine were going on,

Birotteau, in spite of his extreme confidence, felt uneasy. The

excited manner of du Tillet seemed the sign of a discussion. "Can he

be in it?" thought Cesar, with a flash of commercial prudence. The

suspicion passed like lightning through his mind. He looked again and

saw Madame Roguin, and the presence of du Tillet was no longer

suspicious. "Still, suppose Constance were right?" he said to himself.

"What a fool I am to listen to women's notions! I'll speak of it to my

uncle Pillerault this morning; it is only a step from the Cour Batave,

where Monsieur Molineux lives, to the Rue des Bourdonnais."

A cautious observer, or a merchant who had met with swindlers in his

business career, would have been saved by this sight; but the

antecedents of Birotteau, the incapacity of his mind, which had little

power to follow up the chain of inductions by which a superior man

reaches a conclusion, all conspired to blind him. He found the

umbrella-man in full dress, and they were about to start, when

Virginie, the cook, caught him by the arm:--

"Monsieur, madame does not wish you to go out--"

"Pshaw!" said Birotteau, "more women's notions!"

"--without your coffee, which is ready."

"That's true. My neighbor," he said to Cayron, "I have so many things

in my head that I can't think of my stomach. Do me the kindness to go

forward; we will meet at Monsieur Molineux' door, unless you are

willing to go up and explain matters to him, which would save time."

Monsieur Molineux was a grotesque little man, living on his rents,--a

species of being that exists nowhere but in Paris, like a certain

lichen which grows only in Iceland. This comparison is all the more

apt because he belonged to a mixed nature, to an animal-vegetable

kingdom which some modern Mercier might build up of cryptograms that

push up upon, and flower, and die in or under the plastered walls of

the strange unhealthy houses where they prefer to cluster. The first

aspect of this human plant--umbelliferous, judging by the fluted blue

cap which crowned it, with a stalk encased in greenish trousers, and

bulbous roots swathed in list shoes--offered to the eye a flat and

faded countenance, which certainly betrayed nothing poisonous. In this

queer product might be recognized the typical stockholder, who

believes every report which the daily press baptizes with ink, and is

content, for all response, to say, "Read what the papers say,"--the

bourgeois, essentially the friend of order, always revolting in his

moral being against power, though always obeying it; a creature feeble

in the mass but fierce in isolated circumstances, hard as a constable

when his own rights are in question, yet giving fresh chickweed to his

bird and fish-bones to his cat, interrupting the signing of a lease to

whistle to a canary, suspicious as a jailer, but apt to put his money

into a bad business and then endeavor to get it back by niggardly

avarice. The evil savor of this hybrid flower was only revealed by

use; its nauseous bitterness needed the stewing of some business in

which his interests were mingled with those of other men, to bring it

fully out. Like all Parisians, Molineux had the lust of dominating; he

craved the share of sovereignty which is exercised more or less by

every one, even a porter, over a greater or lesser number of victims,

--over wife, children, tenants, clerks, horses, dogs, monkeys, to whom

they send, on the rebound, the mortifications they have endured in the

higher spheres to which they aspired.

This annoying old man had neither wife, child, nephew, or niece. He

bullied his servant-of-all-work too much to make her a victim; for she

escaped all contact with her master by doing her work and keeping out

of his way. His appetite for tyranny was thus balked; and to satisfy

it in some way he patiently studied the laws relating to rentals and

party-walls; he fathomed the jurisprudence which regulates the

dwellings of Paris in an infinite number of petty questions as to

tenants, abutters, liabilities, taxes, repairs, sweepings, decorations

for the Fete-Dieu, waste-pipes, lighting, projections over the public

way, and the neighborhood of unhealthy buildings. His means, his

strength, in fact his whole mind was spent in keeping his proprietary

rights on a complete war-footing. He had made it an amusement, and the

amusement had become a monomania. He was fond of protecting citizens

against the encroachment of illegal proceedings; but finding such

subjects of complaint rare, he had finally turned upon his own

tenants. A tenant became his enemy, his inferior, his subject, his

vassal; he laid claim to his subservience, and looked upon any man as

a brute who passed him on the stairway without speaking. He wrote out

his bills for rent himself, and sent them on the morning of the day

they fell due. The debtor who was behindhand in his payment received a

legal notice to quit at an appointed time. Then followed seizures,

law-suits, costs, and the whole judicial array set in motion with the

rapidity of what the head's-man calls the "mechanism." Molineux

granted neither grace nor time; his heart was a callus in the

direction of a lease.

"I will lend you the money if you want it," he would say to a man he

thought solvent, "but pay my rent; all delays carry with them a loss

of interest for which the law does not indemnify us."

After long study of the caprices and capers of tenants who persisted,

after the fashion of dynasties, in upsetting the arrangements of their

predecessors, he had drawn up a charter of his own and followed it

religiously. In accordance therewith, the old fellow made no repairs:

no chimney ever smoked, the stairs were clean, the ceilings white, the

cornices irreproachable, the floors firm on their joists, the paint

satisfactory; the locks were never more than three years old, not a

pane of glass was missing, there were no cracks, and he saw no broken

tiles until a tenant vacated the premises. When he met the tenants on

their first arrival he was accompanied by a locksmith and a painter

and glazier,--very convenient folks, as he remarked. The lessee was at

liberty to make improvements; but if the unhappy man did so, little

Molineux thought night and day of how he could dislodge him and relet

the improved appartement on better terms. He watched and waited and

spun the web of his mischievous legal proceedings. He knew all the

tricks of Parisian legislation in the matter of leases. Factious and

fond of scribbling, he wrote polite and specious letters to his

tenants; but at the bottom of all his civil sentences could be seen,

as in his faded and cozening face, the soul of a Shylock. He always

demanded six months' rent in advance, to be deducted from the last

quarter of the lease under an array of prickly conditions which he

invented. If new tenants offered themselves, he got information about

them from the police; for he would not have people of certain

callings,--he was afraid, for instance, of hammers. When the lease was

to be signed, he kept the deed and spelled it over for a week, fearing

what he called the /et caetera/ of lawyers.

Outside of his notions as a proprietor, Jean-Baptiste Molineux seemed

good and obliging. He played at boston without complaining of the

players; he laughed at the things which make a bourgeois laugh; talked

of what others of his kind talked about,--the arbitrary powers of

bakers who nefariously sell false weights, of the police, of the

heroic seventeen deputies of the Left. He read the "Good Sense" of the

Cure Meslier, and went to Mass; not that he had any choice between

deism and Christianity, but he took the wafer when offered to him, and

argued that he was therefore safe from the interfering claims of the

clergy. The indefatigable litigant wrote letters on this subject to

the newspapers, which the newspapers did not insert and never

answered. He was in other respects one of those estimable bourgeois

who solemnly put Christmas logs on their fire, draw kings at play,

invent April-fools, stroll on the boulevards when the weather is fine,

go to see the skating, and are always to be found on the terrace of

the Place Louis XV. at two o'clock on the days of the fireworks, with

a roll in their pockets so that they may get and keep a front place.

The Cour Batave, where the little old man lived, is the product of one

of those fantastic speculations of which no man can explain the

meaning after they are once completed. This cloistral structure, with

arcades and interior galleries built of free-stone, with a fountain at

one end,--a parched fountain, which opens its lion's mouth less to

give water than to ask it from the passers-by,--was doubtless invented

to endow the Saint-Denis quarter with a species of Palais-Royal. The

place, unhealthy and buried on all four sides by the high walls of its

houses, has no life or movement except in the daytime; it is a central

spot where dark passages meet, and connect the quarter of the markets

with the Saint-Martin quarter by means of the famous Rue Quincampoix,

--damp ways in which hurried foot-passengers contract rheumatism. But

at night no spot in Paris is more deserted; it might be called the

catacombs of commerce. In it there are various industrial /cloaca/,

very few Dutchmen, but a great many grocers. The appartements in this

merchant-place have, naturally, no other outlook than that of the

common court on which all the windows give, so that rents are at a

minimum.

Monsieur Molineux lived in one of the angles, on the sixth floor for

sanitary reasons, the air not being pure at a less height than seventy

feet above the ground. At this altitude the worthy proprietor enjoyed

an enchanting view of the windmills of Montmartre as he walked among

the gutters on the roof, where he cultivated flowers, in spite of

police regulations against the hanging gardens of our modern Babylon.

His appartement was made up of four rooms, without counting the

precious /anglaises/ on the floor above him of which he had the key;

they belonged to him, he had made them, and he felt he was legally

entitled to them. On entering his appartement, a repulsive barrenness

plainly showed the avarice of the owner: in the antechamber were six

straw chairs and a porcelain stove; on the walls, which were covered

with a bottle-green paper, were four engravings bought at auction. In

the dining-room were two sideboards, two cages full of birds, a table

covered with oil-cloth, a barometer, a window-door which opened on the

hanging gardens, and chairs of dark mahogany covered with horse-hair.

The salon had little curtains of some old green-silk stuff, and

furniture of painted white-wood covered with green worsted velvet. As

to the chamber of the old celibate it was furnished with Louis XV.

articles, so dirty and disfigured through long usage that a woman

dressed in white would have been afraid of soiling herself by contact

with them. The chimney-piece was adorned by a clock with two columns,

between which was a dial-case that served as a pedestal to Pallas

brandishing her lance: a myth. The floor was covered with plates full

of scraps intended for the cats, on which there was much danger of

stepping. Above a chest of drawers in rosewood hung a portrait done in

pastel,--Molineux in his youth. There were also books, tables covered

with shabby green bandboxes, on a bracket a number of his deceased

canaries stuffed; and, finally, a chilly bed that might formerly have

belonged to a Carmelite.

*****

Cesar Birotteau was delighted with the extreme politeness of Molineux,

whom he found wrapped in a gray woollen dressing-gown, watching his

milk in a little metal heater on the edge of his fireplace, while his

coffee-grounds were boiling in a little brown earthenware jug from

which, every now and then, he poured a few drops into his coffee-pot.

The umbrella-man, anxious not to disturb his landlord, had gone to the

door to admit Birotteau. Molineux held the mayors and deputies of the

city of Paris in much esteem;: he called them "my municipal officers."

At sight of the magistrate he rose, and remained standing, cap in

hand, until the great Birotteau was seated.

"No, monsieur; yes, monsieur; ah, monsieur, if I had known I should

have had the honor of receiving in the bosom of my humble /penates/ a

member of the municipality of Paris, believe me I should have made it

my duty to call upon you, although I am your landlord--or, on the

point of becoming so."

Birotteau made him a sign to put on his cap.

"No, I shall not; not until you are seated, and have replaced yours,

if you feel the cold. My room is chilly, the smallness of my means not

permitting--God grant your wishes!" he added, as Birotteau sneezed

while he felt in his pockets for the deeds. In presenting them to

Molineux Cesar remarked, to avoid all unnecessary delay, that Monsieur

Roguin had drawn them up.

"I do not dispute the legal talents of Monsieur Roguin, an old name

well-known in the notariat of Paris; but I have my own little customs,

I do my own business (an excusable hobby), and my notary is--"

"But this matter is very simple," said the perfumer, who was used to

the quick business methods of merchants.

"Simple!" cried Molineux. "Nothing is simple in such matters. Ah! you

are not a landlord, monsieur, and you may think yourself happy. If you

knew to what lengths of ingratitude tenants can go, and to what

precautions we are driven! Why, monsieur, I once had a tenant--"

And for a quarter an hour he recounted how a Monsieur Gendrin,

designer, had deceived the vigilance of his porter, Rue Saint-Honore.

Monsieur Gendrin had committed infamies worthy of Marat,--obscene

drawings at which the police winked. This Gendrin, a profoundly

immoral artist, had brought in women of bad lives, and made the

staircase intolerable,--conduct worthy of a man who made caricatures

of the government. And why such conduct? Because his rent had been

asked for on the 15th! Gendrin and Molineux were about to have a

lawsuit, for, though he did not pay, Gendrin insisted on holding the

empty appartement. Molineux received anonymous letters, no doubt from

Gendrin, which threatened him with assassination some night in the

passages about the Cour Batave.

"It has got to such a pass, monsieur," he said, winding up the tale,

"that monsieur the prefect of police, to whom I confided my trouble (I

profited by the occasion to drop him a few words on the modifications

which should be introduced into the laws to meet the case), has

authorized me to carry pistols for my personal safety."

The little old man got up and fetched the pistols.

"There they are!" he cried.

"But, monsieur, you have nothing to fear from me," said Birotteau,

looking at Cayron, and giving him a glance and a smile intended to

express pity for such a man.

Molineux detected it; he was mortified at such a look from an officer

of the municipality, whose duty it was to protect all persons under

his administration. In any one else he might have pardoned it, but in

Birotteau the deputy-mayor, never!

"Monsieur," he said in a dry tone, "an esteemed commercial judge, a

deputy-mayor, and an honorable merchant would not descend to such

petty meannesses,--for they are meannesses. But in your case there is

an opening through the wall which must be agreed to by your landlord,

Monsieur le comte de Grandville; there are stipulations to be made and

agreed upon about replacing the wall at the end of your lease. Besides

which, rents have hitherto been low, but they are rising; the Place

Vendome is looking up, the Rue Castiglione is to be built upon. I am

binding myself--binding myself down!"

"Let us come to a settlement," said Birotteau, amazed. "How much do

you want? I know business well enough to be certain that all your

reasons can be silenced by the superior consideration of money. Well,

how much is it?"

"That's only fair, monsieur the deputy. How much longer does your own

lease run?"

"Seven years," answered Birotteau.

"Think what my first floor will be worth in seven years!" said

Molineux. "Why, what would two furnished rooms let for in that

quarter?--more than two hundred francs a month perhaps! I am binding

myself--binding myself by a lease. The rent ought to be fifteen

hundred francs. At that price I will consent to the transfer of the

two rooms by Monsieur Cayron, here present," he said, with a sly wink

at the umbrella-man; "and I will give you a lease of them for seven

consecutive years. The costs of piercing the wall are to belong to

you; and you must procure the consent of Monsieur le comte de

Grandville and the cession of all his rights in the matter. You are

responsible for all damage done in making this opening. You will not

be expected to replace the wall yourself, that will be my business;

but you will at once pay me five hundred francs as an indemnity

towards it. We never know who may live or die, and I can't run after

anybody to get the wall rebuilt."

"Those conditions seem to me pretty fair," said Birotteau.

"Next," said Molineux. "You must pay me seven hundred and fifty

francs, /hic et hinc/, to be deducted from the last six months of your

lease; this will be acknowledged in the lease itself. Oh, I will

accept small bills for the value of the rent at any date you please! I

am prompt and square in business. We will agree that you are to close

up the door on my staircase (where you are to have no right of entry),

at your own cost, in masonry. Don't fear,--I shall ask you no

indemnity for that at the end of your lease; I consider it included in

the five hundred francs. Monsieur, you will find me just."

"We merchants are not so sharp," said the perfumer. "It would not be

possible to do business if we made so many stipulations."

"Oh, in business, that is very different, especially in perfumery,

where everything fits like a glove," said the old fellow with a sour

smile; "but when you come to letting houses in Paris, nothing is

unimportant. Why, I have a tenant in the Rue Montorgeuil who--"

"Monsieur," said Birotteau, "I am sorry to detain you from your

breakfast: here are the deeds, correct them. I agree to all that you

propose, we will sign them to-morrow; but to-day let us come to an

agreement by word of mouth, for my architect wants to take possession

of the premises in the morning."

"Monsieur," resumed Molineux with a glance at the umbrella-merchant,

"part of a quarter has expired; Monsieur Cayron would not wish to pay

it; we will add it to the rest, so that your lease may run from

January to January. It will be more in order."

"Very good," said Birotteau.

"And the five per cent for the porter--"

"But," said Birotteau, "if you deprive me of the right of entrance,

that is not fair."

"Oh, you are a tenant," said little Molineux, peremptorily, up in arms

for the principle. "You must pay the tax on doors and windows and your

share in all the other charges. If everything is clearly understood

there will be no difficulty. You must be doing well, monsieur; your

affairs are prospering?"

"Yes," said Birotteau. "But my motive is, I may say, something

different. I assemble my friends as much to celebrate the emancipation

of our territory as to commemorate my promotion to the order of the

Legion of honor--"

"Ah! ah!" said Molineux, "a recompense well-deserved!"

"Yes," said Birotteau, "possibly I showed myself worthy of that signal

and 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. These claims--"

"Are equal to those of our brave soldiers of the old army. The ribbon

is red, for it is dyed with their blood."

At these words, taken from the "Constitutionnel," Birotteau could not

keep from inviting little Molineux to the ball, who thanked him

profusely and felt like forgiving the disdainful look. The old man

conducted his new tenant as far as the landing, and overwhelmed him

with politeness. When Birotteau reached the middle of the Cour Batave

he gave Cayron a merry look.

"I did not think there could exist such--weak beings!" he said, with

difficulty keeping back the word /fools/.

"Ah, monsieur," said Cayron, "it is not everybody that has your

talents."

Birotteau might easily believe himself a superior being in the

presence of Monsieur Molineux; the answer of the umbrella-man made him

smile agreeably, and he bowed to him with a truly royal air as they

parted.

"I am close by the Markets," thought Cesar; "I'll attend to the matter

of the nuts."

*****

After an hour's search, Birotteau, who was sent by the market-women to

the Rue de Lombards where nuts for sugarplums were to be found, heard

from his friend Matifat that the fruit in bulk was only to be had of a

certain Madame Angelique Madou, living in the Rue Perrin-Gasselin, the

sole establishment which kept the true filbert of Provence, and the

veritable white hazel-nut of the Alps.

The Rue Perrin-Gasselin is one of the narrow thoroughfares in a square

labyrinth enclosed by the quay, the Rue Saint-Denis, the Rue de la

Ferronnerie, and the Rue de la Monnaie; it is, as it were, one of the

entrails of the city. There swarm an infinite number of heterogeneous

and mixed articles of merchandise, evil-smelling and jaunty, herrings

and muslin, silks and honey, butter and gauze, and above all a number

of petty trades, of which Paris knows as little as a man knows of what

is going on in his pancreas, and which, at the present moment, had a

blood-sucker named Bidault, otherwise called Gigonnet, a money-lender,

who lived in the Rue Grenetat. In this quarter old stables were filled

with oil-casks, and the carriage-houses were packed with bales of

cotton. Here were stored in bulk the articles that were sold at retail

in the markets.

Madame Madou, formerly a fish-woman, but thrown, some ten years since,

into the dried-fruit trade by a liaison with the former proprietor of

her present business (an affair which had long fed the gossip of the

markets), had originally a vigorous and enticing beauty, now lost

however in a vast embonpoint. She lived on the lower floor of a yellow

house, which was falling to ruins, and was held together at each story

by iron cross-bars. The deceased proprietor had succeeded in getting

rid of all competitors, and had made his business a monopoly. In spite

of a few slight defects of education, his heiress was able to carry it

along, and take care of her stores, which were in coachhouses,

stables, and old workshops, where she fought the vermin with eminent

success. Not troubled with desk or ledgers, for she could neither read

nor write, she answered a letter with a blow of her fist, considering

it an insult. In the main she was a good woman, with a high-colored

face, and a foulard tied over her cap, who mastered with bugle voice

the wagoners when they brought the merchandise; such squabbles usually

ending in a bottle of the "right sort." She had no disputes with the

agriculturists who consigned her the fruit, for they corresponded in

ready money,--the only possible method of communication, to receive

which Mere Madou paid them a visit in the fine season of the year.

Birotteau found this shrewish trader among sacks of filberts, nuts,

and chestnuts.

"Good-morning, my dear lady," said Birotteau with a jaunty air.

"/Your/ dear!" she said. "Hey! my son, what's there agreeable between

us? Did we ever mount guard over kings and queens together?"

"I am a perfumer, and what is more I am deputy-mayor of the second

arrondissement; thus, as magistrate and as customer, I request you to

take another tone with me."

"I marry when I please," said the virago. "I don't trouble the mayor,

or bother his deputies. As for my customers, they adore me, and I talk

to 'em as I choose. If they don't like it, they can snake off

elsewhere."

"This is the result of monopoly," thought Birotteau.

"Popole!--that's my godson,--he must have got into mischief. Have you

come about him, my worthy magistrate?" she said, softening her voice.

"No; I had the honor to tell you that I came as a customer."

"Well, well! and what's your name, my lad? Haven't seen you about

before, have I?"

"If you take that tone, you ought to sell your nuts cheap," said

Birotteau, who proceeded to give his name and all his distinctions.

"Ha! you're the Birotteau that's got the handsome wife. And how many

of the sweet little nuts may you want, my love?"

"Six thousand weight."

"That's all I have," said the seller, in a voice like a hoarse flute.

"My dear monsieur, you are not one of the sluggards who waste their

time on girls and perfumes. God bless you, you've got something to do!

Excuse me a bit. You'll be a jolly customer, dear to the heart of the

woman I love best in the world."

"Who is that?"

"Hey! the dear Madame Madou."

"What's the price of your nuts?"

"For you, old fellow, twenty-five francs a hundred, if you take them

all."

"Twenty-five francs!" cried Birotteau. "Fifteen hundred francs! I

shall want perhaps a hundred thousand a year."

"But just look how fine they are; fresh as a daisy," she said,

plunging her red arm into a sack of filberts. "Plump, no empty ones,

my dear man. Just think! grocers sell their beggarly trash at twenty-

four sous a pound, and in every four pounds they put a pound of

/hollows/. Must I lose my profits to oblige you? You're nice enough,

but you don't please me all that! If you want so many, we might make a

bargain at twenty francs. I don't want to send away a deputy-mayor,--

bad luck to the brides, you know! Now, just handle those nuts; heavy,

aren't they? Less than fifty to the pound; no worms there, I can tell

you."

"Well, then, send six thousand weight, for two thousand francs at

ninety days' sight, to my manufactory, Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple,

to-morrow morning early."

"You're in as great a hurry as a bride! Well, adieu, monsieur the

mayor; don't bear me a grudge. But if it is all the same to you," she

added, following Birotteau through the yard, "I would like your note

at forty days, because I have let you have them too cheap, and I don't

want to lose the discount. Pere Gigonnet may have a tender heart, but

he sucks the soul out of us as a spider sucks a fly."

"Well, then, fifty days. But they are to be weighed by the hundred

pounds, so that there may be no hollow ones. Without that, no

bargain."

"Ah, the dog! he knows what he's about," said Madame Madou; "can't

make a fool of him! It is those rascals in the Rue des Lombards who

have put him up to that! Those big wolves are all in a pack to eat up

the innocent lambs."

This lamb was five feet high and three feet round, and she looked like

a mile-post, dressed in striped calico, without a belt.

The perfumer, lost in thought, was ruminating as he went along the Rue

Saint-Honore about his duel with Macassar Oil. He was meditating on

the labels and the shape of the bottles, discussing the quality of the

corks, the color of the placards. And yet people say there is no

poetry in commerce! Newton did not make more calculations for his

famous binomial than Birotteau made for his Comagene Essence,--for by

this time the Oil had subsided into an Essence, and he went from one

description to the other without observing any difference. His head

spun with his computations, and he took the lively activity of its

emptiness for the substantial work of real talent. He was so

preoccupied that he passed the turn leading to his uncle's house in

the Rue des Bourdonnais, and had to return upon his steps.