VI

Anselme Popinot went down the Rue Saint-Honore and rushed along the

Rue des Deux-Ecus to seize upon a young man whom his commercial

/second-sight/ pointed out to him as the principal instrument of his

future fortune. Popinot the judge had once done a great service to the

cleverest of all commercial travellers, to him whose triumphant

loquacity and activity were to win him, in coming years, the title of

The Illustrious. Devoted especially to the hat-trade and the /article-

Paris/, this prince of travellers was called, at the time of which we

write, purely and simply, Gaudissart. At the age of twenty-two he was

already famous by the power of his commercial magnetism. In those days

he was slim, with a joyous eye, expressive face, unwearied memory, and

a glance that guessed the wants of every one; and he deserved to be,

what in fact he became, the king of commercial travellers, the

/Frenchman par excellence/. A few days earlier Popinot had met

Gaudissart, who mentioned that he was on the point of departure; the

hope of finding him still in Paris sent the lover flying into the Rue

des Deux-Ecus, where he learned that the traveller had engaged his

place at the Messageries-Royales. To bid adieu to his beloved capital,

Gaudissart had gone to see a new piece at the Vaudeville; Popinot

resolved to wait for him. Was it not drawing a cheque on fortune to

entrust the launching of the oil of nuts to this incomparable

steersman of mercantile inventions, already petted and courted by the

richest firms? Popinot had reason to feel sure of Gaudissart. The

commercial traveller, so knowing in the art of entangling that most

wary of human beings, the little provincial trader, had himself become

entangled in the first conspiracy attempted against the Bourbons after

the Hundred Days. Gaudissart, to whom the open firmament of heaven was

indispensable, found himself shut up in prison, under the weight of an

accusation for a capital offence. Popinot the judge, who presided at

the trial, released him on the ground that it was nothing worse than

his imprudent folly which had mixed him up in the affair. A judge

anxious to please the powers in office, or a rabid royalist, would

have sent the luckless traveller to the scaffold. Gaudissart, who

believed he owed his life to the judge, cherished the grief of being

unable to make his savior any other return than that of sterile

gratitude. As he could not thank a judge for doing justice, he went to

the Ragons and declared himself liege-vassal forever to the house of

Popinot.

While waiting about for Gaudissart, Anselme naturally went to look at

the shop in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants, and got the address of the

owner, for the purpose of negotiating a lease. As he sauntered through

the dusky labyrinth of the great market, thinking how to achieve a

rapid success, he suddenly came, in the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, upon a

rare chance, and one of good omen, with which he resolved to regale

Cesar on the morrow. Soon after, while standing about the door of the

Hotel du Commerce, at the end of the Rue des Deux-Ecus, about

midnight, he heard, in the far distance of the Rue de Grenelle, a

vaudeville chorus sung by Gaudissart, with a cane accompaniment

significantly rapped upon the pavement.

"Monsieur," said Anselme, suddenly appearing from the doorway, "two

words?"

"Eleven, if you like," said the commercial traveller, brandishing his

loaded cane over the aggressor.

"I am Popinot," said poor Anselme.

"Enough!" cried Gaudissart, recognizing him. "What do you need? Money?

--absent, on leave, but we can get it. My arm for a duel?--all is

yours, from my head to my heels," and he sang,--

"Behold! behold!

A Frenchman true!"

"Come and talk with me for ten minutes; not in your room,--we might be

overheard,--but on the Quai de l'Horloge; there's no one there at this

hour," said Popinot. "It is about something important."

"Exciting, hey? Proceed."

In ten minutes Gaudissart, put in possession of Popinot's secret, saw

its importance.

"Come forth! perfumers, hair-dressers, petty retailers!"

sang Gaudissart, mimicking Lafon in the role of the Cid. "I shall grab

every shopkeeper in France and Navarre.--Oh, an idea! I was about to

start; I remain; I shall take commissions from the Parisian

perfumers."

"Why?"

"To strangle your rivals, simpleton! If I take their orders I can make

their perfidious cosmetics drink oil, simply by talking and working

for yours only. A first-rate traveller's trick! Ha! ha! we are the

diplomatists of commerce. Famous! As for your prospectus, I'll take

charge of that. I've got a friend--early childhood--Andoche Finot, son

of the hat-maker in the Rue du Coq, the old buffer who launched me

into travelling on hats. Andoche, who has a great deal of wit,--he got

it all out of the heads tiled by his father,--he is in literature; he

does the minor theatres in the 'Courrier des Spectacles.' His father,

an old dog chock-full of reasons for not liking wit, won't believe in

it; impossible to make him see that mind can be sold, sells itself in

fact: he won't believe in anything but the three-sixes. Old Finot

manages young Finot by famine. Andoche, a capable man, no fool,--I

don't consort with fools, except commercially,--Andoche makes epigrams

for the 'Fidele Berger,' which pays; while the other papers, for which

he works like a galley-slave, keep him down on his marrow-bones in the

dust. Are not they jealous, those fellows? Just the same in the

/article-Paris/! Finot wrote a superb comedy in one act for

Mademoiselle Mars, most glorious of the glorious!--ah, there's a woman

I love!--Well, in order to get it played he had to take it to the

Gaite. Andoche understands prospectuses, he worms himself into the

mercantile mind; and he's not proud, he'll concoct it for us gratis.

Damn it! with a bowl of punch and a few cakes we'll get it out of him;

for, Popinot, no nonsense! I am to travel on your commission without

pay: your competitors shall pay; I'll diddle it out of them. Let us

understand each other clearly. As for me, this triumph is an affair of

honor. My reward is to be best man at your wedding! I shall go to

Italy, Germany, England! I shall carry with me placards in all

languages, paste them everywhere, in villages, on doors of churches,

all the best spots I can find in provincial towns! The oil shall

sparkle, scintillate, glisten on every head. Ha! your marriage shall

not be a sham; we'll make it a pageant, colors flying! You shall have

your Cesarine, or my name shall not be ILLUSTRIOUS,--that is what Pere

Finot calls me for having got off his gray hats. In selling your oil I

keep to my own sphere, the human head; hats and oil are well-known

preservatives of the public hair."

Popinot returned to his aunt's house, where he was to sleep, in such a

fever, caused by his visions of success, that the streets seemed to

him to be running oil. He slept little, dreamed that his hair was

madly growing, and saw two angels who unfolded, as they do in

melodramas, a scroll on which was written "Oil Cesarine." He woke,

recollected the dream, and vowed to give the oil of nuts that sacred

name, accepting the sleeping fancy as a celestial mandate.

*****

Cesar and Popinot were at their work-shop in the Faubourg du Temple

the next morning long before the arrival of the nuts. While waiting

for Madame Madou's porters, Popinot triumphantly recounted his treaty

of alliance with Gaudissart.

"Have we indeed the illustrious Gaudissart? Then are we millionaires!"

cried the perfumer, extending his hand to his cashier with an air

which Louis XIV. must have worn when he received the Marechal de

Villars on his return from Denain.

"We have something besides," said the happy clerk, producing from his

pocket a bottle of a squat shape, like a pumpkin, and ribbed on the

sides. "I have found ten thousand bottles like that, all made ready to

hand, at four sous, and six months' credit."

"Anselme, said Birotteau, contemplating the wondrous shape of the

flask, "yesterday [here his tone of voice became solemn] in the

Tuileries,--yes, no later than yesterday,--you said to me, 'I will

succeed.' To-day I--I say to you, 'You will succeed.' Four sous! six

months! an unparalleled shape! Macassar trembles to its foundations!

Was I not right to seize upon the only nuts in Paris? Where did you

find these bottles?"

"I was waiting to speak to Gaudissart, and sauntering--"

"Just like me, when I found the Arab book," cried Birotteau.

"Coming down the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, I saw in a wholesale glass

place, where they make blown glass and cases,--an immense place,--I

caught sight of this flask; it blinded my eyes like a sudden light; a

voice cried to me, 'Here's your chance!'"

"Born merchant! he shall have my daughter!," muttered Cesar.

"I went in; I saw thousands of these bottles packed in cases."

"You asked about them?"

"Do you think me such a ninny?" cried Anselme, in a grieved tone.

"Born merchant!" repeated Birotteau.

"I asked for glass cases for the little wax Jesus; and while I was

bargaining about them I found fault with the shape of the bottles.

From one thing to another, I trapped the man into admitting that

Faille and Bouchot, who lately failed, were starting a new cosmetic

and wanted a peculiar style of bottle; he was doubtful about them and

asked for half the money down. Faille and Bouchot, expecting to

succeed, paid the money; they failed while the bottles were making.

The assignees, when called upon to pay the bill, arranged to leave him

the bottles and the money in hand, as an indemnity for the manufacture

of articles thought to be ridiculous in shape, and quite unsalable.

They cost originally eight sous; he was glad to get rid of them for

four; for, as he said, God knows how long he might have on his hands a

shape for which there was no sale! 'Are you willing,' I said to him,

'to furnish ten thousand at four sous? If so, I may perhaps relieve

you of them. I am a clerk at Monsieur Birotteau's.' I caught him, I

led him, I mastered him, I worked him up, and he is all ours."

"Four sous!" said Birotteau. "Do you know that we could use oil at

three francs, and make a profit of thirty sous, and give twenty sous

discount to retailers?"

"Oil Cesarine!" cried Popinot.

"Oil Cesarine?--Ah, lover! would you flatter both father and daughter?

Well, well, so be it; Oil Cesarine! The Cesars owned the whole world.

They must have had fine hair."

"Cesar was bald," said Popinot.

"Because he never used our oil. Three francs for the Oil Cesarine,

while Macassar Oil costs double! Gaudissart to the fore! We shall make

a hundred thousand francs this year, for we'll pour on every head that

respects itself a dozen bottles a year,--eighteen francs; say eighteen

thousand heads,--one hundred and eighty thousand francs. We are

millionaires!"

The nuts delivered, Raguet, the workmen, Popinot, and Cesar shelled a

sufficient quantity, and before four o'clock they had produced several

pounds of oil. Popinot carried the product to show to Vauquelin, who

made him a present of a recipe for mixing the essence of nuts with

other and less costly oleaginous substances, and scenting it. Popinot

went to work at once to take out a patent for the invention and all

improvements thereon. The devoted Gaudissart lent him the money to pay

the fees, for Popinot was ambitious to pay his share in the

undertaking.

Prosperity brings with it an intoxication which inferior men are

unable to resist. Cesar's exaltation of spirit had a result not

difficult to foresee. Grindot came, and presented a colored sketch of

a charming interior view of the proposed appartement. Birotteau,

seduced, agreed to everything; and soon the house, and the heart of

Constance, began to quiver under the blows of pick and hammer. The

house-painter, Monsieur Lourdois, a very rich contractor, who had

promised that nothing should be wanting, talked of gilding the salon.

On hearing that word Constance interposed.

"Monsieur Lourdois," she said, "you have an income of thirty thousand

francs, you occupy your own house, and you can do what you like to it;

but the rest of us--"

"Madame, commerce ought to shine and not permit itself to be kept in

the shade by the aristocracy. Besides, Monsieur Birotteau is in the

government; he is before the eyes of the world--"

"Yes, but he still keeps a shop," said Constance, in the hearing of

the clerks and the five persons who were listening to her. "Neither

he, nor I, nor his friends, nor his enemies will forget that."

Birotteau rose upon the points of his toes and fell back upon his

heels several times, his hands crossed behind him.

"My wife is right," he said; "we should be modest in prosperity.

Moreover, as long as a man is in business he should be careful of his

expenses, limited in his luxury; the law itself imposes the

obligation,--he must not allow himself 'excessive expenditures.' If

the enlargement of my home and its decoration were to go beyond due

limits, it would be wrong in me to permit it; you yourself would blame

me, Lourdois. The neighborhood has its eye upon me; successful men

incur jealousy, envy. Ah! you will soon know that, young man," he said

to Grindot; "if we are calumniated, at least let us give no handle to

the calumny."

"Neither calumny nor evil-speaking can touch you," said Lourdois;

"your position is unassailable. But your business habits are so strong

that you must argue over every enterprise; you are a deep one--"

"True, I have some experience in business. You know, of course, why I

make this enlargement? If I insist on punctuality in the completion of

the work, it is--"

"No."

"Well, my wife and I are about to assemble our friends, as much to

celebrate the emancipation of our territory as to commemorate my

promotion to the order of the Legion of honor--"

"What do you say?" said Lourdois, "have they given you the cross?"

"Yes; I may possibly have shown myself worthy of that signal royal

favor by my services on the Bench of commerce, and by fighting for the

Bourbons upon the steps of Saint-Roch, on the 13th Vendemiaire, where

I was wounded by Napoleon. Come to the ball, and bring your wife and

daughter."

"Charmed with the honor you deign to pay me," said Lourdois (a

liberal). "But you are a deep one, Papa Birotteau; you want to make

sure that I shall not break my word,--that's the reason you invite me.

Well, I'll employ my best workmen; we'll build the fires of hell and

dry the paint. I must find some desiccating process; it would never do

to dance in a fog from the wet plaster. We will varnish it to hide the

smell."

Three days later the commercial circles of the quarter were in a

flutter at the announcement of Birotteau's ball. Everybody could see

for themselves the props and scaffoldings necessitated by the change

of the staircase, the square wooden funnels down which the rubbish was

thrown into the carts stationed in the street. The sight of men

working by torchlight--for there were day workmen and night workmen--

arrested all the idlers and busybodies in the street; gossip, based on

these preparations, proclaimed a sumptuous forthcoming event.

On Sunday, the day Cesar had appointed to conclude the affair of the

lands about the Madeleine, Monsieur and Madame Ragon, and uncle

Pillerault arrived about four o'clock, just after vespers. In view of

the demolition that was going on, so Cesar said, he could only invite

Charles Claparon, Crottat, and Roguin. The notary brought with him the

"Journal des Debats" in which Monsieur de la Billardiere had inserted

the following article:--

"We learn that the deliverance of our territory will be feted with

enthusiasm throughout France. In Paris the members of the

municipal body feel that the time has come to restore the capital

to that accustomed splendor which under a becoming sense of

propriety was laid aside during the foreign occupation. The mayors

and deputy-mayors each propose to give a ball; this national

movement will no doubt be followed, and the winter promises to be

a brilliant one. Among the fetes now preparing, the one most

talked of is the ball of Monsieur Birotteau, lately named

chevalier of the Legion of honor and well-known for his devotion

to the royal cause. Monsieur Birotteau, wounded in the affair of

Saint-Roch, judges in the department of commerce, and therefore

has doubly merited this honor."

"How well they write nowadays," cried Cesar. "They are talking about

us in the papers," he said to Pillerault.

"Well, what of it?" answered his uncle, who had a special antipathy to

the "Journal des Debats."

"That article may help to sell the Paste of Sultans and the

Carminative Balm," whispered Madame Cesar to Madame Ragon, not sharing

the intoxication of her husband.

Madame Ragon, a tall woman, dry and wrinkled, with a pinched nose and

thin lips, bore a spurious resemblance to a marquise of the old court.

The circles round her eyes had spread to a wide circumference, like

those of elderly women who have known sorrow. The severe and

dignified, although affable, expression of her countenance inspired

respect. She had, withal, a certain oddity about her, which excited

notice, but never ridicule; and this was exhibited in her dress and

habits. She wore mittens, and carried in all weathers a cane sunshade,

like that used by Queen Marie-Antoinette at Trianon; her gown (the

favorite color was pale-brown, the shade of dead leaves) fell from her

hips in those inimitable folds the secret of which the dowagers of the

olden time have carried away with them. She retained the black

mantilla trimmed with black lace woven in large square meshes; her

caps, old-fashioned in shape, had the quaint charm which we see in

silhouettes relieved against a white background. She took snuff with

exquisite nicety and with the gestures which young people of the

present day who have had the happiness of seeing their grandmothers

and great-aunts replacing their gold snuff-boxes solemnly on the

tables beside them, and shaking off the grains which strayed upon

their kerchiefs, will doubtless remember.

The Sieur Ragon was a little man, not over five feet high, with a face

like a nut-cracker, in which could be seen only two eyes, two sharp

cheek-bones, a nose and a chin. Having no teeth he swallowed half his

words, though his style of conversation was effluent, gallant,

pretentious, and smiling, with the smile he formerly wore when he

received beautiful great ladies at the door of his shop. Powder, well

raked off, defined upon his cranium a nebulous half-circle, flanked by

two pigeon-wings, divided by a little queue tied with a ribbon. He

wore a bottle-blue coat, a white waistcoat, small-clothes and silk

stockings, shoes with gold buckles, and black silk gloves. The most

marked feature of his behavior was his habit of going through the

street holding his hat in his hand. He looked like a messenger of the

Chamber of Peers, or an usher of the king's bedchamber, or any of

those persons placed near to some form of power from which they get a

reflected light, though of little account themselves.

"Well, Birotteau," he said, with a magisterial air, "do you repent, my

boy, for having listened to us in the old times? Did we ever doubt the

gratitude of our beloved sovereigns?"

"You have been very happy, dear child," said Madame Ragon to Madame

Birotteau.

"Yes, indeed," answered Constance, always under the spell of the cane

parasol, the butterfly cap, the tight sleeves, and the great kerchief

/a la Julie/ which Madame Ragon wore.

"Cesarine is charming. Come here, my love," said Madame Ragon, in her

shrill voice and patronizing manner.

"Shall we do the business before dinner?" asked uncle Pillerault.

"We are waiting for Monsieur Claparon," said Roguin, "I left him

dressing himself."

"Monsieur Roguin," said Cesar, "I hope you told him that we should

dine in a wretched little room on the /entresol/--"

"He thought it superb sixteen years ago," murmured Constance.

"--among workmen and rubbish."

"Bah! you will find him a good fellow, with no pretension," said

Roguin.

"I have put Raguet on guard in the shop. We can't go through our own

door; everything is pulled down."

"Why did you not bring your nephew?" said Pillerault to Madame Ragon.

"Shall we not see him?" asked Cesarine.

"No, my love," said Madame Ragon; "Anselme, dear boy, is working

himself to death. That bad-smelling Rue des Cinq-Diamants, without sun

and without air, frightens me. The gutter is always blue or green or

black. I am afraid he will die of it. But when a young man has

something in his head--" and she looked at Cesarine with a gesture

which explained that the word head meant heart.

"Has he got his lease?" asked Cesar.

"Yesterday, before a notary," replied Ragon. "He took the place for

eighteen years, but they exacted six months' rent in advance."

"Well, Monsieur Ragon, are you satisfied with me?" said the perfumer.

"I have given him the secret of a great discovery--"

"We know you by heart, Cesar," said little Ragon, taking Cesar's hands

and pressing them with religious friendship.

Roguin was not without anxiety as to Claparon's entrance on the scene;

for his tone and manners were quite likely to alarm these virtuous and

worthy people; he therefore thought it advisable to prepare their

minds.

"You are going to see," he said to Pillerault and the two ladies, "a

thorough original, who hides his methods under a fearfully bad style

of manners; from a very inferior position he has raised himself up by

intelligence. He will acquire better manners through his intercourse

with bankers. You may see him on the boulevard, or on a cafe tippling,

disorderly, betting at billiards, and think him a mere idler; but he

is not; he is thinking and studying all the time to keep industry

alive by new projects."

"I understand that," said Birotteau; "I got my great ideas when

sauntering on the boulevard; didn't I, Mimi?"

"Claparon," resumed Roguin, "makes up by night-work the time lost in

looking about him in the daytime, and watching the current of affairs.

All men of great talent lead curious lives, inexplicable lives; well,

in spite of his desultory ways he attains his object, as I can

testify. In this instance he has managed to make the owners of these

lands give way: they were unwilling, doubtful, timid; he fooled them

all, tired them out, went to see them every day,--and here we are,

virtually masters of the property."

At this moment a curious /broum! broum!/ peculiar to tipplers of

brandy and other liquors, announced the arrival of the most fantastic

personage of our story, and the arbiter in flesh and blood of the

future destinies of Cesar Birotteau. The perfumer rushed headlong to

the little dark staircase, as much to tell Raguet to close the shop as

to pour out his excuses to Claparon for receiving him in the dining-

room.

"What of that? It's the very place to juggle a--I mean to settle a

piece of business."

In spite of Roguin's clever precautions, Monsieur and Madame Ragon,

people of old-fashioned middle-class breeding, the observer

Pillerault, Cesarine, and her mother were disagreeably impressed at

first sight by this sham banker of high finance.

About twenty-eight years of age at the time of which we write, the

late commercial traveller possessed not a hair on his head, and wore a

wig curled in ringlets. This head-gear needed, by rights, a virgin

freshness, a lacteal purity of complexion, and all the softer

corresponding graces: as it was, however, it threw into ignoble relief

a pimpled face, brownish-red in color, inflamed like that of the

conductor of a diligence, and seamed with premature wrinkles, which

betrayed in the puckers of their deep-cut lines a licentious life,

whose misdeeds were still further evidenced by the badness of the

man's teeth, and the black speckles which appeared here and there on

his corrugated skin. Claparon had the air of a provincial comedian who

knows all the roles, and plays the clown with a wink; his cheeks,

where the rouge never stuck, were jaded by excesses, his lips clammy,

though his tongue was forever wagging, especially when he was drunk;

his glances were immodest, and his gestures compromising. Such a face,

flushed with the jovial features of punch, was enough to turn grave

business matters into a farce; so that the embryo banker had been

forced to put himself through a long course of mimicry before he

managed to acquire even the semblance of a manner that accorded with

his fictitious importance.

Du Tillet assisted in dressing him for this occasion, like the manager

of a theatre who is uneasy about the debut of his principal actor; he

feared lest the vulgar habits of this devil-may-care life should crop

up to the surface of the newly-fledged banker. "Talk as little as you

can," he said to him. "No banker ever gabbles; he acts, thinks,

reflects, listens, weighs. To seem like a banker you must say nothing,

or, at any rate, mere nothings. Check that ribald eye of yours, and

look serious, even if you have to look stupid. If you talk politics,

go for the government, but keep to generalities. For instance: 'The

budget is heavy'; 'No compromise is possible between the parties';

'The Liberals are dangerous'; 'The Bourbons must avoid a conflict';

'Liberalism is the cloak of a coalition'; 'The Bourbons are

inaugurating an era of prosperity: let us sustain them, even if we do

not like them'; 'France has had enough of politics,' etc. Don't gorge

yourself at every table where you dine; recollect you are to maintain

the dignity of a millionaire. Don't shovel in your snuff like an old

Invalide; toy with your snuff-box, glance often at your feet, and

sometimes at the ceiling, before you answer; try to look sagacious, if

you can. Above all, get rid of your vile habit of touching everything;

in society a banker ought to seem tired of seeing and touching things.

Hang it! you are supposed to be passing wakeful nights; finance makes

you brusque, so many elements must be brought together to launch an

enterprise,--so much study! Remember to take gloomy views of business;

it is heavy, dull, risky, unsettled. Now, don't go beyond that, and

mind you specify nothing. Don't sing those songs of Beranger at table;

and don't get fuddled. If you are drunk, your future is lost. Roguin

will keep an eye on you. You are going now among moral people,

virtuous people; and you are not to scare them with any of your pot-

house principles."

This lecture produced upon the mind of Charles Claparon very much the

effect that his new clothes produced upon his body. The jovial

scapegrace, easy-going with all the world, and long used to a

comfortable shabbiness, in which his body was no more shackled than

his mind was shackled by language, was now encased in the new clothes

his tailor had just sent home, rigid as a picket-stake, anxious about

his motions as well as about his speech; drawing back his hand when it

was imprudently thrust out to grasp a bottle, just as he stopped his

tongue in the middle of a sentence. All this presented a laughable

discrepancy to the keen observation of Pillerault. Claparon's red

face, and his wig with its profligate ringlets, gave the lie to his

apparel and pretended bearing, just as his thoughts clashed and

jangled with his speech. But these worthy people ended by crediting

such discordances to the preoccupation of his busy mind.

"He is so full of business," said Roguin.

"Business has given him little education," whispered Madame Ragon to

Cesarine.

Monsieur Roguin overheard her, and put a finger on his lips:--

"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

CEPHALIC OIL

Patents for Invention and Improvements.

"No cosmetic can make the hair grow, and no chemical preparation

can dye it without peril to the seat of intelligence. Science has

recently made known the fact that hair is a dead substance, and

that no agent can prevent it from falling off or whitening. To

prevent Baldness and Dandruff, it is necessary to protect the bulb

from which the hair issues from all deteriorating atmospheric

influences, and to maintain the temperature of the head at its

right medium. CEPHALIC OIL, based upon principles laid down by the

Academy of Sciences, produces this important result, sought by the

ancients,--the Greeks, the Romans, and all Northern nations,--to

whom the preservation of the hair was peculiarly precious. Certain

scientific researches have demonstrated that nobles, formerly

distinguished for the length of their hair, used no other remedy

than this; their method of preparation, which had been lost in the

lapse of ages, has been intelligently re-discovered by A. Popinot,

the inventor of CEPHALIC OIL.

"To /preserve/, rather than provoke a useless and injurious

stimulation of the instrument which contains the bulbs, is the

mission of CEPHALIC OIL. In short, this oil, which counteracts the

exfoliation of pellicular atoms, which exhales a soothing perfume,

and arrests, by means of the substances of which it is composed

(among them more especially the oil of nuts), the action of the

outer air upon the scalp, also prevents influenzas, colds in the

head, and other painful cephalic afflictions, by maintaining the

normal temperature of the cranium. Consequently, the bulbs, which

contain the generating fluids, are neither chilled by cold nor

parched by heat. The hair of the head, that magnificent product,

priceless alike to man and woman, will be preserved even to

advanced age, in all the brilliancy and lustre which bestow their

charm upon the heads of infancy, by those who make use of CEPHALIC

OIL.

"DIRECTIONS FOR USE are furnished with each bottle, and serve as a

wrapper.

"METHOD OF USING CEPHALIC OIL.--It is quite useless to oil the

hair; this is not only a vulgar and foolish prejudice, but an

untidy habit, for the reason that all cosmetics leave their trace.

It suffices to wet a little sponge in the oil, and after parting

the hair with the comb, to apply it at the roots in such a manner

that the whole skin of the head may be enabled to imbibe it, after

the scalp has received a preliminary cleansing with brush and

comb.

"The oil is sold in bottles bearing the signature of the inventor,

to prevent counterfeits. Price, THREE FRANCS. A. POPINOT, Rue des

Cinq-Diamants, quartier des Lombards, Paris.

"/It is requested that all letters be prepaid./

"N.B. The house of A. Popinot supplies all oils and essences

appertaining to druggists: lavender, oil of almonds, sweet and

bitter, orange oil, cocoa-nut oil, castor oil, and others."

"My dear friend," said the illustrious Gaudissart to Finot, "it is

admirably written. Thunder and lightning! we are in the upper regions

of science. We shirk nothing; we go straight to the point. That's

useful literature; I congratulate you."

"A noble prospectus!" cried Popinot, enthusiastically.

"A prospectus which slays Macassar at the first word," continued

Gaudissart, rising with a magisterial air to deliver the following

speech, which he divided by gestures and pauses in his most

parliamentary manner.

"No--hair--can be made--to grow! Hair cannot be dyed without--danger!

Ha! ha! success is there. Modern science is in union with the customs

of the ancients. We can deal with young and old alike. We can say to

the old man, 'Ha, monsieur! the ancients, the Greeks and Romans, knew

a thing or two, and were not so stupid as some would have us believe';

and we can say to the young man, 'My dear boy, here's another

discovery due to progress and the lights of science. We advance; what

may we not obtain from steam and telegraphy, and other things! This

oil is based on the scientific treatise of Monsieur Vauquelin!'

Suppose we print an extract from Monsieur Vauquelin's report to the

Academy of Sciences, confirming our statement, hein? Famous! Come,

Finot, sit down; attack the viands! Soak up the champagne! let us

drink to the success of my young friend, here present!"

"I felt," said the author modestly, "that the epoch of flimsy and

frivolous prospectuses had gone by; we are entering upon an era of

science; we need an academical tone,--a tone of authority, which

imposes upon the public."

"We'll boil that oil; my feet itch, and my tongue too. I've got

commissions from all the rival hair people; none of them give more

than thirty per cent discount; we must manage forty on every hundred

remitted, and I'll answer for a hundred thousand bottles in six

months. I'll attack apothecaries, grocers, perfumers! Give 'em forty

per cent, and they'll bamboozle the public."

The three young fellows devoured their dinner like lions, and drank

like lords to the future success of Cephalic Oil.

"The oil is getting into my head," said Finot.

Gaudissart poured out a series of jokes and puns upon hats and heads,

and hair and hair-oil, etc. In the midst of Homeric laughter a knock

resounded, and was heard, in spite of an uproar of toasts and

reciprocal congratulations.

"It is my uncle!" cried Popinot. "He has actually come to see me."

"An uncle!" said Finot, "and we haven't got a glass!"

"The uncle of my friend Popinot is a judge," said Gaudissart to Finot,

"and he is not to be hoaxed; he saved my life. Ha! when one gets to

the pass where I was, under the scaffold--/Qou-ick/, and good-by to

your hair,"--imitating the fatal knife with voice and gesture. "One

recollects gratefully the virtuous magistrate who saved the gutter

where the champagne flows down. Recollect?--I'd recollect him dead-

drunk! You don't know what it is, Finot, unless you have stood in need

of Monsieur Popinot. Huzza! we ought to fire a salute--from six

pounders, too!"

The virtuous magistrate was now asking for his nephew at the door.

Recognizing his voice, Anselme went down, candlestick in hand, to

light him up.

"I wish you good evening, gentlemen," said the judge.

The illustrious Gaudissart bowed profoundly. Finot examined the

magistrate with a tipsy eye, and thought him a bit of a blockhead.

"You have not much luxury here," said the judge, gravely, looking

round the room. "Well, my son, if we wish to be something great, we

must begin by being nothing."

"What profound wisdom!" said Gaudissart to Finot.

"Text for an article," said the journalist.

"Ah! you here, monsieur?" said the judge, recognizing the commercial

traveller; "and what are you doing now?"

"Monsieur, I am contributing to the best of my small ability to the

success of your dear nephew. We have just been studying a prospectus

for his oil; you see before you the author of that prospectus, which

seems to us the finest essay in the literature of wigs." The judge

looked at Finot. "Monsieur," said Gaudissart, "is Monsieur Andoche

Finot, a young man distinguished in literature, who does high-class

politics and the little theatres in the government newspapers,--I may

say a statesman on the high-road to becoming an author."

Finot pulled Gaudissart by the coat-tails.

"Well, well, my sons," said the judge, to whom these words explained

the aspect of the table, where there stilled remained the tokens of a

very excusable feast. "Anselme," said the old gentleman to his nephew,

"dress yourself, and come with me to Monsieur Birotteau's, where I

have a visit to pay. You shall sign the deed of partnership, which I

have carefully examined. As you mean to have the manufactory for your

oil on the grounds in the Faubourg du Temple, I think you had better

take a formal lease of them. Monsieur Birotteau might have others in

partnership with him, and it is better to settle everything legally at

once; then there can be no discussion. These walls seem to me very

damp, my dear boy; take up the straw matting near your bed."

"Permit me, monsieur," said Gaudissart, with an ingratiating air, "to

explain to you that we have just pasted up the paper ourselves, and

that's the--reason why--the walls--are not--dry."

"Economy? quite right," said the judge.

"Look here," said Gaudissart in Finot's ear, "my friend Popinot is a

virtuous young man; he is going with his uncle; let's you and I go and

finish the evening with our cousins."

The journalist showed the empty lining of his pockets. Popinot saw the

gesture, and slipped his twenty-franc piece into the palm of the

author of the prospectus.

The judge had a coach at the end of the street, in which he carried

off his nephew to the Birotteaus.