Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau

“Ta, ta, ta!” exclaimed Birotteau, “you can’t prevent our loving you, you who will take nothing from us. You are like the sun; you give light, and those whom you illuminate can give you nothing in return.”

The man of science smiled and rose; the perfumer and Popinot rose also.

“Anselme, look well at this room. You permit it, monsieur? Your time is precious, I know, but he will never have another opportunity.”

“Well, have you got all you wanted?” said Vauquelin to Birotteau. “After all, we are both commercial men.”

“Pretty nearly, monsieur,” said Birotteau, retreating towards the dining-room, Vauquelin following. “But to launch our Comagene Essence we need a good foundation – ”

“‘Comagene’ and ‘Essence’ are two words that clash. Call your cosmetic ‘Oil of Birotteau’; or, if you don’t want to give your name to the world, find some other. Why, there’s the Dresden Madonna! Ah, Monsieur Birotteau, do you mean that we shall quarrel?”

“Monsieur Vauquelin,” said the perfumer, taking the chemist’s hand. “This treasure has no value except the time that I have spent in finding it. We had to ransack all Germany to find it on China paper before lettering. I knew that you wished for it and that your occupations did not leave you time to search for it; I have been your commercial traveller, that is all. Accept therefore, not a paltry engraving, but efforts, anxieties, despatches to and fro, which are the evidence of my complete devotion. Would that you had wished for something growing on the sides of precipices, that I might have sought it and said to you, ‘Here it is!’ Do not refuse my gift. We have so much reason to be forgotten; allow me therefore to place myself, my wife, my daughter, and the son-in-law I expect to have, beneath your eyes. You must say when you look at the Virgin, ‘There are some people in the world who are thinking of me.’”

“I accept,” said Vauquelin.

Popinot and Birotteau wiped their eyes, so affected were they by the kindly tone in which the academician uttered the words.

“Will you crown your goodness?” said the perfumer.

“What’s that?” exclaimed Vauquelin.

“I assemble my friends” – he rose from his heels, taking, nevertheless, a modest air – “as much to celebrate the emancipation of our territory as to commemorate my promotion to the order of the Legion of honor – ”

“Ah!” exclaimed Vauquelin, surprised.

“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, where I was wounded by Napoleon. My wife gives a ball, three weeks from Sunday; pray come to it, monsieur. Do us the honor to dine with us on that day. Your presence would double the happiness with which I receive my cross. I will write you beforehand.”

“Well, yes,” said Vauquelin.

“My heart swells with joy!” cried the perfumer, when he got into the street. “He comes to my house! I am afraid I’ve forgotten what he said about hair: do you remember it, Popinot!”

“Yes, monsieur; and twenty years hence I shall remember it still.”

“What a great man! what a glance, what penetration!” said Birotteau. “Ah! he made no bones about it; he guessed our thoughts at the first word; he has given us the means of annihilating Macassar oil. Yes! nothing can make the hair grow; Macassar, you lie! Popinot, our fortune is made. We’ll go to the manufactory to-morrow morning at seven o’clock; the nuts will be there, and we will press out some oil. It is all very well for him to say that any oil is good; if the public knew that, we should be lost. If we didn’t put some scent and the name of nuts into the oil, how could we sell it for three or four francs the four ounces?”

“You are about to be decorated, monsieur?” said Popinot, “what glory for – ”

“Commerce; that is true, my boy.”

Cesar’s triumphant air, as if certain of fortune, was observed by the clerks, who made signs at each other; for the trip in the hackney-coach, and the full dress of the cashier and his master had thrown them all into the wildest regions of romance. The mutual satisfaction of Cesar and Anselme, betrayed by looks diplomatically exchanged, the glance full of hope which Popinot cast now and then at Cesarine, proclaimed some great event and gave color to the conjectures of the clerks. In their busy and half cloistral life the smallest events have the interest which a prisoner feels in those of his prison. The bearing of Madame Cesar, who replied to the Olympian looks of her lord with an air of distrust, seemed to point to some new enterprise; for in ordinary times Madame Cesar, delighted with the smallest routine success, would have shared his contentment. It happened, accidentally, that the receipts for the day amounted to more than six thousand francs; for several outstanding bills chanced to be paid.

The dining-room and the kitchen, lighted from a little court, and separated from the dining-room by a passage, from which the staircase, taken out of a corner of the backshop, opened up, was on the entresol where in former days Cesar and Constance had their appartement; in fact, the dining-room, where the honey-moon had been passed, still wore the look of a little salon. During dinner Raguet, the trusty boy of all work, took charge of the shop; but the clerks came down when the dessert was put on table, leaving Cesar, his wife and daughter to finish their dinner alone by the chimney corner. This habit was derived from the Ragons, who kept up the old-fashioned usages and customs of former commercial days, which placed an enormous distance between the masters and the apprentices. Cesarine or Constance then prepared for Birotteau his cup of coffee, which he took sitting on a sofa by the corner of the fire. At this hour he told his wife all the little events of the day, and related what he had seen in the streets, what was going on in the Faubourg du Temple, and the difficulties he had met with in the manufactory, et caetera.

“Wife,” he said, when the clerks had gone down, “this is certainly one of the most important days in our life! The nuts are bought, the hydraulic press is ready to go to work, the land affair is settled. Here, lock up that cheque on the Bank of France,” he added, handing her Pillerault’s paper. “The improvements in the house are ordered, the dignity of our appartement is about to be increased. Bless me! I saw, down in the Cour Batave, a very singular man,” – and he told the tale of Monsieur Molineux.

“I see,” said his wife, interrupting him in the middle of a tirade, “that you have gone in debt two hundred thousand francs.”

“That is true, wife,” said Cesar, with mock humility, “Good God, how shall we pay them? It counts for nothing that the lands about the Madeleine will some day become the finest quarter of Paris.”

“Some day, Cesar!”

“Alas!” he said, going on with his joke, “my three eighths will only be worth a million in six years. How shall I ever pay that two hundred thousand francs?” said Cesar, with a gesture of alarm. “Well, we shall be reduced to pay them with that,” he added, pulling from his pocket a nut, which he had taken from Madame Madou and carefully preserved.

He showed the nut between his fingers to Constance and Cesarine. His wife was silent, but Cesarine, much puzzled, said to her father, as she gave him his coffee, “What do you mean, papa, – are you joking?”

The perfumer, as well as the clerks, had detected during dinner the glances which Popinot had cast at Cesarine, and he resolved to clear up his suspicions.

“Well, my little daughter,” he said, “this nut will revolutionize our home. From this day forth there will be one person the less under my roof.”

Cesarine looked at her father with an eye which seemed to say, “What is that to me?”

“Popinot is going away.”

Though Cesar was a poor observer, and had, moreover, prepared his phrase as much to herald the creation of the house of A. Popinot and Company, as to set a trap for his daughter, yet his paternal tenderness made him guess the confused feelings which rose in Cesarine’s heart, blossomed in roses on her cheek, suffused her forehead and even her eyes as she lowered them. Cesar thought that words must have passed between Cesarine and Popinot. He was mistaken; the two children comprehended each other, like all timid lovers, without a word.

Some moralists hold that love is an involuntary passion, the most disinterested, the least calculating, of all the passions, except maternal love. This opinion carries with it a vulgar error. Though the majority of men may be ignorant of the causes of love, it is none the less true that all sympathy, moral or physical, is based upon calculations made either by the mind, or by sentiment or brutality. Love is an essentially selfish passion. Self means deep calculation. To every mind which looks only at results, it will seem at first sight singular and unlikely that a beautiful girl like Cesarine should love a poor lame fellow with red hair. Yet this phenomenon is completely in harmony with the arithmetic of middle-class sentiments. To explain it, would be to give the reason of marriages which are constantly looked upon with surprise, – marriages between tall and beautiful women and puny men, or between ugly little creatures and handsome men. Every man who is cursed with some bodily infirmity, no matter what it is, – club-feet, a halting-gait, a humped-back, excessive ugliness, claret stains upon the cheek, Roguin’s species of deformity, and other monstrosities the result of causes beyond the control of the sufferer, – has but two courses open to him: either he must make himself feared, or he must practise the virtues of exquisite loving-kindness; he is not permitted to float in the middle currents of average conduct which are habitual to other men. If he takes the first course he probably has talent, genius, or strength of will; a man inspires terror only by the power of evil, respect by genius, fear through force of mind. If he chooses the second course, he makes himself adored; he submits to feminine tyranny, and knows better how to love than men of irreproachable bodily condition.

Anselme, brought up by virtuous people, by the Ragons, models of the honorable bourgeoisie, and by his uncle the judge, had been led, through his ingenuous nature and his deep religious sentiments, to redeem the slight deformity of his person by the perfection of his character. Constance and Cesar, struck by these tendencies, so attractive in youth, had repeatedly sung his praises before Cesarine. Petty as they might be in many ways, husband and wife were noble by nature, and understood the deep things of the heart. Their praises found an echo in the mind of the young girl, who, despite her innocence, had read in Anselme’s pure eyes the violent feeling, which is always flattering whatever be the lover’s age, or rank, or personal appearance. Little Popinot had far more reason to adore a woman than a handsome man could ever have. If she were beautiful, he would love her madly to her dying day; his fondness would inspire him with ambition; he would sacrifice his own life that his wife’s might be happy; he would make her mistress of their home, and be himself the first to accept her sway. Thus thought Cesarine, involuntarily perhaps, yet not altogether crudely; she gave a bird’s-eye glance at the harvest of love in her own home, and reasoned by induction; the happiness of her mother was before her eyes, – she wished for no better fate; her instinct told her that Anselme was another Cesar, improved by his education, as she had been improved by hers. She dreamed of Popinot as mayor of an arrondissement, and liked to picture herself taking up the collections in their parish church as her mother did at Saint-Roch. She had reached the point of no longer perceiving the difference between the left leg and the right leg of her lover, and was even capable of saying, in all sincerity, “Does he limp?” She loved those liquid eyes, and liked to watch the effect her own glance had upon them, as they lighted up for a moment with a chaste flame, and then fell, sadly.

Roguin’s head-clerk, Alexandre Crottat, who was gifted with the precocious experience which comes from knowledge acquired in a lawyer’s office, had an air and manner that was half cynical, half silly, which revolted Cesarine, already disgusted by the trite and commonplace character of his conversation. The silence of Popinot, on the other hand, revealed his gentle nature; she loved the smile, partly mournful, with which he listened to trivial vulgarities. The silly nonsense which made him smile filled her with repulsion; they were grave or gay in sympathy. This hidden vantage-ground did not hinder Anselme from plunging into his work, and his indefatigable ardor in it pleased Cesarine, for she guessed that when his comrades in the shop said, “Mademoiselle Cesarine will marry Roguin’s head-clerk,” the poor lame Anselme, with his red hair, did not despair of winning her himself. A high hope is the proof of a great love.

“Where is he going?” asked Cesarine of her father, trying to appear indifferent.

“He is to set up for himself in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants; and, my faith! by the grace of God!” cried Cesar, whose exclamations were not understood by his wife, nor by his daughter.

When Birotteau encountered a moral difficulty he did as the insects do when there is an obstacle in their way, – he turned either to the right or to the left. He therefore changed the conversation, resolving to talk over Cesarine with his wife.

“I told all your fears and fancies about Roguin to your uncle, and he laughed,” he said to Constance.

“You should never tell what we say to each other!” cried Constance. “That poor Roguin may be the best man in the world; he is fifty-eight years old, and perhaps he thinks no longer of – ”

She stopped short, seeing that Cesarine was listening attentively, and made a sign to Cesar.

“Then I have done right to agree to the affair,” said Birotteau.

“You are the master,” she answered.

Cesar took his wife by the hands and kissed her brow; that answer always conveyed her tacit assent to her husband’s projects.

“Now, then,” cried the perfumer, to his clerks, when he went back to them, “the shop will be closed at ten o’clock. Gentlemen, lend a hand! a great feat! We must move, during the night, all the furniture from the first floor to the second floor. We shall have, as they say, to put the little pots in the big pots, for my architect must have his elbows free to-morrow morning – Popinot has gone out without my permission,” he cried, looking round and not seeing his cashier. “Ah, true, he does not sleep here any more, I forget that. He is gone,” thought Cesar, “either to write down Monsieur Vauquelin’s ideas, or else to hire the shop.”

“We all know the cause of this household change,” said Celestin, speaking in behalf of the two other clerks and Raguet, grouped behind him. “Is it allowable to congratulate monsieur upon an honor which reflects its light upon the whole establishment? Popinot has told us that monsieur – ”

“Hey, hey! my children, it is all true. I have been decorated. I am about to assemble my friends, not only to celebrate the emancipation of our territory, but to commemorate my promotion to the order of the Legion of honor. I may, possibly, have shown myself worthy of that signal and royal favor by my services on the Bench of commerce, and by fighting for the royal cause; which I defended – at your age – upon the steps of Saint-Roch on the 13th Vendemiaire, and I give you my word that Napoleon, called emperor, wounded me himself! wounded me in the thigh; and Madame Ragon nursed me. Take courage! recompense comes to every man. Behold, my sons! misfortunes are never wasted.”

“They will never fight in the streets again,” said Celestin.

“Let us hope so,” said Cesar, who thereupon went off into an harangue to the clerks, which he wound up by inviting them to the ball.