Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau

The vision of a ball inspired the three clerks, Raguet, and Virginie the cook with an ardor that gave them the strength of acrobats. They came and went up and down the stairs, carrying everything and breaking nothing. By two o’clock in the morning the removal was effected. Cesar and his wife slept on the second floor. Popinot’s bedroom became that of Celestin and the second clerk. On the third floor the furniture was stored provisionally.

In the grasp of that magnetic ardor, produced by an influx of the nervous fluid, which lights a brazier in the midriff of ambitious men and lovers intent on high emprise, Popinot, so gentle and tranquil usually, pawed the earth like a thoroughbred before the race, when he came down into the shop after dinner.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Celestin.

“Oh, what a day! my dear fellow, what a day! I am set up in business, and Monsieur Cesar is decorated.”

“You are very lucky if the master helps you,” said Celestin.

Popinot did not answer; he disappeared, driven by a furious wind, – the wind of success.

“Lucky!” said one of the clerks, who was sorting gloves by the dozen, to another who was comparing prices on the tickets. “Lucky! the master has found out that Popinot is making eyes at Mademoiselle Cesarine, and, as the old fellow is pretty clever, he gets rid of Anselme; it would be difficult to refuse him point-blank, on account of his relations. Celestin thinks the trick is luck or generosity!”

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 – ”