Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau

“To maintain a long and dangerous battle?”

“What for?”

“To destroy Macassar Oil!” said Birotteau, rising on his toes like a hero in Plutarch. “Let us not mistake; the enemy is strong, well entrenched, formidable! Macassar Oil has been vigorously launched. The conception was strong. The square bottles were original; I have thought of making ours triangular. Yet on the whole I prefer, after ripe reflection, smaller bottles of thin glass, encased in wicker; they would have a mysterious look, and customers like things which puzzle them.”

“They would be expensive,” said Popinot. “We must get things out as cheap as we can, so as to make a good reduction at wholesale.”

“Good, my lad! That’s the right principle. But now, think of it. Macassar Oil will defend itself; it is specious; the name is seductive. It is offered as a foreign importation; and we have the ill-luck to belong to our own country. Come, Popinot, have you the courage to kill Macassar? Then begin the fight in foreign lands. It seems that Macassar is really in the Indies. Now, isn’t it much better to supply a French product to the Indians than to send them back what they are supposed to send to us? Make the venture. Begin the fight in India, in foreign countries, in the departments. Macassar Oil has been thoroughly advertised; we must not underrate its power, it has been pushed everywhere, the public knows it.”

“I’ll kill it!” cried Popinot, with fire in his eyes.

“What with?” said Birotteau. “That’s the way with ardent young people. Listen till I’ve done.”

Anselme fell into position like a soldier presenting arms to a marshal of France.

“Popinot, I have invented an oil to stimulate the growth of hair, to titillate the scalp, to revive the color of male and female tresses. This cosmetic will not be less successful than my Paste or my Lotion. But I don’t intend to work it myself. I think of retiring from business. It is you, my boy, who are to launch my Oil Comagene, – from the latin word coma, which signifies ‘hair,’ as Monsieur Alibert, the King’s physician, says. The word is found in the tragedy of Berenice, where Racine introduces a king of Comagene, lover of the queen so celebrated for the beauty of her hair; the king – no doubt as a delicate flattery – gave the name to his country. What wit and intellect there is in genius! it condescends to the minutest details.”

Little Popinot kept his countenance as he listened to this absurd flourish, evidently said for his benefit as an educated young man.

“Anselme, I have cast my eyes upon you as the one to found a commercial house in the high-class druggist line, Rue des Lombards. I will be your secret partner, and supply the funds to start with. After the Oil Comagene, we will try an essence of vanilla and the spirit of peppermint. We’ll tackle the drug-trade by revolutionizing it, by selling its products concentrated instead of selling them raw. Ambitious young man, are you satisfied?”

Anselme could not answer, his heart was full; but his eyes, filled with tears, answered for him. The offer seemed prompted by indulgent fatherhood, saying to him: “Deserve Cesarine by becoming rich and respected.”

“Monsieur,” he answered at last, “I will succeed!”

“That’s what I said at your age,” cried the perfumer; “that was my motto. If you don’t win my daughter, at least you will win your fortune. Eh, boy! what is it?”

“Let me hope that in acquiring the one I may obtain the other.”

“I can’t prevent you from hoping, my friend,” said Birotteau, touched by Anselme’s tone.

“Well, then, monsieur, can I begin to-day to look for a shop, so as to start at once?”

“Yes, my son. To-morrow we will shut ourselves up in the workshop, you and I. Before you go to the Rue des Lombards, call at Livingston’s and see if my hydraulic press will be ready to use to-morrow morning. To-night we will go, about dinner-time, to the good and illustrious Monsieur Vauquelin and consult him. He has lately been employed in studying the composition of hair; he has discovered the nature of the coloring matter and whence it comes; also the structure of the hair itself. The secret is just there, Popinot, and you shall know it; all we have to do is to work it out cleverly. Before you go to Livingston’s, just stop at Pieri Berard’s. My lad, the disinterested kindness of Monsieur Vauquelin is one of the sorrows of my life. I cannot make him accept any return. Happily, I found out from Chiffreville that he wished for the Dresden Madonna, engraved by a man named Muller. After two years correspondence with Germany, Berard has at last found one on Chinese paper before lettering. It cost fifteen hundred francs, my boy. To-day, my benefactor will see it in his antechamber when he bows us out; it is to be all framed, and I want you to see about it. We – that is, my wife and I – shall thus recall ourselves to his mind; as for gratitude, we have prayed to God for him daily for sixteen years. I can never forget him; but you see, Popinot, men buried in the depths of science do forget everything, – wives, friends, and those they have benefited. As for us plain people, our lack of mind keeps our hearts warm at any rate. That’s the consolation for not being a great man. Look at those gentlemen of the Institute, – all brain; you will never meet one of them in a church. Monsieur Vauquelin is tied to his study or his laboratory; but I like to believe he thinks of God in analyzing the works of His hands. – Now, then, it is understood; I give you the money and put you in possession of my secret; we will go shares, and there’s no need for any papers between us. Hurrah for success! we’ll act in concert. Off with you, my boy! As for me, I’ve got my part to attend to. One minute, Popinot. I give a great ball three weeks hence; get yourself a dress-coat, and look like a merchant already launched.”

This last kindness touched Popinot so deeply that he caught Cesar’s big hand and kissed it; the worthy soul had flattered the lover by this confidence, and people in love are capable of anything.

“Poor boy!” thought Birotteau, as he watched him hurrying across the Tuileries. “Suppose Cesarine should love him? But he is lame, and his hair is the color of a warming-pan. Young girls are queer; still, I don’t think that Cesarine – And then her mother wants to see her the wife of a notary. Alexandre Crottat can make her rich; wealth makes everything bearable, and there is no happiness that won’t give way under poverty. However, I am resolved to leave my daughter mistress of herself, even if it seems a folly.”

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.”