ingenuous young girl.

When he first came to Paris, Cesar had known how to read, write, and
cipher, but his education stopped there; his laborious life had kept
him from acquiring ideas and knowledge outside the business of
perfumery. Mixing wholly with people to whom science and letters were
of no importance, and whose information did not go beyond their
specialty, having no time to give to higher studies, the perfumer had
become a merely practical man. He adopted necessarily the language,
blunders, and opinions of the bourgeois of Paris, who admires Moliere,
Voltaire, and Rousseau on faith, and buys their books without ever
reading them; who maintains that people should say _ormoires_, because
women put away their gold and their dresses and moire in those
articles of furniture, and that it is only a corruption of the
language to say _armoires_. Potier, Talma, and Mademoiselle Mars were
ten times millionaires, and did not live like other human beings; the
great tragedian ate raw meat, and Mademoiselle Mars sometimes drank
dissolved pearls, in imitation of a celebrated Egyptian actress. The
Emperor had leather pockets in his waistcoat, so that he could take
his snuff by the handful; he rode on horseback at full gallop up the
stairway of the orangery at Versailles. Writers and artists died in
the hospital, as a natural consequence of their eccentricities; they
were, moreover, all atheists, and people should be very careful not to
admit them into their households. Joseph Lebas cited with horror the
history of his step-sister Augustine's marriage with the painter
Sommervieux. Astronomers lived on spiders.

These striking points of information on the French language, on
dramatic art, politics, literature, and science, will explain the
bearings of the bourgeois intellect. A poet passing through the Rue
des Lombards may dream of Araby as he inhales certain perfumes. He may
admire the _danseuses_ in a _chauderie_, as he breathes the odors of
an Indian root. Dazzled by the blaze of cochineal, he recalls the
poems of the Veda, the religion of Brahma and its castes; brushing
against piles of ivory in the rough, he mounts the backs of elephants;
seated in a muslin cage, he makes love like the King of Lahore. But
the little retail merchant is ignorant from whence have come, or where
may grow, the products in which he deals. Birotteau, perfumer, did not
know an iota of natural history, nor of chemistry. Though regarding
Vauquelin as a great man, he thought him an exception, - of about the
same capacity as the retired grocer who summed up a discussion on the
method of importing teas, by remarking with a knowing air, "There are
but two ways: tea comes either by caravan, or by Havre." According to
Birotteau aloes and opium were only to be found in the Rue des
Lombards. Rosewater, said to be brought from Constantinople, was made
in Paris like eau-de-cologne. The names of these places were shams,
invented to please Frenchmen who could not endure the things of their
own country. A French merchant must call his discoveries English to
make them fashionable, just as in England the druggists attribute
theirs to France.

Nevertheless, Cesar was incapable of being wholly stupid or a fool.
Honesty and goodness cast upon all the acts of his life a light which
made them creditable; for noble conduct makes even ignorance seem
worthy. Success gave him confidence. In Paris confidence is accepted
as power, of which it is the outward sign. As for Madame Birotteau,
having measured Cesar during the first three years of their married
life, she was a prey to continual terror. She represented in their
union the sagacious and fore-casting side, - doubt, opposition, and
fear; while Cesar, on the other hand, was the embodiment of audacity,
energy, and the inexpressible delights of fatalism. Yet in spite of
these appearances the husband often quaked, while the wife, in
reality, was possessed of patience and true courage.

Thus it happened that a man who was both mediocre and pusillanimous,
without education, without ideas, without knowledge, without force of
character, and who might be expected not to succeed in the slipperiest
city in the world, came by his principles of conduct, by his sense of
justice, by the goodness of a heart that was truly Christian, and
through his love for the only woman he had really won, to be
considered as a remarkable man, courageous, and full of resolution.
The public saw results only. Excepting Pillerault and Popinot the
judge, all the people of his own circle knew him superficially, and
were unable to judge him. Moreover, the twenty or thirty friends he
had collected about him talked the same nonsense, repeated the same
commonplaces, and all thought themselves superior in their own line.
The women vied with each other in dress and good dinners; each had
said her all when she dropped a contemptuous word about her husband.
Madame Birotteau alone had the good sense to treat hers with honor and
respect in public; she knew him to be a man who, in spite of his
secret disabilities, had earned their fortune, and whose good name she
shared. It is true that she sometimes asked herself what sort of world
this could be, if all the men who were thought superior were like her
husband. Such conduct contributed not a little to maintain the
respectful esteem bestowed upon the perfumer in a community where
women are much inclined to complain of their husbands and bring them
into discredit.

* * * * *

The first days of the year 1814, so fatal to imperial France, were
marked at the Birotteaus by two events, not especially remarkable in
other households, but of a nature to impress such simple souls as
Cesar and his wife, who casting their eyes along the past could find
nothing but tender memories. They had taken as head-clerk a young man
twenty-two years of age, named Ferdinand du Tillet. This lad - who had
just left a perfumery where he was refused a share in the business,
and who was reckoned a genius - had made great efforts to get employed
at "The Queen of Roses," whose methods, facilities, and customs were
well known to him. Birotteau took him, and gave him a salary of a
thousand francs, intending to make him eventually his successor.

Ferdinand had so great an influence on the destinies of this family
that it is necessary to say a few words about him. In the first place
he was named simply Ferdinand, without surname. This anonymous
condition seemed to him an immense advantage at the time when Napoleon
conscripted all families to fill the ranks. He was, however, born
somewhere, as the result of some cruel and voluptuous caprice. The
following are the only facts preserved about his civil condition. In
1793 a poor girl of Tillet, a village near Andelys, came by night and
gave birth to a child in the garden of the curate of the church at
Tillet, and after rapping on the window-shutters went away and drowned
herself. The good priest took the child, gave him the name of the
saint inscribed on the calendar for that day, and fed and brought him
up as his own son. The curate died in 1804, without leaving enough
property to carry on the education he had begun. Ferdinand, thrown
upon Paris, led a filibustering life whose chances might bring him to
the scaffold, to fortune, the bar, the army, commerce, or domestic
life. Obliged to live like a Figaro, he was first a commercial
traveller, then a perfumer's clerk in Paris, where he turned up after
traversing all France, having studied the world and made up his mind
to succeed at any price.

In 1813 Ferdinand thought it necessary to register his age, and obtain
a civil standing by applying to the courts at Andelys for a judgment,
which should enable his baptismal record to be transferred from the
registry of the parish to that of the mayor's office; and he obtained
permission to rectify the document by inserting the name of du Tillet,
under which he was known, and which legally belonged to him through
the fact of his exposure and abandonment in that township. Without
father, mother, or other guardian than the _procureur imperial_, alone
in the world and owing no duty to any man, he found society a hard
stepmother, and he handled it, in his turn, without gloves, - as the
Turks the Moors; he knew no guide but his own interests, and any means
to fortune he considered good. This young Norman, gifted with
dangerous abilities, coupled his desires for success with the harsh
defects which, justly or unjustly, are attributed to the natives of
his province. A wheedling manner cloaked a quibbling mind, for he was
in truth a hard judicial wrangler. But if he boldly contested the
rights of others, he certainly yielded none of his own; he attacked
his adversary at the right moment, and wearied him out with his
inflexible persistency. His merits were those of the Scapins of
ancient comedy; he had their fertility of resource, their cleverness
in skirting evil, their itching to lay hold of all that was good to
keep. In short, he applied to his own poverty a saying which the Abbe
Terray uttered in the name of the State, - he kept a loophole to become
in after years an honest man. Gifted with passionate energy, with a
boldness that was almost military in requiring good as well as evil
actions from those about him, and justifying such demands on the
theory of personal interest, he despised men too much, believing them
all corruptible, he was too unscrupulous in the choice of means,
thinking all equally good, he was too thoroughly convinced that the
success of money was the absolution of all moral mechanism, not to
attain his ends sooner or later.

Such a man, standing between the hulks and a vast fortune, was
necessarily vindictive, domineering, quick in decisions, yet as
dissimulating as a Cromwell planning to decapitate the head of
integrity. His real depth was hidden under a light and jesting mind.
Mere clerk as he was, his ambition knew no bounds. With one
comprehensive glance of hatred he had taken in the whole of society,
saying boldly to himself, "Thou shalt be mine!" He had vowed not to
marry till he was forty, and kept his word. Physically, Ferdinand was
a tall, slender young man, with a good figure and adaptive manners,
which enabled him to take, on occasion, the key-note of the various
societies in which he found himself. His ignoble face was rather
pleasant at first sight; but later, on closer acquaintance,
expressions were caught such as come to the surface of those who are
ill at ease in their own minds, and whose consciences groan at certain
times. His complexion, which was sanguine under the soft skin of a
Norman, had a crude or acrid color. The glance of his eye, whose iris
was circled with a whitish rim as if it were lined with silver, was
evasive yet terrible when he fixed it straight upon his victim. His
voice had a hollow sound, like that of a man worn out with much
speaking. His thin lips were not wanting in charm, but his pointed
nose and slightly projecting forehead showed defects of race; and his
hair, of a tint like hair that has been dyed black, indicated a
mongrel descent, through which he derived his mental qualities from
some libertine lord, his low instincts from a seduced peasant-girl,
his knowledge from an incomplete education, and his vices from his
deserted and abandoned condition.

Birotteau discovered with much amazement that his clerk went out in
the evening very elegantly dressed, came home late, and was seen at
the balls of bankers and notaries. Such habits displeased Cesar,
according to whose ideas clerks should study the books of the firm and
think only of their business. The worthy man was shocked by trifles,
and reproached du Tillet gently for wearing linen that was too fine,
for leaving cards on which his name was inscribed, F. du Tillet, - a
fashion, according to commercial jurisprudence, which belonged only to
the great world. Ferdinand had entered the employ of this Orgon with
the intentions of a Tartuffe. He paid court to Madame Cesar, tried to
seduce her, and judged his master very much as the wife judged him
herself, and all with alarming rapidity. Though discreet, reserved,
and accustomed to say only what he meant to say, du Tillet unbosomed
his opinions on men and life in a way to shock a scrupulous woman who
shared the religious feelings of her husband, and who thought it a
crime to do the least harm to a neighbor. In spite of Madame
Birotteau's caution, du Tillet suspected the contempt in which she
held him. Constance, to whom Ferdinand had written a few love-letters,
soon noticed a change in his manners, which grew presuming, as if
intended to convey the idea of a mutual good understanding. Without
giving the secret reason to her husband, she advised him to send
Ferdinand away. Birotteau agreed with his wife, and the dismissal was
determined upon.

Two days before it was carried into effect, on a Saturday night when
Birotteau was making up his monthly accounts, three thousand francs
were found to be missing. His consternation was dreadful, less for the
loss than for the suspicions which fell upon three clerks, one cook, a
shop-boy, and several habitual workmen. On whom should he lay the
blame? Madame Birotteau never left her counter. The clerk who had
charge of the desk was a nephew of Monsieur Ragon named Popinot, a
young man nineteen years old, who lived with the Birotteaus and was
integrity itself. His figures, which disagreed with the money in the
desk, revealed the deficit, and showed that the abstraction had been
made after the balance had been added up. Husband and wife resolved to
keep silence and watch the house. On the following day, Sunday, they
received their friends. The families who made up their coterie met at
each other's houses for little festivities, turn and turn about. While
playing at _bouillote_, Roguin the notary placed on the card-table
some old louis d'or which Madame Cesar had taken only a few days
before from a bride, Madame d'Espart.

"Have you been robbing the poor-box?" asked the perfumer, laughing.

Roguin replied that he had won the money, at the house of a banker,
from du Tillet, who confirmed the answer without blushing. Cesar, on
the other hand, grew scarlet. When the evening was over, and just as
Ferdinand was going to bed, Birotteau took him into the shop on a
pretext of business.

"Du Tillet," said the worthy man, "three thousand francs are missing
from the desk. I suspect no one; but the circumstance of the old louis
seems too much against you not to oblige me to speak of it. We will
not go to bed till we have found where the error lies, - for, after
all, it may be only an error. Perhaps you took something on account of
your salary?"

Du Tillet said at once that he had taken the louis. The perfumer
opened his ledger and found that his clerk's account had not been
debited.

"I was in a hurry; but I ought to have made Popinot enter the sum,"
said Ferdinand.

"That is true," said Birotteau, bewildered by the cool unconcern of
the Norman, who well knew the worthy people among whom he had come
meaning to make his fortune. The perfumer and his clerk passed the
whole night in examining accounts, a labor which the good man knew to
be useless. In coming and going about the desk Cesar slipped three
bills of a thousand francs each into the money-drawer, catching them
against the top of it; then he pretended to be much fatigued and to
fall asleep and snore. Du Tillet awoke him triumphantly, with an
excessive show of joy at discovering the error. The next day Birotteau
scolded Popinot and his little wife publicly, as if very angry with
them for their negligence. Fifteen days later Ferdinand du Tillet got
a situation with a stockbroker. He said perfumery did not suit him,
and he wished to learn banking. In leaving Birotteau, he spoke of
Madame Cesar in a way to make people suppose that his master had
dismissed him out of jealousy. A few months later, however, du Tillet
went to see Birotteau and asked his endorsement for twenty thousand
francs, to enable him to make up the securities he needed in an
enterprise which was to put him on the high-road to fortune. Observing
the surprise which Cesar showed at this impudence, du Tillet frowned,
and asked if he had no confidence in him. Matifat and two other
merchants, who were present on business with Birotteau, also observed
the indignation of the perfumer, who repressed his anger in their
presence. Du Tillet, he thought, might have become an honest man; his
previous fault might have been committed for some mistress in distress
or from losses at cards; the public reprobation of an honest man might
drive one still young, and possibly repentant, into a career of crime.
So this angel took up his pen and endorsed du Tillet's notes, telling
him that he was heartily willing thus to oblige a lad who had been
very useful to him. The blood rushed to his face as he uttered the
falsehood. Du Tillet could not meet his eye, and no doubt vowed to him
at that moment the undying hatred which the spirits of darkness feel
towards the angels of light.

From this time du Tillet held his balance-pole so well as he danced
the tight-rope of financial speculation, that he was rich and elegant
in appearance before he became so in reality. As soon as he got hold
of a cabriolet he was always in it; he kept himself in the high sphere
of those who mingle business with pleasure, and make the foyer of the
opera-house a branch of the Bourse, - in short, the Turcarets of the
period. Thanks to Madame Roguin, whom he had known at the Birotteau's,
he was received at once among people of the highest standing in
finance; and, at the moment of which we write, he had reached a
prosperity in which there was nothing fictitious. He was on the best
terms with the house of Nucingen, to which Roguin had introduced him,
and he had promptly become connected with the brothers Keller and with
several other great banking-houses. No one knew from whence this youth
had derived the immense capital which he handled, but every one
attributed his success to his intelligence and his integrity.

* * * * *

The Restoration made Cesar a personage, and the turmoil of political
crises naturally lessened his recollection of these domestic
misadventures. The constancy of his royalist opinions (to which he had
become exceedingly indifferent since his wound, though he remained
faithful to them out of decency) and the memory of his devotion in
Vendemiaire won him very high patronage, precisely because he had
asked for none. He was appointed major in the National Guard, although
he was utterly incapable of giving the word of command. In 1815
Napoleon, always his enemy, dismissed him. During the Hundred Days
Birotteau was the bugbear of the liberals of his quarter; for it was
not until 1815 that differences of political opinion grew up among
merchants, who had hitherto been unanimous in their desires for public
tranquillity, of which, as they knew, business affairs stood much in
need.

At the second Restoration the royal government was obliged to remodel
the municipality of Paris. The prefect wished to nominate Birotteau as
mayor. Thanks to his wife, the perfumer would only accept the place of
deputy-mayor, which brought him less before the public. Such modesty
increased the respect generally felt for him, and won him the
friendship of the new mayor, Monsieur Flamet de la Billardiere.
Birotteau, who had seen him in the shop in the days when "The Queen of
Roses" was the headquarters of royalist conspiracy, mentioned him to
the prefect of the Seine when that official consulted Cesar on the
choice to be made. Monsieur and Madame Birotteau were therefore never
forgotten in the invitations of the mayor. Madame Birotteau frequently
took up the collections at Saint-Roch in the best of good company. La
Billardiere warmly supported Birotteau when the question of bestowing
the crosses given to the municipality came up, and dwelt upon his
wound at Saint-Roch, his attachment to the Bourbons, and the respect
which he enjoyed. The government, wishing on the one hand to cheapen
Napoleon's order by lavishing the cross of the Legion of honor, and on
the other to win adherents and rally to the Bourbons the various
trades and men of arts and sciences, included Birotteau in the coming
promotion. This honor, which suited well with the show that Cesar made
in his arrondissement, put him in a position where the ideas of a man
accustomed to succeed naturally enlarged themselves. The news which
the mayor had just given him of his preferment was the determining
reason that decided him to plunge into the scheme which he now for the
first time revealed to his wife; he believed it would enable him to
give up perfumery all the more quickly, and rise into the regions of
the higher bourgeoisie of Paris.

Cesar was now forty years old. The work he had undertaken in his
manufactories had given him a few premature wrinkles, and had slightly
silvered the thick tufts of hair on which the pressure of his hat left
a shining circle. His forehead, where the hair grew in a way to mark
five distinct points, showed the simplicity of his life. The heavy
eyebrows were not alarming because the limpid glance of his frank blue
eyes harmonized with the open forehead of an honest man. His nose,
broken at the bridge and thick at the end, gave him the wondering look
of a gaby in the streets of Paris. His lips were very thick, and his
large chin fell in a straight line below them. His face, high-colored
and square in outline, revealed, by the lines of its wrinkles and by
the general character of its expression, the ingenuous craftiness of a
peasant. The strength of his body, the stoutness of his limbs, the
squareness of his shoulders, the width of his feet, - all denoted the
villager transplanted to Paris. His powerful hairy hands, with their
large square nails, would alone have attested his origin if other
vestiges had not remained in various parts of his person. His lips
wore the cordial smile which shopkeepers put on when a customer
enters; but this commercial sunshine was really the image of his
inward content, and pictured the state of his kindly soul. His
distrust never went beyond the lines of his business, his craftiness
left him on the steps of the Bourse, or when he closed the pages of
his ledger. Suspicion was to him very much what his printed
bill-heads were, - a necessity of the sale itself. His countenance
presented a sort of comical assurance and conceit mingled with good
nature, which gave it originality and saved it from too close a
resemblance to the insipid face of a Parisian bourgeois. Without this
air of naive self-admiration and faith in his own person, he would
have won too much respect; he drew nearer to his fellows by thus
contributing his quota of absurdity. When speaking, he habitually
crossed his hands behind his back. When he thought he had said
something striking or gallant, he rose imperceptibly on the points of
his toes twice, and dropped back heavily on his heels, as if to
emphasize what he said. In the midst of an argument he might be seen
turning round upon himself and walking off a few steps, as if he had
gone to find objections with which he returned upon his adversary
brusquely. He never interrupted, and was sometimes a victim to this
careful observance of civility; for others would take the words out of
his mouth, and the good man had to yield his ground without opening
his lips. His great experience in commercial matters had given him a
few fixed habits, which some people called eccentricities. If a note
were overdue he sent for the bailiff, and thought only of recovering
capital, interest, and costs; and the bailiff was ordered to pursue
the matter until the debtor went into bankruptcy. Cesar then stopped
all proceedings, never appeared at any meeting of creditors, and held
on to his securities. He adopted this system and his implacable
contempt for bankrupts from Monsieur Ragon, who in the course of his
commercial life had seen such loss of time in litigation that he had
come to look upon the meagre and uncertain dividends obtained by such
compromises as fully counterbalanced by a better employment of the
time spent in coming and going, in making proposals, or in listening
to excuses for dishonesty.

"If the bankrupt is an honest man, and recovers himself, he will pay
you," Ragon would say. "If he is without means and simply unfortunate,
why torment him? If he is a scoundrel, you will never get anything.
Your known severity will make you seem uncompromising; it will be