Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau

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.