Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau

“He is so full of business,” said Roguin.

“Business has given him little education,” whispered Madame Ragon to Cesarine.

Monsieur Roguin overheard her, and put a finger on his lips: —

“He is rich, clever, and extremely honorable,” he said, stooping to Madame Ragon’s ear.

“Something may be forgiven in consideration of such qualities,” said Pillerault to Ragon.

“Let us read the deeds before dinner,” said Roguin; “we are all alone.”

Madame Ragon, Cesarine, and Constance left the contracting parties to listen to the deeds read over to them by Alexandre Crottat. Cesar signed, in favor of one of Roguin’s clients, a mortgage bond for forty thousand francs, on his grounds and manufactories in the Faubourg du Temple; he turned over to Roguin Pillerault’s cheque on the Bank of France, and gave, without receipt, bills for twenty thousand francs from his current funds, and notes for one hundred and forty thousand francs payable to the order of Claparon.

“I have no receipt to give you,” said Claparon; “you deal, for your half of the property, with Monsieur Roguin, as I do for ours. The sellers will get their pay from him in cash; all that I engage to do is to see that you get the equivalent of the hundred and forty thousand francs paid to my order.”

“That is equitable,” said Pillerault.

“Well, gentlemen, let us call in the ladies; it is cold without them,” said Claparon, glancing at Roguin, as if to ask whether that jest were too broad.

“Ladies! Ah! mademoiselle is doubtless yours,” said Claparon, holding himself very straight and looking at Birotteau; “hey! you are not a bungler. None of the roses you distil can be compared with her; and perhaps it is because you have distilled roses that – ”

“Faith!” said Roguin, interrupting him, “I am very hungry.”

“Let us go to dinner,” said Birotteau.

“We shall dine before a notary,” said Claparon, catching himself up.

“You do a great deal of business?” said Pillerault, seating himself intentionally next to Claparon.

“Quantities; by the gross,” answered the banker. “But it is all heavy, dull; there are risks, canals. Oh, canals! you have no idea how canals occupy us; it is easy to explain. Government needs canals. Canals are a want especially felt in the departments; they concern commerce, you know. ‘Rivers,’ said Pascal, ‘are walking markets.’ We must have markets. Markets depend on embankments, tremendous earth-works; earth-works employ the laboring-classes; hence loans, which find their way back, in the end, to the pockets of the poor. Voltaire said, ‘Canaux, canards, canaille!’ But the government has its own engineers; you can’t get a finger in the matter unless you get on the right side of them; for the Chamber, – oh, monsieur, the Chamber does us all the harm in the world! It won’t take in the political question hidden under the financial question. There’s bad faith on one side or the other. Would you believe it? there’s Keller in the Chamber: now Francois Keller is an orator, he attacks the government about the budget, about canals. Well, when he gets home to the bank, and we go to him with proposals, canals, and so forth, the sly dog is all the other way: everything is right; we must arrange it with the government which he has just been been impudently attacking. The interests of the orator and the interests of the banker clash; we are between two fires! Now, you understand how it is that business is risky; we have got to please everybody, – clerks, chambers, antechambers, ministers – ”

“Ministers?” said Pillerault, determined to get to the bottom of this co-associate.

“Yes, monsieur, ministers.”

“Well, then the newspapers are right?” said Pillerault.

“There’s my uncle talking politics,” said Birotteau. “Monsieur Claparon has won his heart.”

“Devilish rogues, the newspapers,” said Claparon. “Monsieur, the newspapers do all the mischief. They are useful sometimes, but they keep me awake many a night. I wish they didn’t. I have put my eyes out reading and ciphering.”

“To go back to the ministers,” said Pillerault, hoping for revelations.

“Ministers are a mere necessity of government. Ah! what am I eating? ambrosia?” said Claparon, breaking off. “This is a sauce you’ll never find except at a tradesman’s table, for the pot-houses – ”

Here the flowers in Madame Ragon’s cap skipped like young rams. Claparon perceived the word was low, and tried to catch himself up.

“In bank circles,” he said, “we call the best cafes. – Very, and the Freres Provencaux, – pot-houses in jest. Well, neither those infamous pot-houses nor our most scientific cooks can make us a sauce like this; mellifluous! Some give you clear water soured with lemon, and the rest drugs, chemicals.”

Pillerault tried throughout the dinner to fathom this extraordinary being; finding only a void, he began to think him dangerous.

“All’s well,” whispered Roguin to Claparon.

“I shall get out of these clothes to-night, at any rate,” answered Claparon, who was choking.

“Monsieur,” said Cesar, addressing him, “we are compelled to dine in this little room because we are preparing, eighteen days hence, to assemble our friends, as much to celebrate the emancipation of our territory – ”

“Right, monsieur; I myself am for the government. I belong, in opinion, to the statu quo of the great man who guides the destinies of the house of Austria, jolly dog! Hold fast that you may acquire; and, above all, acquire that you may hold. Those are my opinions, which I have the honor to share with Prince Metternich.”

“ – as to commemorate my promotion to the order of the Legion of honor,” continued Cesar.

“Yes, I know. Who told me of that, – the Kellers, or Nucingen?”

Roguin, surprised at such tact, made an admiring gesture.

“No, no; it was in the Chamber.”

“In the Chamber? was it Monsieur de la Billardiere?” said Birotteau.

“Precisely.”

“He is charming,” whispered Cesar to his uncle.

“He pours out phrases, phrases, phrases,” said Pillerault, “enough to drown you.”

“Possibly I showed myself worthy of this signal, royal favor, – ” resumed Birotteau.

“By your labors in perfumery; the Bourbons know how to reward all merit. Ah! let us support those generous princes, to whom we are about to owe unheard-of prosperity. Believe me, the Restoration feels that it must run a tilt against the Empire; the Bourbons have conquests to make, the conquests of peace. You will see their conquests!”

“Monsieur will perhaps do us the honor to be present at our ball?” said Madame Cesar.

“To pass an evening with you, Madame, I would sacrifice the making of millions.”

“He certainly does chatter,” said Cesar to his uncle.

While the declining glory of perfumery was about to send forth its setting rays, a star was rising with feeble light upon the commercial horizon. Anselme Popinot was laying the corner-stone of his fortune in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants. This narrow little street, where loaded wagons can scarcely pass each other, runs from the Rue des Lombards at one end, to the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher at the other, entering the latter opposite to the Rue Quincampoix, that famous thoroughfare of old Paris where French history has so often been enacted. In spite of this disadvantage, the congregation of druggists in that neighborhood made Popinot’s choice of the little street a good one. The house, which stands second from the Rue des Lombards, was so dark that except at certain seasons it was necessary to use lights in open day. The embryo merchant had taken possession, the preceding evening, of the dingy and disgusting premises. His predecessor, who sold molasses and coarse sugars, had left the stains of his dirty business upon the walls, in the court, in the store-rooms. Imagine a large and spacious shop, with great iron-bound doors, painted a dragon-green, strengthened with long iron bars held on by nails whose heads looked like mushrooms, and covered with an iron trellis-work, which swelled out at the bottom after the fashion of the bakers’-shops in former days; the floor paved with large white stones, most of them broken, the walls yellow, and as bare as those of a guard-room. Next to the shop came the back-shop, and two other rooms lighted from the street, in which Popinot proposed to put his office, his books, and his own workroom. Above these rooms were three narrow little chambers pushed up against the party-wall, with an outlook into the court; here he intended to dwell. The three rooms were dilapidated, and had no view but that of the court, which was dark, irregular, and surrounded by high walls, to which perpetual dampness, even in dry weather, gave the look of being daubed with fresh plaster. Between the stones of this court was a filthy and stinking black substance, left by the sugars and the molasses that once occupied it. Only one of the bedrooms had a chimney, all the walls were without paper, and the floors were tiled with brick.

Since early morning Gaudissart and Popinot, helped by a journeyman whose services the commercial traveller had invoked, were busily employed in stretching a fifteen-sous paper on the walls of these horrible rooms, the workman pasting the lengths. A collegian’s mattress on a bedstead of red wood, a shabby night-stand, an old-fashioned bureau, one table, two armchairs, and six common chairs, the gift of Popinot’s uncle the judge, made up the furniture. Gaudissart had decked the chimney-piece with a frame in which was a mirror much defaced, and bought at a bargain. Towards eight o’clock in the evening the two friends, seated before the fireplace where a fagot of wood was blazing, were about to attack the remains of their breakfast.

“Down with the cold mutton!” cried Gaudissart, suddenly, “it is not worthy of such a housewarming.”

“But,” said Popinot, showing his solitary coin of twenty francs, which he was keeping to pay for the prospectus, “I – ”

“I – ” cried Gaudissart, sticking a forty-franc piece in his own eye.

A knock resounded throughout the court, naturally empty and echoing of a Sunday, when the workpeople were away from it and the laboratories empty.

“Here comes the faithful slave of the Rue de la Poterie!” cried the illustrious Gaudissart.

Sure enough, a waiter entered, followed by two scullions bearing in three baskets a dinner, and six bottles of wine selected with discernment.

“How shall we ever eat it all up?” said Popinot.

“The man of letters!” cried Gaudissart, “don’t forget him. Finot loves the pomps and the vanities; he is coming, the innocent boy, armed with a dishevelled prospectus – the word is pat, hein? Prospectuses are always thirsty. We must water the seed if we want flowers. Depart, slaves!” he added, with a gorgeous air, “there is gold for you.”

He gave them ten sous with a gesture worthy of Napoleon, his idol.

“Thank you, Monsieur Gaudissart,” said the scullions, better pleased with the jest than with the money.

“As for you, my son,” he said to the waiter, who stayed to serve the dinner, “below is a porter’s wife; she lives in a lair where she sometimes cooks, as in other days Nausicaa washed, for pure amusement. Find her, implore her goodness; interest her, young man, in the warmth of these dishes. Tell her she shall be blessed, and above all, respected, most respected, by Felix Gaudissart, son of Jean-Francois Gaudissart, grandson of all the Gaudissarts, vile proletaries of ancient birth, his forefathers. March! and mind that everything is hot, or I’ll deal retributive justice by a rap on your knuckles!”

Another knock sounded.

“Here comes the pungent Andoche!” shouted Gaudissart.

A stout, chubby-faced fellow of medium height, from head to foot the evident son of a hat-maker, with round features whose shrewdness was hidden under a restrained and subdued manner, suddenly appeared. His face, which was melancholy, like that of a man weary of poverty, lighted up hilariously when he caught sight of the table, and the bottles swathed in significant napkins. At Gaudissart’s shout, his pale-blue eyes sparkled, his big head, hollowed like that of a Kalmuc Tartar, bobbed from right to left, and he bowed to Popinot with a queer manner, which meant neither servility nor respect, but was rather that of a man who feels he is not in his right place and will make no concessions. He was just beginning to find out that he possessed no literary talent whatever; he meant to stay in the profession, however, by living on the brains of others, and getting astride the shoulders of those more able than himself, making his profit there instead of struggling any longer at his own ill-paid work. At the present moment he had drunk to the dregs the humiliation of applications and appeals which constantly failed, and he was now, like people in the higher walks of finance, about to change his tone and become insolent, advisedly. But he needed a small sum in hand on which to start, and Gaudissart gave him a share in the present affair of ushering into the world the oil of Popinot.

“You are to negotiate on his account with the newspapers. But don’t play double; if you do I’ll fight you to the death. Give him his money’s worth.”

Popinot gazed at “the author” which much uneasiness. People who are purely commercial look upon an author with mingled sentiments of fear, compassion, and curiosity. Though Popinot had been well brought up, the habits of his relations, their ideas, and the obfuscating effect of a shop and a counting-room, had lowered his intelligence by bending it to the use and wont of his calling, – a phenomenon which may often be seen if we observe the transformations which take place in a hundred comrades, when ten years supervene between the time when they leave college or a public school, to all intents and purposes alike, and the period when they meet again after contact with the world. Andoche accepted Popinot’s perturbation as a compliment.

“Now then, before dinner, let’s get to the bottom of the prospectus; then we can drink without an afterthought,” said Gaudissart. “After dinner one reads askew; the tongue digests.”

“Monsieur,” said Popinot, “a prospectus is often a fortune.”

“And for plebeians like myself,” said Andoche, “fortune is nothing more than a prospectus.”

“Ha, very good!” cried Gaudissart, “that rogue of a Finot has the wit of the forty Academicians.”

“Of a hundred Academicians,” said Popinot, bewildered by these ideas.

The impatient Gaudissart seized the manuscript and began to read in a loud voice, with much emphasis, “CEPHALIC OIL.”

“I should prefer Oil Cesarienne,” said Popinot.

“My friend,” said Gaudissart, “you don’t know the provincials; there’s a surgical operation called by that name, and they are such stupids that they’ll think your oil is meant to facilitate childbirth. To drag them back from that to hair is beyond even my powers of persuasion.”

“Without wishing to defend my term,” said the author, “I must ask you to observe that ‘Cephalic Oil’ means oil for the head, and sums up your ideas in one word.”

“Well, let us see,” said Popinot impatiently.

Here follows the prospectus; the same which the trade receives, by the thousand, to the present day (another piece justificative): —

GOLD MEDALEXPOSITION OF 1819CEPHALIC OILPatents for Invention and Improvements

“No cosmetic can make the hair grow, and no chemical preparation can dye it without peril to the seat of intelligence. Science has recently made known the fact that hair is a dead substance, and that no agent can prevent it from falling off or whitening. To prevent Baldness and Dandruff, it is necessary to protect the bulb from which the hair issues from all deteriorating atmospheric influences, and to maintain the temperature of the head at its right medium. CEPHALIC OIL, based upon principles laid down by the Academy of Sciences, produces this important result, sought by the ancients, – the Greeks, the Romans, and all Northern nations, – to whom the preservation of the hair was peculiarly precious. Certain scientific researches have demonstrated that nobles, formerly distinguished for the length of their hair, used no other remedy than this; their method of preparation, which had been lost in the lapse of ages, has been intelligently re-discovered by A. Popinot, the inventor of CEPHALIC OIL.

“To preserve, rather than provoke a useless and injurious stimulation of the instrument which contains the bulbs, is the mission of CEPHALIC OIL. In short, this oil, which counteracts the exfoliation of pellicular atoms, which exhales a soothing perfume, and arrests, by means of the substances of which it is composed (among them more especially the oil of nuts), the action of the outer air upon the scalp, also prevents influenzas, colds in the head, and other painful cephalic afflictions, by maintaining the normal temperature of the cranium. Consequently, the bulbs, which contain the generating fluids, are neither chilled by cold nor parched by heat. The hair of the head, that magnificent product, priceless alike to man and woman, will be preserved even to advanced age, in all the brilliancy and lustre which bestow their charm upon the heads of infancy, by those who make use of CEPHALIC OIL.

“DIRECTIONS FOR USE are furnished with each bottle, and serve as a wrapper.

“METHOD OF USING CEPHALIC OIL. – It is quite useless to oil the hair; this is not only a vulgar and foolish prejudice, but an untidy habit, for the reason that all cosmetics leave their trace. It suffices to wet a little sponge in the oil, and after parting the hair with the comb, to apply it at the roots in such a manner that the whole skin of the head may be enabled to imbibe it, after the scalp has received a preliminary cleansing with brush and comb.

“The oil is sold in bottles bearing the signature of the inventor, to prevent counterfeits. Price, THREE FRANCS. A. POPINOT, Rue des Cinq-Diamants, quartier des Lombards, Paris.

“It is requested that all letters be prepaid.

“N.B. The house of A. Popinot supplies all oils and essences appertaining to druggists: lavender, oil of almonds, sweet and bitter, orange oil, cocoa-nut oil, castor oil, and others.”

“My dear friend,” said the illustrious Gaudissart to Finot, “it is admirably written. Thunder and lightning! we are in the upper regions of science. We shirk nothing; we go straight to the point. That’s useful literature; I congratulate you.”

“A noble prospectus!” cried Popinot, enthusiastically.

“A prospectus which slays Macassar at the first word,” continued Gaudissart, rising with a magisterial air to deliver the following speech, which he divided by gestures and pauses in his most parliamentary manner.

“No – hair – can be made – to grow! Hair cannot be dyed without – danger! Ha! ha! success is there. Modern science is in union with the customs of the ancients. We can deal with young and old alike. We can say to the old man, ‘Ha, monsieur! the ancients, the Greeks and Romans, knew a thing or two, and were not so stupid as some would have us believe’; and we can say to the young man, ‘My dear boy, here’s another discovery due to progress and the lights of science. We advance; what may we not obtain from steam and telegraphy, and other things! This oil is based on the scientific treatise of Monsieur Vauquelin!’ Suppose we print an extract from Monsieur Vauquelin’s report to the Academy of Sciences, confirming our statement, hein? Famous! Come, Finot, sit down; attack the viands! Soak up the champagne! let us drink to the success of my young friend, here present!”

“I felt,” said the author modestly, “that the epoch of flimsy and frivolous prospectuses had gone by; we are entering upon an era of science; we need an academical tone, – a tone of authority, which imposes upon the public.”

“We’ll boil that oil; my feet itch, and my tongue too. I’ve got commissions from all the rival hair people; none of them give more than thirty per cent discount; we must manage forty on every hundred remitted, and I’ll answer for a hundred thousand bottles in six months. I’ll attack apothecaries, grocers, perfumers! Give ‘em forty per cent, and they’ll bamboozle the public.”

The three young fellows devoured their dinner like lions, and drank like lords to the future success of Cephalic Oil.

“The oil is getting into my head,” said Finot.

Gaudissart poured out a series of jokes and puns upon hats and heads, and hair and hair-oil, etc. In the midst of Homeric laughter a knock resounded, and was heard, in spite of an uproar of toasts and reciprocal congratulations.

“It is my uncle!” cried Popinot. “He has actually come to see me.”

“An uncle!” said Finot, “and we haven’t got a glass!”

“The uncle of my friend Popinot is a judge,” said Gaudissart to Finot, “and he is not to be hoaxed; he saved my life. Ha! when one gets to the pass where I was, under the scaffold —Qou-ick, and good-by to your hair,” – imitating the fatal knife with voice and gesture. “One recollects gratefully the virtuous magistrate who saved the gutter where the champagne flows down. Recollect? – I’d recollect him dead-drunk! You don’t know what it is, Finot, unless you have stood in need of Monsieur Popinot. Huzza! we ought to fire a salute – from six pounders, too!”

The virtuous magistrate was now asking for his nephew at the door. Recognizing his voice, Anselme went down, candlestick in hand, to light him up.

“I wish you good evening, gentlemen,” said the judge.

The illustrious Gaudissart bowed profoundly. Finot examined the magistrate with a tipsy eye, and thought him a bit of a blockhead.

“You have not much luxury here,” said the judge, gravely, looking round the room. “Well, my son, if we wish to be something great, we must begin by being nothing.”

“What profound wisdom!” said Gaudissart to Finot.

“Text for an article,” said the journalist.

“Ah! you here, monsieur?” said the judge, recognizing the commercial traveller; “and what are you doing now?”

“Monsieur, I am contributing to the best of my small ability to the success of your dear nephew. We have just been studying a prospectus for his oil; you see before you the author of that prospectus, which seems to us the finest essay in the literature of wigs.” The judge looked at Finot. “Monsieur,” said Gaudissart, “is Monsieur Andoche Finot, a young man distinguished in literature, who does high-class politics and the little theatres in the government newspapers, – I may say a statesman on the high-road to becoming an author.”

Finot pulled Gaudissart by the coat-tails.

“Well, well, my sons,” said the judge, to whom these words explained the aspect of the table, where there stilled remained the tokens of a very excusable feast. “Anselme,” said the old gentleman to his nephew, “dress yourself, and come with me to Monsieur Birotteau’s, where I have a visit to pay. You shall sign the deed of partnership, which I have carefully examined. As you mean to have the manufactory for your oil on the grounds in the Faubourg du Temple, I think you had better take a formal lease of them. Monsieur Birotteau might have others in partnership with him, and it is better to settle everything legally at once; then there can be no discussion. These walls seem to me very damp, my dear boy; take up the straw matting near your bed.”

“Permit me, monsieur,” said Gaudissart, with an ingratiating air, “to explain to you that we have just pasted up the paper ourselves, and that’s the – reason why – the walls – are not – dry.”

“Economy? quite right,” said the judge.

“Look here,” said Gaudissart in Finot’s ear, “my friend Popinot is a virtuous young man; he is going with his uncle; let’s you and I go and finish the evening with our cousins.”

The journalist showed the empty lining of his pockets. Popinot saw the gesture, and slipped his twenty-franc piece into the palm of the author of the prospectus.

The judge had a coach at the end of the street, in which he carried off his nephew to the Birotteaus.

VII

Pillerault, Monsieur and Madame Ragon, and Monsieur Roguin were playing at boston, and Cesarine was embroidering a handkerchief, when the judge and Anselme arrived. Roguin, placed opposite to Madame Ragon, near whom Cesarine was sitting, noticed the pleasure of the young girl when she saw Anselme enter, and he made Crottat a sign to observe that she turned as rosy as a pomegranate.

“This is to be a day of deeds, then?” said the perfumer, when the greetings were over and the judge told him the purpose of the visit.