Chapter IV: Part I: Cesar at His Apogee (4)

When Grindot came in to measure the bedroom he was surprised and taken aback at the beauty of Cesarine. Just out of her dressing-room and wearing a pretty morning-gown, fresh and rosy as a young girl is fresh and rosy at eighteen, blond and slender, with blue eyes, Cesarine seemed to the young artist a picture of the elasticity, so rare in Paris, that fills and rounds the delicate cheek, and tints with the color adored of painters, the tracery of blue veins throbbing beneath the whiteness of her clear skin. Though she lived in the lymphatic atmosphere of a Parisian shop, where the air stagnates and the sun seldom shines, her habits gave her the same advantages which the open-air life of Rome gives to the Transteverine peasant-woman. Her hair,--which was abundant, and grew, like that of her father, in points upon her forehead,--was caught up in a twist which showed the lines of a well-set neck, and then rippled downward in curls that were scrupulously cared for, after the fashion of young shop-women, whose desire to attract attention inspires the truly English minutiae of their toilet. The beauty of this young girl was not the beauty of an English lady, nor of a French duchess, but the round and glowing beauty of a Flemish Rubens. Cesarine had the turned-up nose of her father, but it was piquant through the delicacy of its modelling,--like those noses, essentially French, which have been so well reproduced by Largilliere. Her skin, of a firm full texture, bespoke the vitality of a virgin; she had the fine brow of her mother, but it was clear with the serenity of a young girl who knows no care. Her liquid blue eyes, bathed in rich fluid, expressed the tender grace of a glowing happiness. If that happiness took from her head the poetry which painters insist on giving to their pictures my making them a shade too pensive, the vague physical languor of a young girl who has never left her mother’s side made up for it, and gave her a species of ideality. Notwithstanding the graceful lines of her figure, she was strongly built. Her feet betrayed the peasant origin of her father and her own defects of race, as did the redness of her hands, the sign of the thoroughly bourgeois life. Sooner or later she would grow stout. She had caught the sentiment of dress from the elegant young women who came to the shop, and had learned from them certain movements of the head, certain ways of speaking and of moving; and she could play the well-bred woman in a way that turned the heads of all the young men, especially the clerks, in whose eyes she appeared truly distinguished. Popinot swore that he would have no other wife than Cesarine. The liquid brightness of that eye, which a look, or a tone of reproach, might cause to overflow in tears, was all that kept him to a sense of masculine superiority. The charming girl inspired love without leaving time to ask whether she had mind enough to make it durable. But of what value is the thing they call in Paris _mind_ to a class whose principal element of happiness is virtue and good sense?

In her moral qualities Cesarine was like her mother, somewhat bettered by the superfluities of education; she loved music, drew the Madonna della Sedia in chalk, and read the works of Mmes. Cottin and Riccoboni, of Bernadin de Saint-Pierre, Fenelon, and Racine. She was never seen behind the counter with her mother except for a few moments before sitting down to dinner, or on some special occasion when she replaced her. Her father and mother, like all persons who have risen from small beginnings, and who cultivate the ingratitude of their children by putting them above themselves, delighted in deifying Cesarine, who happily had the virtues of her class, and took no advantage of their weakness.

Madame Birotteau followed the architect with an anxious and appealing eye, watching with terror, and pointing out to her daughter, the fantastic movements of the four-foot rule, that wand of architects and builders, with which Grindot was measuring. She saw in those mysterious weavings a conjuring spirit that augured evil; she wished the walls were less high, the rooms less large, and dared not question the young man on the effects of his sorcery.

“Do not be afraid, madame, I shall carry nothing off,” said the artist, smiling.

Cesarine could not help smiling.

“Monsieur,” said Constance, in a supplicating voice, not even noticing the tit-for-tat of the young man, “consider economy, and later we may be able to serve you--”

* * * * *

Before starting to see Monsieur Molineux, the owner of the adjoining house, Cesar wished to get from Roguin the private deed about the transference of the lease which Alexandre Crottat had been ordered to draw up. As he left the notary’s house, he saw du Tillet at the window of Roguin’s study. Although the _liaison_ of his former clerk with the lawyer’s wife made it not unlikely that he should see du Tillet there at this hour when the negotiations about the Madeleine were going on, Birotteau, in spite of his extreme confidence, felt uneasy. The excited manner of du Tillet seemed the sign of a discussion. “Can he be in it?” thought Cesar, with a flash of commercial prudence. The suspicion passed like lightning through his mind. He looked again and saw Madame Roguin, and the presence of du Tillet was no longer suspicious. “Still, suppose Constance were right?” he said to himself. “What a fool I am to listen to women’s notions! I’ll speak of it to my uncle Pillerault this morning; it is only a step from the Cour Batave, where Monsieur Molineux lives, to the Rue des Bourdonnais.”

A cautious observer, or a merchant who had met with swindlers in his business career, would have been saved by this sight; but the antecedents of Birotteau, the incapacity of his mind, which had little power to follow up the chain of inductions by which a superior man reaches a conclusion, all conspired to blind him. He found the umbrella-man in full dress, and they were about to start, when Virginie, the cook, caught him by the arm:--

“Monsieur, madame does not wish you to go out--”

“Pshaw!” said Birotteau, “more women’s notions!”

“--without your coffee, which is ready.”

“That’s true. My neighbor,” he said to Cayron, “I have so many things in my head that I can’t think of my stomach. Do me the kindness to go forward; we will meet at Monsieur Molineux’ door, unless you are willing to go up and explain matters to him, which would save time.”

Monsieur Molineux was a grotesque little man, living on his rents,--a species of being that exists nowhere but in Paris, like a certain lichen which grows only in Iceland. This comparison is all the more apt because he belonged to a mixed nature, to an animal-vegetable kingdom which some modern Mercier might build up of cryptograms that push up upon, and flower, and die in or under the plastered walls of the strange unhealthy houses where they prefer to cluster. The first aspect of this human plant--umbelliferous, judging by the fluted blue cap which crowned it, with a stalk encased in greenish trousers, and bulbous roots swathed in list shoes--offered to the eye a flat and faded countenance, which certainly betrayed nothing poisonous. In this queer product might be recognized the typical stockholder, who believes every report which the daily press baptizes with ink, and is content, for all response, to say, “Read what the papers say,”--the bourgeois, essentially the friend of order, always revolting in his moral being against power, though always obeying it; a creature feeble in the mass but fierce in isolated circumstances, hard as a constable when his own rights are in question, yet giving fresh chickweed to his bird and fish-bones to his cat, interrupting the signing of a lease to whistle to a canary, suspicious as a jailer, but apt to put his money into a bad business and then endeavor to get it back by niggardly avarice. The evil savor of this hybrid flower was only revealed by use; its nauseous bitterness needed the stewing of some business in which his interests were mingled with those of other men, to bring it fully out. Like all Parisians, Molineux had the lust of dominating; he craved the share of sovereignty which is exercised more or less by every one, even a porter, over a greater or lesser number of victims,--over wife, children, tenants, clerks, horses, dogs, monkeys, to whom they send, on the rebound, the mortifications they have endured in the higher spheres to which they aspired.

This annoying old man had neither wife, child, nephew, or niece. He bullied his servant-of-all-work too much to make her a victim; for she escaped all contact with her master by doing her work and keeping out of his way. His appetite for tyranny was thus balked; and to satisfy it in some way he patiently studied the laws relating to rentals and party-walls; he fathomed the jurisprudence which regulates the dwellings of Paris in an infinite number of petty questions as to tenants, abutters, liabilities, taxes, repairs, sweepings, decorations for the Fete-Dieu, waste-pipes, lighting, projections over the public way, and the neighborhood of unhealthy buildings. His means, his strength, in fact his whole mind was spent in keeping his proprietary rights on a complete war-footing. He had made it an amusement, and the amusement had become a monomania. He was fond of protecting citizens against the encroachment of illegal proceedings; but finding such subjects of complaint rare, he had finally turned upon his own tenants. A tenant became his enemy, his inferior, his subject, his vassal; he laid claim to his subservience, and looked upon any man as a brute who passed him on the stairway without speaking. He wrote out his bills for rent himself, and sent them on the morning of the day they fell due. The debtor who was behindhand in his payment received a legal notice to quit at an appointed time. Then followed seizures, law-suits, costs, and the whole judicial array set in motion with the rapidity of what the head’s-man calls the “mechanism.” Molineux granted neither grace nor time; his heart was a callus in the direction of a lease.

“I will lend you the money if you want it,” he would say to a man he thought solvent, “but pay my rent; all delays carry with them a loss of interest for which the law does not indemnify us.”

After long study of the caprices and capers of tenants who persisted, after the fashion of dynasties, in upsetting the arrangements of their predecessors, he had drawn up a charter of his own and followed it religiously. In accordance therewith, the old fellow made no repairs: no chimney ever smoked, the stairs were clean, the ceilings white, the cornices irreproachable, the floors firm on their joists, the paint satisfactory; the locks were never more than three years old, not a pane of glass was missing, there were no cracks, and he saw no broken tiles until a tenant vacated the premises. When he met the tenants on their first arrival he was accompanied by a locksmith and a painter and glazier,--very convenient folks, as he remarked. The lessee was at liberty to make improvements; but if the unhappy man did so, little Molineux thought night and day of how he could dislodge him and relet the improved appartement on better terms. He watched and waited and spun the web of his mischievous legal proceedings. He knew all the tricks of Parisian legislation in the matter of leases. Factious and fond of scribbling, he wrote polite and specious letters to his tenants; but at the bottom of all his civil sentences could be seen, as in his faded and cozening face, the soul of a Shylock. He always demanded six months’ rent in advance, to be deducted from the last quarter of the lease under an array of prickly conditions which he invented. If new tenants offered themselves, he got information about them from the police; for he would not have people of certain callings,--he was afraid, for instance, of hammers. When the lease was to be signed, he kept the deed and spelled it over for a week, fearing what he called the _et caetera_ of lawyers.

Outside of his notions as a proprietor, Jean-Baptiste Molineux seemed good and obliging. He played at boston without complaining of the players; he laughed at the things which make a bourgeois laugh; talked of what others of his kind talked about,--the arbitrary powers of bakers who nefariously sell false weights, of the police, of the heroic seventeen deputies of the Left. He read the “Good Sense” of the Cure Meslier, and went to Mass; not that he had any choice between deism and Christianity, but he took the wafer when offered to him, and argued that he was therefore safe from the interfering claims of the clergy. The indefatigable litigant wrote letters on this subject to the newspapers, which the newspapers did not insert and never answered. He was in other respects one of those estimable bourgeois who solemnly put Christmas logs on their fire, draw kings at play, invent April-fools, stroll on the boulevards when the weather is fine, go to see the skating, and are always to be found on the terrace of the Place Louis XV. at two o’clock on the days of the fireworks, with a roll in their pockets so that they may get and keep a front place.

The Cour Batave, where the little old man lived, is the product of one of those fantastic speculations of which no man can explain the meaning after they are once completed. This cloistral structure, with arcades and interior galleries built of free-stone, with a fountain at one end,--a parched fountain, which opens its lion’s mouth less to give water than to ask it from the passers-by,--was doubtless invented to endow the Saint-Denis quarter with a species of Palais-Royal. The place, unhealthy and buried on all four sides by the high walls of its houses, has no life or movement except in the daytime; it is a central spot where dark passages meet, and connect the quarter of the markets with the Saint-Martin quarter by means of the famous Rue Quincampoix,--damp ways in which hurried foot-passengers contract rheumatism. But at night no spot in Paris is more deserted; it might be called the catacombs of commerce. In it there are various industrial _cloaca_, very few Dutchmen, but a great many grocers. The apartments in this merchant-place have, naturally, no other outlook than that of the common court on which all the windows give, so that rents are at a minimum.

Monsieur Molineux lived in one of the angles, on the sixth floor for sanitary reasons, the air not being pure at a less height than seventy feet above the ground. At this altitude the worthy proprietor enjoyed an enchanting view of the windmills of Montmartre as he walked among the gutters on the roof, where he cultivated flowers, in spite of police regulations against the hanging gardens of our modern Babylon. His appartement was made up of four rooms, without counting the precious _anglaises_ on the floor above him of which he had the key; they belonged to him, he had made them, and he felt he was legally entitled to them. On entering his appartement, a repulsive barrenness plainly showed the avarice of the owner: in the antechamber were six straw chairs and a porcelain stove; on the walls, which were covered with a bottle-green paper, were four engravings bought at auction. In the dining-room were two sideboards, two cages full of birds, a table covered with oil-cloth, a barometer, a window-door which opened on the hanging gardens, and chairs of dark mahogany covered with horse-hair. The salon had little curtains of some old green-silk stuff, and furniture of painted white-wood covered with green worsted velvet. As to the chamber of the old celibate it was furnished with Louis XV. articles, so dirty and disfigured through long usage that a woman dressed in white would have been afraid of soiling herself by contact with them. The chimney-piece was adorned by a clock with two columns, between which was a dial-case that served as a pedestal to Pallas brandishing her lance: a myth. The floor was covered with plates full of scraps intended for the cats, on which there was much danger of stepping. Above a chest of drawers in rosewood hung a portrait done in pastel,--Molineux in his youth. There were also books, tables covered with shabby green bandboxes, on a bracket a number of his deceased canaries stuffed; and, finally, a chilly bed that might formerly have belonged to a Carmelite.

* * * * *

Cesar Birotteau was delighted with the extreme politeness of Molineux, whom he found wrapped in a gray woollen dressing-gown, watching his milk in a little metal heater on the edge of his fireplace, while his coffee-grounds were boiling in a little brown earthenware jug from which, every now and then, he poured a few drops into his coffee-pot. The umbrella-man, anxious not to disturb his landlord, had gone to the door to admit Birotteau. Molineux held the mayors and deputies of the city of Paris in much esteem; he called them “my municipal officers.” At sight of the magistrate he rose, and remained standing, cap in hand, until the great Birotteau was seated.

“No, monsieur; yes, monsieur; ah, monsieur, if I had known I should have had the honor of receiving in the bosom of my humble _penates_ a member of the municipality of Paris, believe me I should have made it my duty to call upon you, although I am your landlord--or, on the point of becoming so.”

Birotteau made him a sign to put on his cap.

“No, I shall not; not until you are seated, and have replaced yours, if you feel the cold. My room is chilly, the smallness of my means not permitting--God grant your wishes!” he added, as Birotteau sneezed while he felt in his pockets for the deeds. In presenting them to Molineux Cesar remarked, to avoid all unnecessary delay, that Monsieur Roguin had drawn them up.

“I do not dispute the legal talents of Monsieur Roguin, an old name well-known in the notariat of Paris; but I have my own little customs, I do my own business (an excusable hobby), and my notary is--”

“But this matter is very simple,” said the perfumer, who was used to the quick business methods of merchants.

“Simple!” cried Molineux. “Nothing is simple in such matters. Ah! you are not a landlord, monsieur, and you may think yourself happy. If you knew to what lengths of ingratitude tenants can go, and to what precautions we are driven! Why, monsieur, I once had a tenant--”

And for a quarter an hour he recounted how a Monsieur Gendrin, designer, had deceived the vigilance of his porter, Rue Saint-Honore. Monsieur Gendrin had committed infamies worthy of Marat,--obscene drawings at which the police winked. This Gendrin, a profoundly immoral artist, had brought in women of bad lives, and made the staircase intolerable,--conduct worthy of a man who made caricatures of the government. And why such conduct? Because his rent had been asked for on the 15th! Gendrin and Molineux were about to have a lawsuit, for, though he did not pay, Gendrin insisted on holding the empty appartement. Molineux received anonymous letters, no doubt from Gendrin, which threatened him with assassination some night in the passages about the Cour Batave.

“It has got to such a pass, monsieur,” he said, winding up the tale, “that monsieur the prefect of police, to whom I confided my trouble (I profited by the occasion to drop him a few words on the modifications which should be introduced into the laws to meet the case), has authorized me to carry pistols for my personal safety.”

The little old man got up and fetched the pistols.

“There they are!” he cried.

“But, monsieur, you have nothing to fear from me,” said Birotteau, looking at Cayron, and giving him a glance and a smile intended to express pity for such a man.

Molineux detected it; he was mortified at such a look from an officer of the municipality, whose duty it was to protect all persons under his administration. In any one else he might have pardoned it, but in Birotteau the deputy-mayor, never!

“Monsieur,” he said in a dry tone, “an esteemed commercial judge, a deputy-mayor, and an honorable merchant would not descend to such petty meannesses,--for they are meannesses. But in your case there is an opening through the wall which must be agreed to by your landlord, Monsieur le comte de Grandville; there are stipulations to be made and agreed upon about replacing the wall at the end of your lease. Besides which, rents have hitherto been low, but they are rising; the Place Vendome is looking up, the Rue Castiglione is to be built upon. I am binding myself--binding myself down!”

“Let us come to a settlement,” said Birotteau, amazed. “How much do you want? I know business well enough to be certain that all your reasons can be silenced by the superior consideration of money. Well, how much is it?”

“That’s only fair, monsieur the deputy. How much longer does your own lease run?”

“Seven years,” answered Birotteau.

“Think what my first floor will be worth in seven years!” said Molineux. “Why, what would two furnished rooms let for in that quarter?--more than two hundred francs a month perhaps! I am binding myself--binding myself by a lease. The rent ought to be fifteen hundred francs. At that price I will consent to the transfer of the two rooms by Monsieur Cayron, here present,” he said, with a sly wink at the umbrella-man; “and I will give you a lease of them for seven consecutive years. The costs of piercing the wall are to belong to you; and you must procure the consent of Monsieur le comte de Grandville and the cession of all his rights in the matter. You are responsible for all damage done in making this opening. You will not be expected to replace the wall yourself, that will be my business; but you will at once pay me five hundred francs as an indemnity towards it. We never know who may live or die, and I can’t run after anybody to get the wall rebuilt.”

“Those conditions seem to me pretty fair,” said Birotteau.

“Next,” said Molineux. “You must pay me seven hundred and fifty francs, _hic et hinc_, to be deducted from the last six months of your lease; this will be acknowledged in the lease itself. Oh, I will accept small bills for the value of the rent at any date you please! I am prompt and square in business. We will agree that you are to close up the door on my staircase (where you are to have no right of entry), at your own cost, in masonry. Don’t fear,--I shall ask you no indemnity for that at the end of your lease; I consider it included in the five hundred francs. Monsieur, you will find me just.”

“We merchants are not so sharp,” said the perfumer. “It would not be possible to do business if we made so many stipulations.”

“Oh, in business, that is very different, especially in perfumery, where everything fits like a glove,” said the old fellow with a sour smile; “but when you come to letting houses in Paris, nothing is unimportant. Why, I have a tenant in the Rue Montorgeuil who--”

“Monsieur,” said Birotteau, “I am sorry to detain you from your breakfast: here are the deeds, correct them. I agree to all that you propose, we will sign them to-morrow; but to-day let us come to an agreement by word of mouth, for my architect wants to take possession of the premises in the morning.”

“Monsieur,” resumed Molineux with a glance at the umbrella-merchant, “part of a quarter has expired; Monsieur Cayron would not wish to pay it; we will add it to the rest, so that your lease may run from January to January. It will be more in order.”

“Very good,” said Birotteau.

“And the five per cent for the porter--”

“But,” said Birotteau, “if you deprive me of the right of entrance, that is not fair.”

“Oh, you are a tenant,” said little Molineux, peremptorily, up in arms for the principle. “You must pay the tax on doors and windows and your share in all the other charges. If everything is clearly understood there will be no difficulty. You must be doing well, monsieur; your affairs are prospering?”

“Yes,” said Birotteau. “But my motive is, I may say, something different. I assemble my friends as much to celebrate the emancipation of our territory as to commemorate my promotion to the order of the Legion of honor--”

“Ah! ah!” said Molineux, “a recompense well-deserved!”

“Yes,” said Birotteau, “possibly I showed myself worthy of that signal and 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. These claims--”

“Are equal to those of our brave soldiers of the old army. The ribbon is red, for it is dyed with their blood.”

At these words, taken from the “Constitutionnel,” Birotteau could not keep from inviting little Molineux to the ball, who thanked him profusely and felt like forgiving the disdainful look. The old man conducted his new tenant as far as the landing, and overwhelmed him with politeness. When Birotteau reached the middle of the Cour Batave he gave Cayron a merry look.

“I did not think there could exist such--weak beings!” he said, with difficulty keeping back the word _fools_.

“Ah, monsieur,” said Cayron, “it is not everybody that has your talents.”

Birotteau might easily believe himself a superior being in the presence of Monsieur Molineux; the answer of the umbrella-man made him smile agreeably, and he bowed to him with a truly royal air as they parted.

“I am close by the Markets,” thought Cesar; “I’ll attend to the matter of the nuts.”

* * * * *

After an hour’s search, Birotteau, who was sent by the market-women to the Rue de Lombards where nuts for sugarplums were to be found, heard from his friend Matifat that the fruit in bulk was only to be had of a certain Madame Angelique Madou, living in the Rue Perrin-Gasselin, the sole establishment which kept the true filbert of Provence, and the veritable white hazel-nut of the Alps.

The Rue Perrin-Gasselin is one of the narrow thoroughfares in a square labyrinth enclosed by the quay, the Rue Saint-Denis, the Rue de la Ferronnerie, and the Rue de la Monnaie; it is, as it were, one of the entrails of the city. There swarm an infinite number of heterogeneous and mixed articles of merchandise, evil-smelling and jaunty, herrings and muslin, silks and honey, butter and gauze, and above all a number of petty trades, of which Paris knows as little as a man knows of what is going on in his pancreas, and which, at the present moment, had a blood-sucker named Bidault, otherwise called Gigonnet, a money-lender, who lived in the Rue Grenetat. In this quarter old stables were filled with oil-casks, and the carriage-houses were packed with bales of cotton. Here were stored in bulk the articles that were sold at retail in the markets.

Madame Madou, formerly a fish-woman, but thrown, some ten years since, into the dried-fruit trade by a liaison with the former proprietor of her present business (an affair which had long fed the gossip of the markets), had originally a vigorous and enticing beauty, now lost however in a vast embonpoint. She lived on the lower floor of a yellow house, which was falling to ruins, and was held together at each story by iron cross-bars. The deceased proprietor had succeeded in getting rid of all competitors, and had made his business a monopoly. In spite of a few slight defects of education, his heiress was able to carry it along, and take care of her stores, which were in coachhouses, stables, and old workshops, where she fought the vermin with eminent success. Not troubled with desk or ledgers, for she could neither read nor write, she answered a letter with a blow of her fist, considering it an insult. In the main she was a good woman, with a high-colored face, and a foulard tied over her cap, who mastered with bugle voice the wagoners when they brought the merchandise; such squabbles usually ending in a bottle of the “right sort.” She had no disputes with the agriculturists who consigned her the fruit, for they corresponded in ready money,--the only possible method of communication, to receive which Mere Madou paid them a visit in the fine season of the year.

Birotteau found this shrewish trader among sacks of filberts, nuts, and chestnuts.

“Good-morning, my dear lady,” said Birotteau with a jaunty air.

“_Your_ dear!” she said. “Hey! my son, what’s there agreeable between us? Did we ever mount guard over kings and queens together?”

“I am a perfumer, and what is more I am deputy-mayor of the second arrondissement; thus, as magistrate and as customer, I request you to take another tone with me.”

“I marry when I please,” said the virago. “I don’t trouble the mayor, or bother his deputies. As for my customers, they adore me, and I talk to ‘em as I choose. If they don’t like it, they can snake off elsewhere.”

“This is the result of monopoly,” thought Birotteau.

“Popole!--that’s my godson,--he must have got into mischief. Have you come about him, my worthy magistrate?” she said, softening her voice.

“No; I had the honor to tell you that I came as a customer.”

“Well, well! and what’s your name, my lad? Haven’t seen you about before, have I?”

“If you take that tone, you ought to sell your nuts cheap,” said Birotteau, who proceeded to give his name and all his distinctions.

“Ha! you’re the Birotteau that’s got the handsome wife. And how many of the sweet little nuts may you want, my love?”

“Six thousand weight.”

“That’s all I have,” said the seller, in a voice like a hoarse flute. “My dear monsieur, you are not one of the sluggards who waste their time on girls and perfumes. God bless you, you’ve got something to do! Excuse me a bit. You’ll be a jolly customer, dear to the heart of the woman I love best in the world.”

“Who is that?”

“Hey! the dear Madame Madou.”

“What’s the price of your nuts?”

“For you, old fellow, twenty-five francs a hundred, if you take them all.”

“Twenty-five francs!” cried Birotteau. “Fifteen hundred francs! I shall want perhaps a hundred thousand a year.”

“But just look how fine they are; fresh as a daisy,” she said, plunging her red arm into a sack of filberts. “Plump, no empty ones, my dear man. Just think! grocers sell their beggarly trash at twenty-four sous a pound, and in every four pounds they put a pound of _hollows_. Must I lose my profits to oblige you? You’re nice enough, but you don’t please me all that! If you want so many, we might make a bargain at twenty francs. I don’t want to send away a deputy-mayor,--bad luck to the brides, you know! Now, just handle those nuts; heavy, aren’t they? Less than fifty to the pound; no worms there, I can tell you.”

“Well, then, send six thousand weight, for two thousand francs at ninety days’ sight, to my manufactory, Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple, to-morrow morning early.”

“You’re in as great a hurry as a bride! Well, adieu, monsieur the mayor; don’t bear me a grudge. But if it is all the same to you,” she added, following Birotteau through the yard, “I would like your note at forty days, because I have let you have them too cheap, and I don’t want to lose the discount. Pere Gigonnet may have a tender heart, but he sucks the soul out of us as a spider sucks a fly.”

“Well, then, fifty days. But they are to be weighed by the hundred pounds, so that there may be no hollow ones. Without that, no bargain.”

“Ah, the dog! he knows what he’s about,” said Madame Madou; “can’t make a fool of him! It is those rascals in the Rue des Lombards who have put him up to that! Those big wolves are all in a pack to eat up the innocent lambs.”

This lamb was five feet high and three feet round, and she looked like a mile-post, dressed in striped calico, without a belt.

The perfumer, lost in thought, was ruminating as he went along the Rue Saint-Honore about his duel with Macassar Oil. He was meditating on the labels and the shape of the bottles, discussing the quality of the corks, the color of the placards. And yet people say there is no poetry in commerce! Newton did not make more calculations for his famous binomial than Birotteau made for his Comagene Essence,--for by this time the Oil had subsided into an Essence, and he went from one description to the other without observing any difference. His head spun with his computations, and he took the lively activity of its emptiness for the substantial work of real talent. He was so preoccupied that he passed the turn leading to his uncle’s house in the Rue des Bourdonnais, and had to return upon his steps.

V

Claude-Joseph Pillerault, formerly an iron-monger at the sign of the Cloche d’Or, had one of those faces whose beauty shines from the inner to the outer; about him all things harmonized,--dress and manners, mind and heart, thought and speech, words and acts. He was the sole relation of Madame Birotteau, and had centred all his affections upon her and upon Cesarine, having lost, in the course of his commercial career, his wife and son, and also an adopted child, the son of his house-keeper. These heavy losses had driven the good man into a kind of Christian stoicism,--a noble doctrine, which gave life to his existence, and colored his latter days with the warm, and at the same time chilling, tones which gild the sunsets of winter. His head, thin and hollowed and swarthy, with ochre and bistre tints harmoniously blended, offered a striking likeness to that which artists bestow on Time, though it vulgarized it; for the habits of commercial life lowered the stern and monumental character which painters, sculptors, and clock-makers exaggerate. Of medium height, Pillerault was more thick-set than stout; Nature had built him for hard work and long life; his broad shoulders showed a strong frame; he was dry by temperament, and his skin had, as it were, no emotions, though it was not insensible. Little demonstrative, as was shown by his composed face and quiet attitude, the old man had an inward calm not expressed in phrases nor by emphasis. His eye, the pupil of which was green, mingled with black lines, was remarkable for its unalterable clearness. His forehead, wrinkled in straight lines and yellowed by time, was small and narrow, hard, and crowned with silver-gray hair cut so short that it looked like felt. His delicate mouth showed prudence, but not avarice. The vivacity of his eye showed the purity of his life. Integrity, a sense of duty, and true modesty made, as it were, a halo round his head, bringing his face into the relief of a sound and healthful existence.

For sixty years he had led the hard and sober life of a determined worker. His history was like Cesar’s, except in happiness. A clerk till thirty years of age, his property was all in his business at the time when Cesar put his savings into the Funds; he had suffered, like others, under the Maximum, and the pickaxes and other implements of his trade had been requisitioned. His reserved and judicious nature, his forethought and mathematical reflection, were seen in his methods of work. The greater part of his business was conducted by word of mouth, and he seldom encountered difficulties. Like all thoughtful people he was a great observer; he let people talk, and then studied them. He often refused advantageous bargains on which his neighbors pounced; later, when they regretted them, they declared that Pillerault had “a nose for swindlers.” He preferred small and certain gains to bold strokes which put large sums of money in jeopardy. He dealt in cast-iron chimney backs, gridirons, coarse fire-dogs, kettles and boilers in cast or wrought iron, hoes, and all the agricultural implements of the peasantry. This line, which was sufficiently unremunerative, required an immense mechanical toil. The gains were not in proportion to the labor; the profits on such heavy articles, difficult to move and expensive to store, were small. He himself had nailed up many a case, packed and unpacked many a bale, unloaded many a wagon. No fortune was ever more nobly won, more legitimate or more honorable, than his. He had never overcharged or sought to force a bargain. In his latter business days he might be seen smoking his pipe before the door of his shop looking at the passers-by, and watching his clerks as they worked. In 1814, the period at which he retired from business, his fortune consisted, in the first place, of seventy thousand francs, which he placed in the public Funds, and from which he derived an income of five thousand and some odd hundred francs a year; next of forty thousand francs, the value of his business, which he had sold to one of his clerks; this sum was to be paid in full at the end of five years, without interest. Engaged for thirty years in a business which amounted to a hundred thousand francs a year, he had made about seven per cent profit on the amount, and his living had absorbed one half of that profit. Such was his record. His neighbors, little envious of such mediocrity, praised his excellence without understanding it.

At the corner of the Rue de la Monnaie and the Rue Saint-Honore is the cafe David, where a few old merchants, like Pillerault, take their coffee in the evenings. There, the adoption of the son of his cook had been the subject of a few jests, such as might be addressed to a man much respected, for the iron-monger inspired respectful esteem, though he never sought it; his inward self-respect sufficed him. So when he lost the young man, two hundred friends followed the body to the cemetery. In those days he was heroic. His sorrow, restrained like that of all men who are strong without assumption, increased the sympathy felt in his neighborhood for the “worthy man,”--a term applied to Pillerault in a tone which broadened its meaning and ennobled it. The sobriety of Claude Pillerault, long become a habit, did not yield before the pleasures of an idle life when, on quitting his business, he sought the rest which drags down so many of the Parisian bourgeoisie. He kept up his former ways of life, and enlivened his old age by convictions and interests, which belonged, we must admit, to the extreme Left. Pillerault belonged to that working-men’s party which the Revolution had fused with the bourgeoisie. The only blot upon his character was the importance he attached to the triumph of that party; he held to all the rights, to the liberty, and to the fruits of the Revolution; he believed that his peace of mind and his political stability were endangered by the Jesuits, whose secret power was proclaimed aloud by the Liberals, and menaced by the principles with which the “Constitutionnel” endowed Monsieur. He was quite consistent in his life and ideas; there was nothing narrow about his politics; he never insulted his adversaries, he dreaded courtiers and believed in republican virtues; he thought Manuel a pure man, General Foy a great one, Casimir Perier without ambition, Lafayette a political prophet, and Courier a worthy fellow. He had indeed some noble chimeras. The fine old man lived a family life; he went about among the Ragons, his niece Birotteau, the judge Popinot, Joseph Lebas, and his friend Matifat. Fifteen hundred francs a year sufficed for all his personal wants. As to the rest of his income he spent it on good deeds, and in presents to his great-niece; he gave a dinner four times a year to his friends, at Roland’s, Rue du Hasard, and took them afterwards to the theatre. He played the part of those old bachelors on whom married women draw at sight for their amusements,--a country jaunt, the opera, the Montagnes-Beaujon, _et caetera_. Pillerault was made happy by the pleasure he gave; his joys were in the hearts of others. Though he had sold his business, he did not wish to leave the neighborhood to which all his habits tied him; and he took a small appartement of three rooms in the Rue des Bourdonnais on the fourth floor of an old house.

Just as the moral nature of Molineux could be seen in his strange interior, the pure and simple life of Pillerault was revealed by the arrangements of his modest home, consisting of an antechamber, a sitting-room, and a bed-room. Judged by dimensions, it was the cell of a Trappist. The antechamber, with a red-tiled floor, had only one window, screened by a cambric curtain with a red border; mahogany chairs, covered with reddish sheep’s leather put on with gilt nails, walls hung with an olive-green paper, and otherwise decorated with the American Declaration of Independence, a portrait of Bonaparte as First Consul, and a representation of the battle of Austerlitz. The salon, decorated undoubtedly by an upholsterer, had a set of furniture with arched tops covered in yellow, a carpet, chimney ornaments of bronze without gilding, a painted chimney-board, a console bearing a vase of flowers under a glass case, a round table covered with a cloth, on which stood a liqueur-stand. The newness of this room proclaimed a sacrifice made by the old man to the conventions of the world; for he seldom received any one at home. In his bedroom, as plain as that of a monk or an old soldier (the two men best able to estimate life), a crucifix with a basin of holy-water first caught the eye. This profession of faith in a stoical old republican was strangely moving to the heart of a spectator.

An old woman came to do his household work; but his respect for women was so great that he would not let her black his boots, and he subscribed to a boot-black for that service. His dress was simple, and invariably the same. He wore a coat and trousers of dark-blue cloth, a waistcoat of some printed cotton fabric, a white cravat, high shoes, and on gala days he put on a coat with brass buttons. His habits of rising, breakfasting, going out, dining, his evening resorts, and his returning hours were all stamped with the strictest punctuality; for regular habits are the secret of long life and sound health. Politics never came to the surface in his intercourse with Cesar, the Ragons, or the Abbe Loraux; for the good people of that circle knew each other too well to care to enter the region of proselytism. Like his nephew and like the Ragons, he put implicit confidence in Roguin. To his mind the notary was a being worthy of veneration,--the living image of probity. In the affair of the lands about the Madeleine, Pillerault had undertaken a private examination, which was the real cause of the boldness with which Cesar had combated his wife’s presentiments.

The perfumer went up the seventy-eight stairs which led to the little brown door of his uncle’s appartement, thinking as he went that the old man must be very hale to mount them daily without complaining. He found a frock-coat and pair of trousers hanging on the hat-stand outside the door. Madame Vaillant brushed and cleaned them while this genuine philosopher, wrapped in a gray woollen garment, breakfasted in his chimney-corner and read the parliamentary debates in the “Constitutionnel” or the “Journal du Commerce.”

“Uncle,” said Cesar, “the matter is settled; they are drawing up their deeds; but you have any fears or regrets, there is still time to give it up.”

“Why should I give it up? The thing is good; though it may be a long time before we realize anything, like all safe investments. My fifty thousand francs are in the bank. I received yesterday the last instalment, five thousand francs, from my business. As for the Ragons, they have put their whole fortune into the affair.”

“How do they contrive to life?”

“Never mind how; they do live.”

“Uncle, I understand!” said Birotteau, deeply moved, pressing the hand of the austere old man.

“How is the affair arranged?” asked Pillerault, brusquely.

“I am in for three eighths, you and the Ragons for one eighth. I shall credit you for that on my books until the question of registration is decided.”

“Good! My boy, you must be getting rich to put three hundred thousand francs into it. It seems to me you are risking a good deal outside of your business. Won’t the business suffer? However, that is your affair. If you get a set-back, why the Funds are at eighty, and I could sell two thousand francs worth of my consolidated stock. But take care, my lad; for if you have to come upon me, it will be your daughter’s fortune that you will take.”

“Ah! my uncle, how simply you say things! You touch my heart.”

“General Foy was touching mine in quite another fashion just now. Well, go on; settle the business; lands can’t fly away. We are getting them at half price. Suppose we do have to wait six years, there will always be some returns; there are wood-yards which will bring in a rent. We can’t really lose anything. There is but one chance against us. Roguin might run off with the money.”

“My wife told me so this very night. She fears--”

“That Roguin will carry off our funds?” said Pillerault, laughing. “Pray, why?”

“She says there is too much in his nose; and like men who can’t have women, he is furious to--”

With a smile of incredulity, Pillerault tore a strip from a little book, wrote down an amount, and signed the paper.

“There,” said he, “there’s a cheque on the Bank of France for a hundred thousand francs for the Ragons and for me. Those poor folks have just sold to your scoundrel of a du Tillet their fifteen shares in the mines at Wortschin to make up the amount. Worthy people in trouble,--it wrings my heart; and such good, noble souls, the very flower of the old bourgeoisie! Their brother, Popinot, the judge, knows nothing about it; they hid it from him so that he may not feel obliged to give up his other works of charity. People who have worked, like me, for forty years!”

“God grant that the Oil of Comagene may triumph!” cried Birotteau. “I shall be doubly happy. Adieu; come and dine on Sunday with the Ragons, Roguin, and Monsieur Claparon. We shall sign the papers the day after to-morrow, for to-morrow is Friday, you know, and I shouldn’t like--”

“You don’t surely give in to such superstitions?”

“Uncle, I shall never believe that the day on which the Son of God was put to death by man can be a fortunate day. Why, we ourselves stop all business on the twenty-first of January.”

“On Sunday, then,” said Pillerault brusquely.

“If it were not for his political opinions,” thought Birotteau as he went down stairs, “I don’t believe he would have his equal here below. What are politics to him? He would be just as well off if he never thought of them. His obstinacy in that direction only shows that there can’t be a perfect man.”

“Three o’clock already!” cried Cesar, as he got back to “The Queen of Roses.”

“Monsieur, do you mean to take these securities?” asked Celestin, showing him the notes of the umbrella-maker.

“Yes; at six per cent, without commission. Wife, get my dressing things all ready; I am going to see Monsieur Vauquelin,--you know why. A white cravat, of course.”

Birotteau gave a few orders to the clerks. Not seeing Popinot, he concluded that his future partner had gone to dress; and he went gaily up to his room, where the Dresden Madonna, magnificently framed according to his orders, awaited him.

“Hey! that’s pretty,” he said to his daughter.

“Papa, you must say beautiful, or people will laugh at you.”

“Upon my word! a daughter who scolds her father! Well, well! To my taste I like Hero and Leander quite as much. The Virgin is a religious subject, suitable for a chapel; but Hero and Leander, ah! I shall buy it, for that flask of oil gave me an idea--”

“Papa, I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Virginie! a hackney-coach!” cried Cesar, in stentorian tones, as soon as he had trimmed his beard and seen little Popinot appear, who was dragging his foot timidly because Cesarine was there.

The lover had never yet perceived that his infirmity no longer existed in the eyes of his mistress. Delicious sign of love!--which they on whom chance has inflicted a bodily imperfection can alone obtain.

“Monsieur,” he said, “the press will be ready to work to-morrow.”

“Why, what’s the matter, Popinot?” asked Cesar, as he saw Anselme blush.

“Monsieur, it is the joy of having found a shop, a back-shop, kitchen, chambers above them, and store-rooms,--all for twelve hundred francs a year, in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants.”

“We must take a lease of eighteen years,” said Birotteau. “But let us start for Monsieur Vauquelin’s. We can talk as we go.”

Cesar and Popinot got into the hackney-coach before the eyes of the astonished clerks, who did not know what to make of these gorgeous toilets and the abnormal coach, ignorant as they were of the great project revolving in the mind of the master of “The Queen of Roses.”

“We are going to hear the truth about nuts,” said Cesar, half to himself.

“Nuts?” said Popinot.

“There you have my secret,” said the perfumer. “I’ve let loose the word _nuts_,--all is there. The oil of nuts is the only oil that has any real effect upon hair. No perfumer has ever dreamed of it. I saw an engraving of Hero and Leander, and I said to myself, If the ancients used all that oil on their heads they had some reason for it; for the ancients are the ancients, in spite of all the moderns may say; I stand by Boileau about the ancients. I took my departure from that point and got the oil of nuts, thanks to your relation, little Bianchon the medical student; he told me that at school his comrades used nut oil to promote the growth of their whiskers and mustachios. All we need is the approval of Monsieur Vauquelin; enlightened by his science, we shall mislead the public. I was in the markets just now, talking to a seller of nuts, so as to get hold of the raw material, and now I am about to meet one of the greatest scientific men in France, to get at the quintessence of that commodity. Proverbs are no fools; extremes meet. Now see, my boy, commerce is the intermediary between the productions of the vegetable kingdom and science. Angelique Madou gathers, Monsieur Vauquelin extracts, we sell an essence. Nuts are worth five sous a pound, Monsieur Vauquelin will increase their value one hundredfold, and we shall, perhaps, do a service to humanity; for if vanity is the cause of the greatest torments of mankind, a good cosmetic becomes a benefaction.”

The religious admiration with which Popinot listened to the father of Cesarine stimulated Birotteau’s eloquence, who allowed himself to expatiate in phrases which certainly were extremely wild for a bourgeois.

“Be respectful, Anselme,” he said, as they reached the street where Monsieur Vauquelin lived, “we are about to enter the sanctuary of science. Put the Virgin in full sight, but not ostentatiously, in the dining-room, on a chair. Pray heaven, I may not get mixed up in what I have to say!” cried Cesar, naively. “Popinot, this man has a chemical effect upon me; his voice heats my stomach, and even gives me a slight colic. He is my benefactor, and in a few moments he will be yours.”

These words struck Popinot with a cold chill, and he began to step as if he were walking on eggs, looking nervously at the wall. Monsieur Vauquelin was in his study when Birotteau was announced. The academician knew that the perfumer and deputy-mayor was high in favor, and he admitted him.

“You do not forget me in the midst of your distinctions,” he said, “there is only a hand’s-breadth, however, between a chemist and a perfumer.”