Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau, Honoré de Balzac [good fiction books to read .TXT] 📗

"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,"