Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau. Оноре де Бальзак

should never know him till I tried him. And not here! It is extraordinary!”

      She turned her head with difficulty and glanced furtively about the room, then filled with those picturesque effects which are the despair of language and seem to belong exclusively to the painters of genre. What words can picture the alarming zig-zags produced by falling shadows, the fantastic appearance of curtains bulged out by the wind, the flicker of uncertain light thrown by a night-lamp upon the folds of red calico, the rays shed from a curtain-holder whose lurid centre was like the eye of a burglar, the apparition of a kneeling dress—in short, all the grotesque effects which terrify the imagination at a moment when it has no power except to foresee misfortunes and exaggerate them? Madame Birotteau suddenly saw a strong light in the room beyond her chamber, and thought of fire; but perceiving a red foulard which looked like a pool of blood, her mind turned exclusively to burglars, especially when she thought she saw traces of a struggle in the way the furniture stood about the room. Recollecting the sum of money which was in the desk, a generous fear put an end to the chill ferment of her nightmare. She sprang terrified, and in her night-gown, into the very centre of the room to help her husband, whom she supposed to be in the grasp of assassins.

      “Birotteau! Birotteau!” she cried at last in a voice full of anguish.

      She then saw the perfumer in the middle of the next room, a yard-stick in his hand measuring the air, and so ill wrapped up in his green cotton dressing-gown with chocolate-colored spots that the cold had reddened his legs without his feeling it, preoccupied as he was. When Cesar turned about to say to his wife, “Well, what do you want, Constance?” his air and manner, like those of a man absorbed in calculations, were so prodigiously silly that Madame Birotteau began to laugh.

      “Goodness! Cesar, if you are not an oddity like that!” she said. “Why did you leave me alone without telling me? I have nearly died of terror; I did not know what to imagine. What are you doing there, flying open to all the winds? You’ll get as hoarse as a wolf. Do you hear me, Birotteau?”

      “Yes, wife, here I am,” answered the perfumer, coming into the bedroom.

      “Come and warm yourself, and tell me what maggot you’ve got in your head,” replied Madame Birotteau opening the ashes of the fire, which she hastened to relight. “I am frozen. What a goose I was to get up in my night-gown! But I really thought they were assassinating you.”

      The shopkeeper put his candlestick on the chimney-piece, wrapped his dressing-gown closer about him, and went mechanically to find a flannel petticoat for his wife.

      “Here, Mimi, cover yourself up,” he said. “Twenty-two by eighteen,” he resumed, going on with his monologue; “we can get a superb salon.”

      “Ah, ca! Birotteau, are you on the high road to insanity? Are you dreaming?”

      “No, wife, I am calculating.”

      “You had better wait till daylight for your nonsense,” she cried, fastening the petticoat beneath her short night-gown and going to the door of the room where her daughter was in bed.

      “Cesarine is asleep,” she said, “she won’t hear us. Come, Birotteau, speak up. What is it?”

      “We can give a ball.”

      “Give a ball! we? On the word of an honest woman, you are dreaming, my friend.”

      “I am not dreaming, my beautiful white doe. Listen. People should always do what their position in life demands. Government has brought me forward into prominence. I belong to the government; it is my duty to study its mind, and further its intentions by developing them. The Duc de Richelieu has just put an end to the occupation of France by the foreign armies. According to Monsieur de la Billardiere, the functionaries who represent the city of Paris should make it their duty, each in his own sphere of influence, to celebrate the liberation of our territory. Let us show a true patriotism which shall put these liberals, these damned intriguers, to the blush; hein? Do you think I don’t love my country? I wish to show the liberals, my enemies, that to love the king is to love France.”

      “Do you think you have got any enemies, my poor Birotteau?”

      “Why, yes, wife, we have enemies. Half our friends in the quarter are our enemies. They all say, ‘Birotteau has had luck; Birotteau is a man who came from nothing: yet here he is deputy-mayor; everything succeeds with him.’ Well, they are going to be finely surprised. You are the first to be told that I am made a chevalier of the Legion of honor. The king signed the order yesterday.”

      “Oh! then,” said Madame Birotteau, much moved, “of course we must give the ball, my good friend. But what have you done to merit the cross?”

      “Yesterday, when Monsieur de la Billardiere told me the news,” said Birotteau, modestly, “I asked myself, as you do, what claims I had to it; but I ended by seeing what they were, and in approving the action of the government. In the first place, I am a royalist; I was wounded at Saint-Roch in Vendemiaire: isn’t it something to have borne arms in those days for the good cause? Then, according to the merchants, I exercised my judicial functions in a way to give general satisfaction. I am now deputy-mayor. The king grants four crosses to the municipality of Paris; the prefect, selecting among the deputies suitable persons to be thus decorated, has placed my name first on the list. The king moreover knows me: thanks to old Ragon. I furnish him with the only powder he is willing to use; we alone possess the receipt of the late queen—poor, dear, august victim! The mayor vehemently supported me. So there it is. If the king gives me the cross without my asking for it, it seems to me that I cannot refuse it without failing in my duty to him. Did I seek to be deputy-mayor? So, wife, since we are sailing before the wind, as your uncle Pillerault says when he is jovial, I have decided to put the household on a footing in conformity with our high position. If I can become anything, I’ll risk being whatever the good God wills that I shall be—sub-prefect, if such be my destiny. My wife, you are much mistaken if you think a citizen has paid his debt to his country by merely selling perfumery for twenty years to those who came to buy it. If the State demands the help of our intelligence, we are as much bound to give it as we are to pay the tax on personal property, on windows and doors, et caetera. Do you want to stay forever behind your counter? You have been there, thank God, a long time. This ball shall be our fete—yours and mine. Good-by to economy—for your sake, be it understood. I burn our sign, ‘The Queen of Roses’; I efface the name, ‘Cesar Birotteau, Perfumer, Successor to Ragon,’ and put simply, ‘Perfumery’ in big letters of gold. On the entresol I place the office, the counting-room, and a pretty little sanctum for you. I make the shop out of the back-shop, the present dining-room, and kitchen. I hire the first floor of the next house, and open a door into it through the wall. I turn the staircase so as to pass from house to house on one floor; and we shall thus get a grand appartement, furnished like a nest. Yes, I shall refurnish your bedroom, and contrive a boudoir for you and a pretty chamber for Cesarine. The shop-girl whom you will hire, our head clerk, and your lady’s-maid (yes, Madame, you are to have one!) will sleep on the second floor. On the third will be the kitchen and rooms of the cook and the man-of-all-work. The fourth shall be a general store-house for bottle, crystals, and porcelains. The workshop for our people, in the attic! Passers-by shall no longer see them gumming on the labels, making the bags, sorting the flasks, and corking the phials. Very well for the Rue Saint-Denis, but for the Rue Saint-Honore—fy! bad style! Our shop must be as comfortable as a drawing-room. Tell me, are we the only perfumers who have reached public honors? Are there not vinegar merchants and mustard men who command in the National Guard and are very well received at the Palace? Let us imitate them; let us extend our business, and at the same time press forward into higher society.”

      “Goodness! Birotteau, do you know what I am thinking of as I listen to you? You are like the man who looks for knots in a bulrush. Recollect what I said when it was a question of making you deputy-mayor: ‘your peace of mind before everything!’ You are as fit, I told you, ‘to be put forward in public life as my arm is to turn a windmill. Honors will be your ruin!’ You would not listen to me, and now the ruin has come. To play a part in politics you must have money: have we any? What! would you burn your sign, which cost six hundred francs,