Rise and Fall of César Birotteau | Page 6

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, and renounce
'The Queen of Roses,' your true glory? Leave ambition to others. He
who puts his hand in the fire gets burned,--isn't that true? Politics burn
in these days. We have one hundred good thousand francs invested
outside of our business, our productions, our merchandise. If you want
to increase your fortune, do as they did in 1793. The Funds are at
sixty-two: buy into the Funds. You will get ten thousand francs' income,
and the investment won't hamper our property. Take advantage of the
occasion to marry our daughter; sell the business, and let us go and live
in your native place. Why! for fifteen years you have talked of nothing
but buying Les Tresorieres, that pretty little property near Chinon,
where there are woods and fields, and ponds and vineyards, and two
dairies, which bring in a thousand crowns a year, with a house which
we both like,--all of which we can have for sixty thousand francs; and,
lo! Monsieur now wants to become something under government!
Recollect what we are,--perfumers. If sixteen years before you invented
the DOUBLE PASTE OF SULTANS and the CARMINATIVE BALM
some one had said, 'You are going to make enough money to buy Les
Tresorieres,' wouldn't you have been half sick with joy? Well, you can
acquire that property which you wanted so much that you hardly
opened your mouth about anything else, and now you talk of spending
on nonsense money earned by the sweat of our brow: I can say ours, for
I've sat behind the desk through all that time, like a poor dog in his

kennel. Isn't it much better to come and visit our daughter after she is
married to a notary of Paris, and live eight months of the year at
Chinon, than to begin here to make five sous six blanks, and of six
blanks nothing? Wait for a rise in the Funds, and you can give eight
thousand francs a year to your