Rise and Fall of César Birotteau | Page 5

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'