Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau Part 14

"Ministers are a mere necessity of government. Ah! what am I eating?

ambrosia?" said Claparon, breaking off. "This is a sauce you'll never find except at a tradesman's table, for the pot-houses--"

Here the flowers in Madame Ragon's cap skipped like young rams. Claparon perceived the word was low, and tried to catch himself up.

"In bank circles," he said, "we call the best cafes.--Very, and the Freres Provencaux,--pot-houses in jest. Well, neither those infamous pot-houses nor our most scientific cooks can make us a sauce like this; mellifluous! Some give you clear water soured with lemon, and the rest drugs, chemicals."

Pillerault tried throughout the dinner to fathom this extraordinary being; finding only a void, he began to think him dangerous.

"All's well," whispered Roguin to Claparon.

"I shall get out of these clothes to-night, at any rate," answered Claparon, who was choking.

"Monsieur," said Cesar, addressing him, "we are compelled to dine in this little room because we are preparing, eighteen days hence, to a.s.semble our friends, as much to celebrate the emanc.i.p.ation of our territory--"

"Right, monsieur; I myself am for the government. I belong, in opinion, to the _statu quo_ of the great man who guides the destinies of the house of Austria, jolly dog! Hold fast that you may acquire; and, above all, acquire that you may hold. Those are my opinions, which I have the honor to share with Prince Metternich."

"--as to commemorate my promotion to the order of the Legion of honor,"

continued Cesar.

"Yes, I know. Who told me of that,--the Kellers, or Nucingen?"

Roguin, surprised at such tact, made an admiring gesture.

"No, no; it was in the Chamber."

"In the Chamber? was it Monsieur de la Billardiere?" said Birotteau.

"Precisely."

"He is charming," whispered Cesar to his uncle.

"He pours out phrases, phrases, phrases," said Pillerault, "enough to drown you."

"Possibly I showed myself worthy of this signal, royal favor,--" resumed Birotteau.

"By your labors in perfumery; the Bourbons know how to reward all merit.

Ah! let us support those generous princes, to whom we are about to owe unheard-of prosperity. Believe me, the Restoration feels that it must run a tilt against the Empire; the Bourbons have conquests to make, the conquests of peace. You will see their conquests!"

"Monsieur will perhaps do us the honor to be present at our ball?" said Madame Cesar.

"To pa.s.s an evening with you, Madame, I would sacrifice the making of millions."

"He certainly does chatter," said Cesar to his uncle.

While the declining glory of perfumery was about to send forth its setting rays, a star was rising with feeble light upon the commercial horizon. Anselme Popinot was laying the corner-stone of his fortune in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants. This narrow little street, where loaded wagons can scarcely pa.s.s each other, runs from the Rue des Lombards at one end, to the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher at the other, entering the latter opposite to the Rue Quincampoix, that famous thoroughfare of old Paris where French history has so often been enacted. In spite of this disadvantage, the congregation of druggists in that neighborhood made Popinot's choice of the little street a good one. The house, which stands second from the Rue des Lombards, was so dark that except at certain seasons it was necessary to use lights in open day. The embryo merchant had taken possession, the preceding evening, of the dingy and disgusting premises. His predecessor, who sold mola.s.ses and coa.r.s.e sugars, had left the stains of his dirty business upon the walls, in the court, in the store-rooms. Imagine a large and s.p.a.cious shop, with great iron-bound doors, painted a dragon-green, strengthened with long iron bars held on by nails whose heads looked like mushrooms, and covered with an iron trellis-work, which swelled out at the bottom after the fas.h.i.+on of the bakers'-shops in former days; the floor paved with large white stones, most of them broken, the walls yellow, and as bare as those of a guard-room. Next to the shop came the back-shop, and two other rooms lighted from the street, in which Popinot proposed to put his office, his books, and his own workroom. Above these rooms were three narrow little chambers pushed up against the party-wall, with an outlook into the court; here he intended to dwell. The three rooms were dilapidated, and had no view but that of the court, which was dark, irregular, and surrounded by high walls, to which perpetual dampness, even in dry weather, gave the look of being daubed with fresh plaster.

Between the stones of this court was a filthy and stinking black substance, left by the sugars and the mola.s.ses that once occupied it.

Only one of the bedrooms had a chimney, all the walls were without paper, and the floors were tiled with brick.

Since early morning Gaudissart and Popinot, helped by a journeyman whose services the commercial traveller had invoked, were busily employed in stretching a fifteen-sous paper on the walls of these horrible rooms, the workman pasting the lengths. A collegian's mattress on a bedstead of red wood, a shabby night-stand, an old-fas.h.i.+oned bureau, one table, two armchairs, and six common chairs, the gift of Popinot's uncle the judge, made up the furniture. Gaudissart had decked the chimney-piece with a frame in which was a mirror much defaced, and bought at a bargain.

Towards eight o'clock in the evening the two friends, seated before the fireplace where a f.a.got of wood was blazing, were about to attack the remains of their breakfast.

"Down with the cold mutton!" cried Gaudissart, suddenly, "it is not worthy of such a housewarming."

"But," said Popinot, showing his solitary coin of twenty francs, which he was keeping to pay for the prospectus, "I--"

"I--" cried Gaudissart, sticking a forty-franc piece in his own eye.

A knock resounded throughout the court, naturally empty and echoing of a Sunday, when the workpeople were away from it and the laboratories empty.

"Here comes the faithful slave of the Rue de la Poterie!" cried the ill.u.s.trious Gaudissart.

Sure enough, a waiter entered, followed by two scullions bearing in three baskets a dinner, and six bottles of wine selected with discernment.

"How shall we ever eat it all up?" said Popinot.

"The man of letters!" cried Gaudissart, "don't forget him. Finot loves the pomps and the vanities; he is coming, the innocent boy, armed with a dishevelled prospectus--the word is pat, hein? Prospectuses are always thirsty. We must water the seed if we want flowers. Depart, slaves!" he added, with a gorgeous air, "there is gold for you."

He gave them ten sous with a gesture worthy of Napoleon, his idol.

"Thank you, Monsieur Gaudissart," said the scullions, better pleased with the jest than with the money.

"As for you, my son," he said to the waiter, who stayed to serve the dinner, "below is a porter's wife; she lives in a lair where she sometimes cooks, as in other days Nausicaa washed, for pure amus.e.m.e.nt.

Find her, implore her goodness; interest her, young man, in the warmth of these dishes. Tell her she shall be blessed, and above all, respected, most respected, by Felix Gaudissart, son of Jean-Francois Gaudissart, grandson of all the Gaudissarts, vile proletaries of ancient birth, his forefathers. March! and mind that everything is hot, or I'll deal retributive justice by a rap on your knuckles!"

Another knock sounded.

"Here comes the pungent Andoche!" shouted Gaudissart.

A stout, chubby-faced fellow of medium height, from head to foot the evident son of a hat-maker, with round features whose shrewdness was hidden under a restrained and subdued manner, suddenly appeared. His face, which was melancholy, like that of a man weary of poverty, lighted up hilariously when he caught sight of the table, and the bottles swathed in significant napkins. At Gaudissart's shout, his pale-blue eyes sparkled, his big head, hollowed like that of a Kalmuc Tartar, bobbed from right to left, and he bowed to Popinot with a queer manner, which meant neither servility nor respect, but was rather that of a man who feels he is not in his right place and will make no concessions.

He was just beginning to find out that he possessed no literary talent whatever; he meant to stay in the profession, however, by living on the brains of others, and getting astride the shoulders of those more able than himself, making his profit there instead of struggling any longer at his own ill-paid work. At the present moment he had drunk to the dregs the humiliation of applications and appeals which constantly failed, and he was now, like people in the higher walks of finance, about to change his tone and become insolent, advisedly. But he needed a small sum in hand on which to start, and Gaudissart gave him a share in the present affair of ushering into the world the oil of Popinot.

"You are to negotiate on his account with the newspapers. But don't play double; if you do I'll fight you to the death. Give him his money's worth."

Popinot gazed at "the author" which much uneasiness. People who are purely commercial look upon an author with mingled sentiments of fear, compa.s.sion, and curiosity. Though Popinot had been well brought up, the habits of his relations, their ideas, and the obfuscating effect of a shop and a counting-room, had lowered his intelligence by bending it to the use and wont of his calling,--a phenomenon which may often be seen if we observe the transformations which take place in a hundred comrades, when ten years supervene between the time when they leave college or a public school, to all intents and purposes alike, and the period when they meet again after contact with the world. Andoche accepted Popinot's perturbation as a compliment.

"Now then, before dinner, let's get to the bottom of the prospectus; then we can drink without an afterthought," said Gaudissart. "After dinner one reads askew; the tongue digests."

"Monsieur," said Popinot, "a prospectus is often a fortune."

"And for plebeians like myself," said Andoche, "fortune is nothing more than a prospectus."

"Ha, very good!" cried Gaudissart, "that rogue of a Finot has the wit of the forty Academicians."

"Of a hundred Academicians," said Popinot, bewildered by these ideas.

The impatient Gaudissart seized the ma.n.u.script and began to read in a loud voice, with much emphasis, "CEPHALIC OIL."