César Birotteau

“ While picturing the manners and customs of retail shopkeepers, this sketch will also show by what singular chances Cesar Birotteau became deputy-mayor and perfumer, retired officer of the National Guard, and chevalier of the Legion of honor. In bringing to light the depths of his character and the causes of his rise, we shall show that fortuitous commercial events which strong brains dominate, may become irreparable catastrophes for weak ones. Events are never absolute; their results depend on individuals. ”

“ Kitchen-gardeners carrying their produce to market continue the stir of carriages returning from theatres and balls. Near the middle of this sustained pause in the grand symphony of Parisian uproar, which occurs about one o’clock in the morning, the wife of Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, a perfumer established near the Place Vendome, was startled from her sleep by a frightful dream. ”

“ The noble lad gave her three thousand francs a year, her board, and his own room; going himself into an attic occupied by one of his clerks. Thus it happened that the beautiful woman, after one month's enjoyment of her sumptuous home, came to live in the wretched chamber looking into a damp, dark court, where Gaudissart, Anselme, and Finot had inaugurated Cephalic Oil.
When Molineux, appointed agent by the Court of Commerce, came to take possession of Cesar Birotteau's assets, Madame Birotteau, aided by Celestin, went over the inventory with him. ”

“ Popinot sent the cheque at once to the Bank, and went up to speak to Madame Birotteau; she was not in the counting-room, and had doubtless gone to her chamber. Anselme and Constance lived like mother-in-law and son-in-law when people in that relation suit each other; he therefore rushed up to Madame Cesar's appartement with the natural eagerness of a lover on the threshold of his happiness. The young man was prodigiously surprised to find her, as he sprang like a cat into the room, reading a letter from du Tillet, whose handwriting he recognized at a glance. ”

“ He found Derville sitting by the fire, wrapped in a white woollen dressing-gown, calm and composed in manner, like all lawyers long used to receiving terrible confidences. Birotteau noticed for the first time in his life this necessary coldness, which struck a chill to the soul of a man grasped by the fever of imperilled interests,—passionate, wounded, and cruelly gashed in his life, his honor, his wife, his child, as Cesar showed himself to be while he related his misfortunes. ”

“ Up to the year 1819 he kept up the habit of wearing two watch-chains, which hung down in parallel lines; but he only put on the second when he dressed for the evening. *⁠*⁠* Such was Cesar Birotteau; a worthy man, to whom the fates presiding at the birth of men had denied the faculty of judging politics and life in their entirety, and of rising above the social level of the middle classes; who followed ignorantly the track of routine, whose opinions were all imposed upon him from the outside and applied by him without examination. ”

“ Birotteau felt stabbed to the heart by this cold and grinning kindness as much as by the harshness of Keller or the coarse German banter of Nucingen. The familiarity of the man, and his grotesque gabble excited by champagne, seemed to tarnish the soul of the honest bourgeois as though he came from a house of financial ill-fame. He went down the stairway and found himself in the streets without knowing where he was going. As he walked along the boulevards and reached the Rue Saint-Denis, he recollected Molineux, and turned into the Cour Batave. ”

“ You may all want bread, and you shall find it with me."
"Want bread, uncle?"
"Yes, bread. See things as they are, Cesar. You cannot extricate yourself. With five thousand six hundred francs income, I could set aside four thousand francs for you and the Ragons. If misfortune overtakes you,—I know Constance, she will work herself to the bone, she will deny herself everything; and so will you, Cesar."
"All is not hopeless, uncle."
"I cannot see it as you do."
"I will prove that you are mistaken."
"Nothing would give me greater happiness."
Birotteau left Pillerault without another word. ”

“ There was no fire in the shop, and the door was always open.
"I feared you were never coming," he said respectfully.
The clerks crowded round to look at the distinguished perfumer, the decorated deputy-mayor, the partner of their own master. Birotteau, so pitifully small at the Kellers, felt a craving to imitate those magnates; he stroked his chin, rose on his heels with native self-complacency, and talked his usual platitudes.
"Hey, my lad! we get up early, don't we?" he remarked.
"No, for we don't always go to bed," said Popinot. "We must clutch success." ”

“ In the name of his office this public prosecutor, the representative of public vindictiveness, asked that honor might be restored to the merchant who had never really lost it,—a solitary instance of such an appeal; for a condemned man can only be pardoned. Men of honor alone can imagine the emotions of Cesar Birotteau as he heard Monsieur de Grandville pronounce a speech, of which the following is an abridgement:—
"Gentlemen," said that celebrated official, "on the 16th of
January, 1820, Birotteau was declared a bankrupt by the commercial
tribunal of the Seine. ”

“ He was about to refuse the offer, when love suddenly changed all his resolutions by increasing tenfold the measure of his ambition.
After Ursula's desertion, Cesar had remained virtuous, as much through fear of the dangers of Paris as from application to his work. When the passions are without food they change their wants; marriage then becomes, to persons of the middle class, a fixed idea, for it is their only way of winning and appropriating a woman. Cesar Birotteau had reached that point. Everything at "The Queen of Roses" now rested on the head-clerk ”

“ Several persons here came in.
“On Sunday we dine at your aunt Ragon’s,” added Cesar, leaving Popinot to go on with his business, for he perceived that the fresh meat he had come to taste was not yet cut up.
“It is amazing! A clerk becomes a merchant in twenty-four hours,” thought Birotteau, who understood the happiness and self-assurance of Anselme as little as the dandy luxury of du Tillet. “Anselme put on a little stiff air when I patted him on the head, just as if he were Francois Keller himself.” ”

“ I cannot go home as I am," said Birotteau. "You who are my friend, if there are friends,—you in whom I took an interest, who have dined at my house,—take me somewhere in a carriage, for my wife's sake. Xandrot, go with me!"
The young notary compassionately put the inert mechanism which bore the name of Cesar into a street coach, not without great difficulty.
"Xandrot," said the perfumer, in a voice choked with tears,—for the tears were now falling from his eyes, and loosening the iron band which bound his brow,—"stop at my shop; go in and speak to Celestin for me. ”

“ If Monsieur Birotteau is to fall, what will it avail if you fall too? You will deprive yourselves, one as much as the other, of all the chances of your new business, which may prove his only refuge.”
“Thank you, my uncle; a word to the wise is enough,” said Popinot, to whom Cesar’s heart-rending exclamation was now explained.
The merchant in oils, refined and otherwise, returned to his gloomy shop with an anxious brow. Birotteau saw the change.
“Will you do me the honor to come up into my bedroom? We shall be better there. The clerks, though very busy, might overhear us.” ”

“ Cesar showed him, triumphantly, the four rooms constructed by the architect out of the first floors of the two houses.
"Hey! hey! Well, it is your affair, Monsieur Birotteau," said Molineux. "My first floor thus improved will be worth more than three thousand francs to me."
Birotteau answered with a jest; but he was pricked as if with a pin at the tone in which the little old man had pronounced the words.
"I shall soon have my first floor back again; the man will ruin himself." ”

“ The firm voice of the poor man and his whole manner surprised Cesarine and the priest. Yet nothing could be more natural. All men can better bear a known and definite misfortune than the cruel uncertainties of a fate which, from one moment to another, brings excessive hope or crushing sorrow.
“I have dreamed a dream for twenty-two years; to-day I awake with my cudgel in my hand,” said Cesar, his mind turning back to the Tourangian peasant days.
Pillerault pressed his nephew in his arms as he heard the words. Birotteau saw that his wife, Anselme, and Celestin were present. ”

“ Married Cesar Birotteau in May, 1800. Previous to her marriage she was head "saleslady" at the "Little Sailor" [3] novelty shop, corner of Quai Anjou and rue des Deux Ponts, Paris. Her surviving relative and guardian was her uncle, Claude-Joseph Pillerault. (Cesar Birotteau)
BIROTTEAU (Cesarine) . (See Popinot, Madame Anselme.)
BIXIOU, [4] Parisian grocer, in rue Saint-Honore, before the Revolution in the eighteenth century. He had a clerk called Descoings, who married his widow. The grocer Bixiou was the grandfather of Jean-Jacques Bixiou, the celebrated cartoonist. ”

“ Nothing can be done simply and naturally by people who are stepping from one social level to another. Not a soul—not Madame Birotteau, nor Cesar himself—was allowed to put foot into the new appartement on the first floor. Cesar had promised Raguet, the shop-boy, a new suit of clothes for the day of the ball, if he mounted guard faithfully and let no one enter. Birotteau, like the Emperor Napoleon at Compiegne, when the chateau was re-decorated for his marriage with Maria Louisa of Austria, was determined to see nothing piecemeal ”

“ Laughs ring loudly; all present surrender to the amusement of the moment, knowing that on the morrow toil will resume its sway. Matifat danced with a woman's bonnet on his head; Celestin called the figures of the interminable country dance, and some of the women beat their hands together excitedly at the words of command.
"How they do amuse themselves!" cried the happy Birotteau.
"I hope they won't break anything," said Constance to her uncle.
"You have given the most magnificent ball I have ever seen, and I have seen many," said du Tillet, bowing to his old master. ”

“ The perfumer and his clerk passed the whole night in examining accounts, a labor which the good man knew to be useless. In coming and going about the desk Cesar slipped three bills of a thousand francs each into the money-drawer, catching them against the top of it; then he pretended to be much fatigued and to fall asleep and snore. Du Tillet awoke him triumphantly, with an excessive show of joy at discovering the error. The next day Birotteau scolded Popinot and his little wife publicly, as if very angry with them for their negligence. ”

“ People who have worked, like me, for forty years!"
"God grant that the Oil of Comagene may triumph!" cried Birotteau. "I shall be doubly happy. Adieu; come and dine on Sunday with the Ragons, Roguin, and Monsieur Claparon. We shall sign the papers the day after to-morrow, for to-morrow is Friday, you know, and I shouldn't like—"
"You don't surely give in to such superstitions?"
"Uncle, I shall never believe that the day on which the Son of God was put to death by man can be a fortunate day. Why, we ourselves stop all business on the twenty-first of January." ”

“ Little Popinot, always busy, with his pen behind his ear, lay down as usual flat on his stomach before the father of his Cesarine. The empty phrases which Cesar addressed to his partner seemed to the judge to mask some important request. Instead of going away, the crafty old man stayed in spite of his nephew's evident desire, for he guessed that the perfumer would soon try to get rid of him by going away himself. Accordingly, when Birotteau went out the judge followed, and saw Birotteau hanging about that part of the Rue des Cinq-Diamants which leads into the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher. ”

“ The Figaro has just conquered 'Cesar Birotteau'!
"Never have the angry gods, never have Juno, Neptune, M. de Rambuteau, or the Prefect of Police, opposed to Jason, Theseus, or walkers in Paris, more obstacles, monsters, ruins, dragons, demolitions, than these two unfortunate octavos have fought against.
"We have them at last, and we know what they have cost. The public will only have the trouble of reading them. That will be a pleasure. As to M. de Balzac—twenty days' work, two handfuls of paper, one more beautiful book: that counts for nothing. ”

“ Her celebrated beauty had an enormous influence upon the sales, and the beautiful Madame Birotteau became a topic among the fashionable young men of the Empire. If Cesar was sometimes accused of royalism, the world did justice to his honesty; if a few neighboring shopkeepers envied his happiness, every one at least thought him worthy of it. The bullet which struck him on the steps of Saint-Roch gave him the reputation of being mixed up with political secrets, and also of being a courageous man,—though he had no military courage in his heart, and not the smallest political idea in his brain. ”

“ Nevertheless, Cesar was incapable of being wholly stupid or a fool. Honesty and goodness cast upon all the acts of his life a light which made them creditable; for noble conduct makes even ignorance seem worthy. Success gave him confidence. In Paris confidence is accepted as power, of which it is the outward sign. As for Madame Birotteau, having measured Cesar during the first three years of their married life, she was a prey to continual terror. ”

“ 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 ”