Rise and Fall of César Birotteau | Page 8

the money at five per cent, hypothecated on my

share of the property. But such loans will be unnecessary. I have
discovered an essence which will make the hair grow--an Oil
Comagene, from Syria! Livingston has just set up for me a hydraulic
press to manufacture the oil from nuts, which yield it readily under
strong pressure. In a year, according to my calculations, I shall have
made a hundred thousand francs at least. I meditate an advertisement
which shall begin, 'Down with wigs!'--the effect will be prodigious.
You have never found out my wakefulness, Madame! For three months
the success of Macassar Oil has kept me from sleeping. I am resolved
to take the shine out of Macassar!"
"So these are the fine projects you've been rolling in your noddle for
two months without choosing to tell me? I have just seen myself
begging at my own door,--a warning from heaven! Before long we
shall have nothing left but our eyes to weep with. Never while I live
shall you do it; do you hear me, Cesar? Underneath all this there is
some plot which you don't perceive; you are too upright and loyal to
suspect the trickery of others. Why should they come and offer you
millions? You are giving up your property, you are going beyond your
means; and if your oil doesn't succeed, if you don't make the money, if
the value of the land can't be realized, how will you pay your notes?
With the shells of your nuts? To rise in society you are going to hide
your name, take down your sign, 'The Queen of Roses,' and yet you
mean to salaam and bow and scrape in advertisements and prospectuses,
which will placard Cesar Birotteau at every corner, and on all the
boards, wherever they are building."
"Oh! you are not up to it all. I shall have a branch establishment, under
the name of Popinot, in some house near the Rue des Lombards, where
I shall put little Anselme. I shall pay my debt of gratitude to Monsieur
and Madame Ragon by setting up their nephew, who can make his
fortune. The poor Ragonines look to me half-starved of late."
"Bah! all those people want your money."
"But what people, my treasure? Is it your uncle Pillerault, who loves us
like the apple of his eye, and dines with us every Sunday? Is it good old
Ragon, our predecessor, who has forty upright years in business to

boast of, and with whom we play our game of boston? Is it Roguin, a
notary, a man fifty-seven years old, twenty-five of which he has been in
office? A notary of Paris! he would be the flower of the lot, if honest
folk were not all worth the same price. If necessary, my associates will
help me. Where is the plot, my white doe? Look here, I must tell you
your defect. On the word of an honest man it lies on my heart. You are
as suspicious as a cat. As soon as we had two sous worth in the shop
you thought the customers were all thieves. I had to go down on my
knees to you to let me make you rich. For a Parisian girl you have no
ambition! If it hadn't been for your perpetual fears, no man could have
been happier than I. If I had listened to you I should never have
invented the Paste of Sultans nor the Carminative Balm. Our shop has
given us a living, but these two discoveries have made the hundred and
sixty thousand francs which we possess, net and clear! Without my
genius, for I certainly have talent as a perfumer, we should now be
petty retail shopkeepers, pulling the devil's tail to make both ends meet.
I shouldn't be a distinguished merchant, competing in the election of
judges for the department of commerce; I should be neither a judge nor
a deputy-mayor. Do you know what I should be? A shopkeeper like
Pere Ragon,--be it said without offence, for I respect shopkeeping; the
best of our kidney are in it. After selling perfumery like him for forty
years, we should be worth three thousand francs a year; and at the price
things are now, for they have doubled in value, we should, like them,
have barely enough to live on. (Day after day that poor household
wrings my heart more and more. I must know more about it, and I'll get
the truth from Popinot to-morrow!) If I had followed your advice--you
who have such uneasy happiness and are always asking whether you
will have to-morrow what you have got to-day--I should have no credit,
I should have no cross of the Legion of honor. I should not be on the
highroad