Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau

The head-clerk of “The Queen of Roses,” living between Saint-Roch and the Rue de la Sourdiere, knew nothing of the existence of the Petit-Matelot; for the smaller trades of Paris are more or less strangers to each other. Cesar was so vigorously smitten by the beauty of Constance that he rushed furiously into the shop to buy six linen shirts, disputing the price a long time, and requiring volumes of linen to be unfolded and shown to him, precisely like an Englishwoman in the humor for “shopping.” The young person deigned to take notice of Cesar, perceiving, by certain symptoms known to women, that he came more for the seller than the goods. He dictated his name and address to the young lady, who grew very indifferent to the admiration of her customer once the purchase was made. The poor clerk had had little to do to win the good graces of Ursula; in such matters he was as silly as a sheep, and love now made him sillier. He dared not utter a word, and was moreover too dazzled to observe the indifference which succeeded the smiles of the siren shopwoman.

For eight succeeding days Cesar mounted guard every evening before the Petit-Matelot, watching for a look as a dog waits for a bone at the kitchen door, indifferent to the derision of the clerks and the shop-girls, humbly stepping aside for the buyers and passers-by, and absorbed in the little revolving world of the shop. Some days later he again entered the paradise of his angel, less to purchase handkerchiefs than to communicate to her a luminous idea.

“If you should have need of perfumery, Mademoiselle, I could furnish you in the same manner,” he said as he paid for the handkerchiefs.

Constance Pillerault was daily receiving brilliant proposals, in which there was no question of marriage; and though her heart was as pure as her forehead was white, it was only after six months of marches and counter-marches, in the course of which Cesar revealed his inextinguishable love, that she condescended to receive his attentions, and even then without committing herself to an answer, – a prudence suggested by the number of her swains, wholesale wine-merchants, rich proprietors of cafes, and others who made soft eyes at her. The lover was backed up in his suit by the guardian of Constance, Monsieur Claude-Joseph Pillerault, at that time an ironmonger on the Quai de la Ferraille, whom the young man had finally discovered by devoting himself to the subterraneous spying which distinguishes a genuine love.

The rapidity of this narrative compels us to pass over in silence the joys of Parisian love tasted with innocence, the prodigalities peculiar to clerkdom, such as melons in their earliest prime, choice dinners at Venua’s followed by the theatre, Sunday jaunts to the country in hackney-coaches. Without being handsome, there was nothing in Cesar’s person which made it difficult to love him. The life of Paris and his sojourn in a dark shop had dulled the brightness of his peasant complexion. His abundant black hair, his solid neck and shoulders like those of a Norman horse, his sturdy limbs, his honest and straightforward manner, all contributed to predispose others in his favor. The uncle Pillerault, whose duty it was to watch over the happiness of his brother’s daughter, made inquiries which resulted in his sanctioning the wishes of the young Tourangian. In the year 1800, and in the pretty month of May, Mademoiselle Pillerault consented to marry Cesar Birotteau, who fainted with joy at the moment when, under a linden at Sceaux, Constance-Barbe-Josephine Pillerault accepted him as her husband.

“My little girl,” said Monsieur Pillerault, “you have won a good husband. He has a warm heart and honorable feelings; he is true as gold, and as good as an infant Jesus, – in fact, a king of men.”

Constance frankly abdicated the more brilliant destiny to which, like all shop-girls, she may at times have aspired. She wished to be an honest woman, a good mother of a family, and looked at life according to the religious programme of the middle classes. Such a career suited her own ideas far better than the dangerous vanities which seduce so many youthful Parisian imaginations. Constance, with her narrow intelligence, was a type of the petty bourgeoisie whose labors are not performed without grumbling; who begin by refusing what they desire, and end by getting angry when taken at their word; whose restless activity is carried into the kitchen and into the counting-room, into the gravest matters of business, and into the invisible darns of the household linen; who love while scolding, who conceive no ideas but the simplest (the small change of the mind); who argue about everything, fear everything, calculate everything, and fret perpetually over the future. Her cold but ingenuous beauty, her touching expression, her freshness and purity, prevented Birotteau from thinking of her defects, which moreover were more than compensated by a delicate sense of honor natural to women, by an excessive love of order, by a fanaticism for work, and by her genius as a saleswoman. Constance was eighteen years old, and possessed eleven thousand francs of her own. Cesar, inspired by his love with an excessive ambition, bought the business of “The Queen of Roses” and removed it to a handsome building near the Place Vendome. At the early age of twenty-one, married to a woman he adored, the proprietor of an establishment for which he had paid three quarters of the price down, he had the right to view, and did view, the future in glowing colors; all the more when he measured the path which led from his original point of departure. Roguin, notary of Ragon, who had drawn up the marriage contract, gave the new perfumer some sound advice, and prevented him from paying the whole purchase money down with the fortune of his wife.

“Keep the means of undertaking some good enterprise, my lad,” he had said to him.

Birotteau looked up to the notary with admiration, fell into the habit of consulting him, and made him his friend. Like Ragon and Pillerault, he had so much faith in the profession that he gave himself up to Roguin without allowing himself a suspicion. Thanks to this advice, Cesar, supplied with the eleven thousand francs of his wife for his start in business, would have scorned to exchange his possessions for those of the First Consul, brilliant as the prospects of Napoleon might seem. At first the Birotteaus kept only a cook, and lived in the entresol above the shop, – a sort of den tolerably well decorated by an upholsterer, where the bride and bridegroom began a honeymoon that was never to end. Madame Cesar appeared to advantage behind the counter. 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. Upon these grounds the worthy people of the arrondissement made him captain of the National Guard; but he was cashiered by Napoleon, who, according to Birotteau, owed him a grudge for their encounter on the 13th Vendemiaire. Cesar thus obtained at a cheap rate a varnish of persecution, which made him interesting in the eyes of the opposition, and gave him a certain importance.

Such was the history of this household, lastingly happy through its feeling, and agitated only by commercial anxieties.

During the first year Cesar instructed his wife about the sales of their merchandise and the details of perfumery, – a business which she understood admirably. She really seemed to have been created and sent into the world to fit on the gloves of customers. At the close of that year the assets staggered our ambitious perfumer; all costs calculated, he would be able in less than twenty years to make a modest capital of one hundred thousand francs, which was the sum at which he estimated their happiness. He then resolved to reach fortune more rapidly, and determined to manufacture articles as well as retail them. Contrary to the advice of his wife, he hired some sheds, with the ground about them, in the Faubourg du Temple, and painted upon them in big letters, “Manufactory of Cesar Birotteau.” He enticed a skilful workman from Grasse, with whom he began, on equal shares, the manufacture of soaps, essences, and eau-de-cologne. His connection with this man lasted only six months, and ended by losses which fell upon him alone. Without allowing himself to be discouraged, Birotteau determined to get better results at any price, solely to avoid being scolded by his wife, – to whom he acknowledged later that in those depressing days his head had boiled like a saucepan, and that several times, if it had not been for his religious sentiments, he should have flung himself into the Seine.

Harassed by some unprofitable enterprise, he was lounging one day along the boulevard on his way to dinner, – for the Parisian lounger is as often a man filled with despair as an idler, – when among a parcel of books for six sous a-piece, laid out in a hamper on the pavement, his eyes lighted on the following title, yellow with dust: “Abdeker, or the Art of Preserving Beauty.” He picked up the so-called Arab book, a sort of romance written by a physician of the preceding century, and happened on a page which related to perfumes. Leaning against a tree on the boulevard to turn over the leaves at his ease, he read a note by the author which explained the nature of the skin and the cuticle, and showed that a certain soap, or a certain paste, often produced effects quite contrary to those expected of them, if the soap and the paste toned up a skin which needed relaxing, or relaxed a skin which required tones. Birotteau bought the book, in which he saw his fortune. Nevertheless, having little confidence in his own lights, he consulted a celebrated chemist, Vauquelin, from whom he naively inquired how to mix a two-sided cosmetic which should produce effects appropriate to the diversified nature of the human epidermis. Truly scientific men – men who are really great in the sense that they never attain in their lifetime the renown which their immense and unrecognized labors deserve – are nearly always kind, and willing to serve the poor in spirit. Vauquelin accordingly patronized the perfumer, and allowed him to call himself the inventor of a paste to whiten the hands, the composition of which he dictated to him. Birotteau named this cosmetic the “Double Paste of Sultans.” To complete the work, he applied the same recipe to the manufacture of a lotion for the complexion, which he called the “Carminative Balm.” He imitated in his own line the system of the Petit-Matelot, and was the first perfumer to display that redundancy of placards, advertisements, and other methods of publication which are called, perhaps unjustly, charlatanism.

The Paste of Sultans and the Carminative Balm were ushered into the world of fashion and commerce by colored placards, at the head of which were these words, “Approved by the Institute.” This formula, used for the first time, had a magical effect. Not only all France, but the continent flaunted with the posters, yellow, red, and blue, of the monarch of the “The Queen of Roses,” who kept in stock, supplied, and manufactured, at moderate prices, all that belonged to his trade. At a period when nothing was talked of but the East, to name any sort of cosmetic the “Paste of Sultans” thus divining the magic force of such words in a land where every man hoped to be a sultan as much as every woman longed to be a sultana, was an inspiration which could only have come to a common man or a man of genius. The public always judges by results. Birotteau passed for a superior man, commercially speaking; all the more because he compiled a prospectus whose ridiculous phraseology was an element of success. In France they only made fun of things which occupy the public mind, and the public does not occupy itself with things that do not succeed. Though Birotteau perpetrated this folly in good faith and not as a trick, the world gave him credit for knowing how to play the fool for a purpose. We have found, not without difficulty, a copy of this prospectus at the establishment of Popinot and Co., druggists, Rue des Lombards. This curious document belongs to the class which, in a higher sphere, historians call pieces justificatives. We give it here:

THE DOUBLE PASTE OF SULTANSAND CARMINATIVE BALMOf Cesar BirotteauMARVELLOUS DISCOVERY!Approved by the Institute of France

“For many years a paste for the hands and a lotion for the face offering superior results to those obtained from Eau-de-Cologne in the domain of the toilet, has been widely sought by both sexes in Europe. Devoting long vigils to the study of the skin and cuticle of the two sexes, each of whom, one as much as the other, attach the utmost importance to the softness, suppleness, brilliancy, and velvet texture of the complexion, the Sieur Birotteau, perfumer, favorably known in this metropolis and abroad, has discovered a Paste and a Lotion justly hailed as marvellous by the fashion and elegance of Paris. In point of fact, this Paste and this Lotion possess amazing properties which act upon the skin without prematurely wrinkling it, – the inevitable result of drugs thoughtlessly employed, and sold in these days by ignorance and cupidity. This discovery rests upon diversities of temperament, which divide themselves into two great classes, indicated by the color of the Paste and the Lotion, which will be found pink for the skin and cuticle of persons of lymphatic habit, and white for those possessed of a sanguine temperament.

“This Paste is named the ‘Paste of Sultans,’ because the discovery was originally made for the Seraglio by an Arabian physician. It has been approved by the Institute on the recommendation of our illustrious chemist, Vauquelin; together with the Lotion, fabricated on the same principles which govern the composition of the Paste.

“This precious Paste, exhaling as it does the sweetest perfumes, removes all blotches, even those that are obstinately rebellious, whitens the most recalcitrant epidermis, and dissipates the perspirations of the hand, of which both sexes equally complain.

“The Carminative Balm will disperse the little pimples which appear inopportunely at certain times, and interfere with a lady’s projects for a ball; it refreshes and revives the color by opening or shutting the pores of the skin according to the exigencies of the individual temperament. It is so well known already for its effect in arresting the ravages of time that many, out of gratitude, have called it the ‘Friend of Beauty.’

“Eau-de-Cologne is, purely and simply, a trivial perfume without special efficacy of any kind; while the Double Paste of Sultans and the Carminative Balm are two operative compounds, of a motive power which acts without risk upon the internal energies and seconds them. Their perfumes (essentially balsamic, and of a stimulating character which admirably revives the heart and brain) awake ideas and vivify them; they are as wonderful for their simplicity as for their merits. In short, they offer one attraction the more to women, and to men a means of seduction which it is within their power to secure.

“The daily use of the Balm will relieve the smart occasioned by the heat of the razor; it will protect the lips from chapping, and restore their color; it dispels in time all discolorations, and revives the natural tones of the skin. Such results demonstrate in man a perfect equilibrium of the juices of life, which tends to relieve all persons subject to headache from the sufferings of that horrible malady. Finally, the Carminative Balm, which can be employed by women in all stages of their toilet, will prevent cutaneous diseases by facilitating the transpiration of the tissues, and communicating to them a permanent texture like that of velvet.

“Address, post-paid, Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, successor to Ragon, former perfumer to the Queen Marie Antoinette, at The Queen of Roses, Rue Saint-Honore, Paris, near the Place Vendome.

“The price of a cake of Paste is three francs; that of the bottle six francs.

“Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, to avoid counterfeits, informs the public that the Paste is wrapped in paper bearing his signature, and that the bottles have a stamp blown in the glass.”

The success was owing, without Cesar’s suspecting it, to Constance, who advised him to send cases of the Carminative Balm and the Paste of Sultans to all perfumers in France and in foreign cities, offering them at the same time a discount of thirty per cent if they would buy the two articles by the gross. The Paste and the Balm were, in reality, worth more than other cosmetics of the sort; and they captivated ignorant people by the distinctions they set up among the temperaments. The five hundred perfumers of France, allured by the discount, each bought annually from Birotteau more than three hundred gross of the Paste and the Lotion, – a consumption which, if it gave only a limited profit on each article, became enormous considered in bulk. Cesar was then able to buy the huts and the land in the Faubourg du Temple; he built large manufactories, and decorated his shop at “The Queen of Roses” with much magnificence; his household began to taste the little joys of competence, and his wife no longer trembled as before.

In 1810 Madame Cesar, foreseeing a rise in rents, pushed her husband into becoming chief tenant of the house where they had hitherto occupied only the shop and the entresol, and advised him to remove their own appartement to the first floor. A fortunate event induced Constance to shut her eyes to the follies which Birotteau committed for her sake in fitting up the new appartement. The perfumer had just been elected judge in the commercial courts: his integrity, his well-known sense of honor, and the respect he enjoyed, earned for him this dignity, which ranked him henceforth among the leading merchants of Paris. To improve his knowledge, he rose daily at five o’clock, and read law-reports and books treating of commercial litigation. His sense of justice, his rectitude, his conscientious intentions, – qualities essential to the understanding of questions submitted for consular decision, – soon made him highly esteemed among the judges. His defects contributed not a little to his reputation. Conscious of his inferiority, Cesar subordinated his own views to those of his colleagues, who were flattered in being thus deferred to. Some sought the silent approbation of a man held to be sagacious, in his capacity of listener; others, charmed with his modesty and gentleness, praised him publicly. Plaintiffs and defendants extolled his kindness, his conciliatory spirit; and he was often chosen umpire in contests where his own good sense would have suggested the swift justice of a Turkish cadi. During his whole period in office he contrived to use language which was a medley of commonplaces mixed with maxims and computations served up in flowing phrases mildly put forth, which sounded to the ears of superficial people like eloquence. Thus he pleased that great majority, mediocre by nature, who are condemned to perpetual labor and to views which are of the earth earthy. Cesar, however, lost so much time in court that his wife obliged him finally to resign the expensive dignity.

Towards 1813, the Birotteau household, thanks to its constant harmony, and after steadily plodding on through life, saw the dawn of an era of prosperity which nothing seemed likely to interrupt. Monsieur and Madame Ragon, their predecessors, the uncle Pillerault, Roguin the notary, the Messrs. Matifat, druggists in the Rue des Lombards and purveyors to “The Queen of Roses,” Joseph Lebas, woollen draper and successor to the Messrs. Guillaume at the Maison du Chat-qui-pelote (one of the luminaries of the Rue Saint-Denis), Popinot the judge, brother of Madame Ragon, Chiffreville of the firm of Protez & Chiffreville, Monsieur and Madame Cochin, employed in the treasury department and sleeping partners in the house of Matifat, the Abbe Loraux, confessor and director of the pious members of this coterie, with a few other persons, made up the circle of their friends. In spite of the royalist sentiments of Birotteau, public opinion was in his favor; he was considered very rich, though in fact he possessed only a hundred thousand francs over and above his business. The regularity of his affairs, his punctuality, his habit of making no debts, of never discounting his paper, and of taking, on the contrary, safe securities from those whom he could thus oblige, together with his general amiability, won him enormous credit. His household cost him nearly twenty thousand francs a year, and the education of Cesarine, an only daughter, idolized by Constance as well as by himself, necessitated heavy expenses. Neither husband nor wife considered money when it was a question of giving pleasure to their child, from whom they had never been willing to separate. Imagine the happiness of the poor parvenu peasant as he listened to his charming Cesarine playing a sonata of Steibelt’s on the piano, and singing a ballad; or when he found her writing the French language correctly, or reading Racine, father and son, and explaining their beauties, or sketching a landscape, or painting in sepia! What joy to live again in a flower so pure, so lovely, which had never left the maternal stem; an angel whose budding graces and whose earliest developments he had passionately watched; an only daughter, incapable of despising her father, or of ridiculing his defective education, so truly was she an ingenuous young girl.

When he first came to Paris, Cesar had known how to read, write, and cipher, but his education stopped there; his laborious life had kept him from acquiring ideas and knowledge outside the business of perfumery. Mixing wholly with people to whom science and letters were of no importance, and whose information did not go beyond their specialty, having no time to give to higher studies, the perfumer had become a merely practical man. He adopted necessarily the language, blunders, and opinions of the bourgeois of Paris, who admires Moliere, Voltaire, and Rousseau on faith, and buys their books without ever reading them; who maintains that people should say ormoires, because women put away their gold and their dresses and moire in those articles of furniture, and that it is only a corruption of the language to say armoires. Potier, Talma, and Mademoiselle Mars were ten times millionaires, and did not live like other human beings; the great tragedian ate raw meat, and Mademoiselle Mars sometimes drank dissolved pearls, in imitation of a celebrated Egyptian actress. The Emperor had leather pockets in his waistcoat, so that he could take his snuff by the handful; he rode on horseback at full gallop up the stairway of the orangery at Versailles. Writers and artists died in the hospital, as a natural consequence of their eccentricities; they were, moreover, all atheists, and people should be very careful not to admit them into their households. Joseph Lebas cited with horror the history of his step-sister Augustine’s marriage with the painter Sommervieux. Astronomers lived on spiders.

These striking points of information on the French language, on dramatic art, politics, literature, and science, will explain the bearings of the bourgeois intellect. A poet passing through the Rue des Lombards may dream of Araby as he inhales certain perfumes. He may admire the danseuses in a chauderie, as he breathes the odors of an Indian root. Dazzled by the blaze of cochineal, he recalls the poems of the Veda, the religion of Brahma and its castes; brushing against piles of ivory in the rough, he mounts the backs of elephants; seated in a muslin cage, he makes love like the King of Lahore. But the little retail merchant is ignorant from whence have come, or where may grow, the products in which he deals. Birotteau, perfumer, did not know an iota of natural history, nor of chemistry. Though regarding Vauquelin as a great man, he thought him an exception, – of about the same capacity as the retired grocer who summed up a discussion on the method of importing teas, by remarking with a knowing air, “There are but two ways: tea comes either by caravan, or by Havre.” According to Birotteau aloes and opium were only to be found in the Rue des Lombards. Rosewater, said to be brought from Constantinople, was made in Paris like eau-de-cologne. The names of these places were shams, invented to please Frenchmen who could not endure the things of their own country. A French merchant must call his discoveries English to make them fashionable, just as in England the druggists attribute theirs to France.