Honoré Balzac - Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau

“I expected you to say all this, wife,” said Cesar Birotteau. “I am not quite such a fool (though you think me a great fool, you do) as not to have thought of all that. Now, listen to me. Alexandre Crottat will fit us like a glove for a son-in-law, and he will succeed Roguin; but do you suppose he will be satisfied with a hundred thousand francs dot ? – supposing that we gave our whole property outside of the business to establish our daughter, and I am willing; I would gladly live on dry bread the rest of my days to see her happy as a queen, the wife of a notary of Paris, as you say. Well, then, a hundred thousand francs, or even eight thousand francs a year, is nothing at all towards buying Roguin’s practice. Little Xandrot, as we call him, thinks, like all the rest of the world, that we are richer than we are. If his father, that big farmer who is as close as a snail, won’t sell a hundred thousand francs worth of land Xandrot can’t be a notary, for Roguin’s practice is worth four or five hundred thousand. If Crottat does not pay half down, how could he negotiate the affair? Cesarine must have two hundred thousand francs dot ; and I mean that you and I shall retire solid bourgeois of Paris, with fifteen thousand francs a year. Hein! If I could make you see that as plain as day, wouldn’t it shut your mouth?”

“Oh, if you’ve got the mines of Peru – ”

“Yes, I have, my lamb. Yes,” he said, taking his wife by the waist and striking her with little taps, under an emotion of joy which lighted up his features, “I did not wish to tell you of this matter till it was all cooked; but to-morrow it will be done, – that is, perhaps it will. Here it is then: Roguin has proposed a speculation to me, so safe that he has gone into it with Ragon, with your uncle Pillerault, and two other of his clients. We are to buy property near the Madeleine, which, according to Roguin’s calculations, we shall get for a quarter of the value which it will bring three years from now, at which time, the present leases having expired, we shall manage it for ourselves. We have all six taken certain shares. I furnish three hundred thousand francs, – that is, three-eighths of the whole. If any one of us wants money, Roguin will get it for him by hypothecating his share. To hold the gridiron and know how the fish are fried, I have chosen to be nominally proprietor of one half, which is, however, to be the common property of Pillerault and the worthy Ragon and myself. Roguin will be, under the name of Monsieur Charles Claparon, co-proprietor with me, and will give a reversionary deed to his associates, as I shall to mine. The deeds of purchase are made by promises of sale under private seal, until we are masters of the whole property. Roguin will investigate as to which of the contracts should be paid in money, for he is not sure that we can dispense with registering and yet turn over the titles to those to whom we sell in small parcels. But it takes too long to explain all this to you. The ground once paid for, we have only to cross our arms and in three years we shall be rich by a million. Cesarine will then be twenty, our business will be sold, and we shall step, by the grace of God, modestly to eminence.”

“Where will you get your three hundred thousand francs?” said Madame Birotteau.

“You don’t understand business, my beloved little cat. I shall take the hundred thousand francs which are now with Roguin; I shall borrow forty thousand on the buildings and gardens where we now have our manufactory in the Faubourg du Temple; we have twenty thousand francs here in hand, – in all, one hundred and sixty thousand. There remain one hundred and forty thousand more, for which I shall sign notes to the order of Monsieur Charles Claparon, banker. He will pay the value, less the discount. So there are the three hundred thousand francs provided for. He who owns rents owes nothing. When the notes fall due we can pay them off with our profits. If we cannot pay them in cash, Roguin will give 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 to becoming a political personage. Yes, you may shake your head, but if our affair succeeds I may become deputy of Paris. Ah! I am not named Cesar for nothing; I succeed. It is unimaginable! outside every one credits me with capacity, but here the only person whom I want so much to please that I sweat blood and water to make her happy, is precisely the one who takes me for a fool.”