第14章 II(7)

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;