Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau [13]
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
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