



Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny





RISE AND FALL OF CESAR BIROTTEAU


By Honore De Balzac



Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley






PART I. CESAR AT HIS APOGEE




I

During winter nights noise never ceases in the Rue Saint-Honore except
for a short interval. Kitchen-gardeners carrying their produce to market
continue the stir of carriages returning from theatres and balls. Near
the middle of this sustained pause in the grand symphony of Parisian
uproar, which occurs about one o'clock in the morning, the wife of
Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, a perfumer established near the Place Vendome,
was startled from her sleep by a frightful dream. She had seen her
double. She had appeared to herself clothed in rags, turning with a
shrivelled, withered hand the latch of her own shop-door, seeming to be
at the threshold, yet at the same time seated in her armchair behind the
counter. She was asking alms of herself, and heard herself speaking from
the doorway and also from her seat at the desk.

She tried to grasp her husband, but her hand fell on a cold place.
Her terror became so intense that she could not move her neck, which
stiffened as if petrified; the membranes of her throat became glued
together, her voice failed her. She remained sitting erect in the same
posture in the middle of the alcove, both panels of which were wide
open, her eyes staring and fixed, her hair quivering, her ears filled
with strange noises, her heart tightened yet palpitating, and her person
bathed in perspiration though chilled to the bone.

Fear is a half-diseased sentiment, which presses so violently upon the
human mechanism that the faculties are suddenly excited to the highest
degree of their power or driven to utter disorganization. Physiologists
have long wondered at this phenomenon, which overturns their systems
and upsets all theories; it is in fact a thunderbolt working within the
being, and, like all electric accidents, capricious and whimsical in its
course. This explanation will become a mere commonplace in the day
when scientific men are brought to recognize the immense part which
electricity plays in human thought.

Madame Birotteau now passed through several of the shocks, in some sort
electrical, which are produced by terrible explosions of the will forced
out, or held under, by some mysterious mechanism. Thus during a
period of time, very short if judged by a watch, but immeasurable when
calculated by the rapidity of her impressions, the poor woman had the
supernatural power of emitting more ideas and bringing to the surface
more recollections than, under any ordinary use of her faculties, she
could put forth in the course of a whole day. The poignant tale of her
monologue may be abridged into a few absurd sentences, as contradictory
and bare of meaning as the monologue itself.

"There is no reason why Birotteau should leave my bed! He has eaten so
much veal that he may be ill. But if he were ill he would have waked
me. For nineteen years that we have slept together in this bed, in this
house, it has never happened that he left his place without telling
me,--poor sheep! He never slept away except to pass the night in the
guard-room. Did he come to bed to-night? Why, of course; goodness! how
stupid I am."

She cast her eyes upon the bed and saw her husband's night-cap, which
still retained the almost conical shape of his head.

"Can he be dead? Has he killed himself? Why?" she went on. "For the
last two years, since they made him deputy-mayor, he is
_all-I-don't-know-how_. To put him into public life! On the word of an
honest woman, isn't it pitiable? His business is doing well, for he gave
me a shawl. But perhaps it isn't doing well? Bah! I should know of
it. Does one ever know what a man has got in his head; or a woman
either?--there is no harm in that. Didn't we sell five thousand francs'
worth to-day? Besides, a deputy mayor couldn't kill himself; he knows
the laws too well. Where is he then?"

She could neither turn her neck, nor stretch out her hand to pull
the bell, which would have put in motion a cook, three clerks, and a
shop-boy. A prey to the nightmare, which still lasted though her
mind was wide awake, she forgot her daughter peacefully asleep in an
adjoining room, the door of which opened at the foot of her bed. At last
she cried "Birotteau!" but got no answer. She thought she had called the
name aloud, though in fact she had only uttered it mentally.

"Has he a mistress? He is too stupid," she added. "Besides, he loves me
too well for that. Didn't he tell Madame Roguin that he had never been
unfaithful to me, even in thought? He is virtue upon earth, that man. If
any one ever deserved paradise he does. What does he accuse himself of
to his confessor, I wonder? He must tell him a lot of fiddle-faddle.
Royalist as he is, though he doesn't know why, he can't froth up his
religion. Poor dear cat! he creeps to Mass at eight o'clock as slyly as
if he were going to a bad house. He fears God for God's sake; hell
is nothing to him. How could he have a mistress? He is so tied to my
petticoat that he bores me. He loves me better than his own eyes; he
would put them out for my sake. For nineteen years he has never said to
me one word louder than another. His daughter is never considered before
me. But Cesarine is here--Cesarine! Cesarine!--Birotteau has never had
a thought which he did not tell me. He was right enough when he declared
to me at the Petit-Matelot that I should never know him till I tried
him. And _not here_! It is extraordinary!"

She turned her head with difficulty and glanced furtively about the
room, then filled with those picturesque effects which are the despair
of language and seem to belong exclusively to the painters of genre.
What words can picture the alarming zig-zags produced by falling
shadows, the fantastic appearance of curtains bulged out by the wind,
the flicker of uncertain light thrown by a night-lamp upon the folds of
red calico, the rays shed from a curtain-holder whose lurid centre
was like the eye of a burglar, the apparition of a kneeling dress,--in
short, all the grotesque effects which terrify the imagination at a
moment when it has no power except to foresee misfortunes and exaggerate
them? Madame Birotteau suddenly saw a strong light in the room beyond
her chamber, and thought of fire; but perceiving a red foulard which
looked like a pool of blood, her mind turned exclusively to burglars,
especially when she thought she saw traces of a struggle in the way the
furniture stood about the room. Recollecting the sum of money which
was in the desk, a generous fear put an end to the chill ferment of her
nightmare. She sprang terrified, and in her night-gown, into the very
centre of the room to help her husband, whom she supposed to be in the
grasp of assassins.

"Birotteau! Birotteau!" she cried at last in a voice full of anguish.

She then saw the perfumer in the middle of the next room, a yard-stick
in his hand measuring the air, and so ill wrapped up in his green cotton
dressing-gown with chocolate- spots that the cold had reddened
his legs without his feeling it, preoccupied as he was. When Cesar
turned about to say to his wife, "Well, what do you want, Constance?"
his air and manner, like those of a man absorbed in calculations, were
so prodigiously silly that Madame Birotteau began to laugh.

"Goodness! Cesar, if you are not an oddity like that!" she said. "Why
did you leave me alone without telling me? I have nearly died of terror;
I did not know what to imagine. What are you doing there, flying open
to all the winds? You'll get as hoarse as a wolf. Do you hear me,
Birotteau?"

"Yes, wife, here I am," answered the perfumer, coming into the bedroom.

"Come and warm yourself, and tell me what maggot you've got in your
head," replied Madame Birotteau opening the ashes of the fire, which she
hastened to relight. "I am frozen. What a goose I was to get up in my
night-gown! But I really thought they were assassinating you."

The shopkeeper put his candlestick on the chimney-piece, wrapped his
dressing-gown closer about him, and went mechanically to find a flannel
petticoat for his wife.

"Here, Mimi, cover yourself up," he said. "Twenty-two by eighteen," he
resumed, going on with his monologue; "we can get a superb salon."

"Ah, ca! Birotteau, are you on the high road to insanity? Are you
dreaming?"

"No, wife, I am calculating."

"You had better wait till daylight for your nonsense," she cried,
fastening the petticoat beneath her short night-gown and going to the
door of the room where her daughter was in bed.

"Cesarine is asleep," she said, "she won't hear us. Come, Birotteau,
speak up. What is it?"

"We can give a ball."

"Give a ball! we? On the word of an honest woman, you are dreaming, my
friend."

"I am not dreaming, my beautiful white doe. Listen. People should
always do what their position in life demands. Government has brought
me forward into prominence. I belong to the government; it is my duty to
study its mind, and further its intentions by developing them. The Duc
de Richelieu has just put an end to the occupation of France by
the foreign armies. According to Monsieur de la Billardiere, the
functionaries who represent the city of Paris should make it their duty,
each in his own sphere of influence, to celebrate the liberation of our
territory. Let us show a true patriotism which shall put these liberals,
these damned intriguers, to the blush; hein? Do you think I don't love
my country? I wish to show the liberals, my enemies, that to love the
king is to love France."

"Do you think you have got any enemies, my poor Birotteau?"

"Why, yes, wife, we have enemies. Half our friends in the quarter are
our enemies. They all say, 'Birotteau has had luck; Birotteau is a man
who came from nothing: yet here he is deputy-mayor; everything succeeds
with him.' Well, they are going to be finely surprised. You are the
first to be told that I am made a chevalier of the Legion of honor. The
king signed the order yesterday."

"Oh! then," said Madame Birotteau, much moved, "of course we must give
the ball, my good friend. But what have you done to merit the cross?"

"Yesterday, when Monsieur de la Billardiere told me the news," said
Birotteau, modestly, "I asked myself, as you do, what claims I had to
it; but I ended by seeing what they were, and in approving the action
of the government. In the first place, I am a royalist; I was wounded
at Saint-Roch in Vendemiaire: isn't it something to have borne arms
in those days for the good cause? Then, according to the merchants, I
exercised my judicial functions in a way to give general satisfaction. I
am now deputy-mayor. The king grants four crosses to the municipality of
Paris; the prefect, selecting among the deputies suitable persons to be
thus decorated, has placed my name first on the list. The king moreover
knows me: thanks to old Ragon. I furnish him with the only powder he is
willing to use; we alone possess the receipt of the late queen,--poor,
dear, august victim! The mayor vehemently supported me. So there it is.
If the king gives me the cross without my asking for it, it seems to me
that I cannot refuse it without failing in my duty to him. Did I seek to
be deputy-mayor? So, wife, since we are sailing before the wind, as
your uncle Pillerault says when he is jovial, I have decided to put the
household on a footing in conformity with our high position. If I can
become anything, I'll risk being whatever the good God wills that I
shall be,--sub-prefect, if such be my destiny. My wife, you are much
mistaken if you think a citizen has paid his debt to his country by
merely selling perfumery for twenty years to those who came to buy it.
If the State demands the help of our intelligence, we are as much bound
to give it as we are to pay the tax on personal property, on windows and
doors, _et caetera_. Do you want to stay forever behind your counter?
You have been there, thank God, a long time. This ball shall be our
fete,--yours and mine. Good-by to economy,--for your sake, be it
understood. I burn our sign, 'The Queen of Roses'; I efface the name,
'Cesar Birotteau, Perfumer, Successor to Ragon,' and put simply,
'Perfumery' in big letters of gold. On the _entresol_ I place the
office, the counting-room, and a pretty little sanctum for you. I make
the shop out