Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau. Honore de Balzac
Monsieur Birotteau,” said the umbrella-man, “I have not asked you any compensation for this cession; but you are aware that a good merchant ought to make money out of everything.”
“What the devil!” cried Birotteau. “I’m not made of money. I don’t know that my architect can do the thing at all. He told me that before concluding my arrangements I must know whether the floors were on the same level. Then, supposing Monsieur Molineux does allow me to cut a door in the wall, is it a party-wall? Moreover, I have to turn my staircase, and make a new landing, so as to get a passage-way on the same floor. All that costs money, and I don’t want to ruin myself.”
“Oh, monsieur,” said the southerner. “Before you are ruined, the sun will have married the earth and they’ll have had children.”
Birotteau stroked his chin, rose on the points of his toes, and fell back upon his heels.
“Besides,” resumed Cayron, “all I ask you to do is to cash these securities for me – ”
And he held out sixteen notes amounting in all to five thousand francs.
“Ah!” said the perfumer turning them over. “Small fry, two months, three months – ”
“Take them as low as six per cent,” said the umbrella-man humbly.
“Am I a usurer?” asked the perfumer reproachfully.
“What can I do, monsieur? I went to your old clerk, du Tillet, and he would not take them at any price. No doubt he wanted to find out how much I’d be willing to lose on them.”
“I don’t know those signatures,” said the perfumer.
“We have such queer names in canes and umbrellas; they belong to the peddlers.”
“Well, I won’t say that I will take all; but I’ll manage the short ones.”
“For the want of a thousand francs – sure to be repaid in four months – don’t throw me into the hands of the blood-suckers who get the best of our profits; do take all, monsieur! I do so little in the way of discount that I have no credit; that is what kills us little retailers.”
“Well, I’ll cash your notes; Celestin will make out the account. Be ready at eleven, will you? There’s my architect, Monsieur Grindot,” said the perfumer, catching sight of the young man, with whom he had made an appointment at Monsieur de la Billardiere’s the night before.
“Contrary to the custom of men of talent you are punctual, monsieur,” said Cesar, displaying his finest commercial graces. “If punctuality, in the words of our king, – a man of wit as well as a statesman, – is the politeness of princes, it is also the wealth of merchants. Time, time is gold, especially to you artists. I permit myself to say to you that architecture is the union of all the arts. We will not enter through the shop,” he added, opening the private door of his house.
Four years earlier Monsieur Grindot had carried off the grand prix in architecture, and had lately returned from Rome where he had spent three years at the cost of the State. In Italy the young man had dreamed of art; in Paris he thought of fortune. Government alone can pay the needful millions to raise an architect to glory; it is therefore natural that every ambitious youth of that calling, returning from Rome and thinking himself a Fontaine or a Percier, should bow before the administration. The liberal student became a royalist, and sought to win the favor of influential persons. When a grand prix man behaves thus, his comrades call him a trimmer. The young architect in question had two ways open to him, – either to serve the perfumer well, or put him under contribution. Birotteau the deputy-mayor, Birotteau the future possessor of half the lands about the Madeleine, where he would sooner or later build up a fine neighborhood, was a man to keep on good terms with. Grindot accordingly resolved to sacrifice his immediate gains to his future interests. He listened patiently to the plans, the repetitions, and the ideas of this worthy specimen of the bourgeois class, the constant butt of the witty shafts and ridicule of artists, and the object of their everlasting contempt, nodding his head as if to show the perfumer that he caught his ideas. When Cesar had thoroughly explained everything, the young man proceeded to sum up for him his own plan.
“You have now three front windows on the first floor, besides the window on the staircase which lights the landing; to these four windows you mean to add two on the same level in the next house, by turning the staircase, so as to open a way from one house to the other on the street side.”
“You have understood me perfectly,” said the perfumer, surprised.
“To carry out your plan, you must light the new staircase from above, and manage to get a porter’s lodge beneath it.”
“Beneath it?”
“Yes, the space over which it rests – ”
“I understand, monsieur.”
“As for your own appartement, give me carte-blanche to arrange and decorate it. I wish to make it worthy – ”
“Worthy! You have said the word, monsieur.”
“How much time do you give me to complete the work?”
“Twenty days.”
“What sum do you mean to put in the workmen’s pockets?” asked Grindot.
“How much do you think it will cost?”
“An architect can estimate on a new building almost to a farthing,” answered the young man; “but as I don’t know how to deal with a bourgeois – ah! excuse me, monsieur, the word slipped out – I must warn you that it is impossible to calculate the costs of tearing down and rebuilding. It will take at least eight days before I can give even an approximate idea of them. Trust yourself to me: you shall have a charming staircase, lighted from above, with a pretty vestibule opening from the street, and in the space under the stairway – ”
“Must that be used?”
“Don’t be worried – I will find room for a little porter’s lodge. Your house shall be studied and remodelled con amore. Yes, monsieur, I look to art and not to fortune. Above all things I do not want fame before I have earned it. To my mind, the best means of winning credit is not to play into the hands of contractors, but to get at good effects cheaply.”
“With such ideas, young man,” said Birotteau in a patronizing tone, “you will succeed.”
“Therefore,” resumed Grindot, “employ the masons, painters, locksmiths, carpenters, and upholsterers yourself. I will simply look over their accounts. Pay me only two thousand francs commission. It will be money well laid out. Give me the premises to-morrow at twelve o’clock, and have your workmen on the spot.”
“How much it will cost, at a rough guess?” said Birotteau.
“From ten to twelve thousand francs,” said Grindot. “That does not count the furniture; of course you will renew that. Give me the address of your cabinet-maker; I shall have to arrange with him about the choice of colors, so as to have everything in keeping.”
“Monsieur Braschon, Rue Saint-Antoine, takes my orders,” said Birotteau, assuming a ducal air.
The architect wrote down the address in one of those pretty note-books which invariably come from women.
“Well,” said Birotteau, “I trust to you, monsieur; only you must wait till the lease of the adjoining house is made over to me, and I will get permission to cut through the wall.”
“Send me a note this evening,” said the architect; “it will take me all night to draw the plans – we would rather work for a bourgeois than for the King of Prussia, that is to say for ourselves. I will now take the dimensions, the pitch, the size of the widows, the pictures – ”
“It must be finished on the appointed day,” said Birotteau. “If not, no pay.”
“It shall be done,” said the architect. “The workmen must do without sleep; we will use drying oil in the paint. But don’t let yourself be taken in by the contractors; always ask their price in advance, and have a written agreement.”
“Paris