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."

These phrases, divided by eloquent pauses and delivered like shot,
after the manner of those who recriminate, expressed so deep and
constant an attachment that Madame Birotteau was inwardly touched,
though, like all women, she made use of the love she inspired to gain
her end.

"Well! Birotteau," she said, "if you love me, let me be happy in my
own way. Neither you nor I have education; we don't know how to talk,