The circles round her eyes had spread to a wide circumference, like those of elderly women who have known sorrow. The severe and dignified, although affable, expression of her countenance inspired respect. She had, withal, a certain oddity about her, which excited notice, but never ridicule; and this was exhibited in her dress and habits. She wore mittens, and carried in all weathers a cane sunshade, like that used by Queen Marie-Antoinette at Trianon; her gown (the favorite color was pale-brown, the shade of dead leaves) fell from her hips in those inimitable folds the secret of which the dowagers of the olden time have carried away with them. She retained the black mantilla trimmed with black lace woven in large square meshes; her caps, old-fashioned in shape, had the quaint charm which we see in silhouettes relieved against a white background. She took snuff with exquisite nicety and with the gestures which young people of the present day who have had the happiness of seeing their grandmothers and great-aunts replacing their gold snuff-boxes solemnly on the tables beside them, and shaking off the grains which strayed upon their kerchiefs, will doubtless remember.
The Sieur Ragon was a little man, not over five feet high, with a face like a nut-cracker, in which could be seen only two eyes, two sharp cheek-bones, a nose and a chin. Having no teeth he swallowed half his words, though his style of conversation was effluent, gallant, pretentious, and smiling, with the smile he formerly wore when he received beautiful great ladies at the door of his shop. Powder, well raked off, defined upon his cranium a nebulous half-circle, flanked by two pigeon-wings, divided by a little queue tied with a ribbon. He wore a bottle-blue coat, a white waistcoat, small-clothes and silk stockings, shoes with gold buckles, and black silk gloves. The most marked feature of his behavior was his habit of going through the street holding his hat in his hand. He looked like a messenger of the Chamber of Peers, or an usher of the king's bedchamber, or any of those persons placed near to some form of power from which they get a reflected light, though of little account themselves.
"Well, Birotteau," he said, with a magisterial air, "do you repent, my boy, for having listened to us in the old times? Did we ever doubt the gratitude of our beloved sovereigns?"
"You have been very happy, dear child," said Madame Ragon to Madame Birotteau.
"Yes, indeed," answered Constance, always under the spell of the cane parasol, the butterfly cap, the tight sleeves, and the great kerchief /a la Julie/ which Madame Ragon wore.
"Cesarine is charming. Come here, my love," said Madame Ragon, in her shrill voice and patronizing manner.
"Shall we do the business before dinner?" asked uncle Pillerault.
"We are waiting for Monsieur Claparon," said Roguin, "I left him dressing himself."
"Monsieur Roguin," said Cesar, "I hope you told him that we should dine in a wretched little room on the /entresol/--"
"He thought it superb sixteen years ago," murmured Constance.
"--among workmen and rubbish."
"Bah! you will find him a good fellow, with no pretension," said Roguin.
"I have put Raguet on guard in the shop. We can't go through our own door; everything is pulled down."
"Why did you not bring your nephew?" said Pillerault to Madame Ragon.
"Shall we not see him?" asked Cesarine.
"No, my love," said Madame Ragon; "Anselme, dear boy, is working himself to death. That bad-smelling Rue des Cinq-Diamants, without sun and without air, frightens me. The gutter is always blue or green or black. I am afraid he will die of it. But when a young man has something in his head--" and she looked at Cesarine with a gesture which explained that the word head meant heart.
"Has he got his lease?" asked Cesar.
"Yesterday, before a notary," replied Ragon. "He took the place for eighteen years, but they exacted six months' rent in advance."
"Well, Monsieur Ragon, are you satisfied with me?" said the perfumer.
"I have given him the secret of a great discovery--"
"We know you by heart, Cesar," said little Ragon, taking Cesar's hands and pressing them with religious friendship.
Roguin was not without anxiety as to Claparon's entrance on the scene;
for his tone and manners were quite likely to alarm these virtuous and worthy people; he therefore thought it advisable to prepare their minds.
"You are going to see," he said to Pillerault and the two ladies, "a thorough original, who hides his methods under a fearfully bad style of manners; from a very inferior position he has raised himself up by intelligence. He will acquire better manners through his intercourse with bankers. You may see him on the boulevard, or on a cafe tippling, disorderly, betting at billiards, and think him a mere idler; but he is not; he is thinking and studying all the time to keep industry alive by new projects."
"I understand that," said Birotteau; "I got my great ideas when sauntering on the boulevard; didn't I, Mimi?"
"Claparon," resumed Roguin, "makes up by night-work the time lost in looking about him in the daytime, and watching the current of affairs.
All men of great talent lead curious lives, inexplicable lives; well, in spite of his desultory ways he attains his object, as I can testify. In this instance he has managed to make the owners of these lands give way: they were unwilling, doubtful, timid; he fooled them all, tired them out, went to see them every day,--and here we are, virtually masters of the property."
At this moment a curious /broum! broum!/ peculiar to tipplers of brandy and other liquors, announced the arrival of the most fantastic personage of our story, and the arbiter in flesh and blood of the future destinies of Cesar Birotteau. The perfumer rushed headlong to the little dark staircase, as much to tell Raguet to close the shop as to pour out his excuses to Claparon for receiving him in the dining-
room.
"What of that? It's the very place to juggle a--I mean to settle a piece of business."