ct the
trickery of others. Why should they come and offer you millions? You are
giving up your property, you are going beyond your means; and if your
oil doesn't succeed, if you don't make the money, if the value of the
land can't be realized, how will you pay your notes? With the shells of
your nuts? To rise in society you are going to hide your name, take down
your sign, 'The Queen of Roses,' and yet you mean to salaam and bow
and scrape in advertisements and prospectuses, which will placard Cesar
Birotteau at every corner, and on all the boards, wherever they are
building."

"Oh! you are not up to it all. I shall have a branch establishment,
under the name of Popinot, in some house near the Rue des Lombards,
where I shall put little Anselme. I shall pay my debt of gratitude to
Monsieur and Madame Ragon by setting up their nephew, who can make his
fortune. The poor Ragonines look to me half-starved of late."

"Bah! all those people want your money."

"But what people, my treasure? Is it your uncle Pillerault, who loves
us like the apple of his eye, and dines with us every Sunday? Is it good
old Ragon, our predecessor, who has forty upright years in business
to boast of, and with whom we play our game of boston? Is it Roguin, a
notary, a man fifty-seven years old, twenty-five of which he has been in
office? A notary of Paris! he would be the flower of the lot, if honest
folk were not all worth the same price. If necessary, my associates will
help me. Where is the plot, my white doe? Look here, I must tell you
your defect. On the word of an honest man it lies on my heart. You are
as suspicious as a cat. As soon as we had two sous worth in the shop you
thought the customers were all thieves. I had to go down on my knees to
you to let me make you rich. For a Parisian girl you have no ambition!
If it hadn't been for your perpetual fears, no man could have been
happier than I. If I had listened to you I should never have invented
the Paste of Sultans nor the Carminative Balm. Our shop has given us
a living, but these two discoveries have made the hundred and sixty
thousand francs which we possess, net and clear! Without my genius, for
I certainly have talent 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