f the
creditors. The demonstrative perfumer, who told his dear Constance, with
his head on her pillow, the smallest thoughts and feelings of his whole
life, looking for the lights of her contradiction, and gathering courage
as he did so, was now prevented from speaking of his situation to his
head-clerk, his uncle, or his wife. His thoughts were therefore doubly
heavy,--and yet the generous martyr preferred to suffer, rather than
fling the fiery brand into the soul of his wife. He meant to tell her
of the danger when it was over. The awe with which she inspired him gave
him courage. He went every morning to hear Mass at Saint-Roch, and took
God for his confidant.

"If I do not meet a soldier coming home from Saint-Roch, my request
will be granted. That will be God's answer," he said to himself, after
praying that God would help him.

And he was overjoyed when it happened that he did not meet a soldier.
Still, his heart was so heavy that he needed another heart on which to
lean and moan. Cesarine, to whom from the first he confided the fatal
truth, knew all his secrets. Many stolen glances passed between them,
glances of despair or smothered hope,--interpellations of the eye darted
with mutual eagerness, inquiries and replies full of sympathy, rays
passing from soul to soul. Birotteau compelled himself to seem gay, even
jovial, with his wife. If Constance asked a question--bah! everything
was going well; Popinot (about whom Cesar knew nothing) was succeeding;
the oil was looking up; the notes with Claparon would be paid; there was
nothing to fear. His mock joy was terrible to witness. When his wife had
fallen asleep in the sumptuous bed, Birotteau would rise to a sitting
position and think over his troubles. Cesarine would sometimes creep
in with her bare feet, in her chemise, and a shawl over her white
shoulders.

"Papa, I hear you,--you are crying," she would say, crying herself.

Birotteau sank into such a torpor, after writing the letter which asked
for an interview with the great Francois Keller, that his daughter took
him out for a walk through the streets of Paris. For the first time he
was roused to notice enormous scarlet placards on all the walls, and his
eyes encountered the words "Cephalic Oil."

While catastrophes thus threatened "The Queen of Roses" to westward,
the house of A. Popinot was rising, radiant in the eastern splendors of
success. By the advice of Gaudissart and Finot, Anselme launched his o