h-dog. If occasionally he complained, the head
clerk would smile with a jovial air, and say,--

"Ah, my boy! all is not rose at 'The Queen of Roses.' Larks don't fall
down roasted; you must run after them and catch them, and then you must
find some way to cook them."

The cook, a big creature from Picardy, took the best bits for herself,
and only spoke to Cesar when she wanted to complain of Monsieur and
Madame Ragon, who left her nothing to steal. Towards the end of the
first month this girl, who was forced to keep house of a Sunday, opened
a conversation with Cesar. Ursula with the grease washed off seemed
charming to the poor shop-boy, who, unless hindered by chance, was
likely to strike on the first rock that lay hidden in his way. Like all
unprotected boys, he loved the first woman who threw him a kind look.
The cook took Cesar under her protection; and thence followed certain
secret relations, which the clerks laughed at pitilessly. Two years
later, the cook happily abandoned Cesar for a young recruit belonging to
her native place who was then hiding in Paris,--a lad twenty years old,
owning a few acres of land, who let Ursula marry him.

During those two years the cook had fed her little Cesar well, and had
explained to him certain mysteries of Parisian life, which she made him
look at from the bottom; and she impressed upon him, out of jealousy, a
profound horror of evil places, whose dangers seemed not unknown to
her. In 1792 the feet of the deserted Cesar were well-toughened to the
pavements, his shoulders to the bales, and his mind to what he called
the "humbugs" of Paris. So when Ursula abandoned him he was speedily
consoled, for she had realized none of his instinctive ideas in relation
to sentiment. Licentious and surly, wheedling and pilfering, selfish
and a tippler, she clashed with the simple nature of Birotteau without
offering him any compensating perspective. Sometimes the poor lad felt
with pain that he was bound by ties that are strong enough to hold
ingenuous hearts to a creature with whom he could not sympathize. By the
time that he became master of his own heart he had reached his growth,
and was sixteen years old. His mind, developed by Ursula and by the
banter of the clerks, made him study commerce with an eye in which
intelligence was veiled beneath simplicity: he observed the customers;
asked in leisure moments for explanations about the merchandise, whose
divers sorts and proper places he