ng Beauty." He picked up the so-called Arab book, a sort
of romance written by a physician of the preceding century, and happened
on a page which related to perfumes. Leaning against a tree on the
boulevard to turn over the leaves at his ease, he read a note by the
author which explained the nature of the skin and the cuticle, and
showed that a certain soap, or a certain paste, often produced effects
quite contrary to those expected of them, if the soap and the paste
toned up a skin which needed relaxing, or relaxed a skin which
required tones. Birotteau bought the book, in which he saw his fortune.
Nevertheless, having little confidence in his own lights, he consulted a
celebrated chemist, Vauquelin, from whom he naively inquired how to mix
a two-sided cosmetic which should produce effects appropriate to the
diversified nature of the human epidermis. Truly scientific men--men who
are really great in the sense that they never attain in their lifetime
the renown which their immense and unrecognized labors deserve--are
nearly always kind, and willing to serve the poor in spirit. Vauquelin
accordingly patronized the perfumer, and allowed him to call himself
the inventor of a paste to whiten the hands, the composition of which
he dictated to him. Birotteau named this cosmetic the "Double Paste
of Sultans." To complete the work, he applied the same recipe to
the manufacture of a lotion for the complexion, which he called the
"Carminative Balm." He imitated in his own line the system of the
Petit-Matelot, and was the first perfumer to display that redundancy
of placards, advertisements, and other methods of publication which are
called, perhaps unjustly, charlatanism.

The Paste of Sultans and the Carminative Balm were ushered into the
world of fashion and commerce by colored placards, at the head of which
were these words, "Approved by the Institute." This formula, used for
the first time, had a magical effect. Not only all France, but the
continent flaunted with the posters, yellow, red, and blue, of the
monarch of the "The Queen of Roses," who kept in stock, supplied, and
manufactured, at moderate prices, all that belonged to his trade. At
a period when nothing was talked of but the East, to name any sort of
cosmetic the "Paste of Sultans" thus divining the magic force of such
words in a land where every man hoped to be a sultan as much as every
woman longed to be a sultana, was an inspiration which could only have
come to