e
public that the Paste is wrapped in paper bearing his signature,
and that the bottles have a stamp blown in the glass."

The success was owing, without Cesar's suspecting it, to Constance,
who advised him to send cases of the Carminative Balm and the Paste of
Sultans to all perfumers in France and in foreign cities, offering them
at the same time a discount of thirty per cent if they would buy the two
articles by the gross. The Paste and the Balm were, in reality, worth
more than other cosmetics of the sort; and they captivated ignorant
people by the distinctions they set up among the temperaments. The
five hundred perfumers of France, allured by the discount, each bought
annually from Birotteau more than three hundred gross of the Paste and
the Lotion,--a consumption which, if it gave only a limited profit on
each article, became enormous considered in bulk. Cesar was then able
to buy the huts and the land in the Faubourg du Temple; he built large
manufactories, and decorated his shop at "The Queen of Roses" with
much magnificence; his household began to taste the little joys of
competence, and his wife no longer trembled as before.

In 1810 Madame Cesar, foreseeing a rise in rents, pushed her husband
into becoming chief tenant of the house where they had hitherto occupied
only the shop and the _entresol_, and advised him to remove their own
appartement to the first floor. A fortunate event induced Constance to
shut her eyes to the follies which Birotteau committed for her sake in
fitting up the new appartement. The perfumer had just been elected judge
in the commercial courts: his integrity, his well-known sense of honor,
and the respect he enjoyed, earned for him this dignity, which ranked
him henceforth among the leading merchants of Paris. To improve his
knowledge, he rose daily at five o'clock, and read law-reports and books
treating of commercial litigation. His sense of justice, his rectitude,
his conscientious intentions,--qualities essential to the understanding
of questions submitted for consular decision,--soon made him highly
esteemed among the judges. His defects contributed not a little to his
reputation. Conscious of his inferiority, Cesar subordinated his own
views to those of his colleagues, who were flattered in being thus
deferred to. Some sought the silent approbation of a man held to be
sagacious, in his capacity of listener; others, charmed with his modesty
and gentleness, praised him pub