n, courageous, and full of resolution. The public saw
results only. Excepting Pillerault and Popinot the judge, all the people
of his own circle knew him superficially, and were unable to judge him.
Moreover, the twenty or thirty friends he had collected about him talked
the same nonsense, repeated the same commonplaces, and all thought
themselves superior in their own line. The women vied with each other
in dress and good dinners; each had said her all when she dropped a
contemptuous word about her husband. Madame Birotteau alone had the good
sense to treat hers with honor and respect in public; she knew him to
be a man who, in spite of his secret disabilities, had earned their
fortune, and whose good name she shared. It is true that she sometimes
asked herself what sort of world this could be, if all the men who were
thought superior were like her husband. Such conduct contributed not a
little to maintain the respectful esteem bestowed upon the perfumer in
a community where women are much inclined to complain of their husbands
and bring them into discredit.

* * * * *

The first days of the year 1814, so fatal to imperial France, were
marked at the Birotteaus by two events, not especially remarkable in
other households, but of a nature to impress such simple souls as Cesar
and his wife, who casting their eyes along the past could find nothing
but tender memories. They had taken as head-clerk a young man twenty-two
years of age, named Ferdinand du Tillet. This lad--who had just left
a perfumery where he was refused a share in the business, and who was
reckoned a genius--had made great efforts to get employed at "The Queen
of Roses," whose methods, facilities, and customs were well known to
him. Birotteau took him, and gave him a salary of a thousand francs,
intending to make him eventually his successor.

Ferdinand had so great an influence on the destinies of this family that
it is necessary to say a few words about him. In the first place he was
named simply Ferdinand, without surname. This anonymous condition seemed
to him an immense advantage at the time when Napoleon conscripted all
families to fill the ranks. He was, however, born somewhere, as the
result of some cruel and voluptuous caprice. The following are the
only facts preserved about his civil condition. In 1793 a poor girl of
Tillet, a village near Andelys, came by night and gave birth to a child
in the garden of the curate