of his luckless predecessor. Under
the Restoration, where one had sunk, this other, quite overlooked, had
come to the top--not by any strange stroke of fortune, but by the force
of circumstance. In revolutions, as in storms at sea, solid treasure
goes to the bottom, and light trifles are floated to the surface. Cesar
Birotteau, a Royalist, in favor and envied, had been made the mark of
bourgeois hostility, while bourgeoisie triumphant found its incarnation
in Crevel.

This apartment, at a rent of a thousand crowns, crammed with all the
vulgar magnificence that money can buy, occupied the first floor of
a fine old house between a courtyard and a garden. Everything was as
spick-and-span as the beetles in an entomological case, for Crevel lived
very little at home.

This gorgeous residence was the ambitious citizen's legal domicile. His
establishment consisted of a woman-cook and a valet; he hired two extra
men, and had a dinner sent in by Chevet, whenever he gave a banquet to
his political friends, to men he wanted to dazzle or to a family party.

The seat of Crevel's real domesticity, formerly in the Rue Notre-Dame
de Lorette, with Mademoiselle Heloise Brisetout, had lately been
transferred, as we have seen, to the Rue Chauchat. Every morning the
retired merchant--every ex-tradesman is a retired merchant--spent two
hours in the Rue des Saussayes to attend to business, and gave the
rest of his time to Mademoiselle Zaire, which annoyed Zaire very much.
Orosmanes-Crevel had a fixed bargain with Mademoiselle Heloise; she owed
him five hundred francs worth of enjoyment every month, and no "bills
delivered." He paid separately for his dinner and all extras. This
agreement, with certain bonuses, for he made her a good many presents,
seemed cheap to the ex-attache of the great singer; and he would say to
widowers who were fond of their daughters, that it paid better to job
your horses than to have a stable of your own. At the same time, if the
reader remembers the speech made to the Baron by the porter at the Rue
Chauchat, Crevel did not escape the coachman and the groom.

Crevel, as may be seen, had turned his passionate affection for his
daughter to the advantage of his self-indulgence. The immoral aspect
of the situation was justified by the highest morality. And then the
ex-perfumer derived from this style of living--it was the inevitable,
a free-and-easy life, _Regence, Pompadour, Marechal de Richelieu_, what
not--a ce