e to
that intended, and the ointment, or the soap, acted as a tonic upon a
skin that required a lenitive treatment, or vice versa.

Birotteau saw a fortune in the book, and bought it. Yet, feeling
little confidence in his unaided lights, he went to Vauquelin, the
celebrated chemist, and in all simplicity asked him how to compose a
double cosmetic which should produce the required effect upon the
human epidermis in either case. The really learned--men so truly great
in this sense that they can never receive in their lifetime all the
fame that should reward vast labors like theirs--are almost always
helpful and kindly to the poor in intellect. So it was with Vauquelin.
He came to the assistance of the perfumer, gave him a formula for a
paste to whiten the hands, and allowed him to style himself its
inventor. It was this cosmetic that Birotteau called the Superfine
Pate des Sultanes. The more thoroughly to accomplish his purpose, he
used the recipe for the paste for a wash for the complexion, which he
called the Carminative Toilet Lotion....

Cesar Birotteau might be a Royalist, but public opinion at that time
was in his favor; and tho he had scarcely a hundred thousand francs
beside his business, was looked upon as a very wealthy man. His
steady-going ways, his punctuality, his habit of paying ready money
for everything, of never discounting bills, while he would take paper
to oblige a customer of whom he was sure--all these things, together
with his readiness to oblige, had brought him a great reputation. And
not only so; he had really made a good deal of money, but the building
of his factories had absorbed most of it, and he paid nearly twenty
thousand francs a year in rent. The education of their only daughter,
whom Constance and Cesar both idolized, had been a heavy expense.
Neither the husband nor the wife thought of money where Cesarine's
pleasure was concerned, and they had never brought themselves to part
with her.

Imagine the delight of the poor peasant parvenu when he heard his
charming Cesarine play a sonata by Steibelt or sing a ballad; when he
saw her writing French correctly, or making sepia drawings of
landscapes, or listened while she read aloud from the Racines, father
and son, and explained the beauties of the poetry. What happiness it
was for him to live again in this fair, innocent flower, not yet
plucked from the parent stem; this angel, over whose growing graces
and earliest development they ha