. To
play a part in politics you must have money: have we any? What! would
you burn your sign, which cost six hundred francs, and renounce 'The
Queen of Roses,' your true glory? Leave ambition to others. He who puts
his hand in the fire gets burned,--isn't that true? Politics burn in
these days. We have one hundred good thousand francs invested outside of
our business, our productions, our merchandise. If you want to increase
your fortune, do as they did in 1793. The Funds are at sixty-two:
buy into the Funds. You will get ten thousand francs' income, and the
investment won't hamper our property. Take advantage of the occasion to
marry our daughter; sell the business, and let us go and live in your
native place. Why! for fifteen years you have talked of nothing but
buying Les Tresorieres, that pretty little property near Chinon, where
there are woods and fields, and ponds and vineyards, and two dairies,
which bring in a thousand crowns a year, with a house which we both
like,--all of which we can have for sixty thousand francs; and, lo!
Monsieur now wants to become something under government! Recollect what
we are,--perfumers. If sixteen years before you invented the DOUBLE
PASTE OF SULTANS and the CARMINATIVE BALM some one had said, 'You are
going to make enough money to buy Les Tresorieres,' wouldn't you have
been half sick with joy? Well, you can acquire that property which you
wanted so much that you hardly opened your mouth about anything else,
and now you talk of spending on nonsense money earned by the sweat of
our brow: I can say ours, for I've sat behind the desk through all that
time, like a poor dog in his kennel. Isn't it much better to come and
visit our daughter after she is married to a notary of Paris, and live
eight months of the year at Chinon, than to begin here to make five sous
six blanks, and of six blanks nothing? Wait for a rise in the Funds, and
you can give eight thousand francs a year to your daughter and we can
keep two thousand for ourselves, and the proceeds of the business will
allow us to buy Les Tresorieres. There in your native place, my good
little cat, with our furniture, which is worth a great deal, we shall
live like princes; whereas here we want at least a million to make any
figure at all."

"I expected you to say all this, wife," said Cesar Birotteau. "I am not
quite such a fool (though you think me a great fool, you do) as not to
have thought of all that. Now, listen to me. Alex