which isn't to be sneezed at, I can tell you. On my own account, I have
made, in the last five days, not less than ten thousand francs, merely
by commissions on the sale of druggists' oils."

"What a capable head!" said Birotteau, laying his hand on little
Popinot's thick hair and rubbing it about as if he were a baby. "I found
it out."

Several persons here came in.

"On Sunday we dine at your aunt Ragon's," added Cesar, leaving Popinot
to go on with his business, for he perceived that the fresh meat he had
come to taste was not yet cut up.

"It is amazing! A clerk becomes a merchant in twenty-four hours,"
thought Birotteau, who understood the happiness and self-assurance of
Anselme as little as the dandy luxury of du Tillet. "Anselme put on
a little stiff air when I patted him on the head, just as if he were
Francois Keller himself."

Birotteau never once reflected that the clerks were looking on, and that
the master of the establishment had his dignity to preserve. In this
instance, as in the case of his speech to du Tillet, the worthy soul
committed a folly out of pure goodness of heart, and for lack of knowing
how to withhold an honest sentiment vulgarly expressed. By this trifling
act Cesar would have wounded irretrievably any other man than little
Popinot.

* * * * *

The Sunday dinner at the Ragon's was destined to be the last pleasure of
the nineteen happy years of the Birotteau household,--years of
happiness that were full to overflowing. Ragon lived in the Rue du
Petit-Bourbon-Saint-Sulpice, on the second floor of a dignified old
house, in an appartement decorated with large panels where painted
shepherdesses danced in panniers, before whom fed the sheep of our
nineteenth century, the sober and serious bourgeoisie,--whose comical
demeanor, with their respectful notions about the nobility, and their
devotion to the Sovereign and the Church, were all admirably represented
by Ragon himself. The furniture, the clocks, linen, dinner-service, all
seemed patriarchal; novel in form because of their very age. The salon,
hung with old damask and draped with curtains in brocatelle, contained
portraits of duchesses and other royalist tributes; also a superb
Popinot, sheriff of Sancerre, painted by Latour,--the father of Madame
Ragon, a worthy, excellent man, in a picture out of which he smiled like
a parvenu in all his glory. When at home, Madame Ragon completed her
natural self wit