"Keep the means of undertaking some good enterprise, my lad," he had
said to him.

Birotteau looked up to the notary with admiration, fell into the habit
of consulting him, and made him his friend. Like Ragon and Pillerault,
he had so much faith in the profession that he gave himself up to
Roguin without allowing himself a suspicion. Thanks to this advice,
Cesar, supplied with the eleven thousand francs of his wife for his
start in business, would have scorned to exchange his possessions for
those of the First Consul, brilliant as the prospects of Napoleon
might seem. At first the Birotteaus kept only a cook, and lived in the
_entresol_ above the shop,--a sort of den tolerably well decorated by
an upholsterer, where the bride and bridegroom began a honeymoon that
was never to end. Madame Cesar appeared to advantage behind the
counter. Her celebrated beauty had an enormous influence upon the
sales, and the beautiful Madame Birotteau became a topic among the
fashionable young men of the Empire. If Cesar was sometimes accused of
royalism, the world did justice to his honesty; if a few neighboring
shopkeepers envied his happiness, every one at least thought him
worthy of it. The bullet which struck him on the steps of Saint-Roch
gave him the reputation of being mixed up with political secrets, and
also of being a courageous man,--though he had no military courage in
his heart, and not the smallest political idea in his brain. Upon
these grounds the worthy people of the arrondissement made him captain
of the National Guard; but he was cashiered by Napoleon, who,
according to Birotteau, owed him a grudge for their encounter on the
13th Vendemiaire. Cesar thus obtained at a cheap rate a varnish of
persecution, which made him interesting in the eyes of the opposition,
and gave him a certain importance.