of books for six sous a-piece, laid out in a hamper on the pavement,
his eyes lighted on the following title, yellow with dust: "Abdeker,
or the Art of Preserving Beauty." He picked up the so-called Arab
book, a sort of romance written by a physician of the preceding
century, and happened on a page which related to perfumes. Leaning
against a tree on the boulevard to turn over the leaves at his ease,
he read a note by the author which explained the nature of the skin
and the cuticle, and showed that a certain soap, or a certain paste,
often produced effects quite contrary to those expected of them, if
the soap and the paste toned up a skin which needed relaxing, or
relaxed a skin which required tones. Birotteau bought the book, in
which he saw his fortune. Nevertheless, having little confidence in
his own lights, he consulted a celebrated chemist, Vauquelin, from
whom he naively inquired how to mix a two-sided cosmetic which should
produce effects appropriate to the diversified nature of the human
epidermis. Truly scientific men--men who are really great in the sense
that they never attain in their lifetime the renown which their
immense and unrecognized labors deserve--are nearly always kind, and
willing to serve the poor in spirit. Vauquelin accordingly patronized
the perfumer, and allowed him to call himself the inventor of a paste
to whiten the hands, the composition of which he dictated to him.
Birotteau named this cosmetic the "Double Paste of Sultans." To
complete the work, he applied the same recipe to the manufacture of a
lotion for the complexion, which he called the "Carminative Balm." He
imitated in his own line the system of the Petit-Matelot, and was the
first perfumer to display that redundancy of placards, advertisements,
and other methods of publication which are called, perhaps unjustly,
charlatanism.

The Paste of Sultans and the Carminative Balm were ushered into the