Roses" was the headquarters of royalist conspiracy, mentioned him to
the prefect of the Seine when that official consulted Cesar on the
choice to be made. Monsieur and Madame Birotteau were therefore never
forgotten in the invitations of the mayor. Madame Birotteau frequently
took up the collections at Saint-Roch in the best of good company. La
Billardiere warmly supported Birotteau when the question of bestowing
the crosses given to the municipality came up, and dwelt upon his
wound at Saint-Roch, his attachment to the Bourbons, and the respect
which he enjoyed. The government, wishing on the one hand to cheapen
Napoleon's order by lavishing the cross of the Legion of honor, and on
the other to win adherents and rally to the Bourbons the various
trades and men of arts and sciences, included Birotteau in the coming
promotion. This honor, which suited well with the show that Cesar made
in his arrondissement, put him in a position where the ideas of a man
accustomed to succeed naturally enlarged themselves. The news which
the mayor had just given him of his preferment was the determining
reason that decided him to plunge into the scheme which he now for the
first time revealed to his wife; he believed it would enable him to
give up perfumery all the more quickly, and rise into the regions of
the higher bourgeoisie of Paris.

Cesar was now forty years old. The work he had undertaken in his
manufactories had given him a few premature wrinkles, and had slightly
silvered the thick tufts of hair on which the pressure of his hat left
a shining circle. His forehead, where the hair grew in a way to mark
five distinct points, showed the simplicity of his life. The heavy
eyebrows were not alarming because the limpid glance of his frank blue
eyes harmonized with the open forehead of an honest man. His nose,
broken at the bridge and thick at the end, gave him the wondering look
of a gaby in the streets of Paris. His lips were very thick, and his