eccentric proposal that his august master could have made to him at
that hour of the day,--Popinot felt sure that he must intend to speak
to him about setting up in business. He thought suddenly of Cesarine,
the true queen of roses, the living sign of the house, whom he had
loved from the day when he was taken into Birotteau's employ, two
months before the advent of du Tillet. As he went upstairs he was
forced to pause; his heart swelled, his arteries throbbed violently.
However, he soon came down again, followed by Celestin, the
head-clerk. Anselme and his master turned without a word in the
direction of the Tuileries.

Popinot was twenty-one years old. Birotteau himself had married at
that age. Anselme therefore could see no hindrance to his marriage
with Cesarine, though the wealth of the perfumer and the beauty of the
daughter were immense obstacles in the path of his ambitious desires:
but love gets onward by leaps of hope, and the more absurd they are
the greater faith it has in them; the farther off was the mistress of
Anselme's heart, the more ardent became his desires. Happy the youth
who in those levelling days when all hats looked alike, had contrived
to create a sense of distance between the daughter of a perfumer and
himself, the scion of an old Parisian family! In spite of all his
doubts and fears he was happy; did he not dine every day beside
Cesarine? So, while attending to the business of the house, he threw a
zeal and energy into his work which deprived it of all hardship; doing
it for the sake of Cesarine, nothing tired him. Love, in a youth of
twenty, feeds on devotion.

"He is a true merchant; he will succeed," Cesar would say to Madame
Ragon, as he praised Anselme's activity in preparing the work at the
factory, or boasted of his readiness in learning the niceties of the