in the words of our king,--a man of wit as well as a statesman,--is
the politeness of princes, it is also the wealth of merchants. Time,
time is gold, especially to you artists. I permit myself to say to you
that architecture is the union of all the arts. We will not enter
through the shop," he added, opening the private door of his house.

Four years earlier Monsieur Grindot had carried off the _grand prix_
in architecture, and had lately returned from Rome where he had spent
three years at the cost of the State. In Italy the young man had
dreamed of art; in Paris he thought of fortune. Government alone can
pay the needful millions to raise an architect to glory; it is
therefore natural that every ambitious youth of that calling,
returning from Rome and thinking himself a Fontaine or a Percier,
should bow before the administration. The liberal student became a
royalist, and sought to win the favor of influential persons. When a
_grand prix_ man behaves thus, his comrades call him a trimmer. The
young architect in question had two ways open to him,--either to serve
the perfumer well, or put him under contribution. Birotteau the
deputy-mayor, Birotteau the future possessor of half the lands about
the Madeleine, where he would sooner or later build up a fine
neighborhood, was a man to keep on good terms with. Grindot
accordingly resolved to sacrifice his immediate gains to his future
interests. He listened patiently to the plans, the repetitions, and
the ideas of this worthy specimen of the bourgeois class, the constant
butt of the witty shafts and ridicule of artists, and the object of
their everlasting contempt, nodding his head as if to show the
perfumer that he caught his ideas. When Cesar had thoroughly explained
everything, the young man proceeded to sum up for him his own plan.

"You have now three front windows on the first floor, besides the