“Economy? quite right,” said the judge.
“Look here,” said Gaudissart in Finot’s ear, “my friend Popinot is a virtuous young man; he is going with his uncle; let’s you and I go and finish the evening with our cousins.”
The journalist showed the empty lining of his pockets. Popinot saw the gesture, and slipped his twenty-franc piece into the palm of the author of the prospectus.
The judge had a coach at the end of the street, in which he carried off his nephew to the Birotteaus.
VII
Pillerault, Monsieur and Madame Ragon, and Monsieur Roguin were playing at boston, and Cesarine was embroidering a handkerchief, when the judge and Anselme arrived. Roguin, placed opposite to Madame Ragon, near whom Cesarine was sitting, noticed the pleasure of the young girl when she saw Anselme enter, and he made Crottat a sign to observe that she turned as rosy as a pomegranate.
“This is to be a day of deeds, then?” said the perfumer, when the greetings were over and the judge told him the purpose of the visit.
Cesar, Anselme, and the judge went up to the perfumer’s temporary bedroom on the second floor to discuss the lease and the deed of partnership drawn up by the magistrate. A lease of eighteen years was agreed upon, so that it might run the same length of time as the lease of the shop in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants,—an insignificant circumstance apparently, but one which did Birotteau good service in after days. When Cesar and the judge returned to the entresol, the latter, surprised at the general upset of the household, and the presence of workmen on a Sunday in the house of a man so religious as Birotteau, asked the meaning of it,—a question which Cesar had been eagerly expecting.
“Though you care very little for the world, monsieur,” he said, “you will see no harm in celebrating the deliverance of our territory. That, however, is not all. We are about to assemble a few friends to commemorate my promotion to the order of the Legion of honor.”