"By your labors in perfumery; the Bourbons know how to reward all
merit. Ah! let us support those generous princes, to whom we are about
to owe unheard-of prosperity. Believe me, the Restoration feels that
it must run a tilt against the Empire; the Bourbons have conquests to
make, the conquests of peace. You will see their conquests!"
"Monsieur will perhaps do us the honor to be present at our ball?"
said Madame Cesar.
"To pass an evening with you, Madame, I would sacrifice the making of
millions."
"He certainly does chatter," said Cesar to his uncle.
* * * * *
While the declining glory of perfumery was about to send forth its
setting rays, a star was rising with feeble light upon the commercial
horizon. Anselme Popinot was laying the corner-stone of his fortune in
the Rue des Cinq-Diamants. This narrow little street, where loaded
wagons can scarcely pass each other, runs from the Rue des Lombards at
one end, to the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher at the other, entering the latter
opposite to the Rue Quincampoix, that famous thoroughfare of old Paris
where French history has so often been enacted. In spite of this
disadvantage, the congregation of druggists in that neighborhood made
Popinot's choice of the little street a good one.
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