The ledgers, the accounts, and the desks were moved into the rooms above the shop and the back-shop.  An old cook did all the household work for the master and his three clerks.  Popinot, penned up in a corner of the shop closed in with glass, might be seen in a serge apron and long sleeves of green linen, with a pen behind his ear, in the midst of a mass of papers, where in fact Birotteau now found him, as he was overhauling his letters full of proposals and checks and orders.  At the words “Hey, my boy!” uttered by his old master, Popinot raised his head, locked up his cubby-hole, and came forward with a joyous air and the end of his nose a little red.  There was no fire in the shop, and the door was always open.

“I feared you were never coming,” he said respectfully.

The clerks crowded round to look at the distinguished perfumer, the decorated deputy-mayor, the partner of their own master.  Birotteau, so pitifully small at the Kellers, felt a craving to imitate those magnates; he stroked his chin, rose on his heels with native self-complacency, and talked his usual platitudes.

“Hey, my lad! we get up early, don’t we?” he remarked.

“No, for we don’t always go to bed,” said Popinot.  “We must clutch success.”

“What did I tell you?  My oil will make your fortune!”

“Yes, monsieur.  But the means employed to sell it count for something.  I have set your diamond well.”

“How do we stand?” said Cesar.  “How far have you got?  What are the profits?”

“Profits! at the end of two months!  How can you expect it?  Friend Gaudissart has only been on the road for twenty-five days; he took a post-chaise without saying a word to me.  Oh, he is devoted!  We owe a great deal to my uncle.  The newspapers alone (here he whispered in Birotteau’s ear) will cost us twelve thousand francs.”

“Newspapers!” exclaimed the deputy-mayor.

“Haven’t you read them?”

“No.”

“Then you know nothing,” said Popinot.  “Twenty thousand francs worth of placards, gilt frames, copies of the prospectus.  One hundred thousand bottles bought.  Ah, it is all paying through the nose at this moment!  We are manufacturing on a grand scale.  If you had set foot in the faubourg, where I often work all night, you would have seen a little nut-cracker which isn’t to be sneezed at, I can tell you.  On my own account, I have made, in the last five days, not less than ten thousand francs, merely by commissions on the sale of druggists’ oils.”

“What a capable head!” said Birotteau, laying his hand on little Popinot’s thick hair and rubbing it about as if he were a baby.  “I found it out.”

Several persons here came in.

“On Sunday we dine at your aunt Ragon’s,” added Cesar, leaving Popinot to go on with his business, for he perceived that the fresh meat he had come to taste was not yet cut up.

“It is amazing!  A clerk becomes a merchant in twenty-four hours,” thought Birotteau, who understood the happiness and self-assurance of Anselme as little as the dandy luxury of du Tillet.  “Anselme put on a little stiff air when I patted him on the head, just as if he were Francois Keller himself.”