Birotteau never once reflected that the clerks were looking on, and that the master of the establishment had his dignity to preserve.  In this instance, as in the case of his speech to du Tillet, the worthy soul committed a folly out of pure goodness of heart, and for lack of knowing how to withhold an honest sentiment vulgarly expressed.  By this trifling act Cesar would have wounded irretrievably any other man than little Popinot.

* * * * *

The Sunday dinner at the Ragon’s was destined to be the last pleasure of the nineteen happy years of the Birotteau household,—­years of happiness that were full to overflowing.  Ragon lived in the Rue du Petit-Bourbon-Saint-Sulpice, on the second floor of a dignified old house, in an appartement decorated with large panels where painted shepherdesses danced in panniers, before whom fed the sheep of our nineteenth century, the sober and serious bourgeoisie,—­whose comical demeanor, with their respectful notions about the nobility, and their devotion to the Sovereign and the Church, were all admirably represented by Ragon himself.  The furniture, the clocks, linen, dinner-service, all seemed patriarchal; novel in form because of their very age.  The salon, hung with old damask and draped with curtains in brocatelle, contained portraits of duchesses and other royalist tributes; also a superb Popinot, sheriff of Sancerre, painted by Latour,—­the father of Madame Ragon, a worthy, excellent man, in a picture out of which he smiled like a parvenu in all his glory.  When at home, Madame Ragon completed her natural self with a little King Charles spaniel, which presented a surprisingly harmonious effect as it lay on the hard little sofa, rococo in shape, that assuredly never played the part assigned to the sofa of Crebillon.

Among their many virtues, the Ragons were noted for the possession of old wines which had come to perfect mellowness, and for certain of Madame Anfoux’s liqueurs, which certain persons, obstinately (though it was said hopelessly) bent on making love to Madame Ragon, had brought her from the West Indies.  Thus their little dinners were much prized.  Jeannette, the old cook, took care of the aged couple with blind devotion:  she would have stolen the fruit to make their sweetmeats.  Instead of taking her money to the savings-bank, she put it judiciously into lotteries, hoping that some day she could bestow a good round sum on her master and mistress.  On the appointed Sundays when they received their guests, she was, despite her years, active in the kitchen to superintend the dishes, which she served at the table with an agility that (to use a favorite expression of the worthy Ragon) might have given points to Mademoiselle Contat when she played Susanne in the “Mariage de Figaro.”