César Birotteau

César Birotteau is a Romance of Honore de Balzac, written in 1837. It belongs to the Scènes of Parisian life of the human Comedy .

The complete title of work is actually: Histoire of the size and the decline of César Birotteau, perfumer, chevalier of the Legion of Honor, assistant of the mayor of the eleventh district of Paris , which describes in a sentence all the screen of the novel.

How often in the novels of Balzac, the subject was borrowed from an actual fact, the author having taken for model certain Bully, perfumer of its state, which invented a lotion of vinaigrée toilet to which it gave his name. The dispensary of Bully was put at bag during the popular rising of 1830, the man was ruined, it spent long years to refund its creditors and died in the greatest destitution at the hospital.

Balzac added a business of speculation there, transforming the history into a true novel of adventure in which César Birotteau incarnates the stereotype of the lower middle class of the years 1830. An avid social class of recognition, honors, of which the ambition is to reach the higher realms of the Parisian world.

Always prompt to underline the cruelty of the world, the author likes himself all the same to give a vision moving by this naive character (of which the end will be less hard than that of the starting model). And especially it highlights qualities of courage and perseverance through generous Popinot, employee of César Birotteau and its future son-in-law.

Synopsis

César Birotteau, perfumer enriched by his discoveries which make fury, and to which one will give the Legion of honor, decide to transform its middle-class house into true palate to give a ball in the honor of his/her daughter. Its extravagant expenditure, which frightens his wife and her faithful employee Popinot (secretly in love Miss Birotteau), gives him a giddiness of ambition which leads it to risk all its fortune. The Roguin notary smells in easily deceived Birotteau potential, and it involves it in a business of real estate speculation in the Quartier of the Madeleine in Paris. Birotteau indeed needs money because the alterations of its house and the new way of life which it wants to carry out to it seriously started its inheritance.

But by a skilful double operates, the notary swindler diverts all the economies of the perfumer without him to give of receipt, and it disappears. The instigator of the plot against Birotteau one of his former employees is congédié for flight: Of Tillet, now allowed in the higher realms of the Bank and which completes its revenge by sapping the credit on its former owner near the banks. Without possibility of loan, the perfumer cannot escape from the difficulty, in spite of the devotion of his uncle Pillerault, his wife, his daughter. But its Popinot clerk, helped of the brilliant Gaudissart salesman, develops and markets an oil of his invention which makes fury in its turn, like the discoveries of Birotteau. Popinot spends the days and the nights, in the secrecy, to manufacture the hazel nut oil of which it transfers the benefit with César Birotteau. Helped by six thousand francs which Louis XVIII offers to the faithful royalist, Birotteau refunds all its creditors, is finally rehabilitated in 1823 and takes again its Legion of honor. But embanked by this battle, he dies in the day of his triumph, leaving the flourishing trade and the dignity of his name in heritage with his daughter and faithful Popinot.

Adaptation to the screen

to see: Films based on the work of Honore de Balzac

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