Explaining the delay he would later write "For six years I have kept a rough draft of César Birotteau despairing of ever being able to interest anyone in the character of a rather stupid, somewhat mediocre shopkeeper, whose misfortunes are commonplace, symbolising that world of the small Parisian tradesman which we so often ridicule ...".

At the start of the novel, in 1819, he owns a successful perfume shop, La Reine des Roses, he has been elected deputy mayor of his arrondissement in Paris, and he has been awarded the Legion of Honour.

His attempts to get financial assistance from various bankers such as Nucingen, the Keller brothers and Gigonnet (all recurring characters in La Comédie humaine) fail, since all are friends of du Tillet and acting on his instructions.

Balzac writes "..may the present history be the poem of those vicissitudes of bourgeois life that no voice has thought to sing, so much are they denuded of grandeur, though by the same token immense: what we speak of here is not a single man, but a whole nation of suffering.

"[4] The world of high finance is also explored through César's visits to the bankers du Tillet, the Kellers, Nucingen and Gigonnet during the second half of the book.