The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac (page 4)

about in the streets, but to put it in the tavern stables.”

At this speech the crowd hooted, for Fario was thought to be a miser.

“Come, my good fellow,” said Max, “don’t lose heart. We’ll go up to the tower and see how your barrow got there. Thunder and cannon! we’ll lend you a hand! Come along, Baruch.”

“As for you,” he whispered to Francois, “get the people to stand back, and make sure there is nobody at the foot of the embankment when you see us at the top.”

Fario, Max, Baruch, and three other knights climbed to the foot of the tower. During the rather perilous ascent Max and Fario noticed that no damage to the embankment, nor even trace of the passage of the barrow, could be seen. Fario began to imagine witchcraft, and lost his head. When they reached the top and examined into the matter, it really seemed a thing impossible that the cart had got there.

“How shall I ever get it down?” said the Spaniard, whose little eyes began for the first time to show fear; while his swarthy yellow face, which seemed as it if could never change color, whitened.

“How?” said Max. “Why, that’s not difficult.”

And taking advantage of the Spaniard’s stupefaction, he raised the barrow by the shafts with his robust arms and prepared to fling it down, calling in thundering tones as it left his grasp, “Look out there, below!”

No accident happened, for the crowd, persuaded by Francois and eaten up with curiosity, had retired to a distance from which they could see more clearly what went on at the top of the embankment. The cart was dashed to an infinite number of pieces in a very picturesque manner.

“There! you have got it down,” said Baruch.

“Ah, brigands! ah, scoundrels!” cried Fario; “perhaps it was you who brought it up here!”

Max, Baruch, and their three comrades began to laugh at the Spaniard’s rage.

“I wanted to do you a service,” said Max coolly, “and in handling the damned thing I came very near flinging myself after it; and this is how you thank me, is it? What country do you come from?”

“I come from a country where they never forgive,” replied Fario, trembling with rage. “My cart will be the cab in which you shall drive to the devil!–unless,” he said, suddenly becoming as meek as a lamb, “you will give me a new one.”

“We will talk about that,” said Max, beginning to descend.

When they reached the bottom and met the first hilarious group, Max took Fario by the button of his jacket and said to him,–

“Yes, my good Fario, I’ll give you a magnificent cart, if you will give me two hundred and fifty francs; but I won’t warrant it to go, like this one, up a tower.”

At this last jest Fario became as cool as though he were making a bargain.

“Damn it!” he said, “give me the wherewithal to replace my barrow, and it will be the best use you ever made of old Rouget’s money.”

Max turned livid; he raised his formidable fist to strike Fario; but Baruch, who knew that the blow would descend on others besides the Spaniard, plucked the latter away like a feather and whispered to Max,–

“Don’t commit such a folly!”

The grand master, thus called to order, began to laugh and said to Fario,–

“If I, by accident, broke your barrow, and you in return try to slander me, we are quits.”

“Not yet,” muttered Fario. “But I am glad to know what my barrow was worth.”

“Ah, Max, you’ve found your match!” said a spectator of the scene, who did not belong to the Order of Idleness.

“Adieu, Monsieur Gilet. I haven’t thanked you yet for lending me a hand,” cried the Spaniard, as he kicked the sides of his horse and disappeared amid loud hurrahs.

“We will keep the tires of the wheels for you,” shouted a wheelwright, who had come to inspect the damage done to the cart.

One of the shafts was sticking upright in the ground, as straight as a tree. Max stood by, pale and thoughtful, and deeply annoyed by Fario’s speech. For five days after this, nothing was talked of in Issoudun but the tale of the Spaniard’s barrow; it was even fated to travel abroad, as Goddet remarked,–for it went the round of Berry, where the speeches of Fario and Max were repeated, and at the end of a week the affair, greatly to the Spaniard’s satisfaction, was still the talk of the three departments and the subject of endless gossip. In consequence of the vindictive Spaniard’s terrible speech, Max and the Rabouilleuse became the object of certain comments which were merely whispered in Issoudun, though they were spoken aloud in Bourges, Vatan, Vierzon, and Chateauroux. Maxence Gilet knew enough of that region of the country to guess how envenomed such comments would become.

“We can’t stop their tongues,” he said at last. “Ah! I did a foolish thing!”

“Max!” said Francois, taking his arm. “They are coming to-night.”

“They! Who!”

“The Bridaus. My grandmother has just had a letter from her goddaughter.”

“Listen, my boy,” said Max in a low voice. “I have been thinking deeply of this matter. Neither Flore nor I ought to seem opposed to the Bridaus. If these heirs are to be got rid of, it is for you Hochons to drive them out of Issoudun. Find out what sort of people they are. To-morrow at Mere Cognette’s, after I’ve taken their measure, we can decide what is to be done, and how we can set your grandfather against them.”

“The Spaniard found the flaw in Max’s armor,” said Baruch to his cousin Francois, as they turned into Monsieur Hochon’s house and watched their comrade entering his own door.

While Max was thus employed, Flore, in spite of her friend’s advice, was unable to restrain her wrath; and without knowing whether she would help or hinder Max’s plans, she burst forth upon the poor bachelor. When Jean-Jacques incurred the anger of his mistress, the little attentions and vulgar fondlings which were all his joy were suddenly suppressed. Flore sent her master, as the children say, into disgrace. No more tender glances, no more of the caressing little words in various tones with which she decked her conversation,–“my kitten,” “my old darling,” “my bibi,” “my rat,” etc. A “you,” cold and sharp and ironically respectful, cut like the blade of a knife through the heart of the miserable old bachelor. The “you” was a declaration of war. Instead of helping the poor man with his toilet, handing him what he wanted, forestalling his wishes, looking at him with the sort of admiration which all women know how to express, and which, in some cases, the coarser it is the better it pleases,–saying, for instance, “You look as fresh as a rose!” or, “What health you have!” “How handsome you are, my old Jean!”–in short, instead of entertaining him with the lively chatter and broad jokes in which he delighted, Flore left him to dress alone. If he called her, she answered from the foot of the staircase, “I can’t do everything at once; how can I look after your breakfast and wait upon you up there? Are not you big enough to dress your own self?”

“Oh, dear! what have I done to displease her?” the old man asked himself that morning, as he got one of these rebuffs after calling for his shaving-water.

“Vedie, take up the hot water,” cried Flore.

“Vedie!” exclaimed the poor man, stupefied with fear of the anger that was crushing him. “Vedie, what is the matter with Madame this morning?”

Flore Brazier required her master and Vedie and Kouski and Max to call her Madame.

“She seems to have heard something about you which isn’t to your credit,” answered Vedie, assuming an air of deep concern. “You are doing wrong, monsieur. I’m only a poor servant-woman, and you may say I have no right to poke my nose into your affairs; but I do say you may search through all the women in the world, like that king in holy Scripture, and you won’t find the equal of Madame. You ought to kiss the ground she steps on. Goodness! if you make her unhappy, you’ll only spoil your own life. There she is, poor thing, with her eyes full of tears.”

Vedie left the poor man utterly cast down; he dropped into an armchair and gazed into vacancy like the melancholy imbecile that he was, and forgot to shave. These alternations of tenderness and severity worked upon this feeble creature whose only life was through his amorous fibre, the same morbid effect which great changes from tropical heat to arctic cold produce upon the human body. It was a moral pleurisy, which wore him out like a physical disease. Flore alone could thus affect him; for to her, and to her alone, he was as good as he was foolish.

“Well, haven’t you shaved yet?” she said, appearing at his door.

Her sudden presence made the old man start violently; and from being pale and cast down he grew red for an instant, without, however, daring to complain of her treatment.

“Your breakfast is waiting,” she added. “You can come down as you are, in dressing-gown and slippers; for you’ll breakfast alone, I can tell you.”

Without waiting for an answer, she disappeared. To make him breakfast alone was the punishment he dreaded most; he loved to talk to her as he ate his meals. When he got to the foot of the staircase he was taken with a fit of coughing; for emotion excited his catarrh.

“Cough away!” said Flore in the kitchen, without caring whether he heard her or not. “Confound the old wretch! he is able enough to get over it without bothering others. If he coughs up his soul, it will only be after–“

Such were the amenities the Rabouilleuse addressed to Rouget when she was angry. The poor man sat down in deep distress at a corner of the table in the middle of the room, and looked at his old furniture and the old pictures with a disconsolate air.

“You might at least have put on a cravat,” said Flore. “Do you think it is pleasant for people to see such a neck as yours, which is redder and more wrinkled than a turkey’s?”

“But what have I done?” he asked, lifting his big light-green eyes, full of tears, to his tormentor, and trying to face her hard countenance.

“What have you done?” she exclaimed. “As if you didn’t know? Oh, what a hypocrite! Your sister Agathe–who is as much your sister as I am sister of the tower of Issoudun, if one’s to believe your father, and who has no claim at all upon you–is coming here from Paris with her son, a miserable two-penny painter, to see you.”

“My sister and my nephews coming to Issoudun!” he said, bewildered.

“Oh, yes! play the surprised, do; try to make me believe you didn’t send for them! sewing your lies with white bread, indeed! Don’t fash yourself; we won’t trouble your Parisians–before they set their feet in this house, we shall have shaken the dust of it off ours. Max and I will be gone, never to return. As for your will, I’ll tear it in quarters under your nose, and to your very beard–do you hear? Leave your property to your family, if you don’t think we are your family; and then see if you’ll be loved for yourself by a lot of people who have not seen you for thirty years,–who in fact have never seen you! Is it that sort of sister who can take my place? A pinchbeck saint!”

“If that’s all, my little Flore,” said the old man, “I won’t receive my sister, or my nephews. I swear to you this is the first word I have heard of their coming. It is all got up by that Madame Hochon–a sanctimonious old–“

Max, who had overheard old Rouget’s words, entered suddenly, and said in a masterful tone,–

“What’s all this?”

“My good Max,” said the old man, glad to get the protection of the soldier who, by agreement with Flore, always took his side in a dispute, “I swear by all that is most sacred, that I now hear this news for the first time. I have never written to my sister; my father made me promise not to leave her any of my property; to leave it to the Church sooner than to her. Well, I won’t receive my sister Agathe to this house, or her sons–“

“Your father was wrong, my dear Jean-Jacques, and Madame Brazier is still more wrong,” answered Max. “Your father no doubt had his reasons, but he is dead, and his hatred should die with him. Your sister is your sister, and your nephews are your nephews. You owe it to yourself to welcome them, and you owe it to us as well. What would people say in Issoudun? Thunder! I’ve got enough upon my shoulders as it is, without hearing people say that we shut you up and don’t allow you a will of your own, or that we influence you against your relations and are trying to get hold of your property. The devil take me if I don’t pull up stakes and be off, if that sort of calumny is to be flung at me! the other is bad enough! Let’s eat our breakfast.”

Flore, who was now as mild as a weasel, helped Vedie to set the table. Old Rouget, full of admiration for Max, took him by both hands and led him into the recess of a window, saying in a low voice:–

“Ah! Max, if I had a son, I couldn’t love him better than I love you. Flore is right: you two are my real family. You are a man of honor, Max, and what you have just said is true.”

“You ought to receive and entertain your sister and her son, but not change the arrangements you have made about your property,” said Max. “In that way you will do what is right in the eyes of the world, and yet keep your promise to your father.”

“Well! my dear loves!” cried Flore, gayly, “the salmi is getting cold. Come, my old rat, here’s a wing for you,” she said, smiling on Jean- Jacques.

At the words, the long-drawn face of the poor creature lost its cadaverous tints, the smile of a Theriaki flickered on his pendent lips; but he was seized with another fit of coughing; for the joy of being taken back to favor excited as violent an emotion as the punishment itself. Flore rose, pulled a little cashmere shawl from her own shoulders, and tied it round the old man’s throat, exclaiming: “How silly to put yourself in such a way about nothing. There, you old goose, that will do you good; it has been next my heart–“

“What a good creature!” said Rouget to Max, while Flore went to fetch a black velvet cap to cover the nearly bald head of the old bachelor.

“As good as she is beautiful”; answered Max, “but she is quick- tempered, like all people who carry their hearts in their hands.”

The baldness of this sketch may displease some, who will think the flashes of Flore’s character belong to the sort of realism which a painter ought to leave in shadow. Well! this scene, played again and again with shocking variations, is, in its coarse way and its horrible veracity, the type of such scenes played by women on whatever rung of the social ladder they are perched, when any interest, no matter what, draws them from their own line of obedience and induces them to grasp at power. In their eyes, as in those of politicians, all means to an end are justifiable. Between Flore Brazier and a duchess, between a duchess and the richest bourgeoise, between a bourgeoise and the most luxuriously kept mistress, there are no differences except those of the education they have received, and the surroundings in which they live. The pouting of a fine lady is the same thing as the violence of a Rabouilleuse. At all levels, bitter sayings, ironical jests, cold contempt, hypocritical complaints, false quarrels, win as much success as the low outbursts of this Madame Everard of Issoudun.

Max began to relate, with much humor, the tale of Fario and his barrow, which made the old man laugh. Vedie and Kouski, who came to listen, exploded in the kitchen, and as to Flore, she laughed convulsively. After breakfast, while Jean-Jacques read the newspapers (for they subscribed to the “Constitutionel” and the “Pandore”), Max carried Flore to his own quarters.

“Are you quite sure he has not made any other will since the one in which he left the property to you?”

“He hasn’t anything to write with,” she answered.

“He might have dictated it to some notary,” said Max; “we must look out for that. Therefore it is well to be cordial to the Bridaus, and at the same time endeavor to turn those mortgages into money. The notaries will be only too glad to make the transfers; it is grist to their mill. The Funds are going up; we shall conquer Spain, and deliver Ferdinand VII. and the Cortez, and then they will be above par. You and I could make a good thing out of it by putting the old fellow’s seven hundred and fifty thousand francs into the Funds at eighty-nine. Only you must try to get it done in your name; it will be so much secured anyhow.”

“A capital idea!” said Flore.

“And as there will be an income of fifty thousand francs from eight hundred and ninety thousand, we must make him borrow one hundred and forty thousand francs for two years, to be paid back in two instalments. In two years, we shall get one hundred thousand francs IN Paris, and ninety thousand here, and risk nothing.”

“If it were not for you, my handsome Max, what would become of me now?” she said.

“Oh! to-morrow night at Mere Cognette’s, after I have seen the Parisians, I shall find a way to make the Hochons themselves get rid of them.”

“Ah! what a head you’ve got, my angel! You are a love of a man.”

The place Saint-Jean is at the centre of a long street called at the upper end the rue Grand Narette, and at the lower the rue Petite Narette. The word “Narette” is used in Berry to express the same lay of the land as the Genoese word “salita” indicates,–that is to say, a steep street. The Grand Narette rises rapidly from the place Saint- Jean to the port Vilatte. The house of old Monsieur Hochon is exactly opposite that of Jean-Jacques Rouget. From the windows of the room where Madame Hochon usually sat, it was easy to see what went on at the Rouget household, and vice versa, when the curtains were drawn back or the doors were left open. The Hochon house was like the Rouget house, and the two were doubtless built by the same architect. Monsieur Hochon, formerly tax-collector at Selles in Berry, born, however, at Issoudun, had returned to his native place and married the sister of the sub-delegate, the gay Lousteau, exchanging his office at Selles for another of the same kind at Issoudun. Having retired before 1787, he escaped the dangers of the Revolution, to whose principles, however, he firmly adhered, like all other “honest men” who howl with the winners. Monsieur Hochon came honestly by the reputation of miser. but it would be mere repetition to sketch him here. A single specimen of the avarice which made him famous will suffice to make you see Monsieur Hochon as he was.

At the wedding of his daughter, now dead, who married a Borniche, it was necessary to give a dinner to the Borniche family. The bridegroom, who was heir to a large fortune, had suffered great mortification from having mismanaged his property, and still more because his father and mother refused to help him out. The old people, who were living at the time of the marriage, were delighted to see Monsieur Hochon step in as guardian,–for the purpose, of course, of making his daughter’s dowry secure. On the day of the dinner, which was given to celebrate the signing of the marriage contract, the chief relations of the two families were assembled in the salon, the Hochons on one side, the Borniches on the other,–all in their best clothes. While the contract was being solemnly read aloud by young Heron, the notary, the cook came into the room and asked Monsieur Hochon for some twine to truss up the turkey,–an essential feature of the repast. The old man dove into the pocket of his surtout, pulled out an end of string which had evidently already served to tie up a parcel, and gave it to her; but before she could leave the room he called out, “Gritte, mind you give it back to me!” (Gritte is the abbreviation used in Berry for Marguerite.)

From year to year old Hochon grew more petty in his meanness, and more penurious; and at this time he was eighty-five years old. He belonged to the class of men who stop short in the street, in the middle of a lively dialogue, and stoop to pick up a pin, remarking, as they stick it in the sleeve of their coat, “There’s the wife’s stipend.” He complained bitterly of the poor quality of the cloth manufactured now- a-days, and called attention to the fact that his coat had lasted only ten years. Tall, gaunt, thin, and sallow; saying little, reading little, and doing nothing to fatigue himself; as observant of forms as an oriental,–he enforced in his own house a discipline of strict abstemiousness, weighing and measuring out the food and drink of the family, which, indeed, was rather numerous, and consisted of his wife, nee Lousteau, his grandson Borniche with a sister Adolphine, the heirs of old Borniche, and lastly, his other grandson, Francois Hochon.

Hochon’s eldest son was taken by the draft of 1813, which drew in the sons of well-to-do families who had escaped the regular conscription, and were now formed into a corps styled the “guards of honor.” This heir-presumptive, who was killed at Hanau, had married early in life a rich woman, intending thereby to escape all conscriptions; but after he was enrolled, he wasted his substance, under a presentiment of his end. His wife, who followed the army at a distance, died at Strasburg in 1814, leaving debts which her father-in-law Hochon refused to pay, –answering the creditors with an axiom of ancient law, “Women are minors.”

The house, though large, was scantily furnished; on the second floor, however, there were two rooms suitable for Madame Bridau and Joseph. Old Hochon now repented that he had kept them furnished with two beds, each bed accompanied by an old armchair of natural wood covered with needlework, and a walnut table, on which figured a water-pitcher of the wide-mouthed kind called “gueulard,” standing in a basin with a blue border. The old man kept his winter store of apples and pears, medlars and quinces on heaps of straw in these rooms, where the rats and mice ran riot, so that they exhaled a mingled odor of fruit and vermin. Madame Hochon now directed that everything should be cleaned; the wall-paper, which had peeled off in places, was fastened up again with wafers; and she decorated the windows with little curtains which she pieced together from old hoards of her own. Her husband having refused to let her buy a strip of drugget, she laid down her own bedside carpet for her little Agathe,–“Poor little thing!” as she called the mother, who was now over forty-seven years old. Madame Hochon borrowed two night-tables from a neighbor, and boldly hired two chests of drawers with brass handles from a dealer in second-hand furniture who lived next to Mere Cognette. She herself had preserved two pairs of candlesticks, carved in choice woods by her own father, who had the “turning” mania. From 1770 to 1780 it was the fashion among rich people to learn a trade, and Monsieur Lousteau, the father, was a turner, just as Louis XVI. was a locksmith. These candlesticks were ornamented with circlets made of the roots of rose, peach, and apricot trees. Madame Hochon actually risked the use of her precious relics! These preparations and this sacrifice increased old Hochon’s anxiety; up to this time he had not believed in the arrival of the Bridaus.

The morning of the day that was celebrated by the trick on Fario, Madame Hochon said to her husband after breakfast:–

“I hope, Hochon, that you will receive my goddaughter, Madame Bridau, properly.” Then, after making sure that her grandchildren were out of hearing, she added: “I am mistress of my own property; don’t oblige me to make up to Agathe in my will for any incivility on your part.”

“Do you think, madame,” answered Hochon, in a mild voice, “that, at my age, I don’t know the forms of decent civility?”

“You know very well what I mean, you crafty old thing! Be friendly to our guests, and remember that I love Agathe.”

“And you love Maxence Gilet also, who is getting the property away from your dear Agathe! Ah! you’ve warmed a viper in your bosom there; but after all, the Rouget money is bound to go to a Lousteau.”

After making this allusion to the supposed parentage and both Max and Agathe, Hochon turned to leave the room; but old Madame Hochon, a woman still erect and spare, wearing a round cap with ribbon knots and her hair powdered, a taffet petticoat of changeable colors like a pigeon’s breast, tight sleeves, and her feet in high-heeled slippers, deposited her snuff-box on a little table, and said:–

“Really, Monsieur Hochon, how can a man of your sense repeat absurdities which, unhappily, cost my poor friend her peace of mind, and Agathe the property which she ought to have had from her father. Max Gilet is not the son of my brother, whom I often advised to save the money he paid for him. You know as well as I do that Madame Rouget was virtue itself–“

“And the daughter takes after her; for she strikes me as uncommonly stupid. After losing all her fortune, she brings her sons up so well that here is one in prison and likely to be brought up on a criminal indictment before the Court of Peers for a conspiracy worthy of Berton. As for the other, he is worse off; he’s a painter. If your proteges are to stay here till they have extricated that fool of a Rouget from the claws of Gilet and the Rabouilleuse, we shall eat a good deal more than half a measure of salt with them.”

“That’s enough, Monsieur Hochon; you had better wish they may not have two strings to their bow.”

Monsieur Hochon took his hat, and his cane with an ivory knob, and went away petrified by that terrible speech; for he had no idea that his wife could show such resolution. Madame Hochon took her prayer- book to read the service, for her advanced age prevented her from going daily to church; it was only with difficulty that she got there on Sundays and holidays. Since receiving her goddaughter’s letter she had added a petition to her usual prayers, supplicating God to open the eyes of Jean-Jacques Rouget, and to bless Agathe and prosper the expedition into which she herself had drawn her. Concealing the fact from her grandchildren, whom she accused of being “parpaillots,” she had asked the curate to say a mass for Agathe’s success during a neuvaine which was being held by her granddaughter, Adolphine Borniche, who thus made her prayers in church by proxy.

Adolphine, then eighteen,–who for the last seven years had sewed at the side of her grandmother in that cold household of monotonous and methodical customs,–had undertaken her neuvaine all the more willingly because she hoped to inspire some feeling in Joseph Bridau, in whom she took the deepest interest because of the monstrosities which her grandfather attributed in her hearing to the young Parisian.

All the old people and sensible people of the town, and the fathers of families approved of Madame Hochon’s conduct in receiving her goddaughter; and their good wishes for the latter’s success were in proportion to the secret contempt with which the conduct of Maxence Gilet had long inspired them. Thus the news of the arrival of Rouget’s sister and nephew raised two parties in Issoudun,–that of the higher and older bourgeoisie, who contented themselves with offering good wishes and in watching events without assisting them, and that of the Knights of Idleness and the partisans of Max, who, unfortunately, were capable of committing many high-handed outrages against the Parisians.

CHAPTER XI

Agathe and Joseph arrived at the coach-office of the Messageries- Royales in the place Misere at three o’clock. Though tired with the journey, Madame Bridau felt her youth revive at sight of her native land, where at every step she came upon memories and impressions of her girlish days. In the then condition of public opinion in Issoudun, the arrival of the Parisians was known all over the town in ten minutes. Madame Hochon came out upon her doorstep to welcome her godchild, and kissed her as though she were really a daughter. After seventy-two years of a barren and monotonous existence, exhibiting in their retrospect the graves of her three children, all unhappy in their lives, and all dead, she had come to feel a sort of fictitious motherhood for the young girl whom she had, as she expressed it, carried in her pouch for sixteen years. Through the gloom of provincial life the old woman had cherished this early friendship, this girlish memory, as closely as if Agathe had remained near her, and she had also taken the deepest interest in Bridau. Agathe was led in triumph to the salon where Monsieur Hochon was stationed, chilling as a tepid oven.

“Here is Monsieur Hochon; how does he seem to you?” asked his wife.

“Precisely the same as when I last saw him,” said the Parisian woman.

“Ah! it is easy to see you come from Paris; you are so complimentary,” remarked the old man.

The presentations took place: first, young Baruch Borniche, a tall youth of twenty-two; then Francois Hochon, twenty-four; and lastly little Adolphine, who blushed and did not know what to do with her arms; she was anxious not to seem to be looking at Joseph Bridau, who in his turn was narrowly observed, though from different points of view, by the two young men and by old Hochon. The miser was saying to himself, “He is just out of the hospital; he will be as hungry as a convalescent.” The young men were saying, “What a head! what a brigand! we shall have our hands full!”

“This is my son, the painter; my good Joseph,” said Agathe at last, presenting the artist.

There was an effort in the accent that she put upon the word “good,” which revealed the mother’s heart, whose thoughts were really in the prison of the Luxembourg.

“He looks ill,” said Madame Hochon; “he is not at all like you.”

“No, madame,” said Joseph, with the brusque candor of an artist; “I am like my father, and very ugly at that.”

Madame Hochon pressed Agathe’s hand which she was holding, and glanced at her as much as to say, “Ah! my child; I understand now why you prefer your good-for-nothing Philippe.”

“I never saw your father, my dear boy,” she said aloud; “it is enough to make me love you that you are your mother’s son. Besides, you have talent, so the late Madame Descoings used to write to me; she was the only one of late years who told me much about you.”

“Talent!” exclaimed the artist, “not as yet; but with time and patience I may win fame and fortune.”

“By painting?” said Monsieur Hochon ironically.

“Come, Adolphine,” said Madame Hochon, “go and see about dinner.”

“Mother,” said Joseph, “I will attend to the trunks which they are bringing in.”

“Hochon,” said the grandmother to Francois, “show the rooms to Monsieur Bridau.”

As the dinner was to be served at four o’clock and it was now only half past three, Baruch rushed into the town to tell the news of the Bridau arrival, describe Agathe’s dress, and more particularly to picture Joseph, whose haggard, unhealthy, and determined face was not unlike the ideal of a brigand. That evening Joseph was the topic of conversation in all the households of Issoudun.

“That sister of Rouget must have seen a monkey before her son was born,” said one; “he is the image of a baboon.”

“He has the face of a brigand and the eyes of a basilisk.”

“All artists are like that.”

“They are as wicked as the red ass, and as spiteful as monkeys.”

“It is part of their business.”

“I have just seen Monsieur Beaussier, and he says he would not like to meet him in a dark wood; he saw him in the diligence.”

“He has got hollows over the eyes like a horse, and he laughs like a maniac.”

“The fellow looks as though he were capable of anything; perhaps it’s his fault that his brother, a fine handsome man they tell me, has gone to the bad. Poor Madame Bridau doesn’t seem as if she were very happy with him.”

“Suppose we take advantage of his being here, and have our portraits painted?”

The result of all these observations, scattered through the town was, naturally, to excite curiosity. All those who had the right to visit the Hochons resolved to call that very night and examine the Parisians. The arrival of these two persons in the stagnant town was like the falling of a beam into a community of frogs.

After stowing his mother’s things and his own into the two attic chambers, which he examined as he did so, Joseph took note of the silent house, where the walls, the stair-case, the wood-work, were devoid of decoration and humid with frost, and where there was literally nothing beyond the merest necessaries. He felt the brusque transition from his poetic Paris to the dumb and arid province; and when, coming downstairs, he chanced to see Monsieur Hochon cutting slices of bread for each person, he understood, for the first time in his life, Moliere’s Harpagon.

“We should have done better to go to an inn,” he said to himself.

The aspect of the dinner confirmed his apprehensions. After a soup whose watery clearness showed that quantity was more considered than quality, the bouilli was served, ceremoniously garnished with parsley; the vegetables, in a dish by themselves, being counted into the items of the repast. The bouilli held the place of honor in the middle of the table, accompanied with three other dishes: hard-boiled eggs on sorrel opposite to the vegetables; then a salad dressed with nut-oil to face little cups of custard, whose flavoring of burnt oats did service as vanilla, which it resembles much as coffee made of chiccory resembles mocha. Butter and radishes, in two plates, were at each end of the table; pickled gherkins and horse-radish completed the spread, which won Madam Hochon’s approbation. The good old woman gave a contented little nod when she saw that her husband had done things properly, for the first day at least. The old man answered with a glance and a shrug of his shoulders, which it was easy to translate into–

“See the extravagances you force me to commit!”

As soon as Monsieur Hochon had, as it were, slivered the bouilli into slices, about as thick as the sole of a dancing-shoe, that dish was replaced by another, containing three pigeons. The wine was of the country, vintage 1811. On a hint from her grandmother, Adolphine had decorated each end of the table with a bunch of flowers.

“At Rome as the Romans do,” thought the artist, looking at the table, and beginning to eat,–like a man who had breakfasted at Vierzon, at six o’clock in the morning, on an execrable cup of coffee. When Joseph had eaten up all his bread and asked for more, Monsieur Hochon rose, slowly searched in the pocket of his surtout for a key, unlocked a cupboard behind him, broke off a section of a twelve-pound loaf, carefully cut a round of it, then divided the round in two, laid the pieces on a plate, and passed the plate across the table to the young painter, with the silence and coolness of an old soldier who says to himself on the eve of battle, “Well, I can meet death.” Joseph took the half-slice, and fully understood that he was not to ask for any more. No member of the family was the least surprised at this extraordinary performance. The conversation went on. Agathe learned that the house in which she was born, her father’s house before he inherited that of the old Descoings, had been bought by the Borniches; she expressed a wish to see it once more.

“No doubt,” said her godmother, “the Borniches will be here this evening; we shall have half the town–who want to examine you,” she added, turning to Joseph, “and they will all invite you to their houses.”

Gritte, who in spite of her sixty years, was the only servant of the house, brought in for dessert the famous ripe cheese of Touraine and Berry, made of goat’s milk, whose mouldy discolorations so distinctly reproduce the pattern of the vine-leaves on which it is served, that Touraine ought to have invented the art of engraving. On either side of these little cheeses Gritte, with a company air, placed nuts and some time-honored biscuits.

“Well, Gritte, the fruit?” said Madame Hochon.

“But, madame, there is none rotten,” answered Gritte.

Joseph went off into roars of laughter, as though he were among his comrades in the atelier; for he suddenly perceived that the parsimony of eating only the fruits which were beginning to rot had degenerated into a settled habit.

“Bah! we can eat them all the same,” he exclaimed, with the heedless gayety of a man who will have his say.

“Monsieur Hochon, pray get some,” said the old lady.

Monsieur Hochon, much incensed at the artist’s speech, fetched some peaches, pears, and Saint Catherine plums.

“Adolphine, go and gather some grapes,” said Madame Hochon to her granddaughter.

Joseph looked at the two young men as much as to say: “Is it to such high living as this that you owe your healthy faces?”

Baruch understood the keen glance and smiled; for he and his cousin Hochon were behaving with much discretion. The home-life was of less importance to youths who supped three times the week at Mere Cognette’s. Moreover, just before dinner, Baruch had received notice that the grand master convoked the whole Order at midnight for a magnificent supper, in the course of which a great enterprise would be arranged. The feast of welcome given by old Hochon to his guests explains how necessary were the nocturnal repasts at the Cognette’s to two young fellows blessed with good appetites, who, we may add, never missed any of them.

“We will take the liqueur in the salon,” said Madame Hochon, rising and motioning to Joseph to give her his arm. As they went out before the others, she whispered to the painter:–

“Eh! my poor boy; this dinner won’t give you an indigestion; but I had hard work to get it for you. It is always Lent here; you will get enough just to keep life in you, and no more. So you must bear it patiently.”

The kind-heartedness of the old woman, who thus drew her own predicament, pleased the artist.

“I have lived fifty years with that man, without ever hearing half-a- dozen gold pieces chink in my purse,” she went on. “Oh! if I did not hope that you might save your property, I would never have brought you and your mother into my prison.”

“But how can you survive it?” cried Joseph naively, with the gayety which a French artist never loses.

“Ah, you may well ask!” she said. “I pray.”

Joseph quivered as he heard the words, which raised the old woman so much in his estimation that he stepped back a little way to look into her face; it was radiant with so tender a serenity that he said to her,–

“Let me paint your portrait.”

“No, no,” she answered, “I am too weary of life to wish to remain here on canvas.”

Gayly uttering the sad words, she opened a closet, and brought out a flask containing ratafia, a domestic manufacture of her own, the receipt for which she obtained from the far-famed nuns to whom is also due the celebrated cake of Issoudun,–one of the great creations of French confectionery; which no chef, cook, pastry-cook, or confectioner has ever been able to reproduce. Monsieur de Riviere, ambassador at Constantinople, ordered enormous quantities every year for the Seraglio.

Adolphine held a lacquer tray on which were a number of little old glasses with engraved sides and gilt edges; and as her mother filled each of them, she carried it to the company.

“It seems as though my father’s turn were coming round!” exclaimed Agathe, to whom this immutable provincial custom recalled the scenes of her youth.

“Hochon will go to his club presently to read the papers, and we shall have a little time to ourselves,” said the old lady in a low voice.

In fact, ten minutes later, the three women and Joseph were alone in the salon, where the floor was never waxed, only swept, and the worsted-work designs in oaken frames with grooved mouldings, and all the other plain and rather dismal furniture seemed to Madame Bridau to be in exactly the same state as when she had left Issoudun. Monarchy, Revolution, Empire, and Restoration, which respected little, had certainly respected this room where their glories and their disasters had left not the slightest trace.

“Ah! my godmother, in comparison with your life, mine has been cruelly tried,” exclaimed Madame Bridau, surprised to find even a canary which she had known when alive, stuffed, and standing on the mantleshelf between the old clock, the old brass brackets, and the silver candlesticks.

“My child,” said the old lady, “trials are in the heart. The greater and more necessary the resignation, the harder the struggle with our own selves. But don’t speak of me, let us talk of your affairs. You are directly in front of the enemy,” she added, pointing to the windows of the Rouget house.

“They are sitting down to dinner,” said Adolphine.

The young girl, destined for a cloister, was constantly looking out of the window, in hopes of getting some light upon the enormities imputed to Maxence Gilet, the Rabouilleuse, and Jean-Jacques, of which a few words reached her ears whenever she was sent out of the room that others might talk about them. The old lady now told her granddaughter to leave her alone with Madame Bridau and Joseph until the arrival of visitors.

“For,” she said, turning to the Parisians, “I know my Issoudun by heart; we shall have ten or twelve batches of inquisitive folk here to-night.”

In fact Madame Hochon had hardly related the events and the details concerning the astounding influence obtained by Maxence Gilet and the Rabouilleuse over Jean-Jacques Rouget (without, of course, following the synthetical method with which they have been presented here), adding the many comments, descriptions, and hypotheses with which the good and evil tongues of the town embroidered them, before Adolphine announced the approach of the Borniche, Beaussier, Lousteau-Prangin, Fichet, Goddet-Herau families; in all, fourteen persons looming in the distance.

“You now see, my dear child,” said the old lady, concluding her tale, “that it will not be an easy matter to get this property out of the jaws of the wolf–“

“It seems to me so difficult–with a scoundrel such as you represent him, and a daring woman like that crab-girl–as to be actually impossible,” remarked Joseph. “We should have to stay a year in Issoudun to counteract their influence and overthrow their dominion over my uncle. Money isn’t worth such a struggle,–not to speak of the meannesses to which we should have to condescend. My mother has only two weeks’ leave of absence; her place is a permanent one, and she must not risk it. As for me, in the month of October I have an important work, which Schinner has just obtained for me from a peer of France; so you see, madame, my future fortune is in my brushes.”

This speech was received by Madame Hochon with much amazement. Though relatively superior to the town she lived in, the old lady did not believe in painting. She glanced at her goddaughter, and again pressed her hand.

“This Maxence is the second volume of Philippe,” whispered Joseph in his mother’s ear, “–only cleverer and better behaved. Well, madame,” he said, aloud, we won’t trouble Monsieur Hochon by staying very long.”

“Ah! you are young; you know nothing of the world,” said the old lady. “A couple of weeks, if you are judicious, may produce great results; listen to my advice, and act accordingly.”

“Oh! willingly,” said Joseph, “I know I have a perfectly amazing incapacity for domestic statesmanship: for example, I am sure I don’t know what Desroches himself would tell us to do if my uncle declines to see us.”

Mesdames Borniche, Goddet-Herau, Beaussier, Lousteau-Prangin and Fichet, decorated with their husbands, here entered the room.

When the fourteen persons were seated, and the usual compliments were over, Madame Hochon presented her goddaughter Agathe and Joseph. Joseph sat in his armchair all the evening, engaged in slyly studying the sixty faces which, from five o’clock until half past nine, posed for him gratis, as he afterwards told his mother. Such behavior before the aristocracy of Issoudun did not tend to change the opinion of the little town concerning him: every one went home ruffled by his sarcastic glances, uneasy under his smiles, and even frightened at his face, which seemed sinister to a class of people unable to recognize the singularities of genius.

After ten o’clock, when the household was in bed, Madame Hochon kept her goddaughter in her chamber until midnight. Secure from interruption, the two women told each other the sorrows of their lives, and exchanged their sufferings. As Agathe listened to the last echoes of a soul that had missed its destiny, and felt the sufferings of a heart, essentially generous and charitable, whose charity and generosity could never be exercised, she realized the immensity of the desert in which the powers of this noble, unrecognized soul had been wasted, and knew that she herself, with the little joys and interests of her city life relieving the bitter trials sent from God, was not the most unhappy of the two.

“You who are so pious,” she said, “explain to me my shortcomings; tell me what it is that God is punishing in me.”

“He is preparing us, my child,” answered the old woman, “for the striking of the last hour.”

At midnight the Knights of Idleness were collecting, one by one like shadows, under the trees of the boulevard Baron, and speaking together in whispers.

“What are we going to do?” was the first question of each as he arrived.

“I think,” said Francois, “that Max means merely to give us a supper.”

“No; matters are very serious for him, and for the Rabouilleuse: no doubt, he has concocted some scheme against the Parisians.”

“It would be a good joke to drive them away.”

“My grandfather,” said Baruch, “is terribly alarmed at having two extra mouths to feed, and he’d seize on any pretext–“

“Well, comrades!” cried Max softly, now appearing on the scene, “why are you star-gazing? the planets don’t distil kirschwasser. Come, let us go to Mere Cognette’s!”

“To Mere Cognette’s! To Mere Cognette’s!” they all cried.

The cry, uttered as with one voice, produced a clamor which rang through the town like the hurrah of troops rushing to an assault; total silence followed. The next day, more than one inhabitant must have said to his neighbor: “Did you hear those frightful cries last night, about one o’clock? I thought there was surely a fire somewhere.”

A supper worthy of La Cognette brightened the faces of the twenty-two guests; for the whole Order was present. At two in the morning, as they were beginning to “siroter” (a word in the vocabulary of the Knights which admirably expresses the act of sipping and tasting the wine in small quantities), Max rose to speak:–

“My dear fellows! the honor of your grand master was grossly attacked this morning, after our memorable joke with Fario’s cart,–attacked by a vile pedler, and what is more, a Spaniard (oh, Cabrera!); and I have resolved to make the scoundrel feel the weight of my vengeance; always, of course, within the limits we have laid down for our fun. After reflecting about it all day, I have found a trick which is worth putting into execution,–a famous trick, that will drive him crazy. While avenging the insult offered to the Order in my person, we shall be feeding the sacred animals of the Egyptians,–little beasts which are, after all, the creatures of God, and which man unjustly persecutes. Thus we see that good is the child of evil, and evil is the offspring of good; such is the paramount law of the universe! I now order you all, on pain of displeasing your very humble grand master, to procure clandestinely, each one of you, twenty rats, male or female as heaven pleases. Collect your contingent within three days. If you can get more, the surplus will be welcome. Keep the interesting rodents without food; for it is essential that the delightful little beasts be ravenous with hunger. Please observe that I will accept both house-mice and field-mice as rats. If we multiply twenty-two by twenty, we shall have four hundred; four hundred accomplices let loose in the old church of the Capuchins, where Fario has stored all his grain, will consume a not insignificant quantity! But be lively about it! There’s no time to lose. Fario is to deliver most of the grain to his customers in a week or so; and I am determined that that Spaniard shall find a terrible deficit. Gentlemen, I have not the merit of this invention,” continued Max, observing the signs of general admiration. “Render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to God that which is God’s. My scheme is only a reproduction of Samson’s foxes, as related in the Bible. But Samson was an incendiary, and therefore no philanthropist; while we, like the Brahmins, are the protectors of a persecuted race. Mademoiselle Flore Brazier has already set all her mouse-traps, and Kouski, my right-arm, is hunting field-mice. I have spoken.”

“I know,” said Goddet, “where to find an animal that’s worth forty rats, himself alone.”

“What’s that?”

“A squirrel.”

“I offer a little monkey,” said one of the younger members, “he’ll make himself drunk on wheat.”

“Bad, very bad!” exclaimed Max, “it would show who put the beasts there.”

“But we might each catch a pigeon some night,” said young Beaussier, “taking them from different farms; if we put them through a hole in the roof, they’ll attract thousands of others.”

“So, then, for the next week, Fario’s storehouse is the order of the night,” cried Max, smiling at Beaussier. “Recollect; people get up early in Saint-Paterne. Mind, too, that none of you go there without turning the soles of your list shoes backward. Knight Beaussier, the inventor of pigeons, is made director. As for me, I shall take care to leave my imprint on the sacks of wheat. Gentlemen, you are, all of you, appointed to the commissariat of the Army of Rats. If you find a watchman sleeping in the church, you must manage to make him drunk,– and do it cleverly,–so as to get him far away from the scene of the Rodents’ Orgy.”

“You don’t say anything about the Parisians?” questioned Goddet.

“Oh!” exclaimed Max, “I want time to study them. Meantime, I offer my best shotgun–the one the Emperor gave me, a treasure from the manufactory at Versailles–to whoever finds a way to play the Bridaus a trick which shall get them into difficulties with Madame and Monsieur Hochon, so that those worthy old people shall send them off, or they shall be forced to go of their own accord,–without, understand me, injuring the venerable ancestors of my two friends here present, Baruch and Francois.”

“All right! I’ll think of it,” said Goddet, who coveted the gun.

“If the inventor of the trick doesn’t care for the gun, he shall have my horse,” added Max.

After this night twenty brains were tortured to lay a plot against Agathe and her son, on the basis of Max’s programme. But the devil alone, or chance, could really help them to success; for the conditions given made the thing well-nigh impossible.

The next morning Agathe and Joseph came downstairs just before the second breakfast, which took place at ten o’clock. In Monsieur Hochon’s household the name of first breakfast was given to a cup of milk and slice of bread and butter which was taken in bed, or when rising. While waiting for Madame Hochon, who notwithstanding her age went minutely through the ceremonies with which the duchesses of Louis XV.’s time performed their toilette, Joseph noticed Jean-Jacques Rouget planted squarely on his feet at the door of his house across the street. He naturally pointed him out to his mother, who was unable to recognize her brother, so little did he look like what he was when she left him.

“That is your brother,” said Adolphine, who entered, giving an arm to her grandmother.

“What an idiot he looks like!” exclaimed Joseph.

Agathe clasped her hands, and raised her eyes to heaven.

“What a state they have driven him to! Good God! can that be a man only fifty-seven years old?”

She looked attentively at her brother, and saw Flore Brazier standing directly behind him, with her hair dressed, a pair of snowy shoulders and a dazzling bosom showing through a gauze neckerchief, which was trimmed with lace; she was wearing a dress with a tight-fitting waist, made of grenadine (a silk material then much in fashion), with leg-of- mutton sleeves so-called, fastened at the wrists by handsome bracelets. A gold chain rippled over the crab-girl’s bosom as she leaned forward to give Jean-Jacques his black silk cap lest he should take cold. The scene was evidently studied.

“Hey!” cried Joseph, “there’s a fine woman, and a rare one! She is made, as they say, to paint. What flesh-tints! Oh, the lovely tones! what surface! what curves! Ah, those shoulders! She’s a magnificent caryatide. What a model she would have been for one of Titians’ Venuses!”

Adolphine and Madame Hochon thought he was talking Greek; but Agathe signed to them behind his back, as if to say that she was accustomed to such jargon.

“So you think a creature who is depriving you of your property handsome?” said Madame Hochon.

“That doesn’t prevent her from being a splendid model!–just plump enough not to spoil the hips and the general contour–“

“My son, you are not in your studio,” said Agathe. “Adolphine is here.”

“Ah, true! I did wrong. But you must remember that ever since leaving Paris I have seen nothing but ugly women–“

“My dear godmother,” said Agathe hastily, “how shall I be able to meet my brother, if that creature is always with him?”

“Bah!” said Joseph. “I’ll go and see him myself. I don’t think him such an idiot, now I find he has the sense to rejoice his eyes with a Titian’s Venus.”

“If he were not an idiot,” said Monsieur Hochon, who had come in, “he would have married long ago and had children; and then you would have no chance at the property. It is an ill wind that blows no good.”

“Your son’s idea is very good,” said Madame Hochon; “he ought to pay the first visit. He can make his uncle understand that if you call there he must be alone.”

“That will affront Mademoiselle Brazier,” said old Hochon. “No, no, madame; swallow the pill. If you can’t get the whole property, secure a small legacy.”

The Hochons were not clever enough to match Max. In the middle of breakfast Kouski brought over a letter from Monsieur Rouget, addressed to his sister, Madame Bridau. Madame Hochon made her husband read it aloud, as follows:–

My dear Sister,–I learn from strangers of your arrival in Issoudun. I can guess the reason which made you prefer the house of Monsieur and Madame Hochon to mine; but if you will come to see me you shall be received as you ought to be. I should certainly pay you the first visit if my health did not compel me just now to keep the house; for which I offer my affectionate regrets. I shall be delighted to see my nephew, whom I invite to dine with me to- morrow,–young men are less sensitive than women about the company. It will give me pleasure if Messrs. Baruch Borniche and Francois Hochon will accompany him.

Your affectionate brother,

J.-J. Rouget.

“Say that we are at breakfast, but that Madame Bridau will send an answer presently, and the invitations are all accepted,” said Monsieur Hochon to the servant.

The old man laid a finger on his lips, to require silence from everybody. When the street-door was shut, Monsieur Hochon, little suspecting the intimacy between his grandsons and Max, threw one of his slyest looks at his wife and Agathe, remarking,–

“He is just as capable of writing that note as I am of giving away twenty-five louis; it is the soldier who is corresponding with us!”

“What does that portend?” asked Madame Hochon. “Well, never mind; we will answer him. As for you, monsieur,” she added, turning to Joseph, “you must dine there; but if–“

The old lady was stopped short by a look from her husband. Knowing how warm a friendship she felt for Agathe, old Hochon was in dread lest she should leave some legacy to her goddaughter in case the latter lost the Rouget property. Though fifteen years older than his wife, the miser hoped to inherit her fortune, and to become eventually the sole master of their whole property. That hope was a fixed idea with him. Madame Hochon knew that the best means of obtaining a few concessions from her husband was to threaten him with her will. Monsieur Hochon now took sides with his guests. An enormous fortune was at stake; with a sense of social justice, he wished it to go to the natural heirs, instead of being pillaged by unworthy outsiders. Moreover, the sooner the matter was decided, the sooner he should get rid of his guests. Now that the struggle between the interlopers and the heirs, hitherto existing only in his wife’s mind, had become an actual fact, Monsieur Hochon’s keen intelligence, lulled to sleep by the monotony of provincial life, was fully roused. Madame Hochon had been agreeably surprised that morning to perceive, from a few affectionate words which the old man had said to her about Agathe, that so able and subtle an auxiliary was on the Bridau side.

Towards midday the brains of Monsieur and Madame Hochon, of Agathe, and Joseph (the latter much amazed at the scrupulous care of the old people in the choice of words), were delivered of the following answer, concocted solely for the benefit of Max and Flore:–

My dear Brother,–If I have stayed away from Issoudun, and kept up no intercourse with any one, not even with you, the fault lies not merely with the strange and false ideas my father conceived about me, but with the joys and sorrows of my life in Paris; for if God made me a happy wife, he has also deeply afflicted me as a mother. You are aware that my son, your nephew Philippe, lies under accusation of a capital offence in consequence of his devotion to the Emperor. Therefore you can hardly be surprised if a widow, compelled to take a humble situation in a lottery-office for a living, should come to seek consolation from those among whom she was born.

The profession adopted by the son who accompanies me is one that requires great talent, many sacrifices, and prolonged studies before any results can be obtained. Glory for an artist precedes fortune; is not that to say that Joseph, though he may bring honor to the family, will still be poor? Your sister, my dear Jean- Jacques, would have borne in silence the penalties of paternal injustice, but you will pardon a mother for reminding you that you have two nephews; one of whom carried the Emperor’s orders at the battle of Montereau and served in the Guard at Waterloo, and is now in prison for his devotion to Napoleon; the other, from his thirteenth year, has been impelled by natural gifts to enter a difficult though glorious career.

I thank you for your letter, my dear brother, with heart-felt warmth, for my own sake, and also for Joseph’s, who will certainly accept your invitation. Illness excuses everything, my dear Jean- Jacques, and I shall therefore go to see you in your own house. A sister is always at home with a brother, no matter what may be the life he has adopted.

I embrace you tenderly.

Agathe Rouget

“There’s the matter started. Now, when you see him,” said Monsieur Hochon to Agathe, “you must speak plainly to him about his nephews.”

The letter was carried over by Gritte, who returned ten minutes later to render an account to her masters of all that she had seen and heard, according to a settled provincial custom.

“Since yesterday Madame has had the whole house cleaned up, which she left–“

“Whom do you mean by Madame?” asked old Hochon.

“That’s what they call the Rabouilleuse over there,” answered Gritte. “She left the salon and all Monsieur Rouget’s part of the house in a pitiable state; but since yesterday the rooms have been made to look like what they were before Monsieur Maxence went to live there. You can see your face on the floors. La Vedie told me that Kouski went off on horseback at five o’clock this morning, and came back at nine, bringing provisions. It is going to be a grand dinner!–a dinner fit for the archbishop of Bourges! There’s a fine bustle in the kitchen, and they are as busy as bees. The old man says, ‘I want to do honor to my nephew,’ and he pokes his nose into everything. It appears THE ROUGETS are highly flattered by the letter. Madame came and told me so. Oh! she had on such a dress! I never saw anything so handsome in my life. Two diamonds in her ears!–two diamonds that cost, Vedie told me, three thousand francs apiece; and such lace! rings on her fingers, and bracelets! you’d think she was a shrine; and a silk dress as fine as an altar-cloth. So then she said to me, ‘Monsieur is delighted to find his sister so amiable, and I hope she will permit us to pay her all the attention she deserves. We shall count on her good opinion after the welcome we mean to give her son. Monsieur is very impatient to see his nephew.’ Madame had little black satin slippers; and her stockings! my! they were marvels,–flowers in silk and openwork, just like lace, and you could see her rosy little feet through them. Oh! she’s in high feather, and she had a lovely little apron in front of her which, Vedie says, cost more than two years of our wages put together.”

“Well done! We shall have to dress up,” said the artist laughing.

“What do you think of all this, Monsieur Hochon?” said the old lady when Gritte had departed.

Madame Hochon made Agathe observe her husband, who was sitting with his head in his hands, his elbows on the arms of his chair, plunged in thought.

“You have to do with a Maitre Bonin!” said the old man at last. “With your ideas, young man,” he added, looking at Joseph, “you haven’t force enough to struggle with a practised scoundrel like Maxence Gilet. No matter what I say to you, you will commit some folly. But, at any rate, tell me everything you see, and hear, and do to-night. Go, and God be with you! Try to get alone with your uncle. If, in spite of all your genius, you can’t manage it, that in itself will throw some light upon their scheme. But if you do get a moment alone with him, out of ear-shot, damn it, you must pull the wool from his eyes as to the situation those two have put him in, and plead your mother’s cause.”

CHAPTER XII

At four o’clock, Joseph crossed the open space which separated the Rouget house from the Hochon house,–a sort of avenue of weakly lindens, two hundred feet long and of the same width as the rue Grande Narette. When the nephew arrived, Kouski, in polished boots, black cloth trousers, white waistcoat, and black coat, announced him. The table was set in the large hall, and Joseph, who easily distinguished his uncle, went up to him, kissed him, and bowed to Flore and Max.

“We have not seen each other since I came into the world, my dear uncle,” said the painter gayly; “but better late than never.”

“You are very welcome, my friend,” said the old man, looking at his nephew in a dull way.

“Madame,” Joseph said to Flore with an artist’s vivacity, “this morning I was envying my uncle the pleasure he enjoys in being able to admire you every day.”

“Isn’t she beautiful?” said the old man, whose dim eyes began to shine.

“Beautiful enough to be the model of a great painter.”

“Nephew,” said Rouget, whose elbow Flore was nudging, “this is Monsieur Maxence Gilet; a man who served the Emperor, like your brother, in the Imperial Guard.”

Joseph rose, and bowed.

“Your brother was in the dragoons, I believe,” said Maxence. “I was only a dust-trotter.”

“On foot or on horseback,” said Flore, “you both of you risked your skins.”

Joseph took note of Max quite as much as Max took note of Joseph. Max, who got his clothes from Paris, was dressed as the young dandies of that day dressed themselves. A pair of light-blue cloth trousers, made with very full plaits, covered his feet so that only the toes and the spurs of his boots were seen. His waist was pinched in by a white waistcoat with chased gold buttons, which was laced behind to serve as a belt. The waistcoat, buttoned to the throat, showed off his broad chest, and a black satin stock obliged him to hold his head high, in soldierly fashion. A handsome gold chain hung from a waistcoat pocket, in which the outline of a flat watch was barely seen. He was twisting a watch-key of the kind called a “criquet,” which Breguet had lately invented.

“The fellow is fine-looking,” thought Joseph, admiring with a painter’s eye the eager face, the air of strength, and the intellectual gray eyes which Max had inherited from his father, the noble. “My uncle must be a fearful bore, and that handsome girl takes her compensations. It is a triangular household; I see that.”

At this instant, Baruch and Francois entered.

“Have you been to see the tower of Issoudun?” Flore asked Joseph. “No? then if you would like to take a little walk before dinner, which will not be served for an hour, we will show you the great curiosity of the town.”

“Gladly,” said the artist, quite incapable of seeing the slightest impropriety in so doing.

While Flore went to put on her bonnet, gloves, and cashmere shawl, Joseph suddenly jumped up, as if an enchanter had touched him with his wand, to look at the pictures.

“Ah! you have pictures, indeed, uncle!” he said, examining the one that had caught his eye.

“Yes,” answered the old man. “They came to us from the Descoings, who bought them during the Revolution, when the convents and churches in Berry were dismantled.”

Joseph was not listening; he was lost in admiration of the pictures.

“Magnificent!” he cried. “Oh! what painting! that fellow didn’t spoil his canvas. Dear, dear! better and better, as it is at Nicolet’s–“

“There are seven or eight very large ones up in the garret, which were kept on account of the frames,” said Gilet.

“Let me see them!” cried the artist; and Max took him upstairs.

Joseph came down wildly enthusiastic. Max whispered a word to the Rabouilleuse, who took the old man into the embrasure of a window, where Joseph heard her say in a low voice, but still so that he could hear the words:–

“Your nephew is a painter; you don’t care for those pictures; be kind, and give them to him.”

“It seems,” said Jean-Jacques, leaning on Flore’s arm to reach the place were Joseph was standing in ecstasy before an Albano, “–it seems that you are a painter–“

“Only a ‘rapin,'” said Joseph.

“What may that be?” asked Flore.

“A beginner,” replied Joseph.

“Well,” continued Jean-Jacques, “if these pictures can be of any use to you in your business, I give them to you,–but without the frames. Oh! the frames are gilt, and besides, they are very funny; I will put–“

“Well done, uncle!” cried Joseph, enchanted; “I’ll make you copies of the same dimensions, which you can put into the frames.”

“But that will take your time, and you will want canvas and colors,” said Flore. “You will have to spend money. Come, Pere Rouget, offer your nephew a hundred francs for each copy; here are twenty-seven pictures, and I think there are eleven very big ones in the garret which ought to cost double,–call the whole four thousand francs. Oh, yes,” she went on, turning to Joseph, “your uncle can well afford to pay you four thousand francs for making the copies, since he keeps the frames–but bless me! you’ll want frames; and they say frames cost more than pictures; there’s more gold on them. Answer, monsieur,” she continued, shaking the old man’s arm. “Hein? it isn’t dear; your nephew will take four thousand francs for new pictures in the place of the old ones. It is,” she whispered in his ear, “a very good way to give him four thousand francs; he doesn’t look to me very flush–“

“Well, nephew, I will pay you four thousand francs for the copies–“

“No, no!” said the honest Joseph; “four thousand francs and the pictures, that’s too much; the pictures, don’t you see, are valuable–“

“Accept, simpleton!” said Flore; “he is your uncle, you know.”

“Very good, I accept,” said Joseph, bewildered by the luck that had befallen him; for he had recognized a Perugino.

The result was that the artist beamed with satisfaction as he went out of the house with the Rabouilleuse on his arm, all of which helped Maxence’s plans immensely. Neither Flore, nor Rouget, nor Max, nor indeed any one in Issoudun knew the value of the pictures, and the crafty Max thought he had bought Flore’s triumph for a song, as she paraded triumphantly before the eyes of the astonished town, leaning on the arm of her master’s nephew, and evidently on the best of terms with him. People flocked to their doors to see the crab-girl’s triumph over the family. This astounding event made the sensation on which Max counted; so that when they all returned at five o’clock, nothing was talked of in every household but the cordial understanding between Max and Flore and the nephew of old Rouget. The incident of the pictures and the four thousand francs circulated already. The dinner, at which Lousteau, one of the court judges, and the Mayor of Issoudun were present, was splendid. It was one of those provincial dinners lasting five hours. The most exquisite wines enlivened the conversation. By nine o’clock, at dessert, the painter, seated opposite to his uncle, and between Flore and Max, had fraternized with the soldier, and thought him the best fellow on earth. Joseph returned home at eleven o’clock somewhat tipsy. As to old Rouget, Kouski had carried him to his bed dead-drunk; he had eaten as though he were an actor from foreign parts, and had soaked up the wine like the sands of the desert.

“Well,” said Max when he was alone with Flore, “isn’t this better than making faces at them? The Bridaus are well received, they get small presents, and are smothered with attentions, and the end of it is they will sing our praises; they will go away satisfied and leave us in peace. To-morrow morning you and I and Kouski will take down all those pictures and send them over to the painter, so that he shall see them when he wakes up. We will put the frames in the garret, and cover the walls with one of those varnished papers which represent scenes from Telemachus, such as I have seen at Monsieur Mouilleron’s.”

“Oh, that will be much prettier!” said Flore.

On the morrow, Joseph did not wake up till midday. From his bed he saw the pictures, which had been brought in while he was asleep, leaning one against another on the opposite wall. While he examined them anew, recognizing each masterpiece, studying the manner of each painter, and searching for the signature, his mother had gone to see and thank her brother, urged thereto by old Hochon, who, having heard of the follies the painter had committed the night before, almost despaired of the Bridau cause.

“Your adversaries have the cunning of foxes,” he said to Agathe. “In all my days I never saw a man carry things with such a high hand as that soldier; they say war educates young men! Joseph has let himself be fooled. They have shut his mouth with wine, and those miserable pictures, and four thousand francs! Your artist hasn’t cost Maxence much!”

The long-headed old man instructed Madame Bridau carefully as to the line of conduct she ought to pursue,–advising her to enter into Maxence’s ideas and cajole Flore, so as to set up a sort of intimacy with her, and thus obtain a few moments’ interview with Jean-Jacques alone. Madame Bridau was very warmly received by her brother, to whom Flore had taught his lesson. The old man was in bed, quite ill from the excesses of the night before. As Agathe, under the circumstances, could scarcely begin at once to speak of family matters, Max thought it proper and magnanimous to leave the brother and sister alone together. The calculation was a good one. Poor Agathe found her brother so ill that she would not deprive him of Madame Brazier’s care.

“Besides,” she said to the old bachelor, “I wish to know a person to whom I am grateful for the happiness of my brother.”

These words gave evident pleasure to the old man, who rang for Madame Flore. Flore, as we may well believe, was not far off. The female antagonists bowed to each other. The Rabouilleuse showed the most servile attentions and the utmost tenderness to her master; fancied his head was too low, beat up the pillows, and took care of him like a bride of yesterday. The poor creature received it with a rush of feeling.

“We owe you much gratitude, mademoiselle,” said Agathe, “for the proofs of attachment you have so long given to my brother, and for the way in which you watch over his happiness.”

“That is true, my dear Agathe,” said the old man; “she has taught me what happiness is; she is a woman of excellent qualities.”

“And therefore, my dear brother, you ought to have recompensed Mademoiselle by making her your wife. Yes! I am too sincere in my religion not to wish to see you obey the precepts of the church. You would each be more tranquil in mind if you were not at variance with morality and the laws. I have come here, dear brother, to ask for help in my affliction; but do not suppose that we wish to make any remonstrance as to the manner in which you may dispose of your property–“

“Madame,” said Flore, “we know how unjust your father was to you. Monsieur, here, can tell you,” she went on, looking fixedly at her victim, “that the only quarrels we have ever had were about you. I have always told him that he owes you part of the fortune he received from his father, and your father, my benefactor,–for he was my benefactor,” she added in a tearful voice; “I shall ever remember him! But your brother, madame, has listened to reason–“

“Yes,” said the old man, “when I make my will you shall not be forgotten.”

“Don’t talk of these things, my dear brother; you do not yet know my nature.”

After such a beginning, it is easy to imagine how the visit went on. Rouget invited his sister to dinner on the next day but one.

We may here mention that during these three days the Knights of Idleness captured an immense quantity of rats and mice, which were kept half-famished until they were let loose in the grain one fine night, to the number of four hundred and thirty-six, of which some were breeding mothers. Not content with providing Fario’s store-house with these boarders, the Knights made holes in the roof of the old church and put in a dozen pigeons, taken from as many different farms. These four-footed and feathered creatures held high revels,–all the more securely because the watchman was enticed away by a fellow who kept him drunk from morning till night, so that he took no care of his master’s property.

Madame Bridau believed, contrary to the opinion of old Hochon, that her brother has as yet made no will; she intended asking him what were his intentions respecting Mademoiselle Brazier, as soon as she could take a walk with him alone,–a hope which Flore and Maxence were always holding out to her, and, of course, always disappointing.

Meantime the Knights were searching for a way to put the Parisians to flight, and finding none that were not impracticable follies.

At the end of a week–half the time the Parisians were to stay in Issoudun–the Bridaus were no farther advanced in their object than when they came.

“Your lawyer does not understand the provinces,” said old Hochon to Madame Bridau. “What you have come to do can’t be done in two weeks, nor in two years; you ought never to leave your brother, but live here and try to give him some ideas of religion. You cannot countermine the fortifications of Flore and Maxence without getting a priest to sap them. That is my advice, and it is high time to set about it.”

“You certainly have very singular ideas about the clergy,” said Madame Hochon to her husband.

“Bah!” exclaimed the old man, “that’s just like you pious women.”

“God would never bless an enterprise undertaken in a sacrilegious spirit,” said Madame Bridau. “Use religion for such a purpose! Why, we should be more criminal than Flore.”

This conversation took place at breakfast,–Francois and Baruch listening with all their ears.

“Sacrilege!” exclaimed old Hochon. “If some good abbe, keen as I have known many of them to be, knew what a dilemma you are in, he would not think it sacrilege to bring your brother’s lost soul back to God, and call him to repentance for his sins, by forcing him to send away the woman who causes the scandal (with a proper provision, of course), and showing him how to set his conscience at rest by giving a few thousand francs a year to the seminary of the archbishop and leaving his property to the rightful heirs.”

The passive obedience which the old miser had always exacted from his children, and now from his grandchildren (who were under his guardianship and for whom he was amassing a small fortune, doing for them, he said, just as he would for himself), prevented Baruch and Francois from showing signs of surprise or disapproval; but they exchanged significant glances expressing how dangerous and fatal such a scheme would be to Max’s interest.

“The fact is, madame,” said Baruch, “that if you want to secure your brother’s property, the only sure and true way will be to stay in Issoudun for the necessary length of time–“

“Mother,” said Joseph hastily, “you had better write to Desroches about all this. As for me, I ask nothing more than what my uncle has already given me.”

After fully recognizing the great value of his thirty-nine pictures, Joseph had carefully unnailed the canvases and fastened paper over them, gumming it at the edges with ordinary glue; he then laid them one above another in an enormous wooden box, which he sent to Desroches by the carrier’s waggon, proposing to write him a letter about it by post. The precious freight had been sent off the night before.

“You are satisfied with a pretty poor bargain,” said Monsieur Hochon.

“I can easily get a hundred and fifty thousand francs for those pictures,” replied Joseph.

“Painter’s nonsense!” exclaimed old Hochon, giving Joseph a peculiar look.

“Mother,” said Joseph, “I am going to write to Desroches and explain to him the state of things here. If he advises you to remain, you had better do so. As for your situation, we can always find you another like it.”

“My dear Joseph,” said Madame Hochon, following him as he left the table, “I don’t know anything about your uncle’s pictures, but they ought to be good, judging by the places from which they came. If they are worth only forty thousand francs,–a thousand francs apiece,–tell no one. Though my grandsons are discreet and well-behaved, they might, without intending harm, speak of this windfall; it would be known all over Issoudun; and it is very important that our adversaries should not suspect it. You behave like a child!”

In fact, before evening many persons in Issoudun, including Max, were informed of this estimate, which had the immediate effect of causing a search for all the old paintings which no one had ever cared for, and the appearance of many execrable daubs. Max repented having driven the old man into giving away the pictures, and the rage he felt against the heirs after hearing from Baruch old Hochon’s ecclesiastical scheme, was increased by what he termed his own stupidity. The influence of religion upon such a feeble creature as Rouget was the one thing to fear. The news brought by his two comrades decided Maxence Gilet to turn all Rouget’s investments into money, and to borrow upon his landed property, so as to buy into the Funds as soon as possible; but he considered it even more important to get rid of the Parisians at once. The genius of the Mascarilles and Scapins out together would hardly have solved the latter problem easily.

Flore, acting by Max’s advice, pretended that Monsieur was too feeble to take walks, and that he ought, at his age, to have a carriage. This pretext grew out of the necessity of not exciting inquiry when they went to Bourges, Vierzon, Chateauroux, Vatan, and all the other places where the project of withdrawing investments obliged Max and Flore to betake themselves with Rouget. At the close of the week, all Issoudun was amazed to learn that the old man had gone to Bourges to buy a carriage,–a step which the Knights of Idleness regarded as favorable to the Rabouilleuse. Flore and Max selected a hideous “berlingot,” with cracked leather curtains and windows without glass, aged twenty- two years and nine campaigns, sold on the decease of a colonel, the friend of grand-marshal Bertrand, who, during the absence of that faithful companion of the Emperor, was left in charge of the affairs of Berry. This “berlingot,” painted bright green, was somewhat like a caleche, though shafts had taken the place of a pole, so that it could be driven with one horse. It belonged to a class of carriages brought into vogue by diminished fortunes, which at that time bore the candid name of “demi-fortune”; at its first introduction it was called a “seringue.” The cloth lining of this demi-fortune, sold under the name of caleche, was moth-eaten; its gimps looked like the chevrons of an old Invalide; its rusty joints squeaked,–but it only cost four hundred and fifty francs; and Max bought a good stout mare, trained to harness, from an officer of a regiment then stationed at Bourges. He had the carriage repainted a dark brown, and bought a tolerable harness at a bargain. The whole town of Issoudun was shaken to its centre in expectation of Pere Rouget’s equipage; and on the occasion of its first appearance, every household was on its door-step and curious faces were at all the windows.

The second time the old bachelor went out he drove to Bourges, where, to escape the trouble of attending personally to the business, or, if you prefer it, being ordered to do so by Flore, he went before a notary and signed a power of attorney in favor of Maxence Gilet, enabling him to make all the transfers enumerated in the document. Flore reserved to herself the business of making Monsieur sell out the investments in Issoudun and its immediate neighborhood. The principal notary in Bourges was requested by Rouget to get him a loan of one hundred and forty thousand francs on his landed estate. Nothing was known at Issoudun of these proceedings, which were secretly and cleverly carried out. Maxence, who was a good rider, went with his own horse to Bourges and back between five in the morning and five in the afternoon. Flore never left the old bachelor. Rouget consented without objection to the action Flore dictated to him; but he insisted that the investment in the Funds, producing fifty thousand francs a year, should stand in Flore’s name as holding a life-interest only, and in his as owner of the principal. The tenacity the old man displayed in the domestic disputes which this idea created caused Max a good deal of anxiety; he thought he could see the result of reflections inspired by the sight of the natural heirs.

Amid all these movements, which Max concealed from the knowledge of everyone, he forgot the Spaniard and his granary. Fario came back to Issoudun to deliver his corn, after various trips and business manoeuvres undertaken to raise the price of cereals. The morning after his arrival he noticed that the roof the church of the Capuchins was black with pigeons. He cursed himself for having neglected to examine its condition, and hurried over to look into his storehouse, where he found half his grain devoured. Thousands of mice-marks and rat-marks scattered about showed a second cause of ruin. The church was a Noah’s-ark. But anger turned the Spaniard white as a bit of cambric when, trying to estimate the extent of the destruction and his consequence losses, he noticed that the grain at the bottom of the heap, near the floor, was sprouting from the effects of water, which Max had managed to introduce by means of tin tubes into the very centre of the pile of wheat. The pigeons and the rats could be explained by animal instinct; but the hand of man was plainly visible in this last sign of malignity.

Fario sat down on the steps of a chapel altar, holding his head between his hands. After half an hour of Spanish reflections, he spied the squirrel, which Goddet could not refrain from giving him as a guest, playing with its tail upon a cross-beam, on the middle of which rested one of the uprights that supported the roof. The Spaniard rose and turned to his watchman with a face that was as calm and cold as an Arab’s. He made no complaint, but went home, hired laborers to gather into sacks what remained of the sound grain, and to spread in the sun all that was moist, so as to save as much as possible; then, after estimating that his losses amounted to about three fifths, he attended to filling his orders. But his previous manipulations of the market had raised the price of cereals, and he lost on the three fifths he was obliged to buy to fill his orders; so that his losses amounted really to more than half. The Spaniard, who had no enemies, at once attributed this revenge to Gilet. He was convinced that Maxence and some others were the authors of all the nocturnal mischief, and had in all probability carried his cart up the embankment of the tower, and now intended to amuse themselves by ruining him. It was a matter to him of over three thousand francs,–very nearly the whole capital he had scraped together since the peace. Driven by the desire for vengeance, the man now displayed the cunning and stealthy persistence of a detective to whom a large reward is offered. Hiding at night in different parts of Issoudun, he soon acquired proof of the proceedings of the Knights of Idleness; he saw them all, counted them, watched their rendezvous, and knew of their suppers at Mere Cognette’s; after that he lay in wait to witness one of their deeds, and thus became well informed as to their nocturnal habits.

In spite of Max’s journeys and pre-occupations, he had no intention of neglecting his nightly employments,–first, because he did not wish his comrades to suspect the secret of his operations with Pere Rouget’s property; and secondly, to keep the Knights well in hand. They were therefore convened for the preparation of a prank which might deserve to be talked of for years to come. Poisoned meat was to be thrown on a given night to every watch-dog in the town and in the environs. Fario overheard them congratulating each other, as they came out from a supper at the Cognettes’, on the probable success of the performance, and laughing over the general mourning that would follow this novel massacre of the innocents,–revelling, moreover, in the apprehensions it would excite as to the sinister object of depriving all the households of their guardian watch-dogs.

“It will make people forget Fario’s cart,” said Goddet.

Fario did not need that speech to confirm his suspicions; besides, his mind was already made up.

After three weeks’ stay in Issoudun, Agathe was convinced, and so was Madame Hochon, of the truth of the old miser’s observation, that it would take years to destroy the influence which Max and the Rabouilleuse had acquired over her brother. She had made no progress in Jean-Jacques’s confidence, and she was never left alone with him. On the other hand, Mademoiselle Brazier triumphed openly over the heirs by taking Agathe to drive in the caleche, sitting beside her on the back seat, while Monsieur Rouget and his nephew occupied the front. Mother and son impatiently awaited an answer to the confidential letter they had written to Desroches. The day before the night on which the dogs were to be poisoned, Joseph, who was nearly bored to death in Issoudun, received two letters: the first from the great painter Schinner,–whose age allowed him a closer intimacy than Joseph could have with Gros, their master,–and the second from Desroches.

Here is the first, postmarked Beaumont-sur-Oise:–

My dear Joseph,–I have just finished the principal panel- paintings at the chateau de Presles for the Comte de Serizy. I have left all the mouldings and the decorative painting; and I have recommended you so strongly to the count, and also to Gridot the architect, that you have nothing to do but pick up your brushes and come at once. Prices are arranged to please you. I am off to Italy with my wife; so you can have Mistigris to help you along. The young scamp has talent, and I put him at your disposal. He is twittering like a sparrow at the very idea of amusing himself at the chateau de Presles.

Adieu, my dear Joseph; if I am still absent, and should send nothing to next year’s Salon, you must take my place. Yes, dear Jojo, I know your picture is a masterpiece, but a masterpiece which will rouse a hue and cry about romanticism; you are doomed to lead the life of a devil in holy water. Adieu.

Thy friend,

Schinner

Here follows the letter of Desroches:–

My dear Joseph,–Your Monsieur Hochon strikes me as an old man full of common-sense, and you give me a high idea of his methods; he is perfectly right. My advice, since you ask it, is that your mother should remain at Issoudun with Madame Hochon, paying a small board,–say four hundred francs a year,–to reimburse her hosts for what she eats. Madame Bridau ought, in my opinion, to follow Monsieur Hochon’s advice in everything; for your excellent mother will have many scruples in dealing with persons who have no scruple at all, and whose behavior to her is a master-stroke of policy. That Maxence, you are right enough, is dangerous. He is another Philippe, but of a different calibre. The scoundrel makes his vices serve his fortunes, and gets his amusement gratis; whereas your brother’s follies are never useful to him. All that you say alarms me, but I could do no good by going to Issoudun. Monsieur Hochon, acting behind your mother, will be more useful to you than I. As for you, you had better come back here; you are good for nothing in a matter which requires continual attention, careful observation, servile civilities, discretion in speech, and a dissimulation of manner and gesture which is wholly against the grain of artists.

If they have told you no will has been made, you may be quite sure they have possessed one for a long time. But wills can be revoked, and as long as your fool of an uncle lives he is no doubt susceptible of being worked upon by remorse and religion. Your inheritance will be the result of a combat between the Church and the Rabouilleuse. There will inevitably come a time when that woman will lose her grip on the old man, and religion will be all- powerful. So long as your uncle makes no gift of the property during his lifetime, and does not change the nature of his estate, all may come right whenever religion gets the upper hand. For this reason, you must beg Monsieur Hochon to keep an eye, as well as he can, on the condition of your uncle’s property. It is necessary to know if the real estate is mortgaged, and if so, where and in whose name the proceeds are invested. It is so easy to terrify an old man with fears about his life, in case you find him despoiling his own property for the sake of these interlopers, that almost any heir with a little adroitness could stop the spoliation at its outset. But how should your mother, with her ignorance of the world, her disinterestedness, and her religious ideas, know how to manage such an affair? However, I am not able to throw any light on the matter. All that you have done so far has probably given the alarm, and your adversaries may already have secured themselves–

“That is what I call an opinion in good shape,” exclaimed Monsieur Hochon, proud of being himself appreciated by a Parisian lawyer.

“Oh! Desroches is a famous fellow,” answered Joseph.

“It would be well to read that letter to the two women,” said the old man.

“There it is,” said Joseph, giving it to him; “as to me, I want to be off to-morrow; and I am now going to say good-by to my uncle.”

“Ah!” said Monsieur Hochon, “I see that Monsieur Desroches tells you in a postscript to burn the letter.”

“You can burn it after showing it to my mother,” said the painter.

Joseph dressed, crossed the little square, and called on his uncle, who was just finishing breakfast. Max and Flore were at table.

“Don’t disturb yourself, my dear uncle; I have only come to say good- by.”

“You are going?” said Max, exchanging glances with Flore.

“Yes; I have some work to do at the chateau of Monsieur de Serizy, and I am all the more glad of it because his arm is long enough to do a service to my poor brother in the Chamber of Peers.”

“Well, well, go and work”; said old Rouget, with a silly air. Joseph thought him extraordinarily changed within a few days. “Men must work –I am sorry you are going.”

“Oh! my mother will be here some time longer,” remarked Joseph.

Max made a movement with his lips which the Rabouilleuse observed, and which signified: “They are going to try the plan Baruch warned me of.”

“I am very glad I came,” said Joseph, “for I have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance and you have enriched my studio–“

“Yes,” said Flore, “instead of enlightening your uncle on the value of his pictures, which is now estimated at over one hundred thousand francs, you have packed them off in a hurry to Paris. Poor dear man! he is no better than a baby! We have just been told of a little treasure at Bourges,–what did they call it? a Poussin,–which was in the choir of the cathedral before the Revolution and is now worth, all by itself, thirty thousand francs.”

“That was not right of you, my nephew,” said Jean-Jacques, at a sign from Max, which Joseph could not see.

“Come now, frankly,” said the soldier, laughing, “on your honor, what should you say those pictures were worth? You’ve made an easy haul out of your uncle! and right enough, too,–uncles are made to be pillaged. Nature deprived me of uncles, but damn it, if I’d had any I should have shown them no mercy.”

“Did you know, monsieur,” said Flore to Rouget, “what YOUR pictures were worth? How much did you say, Monsieur Joseph?”

“Well,” answered the painter, who had grown as red as a beetroot,– “the pictures are certainly worth something.”

“They say you estimated them to Monsieur Hochon at one hundred and fifty thousand francs,” said Flore; “is that true?”

“Yes,” said the painter, with childlike honesty.

“And did you intend,” said Flore to the old man, “to give a hundred and fifty thousand francs to your nephew?”

“Never, never!” cried Jean-Jacques, on whom Flore had fixed her eye.

“There is one way to settle all this,” said the painter, “and that is to return them to you, uncle.”

“No, no, keep them,” said the old man.

“I shall send them back to you,” said Joseph, wounded by the offensive silence of Max and Flore. “There is something in my brushes which will make my fortune, without owing anything to any one, even an uncle. My respects to you, mademoiselle; good-day, monsieur–“

And Joseph crossed the square in a state of irritation which artists can imagine. The entire Hochon family were in the salon. When they saw Joseph gesticulating and talking to himself, they asked him what was the matter. The painter, who was as open as the day, related before Baruch and Francois the scene that had just taken place; and which, two hours later, thanks to the two young men, was the talk of the whole town, embroidered with various circumstances that were more or less ridiculous. Some persons insisted that the painter was maltreated by Max; others that he had misbehaved to Flore, and that Max had turned him out of doors.

“What a child your son is!” said Hochon to Madame Bridau; “the booby is the dupe of a scene which they have been keeping back for the last day of his visit. Max and the Rabouilleuse have known the value of those pictures for the last two weeks,–ever since he had the folly to tell it before my grandsons, who never rested till they had blurted it out to all the world. Your artist had better have taken himself off without taking leave.”

“My son has done right to return the pictures if they are really so valuable,” said Agathe.

“If they are worth, as he says, two hundred thousand francs,” said old Hochon, “it was folly to put himself in the way of being obliged to return them. You might have had that, at least, out of the property; whereas, as things are going now, you won’t get anything. And this scene with Joseph is almost a reason why your brother should refuse to see you again.”

CHAPTER XIII

Between midnight and one o’clock, the Knights of Idleness began their gratuitous distribution of comestibles to the dogs of the town. This memorable expedition was not over till three in the morning, the hour at which these reprobates went to sup at Cognette’s. At half-past four, in the early dawn, they crept home. Just as Max turned the corner of the rue l’Avenier into the Grande rue, Fario, who stood ambushed in a recess, struck a knife at his heart, drew out the blade, and escaped by the moat towards Vilatte, wiping the blade of his knife on his handkerchief. The Spaniard washed the handkerchief in the Riviere forcee, and returned quietly to his lodgings at Saint-Paterne, where he got in by a window he had left open, and went to bed: later, he was awakened by his new watchman, who found him fast asleep.

As he fell, Max uttered a fearful cry which no one could mistake. Lousteau-Prangin, son of a judge, a distant relation to the family of the sub-delegate, and young Goddet, who lived at the lower end of the Grande rue, ran at full speed up the street, calling to each other,–

“They are killing Max! Help! help!”

But not a dog barked; and all the town, accustomed to the false alarms of these nightly prowlers, stayed quietly in their beds. When his two comrades reached him, Max had fainted. It was necessary to rouse Monsieur Goddet, the surgeon. Max had recognized Fario; but when he came to his senses, with several persons about him, and felt that his wound was not mortal, it suddenly occurred to him to make capital out of the attack, and he said, in a faint voice,–

“I think I recognized that cursed painter!”

Thereupon Lousteau-Prangin ran off to his father, the judge. Max was carried home by Cognette, young Goddet, and two other persons. Mere Cognette and Monsieur Goddet walked beside the stretcher. Those who carried the wounded man naturally looked across at Monsieur Hochon’s door while waiting for Kouski to let them in, and saw Monsieur Hochon’s servant sweeping the steps. At the old miser’s, as everywhere else in the provinces, the household was early astir. The few words uttered by Max had roused the suspicions of Monsieur Goddet, and he called to the woman,–

“Gritte, is Monsieur Joseph Bridau in bed?”

“Bless me!” she said, “he went out at half-past four. I don’t know what ailed him; he walked up and down his room all night.”

This simple answer drew forth such exclamations of horror that the woman came over, curious to know what they were carrying to old Rouget’s house.

“A precious fellow he is, that painter of yours!” they said to her. And the procession entered the house, leaving Gritte open-mouthed with amazement at the sight of Max in his bloody shirt, stretched half- fainting on a mattress.

Artists will readily guess what ailed Joseph, and kept him restless all night. He imagined the tale the bourgeoisie of Issoudun would tell of him. They would say he had fleeced his uncle; that he was everything but what he had tried to be,–a loyal fellow and an honest artist! Ah! he would have given his great picture to have flown like a swallow to Paris, and thrown his uncle’s paintings at Max’s nose. To be the one robbed, and to be thought the robber!–what irony! So at the earliest dawn, he had started for the poplar avenue which led to Tivoli, to give free course to his agitation.