The Two Brothers

THE TWO BROTHERS

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION

To Monsieur Charles Nodier, member of the French Academy, etc.

Here, my dear Nodier, is a book filled with deeds that are screened from

the action of the laws by the closed doors of domestic life; but as

to which the finger of God, often called chance, supplies the place

of human justice, and in which the moral is none the less striking and

instructive because it is pointed by a scoffer.

To my mind, such deeds contain great lessons for the Family and for

Maternity. We shall some day realize, perhaps too late, the effects

produced by the diminution of paternal authority. That authority, which

formerly ceased only at the death of the father, was the sole human

tribunal before which domestic crimes could be arraigned; kings

themselves, on special occasions, took part in executing its judgments.

However good and tender a mother may be, she cannot fulfil the function

of the patriarchal royalty any more than a woman can take the place of

a king upon the throne. Perhaps I have never drawn a picture that shows

more plainly how essential to European society is the indissoluble

marriage bond, how fatal the results of feminine weakness, how great the

dangers arising from selfish interests when indulged without restraint.

May a society which is based solely on the power of wealth shudder as it

sees the impotence of the law in dealing with the workings of a system

which deifies success, and pardons every means of attaining it. May

it return to the Catholic religion, for the purification of its masses

through the inspiration of religious feeling, and by means of an

education other than that of a lay university.

In the “Scenes from Military Life” so many fine natures, so many high

and noble self-devotions will be set forth, that I may here be allowed

to point out the depraving effect of the necessities of war upon certain

minds who venture to act in domestic life as if upon the field of

battle.

You have cast a sagacious glance over the events of our own time; its

philosophy shines, in more than one bitter reflection, through your

elegant pages; you have appreciated, more clearly than other men,

the havoc wrought in the mind of our country by the existence of four

distinct political systems. I cannot, therefore, place this history

under the protection of a more competent authority. Your name may,

perhaps, defend my work against the criticisms that are certain to

follow it,--for where is the patient who keeps silence when the surgeon

lifts the dressing from his wound?

To the pleasure of dedicating this Scene to you, is joined the pride I

feel in thus making known your friendship for one who here subscribes

himself

Your sincere admirer,

De Balzac

Paris, November, 1842.

THE TWO BROTHERS

CHAPTER I

In 1792 the townspeople of Issoudun enjoyed the services of a physician

named Rouget, whom they held to be a man of consummate malignity. Were

we to believe certain bold tongues, he made his wife extremely unhappy,

although she was the most beautiful woman of the neighborhood. Perhaps,

indeed, she was rather silly. But the prying of friends, the slander of

enemies, and the gossip of acquaintances, had never succeeded in laying

bare the interior of that household. Doctor Rouget was a man of whom we

say in common parlance, “He is not pleasant to deal with.” Consequently,

during his lifetime, his townsmen kept silence about him and treated him

civilly. His wife, a demoiselle Descoings, feeble in health during her

girlhood (which was said to be a reason why the doctor married her),

gave birth to a son, and also to a daughter who arrived, unexpectedly,

ten years after her brother, and whose birth took the husband, doctor

though he were, by surprise. This late-comer was named Agathe.

These little facts are so simple, so commonplace, that a writer seems

scarcely justified in placing them in the fore-front of his history; yet

if they are not known, a man of Doctor Rouget’s stamp would be thought

a monster, an unnatural father, when, in point of fact, he was only

following out the evil tendencies which many people shelter under

the terrible axiom that “men should have strength of character,”--a

masculine phrase that has caused many a woman’s misery.

The Descoings, father-in-law and mother-in-law of the doctor, were

commission merchants in the wool-trade, and did a double business by

selling for the producers and buying for the manufacturers of the golden

fleeces of Berry; thus pocketing a commission on both sides. In this way

they grew rich and miserly--the outcome of many such lives. Descoings

the son, younger brother of Madame Rouget, did not like Issoudun. He

went to seek his fortune in Paris, where he set up as a grocer in the

rue Saint-Honore. That step led to his ruin. But nothing could have

hindered it: a grocer is drawn to his business by an attracting force

quite equal to the repelling force which drives artists away from it.

We do not sufficiently study the social potentialities which make up

the various vocations of life. It would be interesting to know what

determines one man to be a stationer rather than a baker; since, in our

day, sons are not compelled to follow the calling of their fathers,

as they were among the Egyptians. In this instance, love decided the

vocation of Descoings. He said to himself, “I, too, will be a grocer!”

and in the same breath he said (also to himself) some other things

regarding his employer,--a beautiful creature, with whom he had fallen

desperately in love. Without other help than patience and the trifling

sum of money his father and mother sent him, he married the widow of his

predecessor, Monsieur Bixiou.

In 1792 Descoings was thought to be doing an excellent business. At that

time, the old Descoings were still living. They had retired from the

wool-trade, and were employing their capital in buying up the forfeited

estates,--another golden fleece! Their son-in-law Doctor Rouget, who,

about this time, felt pretty sure that he should soon have to mourn for

the death of his wife, sent his daughter to Paris to the care of his

brother-in-law, partly to let her see the capital, but still more to

carry out an artful scheme of his own. Descoings had no children. Madame

Descoings, twelve years older than her husband, was in good health,

but as fat as a thrush after harvest; and the canny Rouget knew enough

professionally to be certain that Monsieur and Madame Descoings,

contrary to the moral of fairy tales, would live happy ever after

without having any children. The pair might therefore become attached to

Agathe.

That young girl, the handsomest maiden in Issoudun, did not resemble

either father or mother. Her birth had caused a lasting breach between

Doctor Rouget and his intimate friend Monsieur Lousteau, a former

sub-delegate who had lately removed from the town. When a family

expatriates itself, the natives of a place as attractive as Issoudun

have a right to inquire into the reasons of so surprising a step. It was

said by certain sharp tongues that Doctor Rouget, a vindictive man, had

been heard to exclaim that Monsieur Lousteau should die by his hand.

Uttered by a physician, this declaration had the force of a cannon-ball.

When the National Assembly suppressed the sub-delegates, Lousteau

and his family left Issoudun, and never returned there. After their

departure Madame Rouget spent most of her time with the sister of the

late sub-delegate, Madame Hochon, who was the godmother of her daughter,

and the only person to whom she confided her griefs. The little that the

good town of Issoudun ever really knew of the beautiful Madame Rouget

was told by Madame Hochon,--though not until after the doctor’s death.

The first words of Madame Rouget, when informed by her husband that

he meant to send Agathe to Paris, were: “I shall never see my daughter

again.”

“And she was right,” said the worthy Madame Hochon.

After this, the poor mother grew as yellow as a quince, and her

appearance did not contradict the tongues of those who declared that

Doctor Rouget was killing her by inches. The behavior of her booby of a

son must have added to the misery of the poor woman so unjustly accused.

Not restrained, possibly encouraged by his father, the young fellow, who

was in every way stupid, paid her neither the attentions nor the respect

which a son owes to a mother. Jean-Jacques Rouget was like his father,

especially on the latter’s worst side; and the doctor at his best was

far from satisfactory, either morally or physically.

The arrival of the charming Agathe Rouget did not bring happiness to her

uncle Descoings; for in the same week (or rather, we should say decade,

for the Republic had then been proclaimed) he was imprisoned on a

hint from Robespierre given to Fouquier-Tinville. Descoings, who was

imprudent enough to think the famine fictitious, had the additional

folly, under the impression that opinions were free, to express that

opinion to several of his male and female customers as he served them

in the grocery. The citoyenne Duplay, wife of a cabinet-maker with whom

Robespierre lodged, and who looked after the affairs of that eminent

citizen, patronized, unfortunately, the Descoings establishment. She

considered the opinions of the grocer insulting to Maximilian the First.

Already displeased with the manners of Descoings, this illustrious

“tricoteuse” of the Jacobin club regarded the beauty of his wife as a

kind of aristocracy. She infused a venom of her own into the grocer’s

remarks when she repeated them to her good and gentle master, and

the poor man was speedily arrested on the well-worn charge of

“accaparation.”

No sooner was he put in prison, than his wife set to work to obtain his

release. But the steps she took were so ill-judged that any one hearing

her talk to the arbiters of his fate might have thought that she was in

reality seeking to get rid of him. Madame Descoings knew Bridau, one

of the secretaries of Roland, then minister of the interior,--the

right-hand man of all the ministers who succeeded each other in

that office. She put Bridau on the war-path to save her grocer. That

incorruptible official--one of the virtuous dupes who are always

admirably disinterested--was careful not to corrupt the men on whom

the fate of the poor grocer depended; on the contrary, he endeavored to

enlighten them. Enlighten people in those days! As well might he have

begged them to bring back the Bourbons. The Girondist minister, who was

then contending against Robespierre, said to his secretary, “Why do you

meddle in the matter?” and all others to whom the worthy Bridau appealed

made the same atrocious reply: “Why do you meddle?” Bridau then sagely

advised Madame Descoings to keep quiet and await events. But instead of

conciliating Robespierre’s housekeeper, she fretted and fumed against

that informer, and even complained to a member of the Convention,

who, trembling for himself, replied hastily, “I will speak of it to

Robespierre.” The handsome petitioner put faith in this promise, which

the other carefully forgot. A few loaves of sugar, or a bottle or two of

good liqueur, given to the citoyenne Duplay would have saved Descoings.

This little mishap proves that in revolutionary times it is quite

as dangerous to employ honest men as scoundrels; we should rely on

ourselves alone. Descoings perished; but he had the glory of going to

the scaffold with Andre Chenier. There, no doubt, grocery and poetry

embraced for the first time in the flesh; although they have, and ever

have had, intimate secret relations. The death of Descoings produced far

more sensation than that of Andre Chenier. It has taken thirty years to

prove to France that she lost more by the death of Chenier than by that

of Descoings.

This act of Robespierre led to one good result: the terrified grocers

let politics alone until 1830. Descoings’s shop was not a hundred yards

from Robespierre’s lodging. His successor was scarcely more fortunate

than himself. Cesar Birotteau, the celebrated perfumer of the “Queen

of Roses,” bought the premises; but, as if the scaffold had left some

inexplicable contagion behind it, the inventor of the “Paste of Sultans”

and the “Carminative Balm” came to his ruin in that very shop. The

solution of the problem here suggested belongs to the realm of occult

science.

During the visits which Roland’s secretary paid to the unfortunate

Madame Descoings, he was struck with the cold, calm, innocent beauty

of Agathe Rouget. While consoling the widow, who, however, was too

inconsolable to carry on the business of her second deceased husband, he

married the charming girl, with the consent of her father, who hastened

to give his approval to the match. Doctor Rouget, delighted to hear that

matters were going beyond his expectations,--for his wife, on the death

of her brother, had become sole heiress of the Descoings,--rushed to

Paris, not so much to be present at the wedding as to see that the

marriage contract was drawn to suit him. The ardent and disinterested

love of citizen Bridau gave carte blanche to the perfidious doctor, who

made the most of his son-in-law’s blindness, as the following history

will show.

Madame Rouget, or, to speak more correctly, the doctor, inherited all

the property, landed and personal, of Monsieur and Madame Descoings the

elder, who died within two years of each other; and soon after that,

Rouget got the better, as we may say, of his wife, for she died at the

beginning of the year 1799. So he had vineyards and he bought farms, he

owned iron-works and he sold fleeces. His well-beloved son was stupidly

incapable of doing anything; but the father destined him for the state

in life of a land proprietor and allowed him to grow up in wealth and

silliness, certain that the lad would know as much as the wisest if he

simply let himself live and die. After 1799, the cipherers of Issoudun

put, at the very least, thirty thousand francs’ income to the doctor’s

credit. From the time of his wife’s death he led a debauched life,

though he regulated it, so to speak, and kept it within the closed doors

of his own house. This man, endowed with “strength of character,” died

in 1805, and God only knows what the townspeople of Issoudun said about

him then, and how many anecdotes they related of his horrible private

life. Jean-Jacques Rouget, whom his father, recognizing his stupidity,

had latterly treated with severity, remained a bachelor for certain

reasons, the explanation of which will form an important part of this

history. His celibacy was partly his father’s fault, as we shall see

later.

Meantime, it is well to inquire into the results of the secret vengeance

the doctor took on a daughter whom he did not recognize as his own, but

who, you must understand at once, was legitimately his. Not a person in

Issoudun had noticed one of those capricious facts that make the whole

subject of generation a vast abyss in which science flounders. Agathe

bore a strong likeness to the mother of Doctor Rouget. Just as gout

is said to skip a generation and pass from grandfather to grandson,

resemblances not uncommonly follow the same course.

In like manner, the eldest of Agathe’s children, who physically

resembled his mother, had the moral qualities of his grandfather, Doctor

Rouget. We will leave the solution of this problem to the twentieth

century, with a fine collection of microscopic animalculae; our

descendants may perhaps write as much nonsense as the scientific schools

of the nineteenth century have uttered on this mysterious and perplexing

question.

Agathe Rouget attracted the admiration of everyone by a face destined,

like that of Mary, the mother of our Lord, to continue ever virgin, even

after marriage. Her portrait, still to be seen in the atelier of Bridau,

shows a perfect oval and a clear whiteness of complexion, without the

faintest tinge of color, in spite of her golden hair. More than one

artist, looking at the pure brow, the discreet, composed mouth, the

delicate nose, the small ears, the long lashes, and the dark-blue eyes

filled with tenderness,--in short, at the whole countenance expressive

of placidity,--has asked the great artist, “Is that a copy of a

Raphael?” No man ever acted under a truer inspiration than the

minister’s secretary when he married this young girl. Agathe was an

embodiment of the ideal housekeeper brought up in the provinces and

never parted from her mother. Pious, though far from sanctimonious, she

had no other education than that given to women by the Church. Judged,

by ordinary standards, she was an accomplished wife, yet her ignorance

of life paved the way for great misfortunes. The epitaph on the Roman

matron, “She did needlework and kept the house,” gives a faithful

picture of her simple, pure, and tranquil existence.

Under the Consulate, Bridau attached himself fanatically to Napoleon,

who placed him at the head of a department in the ministry of the

interior in 1804, a year before the death of Doctor Rouget. With a

salary of twelve thousand francs and very handsome emoluments, Bridau

was quite indifferent to the scandalous settlement of the property at

Issoudun, by which Agathe was deprived of her rightful inheritance. Six

months before Doctor Rouget’s death he had sold one-half of his property

to his son, to whom the other half was bequeathed as a gift, and also in

accordance with his rights as heir. An advance of fifty thousand

francs on her inheritance, made to Agathe at the time of her marriage,

represented her share of the property of her father and mother.

Bridau idolized the Emperor, and served him with the devotion of a

Mohammedan for his prophet; striving to carry out the vast conceptions

of the modern demi-god, who, finding the whole fabric of France

destroyed, went to work to reconstruct everything. The new official

never showed fatigue, never cried “Enough.” Projects, reports, notes,

studies, he accepted all, even the hardest labors, happy in the

consciousness of aiding his Emperor. He loved him as a man, he adored

him as a sovereign, and he would never allow the least criticism of his

acts or his purposes.

From 1804 to 1808, the Bridaus lived in a handsome suite of rooms on the

Quai Voltaire, a few steps from the ministry of the interior and close

to the Tuileries. A cook and footman were the only servants of the

household during this period of Madame Bridau’s grandeur. Agathe, early

afoot, went to market with her cook. While the latter did the rooms, she

prepared the breakfast. Bridau never went to the ministry before

eleven o’clock. As long as their union lasted, his wife took the same

unwearying pleasure in preparing for him an exquisite breakfast, the

only meal he really enjoyed. At all seasons and in all weathers, Agathe

watched her husband from the window as he walked toward his office, and

never drew in her head until she had seen him turn the corner of the rue

du Bac. Then she cleared the breakfast-table herself, gave an eye to the

arrangement of the rooms, dressed for the day, played with her children

and took them to walk, or received the visits of friends; all the

while waiting in spirit for Bridau’s return. If her husband brought him

important business that had to be attended to, she would station herself

close to the writing-table in his study, silent as a statue, knitting

while he wrote, sitting up as late as he did, and going to bed only a

few moments before him. Occasionally, the pair went to some theatre,

occupying one of the ministerial boxes. On those days, they dined at

a restaurant, and the gay scenes of that establishment never ceased to

give Madame Bridau the same lively pleasure they afford to provincials

who are new to Paris. Agathe, who was obliged to accept the formal

dinners sometimes given to the head of a department in a ministry, paid

due attention to the luxurious requirements of the then mode of dress,

but she took off the rich apparel with delight when she returned home,

and resumed the simple garb of a provincial. One day in the week,

Thursday, Bridau received his friends, and he also gave a grand ball,

annually, on Shrove Tuesday.

These few words contain the whole history of their conjugal life, which

had but three events; the births of two children, born three years

apart, and the death of Bridau, who died in 1808, killed by overwork

at the very moment when the Emperor was about to appoint him

director-general, count, and councillor of state. At this period of

his reign, Napoleon was particularly absorbed in the affairs of the

interior; he overwhelmed Bridau with work, and finally wrecked the

health of that dauntless bureaucrat. The Emperor, of whom Bridau had

never asked a favor, made inquiries into his habits and fortune. Finding

that this devoted servant literally had nothing but his situation,

Napoleon recognized him as one of the incorruptible natures which raised

the character of his government and gave moral weight to it, and he

wished to surprise him by the gift of some distinguished reward. But the

effort to complete a certain work, involving immense labor, before

the departure of the Emperor for Spain caused the death of the devoted

servant, who was seized with an inflammatory fever. When the Emperor,

who remained in Paris for a few days after his return to prepare for the

campaign of 1809, was told of Bridau’s death he said: “There are men

who can never be replaced.” Struck by the spectacle of a devotion which

could receive none of the brilliant recognitions that reward a soldier,

the Emperor resolved to create an order to requite civil services, just

as he had already created the Legion of honor to reward the military.

The impression he received from the death of Bridau led him to plan

the order of the Reunion. He had not time, however, to mature this

aristocratic scheme, the recollection of which is now so completely

effaced that many of my readers may ask what were its insignia: the

order was worn with a blue ribbon. The Emperor called it the Reunion,

under the idea of uniting the order of the Golden Fleece of Spain with

the order of the Golden Fleece of Austria. “Providence,” said a Prussian

diplomatist, “took care to frustrate the profanation.”

After Bridau’s death the Emperor inquired into the circumstances of his

widow. Her two sons each received a scholarship in the Imperial Lyceum,

and the Emperor paid the whole costs of their education from his

privy purse. He gave Madame Bridau a pension of four thousand francs,

intending, no doubt, to advance the fortune of her sons in future years.

From the time of her marriage to the death of her husband, Agathe had

held no communication with Issoudun. She lost her mother just as she was

on the point of giving birth to her youngest son, and when her father,

who, as she well knew, loved her little, died, the coronation of the

Emperor was at hand, and that event gave Bridau so much additional work

that she was unwilling to leave him. Her brother, Jean-Jacques Rouget,

had not written to her since she left Issoudun. Though grieved by the

tacit repudiation of her family, Agathe had come to think seldom of

those who never thought of her. Once a year she received a letter from

her godmother, Madame Hochon, to whom she replied with commonplaces,

paying no heed to the advice which that pious and excellent woman gave

to her, disguised in cautious words.

Some time before the death of Doctor Rouget, Madame Hochon had written

to her goddaughter warning her that she would get nothing from her

father’s estate unless she gave a power of attorney to Monsieur Hochon.

Agathe was very reluctant to harass her brother. Whether it were that

Bridau thought the spoliation of his wife in accordance with the laws

and customs of Berry, or that, high-minded as he was, he shared the

magnanimity of his wife, certain it is that he would not listen to

Roguin, his notary, who advised him to take advantage of his ministerial

position to contest the deeds by which the father had deprived the

daughter of her legitimate inheritance. Husband and wife thus tacitly

sanctioned what was done at Issoudun. Nevertheless, Roguin had forced

Bridau to reflect upon the future interests of his wife which were thus

compromised. He saw that if he died before her, Agathe would be left

without property, and this led him to look into his own affairs. He

found that between 1793 and 1805 his wife and he had been obliged to use

nearly thirty thousand of the fifty thousand francs in cash which old

Rouget had given to his daughter at the time of her marriage. He at once

invested the remaining twenty thousand in the public funds, then quoted

at forty, and from this source Agathe received about two thousand francs

a year. As a widow, Madame Bridau could live suitably on an income of

six thousand francs. With provincial good sense, she thought of changing

her residence, dismissing the footman, and keeping no servant except a

cook; but her intimate friend, Madame Descoings, who insisted on being

considered her aunt, sold her own establishment and came to live with

Agathe, turning the study of the late Bridau into her bedroom.

The two widows clubbed their revenues, and so were in possession of a

joint income of twelve thousand francs a year. This seems a very

simple and natural proceeding. But nothing in life is more deserving of

attention than the things that are called natural; we are on our guard

against the unnatural and extraordinary. For this reason, you will find

men of experience--lawyers, judges, doctors, and priests--attaching

immense importance to simple matters; and they are often thought

over-scrupulous. But the serpent amid flowers is one of the finest myths

that antiquity has bequeathed for the guidance of our lives. How often

we hear fools, trying to excuse themselves in their own eyes or in the

eyes of others, exclaiming, “It was all so natural that any one would

have been taken in.”

In 1809, Madame Descoings, who never told her age, was sixty-five. In

her heyday she had been popularly called a beauty, and was now one

of those rare women whom time respects. She owed to her excellent

constitution the privilege of preserving her good looks, which, however,

would not bear close examination. She was of medium height, plump, and

fresh, with fine shoulders and a rather rosy complexion. Her blond hair,

bordering on chestnut, showed, in spite of her husband’s catastrophe,

not a tinge of gray. She loved good cheer, and liked to concoct nice

little made dishes; yet, fond as she was of eating, she also adored

the theatre and cherished a vice which she wrapped in impenetrable

mystery--she bought into lotteries. Can that be the abyss of which

mythology warns us under the fable of the Danaides and their cask?

Madame Descoings, like other women who are lucky enough to keep young

for many years, spend rather too much upon her dress; but aside from

these trifling defects she was the pleasantest of women to live with.

Of every one’s opinion, never opposing anybody, her kindly and

communicative gayety gave pleasure to all. She had, moreover, a Parisian

quality which charmed the retired clerks and elderly merchants of her

circle,--she could take and give a jest. If she did not marry a third

time it was no doubt the fault of the times. During the wars of the

Empire, marrying men found rich and handsome girls too easily to trouble

themselves about women of sixty.

Madame Descoings, always anxious to cheer Madame Bridau, often took the

latter to the theatre, or to drive; prepared excellent little dinners

for her delectation, and even tried to marry her to her own son by her

first husband, Bixiou. Alas! to do this, she was forced to reveal a

terrible secret, carefully kept by her, by her late husband, and by

her notary. The young and beautiful Madame Descoings, who passed for

thirty-six years old, had a son who was thirty-five, named Bixiou,

already a widower, a major in the Twenty-Fourth Infantry, who

subsequently perished at Lutzen, leaving behind him an only son. Madame

Descoings, who only saw her grandson secretly, gave out that he was the

son of the first wife of her first husband. The revelation was partly

a prudential act; for this grandson was being educated with Madame

Bridau’s sons at the Imperial Lyceum, where he had a half-scholarship.

The lad, who was clever and shrewd at school, soon after made himself a

great reputation as draughtsman and designer, and also as a wit.

Agathe, who lived only for her children, declined to re-marry, as much

from good sense as from fidelity to her husband. But it is easier for a

woman to be a good wife than to be a good mother. A widow has two

tasks before her, whose duties clash: she is a mother, and yet she must

exercise parental authority. Few women are firm enough to understand and

practise this double duty. Thus it happened that Agathe, notwithstanding

her many virtues, was the innocent cause of great unhappiness. In the

first place, through her lack of intelligence and the blind confidence

to which such noble natures are prone, Agathe fell a victim to Madame

Descoings, who brought a terrible misfortune on the family. That worthy

soul was nursing up a combination of three numbers called a “trey” in a

lottery, and lotteries give no credit to their customers. As manager of

the joint household, she was able to pay up her stakes with the money

intended for their current expenses, and she went deeper and deeper into

debt, with the hope of ultimately enriching her grandson Bixiou, her

dear Agathe, and the little Bridaus. When the debts amounted to ten

thousand francs, she increased her stakes, trusting that her favorite

trey, which had not turned up in nine years, would come at last, and

fill to overflowing the abysmal deficit.

From that moment the debt rolled up rapidly. When it reached twenty

thousand francs, Madame Descoings lost her head, still failing to win

the trey. She tried to mortgage her own property to pay her niece, but

Roguin, who was her notary, showed her the impossibility of carrying out

that honorable intention. The late Doctor Rouget had laid hold of the

property of the brother-in-law after the grocer’s execution, and had,

as it were, disinherited Madame Descoings by securing to her a

life-interest on the property of his own son, Jean-Jacques Rouget. No

money-lender would think of advancing twenty thousand francs to a woman

sixty-six years of age, on an annuity of about four thousand, at a

period when ten per cent could easily be got for an investment. So one

morning Madame Descoings fell at the feet of her niece, and with sobs

confessed the state of things. Madame Bridau did not reproach her; she

sent away the footman and cook, sold all but the bare necessities of her

furniture, sold also three-fourths of her government funds, paid off the

debts, and bade farewell to her _appartement_.

CHAPTER II

One of the worst corners in all Paris is undoubtedly that part of the

rue Mazarin which lies between the rue Guenegard and its junction with

the rue de Seine, behind the palace of the Institute. The high gray

walls of the college and of the library which Cardinal Mazarin presented

to the city of Paris, and which the French Academy was in after days to

inhabit, cast chill shadows over this angle of the street, where the sun

seldom shines, and the north wind blows. The poor ruined widow came to

live on the third floor of a house standing at this damp, dark, cold

corner. Opposite, rose the Institute buildings, in which were the

dens of ferocious animals known to the bourgeoisie under the name of

artists,--under that of tyro, or rapin, in the studios. Into these

dens they enter rapins, but they may come forth prix de Rome. The

transformation does not take place without extraordinary uproar and

disturbance at the time of year when the examinations are going on, and

the competitors are shut up in their cells. To win a prize, they were

obliged, within a given time, to make, if a sculptor, a clay model; if a

painter, a picture such as may be seen at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts; if

a musician, a cantata; if an architect, the plans for a public building.

At the time when we are penning the words, this menagerie has already

been removed from these cold and cheerless buildings, and taken to the

elegant Palais des Beaux-Arts, which stands near by.

From the windows of Madame Bridau’s new abode, a glance could penetrate

the depths of those melancholy barred cages. To the north, the view was

shut in by the dome of the Institute; looking up the street, the only

distraction to the eye was a file of hackney-coaches, which stood at

the upper end of the rue Mazarin. After a while, the widow put boxes of

earth in front of her windows, and cultivated those aerial gardens that

police regulations forbid, though their vegetable products purify the

atmosphere. The house, which backed up against another fronting on the

rue de Seine, was necessarily shallow, and the staircase wound round

upon itself. The third floor was the last. Three windows to three rooms,

namely, a dining-room, a small salon, and a chamber on one side of the

landing; on the other, a little kitchen, and two single rooms; above, an

immense garret without partitions. Madame Bridau chose this lodging for

three reasons: economy, for it cost only four hundred francs a year,

so that she took a lease of it for nine years; proximity to her sons’

school, the Imperial Lyceum being at a short distance; thirdly, because

it was in the quarter to which she was used.

The inside of the _appartement_ was in keeping with the general look of

the house. The dining-room, hung with a yellow paper covered with little

green flowers, and floored with tiles that were not glazed, contained

nothing that was not strictly necessary,--namely, a table, two

sideboards, and six chairs, brought from the other _appartement_. The

salon was adorned with an Aubusson carpet given to Bridau when the

ministry of the interior was refurnished. To the furniture of this

room the widow added one of those commonplace mahogany sofas with the

Egyptian heads that Jacob Desmalter manufactured by the gross in 1806,

covering them with a silken green stuff bearing a design of white

geometric circles. Above this piece of furniture hung a portrait

of Bridau, done in pastel by the hand of an amateur, which at once

attracted the eye. Though art might have something to say against it,

no one could fail to recognize the firmness of the noble and obscure

citizen upon that brow. The serenity of the eyes, gentle, yet proud,

was well given; the sagacious mind, to which the prudent lips bore

testimony, the frank smile, the atmosphere of the man of whom the

Emperor had said, “Justum et tenacem,” had all been caught, if not with

talent, at least with fidelity. Studying that face, an observer could

see that the man had done his duty. His countenance bore signs of

the incorruptibility which we attribute to several men who served the

Republic. On the opposite wall, over a card-table, flashed a picture

of the Emperor in brilliant colors, done by Vernet; Napoleon was riding

rapidly, attended by his escort.

Agathe had bestowed upon herself two large birdcages; one filled with

canaries, the other with Java sparrows. She had given herself up to this

juvenile fancy since the loss of her husband, irreparable to her, as,

in fact, it was to many others. By the end of three months, her widowed

chamber had become what it was destined to remain until the appointed

day when she left it forever,--a litter of confusion which words are

powerless to describe. Cats were domiciled on the sofa. The canaries,

occasionally let loose, left their commas on the furniture. The poor

dear woman scattered little heaps of millet and bits of chickweed about

the room, and put tidbits for the cats in broken saucers. Garments

lay everywhere. The room breathed of the provinces and of constancy.

Everything that once belonged to Bridau was scrupulously preserved.

Even the implements in his desk received the care which the widow of a

paladin might have bestowed upon her husband’s armor. One slight detail

here will serve to bring the tender devotion of this woman before the

reader’s mind. She had wrapped up a pen and sealed the package, on which

she wrote these words, “Last pen used by my dear husband.” The cup from

which he drank his last draught was on the fireplace; caps and false

hair were tossed, at a later period, over the glass globes which covered

these precious relics. After Bridau’s death not a trace of coquetry, not

even a woman’s ordinary care of her person, was left in the young widow

of thirty-five. Parted from the only man she had ever known, esteemed,

and loved, from one who had never caused her the slightest unhappiness,

she was no longer conscious of her womanhood; all things were as nothing

to her; she no longer even thought of her dress. Nothing was ever more

simply done or more complete than this laying down of conjugal happiness

and personal charm. Some human beings obtain through love the power

of transferring their self--their I--to the being of another; and when

death takes that other, no life of their own is possible for them.

Agathe, who now lived only for her children, was infinitely sad at the

thought of the privations this financial ruin would bring upon them.

From the time of her removal to the rue Mazarin a shade of melancholy

came upon her face, which made it very touching. She hoped a little in

the Emperor; but the Emperor at that time could do no more than he was

already doing; he was giving three hundred francs a year to each child

from his privy purse, besides the scholarships.

As for the brilliant Descoings, she occupied an _appartement_ on the

second floor similar to that of her niece above her. She had made

Madame Bridau an assignment of three thousand francs out of her annuity.

Roguin, the notary, attended to this in Madame Bridau’s interest; but it

would take seven years of such slow repayment to make good the loss.

The Descoings, thus reduced to an income of twelve hundred francs,

lived with her niece in a small way. These excellent but timid creatures

employed a woman-of-all-work for the morning hours only. Madame

Descoings, who liked to cook, prepared the dinner. In the evenings a few

old friends, persons employed at the ministry who owed their places to

Bridau, came for a game of cards with the two widows. Madame Descoings

still cherished her trey, which she declared was obstinate about turning

up. She expected, by one grand stroke, to repay the enforced loan she

had made upon her niece. She was fonder of the little Bridaus than she

was of her grandson Bixiou,--partly from a sense of the wrong she had

done them, partly because she felt the kindness of her niece, who, under

her worst deprivations, never uttered a word of reproach. So Philippe

and Joseph were cossetted, and the old gambler in the Imperial Lottery

of France (like others who have a vice or a weakness to atone for)

cooked them nice little dinners with plenty of sweets. Later on,

Philippe and Joseph could extract from her pocket, with the utmost

facility, small sums of money, which the younger used for pencils,

paper, charcoal and prints, the elder to buy tennis-shoes, marbles,

twine, and pocket-knives. Madame Descoings’s passion forced her to be

content with fifty francs a month for her domestic expenses, so as to

gamble with the rest.

On the other hand, Madame Bridau, motherly love, kept her expenses down

to the same sum. By way of penance for her former over-confidence, she

heroically cut off her own little enjoyments. As with other timid souls

of limited intelligence, one shock to her feelings rousing her distrust

led her to exaggerate a defect in her character until it assumed the

consistency of a virtue. The Emperor, she said to herself, might forget

them; he might die in battle; her pension, at any rate, ceased with her

life. She shuddered at the risk her children ran of being left alone in

the world without means. Quite incapable of understanding Roguin when he

explained to her that in seven years Madame Descoings’s assignment

would replace the money she had sold out of the Funds, she persisted in

trusting neither the notary nor her aunt, nor even the government; she

believed in nothing but herself and the privations she was practising.

By laying aside three thousand francs every year from her pension, she

would have thirty thousand francs at the end of ten years; which would

give fifteen hundred a year to her children. At thirty-six, she might

expect to live twenty years longer; and if she kept to the same system

of economy she might leave to each child enough for the bare necessaries

of life.

Thus the two widows passed from hollow opulence to voluntary

poverty,--one under the pressure of a vice, the other through the

promptings of the purest virtue. None of these petty details are useless

in teaching the lesson which ought to be learned from this present

history, drawn as it is from the most commonplace interests of life, but

whose bearings are, it may be, only the more widespread. The view from

the windows into the student dens; the tumult of the rapins below; the

necessity of looking up at the sky to escape the miserable sights of the

damp angle of the street; the presence of that portrait, full of soul

and grandeur despite the workmanship of an amateur painter; the sight of

the rich colors, now old and harmonious, in that calm and placid home;

the preference of the mother for her eldest child; her opposition to

the tastes of the younger; in short, the whole body of facts and

circumstances which make the preamble of this history are perhaps the

generating causes to which we owe Joseph Bridau, one of the greatest

painters of the modern French school of art.

Philippe, the elder of the two sons, was strikingly like his mother.

Though a blond lad, with blue eyes, he had the daring look which is

readily taken for intrepidity and courage. Old Claparon, who entered the

ministry of the interior at the same time as Bridau, and was one of the

faithful friends who played whist every night with the two widows, used

to say of Philippe two or three times a month, giving him a tap on the

cheek, “Here’s a young rascal who’ll stand to his guns!” The boy, thus

stimulated, naturally and out of bravado, assumed a resolute manner.

That turn once given to his character, he became very adroit at all

bodily exercises; his fights at the Lyceum taught him the endurance and

contempt for pain which lays the foundation of military valor. He also

acquired, very naturally, a distaste for study; public education being

unable to solve the difficult problem of developing “pari passu” the

body and the mind.

Agathe believed that the purely physical resemblance which Philippe bore

to her carried with it a moral likeness; and she confidently expected

him to show at a future day her own delicacy of feeling, heightened by

the vigor of manhood. Philippe was fifteen years old when his mother

moved into the melancholy _appartement_ in the rue Mazarin; and the

winning ways of a lad of that age went far to confirm the maternal

beliefs. Joseph, three years younger, was like his father, but only on

the defective side. In the first place, his thick black hair was always

in disorder, no matter what pains were taken with it; while Philippe’s,

notwithstanding his vivacity, was invariably neat. Then, by some

mysterious fatality, Joseph could not keep his clothes clean; dress him

in new clothes, and he immediately made them look like old ones. The

elder, on the other hand, took care of his things out of mere vanity.

Unconsciously, the mother acquired a habit of scolding Joseph and

holding up his brother as an example to him. Agathe did not treat the

two children alike; when she went to fetch them from school, the thought

in her mind as to Joseph always was, “What sort of state shall I

find him in?” These trifles drove her heart into the gulf of maternal

preference.

No one among the very ordinary persons who made the society of the two

widows--neither old Du Bruel nor old Claparon, nor Desroches the father,

nor even the Abbe Loraux, Agathe’s confessor--noticed Joseph’s faculty

for observation. Absorbed in the line of his own tastes, the future

colorist paid no attention to anything that concerned himself. During

his childhood this disposition was so like torpor that his father grew

uneasy about him. The remarkable size of the head and the width of the

brow roused a fear that the child might be liable to water on the brain.

His distressful face, whose originality was thought ugliness by those

who had no eye for the moral value of a countenance, wore rather a

sullen expression during his childhood. The features, which developed

later in life, were pinched, and the close attention the child paid to

what went on about him still further contracted them. Philippe flattered

his mother’s vanity, but Joseph won no compliments. Philippe sparkled

with the clever sayings and lively answers that lead parents to believe

their boys will turn out remarkable men; Joseph was taciturn, and a

dreamer. The mother hoped great things of Philippe, and expected nothing

of Joseph.

Joseph’s predilection for art was developed by a very commonplace

incident. During the Easter holidays of 1812, as he was coming home from

a walk in the Tuileries with his brother and Madame Descoings, he saw

a pupil drawing a caricature of some professor on the wall of the

Institute, and stopped short with admiration at the charcoal sketch,

which was full of satire. The next day the child stood at the window

watching the pupils as they entered the building by the door on the

rue Mazarin; then he ran downstairs and slipped furtively into the

long courtyard of the Institute, full of statues, busts, half-finished

marbles, plasters, and baked clays; at all of which he gazed feverishly,

for his instinct was awakened, and his vocation stirred within him. He

entered a room on the ground-floor, the door of which was half open; and

there he saw a dozen young men drawing from a statue, who at once began

to make fun of him.

“Hi! little one,” cried the first to see him, taking the crumbs of his

bread and scattering them at the child.

“Whose child is he?”

“Goodness, how ugly!”

For a quarter of an hour Joseph stood still and bore the brunt of

much teasing in the atelier of the great sculptor, Chaudet. But after

laughing at him for a time, the pupils were struck with his persistency

and with the expression of his face. They asked him what he wanted.

Joseph answered that he wished to know how to draw; thereupon they all

encouraged him. Won by such friendliness, the child told them he was

Madame Bridau’s son.

“Oh! if you are Madame Bridau’s son,” they cried, from all parts of the

room, “you will certainly be a great man. Long live the son of Madame

Bridau! Is your mother pretty? If you are a sample of her, she must be

stylish!”

“Ha! you want to be an artist?” said the eldest pupil, coming up to

Joseph, “but don’t you know that that requires pluck; you’ll have to

bear all sorts of trials,--yes, trials,--enough to break your legs and

arms and soul and body. All the fellows you see here have gone through

regular ordeals. That one, for instance, he went seven days without

eating! Let me see, now, if you can be an artist.”

He took one of the child’s arms and stretched it straight up in the air;

then he placed the other arm as if Joseph were in the act of delivering

a blow with his fist.

“Now that’s what we call the telegraph trial,” said the pupil. “If you

can stand like that, without lowering or changing the position of your

arms for a quarter of an hour, then you’ll have proved yourself a plucky

one.”

“Courage, little one, courage!” cried all the rest. “You must suffer if

you want to be an artist.”

Joseph, with the good faith of his thirteen years, stood motionless for

five minutes, all the pupils gazing solemnly at him.

“There! you are moving,” cried one.

“Steady, steady, confound you!” cried another.

“The Emperor Napoleon stood a whole month as you see him there,” said a

third, pointing to the fine statue by Chaudet, which was in the room.

That statue, which represents the Emperor standing with the Imperial

sceptre in his hand, was torn down in 1814 from the column it surmounted

so well.

At the end of ten minutes the sweat stood in drops on Joseph’s forehead.

At that moment a bald-headed little man, pale and sickly in appearance,

entered the atelier, where respectful silence reigned at once.

“What you are about, you urchins?” he exclaimed, as he looked at the

youthful martyr.

“That is a good little fellow, who is posing,” said the tall pupil who

had placed Joseph.

“Are you not ashamed to torture a poor child in that way?” said Chaudet,

lowering Joseph’s arms. “How long have you been standing there?” he

asked the boy, giving him a friendly little pat on the cheek.

“A quarter of an hour.”

“What brought you here?”

“I want to be an artist.”

“Where do you belong? where do you come from?”

“From mamma’s house.”

“Oh! mamma!” cried the pupils.

“Silence at the easels!” cried Chaudet. “Who is your mamma?”

“She is Madame Bridau. My papa, who is dead, was a friend of the

Emperor; and if you will teach me to draw, the Emperor will pay all you

ask for it.”

“His father was head of a department at the ministry of the Interior,”

exclaimed Chaudet, struck by a recollection. “So you want to be an

artist, at your age?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Well, come here just as much as you like; we’ll amuse you. Give him a

board, and paper, and chalks, and let him alone. You are to know, you

young scamps, that his father did me a service. Here, Corde-a-puits,

go and get some cakes and sugar-plums,” he said to the pupil who had

tortured Joseph, giving him some small change. “We’ll see if you are to

be artist by the way you gobble up the dainties,” added the sculptor,

chucking Joseph under the chin.

Then he went round examining the pupils’ works, followed by the child,

who looked and listened, and tried to understand him. The sweets were

brought, Chaudet, himself, the child, and the whole studio all had

their teeth in them; and Joseph was petted quite as much as he had

been teased. The whole scene, in which the rough play and real heart of

artists were revealed, and which the boy instinctively understood, made

a great impression on his mind. The apparition of the sculptor,--for

whom the Emperor’s protection opened a way to future glory, closed soon

after by his premature death,--was like a vision to little Joseph. The

child said nothing to his mother about this adventure, but he spent two

hours every Sunday and every Thursday in Chaudet’s atelier. From

that time forth, Madame Descoings, who humored the fancies of the two

cherubim, kept Joseph supplied with pencils and red chalks, prints and

drawing-paper. At school, the future colorist sketched his masters,

drew his comrades, charcoaled the dormitories, and showed surprising

assiduity in the drawing-class. Lemire, the drawing-master, struck not

only with the lad’s inclination but also with his actual progress,

came to tell Madame Bridau of her son’s faculty. Agathe, like a

true provincial, who knows as little of art as she knows much of

housekeeping, was terrified. When Lemire left her, she burst into tears.

“Ah!” she cried, when Madame Descoings went to ask what was the matter.

“What is to become of me! Joseph, whom I meant to make a government

clerk, whose career was all marked out for him at the ministry of the

interior, where, protected by his father’s memory, he might have risen

to be chief of a division before he was twenty-five, he, my boy, he

wants to be a painter,--a vagabond! I always knew that child would give

me nothing but trouble.”

Madame Descoings confessed that for several months past she had

encouraged Joseph’s passion, aiding and abetting his Sunday and Thursday

visits to the Institute. At the Salon, to which she had taken him, the

little fellow had shown an interest in the pictures, which was, she

declared, nothing short of miraculous.

“If he understands painting at thirteen, my dear,” she said, “your

Joseph will be a man of genius.”

“Yes; and see what genius did for his father,--killed him with overwork

at forty!”

At the close of autumn, just as Joseph was entering his fourteenth year,

Agathe, contrary to Madame Descoings’s entreaties, went to see Chaudet,

and requested that he would cease to debauch her son. She found the

sculptor in a blue smock, modelling his last statue; he received the

widow of the man who formerly had served him at a critical moment,

rather roughly; but, already at death’s door, he was struggling

with passionate ardor to do in a few hours work he could hardly have

accomplished in several months. As Madame Bridau entered, he had just

found an effect long sought for, and was handling his tools and clay

with spasmodic jerks and movements that seemed to the ignorant Agathe

like those of a maniac. At any other time Chaudet would have laughed;

but now, as he heard the mother bewailing the destiny he had opened to

her child, abusing art, and insisting that Joseph should no longer be

allowed to enter the atelier, he burst into a holy wrath.

“I was under obligations to your deceased husband, I wished to help his

son, to watch his first steps in the noblest of all careers,” he cried.

“Yes, madame, learn, if you do not know it, that a great artist is a

king, and more than a king; he is happier, he is independent, he lives

as he likes, he reigns in the world of fancy. Your son has a glorious

future before him. Faculties like his are rare; they are only disclosed

at his age in such beings as the Giottos, Raphaels, Titians, Rubens,

Murillos,--for, in my opinion, he will make a better painter than

sculptor. God of heaven! if I had such a son, I should be as happy as

the Emperor is to have given himself the King of Rome. Well, you are

mistress of your child’s fate. Go your own way, madame; make him a fool,

a miserable quill-driver, tie him to a desk, and you’ve murdered him!

But I hope, in spite if all your efforts, that he will stay an artist. A

true vocation is stronger than all the obstacles that can be opposed to

it. Vocation! why the very word means a call; ay, the election of God

himself! You will make your child unhappy, that’s all.” He flung the

clay he no longer needed violently into a tub, and said to his model,

“That will do for to-day.”

Agathe raised her eyes and saw, in a corner of the atelier where her

glance had not before penetrated, a nude woman sitting on a stool, the

sight of whom drove her away horrified.

“You are not to have the little Bridau here any more,” said Chaudet to

his pupils, “it annoys his mother.”

“Eugh!” they all cried, as Agathe closed the door.

No sooner did the students of sculpture and painting find out that

Madame Bridau did not wish her son to be an artist, than their whole

happiness centred on getting Joseph among them. In spite of a promise

not to go to the Institute which his mother exacted from him, the

child often slipped into Regnauld the painter’s studio, where he was

encouraged to daub canvas. When the widow complained that the bargain

was not kept, Chaudet’s pupils assured her that Regnauld was not

Chaudet, and they hadn’t the bringing up of her son, with other

impertinences; and the atrocious young scamps composed a song with a

hundred and thirty-seven couplets on Madame Bridau.

On the evening of that sad day Agathe refused to play at cards, and sat

on her sofa plunged in such grief that the tears stood in her handsome

eyes.

“What is the matter, Madame Bridau?” asked old Claparon.

“She thinks her boy will have to beg his bread because he has got the

bump of painting,” said Madame Descoings; “but, for my part, I am not

the least uneasy about the future of my step-son, little Bixiou, who has

a passion for drawing. Men are born to get on.”

“You are right,” said the hard and severe Desroches, who, in spite of

his talents, had never himself got on in the position of assistant-head

of a department. “Happily I have only one son; otherwise, with my

eighteen hundred francs a year, and a wife who makes barely twelve

hundred out of her stamped-paper office, I don’t know what would become

of me. I have just placed my boy as under-clerk to a lawyer; he gets

twenty-five francs a month and his breakfast. I give him as much more,

and he dines and sleeps at home. That’s all he gets; he must manage for

himself, but he’ll make his way. I keep the fellow harder at work than

if he were at school, and some day he will be a barrister. When I give

him money to go to the theatre, he is as happy as a king and kisses me.

Oh, I keep a tight hand on him, and he renders me an account of all he

spends. You are too good to your children, Madame Bridau; if your son

wants to go through hardships and privations, let him; they’ll make a

man of him.”

“As for my boy,” said Du Bruel, a former chief of a division, who had

just retired on a pension, “he is only sixteen; his mother dotes on him;

but I shouldn’t listen to his choosing a profession at his age,--a mere

fancy, a notion that may pass off. In my opinion, boys should be guided

and controlled.”

“Ah, monsieur! you are rich, you are a man, and you have but one son,”

said Agathe.

“Faith!” said Claparon, “children do tyrannize over us--over our hearts,

I mean. Mine makes me furious; he has nearly ruined me, and now I won’t

have anything to do with him--it’s a sort of independence. Well, he is

the happier for it, and so am I. That fellow was partly the cause of

his mother’s death. He chose to be a commercial traveller; and the trade

just suited him, for he was no sooner in the house than he wanted to

be out of it; he couldn’t keep in one place, and he wouldn’t learn

anything. All I ask of God is that I may die before he dishonors my

name. Those who have no children lose many pleasures, but they escape

great sufferings.”

“And these men are fathers!” thought Agathe, weeping anew.

“What I am trying to show you, my dear Madame Bridau, is that you had

better let your boy be a painter; if not, you will only waste your

time.”

“If you were able to coerce him,” said the sour Desroches, “I should

advise you to oppose his tastes; but weak as I see you are, you had

better let him daub if he likes.”

“Console yourself, Agathe,” said Madame Descoings, “Joseph will turn out

a great man.”

After this discussion, which was like all discussions, the widow’s

friends united in giving her one and the same advice; which advice did

not in the least relieve her anxieties. They advised her to let Joseph

follow his bent.

“If he doesn’t turn out a genius,” said Du Bruel, who always tried to

please Agathe, “you can then get him into some government office.”

When Madame Descoings accompanied the old clerks to the door she assured

them, at the head of the stairs, that they were “Grecian sages.”

“Madame Bridau ought to be glad her son is willing to do anything,” said

Claparon.

“Besides,” said Desroches, “if God preserves the Emperor, Joseph will

always be looked after. Why should she worry?”

“She is timid about everything that concerns her children,” answered

Madame Descoings. “Well, my good girl,” she said, returning to Agathe,

“you see they are unanimous; why are you still crying?”

“If it was Philippe, I should have no anxiety. But you don’t know what

goes on in that atelier; they have naked women!”

“I hope they keep good fires,” said Madame Descoings.

A few days after this, the disasters of the retreat from Moscow became

known. Napoleon returned to Paris to organize fresh troops, and to ask

further sacrifices from the country. The poor mother was then plunged

into very different anxieties. Philippe, who was tired of school, wanted

to serve under the Emperor; he saw a review at the Tuileries,--the

last Napoleon ever held,--and he became infatuated with the idea of a

soldier’s life. In those days military splendor, the show of uniforms,

the authority of epaulets, offered irresistible seductions to a certain

style of youth. Philippe thought he had the same vocation for the army

that his brother Joseph showed for art. Without his mother’s knowledge,

he wrote a petition to the Emperor, which read as follows:--

Sire,--I am the son of your Bridau; eighteen years of age, five

feet six inches; I have good legs, a good constitution, and wish

to be one of your soldiers. I ask you to let me enter the army,

etc.

Within twenty-four hours, the Emperor had sent Philippe to the Imperial

Lyceum at Saint-Cyr, and six months later, in November, 1813, he

appointed him sub-lieutenant in a regiment of cavalry. Philippe spent

the greater part of that winter in cantonments, but as soon as he knew

how to ride a horse he was dispatched to the front, and went eagerly.

During the campaign in France he was made a lieutenant, after an affair

at the outposts where his bravery had saved his colonel’s life. The

Emperor named him captain at the battle of La Fere-Champenoise, and took

him on his staff. Inspired by such promotion, Philippe won the cross at

Montereau. He witnessed Napoleon’s farewell at Fontainebleau, raved at

the sight, and refused to serve the Bourbons. When he returned to his

mother, in July, 1814, he found her ruined.

Joseph’s scholarship was withdrawn after the holidays, and Madame

Bridau, whose pension came from the Emperor’s privy purse, vainly

entreated that it might be inscribed on the rolls of the ministry of the

interior. Joseph, more of a painter than ever, was delighted with the

turn of events, and entreated his mother to let him go to Monsieur

Regnauld, promising to earn his own living. He declared he was quite

sufficiently advanced in the second class to get on without rhetoric.

Philippe, a captain at nineteen and decorated, who had, moreover, served

the Emperor as an aide-de-camp in two battles, flattered the mother’s

vanity immensely. Coarse, blustering, and without real merit beyond the

vulgar bravery of a cavalry officer, he was to her mind a man of genius;

whereas Joseph, puny and sickly, with unkempt hair and absent mind,

seeking peace, loving quiet, and dreaming of an artist’s glory, would

only bring her, she thought, worries and anxieties.

The winter of 1814-1815 was a lucky one for Joseph. Secretly encouraged

by Madame Descoings and Bixiou, a pupil of Gros, he went to work in

the celebrated atelier of that painter, whence a vast variety of

talent issued in its day, and there he formed the closest intimacy with

Schinner. The return from Elba came; Captain Bridau joined the Emperor

at Lyons, accompanied him to the Tuileries, and was appointed to the

command of a squadron in the dragoons of the Guard. After the battle of

Waterloo--in which he was slightly wounded, and where he won the cross

of an officer of the Legion of honor--he happened to be near Marshal

Davoust at Saint-Denis, and was not with the army of the Loire. In

consequence of this, and through Davoust’s intercession, his cross and

his rank were secured to him, but he was placed on half-pay.

Joseph, anxious about his future, studied all through this period

with an ardor which several times made him ill in the midst of these

tumultuous events.

“It is the smell of the paints,” Agathe said to Madame Descoings. “He

ought to give up a business so injurious to his health.”

However, all Agathe’s anxieties were at this time for her son the

lieutenant-colonel. When she saw him again in 1816, reduced from the

salary of nine thousand francs (paid to a commander in the dragoons of

the Imperial Guard) to a half-pay of three hundred francs a month, she

fitted up her attic rooms for him, and spent her savings in doing so.

Philippe was one of the faithful Bonapartes of the cafe Lemblin, that

constitutional Boeotia; he acquired the habits, manners, style, and life

of a half-pay officer; indeed, like any other young man of twenty-one,

he exaggerated them, vowed in good earnest a mortal enmity to the

Bourbons, never reported himself at the War department, and even refused

opportunities which were offered to him for employment in the infantry

with his rank of lieutenant-colonel. In his mother’s eyes, Philippe

seemed in all this to be displaying a noble character.

“The father himself could have done no more,” she said.

Philippe’s half-pay sufficed him; he cost nothing at home, whereas

all Joseph’s expenses were paid by the two widows. From that moment,

Agathe’s preference for Philippe was openly shown. Up to that time it

had been secret; but the persecution of this faithful servant of the

Emperor, the recollection of the wound received by her cherished son,

his courage in adversity, which, voluntary though it were, seemed to

her a glorious adversity, drew forth all Agathe’s tenderness. The one

sentence, “He is unfortunate,” explained and justified everything.

Joseph himself,--with the innate simplicity which superabounds in the

artist-soul in its opening years, and who was, moreover, brought up to

admire his big brother,--so far from being hurt by the preference of

their mother, encouraged it by sharing her worship of the hero who

had carried Napoleon’s orders on two battlefields, and was wounded at

Waterloo. How could he doubt the superiority of the grand brother,

whom he had beheld in the green and gold uniform of the dragoons of the

Guard, commanding his squadron on the Champ de Mars?

Agathe, notwithstanding this preference, was an excellent mother. She

loved Joseph, though not blindly; she simply was unable to understand

him. Joseph adored his mother; Philippe let his mother adore him.

Towards her, the dragoon softened his military brutality; but he never

concealed the contempt he felt for Joseph,--expressing it, however, in

a friendly way. When he looked at his brother, weak and sickly as he

was at seventeen years of age, shrunken with determined toil, and

over-weighted with his powerful head, he nicknamed him “Cub.” Philippe’s

patronizing manners would have wounded any one less carelessly

indifferent than the artist, who had, moreover, a firm belief in the

goodness of heart which soldiers hid, he thought, beneath a brutal

exterior. Joseph did not yet know, poor boy, that soldiers of genius are

as gentle and courteous in manner as other superior men in any walk of

life. All genius is alike, wherever found.

“Poor boy!” said Philippe to his mother, “we mustn’t plague him; let him

do as he likes.”

To his mother’s eyes the colonel’s contempt was a mark of fraternal

affection.

“Philippe will always love and protect his brother,” she thought to

herself.

CHAPTER III

In 1816, Joseph obtained his mother’s permission to convert the garret

which adjoined his attic room into an atelier, and Madame Descoings gave

him a little money for the indispensable requirements of the painter’s

trade;--in the minds of the two widows, the art of painting was nothing

but a trade. With the feeling and ardor of his vocation, the lad himself

arranged his humble atelier. Madame Descoings persuaded the owner of the

house to put a skylight in the roof. The garret was turned into a vast

hall painted in chocolate-color by Joseph himself. On the walls he hung

a few sketches. Agathe contributed, not without reluctance, an iron

stove; so that her son might be able to work at home, without, however,

abandoning the studio of Gros, nor that of Schinner.

The constitutional party, supported chiefly by officers on half-pay

and the Bonapartists, were at this time inciting “emeutes” around the

Chamber of Deputies, on behalf of the Charter, though no one actually

wanted it. Several conspiracies were brewing. Philippe, who dabbled

in them, was arrested, and then released for want of proof; but the

minister of war cut short his half-pay by putting him on the active

list,--a step which might be called a form of discipline. France was no

longer safe; Philippe was liable to fall into some trap laid for him by

spies,--provocative agents, as they were called, being much talked of in

those days.

While Philippe played billiards in disaffected cafes, losing his time

and acquiring the habit of wetting his whistle with “little glasses” of

all sorts of liquors. Agathe lived in mortal terror for the safety of

the great man of the family. The Grecian sages were too much accustomed

to wend their nightly way up Madame Bridau’s staircase, finding the two

widows ready and waiting, and hearing from them all the news of their

day, ever to break up the habit of coming to the green salon for their

game of cards. The ministry of the interior, though purged of its former

_employes_ in 1816, had retained Claparon, one of those cautious men,

who whisper the news of the “Moniteur,” adding invariably, “Don’t quote

me.” Desroches, who had retired from active service some time after old

Du Bruel, was still battling for his pension. The three friends, who

were witnesses of Agathe’s distress, advised her to send the colonel to

travel in foreign countries.

“They talk about conspiracies, and your son, with his disposition,

will be certain to fall a victim in some of them; there is plenty of

treachery in these days.”

“Philippe is cut from the wood the Emperor made into marshals,” said

Du Bruel, in a low voice, looking cautiously about him; “and he mustn’t

give up his profession. Let him serve in the East, in India--”

“Think of his health,” said Agathe.

“Why doesn’t he get some place, or business?” said old Desroches; “there

are plenty of private offices to be had. I am going as head of a bureau

in an insurance company, as soon as I have got my pension.”

“Philippe is a soldier; he would not like to be any thing else,” said

the warlike Agathe.

“Then he ought to have the sense to ask for employment--”

“And serve _these others_!” cried the widow. “Oh! I will never give him

that advice.”

“You are wrong,” said Du Bruel. “My son has just got an appointment

through the Duc de Navarreins. The Bourbons are very good to those

who are sincere in rallying to them. Your son could be appointed

lieutenant-colonel to a regiment.”

“They only appoint nobles in the cavalry. Philippe would never rise to

be a colonel,” said Madame Descoings.

Agathe, much alarmed, entreated Philippe to travel abroad, and put

himself at the service of some foreign power who, she thought, would

gladly welcome a staff officer of the Emperor.

“Serve a foreign nation!” cried Philippe, with horror.

Agathe kissed her son with enthusiasm.

“His father all over!” she exclaimed.

“He is right,” said Joseph. “France is too proud of her heroes to let

them be heroic elsewhere. Napoleon may return once more.”

However, to satisfy his mother, Philippe took up the dazzling idea of

joining General Lallemand in the United States, and helping him to found

what was called the Champ d’Asile, one of the most disastrous swindles

that ever appeared under the name of national subscription. Agathe gave

ten thousand francs to start her son, and she went to Havre to see him

off. By the end of 1817, she had accustomed herself to live on the six

hundred francs a year which remained to her from her property in the

Funds; then, by a lucky chance, she made a good investment of the ten

thousand francs she still kept of her savings, from which she obtained

an interest of seven per cent. Joseph wished to emulate his mother’s

devotion. He dressed like a bailiff; wore the commonest shoes and blue

stockings; denied himself gloves, and burned charcoal; he lived on bread

and milk and Brie cheese. The poor lad got no sympathy, except from

Madame Descoings, and from Bixiou, his student-friend and comrade, who

was then making those admirable caricatures of his, and filling a small

office in the ministry.

“With what joy I welcomed the summer of 1818!” said Joseph Bridau

in after-years, relating his troubles; “the sun saved me the cost of

charcoal.”

As good a colorist by this time as Gros himself, Joseph now went to his

master for consultation only. He was already meditating a tilt against

classical traditions, and Grecian conventionalities, in short, against

the leading-strings which held down an art to which Nature _as she is_

belongs, in the omnipotence of her creations and her imagery. Joseph

made ready for a struggle which, from the day when he first exhibited in

the Salon, has never ceased. It was a terrible year. Roguin, the notary

of Madame Descoings and Madame Bridau, absconded with the moneys held

back for seven years from Madame Descoings’s annuity, which by that

time were producing two thousand francs a year. Three days after this

disaster, a bill of exchange for a thousand francs, drawn by Philippe

upon his mother, arrived from New York. The poor fellow, misled like

so many others, had lost his all in the Champ d’Asile. A letter, which

accompanied the bill, drove Agathe, Joseph, and the Descoings to

tears, and told of debts contracted in New York, where his comrades in

misfortunes had indorsed for him.

“It was I who made him go!” cried the poor mother, eager to divert the

blame from Philippe.

“I advise you not to send him on many such journeys,” said the old

Descoings to her niece.

Madame Descoings was heroic. She continued to give the three thousand

francs a year to Madame Bridau, but she still paid the dues on her trey

which had never turned up since the year 1799. About this time, she

began to doubt the honesty of the government, and declared it was

capable of keeping the three numbers in the urn, so as to excite the

shareholders to put in enormous stakes. After a rapid survey of all

their resources, it seemed to the two women impossible to raise the

thousand francs without selling out the little that remained in the

Funds. They talked of pawning their silver and part of the linen,

and even the needless pieces of furniture. Joseph, alarmed at these

suggestions, went to see Gerard and told him their circumstances. The

great painter obtained an order from the household of the king for

two copies of a portrait of Louis XVIII., at five hundred francs

each. Though not naturally generous, Gros took his pupil to an

artist-furnishing house and fitted him out with the necessary materials.

But the thousand francs could not be had till the copies were delivered,

so Joseph painted four panels in ten days, sold them to the dealers and

brought his mother the thousand francs with which to meet the bill of

exchange when it fell due. Eight days later, came a letter from the

colonel, informing his mother that he was about to return to France

on board a packet from New York, whose captain had trusted him for

the passage-money. Philippe announced that he should need at least a

thousand francs on his arrival at Havre.

“Good,” said Joseph to his mother, “I shall have finished my copies by

that time, and you can carry him the money.”

“Dear Joseph!” cried Agathe in tears, kissing her son, “God will bless

you. You do love him, then, poor persecuted fellow? He is indeed our

glory and our hope for the future. So young, so brave, so unfortunate!

everything is against him; we three must always stand by him.”

“You see now that painting is good for something,” cried Joseph,

overjoyed to have won his mother’s permission to be a great artist.

Madame Bridau rushed to meet her beloved son, Colonel Philippe, at

Havre. Once there, she walked every day beyond the round tower built by

Francois I., to look out for the American packet, enduring the keenest

anxieties. Mothers alone know how such sufferings quicken maternal love.

The vessel arrived on a fine morning in October, 1819, without delay,

and having met with no mishap. The sight of a mother and the air of

one’s native land produces a certain affect on the coarsest nature,

especially after the miseries of a sea-voyage. Philippe gave way to a

rush of feeling, which made Agathe think to herself, “Ah! how he loves

me!” Alas, the hero loved but one person in the world, and that person

was Colonel Philippe. His misfortunes in Texas, his stay in New York,--a

place where speculation and individualism are carried to the highest

pitch, where the brutality of self-interest attains to cynicism, where

man, essentially isolated, is compelled to push his way for himself and

by himself, where politeness does not exist,--in fact, even the minor

events of Philippe’s journey had developed in him the worst traits of an

old campaigner: he had grown brutal, selfish, rude; he drank and smoked

to excess; physical hardships and poverty had depraved him. Moreover,

he considered himself persecuted; and the effect of that idea is to

make persons who are unintelligent persecutors and bigots themselves. To

Philippe’s conception of life, the universe began at his head and ended

at his feet, and the sun shone for him alone. The things he had seen

in New York, interpreted by his practical nature, carried away his last

scruples on the score of morality. For such beings, there are but two

ways of existence. Either they believe, or they do not believe; they

have the virtues of honest men, or they give themselves up to the

demands of necessity; in which case they proceed to turn their slightest

interests and each passing impulse of their passions into necessities.

Such a system of life carries a man a long way. It was only in

appearance that Colonel Philippe retained the frankness, plain-dealing,

and easy-going freedom of a soldier. This made him, in reality, very

dangerous; he seemed as guileless as a child, but, thinking only of

himself, he never did anything without reflecting what he had better

do,--like a wily lawyer planning some trick “a la Maitre Gonin”; words

cost him nothing, and he said as many as he could to get people to

believe. If, unfortunately, some one refused to accept the explanations

with which he justified the contradictions between his conduct and his

professions, the colonel, who was a good shot and could defy the most

adroit fencing-master, and possessed the coolness of one to whom life is

indifferent, was quite ready to demand satisfaction for the first sharp

word; and when a man shows himself prepared for violence there is little

more to be said. His imposing stature had taken on a certain rotundity,

his face was bronzed from exposure in Texas, he was still succinct in

speech, and had acquired the decisive tone of a man obliged to make

himself feared among the populations of a new world. Thus developed,

plainly dressed, his body trained to endurance by his recent hardships,

Philippe in the eyes of his mother was a hero; in point of fact, he had

simply become what people (not to mince matters) call a blackguard.

Shocked at the destitution of her cherished son, Madame Bridau bought

him a complete outfit of clothes at Havre. After listening to the tale

of his woes, she had not the heart to stop his drinking and eating and

amusing himself as a man just returned from the Champ d’Asile was

likely to eat and drink and divert himself. It was certainly a fine

conception,--that of conquering Texas with the remains of the imperial

army. The failure was less in the idea than in the men who conceived

it; for Texas is to-day a republic, with a future full of promise. This

scheme of Liberalism under the Restoration distinctly proves that the

interests of the party were purely selfish and not national, seeking

power and nothing else. Neither men, nor occasion, nor cause,

nor devotion were lacking; only the money and the support of the

hypocritical party at home who dispensed enormous sums, but gave nothing

when it came to recovering empire. Household managers like Agathe have

a plain common-sense which enables them to perceive such political

chicane: the poor woman saw the truth through the lines of her son’s

tale; for she had read, in the exile’s interests, all the pompous

editorials of the constitutional journals, and watched the management

of the famous subscription, which produced barely one hundred and fifty

thousand francs when it ought to have yielded five or six millions. The

Liberal leaders soon found out that they were playing into the hands of

Louis XVIII. by exporting the glorious remnants of our grand army, and

they promptly abandoned to their fate the most devoted, the most ardent,

the most enthusiastic of its heroes,--those, in short, who had gone in

the advance. Agathe was never able, however, to make her son see that

he was more duped than persecuted. With blind belief in her idol, she

supposed herself ignorant, and deplored, as Philippe did, the evil times

which had done him such wrong. Up to this time he was, to her mind,

throughout his misfortunes, less faulty than victimized by his noble

nature, his energy, the fall of the Emperor, the duplicity of the

Liberals, and the rancor of the Bourbons against the Bonapartists.

During the week at Havre, a week which was horribly costly, she dared

not ask him to make terms with the royal government and apply to the

minister of war. She had hard work to get him away from Havre, where

living is very expensive, and to bring him back to Paris before her

money gave out. Madame Descoings and Joseph, who were awaiting their

arrival in the courtyard of the coach-office of the Messageries Royales,

were struck with the change in Agathe’s face.

“Your mother has aged ten years in two months,” whispered the Descoings

to Joseph, as they all embraced, and the two trunks were being handed

down.

“How do you do, mere Descoings?” was the cool greeting the colonel

bestowed on the old woman whom Joseph was in the habit of calling “maman

Descoings.”

“I have no money to pay for a hackney-coach,” said Agathe, in a sad

voice.

“I have,” replied the young painter. “What a splendid color Philippe has

turned!” he cried, looking at his brother.

“Yes, I’ve browned like a pipe,” said Philippe. “But as for you, you’re

not a bit changed, little man.”

Joseph, who was now twenty-one, and much thought of by the friends who

had stood by him in his days of trial, felt his own strength and was

aware of his talent; he represented the art of painting in a circle of

young men whose lives were devoted to science, letters, politics, and

philosophy. Consequently, he was wounded by his brother’s contempt,

which Philippe still further emphasized with a gesture, pulling his ears

as if he were still a child. Agathe noticed the coolness which succeeded

the first glow of tenderness on the part of Joseph and Madame Descoings;

but she hastened to tell them of Philippe’s sufferings in exile, and so

lessened it. Madame Descoings, wishing to make a festival of the return

of the prodigal, as she called him under her breath, had prepared one

of her good dinners, to which old Claparon and the elder Desroches

were invited. All the family friends were to come, and did come, in the

evening. Joseph had invited Leon Giraud, d’Arthez, Michel Chrestien,

Fulgence Ridal, and Horace Bianchon, his friends of the fraternity.

Madame Descoings had promised Bixiou, her so-called step-son, that the

young people should play at ecarte. Desroches the younger, who had now

taken, under his father’s stern rule, his degree at law, was also of

the party. Du Bruel, Claparon, Desroches, and the Abbe Loraux carefully

observed the returned exile, whose manners and coarse features, and

voice roughened by the abuse of liquors, together with his vulgar glance

and phraseology, alarmed them not a little. While Joseph was placing the

card-tables, the more intimate of the family friends surrounded Agathe

and asked,--

“What do you intend to make of Philippe?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, “but he is determined not to serve the

Bourbons.”

“Then it will be very difficult for you to find him a place in France.

If he won’t re-enter the army, he can’t be readily got into government

employ,” said old Du Bruel. “And you have only to listen to him to see

he could never, like my son, make his fortune by writing plays.”

The motion of Agathe’s eyes, with which alone she replied to this

speech, showed how anxious Philippe’s future made her; they all kept

silence. The exile himself, Bixiou, and the younger Desroches were

playing at ecarte, a game which was then the rage.

“Maman Descoings, my brother has no money to play with,” whispered

Joseph in the good woman’s ear.

The devotee of the Royal Lottery fetched twenty francs and gave them to

the artist, who slipped them secretly into his brother’s hand. All the

company were now assembled. There were two tables of boston; and the

party grew lively. Philippe proved a bad player: after winning for

awhile, he began to lose; and by eleven o’clock he owed fifty francs to

young Desroches and to Bixiou. The racket and the disputes at the ecarte

table resounded more than once in the ears of the more peaceful boston

players, who were watching Philippe surreptitiously. The exile showed

such signs of bad temper that in his final dispute with the younger

Desroches, who was none too amiable himself, the elder Desroches joined

in, and though his son was decidedly in the right, he declared he was

in the wrong, and forbade him to play any more. Madame Descoings did the

same with her grandson, who was beginning to let fly certain witticisms;

and although Philippe, so far, had not understood him, there was always

a chance that one of the barbed arrows might piece the colonel’s thick

skull and put the sharp jester in peril.

“You must be tired,” whispered Agathe in Philippe’s ear; “come to bed.”

“Travel educates youth,” said Bixiou, grinning, when Madame Bridau and

the colonel had disappeared.

Joseph, who got up at dawn and went to bed early, did not see the end of

the party. The next morning Agathe and Madame Descoings, while preparing

breakfast, could not help remarking that soires would be terribly

expensive if Philippe were to go on playing that sort of game, as the

Descoings phrased it. The worthy old woman, then seventy-six years of

age, proposed to sell her furniture, give up her _appartement_ on the

second floor (which the owner was only too glad to occupy), and take

Agathe’s parlor for her chamber, making the other room a sitting-room

and dining-room for the family. In this way they could save seven

hundred francs a year; which would enable them to give Philippe fifty

francs a month until he could find something to do. Agathe accepted the

sacrifice. When the colonel came down and his mother had asked how he

liked his little bedroom, the two widows explained to him the situation

of the family. Madame Descoings and Agathe possessed, by putting all

their resources together, an income of five thousand three hundred

francs, four thousand of which belonged to Madame Descoings and were

merely a life annuity. The Descoings made an allowance of six hundred

a year to Bixiou, whom she had acknowledged as her grandson during the

last few months, also six hundred to Joseph; the rest of her income,

together with that of Agathe, was spent for the household wants. All

their savings were by this time eaten up.

“Make yourselves easy,” said the lieutenant-colonel. “I’ll find a

situation and put you to no expense; all I need for the present is board

and lodging.”

Agathe kissed her son, and Madame Descoings slipped a hundred francs

into his hand to pay for his losses of the night before. In ten days

the furniture was sold, the _appartement_ given up, and the change in

Agathe’s domestic arrangements accomplished with a celerity seldom seen

outside of Paris. During those ten days, Philippe regularly decamped

after breakfast, came back for dinner, was off again for the evening,

and only got home about midnight to go to bed. He contracted certain

habits half mechanically, and they soon became rooted in him; he got his

boots blacked on the Pont Neuf for the two sous it would have cost

him to go by the Pont des Arts to the Palais-Royal, where he consumed

regularly two glasses of brandy while reading the newspapers,--an

occupation which employed him till midday; after that he sauntered along

the rue Vivienne to the cafe Minerve, where the Liberals congregated,

and where he played at billiards with a number of old comrades. While

winning and losing, Philippe swallowed four or five more glasses of

divers liquors, and smoked ten or a dozen cigars in going and coming,

and idling along the streets. In the evening, after consuming a

few pipes at the Hollandais smoking-rooms, he would go to some

gambling-place towards ten o’clock at night. The waiter handed him a

card and a pin; he always inquired of certain well-seasoned players

about the chances of the red or the black, and staked ten francs when

the lucky moment seemed to come; never playing more than three times,

win or lose. If he won, which usually happened, he drank a tumbler

of punch and went home to his garret; but by that time he talked of

smashing the ultras and the Bourbon body-guard, and trolled out, as he

mounted the staircase, “We watch to save the Empire!” His poor mother,

hearing him, used to think “How gay Philippe is to-night!” and then she

would creep up and kiss him, without complaining of the fetid odors of

the punch, and the brandy, and the pipes.

“You ought to be satisfied with me, my dear mother,” he said, towards

the end of January; “I lead the most regular of lives.”

The colonel had dined five times at a restaurant with some of his army

comrades. These old soldiers were quite frank with each other on the

state of their own affairs, all the while talking of certain hopes which

they based on the building of a submarine vessel, expected to bring

about the deliverance of the Emperor. Among these former comrades,

Philippe particularly liked an old captain of the dragoons of the Guard,

named Giroudeau, in whose company he had seen his first service. This

friendship with the late dragoon led Philippe into completing what

Rabelais called “the devil’s equipage”; and he added to his drams, and

his tobacco, and his play, a “fourth wheel.”

One evening at the beginning of February, Giroudeau took Philippe after

dinner to the Gaite, occupying a free box sent to a theatrical journal

belonging to his nephew Finot, in whose office Giroudeau was cashier

and secretary. Both were dressed after the fashion of the Bonapartist

officers who now belonged to the Constitutional Opposition; they wore

ample overcoats with square collars, buttoned to the chin and coming

down to their heels, and decorated with the rosette of the Legion of

honor; and they carried malacca canes with loaded knobs, which they held

by strings of braided leather. The late troopers had just (to use one of

their own expressions) “made a bout of it,” and were mutually unbosoming

their hearts as they entered the box. Through the fumes of a certain

number of bottles and various glasses of various liquors, Giroudeau

pointed out to Philippe a plump and agile little ballet-girl whom he

called Florentine, whose good graces and affection, together with the

box, belonged to him as the representative of an all-powerful journal.

“But,” said Philippe, “I should like to know how far her good graces go

for such an iron-gray old trooper as you.”

“Thank God,” replied Giroudeau, “I’ve stuck to the traditions of our

glorious uniform. I have never wasted a farthing upon a woman in my

life.”

“What’s that?” said Philippe, putting a finger on his left eye.

“That is so,” answered Giroudeau. “But, between ourselves, the newspaper

counts for a good deal. To-morrow, in a couple of lines, we shall advise

the managers to let Mademoiselle Florentine dance a particular step, and

so forth. Faith, my dear boy, I’m uncommonly lucky!”

“Well!” thought Philippe; “if this worthy Giroudeau, with a skull as

polished as my knee, forty-eight years, a big stomach, a face like a

ploughman, and a nose like a potato, can get a ballet-girl, I ought to

be the lover of the first actress in Paris. Where does one find such

luck?” he said aloud.

“I’ll show you Florentine’s place to-night. My Dulcinea only earns

fifty francs a month at the theatre,” added Giroudeau, “but she is very

prettily set up, thanks to an old silk dealer named Cardot, who gives

her five hundred francs a month.”

“Well, but--?” exclaimed the jealous Philippe.

“Bah!” said Giroudeau; “true love is blind.”

When the play was over Giroudeau took Philippe to Mademoiselle

Florentine’s _appartement_, which was close to the theatre, in the rue

de Crussol.

“We must behave ourselves,” said Giroudeau. “Florentine’s mother is

here. You see, I haven’t the means to pay for one, so the worthy woman

is really her own mother. She used to be a concierge, but she’s not

without intelligence. Call her Madame; she makes a point of it.”

Florentine happened that night to have a friend with her,--a certain

Marie Godeschal, beautiful as an angel, cold as a danseuse, and a

pupil of Vestris, who foretold for her a great choregraphic destiny.

Mademoiselle Godeschal, anxious to make her first appearance at the

Panorama-Dramatique under the name of Mariette, based her hopes on the

protection and influence of a first gentleman of the bedchamber, to whom

Vestris had promised to introduce her. Vestris, still green himself at

this period, did not think his pupil sufficiently trained to risk the

introduction. The ambitious girl did, in the end, make her pseudonym of

Mariette famous; and the motive of her ambition, it must be said, was

praiseworthy. She had a brother, a clerk in Derville’s law office. Left

orphans and very poor, and devoted to each other, the brother and sister

had seen life such as it is in Paris. The one wished to be a lawyer that

he might support his sister, and he lived on ten sous a day; the other

had coldly resolved to be a dancer, and to profit by her beauty as much

as by her legs that she might buy a practice for her brother. Outside

of their feeling for each other, and of their mutual life and interests,

everything was to them, as it once was to the Romans and the Hebrews,

barbaric, outlandish, and hostile. This generous affection, which

nothing ever lessened, explained Mariette to those who knew her

intimately.

The brother and sister were living at this time on the eighth floor of a

house in the Vieille rue du Temple. Mariette had begun her studies

when she was ten years old; she was now just sixteen. Alas! for want of

becoming clothes, her beauty, hidden under a coarse shawl, dressed

in calico, and ill-kept, could only be guessed by those Parisians

who devote themselves to hunting grisettes and the quest of beauty in

misfortune, as she trotted past them with mincing step, mounted on iron

pattens. Philippe fell in love with Mariette. To Mariette, Philippe was

commander of the dragoons of the Guard, a staff-officer of the Emperor,

a young man of twenty-seven, and above all, the means of proving herself

superior to Florentine by the evident superiority of Philippe over

Giroudeau. Florentine and Giroudeau, the one to promote his comrade’s

happiness, the other to get a protector for her friend, pushed Philippe

and Mariette into a “mariage en detrempe,”--a Parisian term which is

equivalent to “morganatic marriage,” as applied to royal personages.

Philippe when they left the house revealed his poverty to Giroudeau, but

the old roue reassured him.

“I’ll speak to my nephew Finot,” he said. “You see, Philippe, the reign

of phrases and quill-drivers is upon us; we may as well submit. To-day,

scribblers are paramount. Ink has ousted gunpowder, and talk takes the

place of shot. After all, these little toads of editors are pretty good

fellows, and very clever. Come and see me to-morrow at the newspaper

office; by that time I shall have said a word for you to my nephew.

Before long you’ll have a place on some journal or other. Mariette,

who is taking you at this moment (don’t deceive yourself) because she

literally has nothing, no engagement, no chance of appearing on the

stage, and I have told her that you are going on a newspaper like

myself,--Mariette will try to make you believe she is loving you for

yourself; and you will believe her! Do as I do,--keep her as long as you

can. I was so much in love with Florentine that I begged Finot to write

her up and help her to a debut; but my nephew replied, ‘You say she has

talent; well, the day after her first appearance she will turn her back

on you.’ Oh, that’s Finot all over! You’ll find him a knowing one.”

The next day, about four o’clock, Philippe went to the rue de Sentier,

where he found Giroudeau in the entresol,--caged like a wild beast in

a sort of hen-coop with a sliding panel; in which was a little stove,

a little table, two little chairs, and some little logs of wood. This

establishment bore the magic words, SUBSCRIPTION OFFICE, painted on

the door in black letters, and the word “Cashier,” written by hand and

fastened to the grating of the cage. Along the wall that lay opposite

to the cage, was a bench, where, at this moment, a one-armed man was

breakfasting, who was called Coloquinte by Giroudeau, doubtless from the

Egyptian colors of his skin.

“A pretty hole!” exclaimed Philippe, looking round the room. “In the

name of thunder! what are you doing here, you who charged with poor

Colonel Chabert at Eylau? You--a gallant officer!”

“Well, yes! broum! broum!--a gallant officer keeping the accounts of a

little newspaper,” said Giroudeau, settling his black silk skull-cap.

“Moreover, I’m the working editor of all that rubbish,” he added,

pointing to the newspaper itself.

“And I, who went to Egypt, I’m obliged to stamp it,” said the one-armed

man.

“Hold your tongue, Coloquinte,” said Giroudeau. “You are in presence of

a hero who carried the Emperor’s orders at the battle of Montereau.”

Coloquinte saluted. “That’s were I lost my missing arm!” he said.

“Coloquinte, look after the den. I’m going up to see my nephew.”

The two soldiers mounted to the fourth floor, where, in an attic room

at the end of a passage, they found a young man with a cold light eye,

lying on a dirty sofa. The representative of the press did not stir,

though he offered cigars to his uncle and his uncle’s friend.

“My good fellow,” said Giroudeau in a soothing and humble tone, “this

is the gallant cavalry officer of the Imperial Guard of whom I spoke to

you.”

“Eh! well?” said Finot, eyeing Philippe, who, like Giroudeau, lost all

his assurance before the diplomatist of the press.

“My dear boy,” said Giroudeau, trying to pose as an uncle, “the colonel

has just returned from Texas.”

“Ah! you were taken in by that affair of the Champ d’Asile, were you?

Seems to me you were rather young to turn into a Soldier-laborer.”

The bitterness of this jest will only be understood by those who

remember the deluge of engravings, screens, clocks, bronzes, and

plaster-casts produced by the idea of the Soldier-laborer, a splendid

image of Napoleon and his heroes, which afterwards made its appearance

on the stage in vaudevilles. That idea, however, obtained a national

subscription; and we still find, in the depths of the provinces, old

wall-papers which bear the effigy of the Soldier-laborer. If this young

man had not been Giroudeau’s nephew, Philippe would have boxed his ears.

“Yes, I was taken in by it; I lost my time, and twelve thousand francs

to boot,” answered Philippe, trying to force a grin.

“You are still fond of the Emperor?” asked Finot.

“He is my god,” answered Philippe Bridau.

“You are a Liberal?”

“I shall always belong to the Constitutional Opposition. Oh Foy!

oh Manuel! oh Laffitte! what men they are! They’ll rid us of these

others,--these wretches, who came back to France at the heels of the

enemy.”

“Well,” said Finot coldly, “you ought to make something out of your

misfortunes; for you are the victim of the Liberals, my good fellow.

Stay a Liberal, if you really value your opinions, but threaten the

party with the follies in Texas which you are ready to show up. You

never got a farthing of the national subscription, did you? Well, then

you hold a fine position: demand an account of that subscription. I’ll

tell you how you can do it. A new Opposition journal is just starting,

under the auspices of the deputies of the Left; you shall be the

cashier, with a salary of three thousand francs. A permanent place. All

you want is some one to go security for you in twenty thousand francs;

find that, and you shall be installed within a week. I’ll advise

the Liberals to silence you by giving you the place. Meantime, talk,

threaten,--threaten loudly.”

Giroudeau let Philippe, who was profuse in his thanks, go down a few

steps before him, and then he turned back to say to his nephew, “Well,

you are a queer fellow! you keep me here on twelve hundred francs--”

“That journal won’t live a year,” said Finot. “I’ve got something better

for you.”

“Thunder!” cried Philippe to Giroudeau. “He’s no fool, that nephew of

yours. I never once thought of making something, as he calls it, out of

my position.”

That night at the cafe Lemblin and the cafe Minerve Colonel Philippe

fulminated against the Liberal party, which had raised subscriptions,

sent heroes to Texas, talked hypocritically of Soldier-laborers, and

left them to starve, after taking the money they had put into it, and

keeping them in exile for two years.

“I am going to demand an account of the moneys collected by the

subscription for the Champ d’Asile,” he said to one of the frequenters

of the cafe, who repeated it to the journalists of the Left.

Philippe did not go back to the rue Mazarin; he went to Mariette and

told her of his forthcoming appointment on a newspaper with ten thousand

subscribers, in which her choregraphic claims should be warmly advanced.

Agathe and Madame Descoings waited up for Philippe in fear and

trembling, for the Duc de Berry had just been assassinated. The colonel

came home a few minutes after breakfast; and when his mother showed her

uneasiness at his absence, he grew angry and asked if he were not of

age.

“In the name of thunder, what’s all this! here have I brought you some

good news, and you both look like tombstones. The Duc de Berry is dead,

is he?--well, so much the better! that’s one the less, at any rate.

As for me, I am to be cashier of a newspaper, with a salary of three

thousand francs, and there you are, out of all your anxieties on my

account.”

“Is it possible?” cried Agathe.

“Yes; provided you can go security for me in twenty thousand francs; you

need only deposit your shares in the Funds, you will draw the interest

all the same.”

The two widows, who for nearly two months had been desperately anxious

to find out what Philippe was about, and how he could be provided for,

were so overjoyed at this prospect that they gave no thought to their

other catastrophes. That evening, the Grecian sages, old Du Bruel,

Claparon, whose health was failing, and the inflexible Desroches were

unanimous; they all advised Madame Bridau to go security for her son.

The new journal, which fortunately was started before the assassination

of the Duc de Berry, just escaped the blow which Monsieur Decazes then

launched at the press. Madame Bridau’s shares in the Funds, representing

thirteen hundred francs’ interest, were transferred as security for

Philippe, who was then appointed cashier. That good son at once promised

to pay one hundred francs every month to the two widows, for his board

and lodging, and was declared by both to be the best of sons. Those who

had thought ill of him now congratulated Agathe.

“We were unjust to him,” they said.

Poor Joseph, not to be behind his brother in generosity, resolved to pay

for his own support, and succeeded.

CHAPTER IV

Three months later, the colonel, who ate and drank enough for four men,

finding fault with the food and compelling the poor widows, on the score

of his payments, to spend much money on their table, had not yet paid

down a single penny. His mother and Madame Descoings were unwilling, out

of delicacy, to remind him of his promise. The year went by without one

of those coins which Leon Gozlan so vigorously called “tigers with five

claws” finding its way from Philippe’s pocket to the household purse. It

is true that the colonel quieted his conscience on this score by seldom

dining at home.

“Well, he is happy,” said his mother; “he is easy in mind; he has a

place.”

Through the influence of a feuilleton, edited by Vernou, a friend of

Bixiou, Finot, and Giroudeau, Mariette made her appearance, not at the

Panorama-Dramatique but at the Porte-Saint-Martin, where she triumphed

beside the famous Begrand. Among the directors of the theatre was a rich

and luxurious general officer, in love with an actress, for whose sake

he had made himself an impresario. In Paris, we frequently meet with men

so fascinated with actresses, singers, or ballet-dancers, that they are

willing to become directors of a theatre out of love. This officer knew

Philippe and Giroudeau. Mariette’s first appearance, heralded already

by Finot’s journal and also by Philippe’s, was promptly arranged by the

three officers; for there seems to be solidarity among the passions in a

matter of folly.

The mischievous Bixiou was not long in revealing to his grandmother and

the devoted Agathe that Philippe, the cashier, the hero of heroes,

was in love with Mariette, the celebrated ballet-dancer at the

Porte-Saint-Martin. The news was a thunder-clap to the two widows;

Agathe’s religious principles taught her to think that all women on

the stage were brands in the burning; moreover, she thought, and so did

Madame Descoings, that women of that kind dined off gold, drank pearls,

and wasted fortunes.

“Now do you suppose,” said Joseph to his mother, “that my brother is

such a fool as to spend his money on Mariette? Such women only ruin rich

men.”

“They talk of engaging Mariette at the Opera,” said Bixiou. “Don’t

be worried, Madame Bridau; the diplomatic body often comes to the

Porte-Saint-Martin, and that handsome girl won’t stay long with your

son. I did hear that an ambassador was madly in love with her. By the

bye, another piece of news! Old Claparon is dead, and his son, who has

become a banker, has ordered the cheapest kind of funeral for him. That

fellow has no education; they wouldn’t behave like that in China.”

Philippe, prompted by mercenary motives, proposed to Mariette that she

should marry him; but she, knowing herself on the eve of an engagement

at the Grand Opera, refused the offer, either because she guessed the

colonel’s motive, or because she saw how important her independence

would be to her future fortune. For the remainder of this year, Philippe

never came more than twice a month to see his mother. Where was he?

Either at his office, or the theatre, or with Mariette. No light

whatever as to his conduct reached the household of the rue Mazarin.

Giroudeau, Finot, Bixiou, Vernou, Lousteau, saw him leading a life of

pleasure. Philippe shared the gay amusements of Tullia, a leading

singer at the Opera, of Florentine, who took Mariette’s place at the

Porte-Saint-Martin, of Florine and Matifat, Coralie and Camusot.

After four o’clock, when he left his office, until midnight, he amused

himself; some party of pleasure had usually been arranged the night

before,--a good dinner, a card-party, a supper by some one or other of

the set. Philippe was in his element.

This carnival, which lasted eighteen months, was not altogether without

its troubles. The beautiful Mariette no sooner appeared at the Opera, in

January, 1821, than she captured one of the most distinguished dukes of

the court of Louis XVIII. Philippe tried to make head against the

peer, and by the month of April he was compelled by his passion,

notwithstanding some luck at cards, to dip into the funds of which he

was cashier. By May he had taken eleven hundred francs. In that fatal

month Mariette started for London, to see what could be done with

the lords while the temporary opera house in the Hotel Choiseul, rue

Lepelletier, was being prepared. The luckless Philippe had ended,

as often happens, in loving Mariette notwithstanding her flagrant

infidelities; she herself had never thought him anything but a

dull-minded, brutal soldier, the first rung of a ladder on which she

had never intended to remain long. So, foreseeing the time when Philippe

would have spent all his money, she captured other journalistic support

which released her from the necessity of depending on him; nevertheless,

she did feel the peculiar gratitude that class of women acknowledge

towards the first man who smooths their way, as it were, among the

difficulties and horrors of a theatrical career.

Forced to let his terrible mistress go to London without him, Philippe

went into winter quarters, as he called it,--that is, he returned to

his attic room in his mother’s _appartement_. He made some gloomy

reflections as he went to bed that night, and when he got up again. He

was conscious within himself of the inability to live otherwise than as

he had been living the last year. The luxury that surrounded Mariette,

the dinners, the suppers, the evenings in the side-scenes, the animation

of wits and journalists, the sort of racket that went on around him,

the delights that tickled both his senses and his vanity,--such a life,

found only in Paris, and offering daily the charm of some new thing, was

now more than habit,--it had become to Philippe as much a necessity as

his tobacco or his brandy. He saw plainly that he could not live without

these continual enjoyments. The idea of suicide came into his head; not

on account of the deficit which must soon be discovered in his accounts,

but because he could no longer live with Mariette in the atmosphere

of pleasure in which he had disported himself for over a year. Full

of these gloomy thoughts, he entered for the first time his brother’s

painting-room, where he found the painter in a blue blouse, copying a

picture for a dealer.

“So that’s how pictures are made,” said Philippe, by way of opening the

conversation.

“No,” said Joseph, “that is how they are copied.”

“How much do they pay you for that?”

“Eh! never enough; two hundred and fifty francs. But I study the manner

of the masters and learn a great deal; I found out the secrets of their

method. There’s one of my own pictures,” he added, pointing with the end

of his brush to a sketch with the colors still moist.

“How much do you pocket in a year?”

“Unfortunately, I am known only to painters. Schinner backs me; and

he has got me some work at the Chateau de Presles, where I am going in

October to do some arabesques, panels, and other decorations, for which

the Comte de Serizy, no doubt, will pay well. With such trifles and with

orders from the dealers, I may manage to earn eighteen hundred to two

thousand francs a year over and above the working expenses. I shall send

that picture to the next exhibition; if it hits the public taste, my

fortune is made. My friends think well of it.”

“I don’t know anything about such things,” said Philippe, in a subdued

voice which caused Joseph to turn and look at him.

“What is the matter?” said the artist, seeing that his brother was very

pale.

“I should like to know how long it would take you to paint my portrait?”

“If I worked steadily, and the weather were clear, I could finish it in

three or four days.”

“That’s too long; I have only one day to give you. My poor mother loves

me so much that I wished to leave her my likeness. We will say no more

about it.”

“Why! are you going away again?”

“I am going never to return,” replied Philippe with an air of forced

gayety.

“Look here, Philippe, what is the matter? If it is anything serious,

I am a man and not a ninny. I am accustomed to hard struggles, and if

discretion is needed, I have it.”

“Are you sure?”

“On my honor.”

“You will tell no one, no matter who?”

“No one.”

“Well, I am going to blow my brains out.”

“You!--are you going to fight a duel?”

“I am going to kill myself.”

“Why?”

“I have taken eleven hundred francs from the funds in my hands; I have

got to send in my accounts to-morrow morning. Half my security is lost;

our poor mother will be reduced to six hundred francs a year. That would

be nothing! I could make a fortune for her later; but I am dishonored! I

cannot live under dishonor--”

“You will not be dishonored if it is paid back. To be sure, you will

lose your place, and you will only have the five hundred francs a year

from your cross; but you can live on five hundred francs.”

“Farewell!” said Philippe, running rapidly downstairs, and not waiting

to hear another word.

Joseph left his studio and went down to breakfast with his mother;

but Philippe’s confession had taken away his appetite. He took Madame

Descoings aside and told her the terrible news. The old woman made a

frightened exclamation, let fall the saucepan of milk she had in

her hand, and flung herself into a chair. Agathe rushed in; from one

exclamation to another the mother gathered the fatal truth.

“He! to fail in honor! the son of Bridau to take the money that was

trusted to him!”

The widow trembled in every limb; her eyes dilated and then grew fixed;

she sat down and burst into tears.

“Where is he?” she cried amid the sobs. “Perhaps he has flung himself

into the Seine.”

“You must not give up all hope,” said Madame Descoings, “because a poor

lad has met with a bad woman who has led him to do wrong. Dear me! we

see that every day. Philippe has had such misfortunes! he has had so

little chance to be happy and loved that we ought not to be surprised at

his passion for that creature. All passions lead to excess. My own life

is not without reproach of that kind, and yet I call myself an honest

woman. A single fault is not vice; and after all, it is only those who

do nothing that are never deceived.”

Agathe’s despair overcame her so much that Joseph and the Descoings

were obliged to lessen Philippe’s wrong-doings by assuring her that such

things happened in all families.

“But he is twenty-eight years old,” cried Agathe, “he is no longer a

child.”

Terrible revelation of the inward thought of the poor woman on the

conduct of her son.

“Mother, I assure you he thought only of your sufferings and of the

wrong he had done you,” said Joseph.

“Oh, my God! let him come back to me, let him live, and I will forgive

all,” cried the poor mother, to whose mind a horrible vision of Philippe

dragged dead out of the river presented itself.

Gloomy silence reigned for a short time. The day went by with cruel

alternations of hope and fear; all three ran to the window at the least

sound, and gave way to every sort of conjecture. While the family were

thus grieving, Philippe was quietly getting matters in order at his

office. He had the audacity to give in his accounts with a statement

that, fearing some accident, he had retained eleven hundred francs at

his own house for safe keeping. The scoundrel left the office at five

o’clock, taking five hundred francs more from the desk, and coolly went

to a gambling-house, which he had not entered since his connection with

the paper, for he knew very well that a cashier must not be seen to

frequent such a place. The fellow was not wanting in acumen. His past

conduct proved that he derived more from his grandfather Rouget than

from his virtuous sire, Bridau. Perhaps he might have made a good

general; but in private life, he was one of those utter scoundrels who

shelter their schemes and their evil actions behind a screen of strict

legality, and the privacy of the family roof.

At this conjuncture Philippe maintained his coolness. He won at first,

and gained as much as six thousand francs; but he let himself be dazzled

by the idea of getting out of his difficulties at one stroke. He left

the trente-et-quarante, hearing that the black had come up sixteen times

at the roulette table, and was about to put five thousand francs on the

red, when the black came up for the seventeenth time. The colonel then

put a thousand francs on the black and won. In spite of this remarkable

piece of luck, his head grew weary; he felt it, though he continued to

play. But that divining sense which leads a gambler, and which comes in

flashes, was already failing him. Intermittent perceptions, so fatal to

all gamblers, set in. Lucidity of mind, like the rays of the sun, can

have no effect except by the continuity of a direct line; it can divine

only on condition of not breaking that line; the curvettings of chance

bemuddle it. Philippe lost all. After such a strain, the careless mind

as well as the bravest weakens. When Philippe went home that night

he was not thinking of suicide, for he had never really meant to kill

himself; he no longer thought of his lost place, nor of the sacrificed

security, nor of his mother, nor of Mariette, the cause of his ruin; he

walked along mechanically. When he got home, his mother in tears, Madame

Descoings, and Joseph, all fell on his neck and kissed him and brought

him joyfully to a seat by the fire.

“Bless me!” thought he, “the threat has worked.”

The brute at once assumed an air suitable to the occasion; all the more

easily, because his ill-luck at cards had deeply depressed him. Seeing

her atrocious Benjamin so pale and woe-begone, the poor mother knelt

beside him, kissed his hands, pressed them to her heart, and gazed at

him for a long time with eyes swimming in tears.

“Philippe,” she said, in a choking voice, “promise not to kill yourself,

and all shall be forgotten.”

Philippe looked at his sorrowing brother and at Madame Descoings,

whose eyes were full of tears, and thought to himself, “They are good

creatures.” Then he took his mother in his arms, raised her and put her

on his knee, pressed her to his heart and whispered as he kissed her,

“For the second time, you give me life.”

The Descoings managed to serve an excellent dinner, and to add two

bottles of old wine with a little “liqueur des iles,” a treasure left

over from her former business.

“Agathe,” she said at dessert, “we must let him smoke his cigars,” and

she offered some to Philippe.

These two poor creatures fancied that if they let the fellow take his

ease, he would like his home and stay in it; both, therefore, tried to

endure his tobacco-smoke, though each loathed it. That sacrifice was not

so much as noticed by Philippe.

On the morrow, Agathe looked ten years older. Her terrors calmed,

reflection came back to her, and the poor woman had not closed an eye

throughout that horrible night. She was now reduced to six hundred

francs a year. Madame Descoings, like all fat women fond of good eating,

was growing heavy; her step on the staircase sounded like the chopping

of logs; she might die at any moment; with her life, four thousand

francs would disappear. What folly to rely on that resource! What should

she do? What would become of them? With her mind made up to become a

sick-nurse rather than be supported by her children, Agathe did not

think of herself. But Philippe? what would he do if reduced to live on

the five hundred francs of an officer of the Legion of honor? During the

past eleven years, Madame Descoings, by giving up three thousand

francs a year, had paid her debt twice over, but she still continued to

sacrifice her grandson’s interests to those of the Bridau family.

Though all Agathe’s honorable and upright feelings were shocked by this

terrible disaster, she said to herself: “Poor boy! is it his fault? He

is faithful to his oath. I have done wrong not to marry him. If I had

found him a wife, he would not have got entangled with this danseuse. He

has such a vigorous constitution--”

Madame Descoings had likewise reflected during the night as to the best

way of saving the honor of the family. At daybreak, she got out of bed

and went to her friend’s room.

“Neither you nor Philippe should manage this delicate matter,” she

urged. “Our two old friends Du Bruel and Claparon are dead, but we still

have Desroches, who is very sagacious. I’ll go and see him this morning.

He can tell the newspaper people that Philippe trusted a friend and has

been made a victim; that his weakness in such respects makes him unfit

to be a cashier; what has now happened may happen again, and that

Philippe prefers to resign. That will prevent his being turned off.”

Agathe, seeing that this business lie would save the honor of her son,

at any rate in the eyes of strangers, kissed Madame Descoings, who went

out early to make an end of the dreadful affair.

Philippe, meanwhile, had slept the sleep of the just. “She is sly, that

old woman,” he remarked, when his mother explained to him why breakfast

was late.

Old Desroches, the last remaining friend of these two poor women, who,

in spite of his harsh nature, never forgot that Bridau had obtained

for him his place, fulfilled like an accomplished diplomat the delicate

mission Madame Descoings had confided to him. He came to dine that

evening with the family, and notified Agathe that she must go the

next day to the Treasury, rue Vivienne, sign the transfer of the funds

involved, and obtain a coupon for the six hundred francs a year which

still remained to her. The old clerk did not leave the afflicted

household that night without obliging Philippe to sign a petition to

the minister of war, asking for his reinstatement in the active army.

Desroches promised the two women to follow up the petition at the war

office, and to profit by the triumph of a certain duke over Philippe in

the matter of the danseuse, and so obtain that nobleman’s influence.

“Philippe will be lieutenant-colonel in the Duc de Maufrigneuse’s

regiment within three months,” he declared, “and you will be rid of

him.”

Desroches went away, smothered with blessings from the two poor widows

and Joseph. As to the newspaper, it ceased to exist at the end of two

months, just as Finot had predicted. Philippe’s crime had, therefore,

so far as the world knew, no consequences. But Agathe’s motherhood had

received a deadly wound. Her belief in her son once shaken, she lived

in perpetual fear, mingled with some satisfactions, as she saw her worst

apprehensions unrealized.

When men like Philippe, who are endowed with physical courage, and yet

are cowardly and ignoble in their moral being, see matters and things

resuming their accustomed course about them after some catastrophe in

which their honor and decency is well-nigh lost, such family kindness,

or any show of friendliness towards them is a premium of encouragement.

They count on impunity; their minds distorted, their passions gratified,

only prompt them to study how it happened that they succeeded in getting

round all social laws; the result is they become alarmingly adroit.

A fortnight later, Philippe, once more a man of leisure, lazy and bored,

renewed his fatal cafe life,--his drams, his long games of billiards

embellished with punch, his nightly resort to the gambling-table,

where he risked some trifling stake and won enough to pay for his

dissipations. Apparently very economical, the better to deceive his

mother and Madame Descoings, he wore a hat that was greasy, with the nap

rubbed off at the edges, patched boots, a shabby overcoat, on which

the red ribbon scarcely showed so discolored and dirty was it by long

service at the buttonhole and by the spatterings of coffee and liquors.

His buckskin gloves, of a greenish tinge, lasted him a long while; and

he only gave up his satin neckcloth when it was ragged enough to look

like wadding. Mariette was the sole object of the fellow’s love, and her

treachery had greatly hardened his heart. When he happened to win more

than usual, or if he supped with his old comrade, Giroudeau, he followed

some Venus of the slums, with brutal contempt for the whole sex.

Otherwise regular in his habits, he breakfasted and dined at home and

came in every night about one o’clock. Three months of this horrible

life restored Agathe to some degree of confidence.

As for Joseph, who was working at the splendid picture to which

he afterwards owed his reputation, he lived in his atelier. On the

prediction of her grandson Bixiou, Madame Descoings believed in Joseph’s

future glory, and she showed him every sort of motherly kindness; she

took his breakfast to him, she did his errands, she blacked his boots.

The painter was never seen till dinner-time, and his evenings were spent

at the Cenacle among his friends. He read a great deal, and gave himself

that deep and serious education which only comes through the mind

itself, and which all men of talent strive after between the ages of

twenty and thirty. Agathe, seeing very little of Joseph, and feeling

no uneasiness about him, lived only for Philippe, who gave her the

alternations of fears excited and terrors allayed, which seem the life,

as it were, of sentiment, and to be as necessary to maternity as to

love. Desroches, who came once a week to see the widow of his patron

and friend, gave her hopes. The Duc de Maufrigneuse had asked to have

Philippe in his regiment; the minister of war had ordered an inquiry;

and as the name of Bridau did not appear on any police list, nor an any

record at the Palais de Justice, Philippe would be reinstated in the

army early in the coming year.

To arrive at this result, Desroches set all the powers that he could

influence in motion. At the prefecture of police he learned that

Philippe spent his evenings in the gambling-house; and he thought it

best to tell this fact privately to Madame Descoings, exhorting her keep

an eye on the lieutenant-colonel, for one outbreak would imperil all; as

it was, the minister of war was not likely to inquire whether Philippe

gambled. Once restored to his rank under the flag of his country, he

would perhaps abandon a vice only taken up from idleness. Agathe, who

no longer received her friends in the evening, sat in the chimney-corner

reading her prayers, while Madame Descoings consulted the cards,

interpreted her dreams, and applied the rules of the “cabala” to her

lottery ventures. This jovial fanatic never missed a single drawing; she

still pursued her trey,--which never turned up. It was nearly twenty-one

years old, just approaching its majority; on this ridiculous idea the

old woman now pinned her faith. One of its three numbers had stayed at

the bottom of all the wheels ever since the institution of the lottery.

Accordingly, Madame Descoings laid heavy stakes on that particular

number, as well as on all the combinations of the three numbers. The

last mattress remaining to her bed was the place where she stored her

savings; she unsewed the ticking, put in from time to time the bit of

gold saved from her needs, wrapped carefully in wool, and then sewed the

mattress up again. She intended, at the last drawing, to risk all her

savings on the different combinations of her treasured trey.

This passion, so universally condemned, has never been fairly studied.

No one has understood this opium of poverty. The lottery, all-powerful

fairy of the poor, bestowed the gift of magic hopes. The turn of the

wheel which opens to the gambler a vista of gold and happiness, lasts

no longer than a flash of lightning, but the lottery gave five days’

existence to that magnificent flash. What social power can to-day, for

the sum of five sous, give us five days’ happiness and launch us ideally

into all the joys of civilization? Tobacco, a craving far more immoral

than play, destroys the body, attacks the mind, and stupefies a nation;

while the lottery did nothing of the kind. This passion, moreover, was

forced to keep within limits by the long periods that occurred

between the drawings, and by the choice of wheels which each investor

individually clung to. Madame Descoings never staked on any but the

“wheel of Paris.” Full of confidence that the trey cherished for

twenty-one years was about to triumph, she now imposed upon herself

enormous privations, that she might stake a large amount of savings upon

the last drawing of the year. When she dreamed her cabalistic visions

(for all dreams did not correspond with the numbers of the lottery), she

went and told them to Joseph, who was the sole being who would listen,

and not only not scold her, but give her the kindly words with which an

artist knows how to soothe the follies of the mind. All great talents

respect and understand a real passion; they explain it to themselves

by finding the roots of it in their own hearts or minds. Joseph’s ideas

was, that his brother loved tobacco and liquors, Maman Descoings loved

her trey, his mother loved God, Desroches the younger loved lawsuits,

Desroches the elder loved angling,--in short, all the world, he said,

loved something. He himself loved the “beau ideal” in all things; he

loved the poetry of Lord Byron, the painting of Gericault, the music of

Rossini, the novels of Walter Scott. “Every one to his taste, maman,” he

would say; “but your trey does hang fire terribly.”

“It will turn up, and you will be rich, and my little Bixiou as well.”

“Give it all to your grandson,” cried Joseph; “at any rate, do what you

like best with it.”

“Hey! when it turns up I shall have enough for everybody. In the first

place, you shall have a fine atelier; you sha’n’t deprive yourself of

going to the opera so as to pay for your models and your colors. Do you

know, my dear boy, you make me play a pretty shabby part in that picture

of yours?”

By way of economy, Joseph had made the Descoings pose for his

magnificent painting of a young courtesan taken by an old woman to

a Doge of Venice. This picture, one of the masterpieces of modern

painting, was mistaken by Gros himself for a Titian, and it paved the

way for the recognition which the younger artists gave to Joseph’s

talent in the Salon of 1823.

“Those who know you know very well what you are,” he answered gayly.

“Why need you trouble yourself about those who don’t know you?”

For the last ten years Madame Descoings had taken on the ripe tints of a

russet apple at Easter. Wrinkles had formed in her superabundant flesh,

now grown pallid and flabby. Her eyes, full of life, were bright with

thoughts that were still young and vivacious, and might be considered

grasping; for there is always something of that spirit in a gambler.

Her fat face bore traces of dissimulation and of the mental reservations

hidden in the depths of her heart. Her vice necessitated secrecy. There

were also indications of gluttony in the motion of her lips. And thus,

although she was, as we have seen, an excellent and upright woman, the

eye might be misled by her appearance. She was an admirable model

for the old woman Joseph wished to paint. Coralie, a young actress of

exquisite beauty who died in the flower of her youth, the mistress of

Lucien de Rubempre, one of Joseph’s friends, had given him the idea of

the picture. This noble painting has been called a plagiarism of

other pictures, while in fact it was a splendid arrangement of three

portraits. Michel Chrestien, one of his companions at the Cenacle, lent

his republican head for the senator, to which Joseph added a few mature

tints, just as he exaggerated the expression of Madame Descoings’s

features. This fine picture, which was destined to make a great noise

and bring the artist much hatred, jealousy, and admiration, was just

sketched out; but, compelled as he was to work for a living, he laid

it aside to make copies of the old masters for the dealers; thus he

penetrated the secrets of their processes, and his brush is therefore

one of the best trained of the modern school. The shrewd sense of an

artist led him to conceal the profits he was beginning to lay by

from his mother and Madame Descoings, aware that each had her road to

ruin,--the one in Philippe, the other in the lottery. This astuteness is

seldom wanting among painters; busy for days together in the solitude of

their studios, engaged in work which, up to a certain point, leaves the

mind free, they are in some respects like women,--their thoughts turn

about the little events of life, and they contrive to get at their

hidden meaning.

Joseph had bought one of those magnificent chests or coffers of a past

age, then ignored by fashion, with which he decorated a corner of his

studio, where the light danced upon the bas-reliefs and gave full lustre

to a masterpiece of the sixteenth century artisans. He saw the necessity

for a hiding-place, and in this coffer he had begun to accumulate a

little store of money. With an artist’s carelessness, he was in the

habit of putting the sum he allowed for his monthly expenses in a skull,

which stood on one of the compartments of the coffer. Since his brother

had returned to live at home, he found a constant discrepancy between

the amount he spent and the sum in this receptacle. The hundred francs

a month disappeared with incredible celerity. Finding nothing one day,

when he had only spent forty or fifty francs, he remarked for the

first time: “My money must have got wings.” The next month he paid more

attention to his accounts; but add as he might, like Robert Macaire,

sixteen and five are twenty-three, he could make nothing of them. When,

for the third time, he found a still more important discrepancy, he

communicated the painful fact to Madame Descoings, who loved him, he

knew, with that maternal, tender, confiding, credulous, enthusiastic

love that he had never had from his own mother, good as she was,--a love

as necessary to the early life of an artist as the care of the hen is

to her unfledged chickens. To her alone could he confide his horrible

suspicions. He was as sure of his friends as he was of himself; and the

Descoings, he knew, would take nothing to put in her lottery. At

the idea which then suggested itself the poor woman wrung her hands.

Philippe alone could have committed this domestic theft.

“Why didn’t he ask me, if he wanted it?” cried Joseph, taking a dab

of color on his palette and stirring it into the other colors without

seeing what he did. “Is it likely I should refuse him?”

“It is robbing a child!” cried the Descoings, her face expressing the

deepest disgust.

“No,” replied Joseph, “he is my brother; my purse is his: but he ought

to have asked me.”

“Put in a special sum, in silver, this morning, and don’t take anything

out,” said Madame Descoings. “I shall know who goes into the studio; and

if he is the only one, you will be certain it is he.”

The next day Joseph had proof of his brother’s forced loans upon him.

Philippe came to the studio when his brother was out and took the little

sum he wanted. The artist trembled for his savings.

“I’ll catch him at it, the scamp!” he said, laughing, to Madame

Descoings.

“And you’ll do right: we ought to break him of it. I, too, I have missed

little sums out of my purse. Poor boy! he wants tobacco; he’s accustomed

to it.”

“Poor boy! poor boy!” cried the artist. “I’m rather of Fulgence and

Bixiou’s opinion: Philippe is a dead-weight on us. He runs his head into

riots and has to be shipped to America, and that costs the mother twelve

thousand francs; he can’t find anything to do in the forests of the New

World, and so he comes back again, and that costs twelve thousand more.

Under pretence of having carried two words of Napoleon to a general,

he thinks himself a great soldier and makes faces at the Bourbons;

meantime, what does he do? amuse himself, travel about, see foreign

countries! As for me, I’m not duped by his misfortunes; he doesn’t look

like a man who fails to get the best of things! Somebody finds him a

good place, and there he is, leading the life of a Sardanapalus with

a ballet-girl, and guzzling the funds of his journal; that costs the

mother another twelve thousand francs! I don’t care two straws for

myself, but Philippe will bring that poor woman to beggary. He thinks

I’m of no account because I was never in the dragoons of the Guard; but

perhaps I shall be the one to support that poor dear mother in her old

age, while he, if he goes on as he does, will end I don’t know how.

Bixiou often says to me, ‘He is a downright rogue, that brother of

yours.’ Your grandson is right. Philippe will be up to some mischief

that will compromise the honor of the family, and then we shall have to

scrape up another ten or twelve thousand francs! He gambles every night;

when he comes home, drunk as a templar, he drops on the staircase the

pricked cards on which he marks the turns of the red and black. Old

Desroches is trying to get him back into the army, and, on my word

on honor, I believe he would hate to serve again. Would you ever have

believed that a boy with such heavenly blue eyes and the look of Bayard

could turn out such a scoundrel?”

CHAPTER V

In spite of the coolness and discretion with which Philippe played his

trifling game every night, it happened every now and then that he was

what gamblers call “cleaned out.” Driven by the irresistible necessity

of having his evening stake of ten francs, he plundered the household,

and laid hands on his brother’s money and on all that Madame Descoings

or Agathe left about. Already the poor mother had had a dreadful vision

in her first sleep: Philippe entered the room and took from the pockets

of her gown all the money he could find. Agathe pretended to sleep, but

she passed the rest of the night in tears. She saw the truth only too

clearly. “One wrong act is not a vice,” Madame Descoings had declared;

but after so many repetitions, vice was unmistakable. Agathe could doubt

no longer; her best-beloved son had neither delicacy nor honor.

On the morrow of that frightful vision, before Philippe left the house

after breakfast, she drew him into her chamber and begged him, in a

tone of entreaty, to ask her for what money he needed. After that, the

applications were so numerous that in two weeks Agathe was drained of

all her savings. She was literally without a penny, and began to think

of finding work. The means of earning money had been discussed in the

evenings between herself and Madame Descoings, and she had already taken

patterns of worsted work to fill in, from a shop called the “Pere

de Famille,”--an employment which pays about twenty sous a day.

Notwithstanding Agathe’s silence on the subject, Madame Descoings had

guessed the motive of this desire to earn money by women’s-work. The

change in her appearance was eloquent: her fresh face had withered, the

skin clung to the temples and the cheek-bones, and the forehead showed

deep lines; her eyes lost their clearness; an inward fire was evidently

consuming her; she wept the greater part of the night. A chief cause

of these outward ravages was the necessity of hiding her anguish, her

sufferings, her apprehensions. She never went to sleep until Philippe

came in; she listened for his step, she had learned the inflections of

his voice, the variations of his walk, the very language of his cane

as it touched the pavement. Nothing escaped her. She knew the degree of

drunkenness he had reached, she trembled as she heard him stumble on the

stairs; one night she picked up some pieces of gold at the spot where he

had fallen. When he had drunk and won, his voice was gruff and his cane

dragged; but when he had lost, his step had something sharp, short and

angry about it; he hummed in a clear voice, and carried his cane in the

air as if presenting arms. At breakfast, if he had won, his behavior was

gay and even affectionate; he joked roughly, but still he joked, with

Madame Descoings, with Joseph, and with his mother; gloomy, on the

contrary, when he had lost, his brusque, rough speech, his hard glance,

and his depression, frightened them. A life of debauch and the abuse of

liquors debased, day by day, a countenance that was once so handsome.

The veins of the face were swollen with blood, the features became

coarse, the eyes lost their lashes and grew hard and dry. No longer

careful of his person, Philippe exhaled the miasmas of a tavern and

the smell of muddy boots, which, to an observer, stamped him with

debauchery.

“You ought,” said Madame Descoings to Philippe during the last days of

December, “you ought to get yourself new-clothed from head to foot.”

“And who is to pay for it?” he answered sharply. “My poor mother hasn’t

a sou; and I have five hundred francs a year. It would take my whole

year’s pension to pay for the clothes; besides I have mortgaged it for

three years--”

“What for?” asked Joseph.

“A debt of honor. Giroudeau borrowed a thousand francs from Florentine

to lend me. I am not gorgeous, that’s a fact; but when one thinks that

Napoleon is at Saint Helena, and has sold his plate for the means of

living, his faithful soldiers can manage to walk on their bare feet,” he

said, showing his boots without heels, as he marched away.

“He is not bad,” said Agathe, “he has good feelings.”

“You can love the Emperor and yet dress yourself properly,” said Joseph.

“If he would take any care of himself and his clothes, he wouldn’t look

so like a vagabond.”

“Joseph! you ought to have some indulgence for your brother,” cried

Agathe. “You do the things you like, while he is certainly not in his

right place.”

“What did he leave it for?” demanded Joseph. “What can it matter to him

whether Louis the Eighteenth’s bugs or Napoleon’s cuckoos are on the

flag, if it is the flag of his country? France is France! For my part,

I’d paint for the devil. A soldier ought to fight, if he is a soldier,

for the love of his art. If he had stayed quietly in the army, he would

have been a general by this time.”

“You are unjust to him,” said Agathe, “your father, who adored the

Emperor, would have approved of his conduct. However, he has consented

to re-enter the army. God knows the grief it has caused your brother to

do a thing he considers treachery.”

Joseph rose to return to his studio, but his mother took his hand and

said:--

“Be good to your brother; he is so unfortunate.”

When the artist got back to his painting-room, followed by Madame

Descoings, who begged him to humor his mother’s feelings, and pointed

out to him how changed she was, and what inward suffering the change

revealed, they found Philippe there, to their great amazement.

“Joseph, my boy,” he said, in an off-hand way, “I want some money.

Confound it! I owe thirty francs for cigars at my tobacconist’s, and I

dare not pass the cursed shop till I’ve paid it. I’ve promised to pay it

a dozen times.”

“Well, I like your present way best,” said Joseph; “take what you want

out of the skull.”

“I took all there was last night, after dinner.”

“There was forty-five francs.”

“Yes, that’s what I made it,” replied Philippe. “I took them; is there

any objection?”

“No, my friend, no,” said Joseph. “If you were rich, I should do the

same by you; only, before taking what I wanted, I should ask you if it

were convenient.”

“It is very humiliating to ask,” remarked Philippe; “I would rather see

you taking as I do, without a word; it shows more confidence. In the

army, if a comrade dies, and has a good pair of boots, and you have a

bad pair, you change, that’s all.”

“Yes, but you don’t take them while he is living.”

“Oh, what meanness!” said Philippe, shrugging his shoulders. “Well, so

you haven’t got any money?”

“No,” said Joseph, who was determined not to show his hiding-place.

“In a few days we shall be rich,” said Madame Descoings.

“Yes, you; you think your trey is going to turn up on the 25th at the

Paris drawing. You must have put in a fine stake if you think you can

make us all rich.”

“A paid-up trey of two hundred francs will give three millions, without

counting the couplets and the singles.”

“At fifteen thousand times the stake--yes, you are right; it is just two

hundred you must pay up!” cried Philippe.

Madame Descoings bit her lips; she knew she had spoken imprudently. In

fact, Philippe was asking himself as he went downstairs:--

“That old witch! where does she keep her money? It is as good as lost;

I can make a better use of it. With four pools at fifty francs each, I

could win two hundred thousand francs, and that’s much surer than the

turning up of a trey.”

He tried to think where the old woman was likely to have hid the money.

On the days preceding festivals, Agathe went to church and stayed there

a long time; no doubt she confessed and prepared for the communion. It

was now the day before Christmas; Madame Descoings would certainly go

out to buy some dainties for the “reveillon,” the midnight meal; and

she might also take occasion to pay up her stake. The lottery was drawn

every five days in different localities, at Bordeaux, Lyons, Lille,

Strasburg, and Paris. The Paris lottery was drawn on the twenty-fifth

of each month, and the lists closed on the twenty-fourth, at midnight.

Philippe studied all these points and set himself to watch. He came

home at midday; the Descoings had gone out, and had taken the key of the

_appartement_. But that was no difficulty. Philippe pretended to have

forgotten something, and asked the concierge to go herself and get a

locksmith, who lived close by, and who came at once and opened the door.

The villain’s first thought was the bed; he uncovered it, passed his

hands over the mattress before he examined the bedstead, and at the

lower end felt the pieces wrapped up in paper. He at once ripped the

ticking, picked out twenty napoleons, and then, without taking time

to sew up the mattress, re-made the bed neatly enough, so that Madame

Descoings could suspect nothing.

The gambler stole off with a light foot, resolving to play at three

different times, three hours apart, and each time for only ten minutes.

Thorough-going players, ever since 1786, the time at which public

gaming-houses were established,--the true players whom the government

dreaded, and who ate up, to use a gambling term, the money of the

bank,--never played in any other way. But before attaining this measure

of experience they lost fortunes. The whole science of gambling-houses

and their gains rests upon three things: the impassibility of the bank;

the even results called “drawn games,” when half the money goes to

the bank; and the notorious bad faith authorized by the government,

in refusing to hold or pay the player’s stakes except optionally. In

a word, the gambling-house, which refuses the game of a rich and cool

player, devours the fortune of the foolish and obstinate one, who is

carried away by the rapid movement of the machinery of the game. The

croupiers at “trente et quarante” move nearly as fast as the ball.

Philippe had ended by acquiring the sang-froid of a commanding general,

which enables him to keep his eye clear and his mind prompt in the midst

of tumult. He had reached that statesmanship of gambling which in Paris,

let us say in passing, is the livelihood of thousands who are strong

enough to look every night into an abyss without getting a vertigo. With

his four hundred francs, Philippe resolved to make his fortune that day.

He put aside, in his boots, two hundred francs, and kept the other two

hundred in his pocket. At three o’clock he went to the gambling-house

(which is now turned into the theatre of the Palais-Royal), where the

bank accepted the largest sums. He came out half an hour later with

seven thousand francs in his pocket. Then he went to see Florentine,

paid the five hundred francs which he owed to her, and proposed a supper

at the Rocher de Cancale after the theatre. Returning to his game, along

the rue de Sentier, he stopped at Giroudeau’s newspaper-office to notify

him of the gala. By six o’clock Philippe had won twenty-five thousand

francs, and stopped playing at the end of ten minutes as he had promised

himself to do. That night, by ten o’clock, he had won seventy-five

thousand francs. After the supper, which was magnificent, Philippe, by

that time drunk and confident, went back to his play at midnight. In

defiance of the rule he had imposed upon himself, he played for an

hour and doubled his fortune. The bankers, from whom, by his system of

playing, he had extracted one hundred and fifty thousand francs, looked

at him with curiosity.

“Will he go away now, or will he stay?” they said to each other by a

glance. “If he stays he is lost.”

Philippe thought he had struck a vein of luck, and stayed. Towards three

in the morning, the hundred and fifty thousand francs had gone back to

the bank. The colonel, who had imbibed a considerable quantity of grog

while playing, left the place in a drunken state, which the cold of the

outer air only increased. A waiter from the gambling-house followed him,

picked him up, and took him to one of those horrible houses at the door

of which, on a hanging lamp, are the words: “Lodgings for the night.”

The waiter paid for the ruined gambler, who was put to bed, where he

remained till Christmas night. The managers of gambling-houses have some

consideration for their customers, especially for high players. Philippe

awoke about seven o’clock in the evening, his mouth parched, his face

swollen, and he himself in the grip of a nervous fever. The strength

of his constitution enabled him to get home on foot, where meanwhile

he had, without willing it, brought mourning, desolation, poverty, and

death.

The evening before, when dinner was ready, Madame Descoings and Agathe

expected Philippe. They waited dinner till seven o’clock. Agathe always

went to bed at ten; but as, on this occasion, she wished to be present

at the midnight mass, she went to lie down as soon as dinner was over.

Madame Descoings and Joseph remained alone by the fire in the little

salon, which served for all, and the old woman asked the painter to add

up the amount of her great stake, her monstrous stake, on the famous

trey, which she was to pay that evening at the Lottery office. She

wished to put in for the doubles and singles as well, so as to seize all

chances. After feasting on the poetry of her hopes, and pouring the two

horns of plenty at the feet of her adopted son, and relating to him her

dreams which demonstrated the certainty of success, she felt no other

uneasiness than the difficulty of bearing such joy, and waiting from

mid-night until ten o’clock of the morrow, when the winning numbers were

declared. Joseph, who saw nothing of the four hundred francs necessary

to pay up the stakes, asked about them. The old woman smiled, and led

him into the former salon, which was now her bed-chamber.

“You shall see,” she said.

Madame Descoings hastily unmade the bed, and searched for her scissors

to rip the mattress; she put on her spectacles, looked at the ticking,

saw the hole, and let fall the mattress. Hearing a sigh from the depths

of the old woman’s breast, as though she were strangled by a rush of

blood to the heart, Joseph instinctively held out his arms to catch the

poor creature, and placed her fainting in a chair, calling to his mother

to come to them. Agathe rose, slipped on her dressing-gown,

and ran in. By the light of a candle, she applied the ordinary

remedies,--eau-de-cologne to the temples, cold water to the forehead, a

burnt feather under the nose,--and presently her aunt revived.

“They were there is morning; HE has taken them, the monster!” she said.

“Taken what?” asked Joseph.

“I had twenty louis in my mattress; my savings for two years; no one but

Philippe could have taken them.”

“But when?” cried the poor mother, overwhelmed, “he has not been in

since breakfast.”

“I wish I might be mistaken,” said the old woman. “But this morning

in Joseph’s studio, when I spoke before Philippe of my stakes, I had a

presentiment. I did wrong not to go down and take my little all and pay

for my stakes at once. I meant to, and I don’t know what prevented me.

Oh, yes!--my God! I went out to buy him some cigars.”

“But,” said Joseph, “you left the door locked. Besides, it is so

infamous. I can’t believe it. Philippe couldn’t have watched you, cut

open the mattress, done it deliberately,--no, no!”

“I felt them this morning, when I made my bed after breakfast,” repeated

Madame Descoings.

Agathe, horrified, went down stairs and asked if Philippe had come in

during the day. The concierge related the tale of his return and the

locksmith. The mother, heart-stricken, went back a changed woman. White

as the linen of her chemise, she walked as we might fancy a spectre

walks, slowly, noiselessly, moved by some superhuman power, and yet

mechanically. She held a candle in her hand, whose light fell full upon

her face and showed her eyes, fixed with horror. Unconsciously, her

hands by a desperate movement had dishevelled the hair about her brow;

and this made her so beautiful with anguish that Joseph stood rooted

in awe at the apparition of that remorse, the vision of that statue of

terror and despair.

“My aunt,” she said, “take my silver forks and spoons. I have enough

to make up the sum; I took your money for Philippe’s sake; I thought I

could put it back before you missed it. Oh! I have suffered much.”

She sat down. Her dry, fixed eyes wandered a little.

“It was he who did it,” whispered the old woman to Joseph.

“No, no,” cried Agathe; “take my silver plate, sell it; it is useless to

me; we can eat with yours.”

She went to her room, took the box which contained the plate, felt its

light weight, opened it, and saw a pawnbroker’s ticket. The poor mother

uttered a dreadful cry. Joseph and the Descoings ran to her, saw the

empty box, and her noble falsehood was of no avail. All three were

silent, and avoided looking at each other; but the next moment, by an

almost frantic gesture, Agathe laid her finger on her lips as if to

entreat a secrecy no one desired to break. They returned to the salon,

and sat beside the fire.

“Ah! my children,” cried Madame Descoings, “I am stabbed to the heart:

my trey will turn up, I am certain of it. I am not thinking of myself,

but of you two. Philippe is a monster,” she continued, addressing her

niece; “he does not love you after all that you have done for him. If

you do not protect yourself against him he will bring you to beggary.

Promise me to sell out your Funds and buy a life-annuity. Joseph has a

good profession and he can live. If you will do this, dear Agathe, you

will never be an expense to Joseph. Monsieur Desroches has just started

his son as a notary; he would take your twelve thousand francs and pay

you an annuity.”

Joseph seized his mother’s candlestick, rushed up to his studio, and

came down with three hundred francs.

“Here, Madame Descoings!” he cried, giving her his little store, “it

is no business of ours what you do with your money; we owe you what you

have lost, and here it is, almost in full.”

“Take your poor little all?--the fruit of those privations that have

made me so unhappy! are you mad, Joseph?” cried the old woman, visibly

torn between her dogged faith in the coming trey, and the sacrilege of

accepting such a sacrifice.

“Oh! take it if you like,” said Agathe, who was moved to tears by this

action of her true son.

Madame Descoings took Joseph by the head, and kissed him on the

forehead:--

“My child,” she said, “don’t tempt me. I might only lose it. The

lottery, you see, is all folly.”

No more heroic words were ever uttered in the hidden dramas of domestic

life. It was, indeed, affection triumphant over inveterate vice. At this

instant, the clocks struck midnight.

“It is too late now,” said Madame Descoings.

“Oh!” cried Joseph, “here are your cabalistic numbers.”

The artist sprang at the paper, and rushed headlong down the staircase

to pay the stakes. When he was no longer present, Agathe and Madame

Descoings burst into tears.

“He has gone, the dear love,” cried the old gambler; “but it shall all

be his; he pays his own money.”

Unhappily, Joseph did not know the way to any of the lottery-offices,

which in those days were as well known to most people as the cigarshops

to a smoker in ours. The painter ran along, reading the street

names upon the lamps. When he asked the passers-by to show him a

lottery-office, he was told they were all closed, except the one under

the portico of the Palais-Royal which was sometimes kept open a little

later. He flew to the Palais-Royal: the office was shut.

“Two minutes earlier, and you might have paid your stake,” said one

of the vendors of tickets, whose beat was under the portico, where he

vociferated this singular cry: “Twelve hundred francs for forty sous,”

and offered tickets all paid up.

By the glimmer of the street lamp and the lights of the cafe de la

Rotonde, Joseph examined these tickets to see if, by chance, any of them

bore the Descoings’s numbers. He found none, and returned home grieved

at having done his best in vain for the old woman, to whom he related

his ill-luck. Agathe and her aunt went together to the midnight mass at

Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Joseph went to bed. The collation did not take

place. Madame Descoings had lost her head; and in Agathe’s heart was

eternal mourning.

The two rose late on Christmas morning. Ten o’clock had struck before

Madame Descoings began to bestir herself about the breakfast, which

was only ready at half-past eleven. At that hour, the oblong frames

containing the winning numbers are hung over the doors of the

lottery-offices. If Madame Descoings had paid her stake and held her

ticket, she would have gone by half-past nine o’clock to learn her

fate at a building close to the ministry of Finance, in the rue

Neuve-des-Petits Champs, a situation now occupied by the Theatre

Ventadour in the place of the same name. On the days when the drawings

took place, an observer might watch with curiosity the crowd of old

women, cooks, and old men assembled about the door of this building; a

sight as remarkable as the cue of people about the Treasury on the days

when the dividends are paid.

“Well, here you are, rolling in wealth!” said old Desroches, coming into

the room just as the Descoings was swallowing her last drop of coffee.

“What do you mean?” cried poor Agathe.

“Her trey has turned up,” he said, producing the list of numbers written

on a bit of paper, such as the officials of the lottery put by hundreds

into little wooden bowls on their counters.

Joseph read the list. Agathe read the list. The Descoings read nothing;

she was struck down as by a thunderbolt. At the change in her face,

at the cry she gave, old Desroches and Joseph carried her to her bed.

Agathe went for a doctor. The poor woman was seized with apoplexy, and

she only recovered consciousness at four in the afternoon; old Haudry,

her doctor, then said that, in spite of this improvement, she ought to

settle her worldly affairs and think of her salvation. She herself only

uttered two words:--

“Three millions!”

Old Desroches, informed by Joseph, with due reservations, of the state

of things, related many instances where lottery-players had seen a

fortune escape them on the very day when, by some fatality, they had

forgotten to pay their stakes; but he thoroughly understood that such a

blow might be fatal when it came after twenty years’ perseverance. About

five o’clock, as a deep silence reigned in the little _appartement_, and

the sick woman, watched by Joseph and his mother, the one sitting at

the foot, the other at the head of her bed, was expecting her grandson

Bixiou, whom Desroches had gone to fetch, the sound of Philippe’s step

and cane resounded on the staircase.

“There he is! there he is!” cried the Descoings, sitting up in bed and

suddenly able to use her paralyzed tongue.

Agathe and Joseph were deeply impressed by this powerful effect of the

horror which violently agitated the old woman. Their painful suspense

was soon ended by the sight of Philippe’s convulsed and purple face, his

staggering walk, and the horrible state of his eyes, which were deeply

sunken, dull, and yet haggard; he had a strong chill upon him, and his

teeth chattered.

“Starvation in Prussia!” he cried, looking about him. “Nothing to eat

or drink?--and my throat on fire! Well, what’s the matter? The devil is

always meddling in our affairs. There’s my old Descoings in bed, looking

at me with her eyes as big as saucers.”

“Be silent, monsieur!” said Agathe, rising. “At least, respect the

sorrows you have caused.”

“_Monsieur_, indeed!” he cried, looking at his mother. “My dear little

mother, that won’t do. Have you ceased to love your son?”

“Are you worthy of love? Have you forgotten what you did yesterday?

Go and find yourself another home; you cannot live with us any

longer,--that is, after to-morrow,” she added; “for in the state you are

in now it is difficult--”

“To turn me out,--is that it?” he interrupted. “Ha! are you going to

play the melodrama of ‘The Banished Son’? Well done! is that how you

take things? You are all a pretty set! What harm have I done? I’ve

cleaned out the old woman’s mattress. What the devil is the good of

money kept in wool? Do you call that a crime? Didn’t she take twenty

thousand francs from you? We are her creditors, and I’ve paid myself as

much as I could get,--that’s all.”

“My God! my God!” cried the dying woman, clasping her hands and praying.

“Be silent!” exclaimed Joseph, springing at his brother and putting his

hand before his mouth.

“To the right about, march! brat of a painter!” retorted Philippe,

laying his strong hand on Joseph’s head, and twirling him round, as he

flung him on a sofa. “Don’t dare to touch the moustache of a commander

of a squadron of the dragoons of the Guard!”

“She has paid me back all that she owed me,” cried Agathe, rising and

turning an angry face to her son; “and besides, that is my affair. You

have killed her. Go away, my son,” she added, with a gesture that took

all her remaining strength, “and never let me see you again. You are a

monster.”

“I kill her?”

“Her trey has turned up,” cried Joseph, “and you stole the money for her

stake.”

“Well, if she is dying of a lost trey, it isn’t I who have killed her,”

said the drunkard.

“Go, go!” said Agathe. “You fill me with horror; you have every vice. My

God! is this my son?”

A hollow rattle sounded in Madame Descoings’s throat, increasing

Agathe’s anger.

“I love you still, my mother,--you who are the cause of all my

misfortunes,” said Philippe. “You turn me out of doors on Christmas-day.

What did you do to grandpa Rouget, to your father, that he should drive

you away and disinherit you? If you had not displeased him, we should

all be rich now, and I should not be reduced to misery. What did you do

to your father,--you who are a good woman? You see by your own self, I

may be a good fellow and yet be turned out of house and home,--I, the

glory of the family--”

“The disgrace of it!” cried the Descoings.

“You shall leave this room, or you shall kill me!” cried Joseph,

springing on his brother with the fury of a lion.

“My God! my God!” cried Agathe, trying to separate the brothers.

At this moment Bixiou and Haudry the doctor entered. Joseph had just

knocked his brother over and stretched him on the ground.

“He is a regular wild beast,” he cried. “Don’t speak another word, or

I’ll--”

“I’ll pay you for this!” roared Philippe.

“A family explanation,” remarked Bixiou.

“Lift him up,” said the doctor, looking at him. “He is as ill as Madame

Descoings; undress him and put him to bed; get off his boots.”

“That’s easy to say,” cried Bixiou, “but they must be cut off; his legs

are swollen.”

Agathe took a pair of scissors. When she had cut down the boots, which

in those days were worn outside the clinging trousers, ten pieces of

gold rolled on the floor.

“There it is,--her money,” murmured Philippe. “Cursed fool that I was, I

forgot it. I too have missed a fortune.”

He was seized with a horrible delirium of fever, and began to rave.

Joseph, assisted by old Desroches, who had come back, and by Bixiou,

carried him to his room. Doctor Haudry was obliged to write a line

to the Hopital de la Charite and borrow a strait-waistcoat; for the

delirium ran so high as to make him fear that Philippe might kill

himself,--he was raving. At nine o’clock calm was restored. The Abbe

Loraux and Desroches endeavored to comfort Agathe, who never ceased

to weep at her aunt’s bedside. She listened to them in silence, and

obstinately shook her head; Joseph and the Descoings alone knew the

extent and depth of her inward wound.

“He will learn to do better, mother,” said Joseph, when Desroches and

Bixiou had left.

“Oh!” cried the widow, “Philippe is right,--my father cursed me: I have

no right to--Here, here is your money,” she said to Madame Descoings,

adding Joseph’s three hundred francs to the two hundred found on

Philippe. “Go and see if your brother does not need something,” she said

to Joseph.

“Will you keep a promise made to a dying woman?” asked Madame Descoings,

who felt that her mind was failing her.

“Yes, aunt.”

“Then swear to me to give your property to young Desroches for a life

annuity. My income ceases at my death; and from what you have just said,

I know you will let that wretch wring the last farthing out of you.”

“I swear it, aunt.”

The old woman died on the 31st of December, five days after the terrible

blow which old Desroches had so innocently given her. The five hundred

francs--the only money in the household--were barely enough to pay for

her funeral. She left a small amount of silver and some furniture, the

value of which Madame Bixiou paid over to her grandson Bixiou. Reduced

to eight hundred francs’ annuity paid to her by young Desroches, who

had bought a business without clients, and himself took the capital of

twelve thousand francs, Agathe gave up her _appartement_ on the third

floor, and sold all her superfluous furniture. When, at the end of a

month, Philippe seemed to be convalescent, his mother coldly explained

to him that the costs of his illness had taken all her ready money, that

she should be obliged in future to work for her living, and she urged

him, with the utmost kindness, to re-enter the army and support himself.

“You might have spared me that sermon,” said Philippe, looking at his

mother with an eye that was cold from utter indifference. “I have seen

all along that neither you nor my brother love me. I am alone in the

world; I like it best!”

“Make yourself worthy of our affection,” answered the poor mother,

struck to the very heart, “and we will give it back to you--”

“Nonsense!” he cried, interrupting her.

He took his old hat, rubbed white at the edges, stuck it over one ear,

and went downstairs, whistling.

“Philippe! where are you going without any money?” cried his mother, who

could not repress her tears. “Here, take this--”

She held out to him a hundred francs in gold, wrapped up in paper.

Philippe came up the stairs he had just descended, and took the money.

“Well; won’t you kiss me?” she said, bursting into tears.

He pressed his mother in his arms, but without the warmth of feeling

which was all that could give value to the embrace.

“Where shall you go?” asked Agathe.

“To Florentine, Girodeau’s mistress. Ah! they are real friends!” he

answered brutally.

He went away. Agathe turned back with trembling limbs, and failing

eyes, and aching heart. She fell upon her knees, prayed God to take

her unnatural child into His own keeping, and abdicated her woeful

motherhood.

CHAPTER VI

By February, 1822, Madame Bridau had settled into the attic room

recently occupied by Philippe, which was over the kitchen of her former

_appartement_. The painter’s studio and bedroom was opposite, on the

other side of the staircase. When Joseph saw his mother thus reduced,

he was determined to make her as comfortable as possible. After his

brother’s departure he assisted in the re-arrangement of the garret

room, to which he gave an artist’s touch. He added a rug; the bed,

simple in character but exquisite in taste, had something monastic about

it; the walls, hung with a cheap glazed cotton selected with taste, of

a color which harmonized with the furniture and was newly covered, gave

the room an air of elegance and nicety. In the hallway he added a double

door, with a “portiere” to the inner one. The window was shaded by a

blind which gave soft tones to the light. If the poor mother’s life was

reduced to the plainest circumstances that the life of any woman could

have in Paris, Agathe was at least better off than all others in a like

case, thanks to her son.

To save his mother from the cruel cares of such reduced housekeeping,

Joseph took her every day to dine at a table-d’hote in the rue de

Beaune, frequented by well-bred women, deputies, and titled people,

where each person’s dinner cost ninety francs a month. Having nothing

but the breakfast to provide, Agathe took up for her son the old habits

she had formerly had with the father. But in spite of Joseph’s pious

lies, she discovered the fact that her dinner was costing him nearly

a hundred francs a month. Alarmed at such enormous expense, and not

imaging that her son could earn much money by painting naked women, she

obtained, thanks to her confessor, the Abbe Loraux, a place worth seven

hundred francs a year in a lottery-office belonging to the Comtesse

de Bauvan, the widow of a Chouan leader. The lottery-offices of the

government, the lot, as one might say, of privileged widows, ordinarily

sufficed for the support of the family of each person who managed them.

But after the Restoration the difficulty of rewarding, within the limits

of constitutional government, all the services rendered to the cause,

led to the custom of giving to reduced women of title not only one but

two lottery-offices, worth, usually, from six to ten thousand a year. In

such cases, the widow of a general or nobleman thus “protected” did not

keep the lottery-office herself; she employed a paid manager. When these

managers were young men they were obliged to employ an assistant;

for, according to law, the offices had to be kept open till midnight;

moreover, the reports required by the minister of finance involved

considerable writing. The Comtesse de Bauvan, to whom the Abbe Loraux

explained the circumstances of the widow Bridau, promised, in case

her manager should leave, to give the place to Agathe; meantime she

stipulated that the widow should be taken as assistant, and receive a

salary of six hundred francs. Poor Agathe, who was obliged to be at the

office by ten in the morning, had scarcely time to get her dinner.

She returned to her work at seven in the evening, remaining there till

midnight. Joseph never, for two years, failed to fetch his mother at

night, and bring her back to the rue Mazarin; and often he went to take

her to dinner; his friends frequently saw him leave the opera or some

brilliant salon to be punctually at midnight at the office in the rue

Vivienne.

Agathe soon acquired the monotonous regularity of life which becomes

a stay and a support to those who have endured the shock of violent

sorrows. In the morning, after doing up her room, in which there were no

longer cats and little birds, she prepared the breakfast at her own fire

and carried it into the studio, where she ate it with her son. She then

arranged Joseph’s bedroom, put out the fire in her own chamber, and

brought her sewing to the studio, where she sat by the little iron

stove, leaving the room if a comrade or a model entered it. Though she

understood nothing whatever of art, the silence of the studio suited

her. In the matter of art she made not the slightest progress; she

attempted no hypocrisy; she was utterly amazed at the importance they

all attached to color, composition, drawing. When the Cenacle friends

or some brother-painter, like Schinner, Pierre Grassou, Leon de Lora,--a

very youthful “rapin” who was called at that time Mistigris,--discussed

a picture, she would come back afterwards, examine it attentively, and

discover nothing to justify their fine words and their hot disputes. She

made her son’s shirts, she mended his stockings, she even cleaned his

palette, supplied him with rags to wipe his brushes, and kept things in

order in the studio. Seeing how much thought his mother gave to these

little details, Joseph heaped attentions upon her in return. If mother

and son had no sympathies in the matter of art, they were at least bound

together by signs of tenderness. The mother had a purpose. One morning

as she was petting Joseph while he was sketching a large picture

(finished in after years and never understood), she said, as it were,

casually and aloud,--

“My God! what is he doing?”

“Doing? who?”

“Philippe.”

“Oh, ah! he’s sowing his wild oats; that fellow will make something of

himself by and by.”

“But he has gone through the lesson of poverty; perhaps it was poverty

which changed him to what he is. If he were prosperous he would be

good--”

“You think, my dear mother, that he suffered during that journey of his.

You are mistaken; he kept carnival in New York just as he does here--”

“But if he is suffering at this moment, near to us, would it not be

horrible?”

“Yes,” replied Joseph. “For my part, I will gladly give him some money;

but I don’t want to see him; he killed our poor Descoings.”

“So,” resumed Agathe, “you would not be willing to paint his portrait?”

“For you, dear mother, I’d suffer martyrdom. I can make myself remember

nothing except that he is my brother.”

“His portrait as a captain of dragoons on horseback?”

“Yes, I’ve a copy of a fine horse by Gros and I haven’t any use for it.”

“Well, then, go and see that friend of his and find out what has become

of him.”

“I’ll go!”

Agathe rose; her scissors and work fell at her feet; she went and kissed

Joseph’s head, and dropped two tears on his hair.

“He is your passion, that fellow,” said the painter. “We all have our

hopeless passions.”

That afternoon, about four o’clock, Joseph went to the rue du Sentier

and found his brother, who had taken Giroudeau’s place. The old dragoon

had been promoted to be cashier of a weekly journal established by his

nephew. Although Finot was still proprietor of the other newspaper,

which he had divided into shares, holding all the shares himself, the

proprietor and editor “de visu” was one of his friends, named Lousteau,

the son of that very sub-delegate of Issoudun on whom the Bridaus’

grandfather, Doctor Rouget, had vowed vengeance; consequently he was the

nephew of Madame Hochon. To make himself agreeable to his uncle, Finot

gave Philippe the place Giroudeau was quitting; cutting off, however,

half the salary. Moreover, daily, at five o’clock, Giroudeau audited the

accounts and carried away the receipts. Coloquinte, the old veteran,

who was the office boy and did errands, also kept an eye on the slippery

Philippe; who was, however, behaving properly. A salary of six hundred

francs, and the five hundred of his cross sufficed him to live, all the

more because, living in a warm office all day and at the theatre on a

free pass every evening, he had only to provide himself with food and a

place to sleep in. Coloquinte was departing with the stamped papers on

his head, and Philippe was brushing his false sleeves of green linen,

when Joseph entered.

“Bless me, here’s the cub!” cried Philippe. “Well, we’ll go and dine

together. You shall go to the opera; Florine and Florentine have got

a box. I’m going with Giroudeau; you shall be of the party, and I’ll

introduce you to Nathan.”

He took his leaded cane, and moistened a cigar.

“I can’t accept your invitation; I am to take our mother to dine at a

table d’hote.”

“Ah! how is she, the poor, dear woman?”

“She is pretty well,” answered the painter, “I have just repainted our

father’s portrait, and aunt Descoings’s. I have also painted my own, and

I should like to give our mother yours, in the uniform of the dragoons

of the Imperial Guard.”

“Very good.”

“You will have to come and sit.”

“I’m obliged to be in this hen-coop from nine o’clock till five.”

“Two Sundays will be enough.”

“So be it, little man,” said Napoleon’s staff officer, lighting his

cigar at the porter’s lamp.

When Joseph related Philippe’s position to his mother, on their way to

dinner in the rue de Beaune, he felt her arm tremble in his, and joy

lighted up her worn face; the poor soul breathed like one relieved of

a heavy weight. The next day, inspired by joy and gratitude, she paid

Joseph a number of little attentions; she decorated his studio with

flowers, and bought him two stands of plants. On the first Sunday when

Philippe was to sit, Agathe arranged a charming breakfast in the studio.

She laid it all out on the table; not forgetting a flask of brandy,

which, however, was only half full. She herself stayed behind a screen,

in which she made a little hole. The ex-dragoon sent his uniform the

night before, and she had not refrained from kissing it. When Philippe

was placed, in full dress, on one of those straw horses, all saddled,

which Joseph had hired for the occasion, Agathe, fearing to betray her

presence, mingled the soft sound of her tears with the conversation

of the two brothers. Philippe posed for two hours before and two hours

after breakfast. At three o’clock in the afternoon, he put on his

ordinary clothes and, as he lighted a cigar, he proposed to his brother

to go and dine together in the Palais-Royal, jingling gold in his pocket

as he spoke.

“No,” said Joseph, “it frightens me to see gold about you.”

“Ah! you’ll always have a bad opinion of me in this house,” cried the

colonel in a thundering voice. “Can’t I save my money, too?”

“Yes, yes!” cried Agathe, coming out of her hiding-place, and kissing

her son. “Let us go and dine with him, Joseph!”

Joseph dared not scold his mother. He went and dressed himself; and

Philippe took them to the Rocher de Cancale, where he gave them a

splendid dinner, the bill for which amounted to a hundred francs.

“The devil!” muttered Joseph uneasily; “with an income of eleven hundred

francs you manage, like Ponchard in the ‘Dame Blance,’ to save enough to

buy estates.”

“Bah, I’m on a run of luck,” answered the dragoon, who had drunk

enormously.

Hearing this speech just as they were on the steps of the cafe, and

before they got into the carriage to go to the theatre,--for Philippe

was to take his mother to the Cirque-Olympique (the only theatre her

confessor allowed her to visit),--Joseph pinched his mother’s arm.

She at once pretended to feel unwell, and refused to go the theatre;

Philippe accordingly took them back to the rue Mazarin, where, as soon

as she was alone with Joseph in her garret, Agathe fell into a gloomy

silence.

The following Sunday Philippe came again. This time his mother was

visibly present at the sitting. She served the breakfast, and put

several questions to the dragoon. She then learned that the nephew of

old Madame Hochon, the friend of her mother, played a considerable part

in literature. Philippe and his friend Giroudeau lived among a circle of

journalists, actresses, and booksellers, where they were regarded in the

light of cashiers. Philippe, who had been drinking kirsch before posing,

was loquacious. He boasted that he was about to become a great man. But

when Joseph asked a question as to his pecuniary resources he was dumb.

It so happened that there was no newspaper on the following day, it

being a fete, and to finish the picture Philippe proposed to sit again

on the morrow. Joseph told him that the Salon was close at hand, and as

he did not have the money to buy two frames for the pictures he wished

to exhibit, he was forced to procure it by finishing a copy of a Rubens

which had been ordered by Elie Magus, the picture-dealer. The original

belonged to a wealthy Swiss banker, who had only lent it for ten days,

and the next day was the last; the sitting must therefore be put off

till the following Sunday.

“Is that it?” asked Philippe, pointing to a picture by Rubens on an

easel.

“Yes,” replied Joseph; “it is worth twenty thousand francs. That’s what

genius can do. It will take me all to-morrow to get the tones of the

original and make the copy look so old it can’t be distinguished from

it.”

“Adieu, mother,” said Philippe, kissing Agathe. “Next Sunday, then.”

The next day Elie Magus was to come for his copy. Joseph’s friend,

Pierre Grassou, who was working for the same dealer, wanted to see it

when finished. To play him a trick, Joseph, when he heard his knock, put

the copy, which was varnished with a special glaze of his own, in place

of the original, and put the original on his easel. Pierre Grassou was

completely taken in; and then amazed and delighted at Joseph’s success.

“Do you think it will deceive old Magus?” he said to Joseph.

“We shall see,” answered the latter.

The dealer did not come as he had promised. It was getting late; Agathe

dined that day with Madame Desroches, who had lately lost her husband,

and Joseph proposed to Pierre Grassou to dine at his table d’hote. As he

went out he left the key of his studio with the concierge.

An hour later Philippe appeared and said to the concierge,--

“I am to sit this evening; Joseph will be in soon, and I will wait for

him in the studio.”

The woman gave him the key; Philippe went upstairs, took the copy,

thinking it was the original, and went down again; returned the key

to the concierge with the excuse that he had forgotten something, and

hurried off to sell his Rubens for three thousand francs. He had taken

the precaution to convey a message from his brother to Elie Magus,

asking him not to call till the following day.

That evening when Joseph returned, bringing his mother from Madame

Desroches’s, the concierge told him of Philippe’s freak,--how he had

called intending to wait, and gone away again immediately.

“I am ruined--unless he has had the delicacy to take the copy,” cried

the painter, instantly suspecting the theft. He ran rapidly up the three

flights and rushed into his studio. “God be praised!” he ejaculated. “He

is, what he always has been, a vile scoundrel.”

Agathe, who had followed Joseph, did not understand what he was saying;

but when her son explained what had happened, she stood still, with the

tears in her eyes.

“Have I but one son?” she said in a broken voice.

“We have never yet degraded him to the eyes of strangers,” said Joseph;

“but we must now warn the concierge. In future we shall have to keep the

keys ourselves. I’ll finish his blackguard face from memory; there’s not

much to do to it.”

“Leave it as it is; it will pain me too much ever to look at it,”

answered the mother, heart-stricken and stupefied at such wickedness.

Philippe had been told how the money for this copy was to be expended;

moreover he knew the abyss into which he would plunge his brother

through the loss of the Rubens; but nothing restrained him. After this

last crime Agathe never mentioned him; her face acquired an expression

of cold and concentrated and bitter despair; one thought took possession

of her mind.

“Some day,” she said to herself, “we shall hear of a Bridau in the

police courts.”

Two months later, as Agathe was about to start for her office, an

old officer, who announced himself as a friend of Philippe on urgent

business, called on Madame Bridau, who happened to be in Joseph’s

studio.

When Giroudeau gave his name, mother and son trembled, and none the less

because the ex-dragoon had the face of a tough old sailor of the worst

type. His fishy gray eyes, his piebald moustache, the remains of his

shaggy hair fringing a skull that was the color of fresh butter,

all gave an indescribably debauched and libidinous expression to his

appearance. He wore an old iron-gray overcoat decorated with the red

ribbon of an officer of the Legion of honor, which met with difficulty

over a gastronomic stomach in keeping with a mouth that stretched from

ear to ear, and a pair of powerful shoulders. The torso was supported

by a spindling pair of legs, while the rubicund tints on the cheek-bones

bore testimony to a rollicking life. The lower part of the cheeks, which

were deeply wrinkled, overhung a coat-collar of velvet the worse for

wear. Among other adornments, the ex-dragoon wore enormous gold rings in

his ears.

“What a ‘noceur’!” thought Joseph, using a popular expression, meaning a

“loose fish,” which had lately passed into the ateliers.

“Madame,” said Finot’s uncle and cashier, “your son is in so unfortunate

a position that his friends find it absolutely necessary to ask you to

share the somewhat heavy expense which he is to them. He can no

longer do his work at the office; and Mademoiselle Florentine, of the

Porte-Saint-Martin, has taken him to lodge with her, in a miserable

attic in the rue de Vendome. Philippe is dying; and if you and his

brother are not able to pay for the doctor and medicines, we shall be

obliged, for the sake of curing him, to have him taken to the hospital

of the Capuchins. For three hundred francs we would keep him where he

is. But he must have a nurse; for at night, when Mademoiselle Florentine

is at the theatre, he persists in going out, and takes things that are

irritating and injurious to his malady and its treatment. As we are fond

of him, this makes us really very unhappy. The poor fellow has pledged

the pension of his cross for the next three years; he is temporarily

displaced from his office, and he has literally nothing. He will kill

himself, madame, unless we can put him into the private asylum of Doctor

Dubois. It is a decent hospital, where they will take him for ten francs

a day. Florentine and I will pay half, if you will pay the rest; it

won’t be for more than two months.”

“Monsieur, it is difficult for a mother not to be eternally grateful

to you for your kindness to her son,” replied Agathe; “but this son

is banished from my heart, and as for money, I have none. Not to be a

burden on my son whom you see here, who works day and night and

deserves all the love his mother can give him, I am the assistant in a

lottery-office--at my age!”

“And you, young man,” said the old dragoon to Joseph; “can’t you do as

much for your brother as a poor dancer at the Porte-Saint-Martin and an

old soldier?”

“Look here!” said Joseph, out of patience; “do you want me to tell you

in artist language what I think of your visit? Well, you have come to

swindle us on false pretences.”

“To-morrow your brother shall go to the hospital.”

“And he will do very well there,” answered Joseph. “If I were in like

case, I should go there too.”

Giroudeau withdrew, much disappointed, and also really mortified at

being obliged to send to a hospital a man who had carried the Emperor’s

orders at the battle of Montereau. Three months later, at the end of

July, as Agathe one morning was crossing the Pont Neuf to avoid paying a

sou at the Pont des Arts, she saw, coming along by the shops of the Quai

de l’Ecole, a man bearing all the signs of second-class poverty, who,

she thought, resembled Philippe. In Paris, there are three distinct

classes of poverty. First, the poverty of the man who preserves

appearances, and to whom a future still belongs; this is the poverty

of young men, artists, men of the world, momentarily unfortunate.

The outward signs of their distress are not visible, except under the

microscope of a close observer. These persons are the equestrian order

of poverty; they continue to drive about in cabriolets. In the second

order we find old men who have become indifferent to everything, and, in

June, put the cross of the Legion of honor on alpaca overcoats; that is

the poverty of small incomes,--of old clerks, who live at Sainte-Perine

and care no longer about their outward man. Then comes, in the third

place, poverty in rags, the poverty of the people, the poverty that

is poetic; which Callot, Hogarth, Murillo, Charlet, Raffet, Gavarni,

Meissonier, Art itself adores and cultivates, especially during the

carnival. The man in whom poor Agathe thought she recognized her son was

astride the last two classes of poverty. She saw the ragged neck-cloth,

the scurfy hat, the broken and patched boots, the threadbare coat, whose

buttons had shed their mould, leaving the empty shrivelled pod dangling

in congruity with the torn pockets and the dirty collar. Scraps of flue

were in the creases of the coat, which showed plainly the dust that

filled it. The man drew from the pockets of his seam-rent iron-gray

trousers a pair of hands as black as those of a mechanic. A knitted

woollen waistcoat, discolored by use, showed below the sleeves of his

coat, and above the trousers, and no doubt served instead of a shirt.

Philippe wore a green silk shade with a wire edge over his eyes; his

head, which was nearly bald, the tints of his skin, and his sunken face

too plainly revealed that he was just leaving the terrible Hopital du

Midi. His blue overcoat, whitened at the seams, was still decorated

with the ribbon of his cross; and the passers-by looked at the

hero, doubtless some victim of the government, with curiosity and

commiseration; the rosette attracted notice, and the fiercest “ultra”

was jealous for the honor of the Legion. In those days, however much the

government endeavored to bring the Order into disrepute by bestowing

its cross right and left, there were not fifty-three thousand persons

decorated.

Agathe trembled through her whole being. If it were impossible to love

this son any longer, she could still suffer for him. Quivering with this

last expression of motherhood, she wept as she saw the brilliant staff

officer of the Emperor turn to enter tobacconist’s and pause on the

threshold; he had felt in his pocket and found nothing. Agathe left the

bridge, crossed the quai rapidly, took out her purse, thrust it into

Philippe’s hand, and fled away as if she had committed a crime. After

that, she ate nothing for two days; before her was the horrible vision

of her son dying of hunger in the streets of Paris.

“When he has spent all the money in my purse, who will give him any?”

she thought. “Giroudeau did not deceive us; Philippe is just out of that

hospital.”

She no longer saw the assassin of her poor aunt, the scourge of the

family, the domestic thief, the gambler, the drunkard, the low liver of

a bad life; she saw only the man recovering from illness, yet doomed to

die of starvation, the smoker deprived of his tobacco. At forty-seven

years of age she grew to look like a woman of seventy. Her eyes were

dimmed with tears and prayers. Yet it was not the last grief this son

was to bring upon her; her worst apprehensions were destined to be

realized. A conspiracy of officers was discovered at the heart of the

army, and articles from the “Moniteur” giving details of the arrests

were hawked about the streets.

In the depths of her cage in the lottery-office of the rue Vivienne,

Agathe heard the name of Philippe Bridau. She fainted, and the manager,

understanding her trouble and the necessity of taking certain steps,

gave her leave of absence for two weeks.

“Ah! my friend,” she said to Joseph, as she went to bed that night, “it

is our severity which drove him to it.”

“I’ll go and see Desroches,” answered Joseph.

While the artist was confiding his brother’s affairs to the younger

Desroches,--who by this time had the reputation of being one of the

keenest and most astute lawyers in Paris, and who, moreover, did sundry

services for personages of distinction, among others for des Lupeaulx,

then secretary of a ministry,--Giroudeau called upon the widow. This

time, Agathe believed him.

“Madame,” he said, “if you can produce twelve thousand francs your son

will be set at liberty for want of proof. It is necessary to buy the

silence of two witnesses.”

“I will get the money,” said the poor mother, without knowing how or

where.

Inspired by this danger, she wrote to her godmother, old Madame Hochon,

begging her to ask Jean-Jacques Rouget to send her the twelve thousand

francs and save his nephew Philippe. If Rouget refused, she entreated

Madame Hochon to lend them to her, promising to return them in two

years. By return of courier, she received the following letter:--

My dear girl: Though your brother has an income of not less than

forty thousand francs a year, without counting the sums he has

laid by for the last seventeen years, and which Monsieur Hochon

estimates at more than six hundred thousand francs, he will not

give one penny to nephews whom he has never seen. As for me, you

know I cannot dispose of a farthing while my husband lives. Hochon

is the greatest miser in Issoudun. I do not know what he does with

his money; he does not give twenty francs a year to his

grandchildren. As for borrowing the money, I should have to get

his signature, and he would refuse it. I have not even attempted

to speak to your brother, who lives with a concubine, to whom he

is a slave. It is pitiable to see how the poor man is treated in

his own home, when he might have a sister and nephews to take care

of him.

I have hinted to you several times that your presence at Issoudun

might save your brother, and rescue a fortune of forty, perhaps

sixty, thousand francs a year from the claws of that slut; but you

either do not answer me, or you seem never to understand my

meaning. So to-day I am obliged to write without epistolary

circumlocution. I feel for the misfortune which has overtaken you,

but, my dearest, I can do no more than pity you. And this is why:

Hochon, at eighty-five years of age, takes four meals a day, eats

a salad with hard-boiled eggs every night, and frisks about like a

rabbit. I shall have spent my whole life--for he will live to

write my epitaph--without ever having had twenty francs in my

purse. If you will come to Issoudun and counteract the influence

of that concubine over your brother, you must stay with me, for

there are reasons why Rouget cannot receive you in his own house;

but even then, I shall have hard work to get my husband to let me

have you here. However, you can safely come; I can make him mind

me as to that. I know a way to get what I want out of him; I have

only to speak of making my will. It seems such a horrid thing to

do that I do not often have recourse to it; but for you, dear

Agathe, I will do the impossible.

I hope your Philippe will get out of his trouble; and I beg you to

employ a good lawyer. In any case, come to Issoudun as soon as you

can. Remember that your imbecile of a brother at fifty-seven is an

older and weaker man than Monsieur Hochon. So it is a pressing

matter. People are talking already of a will that cuts off your

inheritance; but Monsieur Hochon says there is still time to get

it revoked.

Adieu, my little Agathe; may God help you! Believe in the love of

your godmother,

Maximilienne Hochon, nee Lousteau.

P.S. Has my nephew, Etienne, who writes in the newspapers and is

intimate, they tell me, with your son Philippe, been to pay his

respects to you? But come at once to Issoudun, and we will talk

over things.

This letter made a great impression on Agathe, who showed it, of course,

to Joseph, to whom she had been forced to mention Giroudeau’s proposal.

The artist, who grew wary when it concerned his brother, pointed out to

her that she ought to tell everything to Desroches.

Conscious of the wisdom of that advice, Agathe went with her son the

next morning, at six o’clock, to find Desroches at his house in the rue

de Bussy. The lawyer, as cold and stern as his late father, with a sharp

voice, a rough skin, implacable eyes, and the visage of a fox as he

licks his lips of the blood of chickens, bounded like a tiger when he

heard of Giroudeau’s visit and proposal.

“And pray, mere Bridau,” he cried, in his little cracked voice, “how

long are you going to be duped by your cursed brigand of a son? Don’t

give him a farthing. Make yourself easy, I’ll answer for Philippe. I

should like to see him brought before the Court of Peers; it might

save his future. You are afraid he will be condemned; but I say, may it

please God his lawyer lets him be convicted. Go to Issoudun, secure the

property for your children. If you don’t succeed, if your brother

has made a will in favor of that woman, and you can’t make him

revoke it,--well then, at least get all the evidence you can of undue

influence, and I’ll institute proceedings for you. But you are too

honest a woman to know how to get at the bottom facts of such a matter.

I’ll go myself to Issoudun in the holidays,--if I can.”

That “go myself” made Joseph tremble in his skin. Desroches winked at

him to let his mother go downstairs first, and then the lawyer detained

the young man for a single moment.

“Your brother is a great scoundrel; he is the cause of the discovery of

this conspiracy,--intentionally or not, I can’t say, for the rascal

is so sly no one can find out the exact truth as to that. Fool or

traitor,--take your choice. He will be put under the surveillance of the

police, nothing more. You needn’t be uneasy; no one knows this secret

but myself. Go to Issoudun with your mother. You have good sense; try to

save the property.”

“Come, my poor mother, Desroches is right,” said Joseph, rejoining

Agathe on the staircase. “I have sold my two pictures, let us start for

Berry; you have two weeks’ leave of absence.”

After writing to her godmother to announce their arrival, Agathe and

Joseph started the next evening for their trip to Issoudun, leaving

Philippe to his fate. The diligence rolled through the rue d’Enfer

toward the Orleans highroad. When Agathe saw the Luxembourg, to which

Philippe had been transferred, she could not refrain from saying,--

“If it were not for the Allies he would never be there!”

Many sons would have made an impatient gesture and smiled with pity; but

the artist, who was alone with his mother in the coupe, caught her in

his arms and pressed her to his heart, exclaiming:--

“Oh, mother! you are a mother just as Raphael was a painter. And you

will always be a fool of a mother!”

Madame Bridau’s mind, diverted before long from her griefs by the

distractions of the journey, began to dwell on the purpose of it. She

re-read the letter of Madame Hochon, which had so stirred up the lawyer

Desroches. Struck with the words “concubine” and “slut,” which the

pen of a septuagenarian as pious as she was respectable had used to

designate the woman now in process of getting hold of Jean-Jacques

Rouget’s property, struck also with the word “imbecile” applied to

Rouget himself, she began to ask herself how, by her presence at

Issoudun, she was to save the inheritance. Joseph, poor disinterested

artist that he was, knew little enough about the Code, and his mother’s

last remark absorbed his mind.

“Before our friend Desroches sent us off to protect our rights, he ought

to have explained to us the means of doing so,” he exclaimed.

“So far as my poor head, which whirls at the thought of Philippe in

prison,--without tobacco, perhaps, and about to appear before the Court

of Peers!--leaves me any distinct memory,” returned Agathe, “I think

young Desroches said we were to get evidence of undue influence, in case

my brother has made a will in favor of that--that--woman.”

“He is good at that, Desroches is,” cried the painter. “Bah! if we can

make nothing of it I’ll get him to come himself.”

“Well, don’t let us trouble our heads uselessly,” said Agathe. “When we

get to Issoudun my godmother will tell us what to do.”

This conversation, which took place just after Madame Bridau and Joseph

changed coaches at Orleans and entered the Sologne, is sufficient proof

of the incapacity of the painter and his mother to play the part the

inexorable Desroches had assigned to them.

In returning to Issoudun after thirty years’ absence, Agathe was about

to find such changes in its manners and customs that it is necessary to

sketch, in a few words, a picture of that town. Without it, the reader

would scarcely understand the heroism displayed by Madame Hochon in

assisting her goddaughter, or the strange situation of Jean-Jacques

Rouget. Though Doctor Rouget had taught his son to regard Agathe in the

light of a stranger, it was certainly a somewhat extraordinary thing

that for thirty years a brother should have given no signs of life to a

sister. Such a silence was evidently caused by peculiar circumstances,

and any other sister and nephew than Agathe and Joseph would long

ago have inquired into them. There is, moreover, a certain connection

between the condition of the city of Issoudun and the interests of the

Bridau family, which can only be seen as the story goes on.

CHAPTER VII

Issoudun, be it said without offence to Paris, is one of the oldest

cities in France. In spite of the historical assumption which makes the

emperor Probus the Noah of the Gauls, Caesar speaks of the excellent

wine of Champ-Fort (“de Campo Forti”) still one of the best vintages of

Issoudun. Rigord writes of this city in language which leaves no

doubt as to its great population and its immense commerce. But these

testimonies both assign a much lesser age to the city than its ancient

antiquity demands. In fact, the excavations lately undertaken by a

learned archaeologist of the place, Monsieur Armand Peremet, have

brought to light, under the celebrated tower of Issoudun, a basilica

of the fifth century, probably the only one in France. This church

preserves, in its very materials, the sign-manual of an anterior

civilization; for its stones came from a Roman temple which stood on the

same site.

Issoudun, therefore, according to the researches of this antiquary, like

other cities of France whose ancient or modern autonym ends in “Dun”

(“dunum”) bears in its very name the certificate of an autochthonous

existence. The word “Dun,” the appanage of all dignity consecrated by

Druidical worship, proves a religious and military settlement of the

Celts. Beneath the Dun of the Gauls must have lain the Roman temple

to Isis. From that comes, according to Chaumon, the name of the

city, Issous-Dun,--“Is” being the abbreviation of “Isis.” Richard

Coeur-de-lion undoubtedly built the famous tower (in which he coined

money) above the basilica of the fifth century,--the third monument

of the third religion of this ancient town. He used the church as a

necessary foundation, or stay, for the raising of the rampart; and he

preserved it by covering it with feudal fortifications as with a

mantle. Issoudun was at that time the seat of the ephemeral power of the

Routiers and the Cottereaux, adventurers and free-lancers, whom Henry

II. sent against his son Richard, at the time of his rebellion as Comte

de Poitou.

The history of Aquitaine, which was not written by the Benedictines,

will probably never be written, because there are no longer

Benedictines: thus we are not able to light up these archaeological

tenebrae in the history of our manners and customs on every occasion of

their appearance. There is another testimony to the ancient importance

of Issoudun in the conversion into a canal of the Tournemine, a little

stream raised several feet above the level of the Theols which surrounds

the town. This is undoubtedly the work of Roman genius. Moreover,

the suburb which extends from the castle in a northerly direction is

intersected by a street which for more than two thousand years has borne

the name of the rue de Rome; and the inhabitants of this suburb, whose

racial characteristics, blood, and physiognomy have a special stamp of

their own, call themselves descendants of the Romans. They are nearly

all vine-growers, and display a remarkable inflexibility of manners

and customs, due, undoubtedly, to their origin,--perhaps also to their

victory over the Cottereaux and the Routiers, whom they exterminated on

the plain of Charost in the twelfth century.

After the insurrection of 1830, France was too agitated to pay much

attention to the rising of the vine-growers of Issoudun; a terrible

affair, the facts of which have never been made public,--for good

reasons. In the first place, the bourgeois of Issoudun refused to allow

the military to enter the town. They followed the use and wont of the

bourgeoisie of the Middle Ages and declared themselves responsible for

their own city. The government was obliged to yield to a sturdy people

backed up by seven or eight thousand vine-growers, who had burned all

the archives, also the offices of “indirect taxation,” and had dragged

through the streets a customs officer, crying out at every street

lantern, “Let us hang him here!” The poor man’s life was saved by the

national guard, who took him to prison on pretext of drawing up his

indictment. The general in command only entered the town by virtue of a

compromise made with the vine-growers; and it needed some courage to go

among them. At the moment when he showed himself at the hotel-de-ville,

a man from the faubourg de Rome slung a “volant” round his neck (the

“volant” is a huge pruning-hook fastened to a pole, with which they trim

trees) crying out, “No more clerks, or there’s an end to compromise!”

The fellow would have taken off that honored head, left untouched by

sixteen years of war, had it not been for the hasty intervention of one

of the leaders of the revolt, to whom a promise had been made that _the

chambers should be asked to suppress the excisemen_.

In the fourteenth century, Issoudun still had sixteen or seventeen

thousand inhabitants, remains of a population double that number in the

time of Rigord. Charles VII. possessed a mansion which still exists, and

was known, as late as the eighteenth century, as the Maison du Roi. This

town, then a centre of the woollen trade, supplied that commodity to

the greater part of Europe, and manufactured on a large scale blankets,

hats, and the excellent Chevreautin gloves. Under Louis XIV., Issoudun,

the birthplace of Baron and Bourdaloue, was always cited as a city of

elegance and good society, where the language was correctly spoken. The

curate Poupard, in his History of Sancerre, mentions the inhabitants

of Issoudun as remarkable among the other Berrichons for subtlety and

natural wit. To-day, the wit and the splendor have alike disappeared.

Issoudun, whose great extent of ground bears witness to its ancient

importance, has now barely twelve thousand inhabitants, including

the vine-dressers of four enormous suburbs,--those of Saint-Paterne,

Vilatte, Rome, and Alouette, which are really small towns. The

bourgeoisie, like that of Versailles, are spread over the length and

breadth of the streets. Issoudun still holds the market for the fleeces

of Berry; a commerce now threatened by improvements in the stock which

are being introduced everywhere except in Berry.

The vineyards of Issoudun produce a wine which is drunk throughout the

two departments, and which, if manufactured as Burgundy and Gascony

manufacture theirs, would be one of the best wines in France. Alas, “to

do as our fathers did,” with no innovations, is the law of the land.

Accordingly, the vine-growers continue to leave the refuse of the grape

in the juice during its fermentation, which makes the wine detestable,

when it might be a source of ever-springing wealth, and an industry for

the community. Thanks to the bitterness which the refuse infuses into

the wine, and which, they say, lessens with age, a vintage will keep

a century. This reason, given by the vine-grower in excuse for his

obstinacy, is of sufficient importance to oenology to be made public

here; Guillaume le Breton has also proclaimed it in some lines of his

“Phillippide.”

The decline of Issoudun is explained by this spirit of sluggishness,

sunken to actual torpor, which a single fact will illustrate. When the

authorities were talking of a highroad between Paris and Toulouse, it

was natural to think of taking it from Vierzon to Chateauroux by way of

Issoudun. The distance was shorter than to make it, as the road now is,

through Vatan, but the leading people of the neighborhood and the

city council of Issoudun (whose discussion of the matter is said to be

recorded), demanded that it should go by Vatan, on the ground that if

the highroad went through their town, provisions would rise in price and

they might be forced to pay thirty sous for a chicken. The only analogy

to be found for this proceeding is in the wilder parts of Sardinia, a

land once so rich and populous, now so deserted. When Charles Albert,

with a praiseworthy intention of civilization, wished to unite Sassari,

the second capital of the island, with Cagliari by a magnificent highway

(the only one ever made in that wild waste by name Sardinia), the direct

line lay through Bornova, a district inhabited by lawless people, all

the more like our Arab tribes because they are descended from the Moors.

Seeing that they were about to fall into the clutches of civilization,

the savages of Bornova, without taking the trouble to discuss the

matter, declared their opposition to the road. The government took

no notice of it. The first engineer who came to survey it, got a ball

through his head, and died on his level. No action was taken on this

murder, but the road made a circuit which lengthened it by eight miles!

The continual lowering of the price of wines drunk in the neighborhood,

though it may satisfy the desire of the bourgeoisie of Issoudun for

cheap provisions, is leading the way to the ruin of the vine-growers,

who are more and more burdened with the costs of cultivation and the

taxes; just as the ruin of the woollen trade is the result of the

non-improvement in the breeding of sheep. Country-folk have the deepest

horror of change; even that which is most conducive to their interests.

In the country, a Parisian meets a laborer who eats an enormous quantity

of bread, cheese, and vegetables; he proves to him that if he would

substitute for that diet a certain portion of meat, he would be better

fed, at less cost; that he could work more, and would not use up his

capital of health and strength so quickly. The Berrichon sees the

correctness of the calculation, but he answers, “Think of the gossip,

monsieur.” “Gossip, what do you mean?” “Well, yes, what would people say

of me?” “He would be the talk of the neighborhood,” said the owner of

the property on which this scene took place; “they would think him as

rich as a tradesman. He is afraid of public opinion, afraid of being

pointed at, afraid of seeming ill or feeble. That’s how we all are in

this region.” Many of the bourgeoisie utter this phrase with feelings of

inward pride.

While ignorance and custom are invincible in the country regions, where

the peasants are left very much to themselves, the town of Issoudun

itself has reached a state of complete social stagnation. Obliged to

meet the decadence of fortunes by the practice of sordid economy, each

family lives to itself. Moreover, society is permanently deprived

of that distinction of classes which gives character to manners and

customs. There is no opposition of social forces, such as that to which

the cities of the Italian States in the Middle Ages owed their vitality.

There are no longer any nobles in Issoudun. The Cottereaux, the

Routiers, the Jacquerie, the religious wars and the Revolution did

away with the nobility. The town is proud of that triumph. Issoudun has

repeatedly refused to receive a garrison, always on the plea of cheap

provisions. She has thus lost a means of intercourse with the age,

and she has also lost the profits arising from the presence of troops.

Before 1756, Issoudun was one of the most delightful of all the garrison

towns. A judicial drama, which occupied for a time the attention of

France, the feud of a lieutenant-general of the department with

the Marquis de Chapt, whose son, an officer of dragoons, was put

to death,--justly perhaps, yet traitorously, for some affair of

gallantry,--deprived the town from that time forth of a garrison. The

sojourn of the forty-fourth demi-brigade, imposed upon it during the

civil war, was not of a nature to reconcile the inhabitants to the race

of warriors.

Bourges, whose population is yearly decreasing, is a victim of the same

social malady. Vitality is leaving these communities. Undoubtedly, the

government is to blame. The duty of an administration is to discover the

wounds upon the body-politic, and remedy them by sending men of energy

to the diseased regions, with power to change the state of things. Alas,

so far from that, it approves and encourages this ominous and fatal

tranquillity. Besides, it may be asked, how could the government send

new administrators and able magistrates? Who, of such men, is willing

to bury himself in the arrondissements, where the good to be done is

without glory? If, by chance, some ambitious stranger settles there,

he soon falls into the inertia of the region, and tunes himself to the

dreadful key of provincial life. Issoudun would have benumbed Napoleon.

As a result of this particular characteristic, the arrondissement of

Issoudun was governed, in 1822, by men who all belonged to Berry. The

administration of power became either a nullity or a farce,--except in

certain cases, naturally very rare, which by their manifest importance

compelled the authorities to act. The procureur du roi, Monsieur

Mouilleron, was cousin to the entire community, and his substitute

belonged to one of the families of the town. The judge of the court,

before attaining that dignity, was made famous by one of those

provincial sayings which put a cap and bells on a man’s head for the

rest of his life. As he ended his summing-up of all the facts of an

indictment, he looked at the accused and said: “My poor Pierre! the

thing is as plain as day; your head will be cut off. Let this be a

lesson to you.” The commissary of police, holding office since the

Restoration, had relations throughout the arrondissement. Moreover, not

only was the influence of religion null, but the curate himself was held

in no esteem.

It was this bourgeoisie, radical, ignorant, and loving to annoy others,

which now related tales, more or less comic, about the relations of

Jean-Jacques Rouget with his servant-woman. The children of these people

went none the less to Sunday-school, and were as scrupulously prepared

for their communion: the schools were kept up all the same; mass was

said; the taxes were paid (the sole thing that Paris extracts of the

provinces), and the mayor passed resolutions. But all these acts of

social existence were done as mere routine, and thus the laxity of

the local government suited admirably with the moral and intellectual

condition of the governed. The events of the following history will

show the effects of this state of things, which is not as unusual in the

provinces as might be supposed. Many towns in France, more particularly

in the South, are like Issoudun. The condition to which the ascendency

of the bourgeoisie has reduced that local capital is one which will

spread over all France, and even to Paris, if the bourgeois continues to

rule the exterior and interior policy of our country.

Now, one word of topography. Issoudun stretches north and south, along

a hillside which rounds towards the highroad to Chateauroux. At the foot

of the hill, a canal, now called the “Riviere forcee” whose waters are

taken from the Theols, was constructed in former times, when the town

was flourishing, for the use of manufactories or to flood the moats of

the rampart. The “Riviere forcee” forms an artificial arm of a natural

river, the Tournemine, which unites with several other streams beyond

the suburb of Rome. These little threads of running water and the two

rivers irrigate a tract of wide-spreading meadow-land, enclosed on all

sides by little yellowish or white terraces dotted with black speckles;

for such is the aspect of the vineyards of Issoudun during seven months

of the year. The vine-growers cut the plants down yearly, leaving only

an ugly stump, without support, sheltered by a barrel. The traveller

arriving from Vierzon, Vatan, or Chateauroux, his eyes weary

with monotonous plains, is agreeably surprised by the meadows of

Issoudun,--the oasis of this part of Berry, which supplies the

inhabitants with vegetables throughout a region of thirty miles in

circumference. Below the suburb of Rome, lies a vast tract entirely

covered with kitchen-gardens, and divided into two sections, which bear

the name of upper and lower Baltan. A long avenue of poplars leads from

the town across the meadows to an ancient convent named Frapesle, whose

English gardens, quite unique in that arrondissement, have received

the ambitious name of Tivoli. Loving couples whisper their vows in its

alleys of a Sunday.

Traces of the ancient grandeur of Issoudun of course reveal themselves

to the eyes of a careful observer; and the most suggestive are the

divisions of the town. The chateau, formerly almost a town itself with

its walls and moats, is a distinct quarter which can only be entered,

even at the present day, through its ancient gateways,--by means of

three bridges thrown across the arms of the two rivers,--and has all

the appearance of an ancient city. The ramparts show, in places, the

formidable strata of their foundations, on which houses have now

sprung up. Above the chateau, is the famous tower of Issoudun, once the

citadel. The conqueror of the city, which lay around these two fortified

points, had still to gain possession of the tower and the castle; and

possession of the castle did not insure that of the tower, or citadel.

The suburb of Saint-Paterne, which lies in the shape of a palette beyond

the tower, encroaching on the meadow-lands, is so considerable that in

the very earliest ages it must have been part of the city itself. This

opinion derived, in 1822, a sort of certainty from the then existence of

the charming church of Saint-Paterne, recently pulled down by the heir

of the individual who bought it of the nation. This church, one of

the finest specimens of the Romanesque that France possessed, actually

perished without a single drawing being made of the portal, which was in

perfect preservation. The only voice raised to save this monument of a

past art found no echo, either in the town itself or in the department.

Though the castle of Issoudun has the appearance of an old town, with

its narrow streets and its ancient mansions, the city itself, properly

so called, which was captured and burned at different epochs, notably

during the Fronde, when it was laid in ashes, has a modern air.

Streets that are spacious in comparison with those of other towns,

and well-built houses form a striking contrast to the aspect of the

citadel,--a contrast that has won for Issoudun, in certain geographies,

the epithet of “pretty.”

In a town thus constituted, without the least activity, even business

activity, without a taste for art, or for learned occupations, and where

everybody stayed in the little round of his or her own home, it was

likely to happen, and did happen under the Restoration in 1816 when

the war was over, that many of the young men of the place had no career

before them, and knew not where to turn for occupation until they could

marry or inherit the property of their fathers. Bored in their own

homes, these young fellows found little or no distraction elsewhere in

the city; and as, in the language of that region, “youth must shed its

cuticle” they sowed their wild oats at the expense of the town itself.

It was difficult to carry on such operations in open day, lest the

perpetrators should be recognized; for the cup of their misdemeanors

once filled, they were liable to be arraigned at their next peccadillo

before the police courts; and they therefore judiciously selected the

night time for the performance of their mischievous pranks. Thus it was

that among the traces of divers lost civilizations, a vestige of the

spirit of drollery that characterized the manners of antiquity burst

into a final flame.

The young men amused themselves very much as Charles IX. amused himself

with his courtiers, or Henry V. of England and his companions, or as in

former times young men were wont to amuse themselves in the provinces.

Having once banded together for purposes of mutual help, to defend each

other and invent amusing tricks, there presently developed among them,

through the clash of ideas, that spirit of malicious mischief which

belongs to the period of youth and may even be observed among animals.

The confederation, in itself, gave them the mimic delights of the

mystery of an organized conspiracy. They called themselves the “Knights

of Idleness.” During the day these young scamps were youthful saints;

they all pretended to extreme quietness; and, in fact, they habitually

slept late after the nights on which they had been playing their

malicious pranks. The “Knights” began with mere commonplace tricks,

such as unhooking and changing signs, ringing bells, flinging casks left

before one house into the cellar of the next with a crash, rousing the

occupants of the house by a noise that seemed to their frightened ears

like the explosion of a mine. In Issoudun, as in many country towns, the

cellar is entered by an opening near the door of the house, covered with

a wooden scuttle, secured by strong iron hinges and a padlock.

In 1816, these modern Bad Boys had not altogether given up such tricks

as these, perpetrated in the provinces by all young lads and gamins. But

in 1817 the Order of Idleness acquired a Grand Master, and distinguished

itself by mischief which, up to 1823, spread something like terror in

Issoudun, or at least kept the artisans and the bourgeoisie perpetually

uneasy.

This leader was a certain Maxence Gilet, commonly called Max, whose

antecedents, no less than his youth and his vigor, predestined him

for such a part. Maxence Gilet was supposed by all Issoudun to be the

natural son of the sub-delegate Lousteau, that brother of Madame Hochon

whose gallantries had left memories behind them, and who, as we have

seen, drew down upon himself the hatred of old Doctor Rouget about

the time of Agathe’s birth. But the friendship which bound the two men

together before their quarrel was so close that, to use an expression of

that region and that period, “they willingly walked the same road.” Some

people said that Maxence was as likely to be the son of the doctor as

of the sub-delegate; but in fact he belonged to neither the one nor

the other,--his father being a charming dragoon officer in garrison at

Bourges. Nevertheless, as a result of their enmity, and very fortunately

for the child, Rouget and Lousteau never ceased to claim his paternity.

Max’s mother, the wife of a poor sabot-maker in the Rome suburb, was

possessed, for the perdition of her soul, of a surprising beauty, a

Trasteverine beauty, the only property which she transmitted to her

son. Madame Gilet, pregnant with Maxence in 1788, had long desired

that blessing, which the town attributed to the gallantries of the

two friends,--probably in the hope of setting them against each

other. Gilet, an old drunkard with a triple throat, treated his wife’s

misconduct with a collusion that is not uncommon among the lower

classes. To make sure of protectors for her son, Madame Gilet was

careful not to enlighten his reputed fathers as to his parentage. In

Paris, she would have turned out a millionaire; at Issoudun she lived

sometimes at her ease, more often miserably, and, in the long run,

despised. Madame Hochon, Lousteau’s sister, paid sixty francs a year

for the lad’s schooling. This liberality, which Madame Hochon was

quite unable to practise on her own account because of her husband’s

stinginess, was naturally attributed to her brother, then living at

Sancerre.

When Doctor Rouget, who certainly was not lucky in sons, observed Max’s

beauty, he paid the board of the “young rogue,” as he called him, at the

seminary, up to the year 1805. As Lousteau died in 1800, and the doctor

apparently obeyed a feeling of vanity in paying the lad’s board until

1805, the question of the paternity was left forever undecided. Maxence

Gilet, the butt of many jests, was soon forgotten,--and for this reason:

In 1806, a year after Doctor Rouget’s death, the lad, who seemed to

have been created for a venturesome life, and was moreover gifted with

remarkable vigor and agility, got into a series of scrapes which more

or less threatened his safety. He plotted with the grandsons of Monsieur

Hochon to worry the grocers of the city; he gathered fruit before the

owners could pick it, and made nothing of scaling walls. He had no equal

at bodily exercises, he played base to perfection, and could have outrun

a hare. With a keen eye worthy of Leather-stocking, he loved hunting

passionately. His time was passed in firing at a mark, instead of

studying; and he spent the money extracted from the old doctor in buying

powder and ball for a wretched pistol that old Gilet, the sabot-maker,

had given him. During the autumn of 1806, Maxence, then seventeen,

committed an involuntary murder, by frightening in the dusk a young

woman who was pregnant, and who came upon him suddenly while stealing

fruit in her garden. Threatened with the guillotine by Gilet, who

doubtless wanted to get rid of him, Max fled to Bourges, met a regiment

then on its way to Egypt, and enlisted. Nothing came of the death of the

young woman.

A young fellow of Max’s character was sure to distinguish himself, and

in the course of three campaigns he did distinguish himself so highly

that he rose to be a captain, his lack of education helping him

strenuously. In Portugal, in 1809, he was left for dead in an English

battery, into which his company had penetrated without being able to

hold it. Max, taken prisoner by the English, was sent to the Spanish

hulks at the island of Cabrera, the most horrible of all stations for

prisoners of war. His friends begged that he might receive the cross of

the Legion of honor and the rank of major; but the Emperor was then in

Austria, and he reserved his favors for those who did brilliant

deeds under his own eye: he did not like officers or men who allowed

themselves to be taken prisoner, and he was, moreover, much dissatisfied

with events in Portugal. Max was held at Cabrera from 1810 to 1814.(1)

During those years he became utterly demoralized, for the hulks were

like galleys, minus crime and infamy. At the outset, to maintain his

personal free will, and protect himself against the corruption which

made that horrible prison unworthy of a civilized people, the handsome

young captain killed in a duel (for duels were fought on those hulks

in a space scarcely six feet square) seven bullies among his

fellow-prisoners, thus ridding the island of their tyranny to the great

joy of the other victims. After this, Max reigned supreme in his hulk,

thanks to the wonderful ease and address with which he handled weapons,

to his bodily strength, and also to his extreme cleverness.

(1) The cruelty of the Spaniards to the French prisoners at Cabrera

was very great. In the spring of 1811, H.M. brig “Minorca,”

Captain Wormeley, was sent by Admiral Sir Charles Cotton, then

commanding the Mediterranean fleet, to make a report of their

condition. As she neared the island, the wretched prisoners swam

out to meet her. They were reduced to skin and bone; many of them

were naked; and their miserable condition so moved the seamen of

the “Minorca” that they came aft to the quarter-deck, and asked

permission to subscribe three days’ rations for the relief of the

sufferers. Captain Wormeley carried away some of the prisoners,

and his report to Sir Charles Cotton, being sent to the Admiralty,

was made the basis of a remonstrance on the part of the British

government with Spain on the subject of its cruelties. Sir Charles

Cotton despatched Captain Wormeley a second time to Cabrera with a

good many head of live cattle and a large supply of other

provisions.--Tr.

But he, in turn, committed arbitrary acts; there were those who curried

favor with him, and worked his will, and became his minions. In that

school of misery, where bitter minds dreamed only of vengeance, where

the sophistries hatched in such brains were laying up, inevitably, a

store of evil thoughts, Max became utterly demoralized. He listened to

the opinions of those who longed for fortune at any price, and did not

shrink from the results of criminal actions, provided they were done

without discovery. When peace was proclaimed, in April, 1814, he left

the island, depraved though still innocent. On his return to Issoudun

he found his father and mother dead. Like others who give way to their

passions and make life, as they call it, short and sweet, the Gilets

had died in the almshouse in the utmost poverty. Immediately after his

return, the news of Napoleon’s landing at Cannes spread through France;

Max could do no better than go to Paris and ask for his rank as major

and for his cross. The marshal who was at that time minister of war

remembered the brave conduct of Captain Gilet in Portugal. He put him in

the Guard as captain, which gave him the grade of major in the infantry;

but he could not get him the cross. “The Emperor says that you will

know how to win it at the first chance,” said the marshal. In fact, the

Emperor did put the brave captain on his list for decoration the evening

after the fight at Fleurus, where Gilet distinguished himself.

After the battle of Waterloo Max retreated to the Loire. At the time

of the disbandment, Marshal Feltre refused to recognize Max’s grade as

major, or his claim to the cross. The soldier of Napoleon returned

to Issoudun in a state of exasperation that may well be conceived;

he declared that he would not serve without either rank or cross. The

war-office considered these conditions presumptuous in a young man of

twenty-five without a name, who might, if they were granted, become

a colonel at thirty. Max accordingly sent in his resignation. The

major--for among themselves Bonapartists recognized the grades obtained

in 1815--thus lost the pittance called half-pay which was allowed to the

officers of the army of the Loire. But all Issoudun was roused at the

sight of the brave young fellow left with only twenty napoleons in his

possession; and the mayor gave him a place in his office with a salary

of six hundred francs. Max kept it a few months, then gave it up of his

own accord, and was replaced by a captain named Carpentier, who, like

himself, had remained faithful to Napoleon.

By this time Gilet had become grand master of the Knights of Idleness,

and was leading a life which lost him the good-will of the chief people

of the town; who, however, did not openly make the fact known to him,

for he was violent and much feared by all, even by the officers of the

old army who, like himself, had refused to serve under the Bourbons,

and had come home to plant their cabbages in Berry. The little affection

felt for the Bourbons among the natives of Issoudun is not surprising

when we recall the history which we have just given. In fact,

considering its size and lack of importance, the little place contained

more Bonapartists than any other town in France. These men became, as is

well known, nearly all Liberals.

In Issoudun and its neighborhood there were a dozen officers in Max’s

position. These men admired him and made him their leader,--with the

exception, however, of Carpentier, his successor, and a certain Monsieur

Mignonnet, ex-captain in the artillery of the Guard. Carpentier, a

cavalry officer risen from the ranks, had married into one of the best

families in the town,--the Borniche-Herau. Mignonnet, brought up at the

Ecole Polytechnique, had served in a corps which held itself superior to

all others. In the Imperial armies there were two shades of distinction

among the soldiers themselves. A majority of them felt a contempt for

the bourgeois, the “civilian,” fully equal to the contempt of nobles for

their serfs, or conquerors for the conquered. Such men did not always

observe the laws of honor in their dealings with civilians; nor did they

much blame those who rode rough-shod over the bourgeoisie. The others,

and particularly the artillery, perhaps because of its republicanism,

never adopted the doctrine of a military France and a civil France,

the tendency of which was nothing less than to make two nations. So,

although Major Potel and Captain Renard, two officers living in the Rome

suburb, were friends to Maxence Gilet “through thick and thin,” Major

Mignonnet and Captain Carpentier took sides with the bourgeoisie, and

thought his conduct unworthy of a man of honor.

Major Mignonnet, a lean little man, full of dignity, busied himself with

the problems which the steam-engine requires us to solve, and lived in

a modest way, taking his social intercourse with Monsieur and Madame

Carpentier. His gentle manners and ways, and his scientific occupations

won him the respect of the whole town; and it was frequently said of

him and of Captain Carpentier that they were “quite another thing” from

Major Potel and Captain Renard, Maxence, and other frequenters of the

cafe Militaire, who retained the soldierly manners and the defective

morals of the Empire.

At the time when Madame Bridau returned to Issoudun, Max was excluded

from the society of the place. He showed, moreover, proper self-respect

in never presenting himself at the club, and in never complaining of the

severe reprobation that was shown him; although he was the handsomest,

the most elegant, and the best dressed man in the place, spent a great

deal of money, and kept a horse,--a thing as amazing at Issoudun as

the horse of Lord Byron at Venice. We are now to see how it was that

Maxence, poor and without apparent means, was able to become the dandy

of the town. The shameful conduct which earned him the contempt of all

scrupulous or religious persons was connected with the interests which

brought Agathe and Joseph to Issoudun.

Judging by the audacity of his bearing, and the expression of his face,

Max cared little for public opinion; he expected, no doubt, to take

his revenge some day, and to lord it over those who now condemned

him. Moreover, if the bourgeoisie of Issoudun thought ill of him, the

admiration he excited among the common people counterbalanced their

opinion; his courage, his dashing appearance, his decision of character,

could not fail to please the masses, to whom his degradations were, for

the most part, unknown, and indeed the bourgeoisie themselves scarcely

suspected its extent. Max played a role at Issoudun which was something

like that of the blacksmith in the “Fair Maid of Perth”; he was the

champion of Bonapartism and the Opposition; they counted upon him as

the burghers of Perth counted upon Smith on great occasions. A single

incident will put this hero and victim of the Hundred-Days into clear

relief.

In 1819, a battalion commanded by royalist officers, young men just

out of the Maison Rouge, passed through Issoudun on its way to go

into garrison at Bourges. Not knowing what to do with themselves in so

constitutional a place as Issoudun, these young gentlemen went to while

away the time at the cafe Militaire. In every provincial town there is a

military cafe. That of Issoudun, built on the place d’Armes at an angle

of the rampart, and kept by the widow of an officer, was naturally the

rendezvous of the Bonapartists, chiefly officers on half-pay, and others

who shared Max’s opinions, to whom the politics of the town allowed free

expression of their idolatry for the Emperor. Every year, dating from

1816, a banquet was given in Issoudun to commemorate the anniversary

of his coronation. The three royalists who first entered asked for the

newspapers, among others, for the “Quotidienne” and the “Drapeau Blanc.”

The politics of Issoudun, especially those of the cafe Militaire, did

not allow of such royalist journals. The establishment had none but the

“Commerce,”--a name which the “Constitutionel” was compelled to adopt

for several years after it was suppressed by the government. But as, in

its first issue under the new name, the leading article began with these

words, “Commerce is essentially constitutional,” people continued to

call it the “Constitutionel,” the subscribers all understanding the sly

play of words which begged them to pay no attention to the label, as the

wine would be the same.

The fat landlady replied from her seat at the desk that she did not take

those papers. “What papers do you take then?” asked one of the officers,

a captain. The waiter, a little fellow in a blue cloth jacket, with an

apron of coarse linen tied over it, brought the “Commerce.”

“Is that your paper? Have you no other?”

“No,” said the waiter, “that’s the only one.”

The captain tore it up, flung the pieces on the floor, and spat upon

them, calling out,--

“Bring dominos!”

In ten minutes the news of the insult offered to the Constitution

Opposition and the Liberal party, in the supersacred person of its

revered journal, which attacked priests with courage and the wit we

all remember, spread throughout the town and into the houses like light

itself; it was told and repeated from place to place. One phrase was on

everybody’s lips,--

“Let us tell Max!”

Max soon heard of it. The royalist officers were still at their game of

dominos when that hero entered the cafe, accompanied by Major Potel and

Captain Renard, and followed by at least thirty young men, curious to

see the end of the affair, most of whom remained outside in the street.

The room was soon full.

“Waiter, _my_ newspaper,” said Max, in a quiet voice.

Then a little comedy was played. The fat hostess, with a timid and

conciliatory air, said, “Captain, I have lent it!”

“Send for it,” cried one of Max’s friends.

“Can’t you do without it?” said the waiter; “we have not got it.”

The young royalists were laughing and casting sidelong glances at the

new-comers.

“They have torn it up!” cried a youth of the town, looking at the feet

of the young royalist captain.

“Who has dared to destroy that paper?” demanded Max, in a thundering

voice, his eyes flashing as he rose with his arms crossed.

“And we spat upon it,” replied the three young officers, also rising,

and looking at Max.

“You have insulted the whole town!” said Max, turning livid.

“Well, what of that?” asked the youngest officer.

With a dexterity, quickness, and audacity which the young men did not

foresee, Max slapped the face of the officer nearest to him, saying,--

“Do you understand French?”

They fought near by, in the allee de Frapesle, three against three; for

Potel and Renard would not allow Max to deal with the officers alone.

Max killed his man. Major Potel wounded his so severely, that the

unfortunate young man, the son of a good family, died in the hospital

the next day. As for the third, he got off with a sword cut, after

wounding his adversary, Captain Renard. The battalion left for Bourges

that night. This affair, which was noised throughout Berry, set Max up

definitely as a hero.

The Knights of Idleness, who were all young, the eldest not more than

twenty-five years old, admired Maxence. Some among them, far from

sharing the prudery and strict notions of their families concerning his

conduct, envied his present position and thought him fortunate. Under

such a leader, the Order did great things. After the month of May, 1817,

never a week passed that the town was not thrown into an uproar by

some new piece of mischief. Max, as a matter of honor, imposed certain

conditions upon the Knights. Statutes were drawn up. These young demons

grew as vigilant as the pupils of Amoros,--bold as hawks, agile at all

exercises, clever and strong as criminals. They trained themselves in

climbing roofs, scaling houses, jumping and walking noiselessly, mixing

mortar, and walling up doors. They collected an arsenal of ropes,

ladders, tools, and disguises. After a time the Knights of Idleness

attained to the beau-ideal of malicious mischief, not only as to the

accomplishment but, still more, in the invention of their pranks.

They came at last to possess the genius for evil that Panurge so much

delighted in; which provokes laughter, and covers its victims with such

ridicule that they dare not complain. Naturally, these sons of good

families of Issoudun possessed and obtained information in their

households, which gave them the ways and means for the perpetration of

their outrages.

Sometimes the young devils incarnate lay in ambush along the Grand’rue

or the Basse rue, two streets which are, as it were, the arteries of the

town, into which many little side streets open. Crouching, with their

heads to the wind, in the angles of the wall and at the corners of the

streets, at the hour when all the households were hushed in their first

sleep, they called to each other in tones of terror from ambush to

ambush along the whole length of the town: “What’s the matter?” “What is

it?” till the repeated cries woke up the citizens, who appeared in

their shirts and cotton night-caps, with lights in their hands,

asking questions of one another, holding the strangest colloquies, and

exhibiting the queerest faces.

A certain poor bookbinder, who was very old, believed in hobgoblins.

Like most provincial artisans, he worked in a small basement shop. The

Knights, disguised as devils, invaded the place in the middle of the

night, put him into his own cutting-press, and left him shrieking to

himself like the souls in hell. The poor man roused the neighbors, to

whom he related the apparitions of Lucifer; and as they had no means of

undeceiving him, he was driven nearly insane.

In the middle of a severe winter, the Knights took down the chimney of

the collector of taxes, and built it up again in one night apparently as

it was before, without making the slightest noise, or leaving the least

trace of their work. But they so arranged the inside of the chimney as

to send all the smoke into the house. The collector suffered for two

months before he found out why his chimney, which had always drawn so

well, and of which he had often boasted, played him such tricks; he was

then obliged to build a new one.

At another time, they put three trusses of hay dusted with brimstone,

and a quantity of oiled paper down the chimney of a pious old woman who

was a friend of Madame Hochon. In the morning, when she came to light

her fire, the poor creature, who was very gentle and kindly, imagined

she had started a volcano. The fire-engines came, the whole population

rushed to her assistance. Several Knights were among the firemen, and

they deluged the old woman’s house, till they had frightened her with a

flood, as much as they had terrified her with the fire. She was made ill

with fear.

When they wished to make some one spend the night under arms and in

mortal terror, they wrote an anonymous letter telling him that he was

about to be robbed; then they stole softly, one by one, round the walls

of his house, or under his windows, whistling as if to call each other.

One of their famous performances, which long amused the town, where in

fact it is still related, was to write a letter to all the heirs of a

miserly old lady who was likely to leave a large property, announcing

her death, and requesting them to be promptly on hand when the seals

were affixed. Eighty persons arrived from Vatan, Saint-Florent, Vierzon

and the neighboring country, all in deep mourning,--widows with sons,

children with their fathers, some in carrioles, some in wicker gigs,

others in dilapidated carts. Imagine the scene between the old woman’s

servants and the first arrivals! and the consultations among the

notaries! It created a sort of riot in Issoudun.

At last, one day the sub-prefect woke up to a sense that this state of

things was all the more intolerable because it seemed impossible to find

out who was at the bottom of it. Suspicion fell on several young men;

but as the National Guard was a mere name in Issoudun, and there was no

garrison, and the lieutenant of police had only eight gendarmes under

him, so that there were no patrols, it was impossible to get any proof

against them. The sub-prefect was immediately posted in the “order of

the night,” and considered thenceforth fair game. This functionary made

a practice of breakfasting on two fresh eggs. He kept chickens in his

yard, and added to his mania for eating fresh eggs that of boiling them

himself. Neither his wife nor his servant, in fact no one, according

to him, knew how to boil an egg properly; he did it watch in hand, and

boasted that he carried off the palm of egg-boiling from all the world.

For two years he had boiled his eggs with a success which earned him

many witticisms. But now, every night for a whole month, the eggs

were taken from his hen-house, and hard-boiled eggs substituted.

The sub-prefect was at his wits’ end, and lost his reputation as the

“sous-prefet a l’oeuf.” Finally he was forced to breakfast on other

things. Yet he never suspected the Knights of Idleness, whose trick

had been cautiously played. After this, Max managed to grease the

sub-prefect’s stoves every night with an oil which sent forth so fetid a

smell that it was impossible for any one to stay in the house. Even that

was not enough; his wife, going to mass one morning, found her shawl

glued together on the inside with some tenacious substance, so that she

was obliged to go without it. The sub-prefect finally asked for another

appointment. The cowardly submissiveness of this officer had much to do

with firmly establishing the weird and comic authority of the Knights of

Idleness.

Beyond the rue des Minimes and the place Misere, a section of a quarter

was at that time enclosed between an arm of the “Riviere forcee” on the

lower side and the ramparts on the other, beginning at the place d’Armes

and going as far as the pottery market. This irregular square is filled

with poor-looking houses crowded one against the other, and divided here

and there by streets so narrow that two persons cannot walk abreast.

This section of the town, a sort of cour des Miracles, was occupied

by poor people or persons working at trades that were little

remunerative,--a population living in hovels, and buildings called

picturesquely by the familiar term of “blind houses.” From the

earliest ages this has no doubt been an accursed quarter, the haunt

of evil-doers; in fact one thoroughfare is named “the street of the

Executioner.” For more than five centuries it has been customary for

the executioner to have a red door at the entrance of his house. The

assistant of the executioner of Chateauroux still lives there,--if we

are to believe public rumor, for the townspeople never see him: the

vine-dressers alone maintain an intercourse with this mysterious

being, who inherits from his predecessors the gift of curing wounds and

fractures. In the days when Issoudun assumed the airs of a capital

city the women of the town made this section of it the scene of their

wanderings. Here came the second-hand sellers of things that look as

if they never could find a purchaser, old-clothes dealers whose wares

infected the air; in short, it was the rendezvous of that apocryphal

population which is to be found in nearly all such portions of a city,

where two or three Jews have gained an ascendency.

At the corner of one of these gloomy streets in the livelier half of

the quarter, there existed from 1815 to 1823, and perhaps later, a

public-house kept by a woman commonly called Mere Cognette. The house

itself was tolerably well built, in courses of white stone, with the

intermediary spaces filled in with ashlar and cement, one storey high

with an attic above. Over the door was an enormous branch of pine,

looking as though it were cast in Florentine bronze. As if this symbol

were not explanatory enough, the eye was arrested by the blue of a

poster which was pasted over the doorway, and on which appeared, above

the words “Good Beer of Mars,” the picture of a soldier pouring out, in

the direction of a very decolletee woman, a jet of foam which spurted

in an arched line from the pitcher to the glass which she was holding

towards him; the whole of a color to make Delacroix swoon.

The ground-floor was occupied by an immense hall serving both as kitchen

and dining-room, from the beams of which hung, suspended by huge nails,

the provisions needed for the custom of such a house. Behind this hall a

winding staircase led to the upper storey; at the foot of the staircase

a door led into a low, long room lighted from one of those little

provincial courts, so narrow, dark, and sunken between tall houses, as

to seem like the flue of a chimney. Hidden by a shed, and concealed from

all eyes by walls, this low room was the place where the Bad Boys of

Issoudun held their plenary court. Ostensibly, Pere Cognet boarded and

lodged the country-people on market-days; secretly, he was landlord to

the Knights of Idleness. This man, who was formerly a groom in a rich

household, had ended by marrying La Cognette, a cook in a good family.

The suburb of Rome still continues, like Italy and Poland, to follow the

Latin custom of putting a feminine termination to the husband’s name and

giving it to the wife.

By uniting their savings Pere Cognet and his spouse had managed to buy

their present house. La Cognette, a woman of forty, tall and plump, with

the nose of a Roxelane, a swarthy skin, jet-black hair, brown eyes that

were round and lively, and a general air of mirth and intelligence, was

selected by Maxence Gilet, on account of her character and her talent

for cookery, as the Leonarde of the Order. Pere Cognet might be about

fifty-six years old; he was thick-set, very much under his wife’s rule,

and, according to a witticism which she was fond of repeating, he only

saw things with a good eye--for he was blind of the other. In the course

of seven years, that is, from 1816 to 1823, neither wife nor husband

had betrayed what went on nightly at their house, or who they were that

shared in the plot; they felt the liveliest regard for the Knights;

their devotion was absolute. But this may seem less creditable if we

remember that self-interest was the security of their affection and

their silence. No matter at what hour of the night the Knights dropped

in upon the tavern, the moment they knocked in a certain way Pere

Cognet, recognizing the signal, got up, lit the fire and the candles,

opened the door, and went to the cellar for a particular wine that was

laid in expressly for the Order; while La Cognette cooked an excellent

supper, eaten either before or after the expeditions, which were usually

planned the previous evening or in the course of the preceding day.

CHAPTER VIII

While Joseph and Madame Bridau were journeying from Orleans to Issoudun,

the Knights of Idleness perpetrated one of their best tricks. An old

Spaniard, a former prisoner of war, who after the peace had remained in

the neighborhood, where he did a small business in grain, came early one

morning to market, leaving his empty cart at the foot of the tower of

Issoudun. Maxence, who arrived at a rendezvous of the Knights, appointed

on that occasion at the foot of the tower, was soon assailed with the

whispered question, “What are we to do to-night?”

“Here’s Pere Fario’s cart,” he answered. “I nearly cracked my shins over

it. Let us get it up on the embankment of the tower in the first place,

and we’ll make up our minds afterwards.”

When Richard Coeur-de-Lion built the tower of Issoudun he raised it, as

we have said, on the ruins of the basilica, which itself stood above the

Roman temple and the Celtic Dun. These ruins, each of which represents

a period of several centuries, form a mound big with the monuments of

three distinct ages. The tower is, therefore, the apex of a cone, from

which the descent is equally steep on all sides, and which is only

approached by a series of steps. To give in a few words an idea of the

height of this tower, we may compare it to the obelisk of Luxor on its

pedestal. The pedestal of the tower of Issoudun, which hid within its

breast such archaeological treasures, was eighty feet high on the side

towards the town. In an hour the cart was taken off its wheels and

hoisted, piece by piece, to the top of the embankment at the foot of the

tower itself,--a work that was somewhat like that of the soldiers who

carried the artillery over the pass of the Grand Saint-Bernard. The cart

was then remounted on its wheels, and the Knights, by this time hungry

and thirsty, returned to Mere Cognette’s, where they were soon seated

round the table in the low room, laughing at the grimaces Fario would

make when he came after his barrow in the morning.

The Knights, naturally, did not play such capers every night. The genius

of Sganarelle, Mascarille, and Scapin combined would not have sufficed

to invent three hundred and sixty-five pieces of mischief a year. In

the first place, circumstances were not always propitious: sometimes the

moon shone clear, or the last prank had greatly irritated their betters;

then one or another of their number refused to share in some proposed

outrage because a relation was involved. But if the scamps were not at

Mere Cognette’s every night, they always met during the day, enjoying

together the legitimate pleasures of hunting, or the autumn vintages and

the winter skating. Among this assemblage of twenty youths, all of them

at war with the social somnolence of the place, there are some who were

more closely allied than others to Max, and who made him their idol. A

character like his often fascinates other youths. The two grandsons of

Madame Hochon--Francois Hochon and Baruch Borniche--were his henchmen.

These young fellows, accepting the general opinion of the left-handed

parentage of Lousteau, looked upon Max as their cousin. Max, moreover,

was liberal in lending them money for their pleasures, which their

grandfather Hochon refused; he took them hunting, let them see life, and

exercised a much greater influence over them than their own family.

They were both orphans, and were kept, although each had attained his

majority, under the guardianship of Monsieur Hochon, for reasons which

will be explained when Monsieur Hochon himself comes upon the scene.

At this particular moment Francois and Baruch (we will call them by

their Christian names for the sake of clearness) were sitting, one on

each side of Max, at the middle of a table that was rather ill lighted

by the fuliginous gleams of four tallow candles of eight to the pound. A

dozen to fifteen bottles of various wines had just been drunk, for only

eleven of the Knights were present. Baruch--whose name indicates pretty

clearly that Calvinism still kept some hold on Issoudun--said to Max, as

the wine was beginning to unloose all tongues,--

“You are threatened in your stronghold.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Max.

“Why, my grandmother has had a letter from Madame Bridau, who is her

goddaughter, saying that she and her son are coming here. My grandmother

has been getting two rooms ready for them.”

“What’s that to me?” said Max, taking up his glass and swallowing the

contents at a gulp with a comic gesture.

Max was then thirty-four years old. A candle standing near him threw

a gleam upon his soldierly face, lit up his brow, and brought out

admirably his clear skin, his ardent eyes, his black and slightly

curling hair, which had the brilliancy of jet. The hair grew vigorously

upward from the forehead and temples, sharply defining those five

black tongues which our ancestors used to call the “five points.”

Notwithstanding this abrupt contrast of black and white, Max’s face was

very sweet, owing its charm to an outline like that which Raphael gave

to the faces of his Madonnas, and to a well-cut mouth whose lips smiled

graciously, giving an expression of countenance which Max had made

distinctively his own. The rich coloring which blooms on a Berrichon

cheek added still further to his look of kindly good-humor. When he

laughed heartily, he showed thirty-two teeth worthy of the mouth of a

pretty woman. In height about five feet six inches, the young man was

admirably well-proportioned,--neither too stout nor yet too thin. His

hands, carefully kept, were white and rather handsome; but his feet

recalled the suburb and the foot-soldier of the Empire. Max would

certainly have made a good general of division; he had shoulders that

were worth a fortune to a marshal of France, and a breast broad enough

to wear all the orders of Europe. Every movement betrayed intelligence;

born with grace and charm, like nearly all the children of love, the

noble blood of his real father came out in him.

“Don’t you know, Max,” cried the son of a former surgeon-major named

Goddet--now the best doctor in the town--from the other end of the

table, “that Madame Hochon’s goddaughter is the sister of Rouget? If she

is coming here with her son, no doubt she means to make sure of getting

the property when he dies, and then--good-by to your harvest!”

Max frowned. Then, with a look which ran from one face to another all

round the table, he watched the effect of this announcement on the minds

of those present, and again replied,--

“What’s that to me?”

“But,” said Francois, “I should think that if old Rouget revoked his

will,--in case he has made one in favor of the Rabouilleuse--”

Here Max cut short his henchman’s speech. “I’ve stopped the mouths of

people who have dared to meddle with you, my dear Francois,” he said;

“and this is the way you pay your debts? You use a contemptuous nickname

in speaking of a woman to whom I am known to be attached.”

Max had never before said as much as this about his relations with the

person to whom Francois had just applied a name under which she was

known at Issoudun. The late prisoner at Cabrera--the major of the

grenadiers of the Guard--knew enough of what honor was to judge rightly

as to the causes of the disesteem in which society held him. He had

therefore never allowed any one, no matter who, to speak to him on

the subject of Mademoiselle Flore Brazier, the servant-mistress of

Jean-Jacques Rouget, so energetically termed a “slut” by the respectable

Madame Hochon. Everybody knew it was too ticklish a subject with Max,

ever to speak of it unless he began it; and hitherto he had never begun

it. To risk his anger or irritate him was altogether too dangerous; so

that even his best friends had never joked him about the Rabouilleuse.

When they talked of his liaison with the girl before Major Potel and

Captain Renard, with whom he lived on intimate terms, Potel would

reply,--

“If he is the natural brother of Jean-Jacques Rouget where else would

you have him live?”

“Besides, after all,” added Captain Renard, “the girl is a worthless

piece, and if Max does live with her where’s the harm?”

After this merited snub, Francois could not at once catch up the thread

of his ideas; but he was still less able to do so when Max said to him,

gently,--

“Go on.”

“Faith, no!” cried Francois.

“You needn’t get angry, Max,” said young Goddet; “didn’t we agree to

talk freely to each other at Mere Cognette’s? Shouldn’t we all be mortal

enemies if we remembered outside what is said, or thought, or done here?

All the town calls Flore Brazier the Rabouilleuse; and if Francois did

happen to let the nickname slip out, is that a crime against the Order

of Idleness?”

“No,” said Max, “but against our personal friendship. However, I thought

better of it; I recollected we were in session, and that was why I said,

‘Go on.’”

A deep silence followed. The pause became so embarrassing for the whole

company that Max broke it by exclaiming:--

“I’ll go on for him,” (sensation) “--for all of you,” (amazement) “--and

tell you what you are thinking” (profound sensation). “You think

that Flore, the Rabouilleuse, La Brazier, the housekeeper of Pere

Rouget,--for they call him so, that old bachelor, who can never have any

children!--you think, I say, that that woman supplies all my wants

ever since I came back to Issoudun. If I am able to throw three

hundred francs a month to the dogs, and treat you to suppers,--as I do

to-night,--and lend money to all of you, you think I get the gold out

of Mademoiselle Flore Brazier’s purse? Well, yes” (profound sensation).

“Yes, ten thousand times yes! Yes, Mademoiselle Brazier is aiming

straight for the old man’s property.”

“She gets it from father to son,” observed Goddet, in his corner.

“You think,” continued Max, smiling at Goddet’s speech, “that I intend

to marry Flore when Pere Rouget dies, and so this sister and her son, of

whom I hear to-night for the first time, will endanger my future?”

“That’s just it,” cried Francois.

“That is what every one thinks who is sitting round this table,” said

Baruch.

“Well, don’t be uneasy, friends,” answered Max. “Forewarned is

forearmed! Now then, I address the Knights of Idleness. If, to get rid

of these Parisians I need the help of the Order, will you lend me a

hand? Oh! within the limits we have marked out for our fooleries,” he

added hastily, perceiving a general hesitation. “Do you suppose I want

to kill them,--poison them? Thank God I’m not an idiot. Besides, if the

Bridaus succeed, and Flore has nothing but what she stands in, I should

be satisfied; do you understand that? I love her enough to prefer her to

Mademoiselle Fichet,--if Mademoiselle Fichet would have me.”

Mademoiselle Fichet was the richest heiress in Issoudun, and the hand

of the daughter counted for much in the reported passion of the younger

Goddet for the mother. Frankness of speech is a pearl of such price that

all the Knights rose to their feet as one man.

“You are a fine fellow, Max!”

“Well said, Max; we’ll stand by you!”

“A fig for the Bridaus!”

“We’ll bridle them!”

“After all, it is only three swains to a shepherdess.”

“The deuce! Pere Lousteau loved Madame Rouget; isn’t it better to love a

housekeeper who is not yoked?”

“If the defunct Rouget was Max’s father, the affair is in the family.”

“Liberty of opinion now-a-days!”

“Hurrah for Max!”

“Down with all hypocrites!”

“Here’s a health to the beautiful Flore!”

Such were the eleven responses, acclamations, and toasts shouted forth

by the Knights of Idleness, and characteristic, we may remark, of their

excessively relaxed morality. It is now easy to see what interest Max

had in becoming their grand master. By leading the young men of the best

families in their follies and amusements, and by doing them services,

he meant to create a support for himself when the day for recovering his

position came. He rose gracefully and waved his glass of claret, while

all the others waited eagerly for the coming allocution.

“As a mark of the ill-will I bear you, I wish you all a mistress who is

equal to the beautiful Flore! As to this irruption of relations, I

don’t feel any present uneasiness; and as to the future, we’ll see what

comes--”

“Don’t let us forget Fario’s cart!”

“Hang it! that’s safe enough!” said Goddet.

“Oh! I’ll engage to settle that business,” cried Max. “Be in the

market-place early, all of you, and let me know when the old fellow goes

for his cart.”

It was striking half-past three in the morning as the Knights slipped

out in silence to go to their homes; gliding close to the walls of the

houses without making the least noise, shod as they were in list shoes.

Max slowly returned to the place Saint-Jean, situated in the upper

part of the town, between the port Saint-Jean and the port Vilatte, the

quarter of the rich bourgeoisie. Maxence Gilet had concealed his fears,

but the news had struck home. His experience on the hulks at Cabrera

had taught him a dissimulation as deep and thorough as his corruption.

First, and above all else, the forty thousand francs a year from landed

property which old Rouget owned was, let it be clearly understood, the

constituent element of Max’s passion for Flore Brazier. By his present

bearing it is easy to see how much confidence the woman had given him in

the financial future she expected to obtain through the infatuation

of the old bachelor. Nevertheless, the news of the arrival of the

legitimate heirs was of a nature to shake Max’s faith in Flore’s

influence. Rouget’s savings, accumulating during the last seventeen

years, still stood in his own name; and even if the will, which Flore

declared had long been made in her favor, were revoked, these savings

at least might be secured by putting them in the name of Mademoiselle

Brazier.

“That fool of a girl never told me, in all these seven years, a word

about the sister and nephews!” cried Max, turning from the rue de la

Marmouse into the rue l’Avenier. “Seven hundred and fifty thousand

francs placed with different notaries at Bourges, and Vierzon, and

Chateauroux, can’t be turned into money and put into the Funds in a

week, without everybody knowing it in this gossiping place! The most

important thing is to get rid of these relations; as soon as they are

driven away we ought to make haste to secure the property. I must think

it over.”

Max was tired. By the help of a pass-key, he let himself into Pere

Rouget’s house, and went to bed without making any noise, saying to

himself,--

“To-morrow, my thoughts will be clear.”

It is now necessary to relate where the sultana of the place Saint-Jean

picked up the nickname of “Rabouilleuse,” and how she came to be the

quasi-mistress of Jean-Jacques Rouget’s home.

As old Doctor Rouget, the father of Jean-Jacques and Madame Bridau,

advanced in years, he began to perceive the nonentity of his son; he

then treated him harshly, trying to break him into a routine that might

serve in place of intelligence. He thus, though unconsciously, prepared

him to submit to the yoke of the first tyranny that threw its halter

over his head.

Coming home one day from his professional round, the malignant and

vicious old man came across a bewitching little girl at the edge of some

fields that lay along the avenue de Tivoli. Hearing the horse, the child

sprang up from the bottom of one of the many brooks which are to be

seen from the heights of Issoudun, threading the meadows like ribbons

of silver on a green robe. Naiad-like, she rose suddenly on the doctor’s

vision, showing the loveliest virgin head that painters ever dreamed of.

Old Rouget, who knew the whole country-side, did not know this miracle

of beauty. The child, who was half naked, wore a forlorn little

petticoat of coarse woollen stuff, woven in alternate strips of brown

and white, full of holes and very ragged. A sheet of rough writing

paper, tied on by a shred of osier, served her for a hat. Beneath this

paper--covered with pot-hooks and round O’s, from which it derived the

name of “schoolpaper”--the loveliest mass of blonde hair that ever a

daughter of Eve could have desired, was twisted up, and held in place

by a species of comb made to comb out the tails of horses. Her pretty

tanned bosom, and her neck, scarcely covered by a ragged fichu which

was once a Madres handkerchief, showed edges of the white skin below the

exposed and sun-burned parts. One end of her petticoat was drawn between

the legs and fastened with a huge pin in front, giving that garment the

look of a pair of bathing drawers. The feet and the legs, which could be

seen through the clear water in which she stood, attracted the eye by a

delicacy which was worthy of a sculptor of the middle ages. The charming

limbs exposed to the sun had a ruddy tone that was not without beauty

of its own. The neck and bosom were worthy of being wrapped in silks and

cashmeres; and the nymph had blue eyes fringed with long lashes, whose

glance might have made a painter or a poet fall upon his knees. The

doctor, enough of an anatomist to trace the exquisite figure, recognized

the loss it would be to art if the lines of such a model were destroyed

by the hard toil of the fields.

“Where do you come from, little girl? I have never seen you before,”

said the old doctor, then sixty-two years of age. This scene took place

in the month of September, 1799.

“I belong in Vatan,” she answered.

Hearing Rouget’s voice, an ill-looking man, standing at some distance

in the deeper waters of the brook, raised his head. “What are you

about, Flore?” he said, “While you are talking instead of catching, the

creatures will get away.”

“Why have you come here from Vatan?” continued the doctor, paying no

heed to the interruption.

“I am catching crabs for my uncle Brazier here.”

“Rabouiller” is a Berrichon word which admirably describes the thing it

is intended to express; namely, the action of troubling the water of a

brook, making it boil and bubble with a branch whose end-shoots spread

out like a racket. The crabs, frightened by this operation, which they

do not understand, come hastily to the surface, and in their flurry rush

into the net the fisher has laid for them at a little distance. Flore

Brazier held her “rabouilloir” in her hand with the natural grace of

childlike innocence.

“Has your uncle got permission to hunt crabs?”

“Hey! are not we all under a Republic that is one and indivisible?”

cried the uncle from his station.

“We are under a Directory,” said the doctor, “and I know of no law which

allows a man to come from Vatan and fish in the territory of Issoudun”;

then he said to Flore, “Have you got a mother, little one!”

“No, monsieur; and my father is in the asylum at Bourges. He went mad

from a sun-stroke he got in the fields.”

“How much do you earn?”

“Five sous a day while the season lasts; I catch ‘em as far as the

Braisne. In harvest time, I glean; in winter, I spin.”

“You are about twelve years old?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Do you want to come with me? You shall be well fed and well dressed,

and have some pretty shoes.”

“No, my niece will stay with me; I am responsible to God and man for

her,” said Uncle Brazier who had come up to them. “I am her guardian,

d’ye see?”

The doctor kept his countenance and checked a smile which might have

escaped most people at the aspect of the man. The guardian wore a

peasant’s hat, rotted by sun and rain, eaten like the leaves of a

cabbage that has harbored several caterpillars, and mended, here and

there, with white thread. Beneath the hat was a dark and sunken face,

in which the mouth, nose, and eyes, seemed four black spots. His forlorn

jacket was a bit of patchwork, and his trousers were of crash towelling.

“I am Doctor Rouget,” said that individual; “and as you are the guardian

of the child, bring her to my house, in the place Saint-Jean. It will

not be a bad day’s work for you; nor for her, either.”

Without waiting for an answer, and sure that Uncle Brazier would soon

appear with his pretty “rabouilleuse,” Doctor Rouget set spurs to his

horse and returned to Issoudun. He had hardly sat down to dinner, before

his cook announced the arrival of the citoyen and citoyenne Brazier.

“Sit down,” said the doctor to the uncle and niece.

Flore and her guardian, still barefooted, looked round the doctor’s

dining-room with wondering eyes; never having seen its like before.

The house, which Rouget inherited from the Descoings estate, stands in

the middle of the place Saint-Jean, a so-called square, very long and

very narrow, planted with a few sickly lindens. The houses in this part

of town are better built than elsewhere, and that of the Descoings’s was

one of the finest. It stands opposite to the house of Monsieur Hochon,

and has three windows in front on the first storey, and a porte-cochere

on the ground-floor which gives entrance to a courtyard, beyond which

lies the garden. Under the archway of the porte-cochere is the door of

a large hall lighted by two windows on the street. The kitchen is behind

this hall, part of the space being used for a staircase which leads to

the upper floor and to the attic above that. Beyond the kitchen is a

wood-shed and wash-house, a stable for two horses and a coach-house,

over which are some little lofts for the storage of oats, hay, and

straw, where, at that time, the doctor’s servant slept.

The hall which the little peasant and her uncle admired with such wonder

is decorated with wooden carvings of the time of Louis XV., painted

gray, and a handsome marble chimney-piece, over which Flore beheld

herself in a large mirror without any upper division and with a carved

and gilded frame. On the panelled walls of the room, from space to

space, hung several pictures, the spoil of various religious houses,

such as the abbeys of Deols, Issoudun, Saint-Gildas, La Pree,

Chezal-Beniot, Saint-Sulpice, and the convents of Bourges and Issoudun,

which the liberality of our kings had enriched with the precious

gifts of the glorious works called forth by the Renaissance. Among the

pictures obtained by the Descoings and inherited by Rouget, was a Holy

Family by Albano, a Saint-Jerome of Demenichino, a Head of Christ by

Gian Bellini, a Virgin of Leonardo, a Bearing of the Cross by Titian,

which formerly belonged to the Marquis de Belabre (the one who sustained

a siege and had his head cut off under Louis XIII.); a Lazarus of Paul

Veronese, a Marriage of the Virgin by the priest Genois, two church

paintings by Rubens, and a replica of a picture by Perugino, done either

by Perugino himself or by Raphael; and finally, two Correggios and one

Andrea del Sarto.

The Descoings had culled these treasures from three hundred church

pictures, without knowing their value, and selecting them only for their

good preservation. Many were not only in magnificent frames, but some

were still under glass. Perhaps it was the beauty of the frames and the

value of the glass that led the Descoings to retain the pictures. The

furniture of the room was not wanting in the sort of luxury we prize in

these days, though at that time it had no value in Issoudun. The clock,

standing on the mantle-shelf between two superb silver candlesticks with

six branches, had an ecclesiastical splendor which revealed the hand of

Boulle. The armchairs of carved oak, covered with tapestry-work due to

the devoted industry of women of high rank, would be treasured in these

days, for each was surmounted with a crown and coat-of-arms. Between the

windows stood a rich console, brought from some castle, on whose marble

slab stood an immense China jar, in which the doctor kept his tobacco.

But neither Rouget, nor his son, nor the cook, took the slightest care

of all these treasures. They spat upon a hearth of exquisite delicacy,

whose gilded mouldings were now green with verdigris. A handsome

chandelier, partly of semi-transparent porcelain, was peppered, like the

ceiling from which it hung, with black speckles, bearing witness to the

immunity enjoyed by the flies. The Descoings had draped the windows with

brocatelle curtains torn from the bed of some monastic prior. To the

left of the entrance-door, stood a chest or coffer, worth many thousand

francs, which the doctor now used for a sideboard.

“Here, Fanchette,” cried Rouget to his cook, “bring two glasses; and

give us some of the old wine.”

Fanchette, a big Berrichon countrywoman, who was considered a better

cook than even La Cognette, ran in to receive the order with a celerity

which said much for the doctor’s despotism, and something also for her

own curiosity.

“What is an acre of vineyard worth in your parts?” asked the doctor,

pouring out a glass of wine for Brazier.

“Three hundred francs in silver.”

“Well, then! leave your niece here as my servant; she shall have three

hundred francs in wages, and, as you are her guardian, you can take

them.”

“Every year?” exclaimed Brazier, with his eyes as wide as saucers.

“I leave that to your conscience,” said the doctor. “She is an orphan;

up to eighteen, she has no right to what she earns.”

“Twelve to eighteen--that’s six acres of vineyard!” said the uncle. “Ay,

she’s a pretty one, gentle as a lamb, well made and active, and obedient

as a kitten. She were the light o’ my poor brother’s eyes--”

“I will pay a year in advance,” observed the doctor.

“Bless me! say two years, and I’ll leave her with you, for she’ll be

better off with you than with us; my wife beats her, she can’t abide

her. There’s none but I to stand up for her, and the little saint of a

creature is as innocent as a new-born babe.”

When he heard the last part of this speech, the doctor, struck by the

word “innocent,” made a sign to the uncle and took him out into the

courtyard and from thence to the garden; leaving the Rabouilleuse at the

table with Fanchette and Jean-Jacques, who immediately questioned her,

and to whom she naively related her meeting with the doctor.

“There now, my little darling, good-by,” said Uncle Brazier, coming

back and kissing Flore on the forehead; “you can well say I’ve made your

happiness by leaving you with this kind and worthy father of the poor;

you must obey him as you would me. Be a good girl, and behave nicely,

and do everything he tells you.”

“Get the room over mine ready,” said the doctor to Fanchette. “Little

Flore--I am sure she is worthy of the name--will sleep there in future.

To-morrow, we’ll send for a shoemaker and a dressmaker. Put another

plate on the table; she shall keep us company.”

That evening, all Issoudun could talk of nothing else than the sudden

appearance of the little “rabouilleuse” in Doctor Rouget’s house. In

that region of satire the nickname stuck to Mademoiselle Brazier before,

during, and after the period of her good fortune.

The doctor no doubt intended to do with Flore Brazier, in a small way,

what Louis XV. did in a large one with Mademoiselle de Romans; but he

was too late about it; Louis XV. was still young, whereas the doctor was

in the flower of old age. From twelve to fourteen, the charming little

Rabouilleuse lived a life of unmixed happiness. Always well-dressed, and

often much better tricked out than the richest girls in Issoudun, she

sported a gold watch and jewels, given by the doctor to encourage her

studies, and she had a master who taught her to read, write, and cipher.

But the almost animal life of the true peasant had instilled into Flore

such deep repugnance to the bitter cup of knowledge, that the doctor

stopped her education at that point. His intentions with regard to the

child, whom he cleansed and clothed, and taught, and formed with a care

which was all the more remarkable because he was thought to be utterly

devoid of tenderness, were interpreted in a variety of ways by the

cackling society of the town, whose gossip often gave rise to fatal

blunders, like those relating to the birth of Agathe and that of Max. It

is not easy for the community of a country town to disentangle the truth

from the mass of conjecture and contradictory reports to which a single

fact gives rise. The provinces insist--as in former days the politicians

of the little Provence at the Tuileries insisted--on full explanations,

and they usually end by knowing everything. But each person clings to

the version of the event which he, or she, likes best; proclaims it,

argues it, and considers it the only true one. In spite of the strong

light cast upon people’s lives by the constant spying of a little

town, truth is thus often obscured; and to be recognized, it needs the

impartiality which historians or superior minds acquire by looking at

the subject from a higher point of view.

“What do you suppose that old gorilla wants at his age with a little

girl only fifteen years old?” society was still saying two years after

the arrival of the Rabouilleuse.

“Ah! that’s true,” they answered, “his days of merry-making are long

past.”

“My dear fellow, the doctor is disgusted at the stupidity of his son,

and he persists in hating his daughter Agathe; it may be that he has

been living a decent life for the last two years, intending to marry

little Flore; suppose she were to give him a fine, active, strapping

boy, full of life like Max?” said one of the wise heads of the town.

“Bah! don’t talk nonsense! After such a life as Rouget and Lousteau led

from 1770 to 1787, is it likely that either of them would have children

at sixty-five years of age? The old villain has read the Scriptures, if

only as a doctor, and he is doing as David did in his old age; that’s

all.”

“They say that Brazier, when he is drunk, boasts in Vatan that he

cheated him,” cried one of those who always believed the worst of

people.

“Good heavens! neighbor; what won’t they say at Issoudun?”

From 1800 to 1805, that is, for five years, the doctor enjoyed all the

pleasures of educating Flore without the annoyances which the ambitions

and pretensions of Mademoiselle de Romans inflicted, it is said, on

Louis le Bien-Aime. The little Rabouilleuse was so satisfied when she

compared the life she led at the doctor’s with that she would have led

at her uncle Brazier’s, that she yielded no doubt to the exactions of

her master as if she had been an Eastern slave. With due deference to

the makers of idylls and to philanthropists, the inhabitants of the

provinces have very little idea of certain virtues; and their scruples

are of a kind that is roused by self-interest, and not by any sentiment

of the right or the becoming. Raised from infancy with no prospect

before them but poverty and ceaseless labor, they are led to consider

anything that saves them from the hell of hunger and eternal toil as

permissible, particularly if it is not contrary to any law. Exceptions

to this rule are rare. Virtue, socially speaking, is the companion of a

comfortable life, and comes only with education.

Thus the Rabouilleuse was an object of envy to all the young

peasant-girls within a circuit of ten miles, although her conduct, from

a religious point of view, was supremely reprehensible. Flore, born in

1787, grew up in the midst of the saturnalias of 1793 and 1798, whose

lurid gleams penetrated these country regions, then deprived of priests

and faith and altars and religious ceremonies; where marriage was

nothing more than legal coupling, and revolutionary maxims left a deep

impression. This was markedly the case at Issoudun, a land where, as we

have seen, revolt of all kinds is traditional. In 1802, Catholic worship

was scarcely re-established. The Emperor found it a difficult matter

to obtain priests. In 1806, many parishes all over France were still

widowed; so slowly were the clergy, decimated by the scaffold, gathered

together again after their violent dispersion.

In 1802, therefore, nothing was likely to reproach Flore Brazier, unless

it might be her conscience; and conscience was sure to be weaker than

self-interest in the ward of Uncle Brazier. If, as everybody chose to

suppose, the cynical doctor was compelled by his age to respect a child

of fifteen, the Rabouilleuse was none the less considered very “wide

awake,” a term much used in that region. Still, some persons thought

she could claim a certificate of innocence from the cessation of the

doctor’s cares and attentions in the last two years of his life, during

which time he showed her something more than coldness.

Old Rouget had killed too many people not to know when his own end was

nigh; and his notary, finding him on his death-bed, draped as it

were, in the mantle of encyclopaedic philosophy, pressed him to make a

provision in favor of the young girl, then seventeen years old.

“So I do,” he said, cynically; “my death sets her at liberty.”

This speech paints the nature of the old man. Covering his evil doings

with witty sayings, he obtained indulgence for them, in a land where

wit is always applauded,--especially when addressed to obvious

self-interest. In those words the notary read the concentrated hatred

of a man whose calculations had been balked by Nature herself, and who

revenged himself upon the innocent object of an impotent love. This

opinion was confirmed to some extent by the obstinate resolution of the

doctor to leave nothing to the Rabouilleuse, saying with a bitter smile,

when the notary again urged the subject upon him,--

“Her beauty will make her rich enough!”

CHAPTER IX

Jean-Jacques Rouget did not mourn his father, though Flore Brazier did.

The old doctor had made his son extremely unhappy, especially since

he came of age, which happened in 1791; but he had given the little

peasant-girl the material pleasures which are the ideal of happiness to

country-folk. When Fanchette asked Flore, after the funeral, “Well, what

is to become of you, now that monsieur is dead?” Jean-Jacques’s eyes

lighted up, and for the first time in his life his dull face grew

animated, showed feeling, and seemed to brighten under the rays of a

thought.

“Leave the room,” he said to Fanchette, who was clearing the table.

At seventeen, Flore retained that delicacy of feature and form, that

distinction of beauty which attracted the doctor, and which women of the

world know how to preserve, though it fades among the peasant-girls

like the flowers of the field. Nevertheless, the tendency to embonpoint,

which handsome countrywomen develop when they no longer live a life

of toil and hardship in the fields and in the sunshine, was already

noticeable about her. Her bust had developed. The plump white shoulders

were modelled on rich lines that harmoniously blended with those of the

throat, already showing a few folds of flesh. But the outline of the

face was still faultless, and the chin delicate.

“Flore,” said Jean-Jacques, in a trembling voice, “you feel at home in

this house?”

“Yes, Monsieur Jean.”

As the heir was about to make his declaration, he felt his tongue

stiffen at the recollection of the dead man, just put away in his grave,

and a doubt seized him as to what lengths his father’s benevolence might

have gone. Flore, who was quite unable even to suspect his simplicity

of mind, looked at her future master and waited for a time, expecting

Jean-Jacques to go on with what he was saying; but she finally left

him without knowing what to think of such obstinate silence. Whatever

teaching the Rabouilleuse may have received from the doctor, it was many

a long day before she finally understood the character of Jean-Jacques,

whose history we now present in a few words.

At the death of his father, Jacques, then thirty-seven, was as timid and

submissive to paternal discipline as a child of twelve years old. That

timidity ought to explain his childhood, youth, and after-life to those

who are reluctant to admit the existence of such characters, or such

facts as this history relates,--though proofs of them are, alas, common

everywhere, even among princes; for Sophie Dawes was taken by the last

of the Condes under worse circumstances than the Rabouilleuse. There are

two species of timidity,--the timidity of the mind, and the timidity

of the nerves; a physical timidity, and a moral timidity. The one is

independent of the other. The body may fear and tremble, while the mind

is calm and courageous, or vice versa. This is the key to many moral

eccentricities. When the two are united in one man, that man will be a

cipher all his life; such double-sided timidity makes him what we call

“an imbecile.” Often fine suppressed qualities are hidden within that

imbecile. To this double infirmity we may, perhaps, owe the lives of

certain monks who lived in ecstasy; for this unfortunate moral and

physical disposition is produced quite as much by the perfection of the

soul and of the organs, as by defects which are still unstudied.

The timidity of Jean-Jacques came from a certain torpor of his

faculties, which a great teacher or a great surgeon, like Despleins,

would have roused. In him, as in the cretins, the sense of love

had inherited a strength and vigor which were lacking to his mental

qualities, though he had mind enough to guide him in ordinary affairs.

The violence of passion, stripped of the ideal in which most young men

expend it, only increased his timidity. He had never brought himself to

court, as the saying is, any woman in Issoudun. Certainly no young girl

or matron would make advances to a young man of mean stature, awkward

and shame-faced in attitude; whose vulgar face, with its flattened

features and pallid skin, making him look old before his time, was

rendered still more hideous by a pair of large and prominent light-green

eyes. The presence of a woman stultified the poor fellow, who was driven

by passion on the one hand as violently as the lack of ideas, resulting

from his education, held him back on the other. Paralyzed between these

opposing forces, he had not a word to say, and feared to be spoken to,

so much did he dread the obligation of replying. Desire, which usually

sets free the tongue, only petrified his powers of speech. Thus it

happened that Jean-Jacques Rouget was solitary and sought solitude

because there alone he was at his ease.

The doctor had seen, too late for remedy, the havoc wrought in his son’s

life by a temperament and a character of this kind. He would have been

glad to get him married; but to do that, he must deliver him over to

an influence that was certain to become tyrannical, and the doctor

hesitated. Was it not practically giving the whole management of the

property into the hands of a stranger, some unknown girl? The doctor

knew how difficult it was to gain true indications of the moral

character of a woman from any study of a young girl. So, while he

continued to search for a daughter-in-law whose sentiments and education

offered some guarantees for the future, he endeavored to push his

son into the ways of avarice; meaning to give the poor fool a sort of

instinct that might eventually take the place of intelligence.

He trained him, in the first place, to mechanical habits of life; and

instilled into him fixed ideas as to the investment of his revenues: and

he spared him the chief difficulties of the management of a fortune,

by leaving his estates all in good order, and leased for long periods.

Nevertheless, a fact which was destined to be of paramount importance in

the life of the poor creature escaped the notice of the wily old doctor.

Timidity is a good deal like dissimulation, and is equally secretive.

Jean-Jacques was passionately in love with the Rabouilleuse. Nothing, of

course, could be more natural. Flore was the only woman who lived in the

bachelor’s presence, the only one he could see at his ease; and at all

hours he secretly contemplated her and watched her. To him, she was the

light of his paternal home; she gave him, unknown to herself, the only

pleasures that brightened his youth. Far from being jealous of his

father, he rejoiced in the education the old man was giving to Flore:

would it not make her all he wanted, a woman easy to win, and to whom,

therefore, he need pay no court? The passion, observe, which is able

to reflect, gives even to ninnies, fools, and imbeciles a species of

intelligence, especially in youth. In the lowest human creature we find

an animal instinct whose persistency resembles thought.

The next day, Flore, who had been reflecting on her master’s silence,

waited in expectation of some momentous communication; but although he

kept near her, and looked at her on the sly with passionate glances,

Jean-Jacques still found nothing to say. At last, when the dessert was

on the table, he recommenced the scene of the night before.

“You like your life here?” he said to Flore.

“Yes, Monsieur Jean.”

“Well, stay here then.”

“Thank you, Monsieur Jean.”

This strange situation lasted three weeks. One night, when no sound

broke the stillness of the house, Flore, who chanced to wake up,

heard the regular breathing of human lungs outside her door, and was

frightened to discover Jean-Jacques, crouched like a dog on the landing.

“He loves me,” she thought; “but he will get the rheumatism if he keeps

up that sort of thing.”

The next day Flore looked at her master with a certain expression. This

mute almost instinctive love had touched her; she no longer thought

the poor ninny so ugly, though his forehead was crowned with pimples

resembling ulcers, the signs of a vitiated blood.

“You don’t want to go back and live in the fields, do you?” said

Jean-Jacques when they were alone.

“Why do you ask me that?” she said, looking at him.

“To know--” replied Rouget, turning the color of a boiled lobster.

“Do you wish to send me back?” she asked.

“No, mademoiselle.”

“Well, what is it you want to know? You have some reason--”

“Yes, I want to know--”

“What?” said Flore.

“You won’t tell me?” exclaimed Rouget.

“Yes I will, on my honor--”

“Ah! that’s it,” returned Rouget, with a frightened air. “Are you an

honest girl?”

“I’ll take my oath--”

“Are you, truly?”

“Don’t you hear me tell you so?”

“Come; are you the same as you were when your uncle brought you here

barefooted?”

“A fine question, faith!” cried Flore, blushing.

The heir lowered his head and did not raise it again. Flore, amazed at

such an encouraging sign from a man who had been overcome by a fear of

that nature, left the room.

Three days later, at the same hour (for both seemed to regard the

dessert as a field of battle), Flore spoke first, and said to her

master,--

“Have you anything against me?”

“No, mademoiselle,” he answered, “No--” (a pause) “On the contrary.”

“You seemed annoyed the other day to hear I was an honest girl.”

“No, I only wished to know--” (a pause) “But you would not tell me--”

“On my word!” she said, “I will tell you the whole truth.”

“The whole truth about--my father?” he asked in a strangled voice.

“Your father,” she said, looking full into her master’s eye, “was a

worthy man--he liked a joke--What of that?--there was nothing in it.

But, poor dear man, it wasn’t the will that was wanting. The truth is,

he had some spite against you, I don’t know what, and he meant--oh! he

meant you harm. Sometimes he made me laugh; but there! what of that?”

“Well, Flore,” said the heir, taking her hand, “as my father was nothing

to you--”

“What did you suppose he was to me?” she cried, as if offended by some

unworthy suspicion.

“Well, but just listen--”

“He was my benefactor, that was all. Ah! he would have liked to make me

his wife, but--”

“But,” said Rouget, taking the hand which Flore had snatched away from

him, “if he was nothing to you you can stay here with me, can’t you?”

“If you wish it,” she said, dropping her eyes.

“No, no! if you wish it, you!” exclaimed Rouget. “Yes, you shall

be--mistress here. All that is here shall be yours; you shall take care

of my property, it is almost yours now--for I love you; I have always

loved you since the day you came and stood there--there!--with bare

feet.”

Flore made no answer. When the silence became embarrassing, Jean-Jacques

had recourse to a terrible argument.

“Come,” he said, with visible warmth, “wouldn’t it be better than

returning to the fields?”

“As you will, Monsieur Jean,” she answered.

Nevertheless, in spite of her “as you will,” Jean-Jacques got no

further. Men of his nature want certainty. The effort that they make in

avowing their love is so great, and costs them so much, that they feel

unable to go on with it. This accounts for their attachment to the first

woman who accepts them. We can only guess at circumstances by results.

Ten months after the death of his father, Jean-Jacques changed

completely; his leaden face cleared, and his whole countenance breathed

happiness. Flore exacted that he should take minute care of his person,

and her own vanity was gratified in seeing him well-dressed; she always

stood on the sill of the door, and watched him starting for a walk,

until she could see him no longer. The whole town noticed these changes,

which had made a new man of the bachelor.

“Have you heard the news?” people said to each other in Issoudun.

“What is it?”

“Jean-Jacques inherits everything from his father, even the

Rabouilleuse.”

“Don’t you suppose the old doctor was wicked enough to provide a ruler

for his son?”

“Rouget has got a treasure, that’s certain,” said everybody.

“She’s a sly one! She is very handsome, and she will make him marry

her.”

“What luck that girl has had, to be sure!”

“The luck that only comes to pretty girls.”

“Ah, bah! do you believe that? look at my uncle Borniche-Herau. You have

heard of Mademoiselle Ganivet? she was as ugly as seven capital sins,

but for all that, she got three thousand francs a year out of him.”

“Yes, but that was in 1778.”

“Still, Rouget is making a mistake. His father left him a good forty

thousand francs’ income, and he ought to marry Mademoiselle Herau.”

“The doctor tried to arrange it, but she would not consent; Jean-Jacques

is so stupid--”

“Stupid! why women are very happy with that style of man.”

“Is your wife happy?”

Such was the sort of tattle that ran through Issoudun. If people,

following the use and wont of the provinces, began by laughing at this

quasi-marriage, they ended by praising Flore for devoting herself to

the poor fellow. We now see how it was that Flore Brazier obtained the

management of the Rouget household,--from father to son, as young Goddet

had said. It is desirable to sketch the history of that management for

the edification of old bachelors.

Fanchette, the cook, was the only person in Issoudun who thought it

wrong that Flore Brazier should be queen over Jean-Jacques Rouget and

his home. She protested against the immorality of the connection, and

took a tone of injured virtue; the fact being that she was humiliated

by having, at her age, a crab-girl for a mistress,--a child who had been

brought barefoot into the house. Fanchette owned three hundred francs

a year in the Funds, for the doctor made her invest her savings in that

way, and he had left her as much more in an annuity; she could therefore

live at her ease without the necessity of working, and she quitted the

house nine months after the funeral of her old master, April 15, 1806.

That date may indicate, to a perspicacious observer, the epoch at which

Flore Brazier ceased to be an honest girl.

The Rabouilleuse, clever enough to foresee Fanchette’s probable

defection,--there is nothing like the exercise of power for teaching

policy,--was already resolved to do without a servant. For six months

she had studied, without seeming to do so, the culinary operations that

made Fanchette a cordon-bleu worthy of cooking for a doctor. In the

matter of choice living, doctors are on a par with bishops. The doctor

had brought Fanchette’s talents to perfection. In the provinces the lack

of occupation and the monotony of existence turn all activity of mind

towards the kitchen. People do not dine as luxuriously in the country

as they do in Paris, but they dine better; the dishes are meditated upon

and studied. In rural regions we often find some Careme in petticoats,

some unrecognized genius able to serve a simple dish of haricot-beans

worthy of the nod with which Rossini welcomed a perfectly-rendered

measure.

When studying for his degree in Paris, the doctor had followed a

course of chemistry under Rouelle, and had gathered some ideas which he

afterwards put to use in the chemistry of cooking. His memory is famous

in Issoudun for certain improvements little known outside of Berry. It

was he who discovered that an omelette is far more delicate when the

whites and the yolks are not beaten together with the violence which

cooks usually put into the operation. He considered that the whites

should be beaten to a froth and the yolks gently added by degrees;

moreover a frying-pan should never be used, but a “cagnard” of porcelain

or earthenware. The “cagnard” is a species of thick dish standing on

four feet, so that when it is placed on the stove the air circulates

underneath and prevents the fire from cracking it. In Touraine the

“cagnard” is called a “cauquemarre.” Rabelais, I think, speaks of a

“cauquemarre” for cooking cockatrice eggs, thus proving the antiquity of

the utensil. The doctor had also found a way to prevent the tartness

of browned butter; but his secret, which unluckily he kept to his own

kitchen, has been lost.

Flore, a born fryer and roaster, two qualities that can never be

acquired by observation nor yet by labor, soon surpassed Fanchette. In

making herself a cordon-bleu she was thinking of Jean-Jacques’s comfort;

though she was, it must be owned, tolerably dainty. Incapable, like all

persons without education, of doing anything with her brains, she spent

her activity upon household matters. She rubbed up the furniture till

it shone, and kept everything about the house in a state of cleanliness

worthy of Holland. She managed the avalanches of soiled linen and the

floods of water that go by the name of “the wash,” which was done,

according to provincial usage, three times a year. She kept a

housewifely eye to the linen, and mended it carefully. Then, desirous

of learning little by little the secret of the family property, she

acquired the very limited business knowledge which Rouget possessed,

and increased it by conversations with the notary of the late doctor,

Monsieur Heron. Thus instructed, she gave excellent advice to her

little Jean-Jacques. Sure of being always mistress, she was as eager and

solicitous about the old bachelor’s interests as if they had been her

own. She was not obliged to guard against the exactions of her uncle,

for two months before the doctor’s death Brazier died of a fall as he

was leaving a wine-shop, where, since his rise in fortune, he spent most

of his time. Flore had also lost her father; thus she served her master

with all the affection which an orphan, thankful to make herself a home

and a settlement in life, would naturally feel.

This period of his life was paradise to poor Jean-Jacques, who now

acquired the gentle habits of an animal, trained into a sort of monastic

regularity. He slept late. Flore, who was up at daybreak attending to

her housekeeping, woke him so that he should find his breakfast ready as

soon as he had finished dressing. After breakfast, about eleven o’clock,

Jean-Jacques went to walk; talked with the people he met, and came home

at three in the afternoon to read the papers,--those of the department,

and a journal from Paris which he received three days after publication,

well greased by the thirty hands through which it came, browned by the

snuffy noses that had pored over it, and soiled by the various tables

on which it had lain. The old bachelor thus got through the day until

it was time for dinner; over that meal he spent as much time as it was

possible to give to it. Flore told him the news of the town, repeating

the cackle that was current, which she had carefully picked up. Towards

eight o’clock the lights were put out. Going to bed early is a saving

of fire and candles very commonly practised in the provinces, which

contributes no doubt to the empty-mindedness of the inhabitants. Too

much sleep dulls and weakens the brain.

Such was the life of these two persons during a period of nine years,

the great events of which were a few journeys to Bourges, Vierzon,

Chateauroux, or somewhat further, if the notaries of those towns and

Monsieur Heron had no investments ready for acceptance. Rouget lent his

money at five per cent on a first mortgage, with release of the wife’s

rights in case the owner was married. He never lent more than a third of

the value of the property, and required notes payable to his order for

an additional interest of two and a half per cent spread over the whole

duration of the loan. Such were the rules his father had told him to

follow. Usury, that clog upon the ambition of the peasantry, is the

destroyer of country regions. This levy of seven and a half per cent

seemed, therefore, so reasonable to the borrowers that Jean-Jacques

Rouget had his choice of investments; and the notaries of the different

towns, who got a fine commission for themselves from clients for whom

they obtained money on such good terms, gave due notice to the old

bachelor.

During these nine years Flore obtained in the long run, insensibly and

without aiming for it, an absolute control over her master. From the

first, she treated him very familiarly; then, without failing him in

proper respect, she so far surpassed him in superiority of mind and

force of character that he became in fact the servant of his servant.

Elderly child that he was, he met this mastery half-way by letting Flore

take such care of him that she treated him more as a mother would a

son; and he himself ended by clinging to her with the feeling of a child

dependent on a mother’s protection. But there were other ties between

them not less tightly knotted. In the first place, Flore kept the

house and managed all its business. Jean-Jacques left everything to the

crab-girl so completely that life without her would have seemed to him

not only difficult, but impossible. In every way, this woman had become

the one need of his existence; she indulged all his fancies, for she

knew them well. He loved to see her bright face always smiling at

him,--the only face that had ever smiled upon him, the only one to which

he could look for a smile. This happiness, a purely material happiness,

expressed in the homely words which come readiest to the tongue in a

Berrichon household, and visible on the fine countenance of the young

woman, was like a reflection of his own inward content. The state into

which Jean-Jacques was thrown when Flore’s brightness was clouded over

by some passing annoyance revealed to the girl her power over him, and,

to make sure of it, she sometimes liked to use it. Using such power

means, with women of her class, abusing it. The Rabouilleuse, no doubt,

made her master play some of those scenes buried in the mysteries of

private life, of which Otway gives a specimen in the tragedy of “Venice

Preserved,” where the scene between the senator and Aquilina is the

realization of the magnificently horrible. Flore felt so secure of her

power that, unfortunately for her, and for the bachelor himself, it did

not occur to her to make him marry her.

Towards the close of 1815, Flore, who was then twenty-seven, had reached

the perfect development of her beauty. Plump and fresh, and white as

a Norman countrywoman, she was the ideal of what our ancestors used to

call “a buxom housewife.” Her beauty, always that of a handsome

barmaid, though higher in type and better kept, gave her a likeness

to Mademoiselle George in her palmy days, setting aside the latter’s

imperial dignity. Flore had the dazzling white round arms, the ample

modelling, the satiny textures of the skin, the alluring though less

rigidly correct outlines of the great actress. Her expression was one

of sweetness and tenderness; but her glance commanded less respect than

that of the noblest Agrippina that ever trod the French stage since the

days of Racine: on the contrary, it evoked a vulgar joy. In 1816 the

Rabouilleuse saw Maxence Gilet, and fell in love with him at first

sight. Her heart was cleft by the mythological arrow,--admirable

description of an effect of nature which the Greeks, unable to conceive

the chivalric, ideal, and melancholy love begotten of Christianity,

could represent in no other way. Flore was too handsome to be disdained,

and Max accepted his conquest.

Thus, at twenty-eight years of age, the Rabouilleuse felt for the first

time a true love, an idolatrous love, the love which includes all ways

of loving,--that of Gulnare and that of Medora. As soon as the penniless

officer found out the respective situations of Flore and Jean-Jacques

Rouget, he saw something more desirable than an “amourette” in an

intimacy with the Rabouilleuse. He asked nothing better for his future

prosperity than to take up his abode at the Rouget’s, recognizing

perfectly the feeble nature of the old bachelor. Flore’s passion

necessarily affected the life and household affairs of her master. For

a month the old man, now grown excessively timid, saw the laughing and

kindly face of his mistress change to something terrible and gloomy

and sullen. He was made to endure flashes of angry temper purposely

displayed, precisely like a married man whose wife is meditating an

infidelity. When, after some cruel rebuff, he nerved himself to ask

Flore the reason of the change, her eyes were so full of hatred, and

her voice so aggressive and contemptuous, that the poor creature quailed

under them.

“Good heavens!” she cried; “you have neither heart nor soul! Here’s

sixteen years that I have spent my youth in this house, and I have only

just found out that you have got a stone there (striking her breast).

For two months you have seen before your eyes that brave captain, a

victim of the Bourbons, who was cut out for a general, and is down in

the depths of poverty, hunted into a hole of a place where there’s no

way to make a penny of money! He’s forced to sit on a stool all day in

the mayor’s office to earn--what? Six hundred miserable francs,--a

fine thing, indeed! And here are you, with six hundred and fifty-nine

thousand well invested, and sixty thousand francs’ income,--thanks

to me, who never spend more than three thousand a year, everything

included, even my own clothes, yes, everything!--and you never think of

offering him a home here, though there’s the second floor empty!

You’d rather the rats and mice ran riot in it than put a human being

there,--and he a lad your father always allowed to be his own son! Do

you want to know what you are? I’ll tell you,--a fratricide! And I know

why, too. You see I take an interest in him, and that provokes you.

Stupid as you seem, you have got more spite in you than the spitefullest

of men. Well, yes! I do take an interest in him, and a keen one--”

“But, Flore--”

“‘_But, Flore_’, indeed! What’s that got to do with it? You may go and

find another Flore (if you can!), for I hope this glass of wine may

poison me if I don’t get away from your dungeon of a house. I haven’t,

God be thanked! cost you one penny during the twelve years I’ve been

with you, and you have had the pleasure of my company into the bargain.

I could have earned my own living anywhere with the work that I’ve

done here,--washing, ironing, looking after the linen, going to market,

cooking, taking care of your interests before everything, slaving myself

to death from morning till night,--and this is my reward!”

“But, Flore--”

“Oh, yes, ‘_Flore_’! find another Flore, if you can, at your time of

life, fifty-one years old, and getting feeble,--for the way your health

is failing is frightful, I know that! and besides, you are none too

amusing--”

“But, Flore--”

“Let me alone!”

She went out, slamming the door with a violence that echoed through the

house, and seemed to shake it to its foundations. Jean-Jacques softly

opened the door and went, still more softly, into the kitchen where she

was muttering to herself.

“But, Flore,” said the poor sheep, “this is the first time I have heard

of this wish of yours; how do you know whether I will agree to it or

not?”

“In the first place,” she said, “there ought to be a man in the house.

Everybody knows you have ten, fifteen, twenty thousand francs here; if

they came to rob you we should both be murdered. For my part, I don’t

care to wake up some fine morning chopped in quarters, as happened to

that poor servant-girl who was silly enough to defend her master. Well!

if the robbers knew there was a man in the house as brave as Caesar

and who wasn’t born yesterday,--for Max could swallow three burglars as

quick as a flash,--well, then I should sleep easy. People may tell you a

lot of stuff,--that I love him, that I adore him,--and some say this and

some say that! Do you know what you ought to say? You ought to answer

that you know it; that your father told you on his deathbed to take care

of his poor Max. That will stop people’s tongues; for every stone in

Issoudun can tell you he paid Max’s schooling--and so! Here’s nine years

that I have eaten your bread--”

“Flore,--Flore!”

“--and many a one in this town has paid court to me, I can tell you!

Gold chains here, and watches there,--what don’t they offer me? ‘My

little Flore,’ they say, ‘why won’t you leave that old fool of a

Rouget,’--for that’s what they call you. ‘I leave him!’ I always answer,

‘a poor innocent like that? I think I see myself! what would become of

him? No, no, where the kid is tethered, let her browse--’”

“Yes, Flore; I’ve none but you in this world, and you make me happy.

If it will give you pleasure, my dear, well, we will have Maxence Gilet

here; he can eat with us--”

“Heavens! I should hope so!”

“There, there! don’t get angry--”

“Enough for one is enough for two,” she answered laughing. “I’ll tell

you what you can do, my lamb, if you really mean to be kind; you must go

and walk up and down near the Mayor’s office at four o’clock, and manage

to meet Monsieur Gilet and invite him to dinner. If he makes excuses,

tell him it will give me pleasure; he is too polite to refuse. And after

dinner, at dessert, if he tells you about his misfortunes, and the hulks

and so forth--for you can easily get him to talk about all that--then

you can make him the offer to come and live here. If he makes any

objection, never mind, I shall know how to settle it.”

Walking slowly along the boulevard Baron, the old celibate reflected,

as much as he had the mind to reflect, over this incident. If he were

to part from Flore (the mere thought confused him) where could he find

another woman? Should he marry? At his age he should be married for his

money, and a legitimate wife would use him far more cruelly than Flore.

Besides, the thought of being deprived of her tenderness, even if it

were a mere pretence, caused him horrible anguish. He was therefore as

polite to Captain Gilet as he knew how to be. The invitation was given,

as Flore had requested, before witnesses, to guard the hero’s honor from

all suspicion.

A reconciliation took place between Flore and her master; but from that

day forth Jean-Jacques noticed many a trifle that betokened a total

change in his mistress’s affections. For two or three weeks Flore

Brazier complained to the tradespeople in the markets, and to the women

with whom she gossiped, about Monsieur Rouget’s tyranny,--how he had

taken it into his head to invite his self-styled natural brother to live

with him. No one, however, was taken in by this comedy; and Flore was

looked upon as a wonderfully clever and artful creature. Old Rouget

really found himself very comfortable after Max became the master of

his house; for he thus gained a companion who paid him many attentions,

without, however, showing any servility. Gilet talked, discussed

politics, and sometimes went to walk with Rouget. After Max was fairly

installed, Flore did not choose to do the cooking; she said it spoiled

her hands. At the request of the grand master of the Order of the

Knights of Idleness, Mere Cognette produced one of her relatives, an

old maid whose master, a curate, had lately died without leaving her

anything,--an excellent cook, withal,--who declared she would devote

herself for life or death to Max and Flore. In the name of the two

powers, Mere Cognette promised her an annuity of three hundred francs a

year at the end of ten years, if she served them loyally, honestly,

and discreetly. The Vedie, as she was called, was noticeable for a face

deeply pitted by the small-pox, and correspondingly ugly.

After the new cook had entered upon her duties, the Rabouilleuse took

the title of Madame Brazier. She wore corsets; she had silk, or

handsome woollen and cotton dresses, according to the season, expensive

neckerchiefs, embroidered caps and collars, lace ruffles at her throat,

boots instead of shoes, and, altogether, adopted a richness and elegance

of apparel which renewed the youthfulness of her appearance. She was

like a rough diamond, that needed cutting and mounting by a jeweller to

bring out its full value. Her desire was to do honor to Max. At the end

of the first year, in 1817, she brought a horse, styled English, from

Bourges, for the poor cavalry captain, who was weary of going afoot. Max

had picked up in the purlieus of Issoudun an old lancer of the Imperial

Guard, a Pole named Kouski, now very poor, who asked nothing better than

to quarter himself in Monsieur Rouget’s house as the captain’s servant.

Max was Kouski’s idol, especially after the duel with the three

royalists. So, from 1817, the household of the old bachelor was made up

of five persons, three of whom were masters, and the expenses advanced

to about eight thousand francs a year.

CHAPTER X

At the time when Madame Bridau returned to Issoudun to save--as Maitre

Desroches expressed it--an inheritance that was seriously threatened,

Jean-Jacques Rouget had reached by degrees a condition that was

semi-vegetative. In the first place, after Max’s instalment, Flore put

the table on an episcopal footing. Rouget, thrown in the way of good

living, ate more and still more, enticed by the Vedie’s excellent

dishes. He grew no fatter, however, in spite of this abundant and

luxurious nourishment. From day to day he weakened like a worn-out

man,--fatigued, perhaps, with the effort of digestion,--and his eyes had

dark circles around them. Still, when his friends and neighbors met him

in his walks and questioned him about his health, he always answered

that he was never better in his life. As he had always been thought

extremely deficient in mind, people did not notice the constant lowering

of his faculties. His love for Flore was the one thing that kept

him alive; in fact, he existed only for her, and his weakness in her

presence was unbounded; he obeyed the creature’s mere look, and watched

her movements as a dog watches every gesture of his master. In short, as

Madame Hochon remarked, at fifty-seven years of age he seemed older than

Monsieur Hochon, an octogenarian.

Every one will suppose, and with reason, that Max’s _appartement_ was

worthy of so charming a fellow. In fact, in the course of six years our

captain had by degrees perfected the comfort of his abode and adorned

every detail of it, as much for his own pleasure as for Flore’s. But it

was, after all, only the comfort and luxury of Issoudun,--colored tiles,

rather elegant wallpapers, mahogany furniture, mirrors in gilt frames,

muslin curtains with red borders, a bed with a canopy, and draperies

arranged as the provincial upholsterers arrange them for a rich bride;

which in the eyes of Issoudun seemed the height of luxury, but are so

common in vulgar fashion-plates that even the petty shopkeepers in Paris

have discarded them at their weddings. One very unusual thing appeared,

which caused much talk in Issoudun, namely, a rush-matting on the

stairs, no doubt to muffle the sound of feet. In fact, though Max was

in the habit of coming in at daybreak, he never woke any one, and

Rouget was far from suspecting that his guest was an accomplice in the

nocturnal performances of the Knights of Idleness.

About eight o’clock the next morning, Flore, wearing a dressing-gown

of some pretty cotton stuff with narrow pink stripes, a lace cap on her

head, and her feet in furred slippers, softly opened the door of Max’s

chamber; seeing that he slept, she remained standing beside the bed.

“He came in so late!” she said to herself. “It was half-past three. He

must have a good constitution to stand such amusements. Isn’t he strong,

the dear love! I wonder what they did last night.”

“Oh, there you are, my little Flore!” said Max, waking like a

soldier trained by the necessities of war to have his wits and his

self-possession about him the instant that he waked, however suddenly it

might happen.

“You are sleepy; I’ll go away.”

“No, stay; there’s something serious going on.”

“Were you up to some mischief last night?”

“Ah, bah! It concerns you and me and that old fool. You never told me

he had a family! Well, his family are coming,--coming here,--no doubt to

turn us out, neck and crop.”

“Ah! I’ll shake him well,” said Flore.

“Mademoiselle Brazier,” said Max gravely, “things are too serious for

giddiness. Send me my coffee; I’ll take it in bed, where I’ll think over

what we had better do. Come back at nine o’clock, and we’ll talk about

it. Meanwhile, behave as if you had heard nothing.”

Frightened at the news, Flore left Max and went to make his coffee; but

a quarter of an hour later, Baruch burst into Max’s bedroom, crying out

to the grand master,--

“Fario is hunting for his barrow!”

In five minutes Max was dressed and in the street, and though he

sauntered along with apparent indifference, he soon reached the foot of

the tower embankment, where he found quite a collection of people.

“What is it?” asked Max, making his way through the crowd and reaching

the Spaniard.

Fario was a withered little man, as ugly as though he were a

blue-blooded grandee. His fiery eyes, placed very close to his nose

and piercing as a gimlet, would have won him the name of a sorcerer in

Naples. He seemed gentle because he was calm, quiet, and slow in his

movements; and for this reason people commonly called him “goodman

Fario.” But his skin--the color of gingerbread--and his softness of

manner only hid from stupid eyes, and disclosed to observing ones, the

half-Moorish nature of a peasant of Granada, which nothing had as yet

roused from its phlegmatic indolence.

“Are you sure,” Max said to him, after listening to his grievance,

“that you brought your cart to this place? for, thank God, there are no

thieves in Issoudun.”

“I left it just there--”

“If the horse was harnessed to it, hasn’t he drawn it somewhere.”

“Here’s the horse,” said Fario, pointing to the animal, which stood

harnessed thirty feet away.

Max went gravely up to the place where the horse stood, because from

there the bottom of the tower at the top of the embankment could be

seen,--the crowd being at the foot of the mound. Everybody followed Max,

and that was what the scoundrel wanted.

“Has anybody thoughtlessly put a cart in his pocket?” cried Francois.

“Turn out your pockets, all of you!” said Baruch.

Shouts of laughter resounded on all sides. Fario swore. Oaths, with a

Spaniard, denote the highest pitch of anger.

“Was your cart light?” asked Max.

“Light!” cried Fario. “If those who laugh at me had it on their feet,

their corns would never hurt them again.”

“Well, it must be devilishly light,” answered Max, “for look there!”

pointing to the foot of the tower; “it has flown up the embankment.”

At these words all eyes were lifted to the spot, and for a moment there

was a perfect uproar in the market-place. Each man pointed at the barrow

bewitched, and all their tongues wagged.

“The devil makes common cause with the inn-keepers,” said Goddet to the

astonished Spaniard. “He means to teach you not to leave your cart 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 peddler, 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 had 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.

While the innocent fellow was vowing, by way of consolation, never

to return to Issoudun, Max was preparing a horrible outrage for

his sensitive spirit. When Monsieur Goddet had probed the wound and

discovered that the knife, turned aside by a little pocket-book, had

happily spared Max’s life (though making a serious wound), he did as all

doctors, and particularly country surgeons, do; he paved the way for his

own credit by “not answering for the patient’s life”; and then, after

dressing the soldier’s wound, and stating the verdict of science to the

Rabouilleuse, Jean-Jacques Rouget, Kouski, and the Vedie, he left the

house. The Rabouilleuse came in tears to her dear Max, while Kouski and

the Vedie told the assembled crowd that the captain was in a fair way

to die. The news brought nearly two hundred persons in groups about the

place Saint-Jean and the two Narettes.

“I sha’n’t be a month in bed; and I know who struck the blow,” whispered

Max to Flore. “But we’ll profit by it to get rid of the Parisians.

I have said I thought I recognized the painter; so pretend that I am

expected to die, and try to have Joseph Bridau arrested. Let him taste

a prison for a couple of days, and I know well enough the mother will be

off in a jiffy for Paris when she gets him out. And then we needn’t fear

the priests they talk of setting on the old fool.”

When Flore Brazier came downstairs, she found the assembled crowd quite

prepared to take the impression she meant to give them. She went out

with tears in her eyes, and related, sobbing, how the painter, “who had

just the face for that sort of thing,” had been angry with Max the night

before about some pictures he had “wormed out” of Pere Rouget.

“That brigand--for you’ve only got to look at him to see what he

is--thinks that if Max were dead, his uncle would leave him his fortune;

as if,” she cried, “a brother were not more to him than a nephew! Max is

Doctor Rouget’s son. The old one told me so before he died!”

“Ah! he meant to do the deed just before he left Issoudun; he chose

his time, for he was going away to-day,” said one of the Knights of

Idleness.

“Max hasn’t an enemy in Issoudun,” said another.

“Besides, Max recognized the painter,” said the Rabouilleuse.

“Where’s that cursed Parisian? Let us find him!” they all cried.

“Find him?” was the answer, “why, he left Monsieur Hochon’s at

daybreak.”

A Knight of Idleness ran off at once to Monsieur Mouilleron. The crowd

increased; and the tumult became threatening. Excited groups filled up

the whole of the Grande-Narette. Others stationed themselves before the

church of Saint-Jean. An assemblage gathered at the porte Vilatte, which

is at the farther end of the Petite-Narette. Monsieur Lousteau-Prangin

and Monsieur Mouilleron, the commissary of police, the lieutenant of

gendarmes, and two of his men, had some difficulty in reaching the place

Saint-Jean through two hedges of people, whose cries and exclamations

could and did prejudice them against the Parisian; who was, it is

needless to say, unjustly accused, although, it is true, circumstances

told against him.

After a conference between Max and the magistrates, Monsieur Mouilleron

sent the commissary of police and a sergeant with one gendarme to

examine what, in the language of the ministry of the interior, is

called “the theatre of the crime.” Then Messieurs Mouilleron and

Lousteau-Prangin, accompanied by the lieutenant of gendarmes crossed

over to the Hochon house, which was now guarded by two gendarmes in the

garden and two at the front door. The crowd was still increasing. The

whole town was surging in the Grande rue.

Gritte had rushed terrified to her master, crying out: “Monsieur, we

shall be pillaged! the town is in revolt; Monsieur Maxence Gilet has

been assassinated; he is dying! and they say it is Monsieur Joseph who

has done it!”

Monsieur Hochon dressed quickly, and came downstairs; but seeing the

angry populace, he hastily retreated within the house, and bolted the

door. On questioning Gritte, he learned that his guest had left the

house at daybreak, after walking the floor all night in great agitation,

and had not yet come in. Much alarmed, he went to find Madame Hochon,

who was already awakened by the noise, and to whom he told the frightful

news which, true or false, was causing almost a riot in Issoudun.

“He is innocent, of course,” said Madame Hochon.

“Before his innocence can be proved, the crowd may get in here and

pillage us,” said Monsieur Hochon, livid with fear, for he had gold in

his cellar.

“Where is Agathe?”

“Sound asleep.”

“Ah! so much the better,” said Madame Hochon. “I wish she may sleep on

till the matter is cleared up. Such a shock might kill the poor child.”

But Agathe woke up and came down half-dressed; for the evasive answers

of Gritte, whom she questioned, had disturbed both her head and heart.

She found Madame Hochon, looking very pale, with her eyes full of tears,

at one of the windows of the salon beside her husband.

“Courage, my child. God sends us our afflictions,” said the old lady.

“Joseph is accused--”

“Of what?”

“Of a bad action which he could never have committed,” answered Madame

Hochon.

Hearing the words, and seeing the lieutenant of gendarmes, who at this

moment entered the room accompanied by the two gentlemen, Agathe fainted

away.

“There now!” said Monsieur Hochon to his wife and Gritte, “carry off

Madame Bridau; women are only in the way at these times. Take her to her

room and stay there, both of you. Sit down, gentlemen,” continued the

old man. “The mistake to which we owe your visit will soon, I hope, be

cleared up.”

“Even if it should be a mistake,” said Monsieur Mouilleron, “the

excitement of the crowd is so great, and their minds are so exasperated,

that I fear for the safety of the accused. I should like to get him

arrested, and that might satisfy these people.”

“Who would ever have believed that Monsieur Maxence Gilet had inspired

so much affection in this town?” asked Lousteau-Prangin.

“One of my men says there’s a crowd of twelve hundred more just coming

in from the faubourg de Rome,” said the lieutenant of gendarmes, “and

they are threatening death to the assassin.”

“Where is your guest?” said Monsieur Mouilleron to Monsieur Hochon.

“He has gone to walk in the country, I believe.”

“Call Gritte,” said the judge gravely. “I was in hopes he had not left

the house. You are aware that the crime was committed not far from here,

at daybreak.”

While Monsieur Hochon went to find Gritte, the three functionaries

looked at each other significantly.

“I never liked that painter’s face,” said the lieutenant to Monsieur

Mouilleron.

“My good woman,” said the judge to Gritte, when she appeared, “they say

you saw Monsieur Joseph Bridau leave the house this morning?”

“Yes, monsieur,” she answered, trembling like a leaf.

“At what hour?”

“Just as I was getting up: he walked about his room all night, and was

dressed when I came downstairs.”

“Was it daylight?”

“Barely.”