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.