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.