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.”