"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 G.o.ddet 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 G.o.ddaughter."

"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 coa.r.s.er 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, a.s.suming 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 coa.r.s.e 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 d.u.c.h.ess, between a d.u.c.h.ess 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 "Const.i.tutionel" 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."