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 G.o.ddaughter 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 G.o.d 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 ap.r.o.n 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 G.o.d 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, d.a.m.n it, you must pull the wool from his eyes as to the situation those two have put him in, and plead your mother's cause."

CHAPTER XII

At four o'clock, Joseph crossed the open s.p.a.ce which separated the Rouget house from the Hochon house,--a sort of avenue of weakly lindens, two hundred feet long and of the same width as the rue Grande Narette.

When the nephew arrived, Kouski, in polished boots, black cloth trousers, white waistcoat, and black coat, announced him. The table was set in the large hall, and Joseph, who easily distinguished his uncle, went up to him, kissed him, and bowed to Flore and Max.

"We have not seen each other since I came into the world, my dear uncle," said the painter gayly; "but better late than never."

"You are very welcome, my friend," said the old man, looking at his nephew in a dull way.

"Madame," Joseph said to Flore with an artist's vivacity, "this morning I was envying my uncle the pleasure he enjoys in being able to admire you every day."

"Isn't she beautiful?" said the old man, whose dim eyes began to shine.

"Beautiful enough to be the model of a great painter."

"Nephew," said Rouget, whose elbow Flore was nudging, "this is Monsieur Maxence Gilet; a man who served the Emperor, like your brother, in the Imperial Guard."

Joseph rose, and bowed.

"Your brother was in the dragoons, I believe," said Maxence. "I was only a dust-trotter."

"On foot or on horseback," said Flore, "you both of you risked your skins."

Joseph took note of Max quite as much as Max took note of Joseph. Max, who got his clothes from Paris, was dressed as the young dandies of that day dressed themselves. A pair of light-blue cloth trousers, made with very full plaits, covered his feet so that only the toes and the spurs of his boots were seen. His waist was pinched in by a white waistcoat with chased gold b.u.t.tons, which was laced behind to serve as a belt.

The waistcoat, b.u.t.toned to the throat, showed off his broad chest, and a black satin stock obliged him to hold his head high, in soldierly fashion. A handsome gold chain hung from a waistcoat pocket, in which the outline of a flat watch was barely seen. He was twisting a watch-key of the kind called a "criquet," which Breguet had lately invented.

"The fellow is fine-looking," thought Joseph, admiring with a painter's eye the eager face, the air of strength, and the intellectual gray eyes which Max had inherited from his father, the n.o.ble. "My uncle must be a fearful bore, and that handsome girl takes her compensations. It is a triangular household; I see that."

At this instant, Baruch and Francois entered.

"Have you been to see the tower of Issoudun?" Flore asked Joseph. "No?

then if you would like to take a little walk before dinner, which will not be served for an hour, we will show you the great curiosity of the town."

"Gladly," said the artist, quite incapable of seeing the slightest impropriety in so doing.

While Flore went to put on her bonnet, gloves, and cashmere shawl, Joseph suddenly jumped up, as if an enchanter had touched him with his wand, to look at the pictures.

"Ah! you have pictures, indeed, uncle!" he said, examining the one that had caught his eye.

"Yes," answered the old man. "They came to us from the Descoings, who bought them during the Revolution, when the convents and churches in Berry were dismantled."

Joseph was not listening; he was lost in admiration of the pictures.

"Magnificent!" he cried. "Oh! what painting! that fellow didn't spoil his canvas. Dear, dear! better and better, as it is at Nicolet's--"