At five o’clock, when perfect silence reigned in the little dwelling, and when the dying woman, watched by Joseph at the foot of her bed, and Agathe at her pillow, was expecting her grandson, whom Desroches had gone to seek, the sound of Philippe’s step and walking-stick echoed on the stairs.
“There he is, there he is!” cried Madame Descoings, sitting up in bed, and suddenly recovering the use of her paralyzed tongue.
Agathe and Joseph were impressed by the impulse of horror which so vehemently roused the sick woman. Their miserable expectations were wholly justified by Philippe’s appearance; by his purple, vacant face, his uncertain gait, and the horrible look of his eyes with deep red rims, glazed and yet wild-looking; he was shivering violently with fever, and his teeth chattered.
“What the devil!” he exclaimed. “Neither bit nor sup, and my throat is on fire. Well, what’s up now? The foul fiend puts his hoof in all that concerns us. My old Descoings in bed, and making eyes at me as big as saucers—”
“Be silent, sir,” said Agathe, rising. “At least you may respect the misery you have caused.”
“Hallo! Sir?” said he, looking at his mother. “My dear little mother, that is not kind; do you no longer love your boy?”
“Are you worthy to be loved? Have you forgotten what you did yesterday? You may look out for a lodging for yourself; you shall no longer live with me. From tomorrow,” she added, “for in such a state as you are in it would be difficult—”
“To turn me out?—So you are going to play the melodrama of the Banished Son?” he went on. “Dear, dear! Is that how you take it? Well, you are all a pretty pack of owls! What harm have I done? Cleaned out the old woman’s mattress for her. We don’t keep money in wool, deuce take it.—And where is the crime? Did not she take twenty thousand francs, I should like to know? Are not we her creditors? I have taken so much on account; that’s all.”
“Oh, God! oh, God!” cried the dying woman, clasping her hands in prayer.
“Hold your tongue!” said Joseph, rushing at his brother and clapping his hand over his mouth.
“Right about face, half turn to the left, you dirty little painter!” replied Philippe, laying his heavy hand on Joseph’s shoulder, turning him round, and landing him in an armchair. “That is not the way to meddle with the moustache of a Major of Dragoons of the Imperial Guard.”
“She has repaid me all she owed me,” cried Agathe, rising and turning an angry face to her son. “Besides, that is nobody’s business but mine. You are killing her. Go,” she added with a gesture that exhausted all her force, “and never let me see you again. You are a villain!”
“I am killing her?”
“Yes; her numbers were drawn in the lottery, and you stole the money she would have staked.”
“Oh, if she is dying of a lost chance, then it is not I who am killing her,” retorted the drunkard.
“Go, I say,” said Agathe; “you fill me with horror. You have every vice! Good God, and is this my son?”
A hollow croak from Madame Descoings’ throat had aggravated Agathe’s wrath.
“And yet I still love you, mother, though you are the cause of all my misfortunes,” said Philippe. “And you can turn me out of doors on a Christmas Day, the birthday of What d’ye call him—Jesus!—What did you do to Grandpapa Rouget, your father, that he turned you out and disinherited you? If you had not offended him in some way, we should have been rich, and I should not have been reduced to the depths of misery. What did you do to your father, I should like to know, you who are so good? You see, I may be a very good boy, and be turned out of doors nevertheless—I, the glory of the family—”
“Its disgrace!” cried Madame Descoings.
“Leave the room, or kill me!” cried Joseph, rushing on his brother with the fury of a lion.
“Good God! good God!” cried Agathe, trying to separate the brothers.
At this moment Bixiou and Doctor Haudry came in, Joseph had knocked down his brother, and Philippe was lying on the floor.
“He is a perfect wild beast!” he said. “Not a word, or I’ll—”
“I will remember this,” bellowed Philippe.
“A little family difference?” said Bixiou.
“Pick him up,” said the physician; “he is as ill as the old lady; undress him, put him to bed, and pull his boots off.”
“That is easily said,” observed Bixiou. “But they must be cut off: his legs are swelled—”
Agathe brought a pair of scissors. When she had slit the boots, which at that time were worn outside tight-fitting trousers, ten gold pieces rolled out on to the floor.
“There—there is her money,” muttered Philippe. “Blasted idiot that I am, I forgot the reserve fund! So I too missed fire!”
The delirium of high fever now came upon Philippe, who began to talk wildly. Joseph, with the help of the elder Desroches, who came in presently, and of Bixiou, got the wretched man up to his own room. Doctor Haudry was obliged to write a line begging the loan of a strait-waistcoat from the hospital, for his mania increased to such a pitch that they feared he might kill himself—he was like a madman.
By nine o’clock peace was restored. The Abbé Loraux and Desroches did what they could to comfort Agathe, who sat by her aunt’s pillow, and never ceased crying; but she only listened and shook her head, preserving obstinate silence; only Joseph and Madame Descoings knew the depth and extent of the inward wound.
“He will do better, mother,” said Joseph at last, when Desroches and Bixiou were gone.
“Oh!” cried the poor woman, “but he is right. Philippe is right! My father cursed me; I have no right … Here is the money,” she went on to Madame Descoings, adding Joseph’s three hundred francs to the two hundred found
