The man in whom the unhappy Agathe fancied she recognized her son had, as it were, one foot on each of these two lowest steps. She saw a horribly starchless collar, a mangy hat, broken and patched boots, a threadbare overcoat with buttons that had lost their mould, while their empty gaping or twisted skins matched the torn pockets and greasy collar. Traces of flue on the cloth plainly revealed that if there were anything in those pockets, it could only be dust. Out of a pair of ripped iron-gray trousers the man drew hands as dirty as a workman’s. Over his breast a knitted woolen undervest, tawny with long wear, of which the sleeves came below those of the coat, and the edge was pulled outside the trousers, served visibly and undoubtedly as a substitute for linen. Philippe wore a shade over his eyes of green silk stretched on wire. His head, almost bald, his color, and hollow cheeks showed that he had just come out of that dreadful hospital.
His blue military coat, though white at the seams, still displayed his Rosette. Thus every passerby looked at this veteran, a victim of the Government no doubt, with curiosity, mingled with pity; for the Rosette attracted the eye, and suggested honorable fears for the Legion of Honor, even in the most rabid ultras. At that time, though an attempt had been made to cast a slur on the Order by reckless promotions, not more than fifty-three thousand persons in France had the right to display it.
Agathe was thrilled to the marrow. Though she could not possibly love this son of hers, she still could suffer acutely through him. Touched by a last gleam of motherly feeling, she shed tears as she saw the dashing staff-officer make as though he would go into a tobacconist’s to buy a cigar, and stop on the threshold; he had felt in his pockets and found nothing. Agathe hastily crossed the road, drew out her purse, pushed it into Philippe’s hand, and fled as if she had committed a crime.
For two days after she could eat nothing; she constantly saw before her the horrible vision of her son dying of hunger in Paris.
“When he has spent the money in my purse, who will give him any?” thought she. “Giroudeau was not deceiving us; Philippe has just come out of the hospital.”
She no longer saw her poor aunt’s murderer, the scourge of the family, the domestic thief, the gambler, drunkard, low debauchee; what she saw was a discharged patient dying of hunger, a smoker bereft of tobacco. At seven-and-forty she looked like a woman of seventy. Her eyes grew dim in tears and prayer.
But this was not the last blow to be dealt her by this dreadful son; her worst anticipations were to be realized. A conspiracy was discovered of officers on service, and the paragraphs of the Moniteur containing the details of the arrests were shouted in the streets. In the recesses of her little coop, in the lottery office in the Rue Vivienne, Agathe heard the name of Philippe Bridau. She fainted away; and the head-clerk, understanding her grief and the necessity for her taking some action, gave her a fortnight’s leave of absence.
“Ah, my dear! We, with our austerity, have driven him to this,” she said to Joseph, as she went to lie down.
“I will go to see Desroches,” said Joseph.
The artist went off to place his brother’s case in the hands of Desroches, who was regarded as the craftiest and astutest attorney in Paris, and who had rendered good service to various persons of importance, among others to des Lupeaulx, at that time Chief Secretary in a Minister’s office. Meanwhile Giroudeau came to call on the widow, who trusted him this time.
“Madame,” said he, “find twelve thousand francs, and your son will be released for want of evidence. We have only to purchase the silence of two witnesses.”
“I will get them,” said the poor mother, not knowing how or whence.
Inspired by the danger, she wrote to her godmother Madame Hochon to beg them of Jean-Jacques Rouget, to save Philippe. If Rouget should refuse, she entreated Madame Hochon to lend her the money, promising to repay it in two years. By return of post she received the following letter:—
My dear Child—Though your brother has, first and last, forty thousand francs a year, to say nothing of the money he has saved in the last seventeen years, which Monsieur Hochon estimates at more than six hundred thousand francs, he will not spend two farthings on the nephews he has never seen. As for me—you cannot know that so long as my husband lives I shall never have six francs to call my own. Hochon is the greatest miser in Issoudun; I do not know what he does with his money; he does not give his grandchildren twenty francs in a year. To borrow it I should have to ask his leave, and he would not give it. I have not even attempted to speak with your brother, who keeps a woman, whose very humble servant he is. It is pitiable to see how the poor man is treated in his own house when he has a sister and nephews.
I have hinted to you several times that your presence at Issoudun might save your brother, and rescue from the clutches of that hussy a fortune of forty or even sixty thousand francs a year; but you do not answer me, or seem not to have understood me. So I write to you today without any circumlocution. I sympathize deeply with the misfortune that has come upon you,
