This is why I can do nothing to help you: Hochon, at the age of eighty-five, eats his four meals a day, sups off hard-boiled eggs and salad, and is as brisk as a rabbit. I shall have lived all my days—for he will write my epitaph—without ever having had twenty francs in my purse. If you like to come to Issoudun to combat the influence of your brother’s concubine, though there are good reasons why Rouget should not receive you into his house, I shall find it difficult to obtain my husband’s permission to invite you to mine. Still, you can come; he will give way on that point. I know a way of getting what I want in some things, and that is by talking of my will. This seems to me so atrocious that I have never yet had recourse to it; but for you I would do the impossible. I hope your Philippe will get out of the scrape, especially if you have a good advocate; but come to Issoudun as soon as you can. Remember that your brother, at fifty-seven, is older and more frail than Monsieur Hochon. So the case is urgent.
Already there are rumors of a will depriving you of your inheritance; but by Monsieur Hochon’s account there is yet time to procure its revocation.
Farewell, my little Agathe. God be with you. And rely on your godmother too, for she loves you.
This letter gave Agathe much to think about; of course she showed it to Joseph, to whom she was obliged to confide Giroudeau’s suggestion. The artist, who was cautious when his brother was concerned, pointed out to his mother that she ought to lay it all before Desroches. Struck by the truth of this remark, she and her son went next day, at six in the morning, to call on Desroches in the Rue de Bussy.
The lawyer, as lean as his father before him, with a harsh voice, a coarse skin, pitiless eyes, and a face like a ferret’s licking the blood of murdered chickens off its lips, sprang like a tiger when he heard of Giroudeau’s call.
“Bless me, mother Bridau,” he cried in his shrill, hard voice, “how long will you continue to be the dupe of your cursed scoundrel of a son? Do not give him a farthing. I will be responsible for Philippe; it is to save him in the future that I shall leave him to the sentence of the superior Court. You quail at the idea of his being found guilty, but God grant that his counsel may fail to get him off. You, go to Issoudun; save your fortune and that of your children. If you do not succeed, if your brother has made his will in that woman’s favor, and you cannot get him to revoke it—well, at any rate, collect the materials for proving undue influence, and I will conduct the case. But there! You are too good a woman to know how to find out the grounds for such an action. In the holidays I will go myself to Issoudun—if I possibly can.”
And this “I will go myself” made the artist shiver in his skin.
Desroches winked at Joseph as a sign that he should let his mother go downstairs first, and detained him for an instant.
“Your brother is a base wretch; he, voluntarily or involuntarily, is the cause of the discovery of the conspiracy; for the rascal is so cunning that it is impossible to find out the truth about it. Fool or traitor—I leave you to choose between them. He will no doubt be placed under the eye of the detective police; but that is all. Be quite easy; I alone know even this much. Hurry off to Issoudun with your mother. You have all your wits; try to save the inheritance.”
“Come, poor mother, Desroches is right,” said Joseph, rejoining Agathe on the stairs. “I have sold my pictures; let us set out for le Berry, as you have a fortnight’s leave.”
Having written to her godmother to announce their arrival, Agathe and Joseph started next day for Issoudun, leaving Philippe to his fate. The diligence went down the Rue de l’Enfer to take the Orléans road. When Agathe saw the Luxembourg, whither Philippe had been transferred, she could not help saying:
“After all, but for the Allies he would not be there now!”
Many sons would have given an impatient shrug or smiled in pity; but Joseph, who was alone with her in the coupé of the diligence, threw his arms round her, and pressed her to his heart, saying, “Oh, mother! you are a mother as Raphael was a painter! And you always will be a dear goose of a mother!”
Aroused from her troubles by the amusement of the journey, Madame Bridau was presently obliged to think of the purpose of her visit. Of course, she reread Madame Hochon’s letter, which had so strongly excited Desroches. Struck by such words as “concubine” and “hussy,” traced by the pen of an old woman of seventy, as pious as she was respectable, to designate the woman who was absorbing Jean-Jacques Rouget’s fortune, while he himself was spoken of as a poor creature, she began to wonder how her presence at Issoudun could avail to save her inheritance. Joseph, an artist, poor and disinterested, knew little of the law, and his mother’s exclamation puzzled him.
“Before sending us off to protect our inheritance, our friend Desroches would have done well to explain to us how we can be robbed of it,” said he.
“So far as my memory serves me—but my head was full of the notion of Philippe in prison, without a pipe even perhaps,
