Madame Hochon, Monsieur Lousteau’s sister, paid about ten crowns a year towards Max’s schooling. This liberality, which Madame Hochon could not allow herself in consequence of her husband’s avarice, was naturally attributed to her brother, then living at Sancerre. When Doctor Rouget, whose son was not a success, observed how handsome Max was, he paid the school expenses of the “young rascal,” as he called him, till 1805. As Lousteau had died in 1800, and the doctor seemed to gratify a feeling of pride by paying the boy’s schooling for five years, the question of paternity remained unsettled.
Indeed, Maxence Gilet, the cause of many jests, was soon forgotten. And this is his story. In 1806, a year after Doctor Rouget’s death, the boy, who seemed born to a life of adventure, and who was indeed gifted with extraordinary strength and agility, had committed a number of more or less rash acts of mischief. He and Monsieur Hochon’s grandsons were already in league to drive the tradesfolks to frenzy; he gathered all the neighbors’ fruit before the owners, making nothing of scaling a wall. This imp had no match in athletic exercises; he played prisoner’s base to perfection; he could have coursed and caught a hare. He had an eye worthy of Leather-Stocking, and had a passion for sport. Instead of doing his lessons, he passed all his time in shooting at a mark. He spent all the money he could extract from the old doctor in buying powder and shot for a worn-out pistol given to him by Gilet the clog-maker. Now, in the autumn of 1806, Max, by this time seventeen, committed an involuntary murder one evening at nightfall by coming upon a young woman in her garden, where he was stealing fruit, and frightening her into a miscarriage. Being threatened by the clog-maker with the guillotine—the old man no doubt wanted to be rid of him—Max ran off, and never stopped till he reached Bourges, joined a regiment on the march to Spain, and there enlisted. No further notice was taken of the young woman’s death.
A lad of Max’s disposition was certain to distinguish himself; and he did so, with such effect that, after three campaigns, he returned as a captain, for the little learning he had picked up had served him well. In 1809, in Portugal, he was left for dead on an English battery which his company had taken, but could not hold. Max, a prisoner, was sent by the English to the Spanish hulks at Cabrera, the worst of all.
An application was indeed made on his behalf to the Emperor for the Cross of the Legion of Honor and the rank of Major, but Napoleon was just then in Austria; he kept all his favors for the dashing actions that were done under his own eye; he had no liking for men who were taken prisoners, and was not best pleased with the state of affairs in Portugal.
Max was left on the hulks from 1810 to 1814. In the course of those four years he was utterly demoralized; for the hulks were the galleys minus the crime and disgrace. In the first place, to secure his own freedom of action and defend himself against the corruption that was rampant in those foul prisons, unworthy of any civilized nation, the handsome young captain killed in duels—for duels were fought on a space six yards square—seven bullies and tyrants of whom he rid his ship, to the great joy of their victims. Max reigned in the hulk, thanks to the prodigious skill he acquired in handling his weapons, to his personal strength and cleverness. But he, in his turn, committed some arbitrary acts, and had adherents who took his part and became his flatterers. In this school of misery, where embittered nature dreamed only of revenge, and where the sophistries hatched in these seething brains found a warrant for every evil purpose, Max became utterly depraved. He listened to the counsel of those who aimed at fortune at any price, and did not shrink from criminal deeds so long as they could be committed without proof.
At last, at the peace, he was released, perverted though guiltless, capable of becoming a great politician in public life, or a scoundrel in private life, as circumstances might direct.
On his return to Issoudun he heard of the deplorable end of his parents. Like all people who give way to their passions, and lead, as the saying goes, a short life and a merry one, the Gilets had died in hospital in the most dire poverty. Almost immediately after the news of Napoleon’s landing at Cannes ran through France, Max thought he could not do better than go to Paris and ask for his Cross and his promotion. The Marshal who was then at the head of the War Office remembered Captain Gilet’s brave conduct in Portugal; he gave him his commission with the rank of Major of Infantry; but he could not obtain the Cross for him. “The Emperor says you will be sure to win it in the first fight,” said the Marshal. And, in fact, the Emperor put down the brave Captain’s name for that honor after the battle of Fleurus, where Gilet distinguished himself. After the battle of Waterloo, Gilet retired with the army on the Loire. When the revision took place. Marshal Feltre would grant him neither his promotion nor his Cross.
Napoleon’s soldier came home to Issoudun in a state of exasperation that may be easily imagined; he refused to serve at all without his Cross and the rank of Major. The authorities thought this a monstrous demand from a young man of five-and-twenty, who
