Among this group of a score of youths who thus protested against the social somnolence of the town, some were more especially intimate with Max than the others, or made him their idol. A man of this temper often infatuates those younger than himself. Now Madame Hochon’s two grandsons, François Hochon and Baruch Borniche, were his devotees. The two boys regarded Max as almost a cousin, accepting the views of the neighbors as to his left-handed relationship to the Lousteaus. Max was free with his loans of money denied them by their grandfather Hochon for their amusements; he took them out shooting, and gave them some training; in fact, his influence over them was paramount to that of home. They both were orphans, and though of age, lived under the guardianship of their grandfather, in consequence of certain circumstances to be explained when the great Monsieur Hochon appears on the scene.
At this moment François and Baruch—we will call them by their Christian names to make the story clearer—were seated, one on the right hand, and one on the left of Max, at the middle of the supper-table, that was wretchedly lighted by the fuliginous glimmer of four dips, eight to the pound. The party, consisting of not more than eleven of the Knights, had drunk a dozen to fifteen bottles of various wines. Baruch, whose name suggests a survival of Calvinism at Issoudun, said to Max at the moment when the wine had set all tongues wagging:
“You are about to be threatened at the very centre—”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Max.
“Why, my grandmother has had a letter from Madame Bridau, her goddaughter, announcing her arrival on a visit with her son. My grandmother arranged two rooms yesterday for their reception.”
“And what is that to me?” said Max, taking up his glass, emptying it at a gulp, and setting it down on the table with a comical flourish.
Max was now four-and-thirty. One of the candles stood near him, and cast its light on his martial countenance, illuminating his forehead, and showing off his fair complexion, his flashing eyes, and his hair crisply waved, and as black as jet. This hair stood up strongly and naturally, curling back from his brow and temples, and clearly marking the outline of growth which our grandfathers called the five points. Notwithstanding such a striking contrast of black and white, Max had a very sweet face, deriving its charm from its shape, much like that given by Raphael to his Virgin’s faces, and from a finely-shaped mouth, on which a gentle smile was apt to linger, a set expression which Max had gradually adopted. The fine color that flushes the faces of the Berrichons added to his genial look, and when he laughed outright he displayed two-and-thirty teeth worthy to grace the mouth of a fine lady. He was tall and well proportioned, neither stout nor thin. His hands, kept with care, were white and not unshapely, but his feet were those of the Roman suburb, of a foot soldier under the Empire. He would have made a fine general of division; he had shoulders that would have been the fortune of a field-marshal, and a breast broad enough to display all the Orders of Europe. Intelligence gave purpose to all his movements. And then, attractive by nature, like almost all children of a passion, the noble blood of his real father came out in him.
“But do not you know, Max,” cried a youth at the bottom of the table, the son of a retired surgeon-major named Goddet, the best doctor in the town, “that Madame Hochon’s goddaughter is Rouget’s sister? And if she and her son the painter are coming here, it is no doubt to get back her share of the old man’s fortune, and then goodbye to your harvest!”
Max frowned. Then with a glance that went from face to face all round the table, he studied the effect on his companions of this address, and again he said, “What is that to me?”
“But,” François began again, “it seems to me that if old Rouget were to alter his will, supposing he has made one in favor of la Rabouilleuse …”
Here Max cut his faithful follower short with these words:—
“When, on my arrival here, I heard you mentioned as one of the cinq-Hochons (cinq-cochons = five pigs), as the pun on your name has it—and has had it these thirty years—I told the man who called you so to shut up, my dear François, and that so emphatically, that no one at Issoudun has ever repeated that idiotic jest, at any rate not in my presence! And this is the return you make: you make use of a name of contempt in speaking of a woman you know me to be attached to.”
Never had Max said so much as to his intimacy with the woman of whom François had just spoken by the nickname commonly given to her in Issoudun. As a former prisoner on the hulks, Max had enough experience, and as Major in the Grenadier Guards he had learned enough of honor, to understand the origin of the contempt for him in the town. He had never allowed anyone whatever to say a word to him with reference to Mademoiselle Flore Brazier, Jean-Jacques Rouget’s servant-mistress, so vigorously designated by good Madame Hochon as a hussy. Moreover, Max was well known to be too touchy to be spoken to on the subject unless he began it, and he never had begun it. In short, it was too dangerous to incur Max’s anger or displeasure for even his most intimate friends to banter him about la Rabouilleuse.
When something was once said of a connection between Max and this girl in the presence of Major Potel and of Captain Renard, the two officers
