“If he is Jean-Jacques Rouget’s half-brother, why should he not live with him?”
“And besides,” added Renard, “the girl is a morsel for a king; supposing he loves her, where is the harm? Does not young Goddet pay court to Madame Fichet to make the daughter his wife as a reward for such a penance?”
After this well-merited lecture, François could not recover the thread of his ideas, and he was yet more at fault when Max gently added:
“Well, go on—”
“Certainly not!” cried François.
“You are angry for nothing. Max,” said young Goddet. “Is it not an understood thing that here, at la Cognette’s, we may all say what we please? Should we not all become the mortal foes of any one of us who remembered outside these walls anything that is said, thought, or done here? All the town speaks of Flore Brazier by the nickname of la Rabouilleuse; if François let it slip out by accident, is that a crime against the Order of Idlesse?”
“No,” said Max, “only against our personal friendship.—But I thought better of it; I remembered we were in Idlesse. I told him to go on.”
There was utter silence. The pause was so uncomfortable for all present that Max exclaimed: “I will go on for him” (sensation), “for all of you” (amazement), “and tell you what you are thinking” (great sensation). “You think that Flore, la Rabouilleuse, Flore Brazier, Daddy Rouget’s housekeeper—for they call him Père Rouget!—an old bachelor, who will never have any children!—you think, I say, that this woman has supplied me with everything since I came to Issoudun. If I have three hundred francs a month to toss out of window; if I can treat you often as I am doing this evening, and have money to lend to you all, I must get the cash out of Madame Brazier’s purse? Well, then, by Heaven! Yes, and again yes.—Yes, Mademoiselle Brazier has taken deadly aim at the old man’s fortune.”
“From father to son she will have richly earned it,” said Goddet in his corner.
“You believe,” Max went on, after smiling at Goddet’s remark, “that I have laid a plot to marry Flore after the old man’s death, and that then his sister, and this son, of whom I never heard till this instant, will endanger my future prospects?”
“That’s it,” cried François.
“So we all think round this table,” said Baruch.
“Well, be calm, my boys,” replied Max; “forewarned is forearmed. Now, I speak to the Knights of Idlesse. If, to be rid of these Parisians, I need the support of the Order, will you lend me a hand? Oh, within the limits we have prescribed for our pranks,” he quickly added, seeing a slight hesitancy. “Do you suppose I want to murder or poison them?—Thank God, I am not a fool! And supposing, after all, that the Bridaus should win the day, and Flore should get no more than she has, I should be satisfied with that, do you hear? I like her well enough to prefer her to Mademoiselle Fichet, if Mademoiselle Fichet would have anything to say to me!”
Mademoiselle Fichet was the richest heiress of Issoudun; and the daughter’s hand formed a large item in young Goddet’s passion for her mother.
Plain speaking is so precious, that the eleven Knights rose as one man.
“You are of the right sort, Max!”
“That is something like, Max. We will be the Knights of Salvation.”
“Down with the Bridaus!”
“We will bridle the Bridaus!”
“After all, a sweetheart has been known to have three husbands!”
“Deuce take it, old Lousteau was fond of Madame Rouget, and there is less harm in courting a housekeeper free and unfettered!”
“And if old Rouget was Max’s father more or less, it is all in the family!”
“Opinions are free!”
“Hurrah for Max!”
“Down with cant!”
“Let us drink the fair Flore’s health!”
Such were the eleven answers, acclamations, or toasts that broke from the eleven Knights of Idlesse, the outcome, it must be owned, of their very low standard of morality. We see now what Max’s object had been in establishing himself as Grand Master of the Order. While inventing practical jokes, and making himself agreeable to the youth of the principal families. Max hoped to secure their suffrages in the day of his rehabilitation. He rose with a grace, lifted his glass full of Bordeaux, and all awaited his next speech.
“For all the ill I wish you, I only hope you may all get wives to compare with the fair Flore! As to the incursion of relations, for the present I am not alarmed; and later, we shall see!”
“We must not forget Fario’s cart!”
“Oh, that is safe enough, by Jove!” said Goddet.
“I will see to the fitting conclusion of that joke,” cried Max. “Be early at the market, and come and let me know when the old fellow comes to look for his cart.”
The clocks were striking half-past three in the morning; the Knights went away in silence to find their way home, hugging the wall, and not making a sound, all being shod with list shoes.
Max slowly walked up to the Place Saint-Jean in the upper part of the town, between the Porte Saint-Jean and the Porte Vilatte, the rich citizens’ quarter. Major Gilet had dissembled his fears, but this news had hit him hard. Since his stay above or below decks he had acquired a power of dissimulation as great and deep as his depravement. In the first place, and above all, the forty thousand francs a year in land owned by Rouget was the whole of Gilet’s passion for Flore Brazier, of that you may be sure! It may easily be seen from his mode of conduct what confidence she had led him to feel in her future fortune, as based on the old bachelor’s affection. At the same time, the news that the legitimate heirs were on their way was enough to shake Max’s faith in Flore’s influence. The savings of the last seventeen years still stood in
