Flore, as meek as a mouse, helped Védie to lay the table. Rouget, filled with admiration for Max, took him by both hands, led him into a window bay, and said to him in an undertone:
“Ah, Max, if I had a son, I should not love him so well as I love you. Flore was right in saying that you two are my family. … You have a sense of honor. Max, and all you have said is very right—”
“You ought to entertain your sister and your nephew,” said Max, interrupting him, “but ought not to alter your will; thus you will satisfy your father and everybody else.”
“Come, my little dears!” cried Flore, in cheerful tones, “the salmis will be cold. There, old boy, there is a wing for you,” she said, smiling on Jean-Jacques.
At this speech the old fellow’s long face lost its cadaverous tints, a treacly smile played on his flabby lips; but he coughed again, for the joy of being received again into favor excited him as greatly as being in disgrace. Flore sprang up, snatched a little cashmere shawl off her shoulders, and wrapped it round the old man’s throat as a comforter, saying:
“It is silly to upset yourself so over trifles. Here, foolish old boy, that will do you good—it has been next my heart—”
“What a good soul!” said Rouget to Max, while Flore went off for a black velvet cap to cover the old fellow’s almost bald head.
“As good as she is handsome,” replied Max; “but a little hasty, like all those who carry their heart in their hand.”
The reader may feel inclined to find fault with the crudities of this picture, and to think that the displays of la Rabouilleuse’s temper are marked by some truths which the painter should leave in the shade? Well; this scene, a hundred times repeated with horrible variations, is in all its coarse and repulsive voraciousness the type of that which every woman will play, on whatever rung of the social ladder she may stand, if any kind of self-interest has diverted her from the path of obedience, and she has seized the reins of power. To women as to great politicians—the end justifies any means. Between Flore Brazier and a duchess, between the duchess and the richest tradesman’s wife, between the tradesman’s wife and the most splendidly kept woman, there are no differences but those due to education and to the atmosphere in which they live. A fine lady’s sulks take the place of Flore’s violence; in every rank bitter taunts, witty sarcasms, cold disdain, hypocritical whining, affected quarrels, are quite as successful as the low abuse of this Madame Everard of Issoudun.
Max told the story of Fario with so much drollery that he made the old fellow laugh. Védie and Kouski, who had come up to listen to the tale, exploded in the passage. As for Flore, she laughed hysterically. After breakfast, while Jean-Jacques was reading the papers—for they now subscribed to the Constitutionnel and the Pandore—Max took Flore up to his room.
“Are you certain,” said he, “that he has never made another will since he named you as his legatee?”
“He has no writing things,” said she.
“He may have dictated one to some notary,” said Max. “If he has not done so, we must be prepared for the contingency. So receive the Bridaus as well as possible; but meanwhile we must try, as soon as we can, to realize all the money out on mortgage. Our notaries will be only too glad to effect the transfers; that is what they eat and drink by. State securities are going up every day; we are to conquer Spain and deliver Ferdinand VII from his Cortès, so next year they may perhaps be above par. So it will be a good stroke of business to invest the old man’s seven hundred and fifty thousand francs in the funds at 89. Only try and get them put into your name. It will always be something saved from the fire.”
“A capital idea,” said Flore.
“And as on eight hundred and ninety thousand francs he will draw fifty thousand francs a year, you must get him to borrow a hundred and forty thousand francs for two years, to be repaid in two instalments. Thus in two years we shall be drawing a hundred thousand francs from Paris and ninety thousand here, so we risk nothing.”
“Without you, my splendid Max, what would have become of us!” said she.
“Oh, tomorrow evening, at la Cognette’s, after I have seen this Paris couple, I will find some means of making the Hochons themselves see them off the premises.”
“Oh, you are so clever! You are an angel, a love of a man!”
The Place Saint-Jean is situated halfway down a street called la Grande Narette in the upper part, and la Petite Narette below. In le Berry the word Narette means the same sort of highway as the Genoese Salita, a street built on a steep slope. Between the Place Saint-Jean and the Vilatte gate, the Narette is excessively steep. Old Monsieur Hochon’s house is opposite to that where lived Jean-Jacques Rouget. What was going on at Père Rouget’s could often be seen out of the drawing-room window where Madame Hochon sat, and vice versa, when the curtains were undrawn or the doors left open.
Hochon’s house is so much like Rouget’s that they were, no doubt, built by the same architect. Hochon, long ago the collector of taxes at Selles, was born at Issoudun, and returned thither to marry the sister of the sub-delegate, the gallant Lousteau, exchanging his post at Selles for a similar one at Issoudun. He had retired
