Having made this allusion to the supposed parentage of Agathe and of Max, Hochon was about to leave the room; but old Madame Hochon, still slender and upright, wearing a mob cap with bows, and her hair powdered, with a shot-silk petticoat, tight sleeves, and high-heeled slippers, set her snuffbox down on her little table, and said:
“Really, Monsieur Hochon, how can a clever man like you repeat the nonsense which, unluckily, destroyed my poor friend’s peace of mind, and cost my poor goddaughter her share of her father’s fortune? Max Gilet is not my brother’s son, and I often advised him to save the money he spent on him. And you know as well as I do that Madame Rouget was virtue itself—”
“Well, the daughter is worthy of her mother, for she seems to me a great goose. After losing all her money, she brought up her sons so well that one of them is in prison awaiting his trial before the supreme court for a conspiracy à la Berton. As to the other—worse and worse! he is a painter.—If your protégés remain here till they have extracted that idiot Rouget from the clutches of la Rabouilleuse and Gilet, we shall get through more than one bushel of salt with them.”
“That will do. Monsieur Hochon; but you might wish them success!”
Monsieur Hochon took up his hat and his ivory-handled cane, and went out, amazed by this alarming speech, for he had not supposed his wife to be so determined. Madame Hochon, on her part, took her prayerbook to read the order of service, her great age hindering her from going to mass every morning. It was with difficulty that she got to church on Sundays and high festivals. Since receiving Agathe’s reply she had added to her regular prayers a special intercession, beseeching God to open the eyes of Jean-Jacques Rouget, to bless Agathe, and to grant success to the undertaking to which she had been driven.
Concealing the fact from her two grandsons, whom she regarded as parpaillots (renegades), she had requested the curé to say masses for nine days, attended by her granddaughter Adolphine Borniche, who put up her grandmother’s prayers in the church as her proxy.
Adolphine, now eighteen, having stitched by her grandmotlier’s side for seven years, in this chill home of methodical and melancholy regularity, was all the more ready to perform the neuvaine, because she hoped to inspire some tender feeling in Joseph Bridau, the painter so little understood by Monsieur Hochon, and in whom she took a keen interest, were it only on account of the monstrous ideas her grandfather attributed to the young Paris artist.
Old people, wise people, the magnates of the town, and fathers of families, all approved of Madame Hochon’s conduct; and their good wishes for her goddaughter and for Agathe’s sons were reinforced by the secret contempt they had long felt for the proceedings of Maxence Gilet. So the advent of Père Rouget’s sister and nephew gave rise to two factions in Issoudun: that of the older and upper citizen class, who could only watch events and hope for the best without helping matters; and that of the Knights of Idlesse and Max’s partisans, who were, unfortunately, capable of doing much mischief to undermine the Parisians.
On this day, then, Agathe and Joseph got out of the coach at the office of the Messageries, Place Misère, at three in the afternoon. Though tired, Madame Bridau felt young again at the sight of her native town, where at every step she found some reminiscence and impression of her girlhood. In the state of mind prevailing at Issoudun the arrival of the Parisians was known all over the town within ten minutes.
Madame Hochon appeared at the front gate to receive her goddaughter, and kissed her as if she had been a child of her own. After seventy-two years of a life as empty as it was monotonous, with nothing to look back upon but the coffins of her three children, all dying in misfortune, she had cultivated a sort of artificial motherhood for the girl who, as she expressed it, had for sixteen years lived in her pocket. In the gloom of a provincial life she had cherished this old regard, this child’s life, and all its memories, just as if Agathe were still with her, and she took a passionate interest in all that concerned the Bridaus.
Agathe was led in triumph into the drawing-room, where worthy Monsieur Hochon stood as cold as a raked-out oven.
“Here is Monsieur Hochon; how do you think he is looking?”
“Why, exactly as he did when I left him,” said Agathe.
“Ah, it is evident you have come from Paris, you pay compliments,” said the old man.
The family were introduced: first, little Baruch Borniche, a tall youth of two-and-twenty; then little François Hochon, now twenty-four; and lastly, little Adolphine, who blushed, and did not know what to do with her hands, and especially with her eyes, for she did not wish to appear to stare at Joseph Bridau, who was anxiously examined by the two lads and by old Hochon, but from different points of view. The miser was reflecting, “He must have just come out of a hospital; he will eat like a fever-patient.”
The two young men were saying to themselves, “What a brigand! What a head! We shall have our hands full!”
“Here is my son the painter, my good Joseph,” said Agathe finally, introducing the artist.
There was a little sigh in the emphasis on the word “good,” which betrayed Agathe’s heart; she was thinking of the prisoner at the Luxembourg.
“He looks ill,” cried Madame Hochon; “he is not like you—”
“No, madame,” said Joseph, with the rough simplicity of an artist, “I am like my
