Madame Hochon pressed Agathe’s hand, which she was holding, and gave her a look. That grasp, that glance were meant to convey:
“Ah, my child, I quite understand your preferring that scapegrace Philippe.”
“I never saw your father, my dear boy,” replied Madame Hochon aloud; “but that you are your mother’s son is enough to make me love you. Besides, you have talent, from what the late Madame Descoings used to write to me; she was the only person to give me any news of you in these latter times.”
“Talent?” said the artist; “no, not yet; but with time and perseverance I may some day win both glory and fortune.”
“By painting?” said Monsieur Hochon, with deep irony.
“Come, Adolphine,” said Madame Hochon, “go and see about getting the dinner served.”
“Mother,” said Joseph, “I will go and carry up our trunks, which have just come.”
“Hochon, will you show Monsieur Bridau the rooms,” said the grandmother to François.
As dinner was not till four, and it was now but half-past three, Baruch went round the town giving news of the Bridaus’ arrival, describing Agathe’s dress, and, above all, Joseph, whose hollow cheeks and sickly, strongly-marked features were like the ideal portrait of a brigand. In every house that day Joseph was the sole subject of conversation.
“Old Rouget’s sister must have met an ape somewhere before her son was born; he is just like a monkey.”—“He has a face like a brigand, and eyes like a basilisk.”—“They say he is extraordinary to behold, quite alarming.”—“All Paris artists are the same.”—“They are as spiteful as cunning asses, and as vicious as apes.”—“It is in the nature of their calling.”—“I have just seen Monsieur Beaussier, who says he would not for worlds meet him at night in the woods. He saw him in the diligence.”—“He has hollows in his face like a horse, and he waves his arms like a madman.”—“That fellow is capable of any crime; it is his fault, perhaps, that his brother, who was a fine handsome man, has gone to the bad. Poor Madame Bridau, she does not look very happy with him. Suppose we take advantage of his being here to have our likeness drawn?”
The result of these opinions, sown broadcast in the town as if by the winds, was a devouring curiosity. All who had a right to call on the Hochons promised themselves that they would do so that evening, to inspect the Parisians. The arrival of these two persons in a stagnant town like Issoudun was as startling as the fall of the Log among the Frogs.
After placing his mother’s luggage and his own in the two attic rooms, and looking round them, Joseph studied the silent house, where the stairs, walls, and panels, bare of adornment, shed a chill, and there was not a thing beyond what was strictly necessary. But when, on going downstairs, he found Monsieur Hochon himself cutting a slice of bread for each person, he understood for the first time Molière’s Harpagon.
“We should have done better at the inn,” thought he.
The dinner confirmed his apprehensions. After a soup, so thin that quantity was evidently preferred to quality, a dish of bouilli was served—fresh-boiled beef—triumphantly wreathed with parsley. The vegetables cooked with it, served in a separate dish, were part of the bill of fare. The meat crowned the table, and was flanked by three other dishes; hard eggs on sorrel opposite the vegetables, and a salad, ready dressed with nut-oil, opposite little cups of custard flavored with burnt oats as a substitute for vanilla—as much like vanilla as chicory is like Mocha. Butter, and radishes on little plates at the opposite ends, black radishes and gherkins, completed the display, which Madame Hochon highly approved. The good old lady nodded at her husband, as a hostess happy to see that, at any rate for the first day, he had done things in style. The old man responded with a look and a shrug, easily interpreted to mean:
“You see what recklessness you lead me into!”
As soon as the bouilli had been dissected by Monsieur Hochon into slices as thin as the sole of your slipper, it was removed to make way for three pigeons. The wine was of the vintage of 1811. At a hint from her grandmother, Adolphine had graced each end of the table with a bunch of flowers.
“Well, make the best of a bad job!” thought the artist, as he looked at the table. And he began to eat like a man who had breakfasted at Vierzon at six in the morning, off an execrable cup of coffee.
When Joseph had eaten his bread and asked for some more, Monsieur Hochon rose, slowly felt for a key in the depths of his coat-pocket, opened a cupboard behind him, flourished the stump of a twelve-pound loaf, ceremoniously cut off another slice, which he divided in two, put it on a plate, and passed the plate across the table to the young painter, with the silence and composure of an old soldier, who says to himself at the beginning of a battle, “Well, I may be dead by tonight.”
Joseph took half the slice, and understood that he must never again ask for more bread. No member of the family was surprised at this scene, which to Joseph seemed so preposterous.
The conversation went on. Agathe heard that the house she was born in, her father’s house before he had inherited that of the Descoings, had been bought by the Borniches, and she expressed a wish to see it again.
“The Borniches will call this evening, no doubt,” said her godmother. “All the town will come to inspect you,” she added to Joseph, “and they will ask you to their houses.”
For dessert the maid brought in the famous soft cheeses of Touraine and le Berry, made of goat’s milk, which so exactly reproduce, in a sort of niello, the veining of the vine-leaves on which they are served, that engraving might very well have been invented in Touraine. On
