“Come, Gritte, bring us some fruit,” said Madame Hochon.
“Madame, there is no rotten fruit left,” replied Gritte.
Joseph shouted with laughter, as if he had been in his studio with his own companions, for he understood at once that the precaution of beginning first on damaged fruit had degenerated into a habit.
“Oh, we can eat it all the same!” said he, with the dash of spirit of a man who feels that he must speak.
“Pray go for some, Monsieur Hochon,” said the old lady.
Monsieur Hochon, much annoyed by the artist’s remark, fetched some small peaches, some pears, and late plums.
“Adolphine, go and cut some grapes,” said Madame Hochon to her granddaughter.
Joseph looked at the two young men with an expression that seemed to say, “And is it to such a diet as this that you owe your blooming appearance?”
Baruch understood this keen glance, and could not help smiling, for his cousin Hochon and he had displayed moderate appetites. The food at home was a matter of indifference to men who supped three times a week at la Cognette’s. And just before dinner, Baruch had had notice that the Grand Master of the Order had summoned a full meeting at midnight to have a splendid supper, as he required their cooperation.
This banquet of welcome offered to his guests by old Hochon explains how necessary these midnight festivities were for the maintenance of these two great fellows, who had fine appetites, and who never missed one.
“We will have some liqueurs in the drawing-room,” said Madame Hochon, rising, and signing to Joseph to give her his arm. They went out first, and she was able to say to the painter, “Well, my poor boy, your dinner will not give you an indigestion; but I had great difficulty in procuring it for you! You will find lenten fare here; just enough to eat to keep you alive, and that is all. So just make the best of it.”
The frank simplicity of the old lady, thus pronouncing judgment on her own house, pleased the painter.
“I shall have lived fifty years with that old man without ever having heard twenty crowns jingle in my purse. Oh, if it were not for the hope of saving your fortune, I would never have invited your mother and you to stay in my prison!”
“But how is it that you are still alive?” said the painter artlessly, with the lightheartedness that never deserts a French artist.
“Ah, indeed,” said she. “I pray.”
Joseph felt a thrill as he heard these words, which gave the old woman such dignity in his eyes that he drew back two or three steps to look in her face; he saw it radiant, full of such tender serenity, that he said to her:
“I will paint your portrait—”
“No, no,” said she. “I have hated life on earth too much to wish to remain on it in a picture.”
As she spoke the sad words in a light tone, she took from a cupboard a flask containing black-currant brandy, a household liqueur prepared by herself, for she had had the recipe from the famous Sisterhood who also created the Issoudun cakes, one of the greatest achievements of French confectionery, which no chef, cook, pastrycook, or confectioner has ever been able to imitate. Monsieur de Rivière, the Ambassador to Constantinople, ordered immense numbers every year for Mahmoud’s seraglio. Adolphine held a small lacquer tray full of little old-fashioned glasses with an engraved pattern and a gilt rim; as her grandmother filled them, she carried them round.
“Glasses round.—Father will have some!” cried Agathe gaily, reminded of her young days by this time-honored ceremony.
“Hochon will go presently to his club to read the papers; we shall have a little time to ourselves,” said the old lady in a low voice.
In fact, ten minutes later, the three women and Joseph were left to themselves in the drawing-room. Its floor was never polished, only swept, while the tapestried panels, in oak frames, with deep ogees and mouldings, and all the simple heavy furniture, stood before Madame Bridau exactly as she had left them. The Monarchy, the Revolution, the Empire, and the Restoration, respecters of few things, had respected this room, where their splendors and disasters had left not a trace.
“Ah, godmother, my life has been cruelly storm-tossed in comparison with yours!” exclaimed Madame Bridau, surprised to see even a canary bird, which she had known alive, stuffed and standing on the chimney-shelf between the old clock and the old brass branched candlesticks and silver taper stands.
“My child,” replied the old lady, “storms are in the heart. The greater and the more needed is our resignation, the greater must our inmost struggles be.—But we will not talk of me, but of your affairs. You are indeed exactly opposite the foe,” she went on, pointing to the windows of old Rouget’s house.
“They are sitting down to dinner,” remarked Adolphine.
The young girl, almost a recluse, was constantly looking out of window, hoping to catch some light shed by chance on the enormities ascribed to Maxence Gilet, to la Rabouilleuse, and to Jean-Jacques, of which a hint now and again reached her ears when she was sent away while they were discussed. The old lady now told her granddaughter to leave her with Monsieur and Madame Bridau till the first visiter should come.
“For I know my Issoudun,” said she, looking at the two Parisians; “we shall have ten or twelve batches of inquisitive callers this evening.”
Madame Hochon had hardly had time to give them the events and particulars concerning the extraordinary influence exerted over Jean-Jacques Rouget by la Rabouilleuse and Maxence Gilet—not with the synthetic brevity with which they have here been narrated, but with the addition of a thousand comments, descriptions, and hypotheses lent to them by good and evil tongues in the town—when Adolphine announced the approach of the Borniches, the Beaussiers, the Lousteau-Prangins, the Fichets, the Goddet-Héraus, fourteen persons in all, who loomed
