“Pooh!” said Joseph. “I will go to see him. For, indeed, I don’t think him quite such an idiot if he has wit enough to gladden his eyes with a Venus worthy of Titian.”
“If he were not an idiot,” said Monsieur Hochon, coming in, “he would have married comfortably, have had a family, and you would have had no chance at all of his fortune. Some good comes out of evil.”
“That is a good idea of your son’s; he can go first to call on his uncle,” said Madame Hochon. “He will give him to understand that if you go he must receive you alone.”
“And so affront Mademoiselle Brazier?” said Monsieur Hochon. “No, no, madame. Put up with this grievance. If you do not get the fortune, try to secure a legacy.”
The Hochons were no match for Maxence Gilet. In the middle of breakfast the Pole arrived with a note from his master, Monsieur Rouget, addressed to his sister, Madame Bridau.
Here is the letter which Madame Hochon made her husband read:—
My dear Sister—
I hear through strangers of your arrival at Issoudun. I can guess the reason for your preferring Monsieur and Madame Hochon’s house to mine; but if you come to see me, you shall be received here as you ought to be. I should be the first to call on you but that my health compels me at present to keep the house. I offer you my affectionate respects. I should be delighted to meet your son, whom I shall hope to see at dinner with me today, for young men are less precise than women as to the company they meet. He will give me great pleasure by coming accompanied by Messieurs Baruch Borniche and François Hochon.
“Say that we are at breakfast, that Madame Bridau will send an answer presently, and the gentlemen accept the invitation,” said Monsieur Hochon to the maid. And the old man laid his finger on his lip to impress silence on all the party.
When the house-door was shut, Monsieur Hochon, having no suspicion of the alliance between his grandsons and Maxence, shot one of his keenest glances at his wife and Agathe.
“He no more wrote that,” said he, “than I am able to pay down twenty-five louis.—The soldier is our correspondent.”
“What does it all mean?” said Madame Hochon. “Never mind, we will answer it. You, monsieur,” she added, turning to the painter, “will dine there, I hope; but if—”
The old lady stopped short at a look from her husband. Seeing the warmth of his wife’s affection for Agathe, old Hochon feared lest she should leave her goddaughter some legacy in the event of her losing all the Rouget property. Though he was fifteen years the elder, the miser hoped to survive her, and to see himself one day master of everything. This hope was his ruling idea. So Madame Hochon had rightly guessed that the way to extract some concessions from her husband was to threaten that she would make a will.
So Monsieur Hochon sided with his guests. The Rouget fortune, which hung in the balance, was in fact enormous; and his sense of social justice made him wish to see it in the hands of the natural heirs rather than grabbed by disreputable outsiders. Again, the sooner the business was settled, the sooner would he be rid of his visitors. Since the struggle, which till now had been only a scheme of his wife’s, had actually begun between the rightful heirs and the unrighteous schemers, Monsieur Hochon’s mind had waked up from the sleep induced by provincial life. Madame Hochon was quite agreeably surprised when, that very morning, she understood, from some kindly expression of old Hochon’s with regard to her goddaughter, that this competent and wily auxiliary was on the side of the Bridaus.
By noon the combined talents of Monsieur and Madame Hochon, of Agathe and Joseph—a good deal surprised to find the two old people so careful in their choice of words—had brought to birth the following reply for the especial benefit of Flore and Maxence:—
My dear Brother—
If I have waited thirty years without revisiting this town, or keeping up any intercourse with anyone in it, not even with you, the fault lies not alone with the strange and false ideas my father had formed against me, but partly with the misfortunes and with the happiness of my life in Paris; for, though God made me a happy wife, He has sorely stricken me as a mother. You cannot but know that my son, your nephew Philippe, lies under a capital charge of treason in consequence of his devotion to the Emperor. Hence, you will not be surprised to hear that a widow, compelled to earn her living by accepting a humble employment in a lottery office, should have come to seek consolation and substantial help from those who have known her from her birth.
The profession taken up by the son who is with me is one of those which demand great talent, great sacrifices, and long study before leading to any success. Glory precedes fortune in this career. Is not this as much as to say that even if Joseph makes his name famous, he will still be poor?
I, your sister, my dear Jean-Jacques, would have endured in silence the effects of our father’s injustice, but forgive me as a mother for reminding you that you have two nephews—one who served on the Emperor’s staff at the battle of Montereau, and fought with the Imperial Guard at Waterloo, and who is now in prison; the other who, from the age of thirteen, has been led by a vocation into a difficult though splendid career.
So I thank you, my dear brother, with heartfelt warmth, for your letter, both on my own account and on Joseph’s; he will certainly wait on you at your invitation. Ill health excuses everything, my dear Jean-Jacques; I will see you in
