“Oh! Fario is on the watch,” replied Philippe, “and not only he. The Spaniard discovered for me, in the neighborhood of Vatan, one of my old soldiers to whom I once did a service. No one suspects that Benjamin Bourdet is at the Spaniard’s orders, and Fario has placed one of his horses at Benjamin’s service.”
“If you were to kill the monster who perverted my grandsons, you would be really doing a good action.”
“By this time, thanks to me, all Issoudun knows what Monsieur Maxence has been at by night for these six years past,” replied Philippe, “and tongues are wagging about him pretty freely. Morally he is a ruined man.”
The moment Philippe had left his uncle, Flore went to Max’s room to relate to him the smallest details of the visit paid by this audacious nephew.
“What is to be done?” said she.
“Before having recourse to extreme measures, which would be a duel with that long corpse of a man,” replied Maxence, “we must play for double or quits by a daring stroke. Let the old simpleton go out with his nephew.”
“But that great hound does not beat about the bush,” cried Flore; “he will call a spade a spade.”
“Just attend to me,” said Maxence, in his most strident tones. “Do you suppose that I have not listened at doors and considered our position? Send to old Cognet for a conveyance and a horse, now, this minute! All must be done in five minutes. Put all that is yours into the cart, take Védie, and be off to Vatan; take the twenty thousand francs he has in his desk. If I bring the old boy to Vatan, do not consent to return here till he has signed the power of attorney. Then I will sneak off to Paris while you come back to Issoudun.—When Jean-Jacques comes in from his walk and finds that you are gone, he will lose his head and want to run after you. Very good—and I will talk to him then!”
While this plot was being laid, Philippe, arm in arm with his uncle, had taken him for a walk on the Boulevard Baron.
“There are two great schemers at loggerheads,” said old Hochon to himself, watching the Colonel supporting his uncle. “I am curious to see the end of this game, where the stake is ninety thousand francs a year.”
“My dear uncle,” said Philippe, whose phraseology had some flavor of his Paris associates, “you are in love with that minx, and you show devilish good taste, for she is a stunning armful. Instead of cosseting you, she makes you trot round like her footman—and that again is natural enough; she would like to see you six feet under the daisies to marry Maxence, whom she worships—”
“Yes, Philippe, I know all that, but I love her all the same.”
“Well, I have sworn by my mother’s body—and she is your sister, sure enough,” Philippe went on—“to make your Rabouilleuse as pliant as my glove, and just what she must have been before that blackguard, who is unworthy ever to have served in the Imperial Guard, came sponging on your household—”
“Oh! if you could only do that!” said the old man.
“It is easy enough,” replied Philippe, cutting him short. “I will kill Maxence like a dog—but—on one condition.”
“What is that?” asked old Rouget, looking at his nephew with a blank expression.
“Do not sign the power of attorney they are asking for before the 3rd of December; drag on only till then. Those two vultures want your license to sell out your stock of fifty thousand francs a year, solely to go and get married in Paris, and there have a high time with your million.”
“I am very much afraid of it,” said Rouget.
“Well, then, whatever they may do to you, put off signing it till next week.”
“Yes, but when Flore talks to me she upsets me so that it turns my brain. I tell you, she has a way of looking at me that makes her blue eyes seem like Paradise, and I am no longer my own master, particularly as there are days when she leaves me in disgrace.”
“Well, if she is all honey, just be satisfied to promise her the document, and give me notice the day before you sign it. Maxence will never be your representative—unless he has killed me. If I kill him, you may take me to live with you in his place, and I will make your beauty dance at a word or a look. Yes, Flore shall be fond of you, or, by God, if she vexes you, I will give her a hiding.”
“Oh! that I would never allow. A blow to Flore would fall on my heart.”
“And yet it is the only way to train a woman or a horse. A man who makes himself feared is loved and obeyed. This is all I wanted to say in your private ear.—Good morning, gentlemen,” said he to Mignonnet and Carpentier. “I am taking my uncle for a little walk you see, and trying to teach him; for we live in an age when the young people are obliged to educate their grandparents.”
Greetings were exchanged.
“You behold in my dear uncle the results of an unfortunate passion,” the Colonel went on. “He is about to be despoiled of his fortune and left stripped like Baba—you know to whom I allude. The good man knows of the plot, but he cannot make up his mind to do without his Nanna for a few days to baffle her,” and Philippe frankly explained the position in which his uncle stood.
“You see, gentlemen,” said he in conclusion, “that there are not two ways of setting my uncle free. Colonel Bridau must kill Major Gilet, or Major Gilet must kill Colonel Bridau. The day after tomorrow is the anniversary of the Emperor’s coronation; I count on you so to arrange the seats at
