About two hours after the confessor’s departure, Joseph came into his mother’s room. He had been to a friend to borrow the necessary money to pay his most pressing debts, and he crept in on tiptoe, believing that his mother was asleep. He then sat down in an armchair, without being seen by the sick woman.
A sob, broken by the words, “Will he ever forgive me?” made Joseph start up with the cold perspiration down his back, for he thought his mother was in the delirium that precedes death.
“What is the matter, mother?” he cried, terrified to see her eyes red with weeping and her woe-stricken face.
“Oh, Joseph! can you forgive me, my child?” cried she.
“What do you mean?” asked the artist.
“I have not loved you as you deserved—”
“What a preposterous idea!” cried he. “You have not loved me—? Have we not lived together these seven years? Have you not kept house for me for seven years? Do I not see you every day? Do I not hear your voice? Are you not the gentle and indulgent sharer of my poverty?—You do not understand painting! Well, but that is not to be taught. And only yesterday I was saying to Grassou, ‘The thing that comforts me in all my struggles is that I have such a good mother; she is just what an artist’s wife ought to be; she takes care of everything; she looks after all my creature comforts without making any fuss—’ ”
“No, Joseph, no. You have loved me, and I have never returned you tenderness for tenderness. Oh! how I wish I might live! … Give me your hand.”
Agathe took her son’s hand, kissed and held it to her heart, gazing at him for a long time, her blue eyes radiant with the affection she had hitherto always kept for Philippe. The painter, who had studied expression, was so struck by the change, and saw so plainly that his mother’s heart had opened to him, that he put his arms round her and held her clasped for some seconds, saying like a crazy creature, “Oh, mother, mother!”
“Ah, I feel I am forgiven!” said she. “God must surely ratify a son’s forgiveness of his mother.”
“You must keep calm; do not worry yourself. It is all over now. I feel that I am enough loved at this moment for all the past,” cried Joseph, laying his mother gently on the pillows.
During a fortnight, while life and death were contending for the saintly creature, she had for Joseph such looks, such impulses of soul and expressions of gesture, as revealed love so perfect that a whole life seemed contained in each outburst. The mother now thought only of her son; she counted herself as nothing, and, upheld by love, no longer felt her sufferings. She made artless speeches like a child’s. D’Arthez, Michel Chrestien, Fulgence Ridal, Pierre Grassou, and Bianchon came to keep Joseph company, and often held discussions in an undertone in the sick woman’s room.
“Oh! how I wish I knew what was meant by color!” she exclaimed one evening when she heard them talking about a picture.
Joseph’s conduct on his part was sublime towards his mother; he scarcely left her room; he cherished Agathe in his heart; he responded to her tenderness with equal tenderness. It was to the painter’s friends one of those beautiful spectacles which can never be forgotten. These men, who all were examples of the union of real talent and noble character, were for Joseph and his mother all that they ought to be—angels who prayed with him and wept with him—not that they said prayers or shed tears, but they were one with him in thought and act. Joseph, an artist as noble in feeling as in gifts, read in certain of his mother’s looks a longing hidden deep in her heart; and he said one day to d’Arthez, “She was too fond of that robber Philippe not to want to see him again before she dies …”
Joseph requested Bixiou, who was a figure in the Bohemian world which Philippe would occasionally frequent, to make that infamous parvenu promise to assume, out of pity, some show of affection, so as to wrap the poor mother’s heart in a shroud graced by illusion. Bixiou, as a student of human nature, a misanthropic scoffer, was ready and willing to undertake such a mission. When he had explained Agathe’s situation to the Comte de Brambourg, who received him in a bedroom hung with yellow silk damask, the Colonel burst out laughing.
“What the devil do you want me to do there?” cried he. “The only service the good woman can do me is to kick the bucket as soon as possible, for she would cut a bad figure at my wedding with Mademoiselle de Soulanges. The less family I have to show, the better for me! As you may well suppose, I only wish I could bury the name of Bridau under all the tombstones in Père-Lachaise.
“My brother ruins me by proclaiming my real name to the world. But you, at any rate, are too clever not to understand my position. Come, now—if you were to be elected deputy, you have a ready tongue of your own; you would be as much feared as Chauvelin, and you might be made Comte Bixiou, Director of the Beaux Arts. If you had achieved that, and if your grandmother Descoings were still alive, how would you like to have that good woman at your elbow—a woman like Madame Saint-Léon? Would you offer her your arm in the Tuileries? Would you introduce her to the noble family
