The first thing Madame Rouget said when her husband spoke of sending Agathe to Paris was, “I shall never see my child again!”—“And she was sadly right,” worthy Madame Hochon would add.
The poor mother then became as yellow as a quince, and her condition by no means gave the lie to those who declared that Rouget was killing her by inches. The ways of her gawky ninny of a son must have contributed to the griefs of the unjustly accused mother. Never checked, or perhaps egged on by his father, the lad, who was altogether stupid, showed his mother none of the attention nor the respect due from a son. Jean-Jacques Rouget was like his father, but even worse; and the doctor was not very admirable, either morally or physically.
The advent of charming Agathe Rouget brought no good to her uncle Descoings. In the course of the week—or rather of the decade, for the Republic had been proclaimed—he was imprisoned on a hint from Robespierre to Fouquier-Tinville. Descoings, being rash enough to opine that the famine was unreal, was fool enough to communicate his opinion—he imagined that thought was free—to several of his customers, male and female, as he served them over the counter. Citoyenne Duplay, the wife of the carpenter with whom Robespierre lodged, and herself the Grand Citoyen’s housekeeper, unhappily for Descoings, honored his shop with her custom. This citoyenne considered the grocer’s views as an insult to Maximilian the First. Ill pleased as she was by the manners of the Descoings couple, this illustrious tricoteuse of the Jacobin Club regarded Citoyenne Descoings’ beauty as a kind of aristocracy. She added venom to their language while repeating it to her benevolent and kindhearted master. The grocer was arrested on the usual charge of “monopolizing.”
Descoings in prison, his wife made a stir to obtain his release; but her efforts were so ill judged that any observer hearing her appeal to the arbiters of his fate might have supposed that all she asked was a decent way of getting rid of him. Madame Descoings knew Bridau, one of the secretaries under Roland, Minister of the Interior, and the right-hand man of all who succeeded to that office. She brought Bridau into the field to save the grocer. This really incorruptible minister, one of those virtuous dupes who are always so admirably disinterested, took good care not to tamper with the men on whom Descoings’ fate depended; he tried to explain! Now, to explain to the men of that time had about as much effect as though they had been asked to restore the Bourbons. The Girondin Minister, at that time combating Robespierre, said to Bridau, “What business is it of yours?” And each man to whom the worthy secretary applied made the same ruthless reply, “What business is it of yours?”
Bridau very prudently advised Madame Descoings to keep quiet; but she, instead of conciliating Robespierre’s housekeeper, spouted fire and flame against the informer; she went to see a member of the Convention, who was in fear for himself, and who said, “I will speak of it to Robespierre.”
On this promise the grocer’s wife rested, and her protector naturally did not speak. A few sugar-loaves, a few bottles of good liqueur offered to Citoyenne Duplay would have saved Descoings.
This little incident shows that in a revolution it is as dangerous to trust for safety to an honest man as to a scoundrel; one can rely only on one’s self.
Though Descoings died, he had the honor, at any rate, of going to the scaffold with André de Chénier. There, no doubt, grocery and poetry embraced for the first time in the flesh; for they have always had, and will always have, their private relations. Descoings’ execution made a far greater sensation than André de Chénier’s. Thirty years elapsed before it was recognized that France had lost more by Chénier’s death than by that of Descoings.
Robespierre’s sentence had this good result—until 1830 grocers were still afraid of meddling in politics.
Descoings’ shop was not more than-a hundred yards from Robespierre’s lodgings. The grocer’s successor failed in business; Cesar Birotteau, the famous perfumer, established himself in the house. But, as if the scaffold had infected the place with disaster, the inventor of the “Compound Sultana Paste” and “Eau Carminative” was also ruined. The solution of this problem is a matter for occult science.
In the course of the few visits paid by the head-clerk to the luckless Descoings’ wife, he was struck by the calm, cold, artless beauty of Agathe Rouget. When he called to console the widow, who was so far inconsolable as to retire from the business after her second bereavement, he ended by marrying the lovely girl in the course of a “decade,” as soon as her father could arrive, and he did not keep them waiting. The doctor, delighted at seeing things turn out even better than he had hoped, since his wife was the sole heiress of the Descoings, flew to Paris, not so much to be present at Agathe’s marriage I as to see that the settlements were drawn to his mind. Citizen Bridau, quite disinterested, and desperately in love, left this matter entirely to the perfidious doctor, who took full advantage of his son-in-law’s infatuation, as will be seen in the course of this history.
Madame Rouget, or, more accurately, the doctor, inherited all the estate, real and personal, of old Monsieur and Madame Descoings, who died within two years of each other. Finally, Rouget got the better of his wife, for she died early in 1799. And he had vineyards, and he bought farmland, and he acquired ironworks, and he sold wool!—His beloved son could never
