The Two Brothers, Honoré de Balzac [sites to read books for free TXT] 📗

the child of evil, and evil is the offspring of good; such is the paramount law of the universe! I now order you all, on pain of displeasing your very humble grand master, to procure clandestinely, each one of you, twenty rats, male or female as heaven pleases. Collect your contingent within three days. If you can get more, the surplus will be welcome. Keep the interesting rodents without food; for it is essential that the delightful little beasts be ravenous with hunger. Please observe that I will accept both house-mice and field-mice as rats. If we multiply twenty-two by twenty, we shall have four hundred; four hundred accomplices let loose in the old church of the Capuchins, where Fario has stored all his grain, will consume a not insignificant quantity! But be lively about it! There's no time to lose. Fario is to deliver most of the grain to his customers in a week or so; and I am determined that that Spaniard shall find a terrible deficit. Gentlemen, I have not the merit of this invention," continued Max, observing the signs of general admiration. "Render to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to God that which is God's. My scheme is only a reproduction of Samson's foxes, as related in the Bible. But Samson was an incendiary, and therefore no philanthropist; while we, like the Brahmins, are the protectors of a persecuted race. Mademoiselle Flore Brazier has already set all her mouse-traps, and Kouski, my right-arm, is hunting field-mice. I have spoken."

"I know," said Goddet, "where to find an animal that's worth forty rats, himself alone."

"What's that?"

"A squirrel."

"I offer a little monkey," said one of the younger members, "he'll make himself drunk on wheat."

"Bad, very bad!" exclaimed Max, "it would show who put the beasts there."

"But we might each catch a pigeon some night," said young Beaussier, "taking them from different farms; if we put them through a hole in the roof, they'll attract thousands of others."

"So, then, for the next week, Fario's storehouse is the order of the night," cried Max, smiling at Beaussier. "Recollect; people get up early in Saint-Paterne. Mind, too, that none of you go there without turning the soles of your list shoes backward. Knight Beaussier, the inventor of pigeons, is made director. As for me, I shall take care to leave my imprint on the sacks of wheat. Gentlemen, you are, all of you, appointed to the commissariat of the Army of Rats. If you find a watchman sleeping in the church, you must manage to make him drunk,--and do it cleverly,--so as to get him far away from the scene of the Rodents' Orgy."

"You don't say anything about the Parisians?" questioned Goddet.

"Oh!" exclaimed Max, "I want time to study them. Meantime, I offer my best shotgun--the one the Emperor gave me, a treasure from the manufactory at Versailles--to whoever finds a way to play the Bridaus a trick which shall get them into difficulties with Madame and Monsieur Hochon, so that those worthy old people shall send them off, or they shall be forced to go of their own accord,--without, understand me, injuring the venerable ancestors of my two friends here present, Baruch and Francois."

"All right! I'll think of it," said Goddet, who coveted the gun.

"If the inventor of the trick doesn't care for the gun, he shall have my horse," added Max.

After this night twenty brains were tortured to lay a plot against Agathe and her son, on the basis of Max's programme. But the devil alone, or chance, could really help them to success; for the conditions given made the thing well-nigh impossible.

The next morning Agathe and Joseph came downstairs just before the second breakfast, which took place at ten o'clock. In Monsieur Hochon's household the name of first breakfast was given to a cup of milk and slice of bread and butter which was taken in bed, or when rising. While waiting for Madame Hochon, who notwithstanding her age went minutely through the ceremonies with which the duchesses of Louis XV.'s time performed their toilette, Joseph noticed Jean-Jacques Rouget planted squarely on his feet at the door of his house across the street. He naturally pointed him out to his mother, who was unable to recognize her brother, so little did he look like what he was when she left him.

"That is your brother," said Adolphine, who entered, giving an arm to her grandmother.

"What an idiot he looks like!" exclaimed Joseph.

Agathe clasped her hands, and raised her eyes to heaven.

"What a state they have driven him to! Good God! can that be a man only fifty-seven years old?"

She looked attentively at her brother, and saw Flore Brazier standing directly behind him, with her hair dressed, a pair of snowy shoulders and a dazzling bosom showing through a gauze neckerchief, which was trimmed with lace; she was wearing a dress with a tight-fitting waist, made of grenadine (a silk material then much in fashion), with leg-of-mutton sleeves so-called, fastened at the wrists by handsome bracelets. A gold chain rippled over the crab-girl's bosom as she leaned forward to give Jean-Jacques his black silk cap lest he should take cold. The scene was evidently studied.

"Hey!" cried Joseph, "there's a fine woman, and a rare one! She is made, as they say, to paint. What flesh-tints! Oh, the lovely tones! what surface! what curves! Ah, those shoulders! She's a magnificent caryatide. What a model she would have been for one of Titians' Venuses!"

Adolphine and Madame Hochon thought he was talking Greek; but Agathe signed to them behind his back, as if to say that she was accustomed to such jargon.

"So you think a creature who is depriving you of your property handsome?" said Madame Hochon.

"That doesn't prevent her from being a splendid model!--just plump enough not to spoil the hips and the general contour--"

"My son, you are not in your studio," said Agathe. "Adolphine is here."

"Ah, true! I did wrong. But you must remember that ever since leaving Paris I have seen nothing but ugly women--"

"My dear godmother," said Agathe hastily, "how shall I be able to meet my brother, if that creature is always with him?"

"Bah!" said Joseph. "I'll go and see him myself. I don't think him such an idiot, now I find he has the sense to rejoice his eyes with a Titian's Venus."

"If he were not an idiot," said Monsieur Hochon, who had come in, "he would have married long ago and had children; and then you would have no chance at the property. It is an ill wind that blows no good."

"Your son's idea is very good," said Madame Hochon; "he ought to pay the first visit. He can make his uncle understand that if you call there he must be alone."

"That will affront Mademoiselle Brazier," said old Hochon. "No, no, madame; swallow the pill. If you can't get the whole property, secure a small legacy."

The Hochons were not clever enough to match Max. In the middle of breakfast Kouski brought over a letter from Monsieur Rouget, addressed to his sister, Madame Bridau. Madame Hochon made her husband read it aloud, as follows:--

My dear Sister,--I learn from strangers of your arrival in
Issoudun. I can guess the reason which made you prefer the house
of Monsieur and Madame Hochon to mine; but if you will come to see
me you shall be received as you ought to be. I should certainly
pay you the first visit if my health did not compel me just now to
keep the house; for which I offer my affectionate regrets. I shall
be delighted to see my nephew, whom I invite to dine with me
to-morrow,--young men are less sensitive than women about the
company. It will give me pleasure if Messrs. Baruch Borniche and
Francois Hochon will accompany him.

Your affectionate brother,

J.-J. Rouget.

"Say that we are at breakfast, but that Madame Bridau will send an answer presently, and the invitations are all accepted," said Monsieur Hochon to the servant.

The old man laid a finger on his lips, to require silence from everybody. When the street-door was shut, Monsieur Hochon, little suspecting the intimacy between his grandsons and Max, threw one of his slyest looks at his wife and Agathe, remarking,--

"He is just as capable of writing that note as I am of giving away twenty-five louis; it is the soldier who is corresponding with us!"

"What does that portend?" asked Madame Hochon. "Well, never mind; we will answer him. As for you, monsieur," she added, turning to Joseph, "you must dine there; but if--"

The old lady was stopped short by a look from her husband. Knowing how warm a friendship she felt for Agathe, old Hochon was in dread lest she should leave some legacy to her goddaughter in case the latter lost the Rouget property. Though fifteen years older than his wife, the miser hoped to inherit her fortune, and to become eventually the sole master of their whole property. That hope was a fixed idea with him. Madame Hochon knew that the best means of obtaining a few concessions from her husband was to threaten him with her will. Monsieur Hochon now took sides with his guests. An enormous fortune was at stake; with a sense of social justice, he wished it to go to the natural heirs, instead of being pillaged by unworthy outsiders. Moreover, the sooner the matter was decided, the sooner he should get rid of his guests. Now that the struggle between the interlopers and the heirs, hitherto existing only in his wife's mind, had become an actual fact, Monsieur Hochon's keen intelligence, lulled to sleep by the monotony of provincial life, was fully roused. Madame Hochon had been agreeably surprised that morning to perceive, from a few affectionate words which the old man had said to her about Agathe, that so able and subtle an auxiliary was on the Bridau side.

Towards midday the brains of Monsieur and Madame Hochon, of Agathe, and Joseph (the latter much amazed at the scrupulous care of the old people in the choice of words), were delivered of the following answer, concocted solely for the benefit of Max and Flore:--

My dear Brother,--If I have stayed away from Issoudun, and kept up
no intercourse with any one, not even with you, the fault lies not
merely with the strange and false ideas my father conceived about
me, but with the joys and sorrows of my life in Paris; for if God
made me a happy wife, he has also deeply afflicted me as a mother.
You are aware that my son, your nephew Philippe, lies under
accusation of a capital offence in consequence of his devotion to
the Emperor. Therefore you can hardly be surprised if a widow,
compelled to take a humble situation in a lottery-office for a
living, should come to seek consolation from those among whom she
was born.

The profession adopted by the son who accompanies me is one that
requires great talent, many sacrifices, and prolonged studies
before any results can be obtained. Glory for an artist precedes
fortune; is not that to say that Joseph, though he may bring honor
to the family, will still be