第90章 CHAPTER XIV(5)

"Fario has told me all about their nocturnal proceedings," resumed Philippe; "without him, I should never have suspected them. My uncle is held down under an absolute thraldom, if I may judge by certain things which the Spaniard has heard Max say to your boys. I suspect Max and the Rabouilleuse of a scheme to make sure of the fifty thousand francs' income from the Funds, and then, after pulling that feather from their pigeon's wing, to run away, I don't know where, and get married. It is high time to know what is going on under my uncle's roof, but I don't see how to set about it."

"I will think of it," said the old man.

They separated, for several persons were now approaching.

Never, at any time in his life, did Jean-Jacques suffer as he had done since the first visit of his nephew Philippe. Flore was terrified by the presentiment of some evil that threatened Max. Weary of her master, and fearing that he might live to be very old, since he was able to bear up under their criminal practices, she formed the very simple plan of leaving Issoudun and being married to Maxence in Paris, after obtaining from Jean-Jacques the transfer of the income in the Funds. The old bachelor, guided, not by any justice to his family, nor by personal avarice, but solely by his passion, steadily refused to make the transfer, on the ground that Flore was to be his sole heir.

The unhappy creature knew to what extent Flore loved Max, and he believed he would be abandoned the moment she was made rich enough to marry. When Flore, after employing the tenderest cajoleries, was unable to succeed, she tried rigor; she no longer spoke to her master;

Vedie was sent to wait upon him, and found him in the morning with his eyes swollen and red with weeping. For a week or more, poor Rouget had breakfasted alone, and Heaven knows on what food!

The day after Philippe's conversation with Monsieur Hochon, he determined to pay a second visit to his uncle, whom he found much changed. Flore stayed beside the old man, speaking tenderly and looking at him with much affection; she played the comedy so well that Philippe guessed some immediate danger, merely from the solicitude thus displayed in his presence. Gilet, whose policy it was to avoid all collision with Philippe, did not appear. After watching his uncle and Flore for a time with a discerning eye, the colonel judged that the time had come to strike his grand blow.

"Adieu, my dear uncle," he said, rising as if to leave the house.

"Oh! don't go yet," cried the old man, who was comforted by Flore's false tenderness. "Dine with us, Philippe."

"Yes, if you will come and take a walk with me."

"Monsieur is very feeble," interposed Mademoiselle Brazier; "just now he was unwilling even to go out in the carriage," she added, turning upon the old man the fixed look with which keepers quell a maniac.

Philippe took Flore by the arm, compelling her to look at him, and looking at her in return as fixedly as she had just looked at her victim.

"Tell me, mademoiselle," he said, "is it a fact that my uncle is not free to take a walk with me?"

"Why, yes he is, monsieur," replied Flore, who was unable to make any other answer.

"Very well. Come, uncle. Mademoiselle, give him his hat and cane."

"But--he never goes out without me. Do you, monsieur?"

"Yes, Philippe, yes; I always want her--"

"It would be better to take the carriage," said Flore.

"Yes, let us take the carriage," cried the old man, in his anxiety to make his two tyrants agree.

"Uncle, you will come with me, alone, and on foot, or I shall never return here; I shall know that the town of Issoudun tells the truth, when it declares you are under the dominion of Mademoiselle Flore Brazier. That my uncle should love you, is all very well," he resumed, holding Flore with a fixed eye; "that you should not love my uncle is also on the cards; but when it comes to your making him unhappy--halt!

If people want to get hold of an inheritance, they must earn it. Are you coming, uncle?"

Philippe saw the eyes of the poor imbecile roving from himself to Flore, in painful hesitation.

"Ha! that's how it is, is it?" resumed the lieutenant-colonel. "Well, adieu, uncle. Mademoiselle, I kiss your hands."

He turned quickly when he reached the door, and caught Flore in the act of making a menacing gesture at his uncle.

"Uncle," he said, "if you wish to go with me, I will meet you at your door in ten minutes: I am now going to see Monsieur Hochon. If you and I do not take that walk, I shall take upon myself to make some others walk."

So saying, he went away, and crossed the place Saint-Jean to the Hochons.

Every one can imagine the scenes which the revelations made by Philippe to Monsieur Hochon had brought about within that family. At nine o'clock, old Monsieur Heron, the notary, presented himself with a bundle of papers, and found a fire in the hall which the old miser, contrary to all his habits, had ordered to be lighted. Madame Hochon, already dressed at this unusual hour, was sitting in her armchair at the corner of the fireplace. The two grandsons, warned the night before by Adolphine that a storm was gathering about their heads, had been ordered to stay in the house. Summoned now by Gritte, they were alarmed at the formal preparations of their grandparents, whose coldness and anger they had been made to feel in the air for the last twenty-four hours.

"Don't rise for them," said their grandfather to Monsieur Heron; "you see before you two miscreants, unworthy of pardon."

"Oh, grandpapa!" said Francois.

"Be silent!" said the old man sternly. "I know of your nocturnal life and your intimacy with Monsieur Maxence Gilet. But you will meet him no more at Mere Cognette's at one in the morning; for you will not leave this house, either of you, until you go to your respective destinations. Ha! it was you who ruined Fario, was it? you, who have narrowly escaped the police-courts-- Hold your tongue!" he said, seeing that Baruch was about to speak. "You both owe money to Monsieur Maxence Gilet; who, for six years, has paid for your debauchery.