The Two Brothers - Honoré de Balzac (best fiction books of all time .TXT) 📗

her leave of absence for two weeks.

"Ah! my friend," she said to Joseph, as she went to bed that night, "it is our severity which drove him to it."

"I'll go and see Desroches," answered Joseph.

While the artist was confiding his brother's affairs to the younger Desroches,--who by this time had the reputation of being one of the keenest and most astute lawyers in Paris, and who, moreover, did sundry services for personages of distinction, among others for des Lupeaulx, then secretary of a ministry,--Giroudeau called upon the widow. This time, Agathe believed him.

"Madame," he said, "if you can produce twelve thousand francs your son will be set at liberty for want of proof. It is necessary to buy the silence of two witnesses."

"I will get the money," said the poor mother, without knowing how or where.

Inspired by this danger, she wrote to her godmother, old Madame Hochon, begging her to ask Jean-Jacques Rouget to send her the twelve thousand francs and save his nephew Philippe. If Rouget refused, she entreated Madame Hochon to lend them to her, promising to return them in two years. By return of courier, she received the following letter:--

My dear girl: Though your brother has an income of not less than
forty thousand francs a year, without counting the sums he has
laid by for the last seventeen years, and which Monsieur Hochon
estimates at more than six hundred thousand francs, he will not
give one penny to nephews whom he has never seen. As for me, you
know I cannot dispose of a farthing while my husband lives. Hochon
is the greatest miser in Issoudun. I do not know what he does with
his money; he does not give twenty francs a year to his
grandchildren. As for borrowing the money, I should have to get
his signature, and he would refuse it. I have not even attempted
to speak to your brother, who lives with a concubine, to whom he
is a slave. It is pitiable to see how the poor man is treated in
his own home, when he might have a sister and nephews to take care
of him.

I have hinted to you several times that your presence at Issoudun
might save your brother, and rescue a fortune of forty, perhaps
sixty, thousand francs a year from the claws of that slut; but you
either do not answer me, or you seem never to understand my
meaning. So to-day I am obliged to write without epistolary
circumlocution. I feel for the misfortune which has overtaken you,
but, my dearest, I can do no more than pity you. And this is why:
Hochon, at eighty-five years of age, takes four meals a day, eats
a salad with hard-boiled eggs every night, and frisks about like a
rabbit. I shall have spent my whole life--for he will live to
write my epitaph--without ever having had twenty francs in my
purse. If you will come to Issoudun and counteract the influence
of that concubine over your brother, you must stay with me, for
there are reasons why Rouget cannot receive you in his own house;
but even then, I shall have hard work to get my husband to let me
have you here. However, you can safely come; I can make him mind
me as to that. I know a way to get what I want out of him; I have
only to speak of making my will. It seems such a horrid thing to
do that I do not often have recourse to it; but for you, dear
Agathe, I will do the impossible.

I hope your Philippe will get out of his trouble; and I beg you to
employ a good lawyer. In any case, come to Issoudun as soon as you
can. Remember that your imbecile of a brother at fifty-seven is an
older and weaker man than Monsieur Hochon. So it is a pressing
matter. People are talking already of a will that cuts off your
inheritance; but Monsieur Hochon says there is still time to get
it revoked.

Adieu, my little Agathe; may God help you! Believe in the love of
your godmother,

Maximilienne Hochon, nee Lousteau.

P.S. Has my nephew, Etienne, who writes in the newspapers and is
intimate, they tell me, with your son Philippe, been to pay his
respects to you? But come at once to Issoudun, and we will talk
over things.

This letter made a great impression on Agathe, who showed it, of course, to Joseph, to whom she had been forced to mention Giroudeau's proposal. The artist, who grew wary when it concerned his brother, pointed out to her that she ought to tell everything to Desroches.

Conscious of the wisdom of that advice, Agathe went with her son the next morning, at six o'clock, to find Desroches at his house in the rue de Bussy. The lawyer, as cold and stern as his late father, with a sharp voice, a rough skin, implacable eyes, and the visage of a fox as he licks his lips of the blood of chickens, bounded like a tiger when he heard of Giroudeau's visit and proposal.

"And pray, mere Bridau," he cried, in his little cracked voice, "how long are you going to be duped by your cursed brigand of a son? Don't give him a farthing. Make yourself easy, I'll answer for Philippe. I should like to see him brought before the Court of Peers; it might save his future. You are afraid he will be condemned; but I say, may it please God his lawyer lets him be convicted. Go to Issoudun, secure the property for your children. If you don't succeed, if your brother has made a will in favor of that woman, and you can't make him revoke it,--well then, at least get all the evidence you can of undue influence, and I'll institute proceedings for you. But you are too honest a woman to know how to get at the bottom facts of such a matter. I'll go myself to Issoudun in the holidays,--if I can."

That "go myself" made Joseph tremble in his skin. Desroches winked at him to let his mother go downstairs first, and then the lawyer detained the young man for a single moment.

"Your brother is a great scoundrel; he is the cause of the discovery of this conspiracy,--intentionally or not, I can't say, for the rascal is so sly no one can find out the exact truth as to that. Fool or traitor,--take your choice. He will be put under the surveillance of the police, nothing more. You needn't be uneasy; no one knows this secret but myself. Go to Issoudun with your mother. You have good sense; try to save the property."

"Come, my poor mother, Desroches is right," said Joseph, rejoining Agathe on the staircase. "I have sold my two pictures, let us start for Berry; you have two weeks' leave of absence."

After writing to her godmother to announce their arrival, Agathe and Joseph started the next evening for their trip to Issoudun, leaving Philippe to his fate. The diligence rolled through the rue d'Enfer toward the Orleans highroad. When Agathe saw the Luxembourg, to which Philippe had been transferred, she could not refrain from saying,--

"If it were not for the Allies he would never be there!"

Many sons would have made an impatient gesture and smiled with pity; but the artist, who was alone with his mother in the coupe, caught her in his arms and pressed her to his heart, exclaiming:--

"Oh, mother! you are a mother just as Raphael was a painter. And you will always be a fool of a mother!"

Madame Bridau's mind, diverted before long from her griefs by the distractions of the journey, began to dwell on the purpose of it. She re-read the letter of Madame Hochon, which had so stirred up the lawyer Desroches. Struck with the words "concubine" and "slut," which the pen of a septuagenarian as pious as she was respectable had used to designate the woman now in process of getting hold of Jean-Jacques Rouget's property, struck also with the word "imbecile" applied to Rouget himself, she began to ask herself how, by her presence at Issoudun, she was to save the inheritance. Joseph, poor disinterested artist that he was, knew little enough about the Code, and his mother's last remark absorbed his mind.

"Before our friend Desroches sent us off to protect our rights, he ought to have explained to us the means of doing so," he exclaimed.

"So far as my poor head, which whirls at the thought of Philippe in prison,--without tobacco, perhaps, and about to appear before the Court of Peers!--leaves me any distinct memory," returned Agathe, "I think young Desroches said we were to get evidence of undue influence, in case my brother has made a will in favor of that--that--woman."

"He is good at that, Desroches is," cried the painter. "Bah! if we can make nothing of it I'll get him to come himself."

"Well, don't let us trouble our heads uselessly," said Agathe. "When we get to Issoudun my godmother will tell us what to do."

This conversation, which took place just after Madame Bridau and Joseph changed coaches at Orleans and entered the Sologne, is sufficient proof of the incapacity of the painter and his mother to play the part the inexorable Desroches had assigned to them.

In returning to Issoudun after thirty years' absence, Agathe was about to find such changes in its manners and customs that it is necessary to sketch, in a few words, a picture of that town. Without it, the reader would scarcely understand the heroism displayed by Madame Hochon in assisting her goddaughter, or the strange situation of Jean-Jacques Rouget. Though Doctor Rouget had taught his son to regard Agathe in the light of a stranger, it was certainly a somewhat extraordinary thing that for thirty years a brother should have given no signs of life to a sister. Such a silence was evidently caused by peculiar circumstances, and any other sister and nephew than Agathe and Joseph would long ago have inquired into them. There is, moreover, a certain connection between the condition of the city of Issoudun and the interests of the Bridau family, which can only be seen as the story goes on.


CHAPTER VII

Issoudun, be it said without offence to Paris, is one of the oldest cities in France. In spite of the historical assumption which makes the emperor Probus the Noah of the Gauls, Caesar speaks of the excellent wine of Champ-Fort ("de Campo Forti") still one of the best vintages of Issoudun. Rigord writes of this city in language which leaves no doubt as to its great population and its immense commerce. But these testimonies both assign a much lesser age to the city than its ancient antiquity demands. In fact, the excavations lately undertaken by a learned archaeologist of the place, Monsieur Armand Peremet, have brought to light, under the celebrated tower of Issoudun, a basilica of the fifth century, probably the only one in France. This church preserves, in its very materials, the