finds you gone, he'll go beside himself, and want to follow you. Well!
when he does, I'll give him a talking to."
CHAPTER XV
While the
foregoing plot was progressing, Philippe was walking arm in
arm with his uncle along the
boulevard Baron.
"The two great tacticians are coming to close quarters at last,"
thought Monsieur Hochon as he watched the
colonel marching off with
his uncle; "I am curious to see the end of the game, and what becomes
of the stake of ninety thousand francs a year."
"My dear uncle," said Philippe, whose phraseology had a
flavor of his
affinities in Paris, "you love this girl, and you are devilishly
right. She is damnably handsome! Instead of billing and cooing she
makes you trot like a valet; well, that's all simple enough; but she
wants to see you six feet
underground, so that she may marry Max, whom
she adores."
"I know that, Philippe, but I love her all the same."
"Well, I have sworn by the soul of my mother, who is your own sister,"
continued Philippe, "to make your Rabouilleuse as supple as my glove,
and the same as she was before that
scoundrel, who is
worthy" target="_blank" title="a.不值得的;不足道的">
unworthy to have
served in the Imperial Guard, ever came to quarter himself in your
house."
"Ah! if you could do that!--" said the old man.
"It is very easy," answered Philippe, cutting his uncle short. "I'll
kill Max as I would a dog; but--on one condition," added the old
campaigner.
"What is that?" said Rouget, looking at his
nephew in a
stupid way.
"Don't sign that power of
attorney which they want of you before the
third of December; put them off till then. Your torturers only want it
to
enable them to sell the fifty thousand a year you have in the
Funds, so that they may run off to Paris and pay for their wedding
festivities out of your millions."
"I am afraid so," replied Rouget.
"Well,
whatever they may say or do to you, put off giving that power
of
attorney until next week."
"Yes; but when Flore talks to me she stirs my very soul, till I don't
know what I do. I give you my word, when she looks at me in a certain
way, her blue eyes seem like
paradise, and I am no longer master of
myself,--especially when for some days she had been harsh to me."
"Well, whether she is sweet or sour, don't do more than promise to
sign the paper, and let me know the night before you are going to do
it. That will answer. Maxence shall not be your proxy unless he first
kills me. If I kill him, you must agree to take me in his place, and
I'll
undertake to break in that handsome girl and keep her at your
beck and call. Yes, Flore shall love you, and if she doesn't satisfy
you--thunder! I'll
thrash her."
"Oh! I never could allow that. A blow struck at Flore would break my
heart."
"But it is the only way to
govern women and horses. A man makes
himself feared, or loved, or respected. Now that is what I wanted to
whisper in your ear--Good-morning, gentlemen," he said to Mignonnet
and Carpentier, who came up at the moment; "I am
taking my uncle for a
walk, as you see, and
trying to improve him; for we are in an age when
children are obliged to
educate their grandparents."
They all bowed to each other.
"You behold in my dear uncle the effects of an
unhappypassion. Those
two want to strip him of his fortune and leave him in the lurch--you
know to whom I refer? He sees the plot; but he hasn't the courage to
give up his SUGAR-PLUM for a few days so as to
baffle it."
Philippe
briefly explained his uncle's position.
"Gentlemen," he remarked, in
conclusion, "you see there are no two
ways of saving him: either Colonel Bridau must kill Captain Gilet, or
Captain Gilet must kill Colonel Bridau. We
celebrate the Emperor's
coronation on the day after to-morrow; I rely upon you to arrange the
seats at the
banquet so that I shall sit opposite to Gilet. You will
do me the honor, I hope, of being my seconds."
"We will
appoint you to
preside, and sit ourselves on either side of
you. Max, as vice-
president, will of course sit opposite," said
Mignonnet.
"Oh! the
scoundrel will have Potel and Renard with him," said
Carpentier. "In spite of all that Issoudun now knows and says of his
midnight maraudings, those two
worthy officers, who have already been
his seconds, remain
faithful to him."
"You see how it all maps out, uncle," said Philippe. "Therefore, sign
no paper before the third of December; the next day you shall be free,
happy, and
beloved by Flore, without having to coax for it."
"You don't know him, Philippe," said the terrified old man. "Maxence
has killed nine men in duels."
"Yes; but ninety thousand francs a year didn't depend on it," answered
Philippe.
"A bad
conscience shakes the hand," remarked Mignonnet sententiously.
"In a few days from now," resumed Philippe, "you and the Rabouilleuse
will be living together as sweet as honey,--that is, after she gets
through
mourning. At first she'll twist like a worm, and yelp, and
weep; but never mind, let the water run!"
The two soldiers approved of Philippe's arguments, and tried to
hearten up old Rouget, with whom they walked about for nearly two
hours. At last Philippe took his uncle home,
saying as they parted:--
"Don't take any steps without me. I know women. I have paid for one,
who cost me far more than Flore can ever cost you. But she taught me
how to
behave to the fair sex for the rest of my days. Women are bad
children; they are
inferior animals to men; we must make them fear us;
the worst condition in the world is to be
governed by such brutes."
It was about half-past two in the afternoon when the old man got home.
Kouski opened the door in tears,--that is, by Max's orders, he gave
signs of weeping.
"Oh! Monsieur, Madame has gone away, and taken Vedie with her!"
"Gone--a--way!" said the old man in a strangled voice.
The blow was so
violent that Rouget sat down on the stairs,
unable to
stand. A moment after, he rose, looked about the hall, into the
kitchen, went up to his own room, searched all the chambers, and
returned to the salon, where he threw himself into a chair, and burst
into tears.
"Where is she?" he sobbed. "Oh! where is she? where is Max?"
"I don't know," answered Kouski. "The captain went out without telling
me."
Gilet thought it
politic to be seen sauntering about the town. By
leaving the old man alone with his
despair, he knew he should make him
feel his
desertion the more
keenly, and reduce him to docility. To
keep Philippe from assisting his uncle at this
crisis, he had given
Kouski
strict orders not to open the door to any one. Flore away, the
miserable old man grew
frantic, and the situation of things approached
a
crisis. During his walk through the town, Maxence Gilet was avoided
by many persons who a day or two earlier would have hastened to shake
hands with him. A general
reaction had set in against him. The deeds
of the Knights of Idleness were ringing on every tongue. The tale of
Joseph Bridau's
arrest, now cleared up, disgraced Max in the eyes of
all; and his life and conduct received in one day their just award.
Gilet met Captain Potel, who was looking for him, and seemed almost
beside himself.
"What's the matter with you, Potel?"
"My dear fellow, the Imperial Guard is being black-guarded all over
the town! These civilians are crying you down! and it goes to the
bottom of my heart."
"What are they complaining of?" asked Max.
"Of what you do at night."
"As if we couldn't amuse ourselves a little!"
"But that isn't all," said Potel.
Potel belonged to the same class as the officer who replied to the
burgomasters: "Eh! your town will be paid for, if we do burn it!" So
he was very little troubled about the deeds of the Order of Idleness.
"What more?" inquired Gilet.
"The Guard is against the Guard. It is that that breaks my heart.
Bridau has set all these bourgeois on you. The Guard against the
Guard! no, it ought not to be! You can't back down, Max; you must meet
Bridau. I had a great mind to pick a quarrel with the low
scoundrelmyself and send him to the shades; I wish I had, and then the
bourgeois wouldn't have seen the
spectacle of the Guard against the
Guard. In war times, I don't say anything against it. Two heroes of
the Guard may quarrel, and fight,--but at least there are no civilians
to look on and sneer. No, I say that big
villain never served in the
Guard. A guardsman would never
behave as he does to another guardsman,
under the very eyes of the bourgeois; impossible! Ah! it's all wrong;
the Guard is disgraced--and here, at Issoudun! where it was once so
honored."
"Come, Potel, don't worry yourself," answered Max; "even if you do not
see me at the
banquet--"
"What! do you mean that you won't be there the day after to-morrow?"
cried Potel, interrupting his friend. "Do you wish to be called a
coward? and have it said you are
running away from Bridau? No, no! The
unmounted grenadiers of the Guard can not draw back before the
dragoons of the Guard. Arrange your business in some other way and be
there!"
"One more to send to the shades!" said Max. "Well, I think I can
manage my business so as to get there--For," he thought to himself,
"that power of
attorney ought not to be in my name; as old Heron says,
it would look too much like theft."
This lion, tangled in the meshes Philippe Bridau was weaving for him,
muttered between his teeth as he went along; he avoided the looks of
those he met and returned home by the
boulevard Vilatte, still talking
to himself.
"I will have that money before I fight," he said. "If I die, it shall
not go to Philippe. I must put it in Flore's name. She will follow my
instructions, and go straight to Paris. Once there, she can marry, if
she chooses, the son of some
marshal of France who has been sent to
the right-about. I'll have that power of
attorney made in Baruch's
name, and he'll
transfer the property by my order."
Max, to do him justice, was never more cool and calm in appearance
than when his blood and his ideas were boiling. No man ever united in
a higher degree the qualities which make a great general. If his
career had not been cut short by his
captivity at Cabrera, the Emperor
would certainly have found him one of those men who are necessary to
the success of vast enterprises. When he entered the room where the
hapless
victim of all these comic and
tragic scenes was still weeping,
Max asked the meaning of such
distress; seemed surprised, pretended
that he knew nothing, and heard, with well-acted
amazement, of Flore's
departure. He questioned Kouski, to
obtain some light on the object of
this
inexplicable journey.
"Madame said like this," Kouski replied, "--that I was to tell
monsieur she had taken twenty thousand francs in gold from his drawer,
thinking that
monsieur wouldn't refuse her that
amount as wages for
the last twenty-two years."
"Wages?" exclaimed Rouget.
"Yes," replied Kouski. "Ah! I shall never come back," she said to
Vedie as she drove away. "Poor Vedie, who is so attached to
monsieur,
remonstrated with madame. 'No, no,' she answered, 'he has no affection
for me; he lets his
nephew treat me like the lowest of the low'; and
she wept--oh! bitterly."
"Eh! what do I care for Philippe?" cried the old man, whom Max was
watching. "Where is Flore? how can we find out where she is?"
"Philippe, whose advice you follow, will help you," said Max coldly.
"Philippe?" said the old man, "what has he to do with the poor child?
There is no one but you, my good Max, who can find Flore. She will
follow you--you could bring her back to me--"
"I don't wish to oppose Monsieur Bridau," observed Max.
"As for that," cried Rouget, "if that hinders you, he told me he meant
to kill you."
"Ah!" exclaimed Gilet, laughing, "we will see about it!"
"My friend," said the old man, "find Flore, and I will do all she
wants of me."
"Some one must have seen her as she passed through the town," said
Maxence to Kouski. "Serve dinner; put everything on the table, and