the winners. Monsieur Hochon came honestly by the reputation of miser.
but it would be mere petition" target="_blank" title="n.重复；背诵；复制品">repetition to sketch him here. A single specimen

of the avarice which made him famous will suffice to make you see
Monsieur Hochon as he was.

At the wedding of his daughter, now dead, who married a Borniche, it
was necessary to give a dinner to the Borniche family. The bridegroom,

who was heir to a large fortune, had suffered great mortification from
having mismanaged his property, and still more because his father and

mother refused to help him out. The old people, who were living at the
time of the marriage, were delighted to see Monsieur Hochon step in as

guardian,--for the purpose, of course, of making his daughter's dowry
secure. On the day of the dinner, which was given to celebrate the

signing of the marriage contract, the chief relations of the two
families were assembled in the salon, the Hochons on one side, the

Borniches on the other,--all in their best clothes. While the contract
was being solemnly read aloud by young Heron, the notary, the cook

came into the room and asked Monsieur Hochon for some twine to truss
up the turkey,--an essential feature of the repast. The old man dove

into the pocket of his surtout, pulled out an end of string which had
evidently already served to tie up a parcel, and gave it to her; but

before she could leave the room he called out, "Gritte, mind you give
it back to me!" (Gritte is the abbreviation used in Berry for

Marguerite.)
From year to year old Hochon grew more petty in his meanness, and more

penurious; and at this time he was eighty-five years old. He belonged
to the class of men who stop short in the street, in the middle of a

lively dialogue, and stoop to pick up a pin, remarking, as they stick
it in the sleeve of their coat, "There's the wife's stipend." He

complained bitterly of the poor quality of the cloth manufactured now-
a-days, and called attention to the fact that his coat had lasted only

ten years. Tall, gaunt, thin, and sallow; saying little, reading
little, and doing nothing to fatigue himself; as observant of forms as

an oriental,--he enforced in his own house a discipline of strict
abstemiousness, weighing and measuring out the food and drink of the

family, which, indeed, was rather numerous, and consisted of his wife,
nee Lousteau, his grandson Borniche with a sister Adolphine, the heirs

of old Borniche, and lastly, his other grandson, Francois Hochon.
Hochon's eldest son was taken by the draft of 1813, which drew in the

sons of well-to-do families who had escaped the regular conscription,
and were now formed into a corps styled the "guards of honor." This

heir-presumptive, who was killed at Hanau, had married early in life a
rich woman, intending thereby to escape all conscriptions; but after

he was enrolled, he wasted his substance, under a presentiment of his
end. His wife, who followed the army at a distance, died at Strasburg

in 1814, leaving debts which her father-in-law Hochon refused to pay,
--answering the creditors with an axiom of ancient law, "Women are

minors."
The house, though large, was scantily furnished; on the second floor,

however, there were two rooms suitable for Madame Bridau and Joseph.
Old Hochon now repented that he had kept them furnished with two beds,

each bed accompanied by an old armchair of natural wood covered with
needlework, and a walnut table, on which figured a water-pitcher of

the wide-mouthed kind called "gueulard," standing in a basin with a
blue border. The old man kept his winter store of apples and pears,

medlars and quinces on heaps of straw in these rooms, where the rats
and mice ran riot, so that they exhaled a mingled odor of fruit and

vermin. Madame Hochon now directed that everything should be cleaned;
the wall-paper, which had peeled off in places, was fastened up again

with wafers; and she decorated the windows with little curtains which
she pieced together from old hoards of her own. Her husband having

refused to let her buy a strip of drugget, she laid down her own
bedside carpet for her little Agathe,--"Poor little thing!" as she

called the mother, who was now over forty-seven years old. Madame
Hochon borrowed two night-tables from a neighbor, and boldly hired two

chests of drawers with brass handles from a dealer in second-hand
furniture who lived next to Mere Cognette. She herself had preserved

two pairs of candlesticks, carved in choice woods by her own father,
who had the "turning" mania. From 1770 to 1780 it was the fashion

among rich people to learn a trade, and Monsieur Lousteau, the father,
was a turner, just as Louis XVI. was a locksmith. These candlesticks

were ornamented with circlets made of the roots of rose, peach, and
apricot trees. Madame Hochon actually risked the use of her precious

relics! These preparations and this sacrifice increased old Hochon's
anxiety; up to this time he had not believed in the arrival of the

Bridaus.
The morning of the day that was celebrated by the trick on Fario,

Madame Hochon said to her husband after breakfast:--
"I hope, Hochon, that you will receive my goddaughter, Madame Bridau,

properly." Then, after making sure that her grandchildren were out of
hearing, she added: "I am mistress of my own property; don't oblige me

to make up to Agathe in my will for any incivility on your part."
"Do you think, madame," answered Hochon, in a mild voice, "that, at my

age, I don't know the forms of decent civility?"
"You know very well what I mean, you crafty old thing! Be friendly to

our guests, and remember that I love Agathe."
"And you love Maxence Gilet also, who is getting the property away

from your dear Agathe! Ah! you've warmed a viper in your bosom there;
but after all, the Rouget money is bound to go to a Lousteau."

After making this allusion to the supposed parentage and both Max and
Agathe, Hochon turned to leave the room; but old Madame Hochon, a

woman still erect and spare, wearing a round cap with ribbon knots and
her hair powdered, a taffet petticoat of changeable colors like a

pigeon's breast, tight sleeves, and her feet in high-heeled slippers,
deposited her snuff-box on a little table, and said:--

"Really, Monsieur Hochon, how can a man of your sense repeat
absurdities which, unhappily, cost my poor friend her peace of mind,

and Agathe the property which she ought to have had from her father.
Max Gilet is not the son of my brother, whom I often advised to save

the money he paid for him. You know as well as I do that Madame Rouget
was virtue itself--"

"And the daughter takes after her; for she strikes me as uncommonly
stupid. After losing all her fortune, she brings her sons up so well

that here is one in prison and likely to be brought up on a criminal
indictment before the Court of Peers for a conspiracyworthy of

Berton. As for the other, he is worse off; he's a painter. If your
proteges are to stay here till they have extricated that fool of a

Rouget from the claws of Gilet and the Rabouilleuse, we shall eat a
good deal more than half a measure of salt with them."

"That's enough, Monsieur Hochon; you had better wish they may not have
two strings to their bow."

Monsieur Hochon took his hat, and his cane with an ivory knob, and
went away petrified by that terrible speech; for he had no idea that

his wife could show such resolution. Madame Hochon took her prayer-
book to read the service, for her advanced age prevented her from

going daily to church; it was only with difficulty that she got there
on Sundays and holidays. Since receiving her goddaughter's letter she

had added a petition to her usual prayers, supplicating God to open
the eyes of Jean-Jacques Rouget, and to bless Agathe and prosper the

expedition into which she herself had drawn her. Concealing the fact
from her grandchildren, whom she accused of being "parpaillots," she

had asked the curate to say a mass for Agathe's success during a
neuvaine which was being held by her granddaughter, Adolphine

Borniche, who thus made her prayers in church by proxy.
Adolphine, then eighteen,--who for the last seven years had sewed at

the side of her grandmother in that cold household of monotonous and
methodical customs,--had undertaken her neuvaine all the more

willingly because she hoped to inspire some feeling in Joseph Bridau,
in whom she took the deepest interest because of the monstrosities