The Two Brothers | Page 9

circle,--she could take and give a jest. If she did not marry a third
time it was no doubt the fault of the times. During the wars of the
Empire, marrying men found rich and handsome girls too easily to
trouble themselves about women of sixty.
Madame Descoings, always anxious to cheer Madame Bridau, often
took the latter to the theatre, or to drive; prepared excellent little
dinners for her delectation, and even tried to marry her to her own son

by her first husband, Bixiou. Alas! to do this, she was forced to reveal a
terrible secret, carefully kept by her, by her late husband, and by her
notary. The young and beautiful Madame Descoings, who passed for
thirty-six years old, had a son who was thirty-five, named Bixiou,
already a widower, a major in the Twenty-Fourth Infantry, who
subsequently perished at Lutzen, leaving behind him an only son.
Madame Descoings, who only saw her grandson secretly, gave out that
he was the son of the first wife of her first husband. The revelation was
partly a prudential act; for this grandson was being educated with
Madame Bridau's sons at the Imperial Lyceum, where he had a half-
scholarship. The lad, who was clever and shrewd at school, soon after
made himself a great reputation as draughtsman and designer, and also
as a wit.
Agathe, who lived only for her children, declined to re-marry, as much
from good sense as from fidelity to her husband. But it is easier for a
woman to be a good wife than to be a good mother. A widow has two
tasks before her, whose duties clash: she is a mother, and yet she must
exercise parental authority. Few women are firm enough to understand
and practise this double duty. Thus it happened that Agathe,
notwithstanding her many virtues, was the innocent cause of great
unhappiness. In the first place, through her lack of intelligence and the
blind confidence to which such noble natures are prone, Agathe fell a
victim to Madame Descoings, who brought a terrible misfortune on the
family. That worthy soul was nursing up a combination of three
numbers called a "trey" in a lottery, and lotteries give no credit to their
customers. As manager of the joint household, she was able to pay up
her stakes with the money intended for their current expenses, and she
went deeper and deeper into debt, with the hope of ultimately enriching
her grandson Bixiou, her dear Agathe, and the little Bridaus. When the
debts amounted to ten thousand francs, she increased her stakes,
trusting that her favorite trey, which had not turned up in nine years,
would come at last, and fill to overflowing the abysmal deficit.
From that moment the debt rolled up rapidly. When it reached twenty
thousand francs, Madame Descoings lost her head, still failing to win
the trey. She tried to mortgage her own property to pay her niece, but

Roguin, who was her notary, showed her the impossibility of carrying
out that honorable intention. The late Doctor Rouget had laid hold of
the property of the brother-in-law after the grocer's execution, and had,
as it were, disinherited Madame Descoings by securing to her a
life-interest on the property of his own son, Jean-Jacques Rouget. No
money-lender would think of advancing twenty thousand francs to a
woman sixty-six years of age, on an annuity of about four thousand, at
a period when ten per cent could easily be got for an investment. So
one morning Madame Descoings fell at the feet of her niece, and with
sobs confessed the state of things. Madame Bridau did not reproach her;
she sent away the footman and cook, sold all but the bare necessities of
her furniture, sold also three-fourths of her government funds, paid off
the debts, and bade farewell to her appartement.


CHAPTER II
One of the worst corners in all Paris is undoubtedly that part of the rue
Mazarin which lies between the rue Guenegard and its junction with the
rue de Seine, behind the palace of the Institute. The high gray walls of
the college and of the library which Cardinal Mazarin presented to the
city of Paris, and which the French Academy was in after days to
inhabit, cast chill shadows over this angle of the street, where the sun
seldom shines, and the north wind blows. The poor ruined widow came
to live on the third floor of a house standing at this damp, dark, cold
corner. Opposite, rose the Institute buildings, in which were the dens of
ferocious animals known to the bourgeoisie under the name of
artists,--under that of tyro, or rapin, in the studios. Into these dens they
enter rapins, but they may come forth prix de Rome. The
transformation does not