but you will pardon a mother for reminding you that you have two nephews; one of whom carried the Emperor’s orders at the battle of Montereau and served in the Guard at Waterloo, and is now in prison for his devotion to Napoleon; the other, from his thirteenth year, has been impelled by natural gifts to enter a difficult though glorious career.

I thank you for your letter, my dear brother, with heart-felt warmth, for my own sake, and also for Joseph’s, who will certainly accept your invitation.  Illness excuses everything, my dear Jean-Jacques, and I shall therefore go to see you in your own house.  A sister is always at home with a brother, no matter what may be the life he has adopted.

  I embrace you tenderly.

  Agathe Rouget

“There’s the matter started.  Now, when you see him,” said Monsieur Hochon to Agathe, “you must speak plainly to him about his nephews.”

The letter was carried over by Gritte, who returned ten minutes later to render an account to her masters of all that she had seen and heard, according to a settled provincial custom.

“Since yesterday Madame has had the whole house cleaned up, which she left—­”

“Whom do you mean by Madame?” asked old Hochon.

“That’s what they call the Rabouilleuse over there,” answered Gritte.  “She left the salon and all Monsieur Rouget’s part of the house in a pitiable state; but since yesterday the rooms have been made to look like what they were before Monsieur Maxence went to live there.  You can see your face on the floors.  La Vedie told me that Kouski went off on horseback at five o’clock this morning, and came back at nine, bringing provisions.  It is going to be a grand dinner!—­a dinner fit for the archbishop of Bourges!  There’s a fine bustle in the kitchen, and they are as busy as bees.  The old man says, ’I want to do honor to my nephew,’ and he pokes his nose into everything.  It appears the Rougets are highly flattered by the letter.  Madame came and told me so.  Oh! she had on such a dress!  I never saw anything so handsome in my life.  Two diamonds in her ears!—­two diamonds that cost, Vedie told me, three thousand francs apiece; and such lace! rings on her fingers, and bracelets! you’d think she was a shrine; and a silk dress as fine as an altar-cloth.  So then she said to me, ’Monsieur is delighted to find his sister so amiable, and I hope she will permit us to pay her all the attention she deserves.  We shall count on her good opinion after the welcome we mean to give her son.  Monsieur is very impatient to see his nephew.’  Madame had little black satin slippers; and her stockings! my! they were marvels,—­flowers in silk and openwork, just like lace, and you could see her rosy little feet through them.  Oh! she’s in high feather, and she had a lovely little apron in front of her which, Vedie says, cost more than two years of our wages put together.”

“Well done!  We shall have to dress up,” said the artist laughing.