“You know that, do you?” exclaimed Felicite, becoming serious and distrustful.  “Well, you’re not so foolish as I thought, then.  Do you open letters like some one of my acquaintance?”

“No; but I listen at doors,” Aristide replied, with great assurance.

This frankness did not displease the old woman.  She began to smile again, and asked more softly:  “Well, then, you blockhead, how is it you didn’t rally to us sooner?”

“Ah! that’s where it is,” the young man said, with some embarrassment.  “I didn’t have much confidence in you.  You received such idiots:  my father-in-law, Granoux, and the others!—­And then, I didn’t want to go too far. . . .”  He hesitated, and then resumed, with some uneasiness:  “To-day you are at least quite sure of the success of the Coup d’Etat, aren’t you?”

“I!” cried Felicite, wounded by her son’s doubts; “no, I’m not sure of anything.”

“And yet you sent word to say that I was to take off my sling!”

“Yes; because all the gentlemen are laughing at you.”

Aristide remained stock still, apparently contemplating one of the flowers of the orange-coloured wall-paper.  And his mother felt sudden impatience as she saw him hesitating thus.

“Ah! well,” she said, “I’ve come back again to my former opinion; you’re not very shrewd.  And you think you ought to have had Eugene’s letters to read?  Why, my poor fellow you would have spoilt everything, with your perpetual vacillation.  You never can make up your mind.  You are hesitating now.”

“I hesitate?” he interrupted, giving his mother a cold, keen glance.  “Ah! well, you don’t know me.  I would set the whole town on fire if it were necessary, and I wanted to warm my feet.  But, understand me, I’ve no desire to take the wrong road!  I’m tired of eating hard bread, and I hope to play fortune a trick.  But I only play for certainties.”

He spoke these words so sharply, with such a keen longing for success, that his mother recognised the cry of her own blood.

“Your father is very brave,” she whispered.

“Yes, I’ve seen him,” he resumed with a sneer.  “He’s got a fine look on him!  He reminded me of Leonidas at Thermopylae.  Is it you, mother, who have made him cut this figure?”

And he added cheerfully, with a gesture of determination:  “Well, so much the worse!  I’m a Bonapartist!  Father is not the man to risk the chance of being killed unless it pays him well.”

“You’re quite right,” his mother replied; “I mustn’t say anything; but to-morrow you’ll see.”

He did not press her, but swore that she would soon have reason to be proud of him; and then he took his departure, while Felicite, feeling her old preference reviving, said to herself at the window, as she watched him going off, that he had the devil’s own wit, that she would never have had sufficient courage to let him leave without setting him in the right path.