said to be a reason why the doctor married her), gave birth to a son,
and also to a daughter who arrived, unexpectedly, ten years after her
brother, and whose birth took the husband, doctor though he were, by
surprise. This late-comer was named Agathe.

These little facts are so simple, so commonplace, that a writer seems
scarcely justified in placing them in the fore-front of his history;
yet if they are not known, a man of Doctor Rouget's stamp would be
thought a monster, an unnatural father, when, in point of fact, he was
only following out the evil tendencies which many people shelter under
the terrible axiom that "men should have strength of character,"--a
masculine phrase that has caused many a woman's misery.

The Descoings, father-in-law and mother-in-law of the doctor, were
commission merchants in the wool-trade, and did a double business by
selling for the producers and buying for the manufacturers of the
golden fleeces of Berry; thus pocketing a commission on both sides. In
this way they grew rich and miserly--the outcome of many such lives.
Descoings the son, younger brother of Madame Rouget, did not like
Issoudun. He went to seek his fortune in Paris, where he set up as a
grocer in the rue Saint-Honore. That step led to his ruin. But nothing
could have hindered it: a grocer is drawn to his business by an
attracting force quite equal to the repelling force which drives
artists away from it. We do not sufficiently study the social
potentialities which make up the various vocations of life. It would
be interesting to know what determines one man to be a stationer
rather than a baker; since, in our day, sons are not compelled to
follow the calling of their fathers, as they were among the Egyptians.
In this instance, love decided the vocation of Descoings. He said to
himself, "I, too, will be a grocer!" and in the same breath he said
(also to himself) some other things regarding his employer,--a
beautiful creature, with whom he had fallen desperately in love.
Without other help than patience and the trifling sum of money his
father and mother sent him, he married the widow of his predecessor,
Monsieur Bixiou.

In 1792 Descoings was thought to be doing an excellent business. At
that time, the old Descoings were still living. They had retired from
the wool-trade, and were employing their capital in buying up the
forfeited estates,--another golden fleece! Their son-in-law Doctor
Rouget, who, about this time, fel