nterest; but it would take seven years of such slow repayment to make
good the loss. The Descoings, thus reduced to an income of twelve
hundred francs, lived with her niece in a small way. These excellent
but timid creatures employed a woman-of-all-work for the morning hours
only. Madame Descoings, who liked to cook, prepared the dinner. In the
evenings a few old friends, persons employed at the ministry who owed
their places to Bridau, came for a game of cards with the two widows.
Madame Descoings still cherished her trey, which she declared was
obstinate about turning up. She expected, by one grand stroke, to
repay the enforced loan she had made upon her niece. She was fonder of
the little Bridaus than she was of her grandson Bixiou,--partly from a
sense of the wrong she had done them, partly because she felt the
kindness of her niece, who, under her worst deprivations, never
uttered a word of reproach. So Philippe and Joseph were cossetted, and
the old gambler in the Imperial Lottery of France (like others who
have a vice or a weakness to atone for) cooked them nice little
dinners with plenty of sweets. Later on, Philippe and Joseph could
extract from her pocket, with the utmost facility, small sums of
money, which the younger used for pencils, paper, charcoal and prints,
the elder to buy tennis-shoes, marbles, twine, and pocket-knives.
Madame Descoings's passion forced her to be content with fifty francs
a month for her domestic expenses, so as to gamble with the rest.

On the other hand, Madame Bridau, motherly love, kept her expenses
down to the same sum. By way of penance for her former over-confidence,
she heroically cut off her own little enjoyments. As with
other timid souls of limited intelligence, one shock to her feelings
rousing her distrust led her to exaggerate a defect in her character
until it assumed the consistency of a virtue. The Emperor, she said to
herself, might forget them; he might die in battle; her pension, at
any rate, ceased with her life. She shuddered at the risk her children
ran of being left alone in the world without means. Quite incapable of
understanding Roguin when he explained to her that in seven years
Madame Descoings's assignment would replace the money she had sold out
of the Funds, she persisted in trusting neither the notary nor her
aunt, nor even the government; she believed in nothing but herself and
the privations she was practising. By laying aside three thousand
francs