tainly
have made a good general of division; he had shoulders that were
worth a fortune to a marshal of France, and a breast broad enough to
wear all the orders of Europe. Every movement betrayed intelligence;
born with grace and charm, like nearly all the children of love, the
noble blood of his real father came out in him.

"Don't you know, Max," cried the son of a former surgeon-major named
Goddet--now the best doctor in the town--from the other end of the
table, "that Madame Hochon's goddaughter is the sister of Rouget? If
she is coming here with her son, no doubt she means to make sure of
getting the property when he dies, and then--good-by to your harvest!"

Max frowned. Then, with a look which ran from one face to another all
round the table, he watched the effect of this announcement on the
minds of those present, and again replied,--

"What's that to me?"

"But," said Francois, "I should think that if old Rouget revoked his
will,--in case he has made one in favor of the Rabouilleuse--"

Here Max cut short his henchman's speech. "I've stopped the mouths of
people who have dared to meddle with you, my dear Francois," he said;
"and this is the way you pay your debts? You use a contemptuous
nickname in speaking of a woman to whom I am known to be attached."

Max had never before said as much as this about his relations with the
person to whom Francois had just applied a name under which she was
known at Issoudun. The late prisoner at Cabrera--the major of the
grenadiers of the Guard--knew enough of what honor was to judge
rightly as to the causes of the disesteem in which society held him.
He had therefore never allowed any one, no matter who, to speak to him
on the subject of Mademoiselle Flore Brazier, the servant-mistress of
Jean-Jacques Rouget, so energetically termed a "slut" by the
respectable Madame Hochon. Everybody knew it was too ticklish a
subject with Max, ever to speak of it unless he began it; and hitherto
he had never begun it. To risk his anger or irritate him was
altogether too dangerous; so that even his best friends had never
joked him about the Rabouilleuse. When they talked of his liaison with
the girl before Major Potel and Captain Renard, with whom he lived on
intimate terms, Potel would reply,--

"If he is the natural brother of Jean-Jacques Rouget where else would
you have him live?"

"Besides, after all," added Captain Renard, "the girl is a worthless
piece, and if Max does live