ion as deep and
thorough as his corruption. First, and above all else, the forty
thousand francs a year from landed property which old Rouget owned
was, let it be clearly understood, the constituent element of Max's
passion for Flore Brazier. By his present bearing it is easy to see
how much confidence the woman had given him in the financial future
she expected to obtain through the infatuation of the old bachelor.
Nevertheless, the news of the arrival of the legitimate heirs was of a
nature to shake Max's faith in Flore's influence. Rouget's savings,
accumulating during the last seventeen years, still stood in his own
name; and even if the will, which Flore declared had long been made in
her favor, were revoked, these savings at least might be secured by
putting them in the name of Mademoiselle Brazier.

"That fool of a girl never told me, in all these seven years, a word
about the sister and nephews!" cried Max, turning from the rue de la
Marmouse into the rue l'Avenier. "Seven hundred and fifty thousand
francs placed with different notaries at Bourges, and Vierzon, and
Chateauroux, can't be turned into money and put into the Funds in a
week, without everybody knowing it in this gossiping place! The most
important thing is to get rid of these relations; as soon as they are
driven away we ought to make haste to secure the property. I must
think it over."

Max was tired. By the help of a pass-key, he let himself into Pere
Rouget's house, and went to bed without making any noise, saying to
himself,--

"To-morrow, my thoughts will be clear."

It is now necessary to relate where the sultana of the place
Saint-Jean picked up the nickname of "Rabouilleuse," and how she came
to be the quasi-mistress of Jean-Jacques Rouget's home.

As old Doctor Rouget, the father of Jean-Jacques and Madame Bridau,
advanced in years, he began to perceive the nonentity of his son; he
then treated him harshly, trying to break him into a routine that
might serve in place of intelligence. He thus, though unconsciously,
prepared him to submit to the yoke of the first tyranny that threw its
halter over his head.

Coming home one day from his professional round, the malignant and
vicious old man came across a bewitching little girl at the edge of
some fields that lay along the avenue de Tivoli. Hearing the horse,
the child sprang up from the bottom of one of the many brooks which
are to be seen from the heights of Issoudun, threading the mea