past. The old man dove
into the pocket of his surtout, pulled out an end of string which had
evidently already served to tie up a parcel, and gave it to her; but
before she could leave the room he called out, "Gritte, mind you give
it back to me!" (Gritte is the abbreviation used in Berry for
Marguerite.)

From year to year old Hochon grew more petty in his meanness, and more
penurious; and at this time he was eighty-five years old. He belonged
to the class of men who stop short in the street, in the middle of a
lively dialogue, and stoop to pick up a pin, remarking, as they stick
it in the sleeve of their coat, "There's the wife's stipend." He
complained bitterly of the poor quality of the cloth manufactured
now-a-days, and called attention to the fact that his coat had lasted
only ten years. Tall, gaunt, thin, and sallow; saying little, reading
little, and doing nothing to fatigue himself; as observant of forms as
an oriental,--he enforced in his own house a discipline of strict
abstemiousness, weighing and measuring out the food and drink of the
family, which, indeed, was rather numerous, and consisted of his wife,
nee Lousteau, his grandson Borniche with a sister Adolphine, the heirs
of old Borniche, and lastly, his other grandson, Francois Hochon.

Hochon's eldest son was taken by the draft of 1813, which drew in the
sons of well-to-do families who had escaped the regular conscription,
and were now formed into a corps styled the "guards of honor." This
heir-presumptive, who was killed at Hanau, had married early in life a
rich woman, intending thereby to escape all conscriptions; but after
he was enrolled, he wasted his substance, under a presentiment of his
end. His wife, who followed the army at a distance, died at Strasburg
in 1814, leaving debts which her father-in-law Hochon refused to pay,
--answering the creditors with an axiom of ancient law, "Women are
minors."

The house, though large, was scantily furnished; on the second floor,
however, there were two rooms suitable for Madame Bridau and Joseph.
Old Hochon now repented that he had kept them furnished with two beds,
each bed accompanied by an old armchair of natural wood covered with
needlework, and a walnut table, on which figured a water-pitcher of
the wide-mouthed kind called "gueulard," standing in a basin with a
blue border. The old man kept his winter store of apples and pears,
medlars and quinces on heaps of straw in these rooms, where the rats