on's conduct in receiving her
goddaughter; and their good wishes for the latter's success were in
proportion to the secret contempt with which the conduct of Maxence
Gilet had long inspired them. Thus the news of the arrival of Rouget's
sister and nephew raised two parties in Issoudun,--that of the higher
and older bourgeoisie, who contented themselves with offering good
wishes and in watching events without assisting them, and that of the
Knights of Idleness and the partisans of Max, who, unfortunately, were
capable of committing many high-handed outrages against the Parisians.

CHAPTER XI

Agathe and Joseph arrived at the coach-office of the
Messageries-Royales in the place Misere at three o'clock. Though tired
with the journey, Madame Bridau felt her youth revive at sight of her
native land, where at every step she came upon memories and impressions
of her girlish days. In the then condition of public opinion in
Issoudun, the arrival of the Parisians was known all over the town in
ten minutes. Madame Hochon came out upon her doorstep to welcome her
godchild, and kissed her as though she were really a daughter. After
seventy-two years of a barren and monotonous existence, exhibiting in
their retrospect the graves of her three children, all unhappy in
their lives, and all dead, she had come to feel a sort of fictitious
motherhood for the young girl whom she had, as she expressed it,
carried in her pouch for sixteen years. Through the gloom of
provincial life the old woman had cherished this early friendship,
this girlish memory, as closely as if Agathe had remained near her,
and she had also taken the deepest interest in Bridau. Agathe was led
in triumph to the salon where Monsieur Hochon was stationed, chilling
as a tepid oven.

"Here is Monsieur Hochon; how does he seem to you?" asked his wife.

"Precisely the same as when I last saw him," said the Parisian woman.

"Ah! it is easy to see you come from Paris; you are so complimentary,"
remarked the old man.

The presentations took place: first, young Baruch Borniche, a tall
youth of twenty-two; then Francois Hochon, twenty-four; and lastly
little Adolphine, who blushed and did not know what to do with her
arms; she was anxious not to seem to be looking at Joseph Bridau, who
in his turn was narrowly observed, though from different points of
view, by the two young men and by old Hochon. The miser was saying to
himself, "He is just