dame Hochon, who notwithstanding her age
went minutely through the ceremonies with which the duchesses of Louis
XV.'s time performed their toilette, Joseph noticed Jean-Jacques
Rouget planted squarely on his feet at the door of his house across
the street. He naturally pointed him out to his mother, who was unable
to recognize her brother, so little did he look like what he was when
she left him.

"That is your brother," said Adolphine, who entered, giving an arm to
her grandmother.

"What an idiot he looks like!" exclaimed Joseph.

Agathe clasped her hands, and raised her eyes to heaven.

"What a state they have driven him to! Good God! can that be a man
only fifty-seven years old?"

She looked attentively at her brother, and saw Flore Brazier standing
directly behind him, with her hair dressed, a pair of snowy shoulders
and a dazzling bosom showing through a gauze neckerchief, which was
trimmed with lace; she was wearing a dress with a tight-fitting waist,
made of grenadine (a silk material then much in fashion), with
leg-of-mutton sleeves so-called, fastened at the wrists by handsome
bracelets. A gold chain rippled over the crab-girl's bosom as she
leaned forward to give Jean-Jacques his black silk cap lest he should
take cold. The scene was evidently studied.

"Hey!" cried Joseph, "there's a fine woman, and a rare one! She is
made, as they say, to paint. What flesh-tints! Oh, the lovely tones!
what surface! what curves! Ah, those shoulders! She's a magnificent
caryatide. What a model she would have been for one of Titians'
Venuses!"

Adolphine and Madame Hochon thought he was talking Greek; but Agathe
signed to them behind his back, as if to say that she was accustomed
to such jargon.

"So you think a creature who is depriving you of your property
handsome?" said Madame Hochon.

"That doesn't prevent her from being a splendid model!--just plump
enough not to spoil the hips and the general contour--"

"My son, you are not in your studio," said Agathe. "Adolphine is
here."

"Ah, true! I did wrong. But you must remember that ever since leaving
Paris I have seen nothing but ugly women--"

"My dear godmother," said Agathe hastily, "how shall I be able to meet
my brother, if that creature is always with him?"

"Bah!" said Joseph. "I'll go and see him myself. I don't think him
such an idiot, now I find he has the sense to rejoice his eyes with a
Titian's Venus."

"If he were not an idiot," said Monsieur