rily changed within a few days. "Men must work
--I am sorry you are going."

"Oh! my mother will be here some time longer," remarked Joseph.

Max made a movement with his lips which the Rabouilleuse observed, and
which signified: "They are going to try the plan Baruch warned me of."

"I am very glad I came," said Joseph, "for I have had the pleasure of
making your acquaintance and you have enriched my studio--"

"Yes," said Flore, "instead of enlightening your uncle on the value of
his pictures, which is now estimated at over one hundred thousand
francs, you have packed them off in a hurry to Paris. Poor dear man!
he is no better than a baby! We have just been told of a little
treasure at Bourges,--what did they call it? a Poussin,--which was in
the choir of the cathedral before the Revolution and is now worth, all
by itself, thirty thousand francs."

"That was not right of you, my nephew," said Jean-Jacques, at a sign
from Max, which Joseph could not see.

"Come now, frankly," said the soldier, laughing, "on your honor, what
should you say those pictures were worth? You've made an easy haul out
of your uncle! and right enough, too,--uncles are made to be pillaged.
Nature deprived me of uncles, but damn it, if I'd had any I should
have shown them no mercy."

"Did you know, monsieur," said Flore to Rouget, "what _your_ pictures
were worth? How much did you say, Monsieur Joseph?"

"Well," answered the painter, who had grown as red as a beetroot,
--"the pictures are certainly worth something."

"They say you estimated them to Monsieur Hochon at one hundred and
fifty thousand francs," said Flore; "is that true?"

"Yes," said the painter, with childlike honesty.

"And did you intend," said Flore to the old man, "to give a hundred
and fifty thousand francs to your nephew?"

"Never, never!" cried Jean-Jacques, on whom Flore had fixed her eye.

"There is one way to settle all this," said the painter, "and that is
to return them to you, uncle."

"No, no, keep them," said the old man.

"I shall send them back to you," said Joseph, wounded by the offensive
silence of Max and Flore. "There is something in my brushes which will
make my fortune, without owing anything to any one, even an uncle. My
respects to you, mademoiselle; good-day, monsieur--"

And Joseph crossed the square in a state of irritation which artists
can imagine. The entire Hochon family were in the salon. When they saw
Joseph gesticulating and ta