henier. There, no doubt, grocery and poetry
embraced for the first time in the flesh; although they have, and ever
have had, intimate secret relations. The death of Descoings produced far
more sensation than that of Andre Chenier. It has taken thirty years to
prove to France that she lost more by the death of Chenier than by that
of Descoings.

This act of Robespierre led to one good result: the terrified grocers
let politics alone until 1830. Descoings's shop was not a hundred yards
from Robespierre's lodging. His successor was scarcely more fortunate
than himself. Cesar Birotteau, the celebrated perfumer of the "Queen
of Roses," bought the premises; but, as if the scaffold had left some
inexplicable contagion behind it, the inventor of the "Paste of Sultans"
and the "Carminative Balm" came to his ruin in that very shop. The
solution of the problem here suggested belongs to the realm of occult
science.

During the visits which Roland's secretary paid to the unfortunate
Madame Descoings, he was struck with the cold, calm, innocent beauty
of Agathe Rouget. While consoling the widow, who, however, was too
inconsolable to carry on the business of her second deceased husband, he
married the charming girl, with the consent of her father, who hastened
to give his approval to the match. Doctor Rouget, delighted to hear that
matters were going beyond his expectations,--for his wife, on the death
of her brother, had become sole heiress of the Descoings,--rushed to
Paris, not so much to be present at the wedding as to see that the
marriage contract was drawn to suit him. The ardent and disinterested
love of citizen Bridau gave carte blanche to the perfidious doctor, who
made the most of his son-in-law's blindness, as the following history
will show.

Madame Rouget, or, to speak more correctly, the doctor, inherited all
the property, landed and personal, of Monsieur and Madame Descoings the
elder, who died within two years of each other; and soon after that,
Rouget got the better, as we may say, of his wife, for she died at the
beginning of the year 1799. So he had vineyards and he bought farms, he
owned iron-works and he sold fleeces. His well-beloved son was stupidly
incapable of doing anything; but the father destined him for the state
in life of a land proprietor and allowed him to grow up in wealth and
silliness, certain that the lad would know as much as the wisest if he
simply let himself live and die. After 1799, the ci