the laws
and customs of Berry, or that, high-minded as he was, he shared the
magnanimity of his wife, certain it is that he would not listen to
Roguin, his notary, who advised him to take advantage of his ministerial
position to contest the deeds by which the father had deprived the
daughter of her legitimate inheritance. Husband and wife thus tacitly
sanctioned what was done at Issoudun. Nevertheless, Roguin had forced
Bridau to reflect upon the future interests of his wife which were thus
compromised. He saw that if he died before her, Agathe would be left
without property, and this led him to look into his own affairs. He
found that between 1793 and 1805 his wife and he had been obliged to use
nearly thirty thousand of the fifty thousand francs in cash which old
Rouget had given to his daughter at the time of her marriage. He at once
invested the remaining twenty thousand in the public funds, then quoted
at forty, and from this source Agathe received about two thousand francs
a year. As a widow, Madame Bridau could live suitably on an income of
six thousand francs. With provincial good sense, she thought of changing
her residence, dismissing the footman, and keeping no servant except a
cook; but her intimate friend, Madame Descoings, who insisted on being
considered her aunt, sold her own establishment and came to live with
Agathe, turning the study of the late Bridau into her bedroom.

The two widows clubbed their revenues, and so were in possession of a
joint income of twelve thousand francs a year. This seems a very
simple and natural proceeding. But nothing in life is more deserving of
attention than the things that are called natural; we are on our guard
against the unnatural and extraordinary. For this reason, you will find
men of experience--lawyers, judges, doctors, and priests--attaching
immense importance to simple matters; and they are often thought
over-scrupulous. But the serpent amid flowers is one of the finest myths
that antiquity has bequeathed for the guidance of our lives. How often
we hear fools, trying to excuse themselves in their own eyes or in the
eyes of others, exclaiming, "It was all so natural that any one would
have been taken in."

In 1809, Madame Descoings, who never told her age, was sixty-five. In
her heyday she had been popularly called a beauty, and was now one
of those rare women whom time respects. She owed to her excellent
constitution the privilege of preserving her good looks,