idow has two
tasks before her, whose duties clash: she is a mother, and yet she must
exercise parental authority. Few women are firm enough to understand and
practise this double duty. Thus it happened that Agathe, notwithstanding
her many virtues, was the innocent cause of great unhappiness. In the
first place, through her lack of intelligence and the blind confidence
to which such noble natures are prone, Agathe fell a victim to Madame
Descoings, who brought a terrible misfortune on the family. That worthy
soul was nursing up a combination of three numbers called a "trey" in a
lottery, and lotteries give no credit to their customers. As manager of
the joint household, she was able to pay up her stakes with the money
intended for their current expenses, and she went deeper and deeper into
debt, with the hope of ultimately enriching her grandson Bixiou, her
dear Agathe, and the little Bridaus. When the debts amounted to ten
thousand francs, she increased her stakes, trusting that her favorite
trey, which had not turned up in nine years, would come at last, and
fill to overflowing the abysmal deficit.

From that moment the debt rolled up rapidly. When it reached twenty
thousand francs, Madame Descoings lost her head, still failing to win
the trey. She tried to mortgage her own property to pay her niece, but
Roguin, who was her notary, showed her the impossibility of carrying out
that honorable intention. The late Doctor Rouget had laid hold of the
property of the brother-in-law after the grocer's execution, and had,
as it were, disinherited Madame Descoings by securing to her a
life-interest on the property of his own son, Jean-Jacques Rouget. No
money-lender would think of advancing twenty thousand francs to a woman
sixty-six years of age, on an annuity of about four thousand, at a
period when ten per cent could easily be got for an investment. So one
morning Madame Descoings fell at the feet of her niece, and with sobs
confessed the state of things. Madame Bridau did not reproach her; she
sent away the footman and cook, sold all but the bare necessities of her
furniture, sold also three-fourths of her government funds, paid off the
debts, and bade farewell to her _appartement_.

CHAPTER II

One of the worst corners in all Paris is undoubtedly that part of the
rue Mazarin which lies between the rue Guenegard and its junction with
the rue de Seine, behind the palace of the Institute. The high gray
walls of the c