ion of public opinion in Issoudun, the arrival
of the Parisians was known all over the town in ten minutes. Madame
Hochon came out upon her doorstep to welcome her godchild, and kissed
her as though she were really a daughter. After seventy-two years of
a barren and monotonous existence, exhibiting in their retrospect the
graves of her three children, all unhappy in their lives, and all dead,
she had come to feel a sort of fictitious motherhood for the young girl
whom she had, as she expressed it, carried in her pouch for sixteen
years. Through the gloom of provincial life the old woman had cherished
this early friendship, this girlish memory, as closely as if Agathe
had remained near her, and she had also taken the deepest interest in
Bridau. Agathe was led in triumph to the salon where Monsieur Hochon was
stationed, chilling as a tepid oven.

"Here is Monsieur Hochon; how does he seem to you?" asked his wife.

"Precisely the same as when I last saw him," said the Parisian woman.

"Ah! it is easy to see you come from Paris; you are so complimentary,"
remarked the old man.

The presentations took place: first, young Baruch Borniche, a tall youth
of twenty-two; then Francois Hochon, twenty-four; and lastly little
Adolphine, who blushed and did not know what to do with her arms; she
was anxious not to seem to be looking at Joseph Bridau, who in his turn
was narrowly observed, though from different points of view, by the two
young men and by old Hochon. The miser was saying to himself, "He is
just out of the hospital; he will be as hungry as a convalescent." The
young men were saying, "What a head! what a brigand! we shall have our
hands full!"

"This is my son, the painter; my good Joseph," said Agathe at last,
presenting the artist.

There was an effort in the accent that she put upon the word "good,"
which revealed the mother's heart, whose thoughts were really in the
prison of the Luxembourg.

"He looks ill," said Madame Hochon; "he is not at all like you."

"No, madame," said Joseph, with the brusque candor of an artist; "I am
like my father, and very ugly at that."

Madame Hochon pressed Agathe's hand which she was holding, and glanced
at her as much as to say, "Ah! my child; I understand now why you prefer
your good-for-nothing Philippe."

"I never saw your father, my dear boy," she said aloud; "it is enough
to make me love you that you are your mother's son. Besides, you have
talent, so the late Madame