Agathe and Joseph arrived at the coach-office of the Messageries-Royales in the place Misere at three o'clock. Though tired with the journey, Madame Bridau felt her youth revive at sight of her native land, where at every step she came upon memories and impressions of her girlish days. In the then condition 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."