"Yes," said Flore, "instead of enlightening your uncle on the value of his pictures, which is now estimated at over one hundred thousand francs, you have packed them off in a hurry to Paris. Poor dear man! he is no better than a baby! We have just been told of a little treasure at Bourges,—what did they call it? a Poussin,—which was in the choir of the cathedral before the Revolution and is now worth, all by itself, thirty thousand francs."
"That was not right of you, my nephew," said Jean-Jacques, at a sign from Max, which Joseph could not see.
"Come now, frankly," said the soldier, laughing, "on your honor, what should you say those pictures were worth? You've made an easy haul out of your uncle! and right enough, too,—uncles are made to be pillaged. Nature deprived me of uncles, but damn it, if I'd had any I should have shown them no mercy."
"Did you know, monsieur," said Flore to Rouget, "what your pictures were worth? How much did you say, Monsieur Joseph?"
"Well," answered the painter, who had grown as red as a beetroot, —"the pictures are certainly worth something."
"They say you estimated them to Monsieur Hochon at one hundred and fifty thousand francs," said Flore; "is that true?"
"Yes," said the painter, with childlike honesty.
"And did you intend," said Flore to the old man, "to give a hundred and fifty thousand francs to your nephew?"
"Never, never!" cried Jean-Jacques, on whom Flore had fixed her eye.
"There is one way to settle all this," said the painter, "and that is to return them to you, uncle."