Adolphine held a lacquer tray on which were a number of little old glasses with engraved sides and gilt edges; and as her mother filled each of them, she carried it to the company.
“It seems as though my father’s turn were coming round!” exclaimed Agathe, to whom this immutable provincial custom recalled the scenes of her youth.
“Hochon will go to his club presently to read the papers, and we shall have a little time to ourselves,” said the old lady in a low voice.
In fact, ten minutes later, the three women and Joseph were alone in the salon, where the floor was never waxed, only swept, and the worsted-work designs in oaken frames with grooved mouldings, and all the other plain and rather dismal furniture seemed to Madame Bridau to be in exactly the same state as when she had left Issoudun. Monarchy, Revolution, Empire, and Restoration, which respected little, had certainly respected this room where their glories and their disasters had left not the slightest trace.
“Ah! my godmother, in comparison with your life, mine has been cruelly tried,” exclaimed Madame Bridau, surprised to find even a canary which she had known when alive, stuffed, and standing on the mantleshelf between the old clock, the old brass brackets, and the silver candlesticks.
“My child,” said the old lady, “trials are in the heart. The greater and more necessary the resignation, the harder the struggle with our own selves. But don’t speak of me, let us talk of your affairs. You are directly in front of the enemy,” she added, pointing to the windows of the Rouget house.
“They are sitting down to dinner,” said Adolphine.
The young girl, destined for a cloister, was constantly looking out of the window, in hopes of getting some light upon the enormities imputed to Maxence Gilet, the Rabouilleuse, and Jean-Jacques, of which a few words reached her ears whenever she was sent out of the room that others might talk about them. The old lady now told her granddaughter to leave her alone with Madame Bridau and Joseph until the arrival of visitors.
“For,” she said, turning to the Parisians, “I know my Issoudun by heart; we shall have ten or twelve batches of inquisitive folk here to-night.”
In fact Madame Hochon had hardly related the events and the details concerning the astounding influence obtained by Maxence Gilet and the Rabouilleuse over Jean-Jacques Rouget (without, of course, following the synthetical method with which they have been presented here), adding the many comments, descriptions, and hypotheses with which the good and evil tongues of the town embroidered them, before Adolphine announced the approach of the Borniche, Beaussier, Lousteau-Prangin, Fichet, Goddet-Herau families; in all, fourteen persons looming in the distance.