“Don’t disturb yourself, my dear uncle; I have only come to say good-by.”
“You are going?” said Max, exchanging glances with Flore.
“Yes; I have some work to do at the chateau of Monsieur de Serizy, and I am all the more glad of it because his arm is long enough to do a service to my poor brother in the Chamber of Peers.”
“Well, well, go and work”; said old Rouget, with a silly air. Joseph thought him extraordinarily changed within a few days. “Men must work—I am sorry you are going.”
“Oh! my mother will be here some time longer,” remarked Joseph.
Max made a movement with his lips which the Rabouilleuse observed, and which signified: “They are going to try the plan Baruch warned me of.”
“I am very glad I came,” said Joseph, “for I have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance and you have enriched my studio—”
“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.”