“You might at least have put on a cravat,” said Flore. “Do you think it is pleasant for people to see such a neck as yours, which is redder and more wrinkled than a turkey’s?”
“But what have I done?” he asked, lifting his big light-green eyes, full of tears, to his tormentor, and trying to face her hard countenance.
“What have you done?” she exclaimed. “As if you didn’t know? Oh, what a hypocrite! Your sister Agathe—who is as much your sister as I am sister of the tower of Issoudun, if one’s to believe your father, and who has no claim at all upon you—is coming here from Paris with her son, a miserable two-penny painter, to see you.”
“My sister and my nephews coming to Issoudun!” he said, bewildered.
“Oh, yes! play the surprised, do; try to make me believe you didn’t send for them! sewing your lies with white bread, indeed! Don’t fash yourself; we won’t trouble your Parisians—before they set their feet in this house, we shall have shaken the dust of it off ours. Max and I will be gone, never to return. As for your will, I’ll tear it in quarters under your nose, and to your very beard—do you hear? Leave your property to your family, if you don’t think we are your family; and then see if you’ll be loved for yourself by a lot of people who have not seen you for thirty years,—who in fact have never seen you! Is it that sort of sister who can take my place? A pinchbeck saint!”
“If that’s all, my little Flore,” said the old man, “I won’t receive my sister, or my nephews. I swear to you this is the first word I have heard of their coming. It is all got up by that Madame Hochon—a sanctimonious old—”
Max, who had overheard old Rouget’s words, entered suddenly, and said in a masterful tone,—
“What’s all this?”
“My good Max,” said the old man, glad to get the protection of the soldier who, by agreement with Flore, always took his side in a dispute, “I swear by all that is most sacred, that I now hear this news for the first time. I have never written to my sister; my father made me promise not to leave her any of my property; to leave it to the Church sooner than to her. Well, I won’t receive my sister Agathe to this house, or her sons—”
“Your father was wrong, my dear Jean-Jacques, and Madame Brazier is still more wrong,” answered Max. “Your father no doubt had his reasons, but he is dead, and his hatred should die with him. Your sister is your sister, and your nephews are your nephews. You owe it to yourself to welcome them, and you owe it to us as well. What would people say in Issoudun? Thunder! I’ve got enough upon my shoulders as it is, without hearing people say that we shut you up and don’t allow you a will of your own, or that we influence you against your relations and are trying to get hold of your property. The devil take me if I don’t pull up stakes and be off, if that sort of calumny is to be flung at me! the other is bad enough! Let’s eat our breakfast.”