Monsieur Hochon took his hat, and his cane with an ivory knob, and went away petrified by that terrible speech; for he had no idea that his wife could show such resolution.  Madame Hochon took her prayer-book to read the service, for her advanced age prevented her from going daily to church; it was only with difficulty that she got there on Sundays and holidays.  Since receiving her goddaughter’s letter she had added a petition to her usual prayers, supplicating God to open the eyes of Jean-Jacques Rouget, and to bless Agathe and prosper the expedition into which she herself had drawn her.  Concealing the fact from her grandchildren, whom she accused of being “parpaillots,” she had asked the curate to say a mass for Agathe’s success during a neuvaine which was being held by her granddaughter, Adolphine Borniche, who thus made her prayers in church by proxy.

Adolphine, then eighteen,—­who for the last seven years had sewed at the side of her grandmother in that cold household of monotonous and methodical customs,—­had undertaken her neuvaine all the more willingly because she hoped to inspire some feeling in Joseph Bridau, in whom she took the deepest interest because of the monstrosities which her grandfather attributed in her hearing to the young Parisian.

All the old people and sensible people of the town, and the fathers of families approved of Madame Hochon’s conduct in receiving her goddaughter; and their good wishes for the latter’s success were in proportion to the secret contempt with which the conduct of Maxence Gilet had long inspired them.  Thus the news of the arrival of Rouget’s sister and nephew raised two parties in Issoudun,—­that of the higher and older bourgeoisie, who contented themselves with offering good wishes and in watching events without assisting them, and that of the Knights of Idleness and the partisans of Max, who, unfortunately, were capable of committing many high-handed outrages against the Parisians.

CHAPTER XI

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.