“Oh! willingly,” said Joseph, “I know I have a perfectly amazing incapacity for domestic statesmanship:  for example, I am sure I don’t know what Desroches himself would tell us to do if my uncle declines to see us.”

Mesdames Borniche, Goddet-Herau, Beaussier, Lousteau-Prangin and Fichet, decorated with their husbands, here entered the room.

When the fourteen persons were seated, and the usual compliments were over, Madame Hochon presented her goddaughter Agathe and Joseph.  Joseph sat in his armchair all the evening, engaged in slyly studying the sixty faces which, from five o’clock until half past nine, posed for him gratis, as he afterwards told his mother.  Such behavior before the aristocracy of Issoudun did not tend to change the opinion of the little town concerning him:  every one went home ruffled by his sarcastic glances, uneasy under his smiles, and even frightened at his face, which seemed sinister to a class of people unable to recognize the singularities of genius.

After ten o’clock, when the household was in bed, Madame Hochon kept her goddaughter in her chamber until midnight.  Secure from interruption, the two women told each other the sorrows of their lives, and exchanged their sufferings.  As Agathe listened to the last echoes of a soul that had missed its destiny, and felt the sufferings of a heart, essentially generous and charitable, whose charity and generosity could never be exercised, she realized the immensity of the desert in which the powers of this noble, unrecognized soul had been wasted, and knew that she herself, with the little joys and interests of her city life relieving the bitter trials sent from God, was not the most unhappy of the two.

“You who are so pious,” she said, “explain to me my shortcomings; tell me what it is that God is punishing in me.”

“He is preparing us, my child,” answered the old woman, “for the striking of the last hour.”

At midnight the Knights of Idleness were collecting, one by one like shadows, under the trees of the boulevard Baron, and speaking together in whispers.

“What are we going to do?” was the first question of each as he arrived.

“I think,” said Francois, “that Max means merely to give us a supper.”

“No; matters are very serious for him, and for the Rabouilleuse:  no doubt, he has concocted some scheme against the Parisians.”

“It would be a good joke to drive them away.”

“My grandfather,” said Baruch, “is terribly alarmed at having two extra mouths to feed, and he’d seize on any pretext—­”

“Well, comrades!” cried Max softly, now appearing on the scene, “why are you star-gazing? the planets don’t distil kirschwasser.  Come, let us go to Mere Cognette’s!”

“To Mere Cognette’s!  To Mere Cognette’s!” they all cried.

The cry, uttered as with one voice, produced a clamor which rang through the town like the hurrah of troops rushing to an assault; total silence followed.  The next day, more than one inhabitant must have said to his neighbor:  “Did you hear those frightful cries last night, about one o’clock?  I thought there was surely a fire somewhere.”