“So, then, for the next week, Fario’s storehouse is the order of the night,” cried Max, smiling at Beaussier.  “Recollect; people get up early in Saint-Paterne.  Mind, too, that none of you go there without turning the soles of your list shoes backward.  Knight Beaussier, the inventor of pigeons, is made director.  As for me, I shall take care to leave my imprint on the sacks of wheat.  Gentlemen, you are, all of you, appointed to the commissariat of the Army of Rats.  If you find a watchman sleeping in the church, you must manage to make him drunk, —­and do it cleverly,—­so as to get him far away from the scene of the Rodents’ Orgy.”

“You don’t say anything about the Parisians?” questioned Goddet.

“Oh!” exclaimed Max, “I want time to study them.  Meantime, I offer my best shotgun—­the one the Emperor gave me, a treasure from the manufactory at Versailles—­to whoever finds a way to play the Bridaus a trick which shall get them into difficulties with Madame and Monsieur Hochon, so that those worthy old people shall send them off, or they shall be forced to go of their own accord,—­without, understand me, injuring the venerable ancestors of my two friends here present, Baruch and Francois.”

“All right!  I’ll think of it,” said Goddet, who coveted the gun.

“If the inventor of the trick doesn’t care for the gun, he shall have my horse,” added Max.

After this night twenty brains were tortured to lay a plot against Agathe and her son, on the basis of Max’s programme.  But the devil alone, or chance, could really help them to success; for the conditions given made the thing well-nigh impossible.

The next morning Agathe and Joseph came downstairs just before the second breakfast, which took place at ten o’clock.  In Monsieur Hochon’s household the name of first breakfast was given to a cup of milk and slice of bread and butter which was taken in bed, or when rising.  While waiting for Madame Hochon, who notwithstanding her age went minutely through the ceremonies with which the duchesses of Louis XV.’s time performed their toilette, Joseph noticed Jean-Jacques Rouget planted squarely on his feet at the door of his house across the street.  He naturally pointed him out to his mother, who was unable to recognize her brother, so little did he look like what he was when she left him.

“That is your brother,” said Adolphine, who entered, giving an arm to her grandmother.

“What an idiot he looks like!” exclaimed Joseph.

Agathe clasped her hands, and raised her eyes to heaven.

“What a state they have driven him to!  Good God! can that be a man only fifty-seven years old?”

She looked attentively at her brother, and saw Flore Brazier standing directly behind him, with her hair dressed, a pair of snowy shoulders and a dazzling bosom showing through a gauze neckerchief, which was trimmed with lace; she was wearing a dress with a tight-fitting waist, made of grenadine (a silk material then much in fashion), with leg-of-mutton sleeves so-called, fastened at the wrists by handsome bracelets.  A gold chain rippled over the crab-girl’s bosom as she leaned forward to give Jean-Jacques his black silk cap lest he should take cold.  The scene was evidently studied.