Artists will readily guess what ailed Joseph, and kept him restless all night.  He imagined the tale the bourgeoisie of Issoudun would tell of him.  They would say he had fleeced his uncle; that he was everything but what he had tried to be,—­a loyal fellow and an honest artist!  Ah! he would have given his great picture to have flown like a swallow to Paris, and thrown his uncle’s paintings at Max’s nose.  To be the one robbed, and to be thought the robber!—­what irony!  So at the earliest dawn, he had started for the poplar avenue which led to Tivoli, to give free course to his agitation.

While the innocent fellow was vowing, by way of consolation, never to return to Issoudun, Max was preparing a horrible outrage for his sensitive spirit.  When Monsieur Goddet had probed the wound and discovered that the knife, turned aside by a little pocket-book, had happily spared Max’s life (though making a serious wound), he did as all doctors, and particularly country surgeons, do; he paved the way for his own credit by “not answering for the patient’s life”; and then, after dressing the soldier’s wound, and stating the verdict of science to the Rabouilleuse, Jean-Jacques Rouget, Kouski, and the Vedie, he left the house.  The Rabouilleuse came in tears to her dear Max, while Kouski and the Vedie told the assembled crowd that the captain was in a fair way to die.  The news brought nearly two hundred persons in groups about the place Saint-Jean and the two Narettes.

“I sha’n’t be a month in bed; and I know who struck the blow,” whispered Max to Flore.  “But we’ll profit by it to get rid of the Parisians.  I have said I thought I recognized the painter; so pretend that I am expected to die, and try to have Joseph Bridau arrested.  Let him taste a prison for a couple of days, and I know well enough the mother will be off in a jiffy for Paris when she gets him out.  And then we needn’t fear the priests they talk of setting on the old fool.”

When Flore Brazier came downstairs, she found the assembled crowd quite prepared to take the impression she meant to give them.  She went out with tears in her eyes, and related, sobbing, how the painter, “who had just the face for that sort of thing,” had been angry with Max the night before about some pictures he had “wormed out” of Pere Rouget.

“That brigand—­for you’ve only got to look at him to see what he is —­thinks that if Max were dead, his uncle would leave him his fortune; as if,” she cried, “a brother were not more to him than a nephew!  Max is Doctor Rouget’s son.  The old one told me so before he died!”

“Ah! he meant to do the deed just before he left Issoudun; he chose his time, for he was going away to-day,” said one of the Knights of Idleness.

“Max hasn’t an enemy in Issoudun,” said another.

“Besides, Max recognized the painter,” said the Rabouilleuse.

“Where’s that cursed Parisian?  Let us find him!” they all cried.