Madame Descoings, always anxious to cheer Madame Bridau, often took the latter to the theatre, or to drive; prepared excellent little dinners for her delectation, and even tried to marry her to her own son by her first husband, Bixiou.  Alas! to do this, she was forced to reveal a terrible secret, carefully kept by her, by her late husband, and by her notary.  The young and beautiful Madame Descoings, who passed for thirty-six years old, had a son who was thirty-five, named Bixiou, already a widower, a major in the Twenty-Fourth Infantry, who subsequently perished at Lutzen, leaving behind him an only son.  Madame Descoings, who only saw her grandson secretly, gave out that he was the son of the first wife of her first husband.  The revelation was partly a prudential act; for this grandson was being educated with Madame Bridau’s sons at the Imperial Lyceum, where he had a half-scholarship.  The lad, who was clever and shrewd at school, soon after made himself a great reputation as draughtsman and designer, and also as a wit.

Agathe, who lived only for her children, declined to re-marry, as much from good sense as from fidelity to her husband.  But it is easier for a woman to be a good wife than to be a good mother.  A widow has two tasks before her, whose duties clash:  she is a mother, and yet she must exercise parental authority.  Few women are firm enough to understand and practise this double duty.  Thus it happened that Agathe, notwithstanding her many virtues, was the innocent cause of great unhappiness.  In the first place, through her lack of intelligence and the blind confidence to which such noble natures are prone, Agathe fell a victim to Madame Descoings, who brought a terrible misfortune on the family.  That worthy soul was nursing up a combination of three numbers called a “trey” in a lottery, and lotteries give no credit to their customers.  As manager of the joint household, she was able to pay up her stakes with the money intended for their current expenses, and she went deeper and deeper into debt, with the hope of ultimately enriching her grandson Bixiou, her dear Agathe, and the little Bridaus.  When the debts amounted to ten thousand francs, she increased her stakes, trusting that her favorite trey, which had not turned up in nine years, would come at last, and fill to overflowing the abysmal deficit.

From that moment the debt rolled up rapidly.  When it reached twenty thousand francs, Madame Descoings lost her head, still failing to win the trey.  She tried to mortgage her own property to pay her niece, but Roguin, who was her notary, showed her the impossibility of carrying out that honorable intention.  The late Doctor Rouget had laid hold of the property of the brother-in-law after the grocer’s execution, and had, as it were, disinherited Madame Descoings by securing to her a life-interest on the property of his own son, Jean-Jacques Rouget.  No money-lender would think of advancing twenty thousand francs to