make humble, to his mother’s exhortations, but they were lost in the void, and did not reach his mind.  Nevertheless, the word “army,” the thought of being a soldier, and the sight of his mother’s tears did at last make him cry.  No sooner did Madame Clapart see the drops coursing down his cheeks than she felt herself helpless, and, like most mothers in such cases, she began the peroration which terminates these scenes,—­scenes in which they suffer their own anguish and that of their children also.

“Well, Oscar, promise me that you will be more discreet in future, —­that you will not talk heedlessly any more, but will strive to repress your silly vanity,” et cetera, et cetera.

Oscar of course promised all his mother asked him to promise, and then, after gently drawing him to her, Madame Clapart ended by kissing him to console him for being scolded.

“In future,” she said, “you will listen to your mother, and will follow her advice; for a mother can give nothing but good counsel to her child.  We will go and see your uncle Cardot; that is our last hope.  Cardot owed a great deal to your father, who gave him his sister, Mademoiselle Husson, with an enormous dowry for those days, which enabled him to make a large fortune in the silk trade.  I think he might, perhaps, place you with Monsieur Camusot, his successor and son-in-law, in the rue des Bourdonnais.  But, you see, your uncle Cardot has four children.  He gave his establishment, the Cocon d’Or, to his eldest daughter, Madame Camusot; and though Camusot has millions, he has also four children by two wives; and, besides, he scarcely knows of our existence.  Cardot has married his second daughter, Mariane, to Monsieur Protez, of the firm of Protez and Chiffreville.  The practice of his eldest son, the notary, cost him four hundred thousand francs; and he has just put his second son, Joseph, into the drug business of Matifat.  So you see, your uncle Cardot has many reasons not to take an interest in you, whom he sees only four times a year.  He has never come to call upon me here, though he was ready enough to visit me at Madame Mere’s when he wanted to sell his silks to the Emperor, the imperial highnesses, and all the great people at court.  But now the Camusots have turned ultras.  The eldest son of Camusot’s first wife married a daughter of one of the king’s ushers.  The world is mighty hump-backed when it stoops!  However, it was a clever thing to do, for the Cocon d’Or has the custom of the present court as it had that of the Emperor.  But to-morrow we will go and see your uncle Cardot, and I hope that you will endeavor to behave properly; for, as I said before, and I repeat it, that is our last hope.”