"Yes," said Flore, "instead of enlightening your uncle on the value of his pictures, which is now estimated at over one hundred thousand francs, you have packed them off in a hurry to Paris. Poor dear man! he is no better than a baby! We have just been told of a little treasure at Bourges,--what did they call it? a Poussin,--which was in the choir of the cathedral before the Revolution and is now worth, all by itself, thirty thousand francs."
"That was not right of you, my nephew," said Jean-Jacques, at a sign from Max, which Joseph could not see.
"Come now, frankly," said the soldier, laughing, "on your honor, what should you say those pictures were worth? You've made an easy haul out of your uncle! and right enough, too,--uncles are made to be pillaged.
Nature deprived me of uncles, but damn it, if I'd had any I should have shown them no mercy."
"Did you know, monsieur," said Flore to Rouget, "what YOUR pictures were worth? How much did you say, Monsieur Joseph?"
"Well," answered the painter, who had grown as red as a beetroot,--
"the pictures are certainly worth something."
"They say you estimated them to Monsieur Hochon at one hundred and fifty thousand francs," said Flore; "is that true?"
"Yes," said the painter, with childlike honesty.
"And did you intend," said Flore to the old man, "to give a hundred and fifty thousand francs to your nephew?"
"Never, never!" cried Jean-Jacques, on whom Flore had fixed her eye.
"There is one way to settle all this," said the painter, "and that is to return them to you, uncle."
"No, no, keep them," said the old man.
"I shall send them back to you," said Joseph, wounded by the offensive silence of Max and Flore. "There is something in my brushes which will make my fortune, without owing anything to any one, even an uncle. My respects to you, mademoiselle; good-day, monsieur--"
And Joseph crossed the square in a state of irritation which artists can imagine. The entire Hochon family were in the salon. When they saw Joseph gesticulating and talking to himself, they asked him what was the matter. The painter, who was as open as the day, related before Baruch and Francois the scene that had just taken place; and which, two hours later, thanks to the two young men, was the talk of the whole town, embroidered with various circumstances that were more or less ridiculous. Some persons insisted that the painter was maltreated by Max; others that he had misbehaved to Flore, and that Max had turned him out of doors.
"What a child your son is!" said Hochon to Madame Bridau; "the booby is the dupe of a scene which they have been keeping back for the last day of his visit. Max and the Rabouilleuse have known the value of those pictures for the last two weeks,--ever since he had the folly to tell it before my grandsons, who never rested till they had blurted it out to all the world. Your artist had better have taken himself off without taking leave."
"My son has done right to return the pictures if they are really so valuable," said Agathe.
"If they are worth, as he says, two hundred thousand francs," said old Hochon, "it was folly to put himself in the way of being obliged to return them. You might have had that, at least, out of the property; whereas, as things are going now, you won't get anything. And this scene with Joseph is almost a reason why your brother should refuse to see you again."
