time to set about it."

"You certainly have very singular ideas about the clergy," said Madame
Hochon to her husband.

"Bah!" exclaimed the old man, "that's just like you pious women."

"God would never bless an enterprise undertaken in a sacrilegious
spirit," said Madame Bridau. "Use religion for such a purpose! Why, we
should be more criminal than Flore."

This conversation took place at breakfast,--Francois and Baruch
listening with all their ears.

"Sacrilege!" exclaimed old Hochon. "If some good abbe, keen as I have
known many of them to be, knew what a dilemma you are in, he would not
think it sacrilege to bring your brother's lost soul back to God, and
call him to repentance for his sins, by forcing him to send away the
woman who causes the scandal (with a proper provision, of course), and
showing him how to set his conscience at rest by giving a few thousand
francs a year to the seminary of the archbishop and leaving his
property to the rightful heirs."

The passive obedience which the old miser had always exacted from his
children, and now from his grandchildren (who were under his
guardianship and for whom he was amassing a small fortune, doing for
them, he said, just as he would for himself), prevented Baruch and
Francois from showing signs of surprise or disapproval; but they
exchanged significant glances expressing how dangerous and fatal such
a scheme would be to Max's interest.

"The fact is, madame," said Baruch, "that if you want to secure your
brother's property, the only sure and true way will be to stay in
Issoudun for the necessary length of time--"

"Mother," said Joseph hastily, "you had better write to Desroches
about all this. As for me, I ask nothing more than what my uncle has
already given me."

After fully recognizing the great value of his thirty-nine pictures,
Joseph had carefully unnailed the canvases and fastened paper over
them, gumming it at the edges with ordinary glue; he then laid them
one above another in an enormous wooden box, which he sent to
Desroches by the carrier's waggon, proposing to write him a letter
about it by post. The precious freight had been sent off the night
before.

"You are satisfied with a pretty poor bargain," said Monsieur Hochon.

"I can easily get a hundred and fifty thousand francs for those
pictures," replied Joseph.

"Painter's nonsense!" exclaimed old Hochon, giving Joseph a peculiar
look.

"Mother," said Joseph, "I am going to write