me hold on Issoudun--said to Max, as
the wine was beginning to unloose all tongues,--

"You are threatened in your stronghold."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Max.

"Why, my grandmother has had a letter from Madame Bridau, who is her
goddaughter, saying that she and her son are coming here. My grandmother
has been getting two rooms ready for them."

"What's that to me?" said Max, taking up his glass and swallowing the
contents at a gulp with a comic gesture.

Max was then thirty-four years old. A candle standing near him threw
a gleam upon his soldierly face, lit up his brow, and brought out
admirably his clear skin, his ardent eyes, his black and slightly
curling hair, which had the brilliancy of jet. The hair grew vigorously
upward from the forehead and temples, sharply defining those five
black tongues which our ancestors used to call the "five points."
Notwithstanding this abrupt contrast of black and white, Max's face was
very sweet, owing its charm to an outline like that which Raphael gave
to the faces of his Madonnas, and to a well-cut mouth whose lips smiled
graciously, giving an expression of countenance which Max had made
distinctively his own. The rich coloring which blooms on a Berrichon
cheek added still further to his look of kindly good-humor. When he
laughed heartily, he showed thirty-two teeth worthy of the mouth of a
pretty woman. In height about five feet six inches, the young man was
admirably well-proportioned,--neither too stout nor yet too thin. His
hands, carefully kept, were white and rather handsome; but his feet
recalled the suburb and the foot-soldier of the Empire. Max would
certainly have made a good general of division; he had shoulders that
were worth a fortune to a marshal of France, and a breast broad enough
to wear all the orders of Europe. Every movement betrayed intelligence;
born with grace and charm, like nearly all the children of love, the
noble blood of his real father came out in him.

"Don't you know, Max," cried the son of a former surgeon-major named
Goddet--now the best doctor in the town--from the other end of the
table, "that Madame Hochon's goddaughter is the sister of Rouget? If she
is coming here with her son, no doubt she means to make sure of getting
the property when he dies, and then--good-by to your harvest!"

Max frowned. Then, with a look which ran from one face to another all
round the table, he watched the effect of this announcement on the minds