That fool of a girl never told me, in all these seven years, a word
about the sister and nephews!" cried Max, turning from the rue de la
Marmouse into the rue l'Avenier. "Seven hundred and fifty thousand
francs placed with different notaries at Bourges, and Vierzon, and
Chateauroux, can't be turned into money and put into the Funds in a
week, without everybody knowing it in this gossiping place! The most
important thing is to get rid of these relations; as soon as they are
driven away we ought to make haste to secure the property. I must think
it over."

Max was tired. By the help of a pass-key, he let himself into Pere
Rouget's house, and went to bed without making any noise, saying to
himself,--

"To-morrow, my thoughts will be clear."

It is now necessary to relate where the sultana of the place Saint-Jean
picked up the nickname of "Rabouilleuse," and how she came to be the
quasi-mistress of Jean-Jacques Rouget's home.

As old Doctor Rouget, the father of Jean-Jacques and Madame Bridau,
advanced in years, he began to perceive the nonentity of his son; he
then treated him harshly, trying to break him into a routine that might
serve in place of intelligence. He thus, though unconsciously, prepared
him to submit to the yoke of the first tyranny that threw its halter
over his head.

Coming home one day from his professional round, the malignant and
vicious old man came across a bewitching little girl at the edge of some
fields that lay along the avenue de Tivoli. Hearing the horse, the child
sprang up from the bottom of one of the many brooks which are to be
seen from the heights of Issoudun, threading the meadows like ribbons
of silver on a green robe. Naiad-like, she rose suddenly on the doctor's
vision, showing the loveliest virgin head that painters ever dreamed of.
Old Rouget, who knew the whole country-side, did not know this miracle
of beauty. The child, who was half naked, wore a forlorn little
petticoat of coarse woollen stuff, woven in alternate strips of brown
and white, full of holes and very ragged. A sheet of rough writing
paper, tied on by a shred of osier, served her for a hat. Beneath this
paper--covered with pot-hooks and round O's, from which it derived the
name of "schoolpaper"--the loveliest mass of blonde hair that ever a
daughter of Eve could have desired, was twisted up, and held in place
by a species of comb made to comb out the tails of horses. Her pretty
tanned bosom, and her neck, scarce