e, all of you, appointed
to the commissariat of the Army of Rats. If you find a watchman
sleeping in the church, you must manage to make him drunk,--and do it
cleverly,--so as to get him far away from the scene of the Rodents'
Orgy."

"You don't say anything about the Parisians?" questioned Goddet.

"Oh!" exclaimed Max, "I want time to study them. Meantime, I offer
my best shotgun--the one the Emperor gave me, a treasure from the
manufactory at Versailles--to whoever finds a way to play the Bridaus
a trick which shall get them into difficulties with Madame and Monsieur
Hochon, so that those worthy old people shall send them off, or they
shall be forced to go of their own accord,--without, understand me,
injuring the venerable ancestors of my two friends here present, Baruch
and Francois."

"All right! I'll think of it," said Goddet, who coveted the gun.

"If the inventor of the trick doesn't care for the gun, he shall have my
horse," added Max.

After this night twenty brains were tortured to lay a plot against
Agathe and her son, on the basis of Max's programme. But the devil
alone, or chance, could really help them to success; for the conditions
given made the thing well-nigh impossible.

The next morning Agathe and Joseph came downstairs just before the
second breakfast, which took place at ten o'clock. In Monsieur Hochon's
household the name of first breakfast was given to a cup of milk and
slice of bread and butter which was taken in bed, or when rising. While
waiting for Madame Hochon, who notwithstanding her age went minutely
through the ceremonies with which the duchesses of Louis XV.'s time
performed their toilette, Joseph noticed Jean-Jacques Rouget planted
squarely on his feet at the door of his house across the street. He
naturally pointed him out to his mother, who was unable to recognize her
brother, so little did he look like what he was when she left him.

"That is your brother," said Adolphine, who entered, giving an arm to
her grandmother.

"What an idiot he looks like!" exclaimed Joseph.

Agathe clasped her hands, and raised her eyes to heaven.

"What a state they have driven him to! Good God! can that be a man only
fifty-seven years old?"

She looked attentively at her brother, and saw Flore Brazier standing
directly behind him, with her hair dressed, a pair of snowy shoulders
and a dazzling bosom showing through a gauze neckerchief, which was
trimmed with lace; she was wearing a dress