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However, the strongest intellect of the yellow drawing-room was certainly Commander Sicardot, Aristide's father-in-law. Of Herculean frame, with a brick-red face, scarred and planted with tufts of grey hair, he was one of the most glorious old dolts of the Grande Armee.
To educate his only son Raoul, to be able to develop his marked talent as an artist, has been Aristide's one ambition. The proposition to take the girl, and the liberal payments promised, assure the artistic future of Raoul. Marie Berard has appreciated that the life of this orphan child is the measure of her own golden fortunes.
She saw that high-sounding titles were no more part of the personalities bearing them than the mass of frankly false hair so grandly worn by Aristide's grand-aunt was part of the wisp-like remnant of natural head covering.
"We have no need of anything," he said; "you will keep my wife and myself, and we will reckon up later on." Pierre was short of money at the time, and accepted, not, however, without some uneasiness at Aristide's disinterestedness.
At one moment, however, as the uproar of voices became deafening, she seemed to recollect something, and quitting her seat she whispered in Aristide's ear: "And Silvere?" The young man started with surprise at the question. "He is dead," he replied, likewise in a whisper. "I was there when the gendarme blew his brains out with a pistol." Felicite in her turn shuddered.
For her part she did not know what he could have to do with them, but on the other hand she was unable to close her eyes to Aristide's ill-advised acts at Plassans. The visitors to her drawing-room did not scruple to denounce the democratic journalist with extreme severity.
She, who tolerated Aristide's idleness because she thought it would prove fertile, could not view without regret the slow progress of Pascal, his partiality for obscurity and contempt for riches, his determined resolve to lead a life of retirement. He was certainly not the child who would ever gratify her vanities. "But where do you spring from?" she would sometimes say to him.
Even that little Maxime, Aristide's son, that little nine-year-old brat, pokes his tongue out at me when me meets me. That child will some day beat his own mother, and a good job too! Say what you like, all those folks don't deserve their luck; but it's always like this in families, the good ones suffer while the bad ones make their fortunes."
All these people round here with their little farms were once the peasants of Aristide's ancestors. Now even this chateau has a mortgage on it. I couldn't keep back the tears, while Aristide was telling me." Adelaide thought of Charles Whitney listening to that same recital, and almost laughed. "Well, I feel sure it will turn out all right," she said. "Your mother'll see to that.
"He promised me a good article. The 'Independant' has not appeared yet " But her husband interrupted her, crying: "See! isn't that he who is just coming out of the Sub-Prefecture?" The old woman glanced in that direction. "He's got his arm in a sling again!" she cried. Aristide's hand was indeed wrapped in the silk handkerchief once more.
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