"Ah! my friend," she said to Joseph, as she went to bed that night,
"it is our severity which drove him to it."
"I'll go and see Desroches," answered Joseph.
While the artist was confiding his brother's affairs to the younger
Desroches,--who by this time had the reputation of being one of the
keenest and most astute lawyers in Paris, and who, moreover, did
sundry services for personages of distinction, among others for des
Lupeaulx, then secretary of a ministry,--Giroudeau called upon the
widow. This time, Agathe believed him.
"Madame," he said, "if you can produce twelve thousand francs your son
will be set at liberty for want of proof. It is necessary to buy the
silence of two witnesses."
"I will get the money," said the poor mother, without knowing how or
where.
Inspired by this danger, she wrote to her godmother, old Madame
Hochon, begging her to ask Jean-Jacques Rouget to send her the twelve
thousand francs and save his nephew Philippe. If Rouget refused, she
entreated Madame Hochon to lend them to her, promising to return them
in two years. By return of courier, she received the following
letter:--
My dear girl: Though your brother has an income of not less than
forty thousand francs a year, without counting the sums he has
laid by for the last seventeen years, and which Monsieur Hochon
estimates at more than six hundred thousand francs, he will not
give one penny to nephews whom he has never seen. As for me, you
know I cannot dispose of a farthing while my husband lives.
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