The Two Brothers | Page 5

the latter's worst side; and the doctor at his
best was far from satisfactory, either morally or physically.
The arrival of the charming Agathe Rouget did not bring happiness to
her uncle Descoings; for in the same week (or rather, we should say
decade, for the Republic had then been proclaimed) he was imprisoned
on a hint from Robespierre given to Fouquier-Tinville. Descoings, who
was imprudent enough to think the famine fictitious, had the additional
folly, under the impression that opinions were free, to express that
opinion to several of his male and female customers as he served them
in the grocery. The citoyenne Duplay, wife of a cabinet- maker with
whom Robespierre lodged, and who looked after the affairs of that

eminent citizen, patronized, unfortunately, the Descoings establishment.
She considered the opinions of the grocer insulting to Maximilian the
First. Already displeased with the manners of Descoings, this
illustrious "tricoteuse" of the Jacobin club regarded the beauty of his
wife as a kind of aristocracy. She infused a venom of her own into the
grocer's remarks when she repeated them to her good and gentle master,
and the poor man was speedily arrested on the well-worn charge of
"accaparation."
No sooner was he put in prison, than his wife set to work to obtain his
release. But the steps she took were so ill-judged that any one hearing
her talk to the arbiters of his fate might have thought that she was in
reality seeking to get rid of him. Madame Descoings knew Bridau, one
of the secretaries of Roland, then minister of the interior,--the
right-hand man of all the ministers who succeeded each other in that
office. She put Bridau on the war-path to save her grocer. That
incorruptible official--one of the virtuous dupes who are always
admirably disinterested--was careful not to corrupt the men on whom
the fate of the poor grocer depended; on the contrary, he endeavored to
enlighten them. Enlighten people in those days! As well might he have
begged them to bring back the Bourbons. The Girondist minister, who
was then contending against Robespierre, said to his secretary, "Why
do you meddle in the matter?" and all others to whom the worthy
Bridau appealed made the same atrocious reply: "Why do you
meddle?" Bridau then sagely advised Madame Descoings to keep quiet
and await events. But instead of conciliating Robespierre's housekeeper,
she fretted and fumed against that informer, and even complained to a
member of the Convention, who, trembling for himself, replied hastily,
"I will speak of it to Robespierre." The handsome petitioner put faith in
this promise, which the other carefully forgot. A few loaves of sugar, or
a bottle or two of good liqueur, given to the citoyenne Duplay would
have saved Descoings.
This little mishap proves that in revolutionary times it is quite as
dangerous to employ honest men as scoundrels; we should rely on
ourselves alone. Descoings perished; but he had the glory of going to
the scaffold with Andre Chenier. There, no doubt, grocery and poetry

embraced for the first time in the flesh; although they have, and ever
have had, intimate secret relations. The death of Descoings produced
far more sensation than that of Andre Chenier. It has taken thirty years
to prove to France that she lost more by the death of Chenier than by
that of Descoings.
This act of Robespierre led to one good result: the terrified grocers let
politics alone until 1830. Descoings's shop was not a hundred yards
from Robespierre's lodging. His successor was scarcely more fortunate
than himself. Cesar Birotteau, the celebrated perfumer of the "Queen of
Roses," bought the premises; but, as if the scaffold had left some
inexplicable contagion behind it, the inventor of the "Paste of Sultans"
and the "Carminative Balm" came to his ruin in that very shop. The
solution of the problem here suggested belongs to the realm of occult
science.
During the visits which Roland's secretary paid to the unfortunate
Madame Descoings, he was struck with the cold, calm, innocent beauty
of Agathe Rouget. While consoling the widow, who, however, was too
inconsolable to carry on the business of her second deceased husband,
he married the charming girl, with the consent of her father, who
hastened to give his approval to the match. Doctor Rouget, delighted to
hear that matters were going beyond his expectations,--for his wife, on
the death of her brother, had become sole heiress of the
Descoings,--rushed to Paris, not so much to be present at the wedding
as to see that the marriage contract was drawn to suit him. The ardent
and disinterested love of citizen Bridau gave carte blanche to the
perfidious doctor, who made the most of his son-in-law's blindness, as
the following history will show.
Madame Rouget, or, to speak more