"What harm have
I done?" he asks, speaking of his robbery of his relative, the old
Madame Descoings. "I have merely cleaned the old lady's mattress." And
he is equally indifferent to what destiny reserves for him. "I am a
_parvenu_, my dear fellow; I don't intend to let my swaddling-clothes
be seen. My son will be luckier than I; he will be a _grand seigneur_.
The rascal will be glad to see me dead. I quite reckon on it;
otherwise he would not be my son."
Most of the other figures are of equal truth to life, and are
presented so as to increase the effect of the complete picture:
Jean-Jacques Rouget, the stupid infatuated uncle, who espouses the
intriguing Flore Brazier; and Flore herself, whose petty vices are
crushed by those of her second husband; Maxime Gilet, the bully of
Issoudun, whose surface bravado is checked and mated by the cooler
scoundrelism of Philippe; Agathe, the foolish mother, whose eyes are
blind to the devotion of her son Joseph; and Girondeau, the old
dragoon, companion to Philippe who casts him off as soon as prosperity
smiles and he has no further need for him. And the narrow-horizoned,
curiously interlaced existences of the county-town add the mass of
their colour-value, sombre but rich.
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