Lieutenant–Colonel Bridau returned to Paris, taking with him his aunt and the helpless Rouget, whom he escorted, three days after their arrival, to the Treasury¹, where Jean–Jacques signed the transfer of the income, which henceforth became Philippe’s. The exhausted² old man and the Rabouilleuse were now plunged³ by their nephew into the excessive dissipations of the dangerous and restless society of actresses, journalists, artists, and the equivocal women among whom Philippe had already wasted his youth; where old Rouget found excitements that soon after killed him. Instigated⁴ by Giroudeau, Lolotte, one of the handsomest of the Opera ballet-girls, was the amiable⁵ assassin of the old man. Rouget died after a splendid supper at Florentine’s, and Lolotte threw the blame of his death upon a slice of pate⁶ de foie gras; as the Strasburg masterpiece could make no defence, it was considered settled that the old man died of indigestion.

Madame Rouget was in her element in the midst of this excessively decollete society; but Philippe gave her in charge of Mariette, and that monitress did not allow the widow — whose mourning was diversified⁷ with a few amusements — to commit any actual follies⁸.

In October, 1823, Philippe returned to Issoudun, furnished with a power of attorney from his aunt, to liquidate⁹ the estate of his uncle; a business that was soon over, for he returned to Paris in March, 1824, with sixteen hundred thousand francs — the net proceeds of old Rouget’s property, not counting the precious pictures, which had never left Monsieur Hochon’s hands. Philippe put the whole property into the hands of Mongenod and Sons, where young Baruch Borniche was employed, and on whose

分享到：