They would say he had fleeced his uncle; that he was everything but what he had tried to be,--a loyal fellow and an honest artist! Ah! he would have given his great picture to have flown like a swallow to Paris, and thrown his uncle's paintings at Max's nose.

To be the one robbed, and to be thought the robber!--what irony! So at the earliest dawn, he had started for the poplar avenue which led to Tivoli, to give free course to his agitation.
While the innocent fellow was vowing, by way of consolation, never to return to Issoudun, Max was preparing a horrible outrage for his sensitive spirit.

When Monsieur Goddet had probed the wound and discovered that the knife, turned aside by a little pocket-book, had happily spared Max's life (though making a serious wound), he did as all doctors, and particularly country surgeons, do; he paved the way for his own credit by "not answering for the patient's life"; and then, after dressing the soldier's wound, and stating the verdict of science to the Rabouilleuse, Jean-Jacques Rouget, Kouski, and the Vedie, he left the house.

The Rabouilleuse came in tears to her dear Max, while Kouski and the Vedie told the assembled crowd that the captain was in a fair way to die.

The news brought nearly two hundred persons in groups about the place Saint-Jean and the two Narettes.
"I sha'n't be a month in bed; and I know who struck the blow," whispered Max to Flore.