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.