This liberality, which Madame Hochon was quite unable to practise on her own account because of her husband's stinginess, was naturally attributed to her brother, then living at Sancerre.
When Doctor Rouget, who certainly was not lucky in sons, observed Max's beauty, he paid the board of the "young rogue," as he called him, at the seminary, up to the year 1805.

As Lousteau died in 1800, and the doctor apparently obeyed a feeling of vanity in paying the lad's board until 1805, the question of the paternity was left forever undecided.

Maxence Gilet, the butt of many jests, was soon forgotten,--and for this reason: In 1806, a year after Doctor Rouget's death, the lad, who seemed to have been created for a venturesome life, and was moreover gifted with remarkable vigor and agility, got into a series of scrapes which more or less threatened his safety.

He plotted with the grandsons of Monsieur Hochon to worry the grocers of the city; he gathered fruit before the owners could pick it, and made nothing of scaling walls.

He had no equal at bodily exercises, he played base to perfection, and could have outrun a hare.