No sooner did Madame Clapart see the drops coursing down his cheeks
than she felt herself helpless, and, like most mothers in such cases,
she began the peroration which terminates these scenes,--scenes in
which they suffer their own anguish and that of their children also.

"Well, Oscar, _promise_ me that you will be more discreet in future,
--that you will not talk heedlessly any more, but will strive to
repress your silly vanity," et cetera, et cetera.

Oscar of course promised all his mother asked him to promise, and
then, after gently drawing him to her, Madame Clapart ended by kissing
him to console him for being scolded.

"In future," she said, "you will listen to your mother, and will
follow her advice; for a mother can give nothing but good counsel to
her child. We will go and see your uncle Cardot; that is our last
hope. Cardot owed a great deal to your father, who gave him his
sister, Mademoiselle Husson, with an enormous dowry for those days,
which enabled him to make a large fortune in the silk trade. I think
he might, perhaps, place you with Monsieur Camusot, his successor and
son-in-law, in the rue des Bourdonnais. But, you see, your uncle
Cardot has four children. He gave his establishment, the Cocon d'Or,
to his eldest daughter, Madame Camusot; and though Camusot has
millions, he has also four children by two wives; and, besides, he
scarcely knows of our existence. Cardot has married his second
daughter, Mariane, to Monsieur Protez, of the firm of Protez and
Chiffreville. The practice of his eldest son, the notary, cost him
four hundred thousand francs; and he has just put his second son,
Joseph, into the drug business of Matifat. So you see, your uncle
Cardot has many reasons not to take an interest in you, whom he sees