which his enemies made use of to deny his
talent.

"High art is at a low ebb," said his friend Pierre Grassou, who made
daubs to suit the taste of the bourgeoisie, in whose _appartements_ fine
paintings were at a discount.

"You ought to have a whole cathedral to decorate; that's what you
want," declared Schinner; "then you would silence criticism with a
master-stroke."

Such speeches, which alarmed the good Agathe, only corroborated the
judgment she had long since formed upon Philippe and Joseph. Facts
sustained that judgment in the mind of a woman who had never ceased to
be a provincial. Philippe, her favorite child, was he not the great
man of the family at last? in his early errors she saw only the
ebullitions of youth. Joseph, to the merit of whose productions she
was insensible, for she saw them too long in process of gestation to
admire them when finished, seemed to her no more advanced in 1828 than
he was in 1816. Poor Joseph owed money, and was bowed down by the
burden of debt; he had chosen, she felt, a worthless career that made
him no return. She could not conceive why they had given him the cross
of the Legion of honor. Philippe, on the other hand, rich enough to
cease gambling, a guest at the fetes of _Madame_, the brilliant colonel
who at all reviews and in all processions appeared before her eyes in
splendid uniforms, with his two crosses on his breast, realized all
her maternal dreams. One such day of public ceremony effaced from
Agathe's mind the horrible sight of Philippe's misery on the Quai de
l'Ecole; on that day he passed his mother at the self-same spot, in
attendance on the Dauphin, with plumes in his shako, and his pelisse
gorgeous with gold and fur. Agathe, who to her artist son was now a
sort of devoted gray sister, felt herself the mother of none but the
dashing aide-de-camp to his Royal Highness, the Dauphin of France.
Proud of Philippe, she felt he made the ease and happiness of her
life,--forgetting that the lottery-office, by which she was enabled to
live at all, came through Joseph.

One day Agathe noticed that her poor artist was more worried than
usual by the bill of his color-man, and she determined, though cursing
his profession in her heart, to free him from his debts. The poor
woman kept the house with the proceeds of her office, and took care
never to ask Joseph for a farthing. Consequently she had no money of
her own; but she relied on Philippe's good heart and well-filled