Philippe felt on seeing Giroudeau a colonel drove him to re-enter the
service. Unluckily for himself, he obtained, in 1835, the command of a
regiment in Algiers, where he remained three years in a post of
danger, always hoping for the epaulets of a general. But some
malignant influence--that, in fact, of General Giroudeau,--continually
balked him. Grown hard and brutal, Philippe exceeded the ordinary
severity of the service, and was hated, in spite of his bravery a la
Murat.
At the beginning of the fatal year 1839, while making a sudden dash
upon the Arabs during a retreat before superior forces, he flung
himself against the enemy, followed by only a single company, and fell
in, unfortunately, with the main body of the enemy. The battle was
bloody and terrible, man to man, and only a few horsemen escaped
alive. Seeing that their colonel was surrounded, these men, who were
at some distance, were unwilling to perish uselessly in attempting to
rescue him. They heard his cry: "Your colonel! to me! a colonel of the
Empire!" but they rejoined the regiment. Philippe met with a horrible
death, for the Arabs, after hacking him to pieces with their
scimitars, cut off his head.
Joseph, who was married about this time, through the good offices of
the Comte de Serizy, to the daughter of a millionaire farmer,
inherited his brother's house in Paris and the estate of Brambourg, in
consequence of the entail, which Philippe, had he foreseen this
result, would certainly have broken. The chief pleasure the painter
derived from his inheritance was in the fine collection of paintings
from Issoudun. He now possesses an income of sixty thousand francs,
and his father-in-law, the farmer, continues to pile up the five-franc
pieces. Though Joseph Bridau paints magnificent pictures, and renders
important services to artists, he is not yet a member of the
Institute. As the result of a clause in the deed of entail, he is now
Comte de Brambourg, a fact which often makes him roar with laughter
among his friends in the atelier.
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Note: The Two Brothers is also known as A Bachelor's Establishment and
The Black Sheep. In other Addendum appearances it is referred to as A
Bachelor's Establishment.
Bianchon, Horace
Father Goriot
The Atheist's Mass
Cesar Birotteau
The Commission in Lunacy
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
The
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