eness; and she confidently
expected him to show at a future day her own delicacy of feeling,
heightened by the vigor of manhood. Philippe was fifteen years old
when his mother moved into the melancholy _appartement_ in the rue
Mazarin; and the winning ways of a lad of that age went far to confirm
the maternal beliefs. Joseph, three years younger, was like his
father, but only on the defective side. In the first place, his thick
black hair was always in disorder, no matter what pains were taken
with it; while Philippe's, notwithstanding his vivacity, was
invariably neat. Then, by some mysterious fatality, Joseph could not
keep his clothes clean; dress him in new clothes, and he immediately
made them look like old ones. The elder, on the other hand, took care
of his things out of mere vanity. Unconsciously, the mother acquired a
habit of scolding Joseph and holding up his brother as an example to
him. Agathe did not treat the two children alike; when she went to
fetch them from school, the thought in her mind as to Joseph always
was, "What sort of state shall I find him in?" These trifles drove her
heart into the gulf of maternal preference.

No one among the very ordinary persons who made the society of the two
widows--neither old Du Bruel nor old Claparon, nor Desroches the
father, nor even the Abbe Loraux, Agathe's confessor--noticed Joseph's
faculty for observation. Absorbed in the line of his own tastes, the
future colorist paid no attention to anything that concerned himself.
During his childhood this disposition was so like torpor that his
father grew uneasy about him. The remarkable size of the head and the
width of the brow roused a fear that the child might be liable to
water on the brain. His distressful face, whose originality was
thought ugliness by those who had no eye for the moral value of a
countenance, wore rather a sullen expression during his childhood. The
features, which developed later in life, were pinched, and the close
attention the child paid to what went on about him still further
contracted them. Philippe flattered his mother's vanity, but Joseph
won no compliments. Philippe sparkled with the clever sayings and
lively answers that lead parents to believe their boys will turn out
remarkable men; Joseph was taciturn, and a dreamer. The mother hoped
great things of Philippe, and expected nothing of Joseph.

Joseph's predilection for art was developed by a very commonplace
incident. During the E