a
critical moment, rather roughly; but, already at death's door, he was
struggling with passionate ardor to do in a few hours work he could
hardly have accomplished in several months. As Madame Bridau entered,
he had just found an effect long sought for, and was handling his
tools and clay with spasmodic jerks and movements that seemed to the
ignorant Agathe like those of a maniac. At any other time Chaudet
would have laughed; but now, as he heard the mother bewailing the
destiny he had opened to her child, abusing art, and insisting that
Joseph should no longer be allowed to enter the atelier, he burst into
a holy wrath.

"I was under obligations to your deceased husband, I wished to help
his son, to watch his first steps in the noblest of all careers," he
cried. "Yes, madame, learn, if you do not know it, that a great artist
is a king, and more than a king; he is happier, he is independent, he
lives as he likes, he reigns in the world of fancy. Your son has a
glorious future before him. Faculties like his are rare; they are only
disclosed at his age in such beings as the Giottos, Raphaels, Titians,
Rubens, Murillos,--for, in my opinion, he will make a better painter
than sculptor. God of heaven! if I had such a son, I should be as
happy as the Emperor is to have given himself the King of Rome. Well,
you are mistress of your child's fate. Go your own way, madame; make
him a fool, a miserable quill-driver, tie him to a desk, and you've
murdered him! But I hope, in spite if all your efforts, that he will
stay an artist. A true vocation is stronger than all the obstacles
that can be opposed to it. Vocation! why the very word means a call;
ay, the election of God himself! You will make your child unhappy,
that's all." He flung the clay he no longer needed violently into a
tub, and said to his model, "That will do for to-day."

Agathe raised her eyes and saw, in a corner of the atelier where her
glance had not before penetrated, a nude woman sitting on a stool, the
sight of whom drove her away horrified.

"You are not to have the little Bridau here any more," said Chaudet to
his pupils, "it annoys his mother."

"Eugh!" they all cried, as Agathe closed the door.

No sooner did the students of sculpture and painting find out that
Madame Bridau did not wish her son to be an artist, than their whole
happiness centred on getting Joseph among them. In spite of a promise
not to go to the Institute which his mother exacted f