ed everything.
Joseph himself,--with the innate simplicity which superabounds in the
artist-soul in its opening years, and who was, moreover, brought up to
admire his big brother,--so far from being hurt by the preference of
their mother, encouraged it by sharing her worship of the hero who had
carried Napoleon's orders on two battlefields, and was wounded at
Waterloo. How could he doubt the superiority of the grand brother,
whom he had beheld in the green and gold uniform of the dragoons of
the Guard, commanding his squadron on the Champ de Mars?

Agathe, notwithstanding this preference, was an excellent mother. She
loved Joseph, though not blindly; she simply was unable to understand
him. Joseph adored his mother; Philippe let his mother adore him.
Towards her, the dragoon softened his military brutality; but he never
concealed the contempt he felt for Joseph,--expressing it, however, in
a friendly way. When he looked at his brother, weak and sickly as he
was at seventeen years of age, shrunken with determined toil, and
over-weighted with his powerful head, he nicknamed him "Cub."
Philippe's patronizing manners would have wounded any one less
carelessly indifferent than the artist, who had, moreover, a firm
belief in the goodness of heart which soldiers hid, he thought,
beneath a brutal exterior. Joseph did not yet know, poor boy, that
soldiers of genius are as gentle and courteous in manner as other
superior men in any walk of life. All genius is alike, wherever found.

"Poor boy!" said Philippe to his mother, "we mustn't plague him; let
him do as he likes."

To his mother's eyes the colonel's contempt was a mark of fraternal
affection.

"Philippe will always love and protect his brother," she thought to
herself.

CHAPTER III

In 1816, Joseph obtained his mother's permission to convert the garret
which adjoined his attic room into an atelier, and Madame Descoings
gave him a little money for the indispensable requirements of the
painter's trade;--in the minds of the two widows, the art of painting
was nothing but a trade. With the feeling and ardor of his vocation,
the lad himself arranged his humble atelier. Madame Descoings
persuaded the owner of the house to put a skylight in the roof. The
garret was turned into a vast hall painted in chocolate-color by
Joseph himself. On the walls he hung a few sketches. Agathe
contributed, not without reluctance, an iron stove; so that her