will compromise the honor of the family,
and then we shall have to scrape up another ten or twelve thousand
francs! He gambles every night; when he comes home, drunk as a
templar, he drops on the staircase the pricked cards on which he marks
the turns of the red and black. Old Desroches is trying to get him
back into the army, and, on my word on honor, I believe he would hate
to serve again. Would you ever have believed that a boy with such
heavenly blue eyes and the look of Bayard could turn out such a
scoundrel?"

CHAPTER V

In spite of the coolness and discretion with which Philippe played his
trifling game every night, it happened every now and then that he was
what gamblers call "cleaned out." Driven by the irresistible necessity
of having his evening stake of ten francs, he plundered the household,
and laid hands on his brother's money and on all that Madame Descoings
or Agathe left about. Already the poor mother had had a dreadful
vision in her first sleep: Philippe entered the room and took from the
pockets of her gown all the money he could find. Agathe pretended to
sleep, but she passed the rest of the night in tears. She saw the
truth only too clearly. "One wrong act is not a vice," Madame
Descoings had declared; but after so many repetitions, vice was
unmistakable. Agathe could doubt no longer; her best-beloved son had
neither delicacy nor honor.

On the morrow of that frightful vision, before Philippe left the house
after breakfast, she drew him into her chamber and begged him, in a
tone of entreaty, to ask her for what money he needed. After that, the
applications were so numerous that in two weeks Agathe was drained of
all her savings. She was literally without a penny, and began to think
of finding work. The means of earning money had been discussed in the
evenings between herself and Madame Descoings, and she had already
taken patterns of worsted work to fill in, from a shop called the
"Pere de Famille,"--an employment which pays about twenty sous a day.
Notwithstanding Agathe's silence on the subject, Madame Descoings had
guessed the motive of this desire to earn money by women's-work. The
change in her appearance was eloquent: her fresh face had withered,
the skin clung to the temples and the cheek-bones, and the forehead
showed deep lines; her eyes lost their clearness; an inward fire was
evidently consuming her; she wept the greater part of the night. A
chief cau