esh butter,
all gave an indescribably debauched and libidinous expression to his
appearance. He wore an old iron-gray overcoat decorated with the red
ribbon of an officer of the Legion of honor, which met with difficulty
over a gastronomic stomach in keeping with a mouth that stretched from
ear to ear, and a pair of powerful shoulders. The torso was supported
by a spindling pair of legs, while the rubicund tints on the cheek-bones
bore testimony to a rollicking life. The lower part of the cheeks, which
were deeply wrinkled, overhung a coat-collar of velvet the worse for
wear. Among other adornments, the ex-dragoon wore enormous gold rings in
his ears.

"What a 'noceur'!" thought Joseph, using a popular expression, meaning a
"loose fish," which had lately passed into the ateliers.

"Madame," said Finot's uncle and cashier, "your son is in so unfortunate
a position that his friends find it absolutely necessary to ask you to
share the somewhat heavy expense which he is to them. He can no
longer do his work at the office; and Mademoiselle Florentine, of the
Porte-Saint-Martin, has taken him to lodge with her, in a miserable
attic in the rue de Vendome. Philippe is dying; and if you and his
brother are not able to pay for the doctor and medicines, we shall be
obliged, for the sake of curing him, to have him taken to the hospital
of the Capuchins. For three hundred francs we would keep him where he
is. But he must have a nurse; for at night, when Mademoiselle Florentine
is at the theatre, he persists in going out, and takes things that are
irritating and injurious to his malady and its treatment. As we are fond
of him, this makes us really very unhappy. The poor fellow has pledged
the pension of his cross for the next three years; he is temporarily
displaced from his office, and he has literally nothing. He will kill
himself, madame, unless we can put him into the private asylum of Doctor
Dubois. It is a decent hospital, where they will take him for ten francs
a day. Florentine and I will pay half, if you will pay the rest; it
won't be for more than two months."

"Monsieur, it is difficult for a mother not to be eternally grateful
to you for your kindness to her son," replied Agathe; "but this son
is banished from my heart, and as for money, I have none. Not to be a
burden on my son whom you see here, who works day and night and
deserves all the love his mother can give him, I am the assistant in a
lottery-office--at my ag