llowed 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 from him, the
child often slipped into Regnauld the painter's studio, where he was
encouraged to daub canvas. When the widow complained that the bargain
was not kept, Chaudet's pupils assured her that Regnauld was not
Chaudet, and they hadn't the bringing up of her son, with other
impertinences; and the atrocious young scamps composed a song with a
hundred and thirty-seven couplets on Madame Bridau.

On the evening of that sad day Agathe refused to play at cards, and sat
on her sofa plunged in such grief that the tears stood in her handsome
eyes.

"What is the matter