ad sent Philippe to the Imperial
Lyceum at Saint-Cyr, and six months later, in November, 1813, he
appointed him sub-lieutenant in a regiment of cavalry. Philippe spent
the greater part of that winter in cantonments, but as soon as he knew
how to ride a horse he was dispatched to the front, and went eagerly.
During the campaign in France he was made a lieutenant, after an affair
at the outposts where his bravery had saved his colonel's life. The
Emperor named him captain at the battle of La Fere-Champenoise, and took
him on his staff. Inspired by such promotion, Philippe won the cross at
Montereau. He witnessed Napoleon's farewell at Fontainebleau, raved at
the sight, and refused to serve the Bourbons. When he returned to his
mother, in July, 1814, he found her ruined.

Joseph's scholarship was withdrawn after the holidays, and Madame
Bridau, whose pension came from the Emperor's privy purse, vainly
entreated that it might be inscribed on the rolls of the ministry of the
interior. Joseph, more of a painter than ever, was delighted with the
turn of events, and entreated his mother to let him go to Monsieur
Regnauld, promising to earn his own living. He declared he was quite
sufficiently advanced in the second class to get on without rhetoric.
Philippe, a captain at nineteen and decorated, who had, moreover, served
the Emperor as an aide-de-camp in two battles, flattered the mother's
vanity immensely. Coarse, blustering, and without real merit beyond the
vulgar bravery of a cavalry officer, he was to her mind a man of genius;
whereas Joseph, puny and sickly, with unkempt hair and absent mind,
seeking peace, loving quiet, and dreaming of an artist's glory, would
only bring her, she thought, worries and anxieties.

The winter of 1814-1815 was a lucky one for Joseph. Secretly encouraged
by Madame Descoings and Bixiou, a pupil of Gros, he went to work in
the celebrated atelier of that painter, whence a vast variety of
talent issued in its day, and there he formed the closest intimacy with
Schinner. The return from Elba came; Captain Bridau joined the Emperor
at Lyons, accompanied him to the Tuileries, and was appointed to the
command of a squadron in the dragoons of the Guard. After the battle of
Waterloo--in which he was slightly wounded, and where he won the cross
of an officer of the Legion of honor--he happened to be near Marshal
Davoust at Saint-Denis, and was not with the army of the Loire. In
consequence of this, and t