on and the elder Desroches
were invited. All the family friends were to come, and did come, in the
evening. Joseph had invited Leon Giraud, d'Arthez, Michel Chrestien,
Fulgence Ridal, and Horace Bianchon, his friends of the fraternity.
Madame Descoings had promised Bixiou, her so-called step-son, that the
young people should play at ecarte. Desroches the younger, who had now
taken, under his father's stern rule, his degree at law, was also of
the party. Du Bruel, Claparon, Desroches, and the Abbe Loraux carefully
observed the returned exile, whose manners and coarse features, and
voice roughened by the abuse of liquors, together with his vulgar glance
and phraseology, alarmed them not a little. While Joseph was placing the
card-tables, the more intimate of the family friends surrounded Agathe
and asked,--

"What do you intend to make of Philippe?"

"I don't know," she answered, "but he is determined not to serve the
Bourbons."

"Then it will be very difficult for you to find him a place in France.
If he won't re-enter the army, he can't be readily got into government
employ," said old Du Bruel. "And you have only to listen to him to see
he could never, like my son, make his fortune by writing plays."

The motion of Agathe's eyes, with which alone she replied to this
speech, showed how anxious Philippe's future made her; they all kept
silence. The exile himself, Bixiou, and the younger Desroches were
playing at ecarte, a game which was then the rage.

"Maman Descoings, my brother has no money to play with," whispered
Joseph in the good woman's ear.

The devotee of the Royal Lottery fetched twenty francs and gave them to
the artist, who slipped them secretly into his brother's hand. All the
company were now assembled. There were two tables of boston; and the
party grew lively. Philippe proved a bad player: after winning for
awhile, he began to lose; and by eleven o'clock he owed fifty francs to
young Desroches and to Bixiou. The racket and the disputes at the ecarte
table resounded more than once in the ears of the more peaceful boston
players, who were watching Philippe surreptitiously. The exile showed
such signs of bad temper that in his final dispute with the younger
Desroches, who was none too amiable himself, the elder Desroches joined
in, and though his son was decidedly in the right, he declared he was
in the wrong, and forbade him to play any more. Madame Descoings did the
same with her grandson, who was b