e contracted certain
habits half mechanically, and they soon became rooted in him; he got his
boots blacked on the Pont Neuf for the two sous it would have cost
him to go by the Pont des Arts to the Palais-Royal, where he consumed
regularly two glasses of brandy while reading the newspapers,--an
occupation which employed him till midday; after that he sauntered along
the rue Vivienne to the cafe Minerve, where the Liberals congregated,
and where he played at billiards with a number of old comrades. While
winning and losing, Philippe swallowed four or five more glasses of
divers liquors, and smoked ten or a dozen cigars in going and coming,
and idling along the streets. In the evening, after consuming a
few pipes at the Hollandais smoking-rooms, he would go to some
gambling-place towards ten o'clock at night. The waiter handed him a
card and a pin; he always inquired of certain well-seasoned players
about the chances of the red or the black, and staked ten francs when
the lucky moment seemed to come; never playing more than three times,
win or lose. If he won, which usually happened, he drank a tumbler
of punch and went home to his garret; but by that time he talked of
smashing the ultras and the Bourbon body-guard, and trolled out, as he
mounted the staircase, "We watch to save the Empire!" His poor mother,
hearing him, used to think "How gay Philippe is to-night!" and then she
would creep up and kiss him, without complaining of the fetid odors of
the punch, and the brandy, and the pipes.

"You ought to be satisfied with me, my dear mother," he said, towards
the end of January; "I lead the most regular of lives."

The colonel had dined five times at a restaurant with some of his army
comrades. These old soldiers were quite frank with each other on the
state of their own affairs, all the while talking of certain hopes which
they based on the building of a submarine vessel, expected to bring
about the deliverance of the Emperor. Among these former comrades,
Philippe particularly liked an old captain of the dragoons of the Guard,
named Giroudeau, in whose company he had seen his first service. This
friendship with the late dragoon led Philippe into completing what
Rabelais called "the devil's equipage"; and he added to his drams, and
his tobacco, and his play, a "fourth wheel."

One evening at the beginning of February, Giroudeau took Philippe after
dinner to the Gaite, occupying a free box sent to a theatrical journal