“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, Madame Bridau?” asked old Claparon.

“She thinks her boy will have to beg his bread because he has got the bump of painting,” said Madame Descoings; “but, for my part, I am not the least uneasy about the future of my step-son, little Bixiou, who has a passion for drawing.  Men are born to get on.”

“You are right,” said the hard and severe Desroches, who, in spite of his talents, had never himself got on in the position of assistant-head of a department.  “Happily I have only one son; otherwise, with my eighteen hundred francs a year, and a wife who makes barely twelve hundred out of her stamped-paper office, I don’t know what would become of me.  I have just placed my boy as under-clerk to a lawyer; he gets twenty-five francs a month and his breakfast.  I give him as much more, and he dines and sleeps at home.  That’s all he gets; he must manage for himself, but he’ll make his way.  I keep the fellow harder at work than if he were at school, and some day he will be a barrister.  When I give him money to go to the theatre, he is as happy as a king and kisses me.  Oh, I keep a tight hand on him, and he renders me an account of all he spends.  You are too good to your children, Madame Bridau; if your son wants to go through hardships and privations, let him; they’ll make a man of him.”

“As for my boy,” said Du Bruel, a former chief of a division, who had just retired on a pension, “he is only sixteen; his mother dotes on him; but I shouldn’t listen to his choosing a profession at his age, —­a mere fancy, a notion that may pass off.  In my opinion, boys should be guided and controlled.”

“Ah, monsieur! you are rich, you are a man, and you have but one son,” said Agathe.

“Faith!” said Claparon, “children do tyrannize over us—­over our hearts, I mean.  Mine makes me furious; he has nearly ruined me, and now I won’t have anything to do with him—­it’s a sort of independence.  Well, he is the happier for it, and so am I. That fellow was partly the cause of his mother’s death.  He chose to be a commercial traveller; and the trade just suited him, for he was no sooner in the house than he wanted to be out of it; he couldn’t keep in one place, and he wouldn’t learn anything.  All I ask of God is that I may die before he dishonors my name.  Those who have no children lose many pleasures, but they escape great sufferings.”