“And these men are fathers!” thought Agathe, weeping anew.

“What I am trying to show you, my dear Madame Bridau, is that you had better let your boy be a painter; if not, you will only waste your time.”

“If you were able to coerce him,” said the sour Desroches, “I should advise you to oppose his tastes; but weak as I see you are, you had better let him daub if he likes.”

“Console yourself, Agathe,” said Madame Descoings, “Joseph will turn out a great man.”

After this discussion, which was like all discussions, the widow’s friends united in giving her one and the same advice; which advice did not in the least relieve her anxieties.  They advised her to let Joseph follow his bent.

“If he doesn’t turn out a genius,” said Du Bruel, who always tried to please Agathe, “you can then get him into some government office.”

When Madame Descoings accompanied the old clerks to the door she assured them, at the head of the stairs, that they were “Grecian sages.”

“Madame Bridau ought to be glad her son is willing to do anything,” said Claparon.

“Besides,” said Desroches, “if God preserves the Emperor, Joseph will always be looked after.  Why should she worry?”

“She is timid about everything that concerns her children,” answered Madame Descoings.  “Well, my good girl,” she said, returning to Agathe, “you see they are unanimous; why are you still crying?”

“If it was Philippe, I should have no anxiety.  But you don’t know what goes on in that atelier; they have naked women!”

“I hope they keep good fires,” said Madame Descoings.

A few days after this, the disasters of the retreat from Moscow became known.  Napoleon returned to Paris to organize fresh troops, and to ask further sacrifices from the country.  The poor mother was then plunged into very different anxieties.  Philippe, who was tired of school, wanted to serve under the Emperor; he saw a review at the Tuileries, —­the last Napoleon ever held,—­and he became infatuated with the idea of a soldier’s life.  In those days military splendor, the show of uniforms, the authority of epaulets, offered irresistible seductions to a certain style of youth.  Philippe thought he had the same vocation for the army that his brother Joseph showed for art.  Without his mother’s knowledge, he wrote a petition to the Emperor, which read as follows:—­

Sire,—­I am the son of your Bridau; eighteen years of age, five feet six inches; I have good legs, a good constitution, and wish to be one of your soldiers.  I ask you to let me enter the army, etc.

Within twenty-four hours, the Emperor had 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