“Put in a special sum, in silver, this morning, and don’t take anything out,” said Madame Descoings.  “I shall know who goes into the studio; and if he is the only one, you will be certain it is he.”

The next day Joseph had proof of his brother’s forced loans upon him.  Philippe came to the studio when his brother was out and took the little sum he wanted.  The artist trembled for his savings.

“I’ll catch him at it, the scamp!” he said, laughing, to Madame Descoings.

“And you’ll do right:  we ought to break him of it.  I, too, I have missed little sums out of my purse.  Poor boy! he wants tobacco; he’s accustomed to it.”

“Poor boy! poor boy!” cried the artist.  “I’m rather of Fulgence and Bixiou’s opinion:  Philippe is a dead-weight on us.  He runs his head into riots and has to be shipped to America, and that costs the mother twelve thousand francs; he can’t find anything to do in the forests of the New World, and so he comes back again, and that costs twelve thousand more.  Under pretence of having carried two words of Napoleon to a general, he thinks himself a great soldier and makes faces at the Bourbons; meantime, what does he do? amuse himself, travel about, see foreign countries!  As for me, I’m not duped by his misfortunes; he doesn’t look like a man who fails to get the best of things!  Somebody finds him a good place, and there he is, leading the life of a Sardanapalus with a ballet-girl, and guzzling the funds of his journal; that costs the mother another twelve thousand francs!  I don’t care two straws for myself, but Philippe will bring that poor woman to beggary.  He thinks I’m of no account because I was never in the dragoons of the Guard; but perhaps I shall be the one to support that poor dear mother in her old age, while he, if he goes on as he does, will end I don’t know how.  Bixiou often says to me, ’He is a downright rogue, that brother of yours.’  Your grandson is right.  Philippe will be up to some mischief that will compromise the honor of the family, and then we shall have to scrape up another ten or twelve thousand francs!  He gambles every night; when he comes home, drunk as a templar, he drops on the staircase the pricked cards on which he marks the turns of the red and black.  Old Desroches is trying to get him back into the army, and, on my word on honor, I believe he would hate to serve again.  Would you ever have believed that a boy with such heavenly blue eyes and the look of Bayard could turn out such a scoundrel?”

CHAPTER V

In spite of the coolness and discretion with which Philippe played his trifling game every night, it happened every now and then that he was what gamblers call “cleaned out.”  Driven by the irresistible necessity of having his evening stake of ten francs, he plundered the household, and laid hands on his brother’s money and on all that Madame Descoings or Agathe left about.  Already