ross for the next
three years; he is temporarily displaced from his office, and he has
literally nothing. He will kill himself, madame, unless we can put him
into the private asylum of Doctor Dubois. It is a decent hospital,
where they will take him for ten francs a day. Florentine and I will
pay half, if you will pay the rest; it won't be for more than two
months."

"Monsieur, it is difficult for a mother not to be eternally grateful
to you for your kindness to her son," replied Agathe; "but this son is
banished from my heart, and as for money, I have none. Not to be a
burden on my son whom you see here, who works day and night and
deserves all the love his mother can give him, I am the assistant in a
lottery-office--at my age!"

"And you, young man," said the old dragoon to Joseph; "can't you do as
much for your brother as a poor dancer at the Porte-Saint-Martin and
an old soldier?"

"Look here!" said Joseph, out of patience; "do you want me to tell you
in artist language what I think of your visit? Well, you have come to
swindle us on false pretences."

"To-morrow your brother shall go to the hospital."

"And he will do very well there," answered Joseph. "If I were in like
case, I should go there too."

Giroudeau withdrew, much disappointed, and also really mortified at
being obliged to send to a hospital a man who had carried the
Emperor's orders at the battle of Montereau. Three months later, at
the end of July, as Agathe one morning was crossing the Pont Neuf to
avoid paying a sou at the Pont des Arts, she saw, coming along by the
shops of the Quai de l'Ecole, a man bearing all the signs of
second-class poverty, who, she thought, resembled Philippe. In Paris,
there are three distinct classes of poverty. First, the poverty of the
man who preserves appearances, and to whom a future still belongs; this
is the poverty of young men, artists, men of the world, momentarily
unfortunate. The outward signs of their distress are not visible,
except under the microscope of a close observer. These persons are the
equestrian order of poverty; they continue to drive about in
cabriolets. In the second order we find old men who have become
indifferent to everything, and, in June, put the cross of the Legion
of honor on alpaca overcoats; that is the poverty of small incomes,
--of old clerks, who live at Sainte-Perine and care no longer about
their outward man. Then comes, in the third place, poverty in rags,
the poverty of