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