the father. But in spite of Joseph's pious
lies, she discovered the fact that her dinner was costing him nearly
a hundred francs a month. Alarmed at such enormous expense, and not
imaging that her son could earn much money by painting naked women, she
obtained, thanks to her confessor, the Abbe Loraux, a place worth seven
hundred francs a year in a lottery-office belonging to the Comtesse
de Bauvan, the widow of a Chouan leader. The lottery-offices of the
government, the lot, as one might say, of privileged widows, ordinarily
sufficed for the support of the family of each person who managed them.
But after the Restoration the difficulty of rewarding, within the limits
of constitutional government, all the services rendered to the cause,
led to the custom of giving to reduced women of title not only one but
two lottery-offices, worth, usually, from six to ten thousand a year. In
such cases, the widow of a general or nobleman thus "protected" did not
keep the lottery-office herself; she employed a paid manager. When these
managers were young men they were obliged to employ an assistant;
for, according to law, the offices had to be kept open till midnight;
moreover, the reports required by the minister of finance involved
considerable writing. The Comtesse de Bauvan, to whom the Abbe Loraux
explained the circumstances of the widow Bridau, promised, in case
her manager should leave, to give the place to Agathe; meantime she
stipulated that the widow should be taken as assistant, and receive a
salary of six hundred francs. Poor Agathe, who was obliged to be at the
office by ten in the morning, had scarcely time to get her dinner.
She returned to her work at seven in the evening, remaining there till
midnight. Joseph never, for two years, failed to fetch his mother at
night, and bring her back to the rue Mazarin; and often he went to take
her to dinner; his friends frequently saw him leave the opera or some
brilliant salon to be punctually at midnight at the office in the rue
Vivienne.

Agathe soon acquired the monotonous regularity of life which becomes
a stay and a support to those who have endured the shock of violent
sorrows. In the morning, after doing up her room, in which there were no
longer cats and little birds, she prepared the breakfast at her own fire
and carried it into the studio, where she ate it with her son. She then
arranged Joseph's bedroom, put out the fire in her own chamber, and
brought her sewing to t