t this evening; Joseph will be in soon, and I will wait for
him in the studio."

The woman gave him the key; Philippe went upstairs, took the copy,
thinking it was the original, and went down again; returned the key
to the concierge with the excuse that he had forgotten something, and
hurried off to sell his Rubens for three thousand francs. He had taken
the precaution to convey a message from his brother to Elie Magus,
asking him not to call till the following day.

That evening when Joseph returned, bringing his mother from Madame
Desroches's, the concierge told him of Philippe's freak,--how he had
called intending to wait, and gone away again immediately.

"I am ruined--unless he has had the delicacy to take the copy," cried
the painter, instantly suspecting the theft. He ran rapidly up the three
flights and rushed into his studio. "God be praised!" he ejaculated. "He
is, what he always has been, a vile scoundrel."

Agathe, who had followed Joseph, did not understand what he was saying;
but when her son explained what had happened, she stood still, with the
tears in her eyes.

"Have I but one son?" she said in a broken voice.

"We have never yet degraded him to the eyes of strangers," said Joseph;
"but we must now warn the concierge. In future we shall have to keep the
keys ourselves. I'll finish his blackguard face from memory; there's not
much to do to it."

"Leave it as it is; it will pain me too much ever to look at it,"
answered the mother, heart-stricken and stupefied at such wickedness.

Philippe had been told how the money for this copy was to be expended;
moreover he knew the abyss into which he would plunge his brother
through the loss of the Rubens; but nothing restrained him. After this
last crime Agathe never mentioned him; her face acquired an expression
of cold and concentrated and bitter despair; one thought took possession
of her mind.

"Some day," she said to herself, "we shall hear of a Bridau in the
police courts."

Two months later, as Agathe was about to start for her office, an
old officer, who announced himself as a friend of Philippe on urgent
business, called on Madame Bridau, who happened to be in Joseph's
studio.

When Giroudeau gave his name, mother and son trembled, and none the less
because the ex-dragoon had the face of a tough old sailor of the worst
type. His fishy gray eyes, his piebald moustache, the remains of his
shaggy hair fringing a skull that was the color of fr