e!"

"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 the people, the poverty that
is poetic; which Callot, Hogarth, Murillo, Charlet, Raffet, Gavarni,
Meissonier, Art itself adores and cultivates, especially during the
carnival. The man in whom poor Agathe thought she recognized her son was
astride the last two classes of poverty. She saw the ragged neck-cloth,
the scurfy hat, the broken and patched boots, the threadbare coat, whose
buttons had shed their mould, leaving the empty shrivelled pod dangling
in congruity with the torn pockets and the dirty collar. Scraps of flue
were in the creases of the coat, which showed plainly the dust that
filled it. The man drew from the pockets of his seam-rent iron-gray
trousers a pair of hands as black as those of a mechanic. A knitted
woollen