ff officer of the Emperor.

"Serve a foreign nation!" cried Philippe, with horror.

Agathe kissed her son with enthusiasm.

"His father all over!" she exclaimed.

"He is right," said Joseph. "France is too proud of her heroes to let
them be heroic elsewhere. Napoleon may return once more."

However, to satisfy his mother, Philippe took up the dazzling idea of
joining General Lallemand in the United States, and helping him to found
what was called the Champ d'Asile, one of the most disastrous swindles
that ever appeared under the name of national subscription. Agathe gave
ten thousand francs to start her son, and she went to Havre to see him
off. By the end of 1817, she had accustomed herself to live on the six
hundred francs a year which remained to her from her property in the
Funds; then, by a lucky chance, she made a good investment of the ten
thousand francs she still kept of her savings, from which she obtained
an interest of seven per cent. Joseph wished to emulate his mother's
devotion. He dressed like a bailiff; wore the commonest shoes and blue
stockings; denied himself gloves, and burned charcoal; he lived on bread
and milk and Brie cheese. The poor lad got no sympathy, except from
Madame Descoings, and from Bixiou, his student-friend and comrade, who
was then making those admirable caricatures of his, and filling a small
office in the ministry.

"With what joy I welcomed the summer of 1818!" said Joseph Bridau
in after-years, relating his troubles; "the sun saved me the cost of
charcoal."

As good a colorist by this time as Gros himself, Joseph now went to his
master for consultation only. He was already meditating a tilt against
classical traditions, and Grecian conventionalities, in short, against
the leading-strings which held down an art to which Nature _as she is_
belongs, in the omnipotence of her creations and her imagery. Joseph
made ready for a struggle which, from the day when he first exhibited in
the Salon, has never ceased. It was a terrible year. Roguin, the notary
of Madame Descoings and Madame Bridau, absconded with the moneys held
back for seven years from Madame Descoings's annuity, which by that
time were producing two thousand francs a year. Three days after this
disaster, a bill of exchange for a thousand francs, drawn by Philippe
upon his mother, arrived from New York. The poor fellow, misled like
so many others, had lost his all in the Champ d'Asile. A letter, which
accompanied