“Philippe will always love and protect his brother,” she thought.
In 1816 Joseph obtained his mother’s permission to convert the loft adjoining his bedroom into a painting room, and Madame Descoings gave him a small sum to purchase such things as were indispensable to his “business” as a painter; for in the minds of the two widows painting was but a trade. Joseph, with the energy and zeal that are part of such a vocation, arranged everything in his humble studio with his own hands. The landlord, at Madame Descoings’ request, made a skylight in the roof. Thus the attic became a large room, and was painted chocolate-color by Joseph; he hung some sketches against the walls; Agathe, not very willingly, had a small cast-iron stove fixed; and Joseph could now work at home, not, however, neglecting Gros’ studio or Schinner’s.
The Constitutional party, consisting largely of half-pay officers and the Bonapartists, were at that time frequently engaged in riots round the House of Representatives, in the name of the Charter, which no one would hear of, and they plotted sundry conspiracies. Philippe, who must needs get mixed up in them, was arrested, but released for lack of evidence; but the War Minister cut off his half-pay, reducing him to what might be called punishment pay. France was no longer the place for him; Philippe would end by falling into some trap laid by the Government agents. There was at that time a great talk of these agents provocateurs. So, while Philippe was playing billiards in cafés suspected of disaffection, losing his time, and getting into a habit of drinking various liqueurs, Agathe lived in mortal terrors for the great man of the family.
The “three Sages of Greece” were too well used to walking the same way every evening, to mounting the stairs to the widows’ rooms, and to finding the ladies always expecting them, and anxious to ask them the news of the day, ever to cease their visits; they came regularly to their game in the little green drawing-room. The Ministry of the Interior, thoroughly purged in 1816, had kept Claparon on its lists as one of the trimmers who murmur in an undertone the news from the Moniteur, adding, “Do not get me into trouble!” Desroches, dismissed soon after his senior du Bruel, was still fighting for his pension. These three friends, seeing Agathe’s despair, advised her to send the Colonel abroad.
“There is much talk of conspiracies, and your son, with his character, will be the victim of some such affair, for there is always someone to peach.”
“The Devil!” said du Bruel, in a low voice, and looking about him. “He is the stuff of which his Emperor used to make his marshals, and he ought not to give up his calling. Let him serve in the East, in the Indies—”
“But his health?” objected Agathe.
“Why does not he enter an office?” said Desroches. “So many private concerns are being started. I mean to get a place as head-clerk in an Assurance Company as soon as my pension is settled.”
“Philippe is a soldier; he only cares for fighting,” said Agathe the warlike.
“Then he should be a good boy, and apply for active service with—”
“This crew?” cried the widow. “Oh, you will never get me to suggest it!”
“You are wrong,” replied du Bruel. “My son has just been helped on by the Duc de Navarreins. The Bourbons are very good to all who join them honestly. Your son will be appointed as Lieutenant-Colonel to a regiment.”
“They will take none but noblemen in the cavalry, and he will never be full colonel,” cried Madame Descoings.
Agathe, in great alarm, implored Philippe to go abroad and offer his services to some foreign power. Any one of them would receive with favor an officer of the Emperor’s staff.
“Serve with foreigners?” cried Philippe in horror.
Agathe embraced her son fervently, exclaiming, “He is his father all over.”
“He is quite right,” said Joseph. “A Frenchman is too proud of his column to lead any foreign columns. Besides, Napoleon may come back again yet.”
To please his mother, a splendid idea occurred to Philippe: He might join General Lallemand in the United States, and cooperate in founding the Champ d’Asile, one of the most disastrous hoaxes ever perpetrated under the name of a National Fund. Agathe paid ten thousand francs, and went with her son to le Havre to see him on board ship.
At the end of 1817, Agathe was managing to live on the six hundred francs a year left to her in Government securities; then, by a happy inspiration, she invested at once the ten thousand francs that remained to her of her savings, and so had seven hundred francs a year more.
Joseph wished to contribute to her act of sacrifice; he went about dressed like a bum-bailiff, wearing thick shoes and blue socks; he wore no gloves; he burnt coal instead of wood; he lived on bread, milk, and cheap cheese. The poor lad never heard a word of encouragement from anybody but old Madame Descoings and from Bixiou, his schoolfellow and fellow-student, who was by this time employed in drawing capital little caricatures, besides having a small place in a Government office.
“How glad I was to see the summer of 1818!” Bridau would often say when speaking of these hard times. “The sun saved my buying fuel.”
He was already quite as good a colorist as Gros, and only went to his master for advice; he was thinking of riding a tilt at the classic school, of breaking free from Greek conventionality and the leading strings which fettered an art whose birthright is nature as it is, in the omnipotence of its creativeness and its caprice. Joseph was making ready for the struggle which, from the day when he first exhibited at the Salon, was never more to cease.
It was a terrible year for them all. Roguin, the widows’ notary, disappeared, taking with him all
