“And it is all my doing that he went!” cried the poor mother, ingenious in finding excuses for Philippe’s sins.
“I advise you not to send him often on such journeys,” said old Madame Descoings to her niece.
Madame Descoings was heroic; she still paid Madame Bridau a thousand crowns; but she also still paid regularly to keep up the three numbers which had never come out since 1799. At this time she began to doubt the honesty of the management. She accused the Government authorities, believing them quite capable of suppressing the issue of the three numbers in the drawing so as to keep up the frenzied deposits of the ticket-holders.
After a brief consideration of ways and means, it seemed impossible to raise a thousand francs without selling some shares. The two women talked of pledging their plate, some of their house linen, or even part of the furniture that they could do without. Joseph, terrified by these plans, went to call on Gérard, and explained the situation; the great painter obtained a commission for him from the Master of the Royal Household to make two copies of the portrait of Louis XVIII, at the price of five hundred francs each. Though little addicted to liberality, Gros took his pupil to a shop where Joseph got all the necessary materials. But the thousand francs were to be paid only on delivery. Joseph set to work and painted four little pictures in ten days; these he sold to the dealers, and brought his mother a thousand francs; she could meet the bill. A week later, another letter from the Colonel announced to his mother that he was sailing on board a packet, the captain having accepted his promise to pay, Philippe added that he would need at least a thousand francs more on disembarking at le Havre.
“Well,” said Joseph to his mother, “I shall have finished the copies; you can take him the thousand francs.”
“Dear Joseph!” cried Agathe, embracing him with tears. “Then you really love that poor persecuted boy? He is our glory and all our hope! So young, so brave, and so unfortunate! Everything is against him; let us all three at any rate be on his side.”
“Painting is good for something after all, you see,” cried Joseph, happy at having at last won his mother’s permission to become a great artist.
Madame Bridau flew to meet her beloved son, Colonel Philippe. At le Havre she walked every day to a point beyond the round tower built by Francis I, every day imagining fresh and dreadful alarms as she watched for the American packet. None but mothers know how this kind of torment revives their first motherhood. The vessel came in one fine morning in October 1819, without damage, without having met the slightest squall.
The air of his native land, and the sight of his mother, must always have some effect, even on the coarsest soul, especially after an exile full of disasters. Philippe gave way to an effusiveness of feeling which made Agathe think to herself, “How much this one loves me!”—Alas! the young officer loved but one creature in the world, and that was Colonel Philippe. His ill-fortune in Texas, his stay in New York—a place where speculation and self-interest are carried to the highest pitch, where the coarsest selfishness becomes cynicism, where each man, living for himself alone, is compelled to tread his own path, where politeness does not exist—in short, the smallest incidents of his expedition had developed in Philippe all the bad tendencies of the disbanded trooper. He was a bully, a drinker, a smoker, assertive and rude; penury and privations had deteriorated him. Also, the Colonel considered himself persecuted; the effect of this belief on a man of low intelligence is to make him an intolerant persecutor. To Philippe the whole universe began at his head and ended at his feet; the sun shone for him alone. To crown all, his experience in Now York, interpreted by a man of action, had robbed him of every moral scruple.
With beings of his stamp there are but two modes of existence: they are believers, or they are unbelievers; they have all the virtues of an honest man, or they are carried away by every pressure of necessity; then they get into a habit of regarding their smallest interests, and every passing wish prompted by passion, as a necessity. On this plan a man may go far.
In appearance, but in appearance only, the Colonel had preserved the blunt, frank, easygoing manner of a soldier. Thus he was a very dangerous man; he seemed as guileless as a child; but having no one to think of but himself, he never did anything without carefully considering what he had best do, much as a wily prosecutor considers every twist and turn of a tricky rogue. Words cost him nothing, and he would give you as many as you chose to believe. If a man should, unluckily, be so rash as to take exception to the explanations by which he would justify the discrepancies between his conduct and his speech, the Colonel, who was a first-rate shot, who could challenge the most skilful swordsman, and who had the cool head of a man to whom life is a matter of indifference, was ready to demand satisfaction for the first sharp word. Pending that, he looked like a man so ready for blows as to
