The old tradeswoman, too, had reflected during the night as to the means of saving the honor of the family. At daybreak she got out of bed, and crept to her friend’s room.
“It is not your part, nor Philippe’s, to manage this delicate matter,” said she. “Though our two old friends, Claparon and du Bruel, are dead, we still have old Monsieur Desroches, who has good judgment, and I will go to him this morning. Desroches must report that Philippe has been the victim of his confidence in a friend, and that his weakness in such cases quite unfits him for the post of cashier. What has happened once may happen again: Philippe prefers to retire, thus he will not be dismissed.”
Agathe, seeing in this official lie a cloak for Philippe’s honor, at any rate in the eyes of strangers, embraced the old lady, who went out to settle the dreadful business. Philippe had slept the sleep of the just.
“She is a sharp one!” said he with a smile, when Agathe explained to her son why breakfast was late.
Old Desroches, the last friend left to those two poor women, still remembered, in spite of his hard nature, that it was Bridau who had given him his place, and he executed the delicate task proposed to him with the skill of an accomplished diplomat. He came to dine with the family, and to remind Agathe that she must go on the morrow to the Treasury in the Rue Vivienne to sign the transfer of the securities to be sold, and take out the coupons for six hundred francs, her remaining dividends. The old man did not leave this hapless household till he had obtained Philippe’s signature to a petition to the Minister of War begging to be reinstated in active service. Desroches pledged his word to the two women that he would forward the petition through the departments of the War Office, and take advantage of the Duke’s triumph over Philippe with the dancer to secure that great man’s interest.
“Within three months he will be lieutenant-colonel in the Duc de Maufrigneuse’s regiment, and you will be rid of him.”
Desroches went home loaded with blessings by the two women and Joseph.
As to the newspaper, as Finot had prophesied, two months later it had ceased to appear. Thus, to the world, Philippe’s defalcation had no results. But Agathe’s motherly feeling had been deeply wounded. Her belief in her son once shaken, she lived in perpetual terrors, mitigated by satisfaction when she found that her sinister anticipations were unfounded.
When men like Philippe, gifted with personal courage, but moral cowards and sneaks, see the course of affairs around them following its usual channel after a plunge in which their moral status has almost perished, this acceptance of the situation by their family or friends is an encouragement. They are sure of impunity; their perverted mind, their gratified passions, lead them to consider how they succeeded in evading the social law, and they become atrociously clever. Thus, a fortnight after, Philippe, once more an idle man and a lounger, inevitably returned to the life of cafés, to his sittings relieved by drams, his long games of billiards with punch, his nightly visit to the gaming-tables, where he risked a small stake at a lucky moment, and pocketed such little winnings as sufficed to pay for his dissipations. He made a display of economy to deceive his mother and her friend, wore an almost filthy hat, hairless at the edges of the crown and brim, patched boots, a threadbare greatcoat, on which the red rosette scarcely showed, so darkened was it by long wear and soiled with splashes of spirits or of coffee. His greenish buckskin gloves lasted a long time, and he never cast off his satin stock till it looked like tow.
Mariette was this man’s only love, and the dancer’s faithlessness did much to harden his heart. Now and then, when he won more than he expected, or if he were supping with his friend Giroudeau, Philippe would court a Venus of the street, out of a sort of brutal scorn for all her sex. Still, he kept regular hours, breakfasted and dined at home, and came in every night at about one. Three months of this wretched life restored Agathe to some little confidence.
As for Joseph, who was at work on the splendid picture to which he owed his reputation, he lived in his studio. On the word of her grandson, who firmly believed in Joseph’s triumph, Madame Descoings lavished maternal care on the painter; she carried up his breakfast in the morning, ran his errands, blacked his boots. The artist never appeared till dinnertime, and gave his evenings to his friends of the Artistic Society. He also read a great deal; he was giving himself the thorough and serious education which a man gets only from himself, and which every man of talent does, in fact, give himself between the ages of twenty and thirty. Agathe, seeing so little of Joseph, and feeling no uneasiness about him, lived in Philippe only, since he alone gave her those alternations of rising fears and terrors allayed which are, to a certain extent, the very life of feeling, and as necessary to motherhood as love is.
Desroches, who came about once a week to call on the widow of his old friend and chief, could give her hopes: the Duc de Maufrigneuse had applied for
