"No," said Joseph, "it frightens me to see gold about you."
"Ah! you'll always have a bad opinion of me in this house," cried the colonel in a thundering voice. "Can't I save my money, too?"
"Yes, yes!" cried Agathe, coming out of her hiding-place, and kissing her son. "Let us go and dine with him, Joseph!"
Joseph dared not scold his mother. He went and dressed himself; and Philippe took them to the Rocher de Cancale, where he gave them a splendid dinner, the bill for which amounted to a hundred francs.
"The devil!" muttered Joseph uneasily; "with an income of eleven hundred francs you manage, like Ponchard in the 'Dame Blance,' to save enough to buy estates."
"Bah, I'm on a run of luck," answered the dragoon, who had drunk enormously.
Hearing this speech just as they were on the steps of the cafe, and before they got into the carriage to go to the theatre,—for Philippe was to take his mother to the Cirque-Olympique (the only theatre her confessor allowed her to visit),—Joseph pinched his mother's arm. She at once pretended to feel unwell, and refused to go the theatre; Philippe accordingly took them back to the rue Mazarin, where, as soon as she was alone with Joseph in her garret, Agathe fell into a gloomy silence.
The following Sunday Philippe came again. This time his mother was visibly present at the sitting. She served the breakfast, and put several questions to the dragoon. She then learned that the nephew of old Madame Hochon, the friend of her mother, played a considerable part in literature. Philippe and his friend Giroudeau lived among a circle of journalists, actresses, and booksellers, where they were regarded in the light of cashiers. Philippe, who had been drinking kirsch before posing, was loquacious. He boasted that he was about to become a great man. But when Joseph asked a question as to his pecuniary resources he was dumb. It so happened that there was no newspaper on the following day, it being a fete, and to finish the picture Philippe proposed to sit again on the morrow. Joseph told him that the Salon was close at hand, and as he did not have the money to buy two frames for the pictures he wished to exhibit, he was forced to procure it by finishing a copy of a Rubens which had been ordered by Elie Magus, the picture-dealer. The original belonged to a wealthy Swiss banker, who had only lent it for ten days, and the next day was the last; the sitting must therefore be put off till the following Sunday.
"Is that it?" asked Philippe, pointing to a picture by Rubens on an easel.
"Yes," replied Joseph; "it is worth twenty thousand francs. That's what genius can do. It will take me all to-morrow to get the tones of the original and make the copy look so old it can't be distinguished from it."