aunt, nor even the government; she believed in nothing but herself and
the privations she was practising. By laying aside three thousand
francs every year from her pension, she would have thirty thousand
francs at the end of ten years; which would give fifteen hundred a
year to her children. At thirty-six, she might expect to live twenty
years longer; and if she kept to the same system of economy she might
leave to each child enough for the bare necessaries of life.

Thus the two widows passed from hollow opulence to voluntary poverty,
--one under the pressure of a vice, the other through the promptings
of the purest virtue. None of these petty details are useless in
teaching the lesson which ought to be learned from this present
history, drawn as it is from the most commonplace interests of life,
but whose bearings are, it may be, only the more widespread. The view
from the windows into the student dens; the tumult of the rapins
below; the necessity of looking up at the sky to escape the miserable
sights of the damp angle of the street; the presence of that portrait,
full of soul and grandeur despite the workmanship of an amateur
painter; the sight of the rich colors, now old and harmonious, in that
calm and placid home; the preference of the mother for her eldest
child; her opposition to the tastes of the younger; in short, the
whole body of facts and circumstances which make the preamble of this
history are perhaps the generating causes to which we owe Joseph
Bridau, one of the greatest painters of the modern French school of
art.

Philippe, the elder of the two sons, was strikingly like his mother.
Though a blond lad, with blue eyes, he had the daring look which is
readily taken for intrepidity and courage. Old Claparon, who entered
the ministry of the interior at the same time as Bridau, and was one