Philippe, a captain at nineteen and decorated, who had, moreover,
served the Emperor as an aide-de-camp in two battles, flattered the
mother's vanity immensely. Coarse, blustering, and without real merit
beyond the vulgar bravery of a cavalry officer, he was to her mind a
man of genius; whereas Joseph, puny and sickly, with unkempt hair and
absent mind, seeking peace, loving quiet, and dreaming of an artist's
glory, would only bring her, she thought, worries and anxieties.

The winter of 1814-1815 was a lucky one for Joseph. Secretly
encouraged by Madame Descoings and Bixiou, a pupil of Gros, he went to
work in the celebrated atelier of that painter, whence a vast variety
of talent issued in its day, and there he formed the closest intimacy
with Schinner. The return from Elba came; Captain Bridau joined the
Emperor at Lyons, accompanied him to the Tuileries, and was appointed
to the command of a squadron in the dragoons of the Guard. After the
battle of Waterloo--in which he was slightly wounded, and where he won
the cross of an officer of the Legion of honor--he happened to be near
Marshal Davoust at Saint-Denis, and was not with the army of the
Loire. In consequence of this, and through Davoust's intercession, his
cross and his rank were secured to him, but he was placed on half-pay.

Joseph, anxious about his future, studied all through this period with
an ardor which several times made him ill in the midst of these
tumultuous events.

"It is the smell of the paints," Agathe said to Madame Descoings. "He
ought to give up a business so injurious to his health."

However, all Agathe's anxieties were at this time for her son the
lieutenant-colonel. When she saw him again in 1816, reduced from the