Agathe, notwithstanding this preference, was an excellent mother. She
loved Joseph, though not blindly; she simply was unable to understand
him. Joseph adored his mother; Philippe let his mother adore him.
Towards her, the dragoon softened his military brutality; but he never
concealed the contempt he felt for Joseph,--expressing it, however, in
a friendly way. When he looked at his brother, weak and sickly as he
was at seventeen years of age, shrunken with determined toil, and
over-weighted with his powerful head, he nicknamed him "Cub."
Philippe's patronizing manners would have wounded any one less
carelessly indifferent than the artist, who had, moreover, a firm
belief in the goodness of heart which soldiers hid, he thought,
beneath a brutal exterior. Joseph did not yet know, poor boy, that
soldiers of genius are as gentle and courteous in manner as other
superior men in any walk of life. All genius is alike, wherever found.

"Poor boy!" said Philippe to his mother, "we mustn't plague him; let
him do as he likes."

To his mother's eyes the colonel's contempt was a mark of fraternal
affection.

"Philippe will always love and protect his brother," she thought to
herself.



CHAPTER III

In 1816, Joseph obtained his mother's permission to convert the garret