"Good," said Joseph to his mother, "I shall have finished my copies by
that time, and you can carry him the money."

"Dear Joseph!" cried Agathe in tears, kissing her son, "God will bless
you. You do love him, then, poor persecuted fellow? He is indeed our
glory and our hope for the future. So young, so brave, so unfortunate!
everything is against him; we three must always stand by him."

"You see now that painting is good for something," cried Joseph,
overjoyed to have won his mother's permission to be a great artist.

Madame Bridau rushed to meet her beloved son, Colonel Philippe, at
Havre. Once there, she walked every day beyond the round tower built
by Francois I., to look out for the American packet, enduring the
keenest anxieties. Mothers alone know how such sufferings quicken
maternal love. The vessel arrived on a fine morning in October, 1819,
without delay, and having met with no mishap. The sight of a mother
and the air of one's native land produces a certain affect on the
coarsest nature, especially after the miseries of a sea-voyage.
Philippe gave way to a rush of feeling, which made Agathe think to
herself, "Ah! how he loves me!" Alas, the hero loved but one person in
the world, and that person was Colonel Philippe. His misfortunes in
Texas, his stay in New York,--a place where speculation and
individualism are carried to the highest pitch, where the brutality of
self-interest attains to cynicism, where man, essentially isolated, is
compelled to push his way for himself and by himself, where politeness
does not exist,--in fact, even the minor events of Philippe's journey
had developed in him the worst traits of an old campaigner: he had
grown brutal, selfish, rude; he drank and smoked to excess; physical
hardships and poverty had depraved him. Moreover, he considered