trolled out, as he mounted the staircase, "We watch to save the
Empire!" His poor mother, hearing him, used to think "How gay Philippe
is to-night!" and then she would creep up and kiss him, without
complaining of the fetid odors of the punch, and the brandy, and the
pipes.

"You ought to be satisfied with me, my dear mother," he said, towards
the end of January; "I lead the most regular of lives."

The colonel had dined five times at a restaurant with some of his army
comrades. These old soldiers were quite frank with each other on the
state of their own affairs, all the while talking of certain hopes
which they based on the building of a submarine vessel, expected to
bring about the deliverance of the Emperor. Among these former
comrades, Philippe particularly liked an old captain of the dragoons
of the Guard, named Giroudeau, in whose company he had seen his first
service. This friendship with the late dragoon led Philippe into
completing what Rabelais called "the devil's equipage"; and he added
to his drams, and his tobacco, and his play, a "fourth wheel."

One evening at the beginning of February, Giroudeau took Philippe
after dinner to the Gaite, occupying a free box sent to a theatrical
journal belonging to his nephew Finot, in whose office Giroudeau was
cashier and secretary. Both were dressed after the fashion of the
Bonapartist officers who now belonged to the Constitutional
Opposition; they wore ample overcoats with square collars, buttoned to
the chin and coming down to their heels, and decorated with the
rosette of the Legion of honor; and they carried malacca canes with
loaded knobs, which they held by strings of braided leather. The late
troopers had just (to use one of their own expressions) "made a bout