“Maman Descoings, my brother has no money to play with,” whispered Joseph in the good woman’s ear.

The devotee of the Royal Lottery fetched twenty francs and gave them to the artist, who slipped them secretly into his brother’s hand.  All the company were now assembled.  There were two tables of boston; and the party grew lively.  Philippe proved a bad player:  after winning for awhile, he began to lose; and by eleven o’clock he owed fifty francs to young Desroches and to Bixiou.  The racket and the disputes at the ecarte table resounded more than once in the ears of the more peaceful boston players, who were watching Philippe surreptitiously.  The exile showed such signs of bad temper that in his final dispute with the younger Desroches, who was none too amiable himself, the elder Desroches joined in, and though his son was decidedly in the right, he declared he was in the wrong, and forbade him to play any more.  Madame Descoings did the same with her grandson, who was beginning to let fly certain witticisms; and although Philippe, so far, had not understood him, there was always a chance that one of the barbed arrows might piece the colonel’s thick skull and put the sharp jester in peril.

“You must be tired,” whispered Agathe in Philippe’s ear; “come to bed.”

“Travel educates youth,” said Bixiou, grinning, when Madame Bridau and the colonel had disappeared.

Joseph, who got up at dawn and went to bed early, did not see the end of the party.  The next morning Agathe and Madame Descoings, while preparing breakfast, could not help remarking that soires would be terribly expensive if Philippe were to go on playing that sort of game, as the Descoings phrased it.  The worthy old woman, then seventy-six years of age, proposed to sell her furniture, give up her appartement on the second floor (which the owner was only too glad to occupy), and take Agathe’s parlor for her chamber, making the other room a sitting-room and dining-room for the family.  In this way they could save seven hundred francs a year; which would enable them to give Philippe fifty francs a month until he could find something to do.  Agathe accepted the sacrifice.  When the colonel came down and his mother had asked how he liked his little bedroom, the two widows explained to him the situation of the family.  Madame Descoings and Agathe possessed, by putting all their resources together, an income of five thousand three hundred francs, four thousand of which belonged to Madame Descoings and were merely a life annuity.  The Descoings made an allowance of six hundred a year to Bixiou, whom she had acknowledged as her grandson during the last few months, also six hundred to Joseph; the rest of her income, together with that of Agathe, was spent for the household wants.  All their savings were by this time eaten up.

“Make yourselves easy,” said the lieutenant-colonel.  “I’ll find a situation and put you to no expense; all I need for the present is board and lodging.”