rendered to the cause, led to the custom of giving to reduced women of title not only one but two lottery-offices, worth, usually, from six to ten thousand a year.  In such cases, the widow of a general or nobleman thus “protected” did not keep the lottery-office herself; she employed a paid manager.  When these managers were young men they were obliged to employ an assistant; for, according to law, the offices had to be kept open till midnight; moreover, the reports required by the minister of finance involved considerable writing.  The Comtesse de Bauvan, to whom the Abbe Loraux explained the circumstances of the widow Bridau, promised, in case her manager should leave, to give the place to Agathe; meantime she stipulated that the widow should be taken as assistant, and receive a salary of six hundred francs.  Poor Agathe, who was obliged to be at the office by ten in the morning, had scarcely time to get her dinner.  She returned to her work at seven in the evening, remaining there till midnight.  Joseph never, for two years, failed to fetch his mother at night, and bring her back to the rue Mazarin; and often he went to take her to dinner; his friends frequently saw him leave the opera or some brilliant salon to be punctually at midnight at the office in the rue Vivienne.

Agathe soon acquired the monotonous regularity of life which becomes a stay and a support to those who have endured the shock of violent sorrows.  In the morning, after doing up her room, in which there were no longer cats and little birds, she prepared the breakfast at her own fire and carried it into the studio, where she ate it with her son.  She then arranged Joseph’s bedroom, put out the fire in her own chamber, and brought her sewing to the studio, where she sat by the little iron stove, leaving the room if a comrade or a model entered it.  Though she understood nothing whatever of art, the silence of the studio suited her.  In the matter of art she made not the slightest progress; she attempted no hypocrisy; she was utterly amazed at the importance they all attached to color, composition, drawing.  When the Cenacle friends or some brother-painter, like Schinner, Pierre Grassou, Leon de Lora,—­a very youthful “rapin” who was called at that time Mistigris,—­discussed a picture, she would come back afterwards, examine it attentively, and discover nothing to justify their fine words and their hot disputes.  She made her son’s shirts, she mended his stockings, she even cleaned his palette, supplied him with rags to wipe his brushes, and kept things in order in the studio.  Seeing how much thought his mother gave to these little details, Joseph heaped attentions upon her in return.  If mother and son had no sympathies in the matter of art, they were at least bound together by signs of tenderness.  The mother had a purpose.  One morning as she was petting Joseph while he was sketching a large picture (finished in after years and never understood), she said, as it were, casually and aloud,—­