The following Sunday Philippe came again.  This time his mother was visibly present at the sitting.  She served the breakfast, and put several questions to the dragoon.  She then learned that the nephew of old Madame Hochon, the friend of her mother, played a considerable part in literature.  Philippe and his friend Giroudeau lived among a circle of journalists, actresses, and booksellers, where they were regarded in the light of cashiers.  Philippe, who had been drinking kirsch before posing, was loquacious.  He boasted that he was about to become a great man.  But when Joseph asked a question as to his pecuniary resources he was dumb.  It so happened that there was no newspaper on the following day, it being a fete, and to finish the picture Philippe proposed to sit again on the morrow.  Joseph told him that the Salon was close at hand, and as he did not have the money to buy two frames for the pictures he wished to exhibit, he was forced to procure it by finishing a copy of a Rubens which had been ordered by Elie Magus, the picture-dealer.  The original belonged to a wealthy Swiss banker, who had only lent it for ten days, and the next day was the last; the sitting must therefore be put off till the following Sunday.

“Is that it?” asked Philippe, pointing to a picture by Rubens on an easel.

“Yes,” replied Joseph; “it is worth twenty thousand francs.  That’s what genius can do.  It will take me all to-morrow to get the tones of the original and make the copy look so old it can’t be distinguished from it.”

“Adieu, mother,” said Philippe, kissing Agathe.  “Next Sunday, then.”

The next day Elie Magus was to come for his copy.  Joseph’s friend, Pierre Grassou, who was working for the same dealer, wanted to see it when finished.  To play him a trick, Joseph, when he heard his knock, put the copy, which was varnished with a special glaze of his own, in place of the original, and put the original on his easel.  Pierre Grassou was completely taken in; and then amazed and delighted at Joseph’s success.

“Do you think it will deceive old Magus?” he said to Joseph.

“We shall see,” answered the latter.

The dealer did not come as he had promised.  It was getting late; Agathe dined that day with Madame Desroches, who had lately lost her husband, and Joseph proposed to Pierre Grassou to dine at his table d’hote.  As he went out he left the key of his studio with the concierge.

An hour later Philippe appeared and said to the concierge,—­

“I am to sit this evening; Joseph will be in soon, and I will wait for him in the studio.”

The woman gave him the key; Philippe went upstairs, took the copy, thinking it was the original, and went down again; returned the key to the concierge with the excuse that he had forgotten something, and hurried off to sell his Rubens for three thousand francs.  He had taken the precaution to convey a message from his brother to Elie Magus, asking him not to call till the following day.