In spite of the coolness and discretion¹ with which Philippe played his trifling² game every night, it happened every now and then that he was what gamblers call “cleaned out.” Driven by the irresistible³ necessity of having his evening stake of ten francs, he plundered⁴ the household, and laid hands on his brother’s money and on all that Madame Descoings or Agathe left about. Already the poor mother had had a dreadful vision in her first sleep: Philippe entered the room and took from the pockets of her gown all the money he could find. Agathe pretended to sleep, but she passed the rest of the night in tears. She saw the truth only too clearly. “One wrong act is not a vice⁵,” Madame Descoings had declared; but after so many repetitions, vice was unmistakable. Agathe could doubt no longer; her best-beloved son had neither delicacy⁶ nor honor.

On the morrow of that frightful⁷ vision, before Philippe left the house after breakfast, she drew him into her chamber⁸ and begged him, in a tone of entreaty¹⁰, to ask her for what money he needed. After that, the applications were so numerous that in two weeks Agathe was drained of all her savings¹¹. She was literally¹² without a penny, and began to think of finding work. The means of earning money had been discussed in the evenings between herself and Madame Descoings, and she had already taken patterns of worsted work to fill in, from a shop called the “Pere de Famille,”— an employment which pays about twenty sous a day. Notwithstanding Agathe’s silence on the subject, Madame Descoings had guessed the

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