No one has understood this opium of poverty. The lottery, all-powerful

fairy of the poor, bestowed the gift of magic hopes. The turn of the
wheel which opens to the gambler a vista of gold and happiness, lasts

no longer than a flash of lightning, but the lottery gave five days'
existence to that magnificent flash. What social power can to-day, for

the sum of five sous, give us five days' happiness and launch us
ideally into all the joys of civilization? Tobacco, a craving far more

immoral than play, destroys the body, attacks the mind, and stupefies
a nation; while the lottery did nothing of the kind. This passion,

moreover, was forced to keep within limits by the long periods that
occurred between the drawings, and by the choice of wheels which each

investor individually clung to. Madame Descoings never staked on any
but the "wheel of Paris." Full of confidence that the trey cherished

for twenty-one years was about to triumph, she now imposed upon
herself enormous privations, that she might stake a large amount of

savings upon the last drawing of the year. When she dreamed her
cabalistic visions (for all dreams did not correspond with the numbers

of the lottery), she went and told them to Joseph, who was the sole
being who would listen, and not only not scold her, but give her the

kindly words with which an artist knows how to soothe the follies of
the mind. All great talents respect and understand a real passion;

they explain it to themselves by finding the roots of it in their own
hearts or minds. Joseph's ideas was, that his brother loved tobacco

and liquors, Maman Descoings loved her trey, his mother loved God,
Desroches the younger loved lawsuits, Desroches the elder loved

angling,--in short, all the world, he said, loved something. He
himself loved the "beau ideal" in all things; he loved the poetry of

Lord Byron, the painting of Gericault, the music of Rossini, the
novels of Walter Scott. "Every one to his taste, maman," he would say;

"but your trey does hang fire terribly."
"It will turn up, and you will be rich, and my little Bixiou as well."

"Give it all to your grandson," cried Joseph; "at any rate, do what
you like best with it."

"Hey! when it turns up I shall have enough for everybody. In the first
place, you shall have a fine atelier; you sha'n't deprive yourself of

going to the opera so as to pay for your models and your colors. Do
you know, my dear boy, you make me play a pretty shabby part in that

picture of yours?"
By way of economy, Joseph had made the Descoings pose for his

magnificentpainting of a young courtesan taken by an old woman to a
Doge of Venice. This picture, one of the masterpieces of modern

painting, was mistaken by Gros himself for a Titian, and it paved the
way for the recognition which the younger artists gave to Joseph's

talent in the Salon of 1823.
"Those who know you know very well what you are," he answered gayly.

"Why need you trouble yourself about those who don't know you?"
For the last ten years Madame Descoings had taken on the ripe tints of

a russet apple at Easter. Wrinkles had formed in her superabundant
flesh, now grown pallid and flabby. Her eyes, full of life, were

bright with thoughts that were still young and vivacious, and might be
considered grasping; for there is always something of that spirit in a

gambler. Her fat face bore traces of dissimulation and of the mental
reservations hidden in the depths of her heart. Her vice necessitated

secrecy. There were also indications of gluttony in the motion of her
lips. And thus, although she was, as we have seen, an excellent and

upright woman, the eye might be misled by her appearance. She was an
admirable model for the old woman Joseph wished to paint. Coralie, a

young actress of exquisite beauty who died in the flower of her youth,
the mistress of Lucien de Rubempre, one of Joseph's friends, had given

him the idea of the picture. This noble painting has been called a
plagiarism of other pictures, while in fact it was a splendid

arrangement of three portraits. Michel Chrestien, one of his
companions at the Cenacle, lent his republican head for the senator,

to which Joseph added a few mature tints, just as he exaggerated the
expression of Madame Descoings's features. This fine picture, which

was destined to make a great noise and bring the artist much hatred,
jealousy, and admiration, was just sketched out; but, compelled as he

was to work for a living, he laid it aside to make copies of the old
masters for the dealers; thus he penetrated the secrets of their

processes, and his brush is therefore one of the best trained of the
modern school. The shrewd sense of an artist led him to conceal the

profits he was beginning to lay by from his mother and Madame
Descoings, aware that each had her road to ruin,--the one in Philippe,

the other in the lottery. This astuteness is seldom wanting among
painters; busy for days together in the solitude of their studios,

engaged in work which, up to a certain point, leaves the mind free,
they are in some respects like women,--their thoughts turn about the

little events of life, and they contrive to get at their hidden
meaning.

Joseph had bought one of those magnificent chests or coffers of a past
age, then ignored by fashion, with which he decorated a corner of his

studio, where the light danced upon the bas-reliefs and gave full
lustre to a masterpiece of the sixteenth century artisans. He saw the

necessity for a hiding-place, and in this coffer he had begun to
accumulate a little store of money. With an artist's carelessness, he

was in the habit of putting the sum he allowed for his monthly
expenses in a skull, which stood on one of the compartments of the

coffer. Since his brother had returned to live at home, he found a
constant discrepancy between the amount he spent and the sum in this

receptacle. The hundred francs a month disappeared with incredible
celerity. Finding nothing one day, when he had only spent forty or

fifty francs, he remarked for the first time: "My money must have got
wings." The next month he paid more attention to his accounts; but add

as he might, like Robert Macaire, sixteen and five are twenty-three,
he could make nothing of them. When, for the third time, he found a

still more important discrepancy, he communicated the painful fact to
Madame Descoings, who loved him, he knew, with that maternal, tender,

confiding, credulous, enthusiastic love that he had never had from his
own mother, good as she was,--a love as necessary to the early life of

an artist as the care of the hen is to her unfledged chickens. To her
alone could he confide his horrible suspicions. He was as sure of his

friends as he was of himself; and the Descoings, he knew, would take
nothing to put in her lottery. At the idea which then suggested itself

the poor woman wrung her hands. Philippe alone could have committed
this domestic theft.

"Why didn't he ask me, if he wanted it?" cried Joseph, taking a dab of
color on his palette and stirring it into the other colors without

seeing what he did. "Is it likely I should refuse him?"
"It is robbing a child!" cried the Descoings, her face expressing the

deepest disgust.
"No," replied Joseph, "he is my brother; my purse is his: but he ought

to have asked me."
"Put in a special sum, in silver, this morning, and don't take

anything out," said Madame Descoings. "I shall know who goes into the
studio; and if he is the only one, you will be certain it is he."

The next day Joseph had proof of his brother's forced loans upon him.
Philippe came to the studio when his brother was out and took the

little sum he wanted. The artist trembled for his savings.
"I'll catch him at it, the scamp!" he said, laughing, to Madame

Descoings.
"And you'll do right: we ought to break him of it. I, too, I have

missed little sums out of my purse. Poor boy! he wants tobacco; he's
accustomed to it."

"Poor boy! poor boy!" cried the artist. "I'm rather of Fulgence and
Bixiou's opinion: Philippe is a dead-weight on us. He runs his head

into riots and has to be shipped to America, and that costs the mother
twelve thousand francs; he can't find anything to do in the forests of

the New World, and so he comes back again, and that costs twelve
thousand more. Under pretence of having carried two words of Napoleon

to a general, he thinks himself a great soldier and makes faces at the
Bourbons; meantime, what does he do? amuse himself, travel about, see

foreign countries! As for me, I'm not duped by his misfortunes; he
doesn't look like a man who fails to get the best of things! Somebody