Old Claparon, who entered
the ministry of the interior at the same time as Bridau, and was one
of the faithful friends who played whist every night with the two
widows, used to say of Philippe two or three times a month, giving him
a tap on the cheek, "Here's a young rascal who'll stand to his guns!"
The boy, thus stimulated, naturally and out of bravado, assumed a
resolute manner. That turn once given to his character, he became very
adroit at all bodily exercises; his fights at the Lyceum taught him
the endurance and contempt for pain which lays the foundation of
military valor. He also acquired, very naturally, a distaste for
study; public education being unable to solve the difficult problem of
developing "pari passu" the body and the mind.
Agathe believed that the purely physical resemblance which Philippe
bore to her carried with it a moral likeness; and she confidently
expected him to show at a future day her own delicacy of feeling,
heightened by the vigor of manhood. Philippe was fifteen years old
when his mother moved into the melancholy _appartement_ in the rue
Mazarin; and the winning ways of a lad of that age went far to confirm
the maternal beliefs. Joseph, three years younger, was like his
father, but only on the defective side. In the first place, his thick
black hair was always in disorder, no matter what pains were taken
with it; while Philippe's, notwithstanding his vivacity, was
invariably neat.
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