D'Arthez, Michel Chrestien, Fulgence Ridal, Pierre
Grassou, and Bianchon often kept Joseph company, and she heard them
talking art in a low voice in a corner of her room.
"Oh, how I wish I knew what color is!" she exclaimed one evening as
she heard them discussing one of Joseph's pictures.
Joseph, on his side, was sublimely devoted to his mother. He never
left her chamber; answered tenderness by tenderness, cherishing her
upon his heart. The spectacle was never afterwards forgotten by his
friends; and they themselves, a band of brothers in talent and
nobility of nature, were to Joseph and his mother all that they should
have been,--friends who prayed, and truly wept; not saying prayers and
shedding tears, but one with their friend in thought and action.
Joseph, inspired as much by feeling as by genius, divined in the
occasional expression of his mother's face a desire that was deep
hidden in her heart, and he said one day to d'Arthez,--
"She has loved that brigand Philippe too well not to want to see him
before she dies."
Joseph begged Bixiou, who frequented the Bohemian regions where
Philippe was still occasionally to be found, to persuade that
shameless son to play, if only out of pity, a little comedy of
tenderness which might wrap the mother's heart in a winding-sheet of
illusive happiness. Bixiou, in his capacity as an observing and
misanthropical scoffer, desired nothing better than to undertake such
a mission.
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