“Ah! my children,” cried Madame Descoings, “I am stabbed to the heart: my trey will turn up, I am certain of it. I am not thinking of myself, but of you two. Philippe is a monster,” she continued, addressing her niece; “he does not love you after all that you have done for him. If you do not protect yourself against him he will bring you to beggary. Promise me to sell out your Funds and buy a life-annuity. Joseph has a good profession and he can live. If you will do this, dear Agathe, you will never be an expense to Joseph. Monsieur Desroches has just started his son as a notary; he would take your twelve thousand francs and pay you an annuity.” Joseph seized his mother’s candlestick, rushed up to his studio, and came down with three hundred francs. “Here, Madame Descoings!” he cried, giving her his little store, “it is no business of ours what you do with your money; we owe you what you have lost, and here it is, almost in full.” “Take your poor little all?--the fruit of those privations that have made me so unhappy! are you mad, Joseph?” cried the old woman, visibly torn between her dogged faith in the coming trey, and the sacrilege of accepting such a sacrifice. “Oh! take it if you like,” said Agathe, who was moved to tears by this action of her true son. Madame Descoings took Joseph by the head, and kissed him on the forehead:-- “My child,” she said, “don’t tempt me. I might only lose it. The lottery, you see, is all folly.” No more heroic words were ever uttered in the hidden dramas of domestic life. It was, indeed, affection triumphant over inveterate vice. At this instant, the clocks struck midnight. “It is too late now,” said Madame Descoings. “Oh!” cried Joseph, “here are your cabalistic numbers.” The artist sprang at the paper, and rushed headlong down the staircase to pay the stakes. When he was no longer present, Agathe and Madame Descoings burst into tears. “He has gone, the dear love,” cried the old gambler; “but it shall all be his; he pays his own money.” Unhappily, Joseph did not know the way to any of the lottery-offices, which in those days were as well known to most people as the cigarshops to a smoker in ours. The painter ran along, reading the street names upon the lamps. When he asked the passers-by to show him a lottery-office, he was told they were all closed, except the one under the portico of the Palais-Royal which was sometimes kept open a little later. He flew to the Palais-Royal: the office was shut. “Two minutes earlier, and you might have paid your stake,” said one of the vendors of tickets, whose beat was under the portico, where he vociferated this singular cry: “Twelve hundred francs for forty sous,” and offered tickets all paid up.