While winning and losing, Philippe swallowed four or
five more glasses of divers liquors, and smoked ten or a dozen cigars
in going and coming, and idling along the streets. In the evening,
after consuming a few pipes at the Hollandais smoking-rooms, he would
go to some gambling-place towards ten o'clock at night. The waiter
handed him a card and a pin; he always inquired of certain
well-seasoned players about the chances of the red or the black, and
staked ten francs when the lucky moment seemed to come; never playing
more than three times, win or lose. If he won, which usually happened,
he drank a tumbler of punch and went home to his garret; but by that
time he talked of smashing the ultras and the Bourbon body-guard, and
trolled out, as he mounted the staircase, "We watch to save the
Empire!" His poor mother, hearing him, used to think "How gay Philippe
is to-night!" and then she would creep up and kiss him, without
complaining of the fetid odors of the punch, and the brandy, and the
pipes.
"You ought to be satisfied with me, my dear mother," he said, towards
the end of January; "I lead the most regular of lives."
The colonel had dined five times at a restaurant with some of his army
comrades. These old soldiers were quite frank with each other on the
state of their own affairs, all the while talking of certain hopes
which they based on the building of a submarine vessel, expected to
bring about the deliverance of the Emperor. Among these former
comrades, Philippe particularly liked an old captain of the dragoons
of the Guard, named Giroudeau, in whose company he had seen his first
service.
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