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.

Then, by some mysterious fatality, Joseph could not keep his clothes clean; dress him in new clothes, and he immediately made them look like old ones.