After the battle of Waterloo--in which he was slightly wounded, and where he won the cross of an officer of the Legion of honor--he happened to be near Marshal Davoust at Saint-Denis, and was not with the army of the Loire.

In consequence of this, and through Davoust's intercession, his cross and his rank were secured to him, but he was placed on half-pay.
Joseph, anxious about his future, studied all through this period with an ardor which several times made him ill in the midst of these tumultuous events.
"It is the smell of the paints," Agathe said to Madame Descoings.

"He ought to give up a business so injurious to his health." However, all Agathe's anxieties were at this time for her son the lieutenant-colonel.

When she saw him again in 1816, reduced from the salary of nine thousand francs (paid to a commander in the dragoons of the Imperial Guard) to a half-pay of three hundred francs a month, she fitted up her attic rooms for him, and spent her savings in doing so.
Philippe was one of the faithful Bonapartes of the cafe Lemblin, that constitutional Boeotia; he acquired the habits, manners, style, and life of a half-pay officer; indeed, like any other young man of twenty-one, he exaggerated them, vowed in good earnest a mortal enmity to the Bourbons, never reported himself at the War department, and even refused opportunities which were offered to him for employment in the infantry with his rank of lieutenant-colonel.

In his mother's eyes, Philippe seemed in all this to be displaying a noble character.
"The father himself could have done no more," she said.
Philippe's half-pay sufficed him; he cost nothing at home, whereas all Joseph's expenses were paid by the two widows.