Joseph adored his mother; Philippe let his mother adore him.
Towards her, the dragoon softened his military brutality; but he never concealed the contempt he felt for Joseph,--expressing it, however, in a friendly way.

When he looked at his brother, weak and sickly as he was at seventeen years of age, shrunken with determined toil, and over-weighted with his powerful head, he nicknamed him "Cub." Philippe's patronizing manners would have wounded any one less carelessly indifferent than the artist, who had, moreover, a firm belief in the goodness of heart which soldiers hid, he thought, beneath a brutal exterior.

Joseph did not yet know, poor boy, that soldiers of genius are as gentle and courteous in manner as other superior men in any walk of life.

All genius is alike, wherever found.
"Poor boy!" said Philippe to his mother, "we mustn't plague him; let him do as he likes." To his mother's eyes the colonel's contempt was a mark of fraternal affection.
"Philippe will always love and protect his brother," she thought to herself..