He was conscious within himself of the inability to live otherwise than as he had been living the last year.

The luxury that surrounded Mariette, the dinners, the suppers, the evenings in the side-scenes, the animation of wits and journalists, the sort of racket that went on around him, the delights that tickled both his senses and his vanity,--such a life, found only in Paris, and offering daily the charm of some new thing, was now more than habit,--it had become to Philippe as much a necessity as his tobacco or his brandy.

He saw plainly that he could not live without these continual enjoyments.

The idea of suicide came into his head; not on account of the deficit which must soon be discovered in his accounts, but because he could no longer live with Mariette in the atmosphere of pleasure in which he had disported himself for over a year.

Full of these gloomy thoughts, he entered for the first time his brother's painting-room, where he found the painter in a blue blouse, copying a picture for a dealer.
"So that's how pictures are made," said Philippe, by way of opening the conversation.
"No," said Joseph, "that is how they are copied." "How much do they pay you for that ?" "Eh! never enough; two hundred and fifty francs.