At breakfast, if he had won, his behavior was gay and even affectionate; he joked roughly, but still he joked, with Madame Descoings, with Joseph, and with his mother; gloomy, on the contrary, when he had lost, his brusque, rough speech, his hard glance, and his depression, frightened them.

A life of debauch and the abuse of liquors debased, day by day, a countenance that was once so handsome.
The veins of the face were swollen with blood, the features became coarse, the eyes lost their lashes and grew hard and dry.

No longer careful of his person, Philippe exhaled the miasmas of a tavern and the smell of muddy boots, which, to an observer, stamped him with debauchery.
"You ought," said Madame Descoings to Philippe during the last days of December, "you ought to get yourself new-clothed from head to foot." "And who is to pay for it ?" he answered sharply.

"My poor mother hasn't a sou; and I have five hundred francs a year.

It would take my whole year's pension to pay for the clothes; besides I have mortgaged it for three years--" "What for ?" asked Joseph.
"A debt of honor.