Caravan grew quite tender-hearted when he mentioned her great age, and more than once asked Doctor Chenet, emphasizing the word doctor—­although he had no right to the title, being only an Officier de Sante, and, as such, not fully qualified—­whether he had often met anyone as old as that.  And he rubbed his hands with pleasure; not, perhaps, that he cared very much about seeing the good woman last for ever here on earth, but because the long duration of his mother’s life was, as it were, an earnest of old age for himself, and he continued: 

“Oh!  In my family, we last long, and I am sure that, unless I meet with an accident, I shall not die until I am very old.”

The medico looked at him with pity, and glanced for a moment at his neighbor’s red face, his short, thick neck, his “corporation,” as Chenet called it to himself, that hung down between two flaccid, fat legs, and his apoplectic rotundity of the old, flabby official, and, lifting the white Panama hat which he wore, from his head, he said, with a snigger:—­

“I am not so sure of that, old fellow; your mother is as tough as nails, and I should say that your life is not a very good one.”

This rather upset Caravan, who did not speak again until the tram put them down at their destination, where the two friends got out, and Chenet asked his friend to have a glass of vermouth at the Cafe du Globe, opposite, which both of them were in the habit of frequenting.  The proprietor, who was a friend of theirs, held out two fingers to them, which they shook across the bottles on the counter, and then they joined three of their friends, who were playing at dominoes, and who had been there since midday.  They exchanged cordial greetings, with the usual inquiries:—­“Anything fresh?” and then the three players continued their game, and held out their hands without looking up, when the others wished them “Good-night,” and then they both went home to dinner.

Caravan lived in a small, two-storied house in Courbevoie, near where the roads meet; the ground floor was occupied by a hair-dresser.  Two bedrooms, a dining-room and a kitchen, formed the whole of their apartments, and Madame Caravan spent nearly her whole time in cleaning them up, while her daughter, Marie-Louise, who was twelve, and her son, Philippe-Auguste, were running about with all the little, dirty, mischievous brats of the neighborhood, and playing in the gutters.

Caravan had installed his mother, whose avarice was notorious in the neighborhood, and who was terribly thin, in the room above them.  She was always in a bad temper, and she never passed a day without quarreling and flying into furious tempers.  She used to apostrophize the neighbors, who were standing at their own doors, the coster-mongers, the street-sweepers, and the street-boys, in the most violent language, and the latter, to have their revenge, used to follow her at a distance when she went out, and call out rude things after her.