She took up the Naval Year Book, which she always kept close at hand, and looked him up.

“’Bonassot—­Toulon.  Born in 1851.  Student-Commissioner in 1871.  Sub-Commissioner in 1875.’  Has he been to sea?” she continued, and at that question Caravan’s looks cleared up, and he laughed until his sides shook.

“Just like Balin—­just like Balin, his chief.”  And he added an old office joke, and laughed more than ever: 

“It would not even do to send them by water to inspect the Point-du-Jour, for they would be sick on the penny steamboats on the Seine.”

But she remained as serious as if she had not heard him, and then she said in a low voice, while she scratched her chin: 

“If only we had a Deputy to fall back upon.  When the Chamber hears everything that is going on at the Admiralty, the Minister will be turned out...”

She was interrupted by a terrible noise on the stairs.  Marie-Louise and Philippe-Auguste, who had just come in from the gutter, were giving each other slaps all the way upstairs.  Their mother rushed at them furiously, and taking each of them by an arm, she dragged them into the room, shaking them vigorously, but as soon as they saw their father, they rushed up to him, and he kissed them affectionately, and taking one of them on each knee, he began to talk to them.

Philippe-Auguste was an ugly, ill-kempt little brat, dirty from head to foot, with the face of an idiot, and Marie-Louise was already like her mother—­spoke like her, repeated her words, and even imitated her movements.  She also asked him whether there was anything fresh at the office, and he replied merrily: 

“Your friend, Ramon, who comes and dines here every Sunday, is going to leave us, little one.  There is a new second head-clerk.”

She looked at her father, and with a precocious child’s pity, she said: 

“So somebody has been put over your head again!”

He stopped laughing, and did not reply, and then, in order, to create a diversion, he said, addressing his wife, who was cleaning the windows: 

“How is mamma, up there?”

Madame Caravan left off rubbing, turned round, pulled her cap up, as it had fallen quite on to her back, and said, with trembling lips: 

“Ah! yes; just speak to your mother about this, for she has created a pretty scene.  Just think that a short time ago Madame Lebaudin, the hairdresser’s wife, came upstairs to borrow a packet of starch of me, and, as I was not at home, your mother called her a beggar woman, and turned her out; but I gave it to the old woman.  She pretended not to hear, like she always does when one tells her unpleasant truths, but she is no more deaf than I am, as you know.  It is all a sham, and the proof of it is, that she went up to her own room immediately, without saying a word.”