at, 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 to them two fingers,
which they shook across the bottles of the counter; and then they joined
three of their friends, who were playing dominoes, and who had been there
since midday. They exchanged cordial greetings, with the usual question:
"Anything new?" 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-story house in Courbevaie, near where the
roads meet; the ground floor was occupied by a hair-dresser. Two bed
rooms, 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, Phillip-Auguste,
were running about with all the little, dirty, mischievous brats of the
neighborhood, and playing in the gutter.

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 cross, and she never passed a day without quarreling and flying
into furious tempers. She would 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.

A little servant from Normandy, who was incredibly giddy and thoughtless,
performed the household work, and slept on the second floor in the same
room as the old woman, for fear of anything happening to her in the
night.

When Caravan got in, his wife, who suffered from a chronic passion for
cleaning, was polishing up the mahogany chairs that were scattered about
the room with a piece of flannel. She always wore cotton gloves, and
adorned her head with a cap ornamented with many colored ribbons, which
was always tilted over one ear; and whenever anyone caught her polishing,
s