Bonassot."

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. At that
question Caravan's looks cleared up, and he laughed until his sides
shook.

"As much as Balin--as much as Baffin, 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, as she scratched her chin:

"If we only 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 slapping
each other 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, 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:

"Another man has been put over your head again."

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

"How is mamma, upstairs?"

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; let us talk about your mother, for she has made a pretty
scene. Just imagine: 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 chased her out as though she were a beggar;
but I g