ain and quarrelsome. Fourteen years of office life had
withered him, and now the long evening hours which he spent at a
neighbouring cafe were finishing him off.

When Madame Theodore had quitted the house she turned with dragging steps
towards the Rue Marcadet where the Toussaints resided. Here, again, she
had no great expectations, for she well knew what ill-luck and worry had
fallen upon her brother's home. During the previous autumn Toussaint,
though he was but fifty, had experienced an attack of paralysis which had
laid him up for nearly five months. Prior to this mishap he had borne
himself bravely, working steadily, abstaining from drink, and bringing up
his three children in true fatherly fashion. One of them, a girl, was now
married to a carpenter, with whom she had gone to Le Havre, while of the
others, both boys--one a soldier, had been killed in Tonquin, and the
other Charles, after serving his time in the army, had become a working
mechanician. Still, Toussaint's long illness had exhausted the little
money which he had in the Savings Bank, and now that he had been set on
his legs again, he had to begin life once more without a copper before
him.

Madame Theodore found her sister-in-law alone in the cleanly kept room
which she and her husband occupied. Madame Toussaint was a portly woman,
whose corpulence increased in spite of everything, whether it were worry
or fasting. She had a round puffy face with bright little eyes; and was a
very worthy woman, whose only faults were an inclination for gossiping
and a fondness for good cheer. Before Madame Theodore even opened her
mouth she understood the object of her visit. "You've come on us at a bad
moment, my dear," she said, "we're stumped. Toussaint wasn't able to go
back to the works till the day before yesterday, and he'll have to ask
for an advance this evening."

As she spoke, she looked at the other with no great sympathy, hurt as she
felt by her slovenly appearance. "And Salvat," she added, "is he still
doing nothing?"

Madame Theodore doubtless foresaw the question, for she quietly lied: "He
isn't in Paris, a friend has taken him off for some work over Belgium
way, and I'm waiting for him to send us something."

Madame Toussaint still remained distrustful, however: "Ah!" she said,
"it's just as well that he shouldn't be in Paris; for with all these bomb
affairs we couldn't help thinking of him, and saying that he was quite
mad enough to mix himself