ery month to inquire after Aunt Dide. For
many years past she had taken a keen interest in the madwoman's health,
amazed to see her lasting so long, and furious with her for persisting
in living so far beyond the common term of life, until she had become a
very prodigy of longevity. What a relief, the fine morning on which
they should put under ground this troublesome witness of the past, this
specter of expiation and of waiting, who brought living before her the
abominations of the family! When so many others had been taken she, who
was demented and who had only a spark of life left in her eyes, seemed
forgotten. On this day she had found her as usual, skeleton-like, stiff
and erect in her armchair. As the keeper said, there was now no reason
why she should ever die. She was a hundred and five years old.

When she left the asylum Felicite was furious. She thought of Uncle
Macquart. Another who troubled her, who persisted in living with
exasperating obstinacy! Although he was only eighty-four years old,
three years older than herself, she thought him ridiculously aged, past
the allotted term of life. And a man who led so dissipated a life, who
had gone to bed dead drunk every night for the last sixty years!
The good and the sober were taken away; he flourished in spite of
everything, blooming with health and gaiety. In days past, just after
he had settled at the Tulettes, she had made him presents of wines,
liqueurs and brandy, in the unavowed hope of ridding the family of a
fellow who was really disreputable, and from whom they had nothing to
expect but annoyance and shame. But she had soon perceived that all this
liquor served, on the contrary, to keep up his health and spirits and
his sarcastic humor, and she had left off making him presents, seeing
that he throve on what she had hoped would prove a poison to him. She
had cherished a deadly hatred toward him since then. She would have
killed him if she had dared, every time she saw him, standing firmly on
his drunken legs, and laughing at her to her face, knowing well that she
was watching for his death, and triumphant because he did not give her
the pleasure of burying with him all the old dirty linen of the family,
the blood and mud of the two conquests of Plassans.

"You see, Felicite," he would often say to her with his air of wicked
mockery, "I am here to take care of the old mother, and the day on
which we both make up our minds to die it would be through compl