waistcoats, and wore black trousers and long
coats, on which his ribbon, which was very broad, showed off better. He
got shaved every morning, manicured his nails more carefully, changed his
linen every two days, from a legitimate sense of what was proper, and out
of respect for the national Order, of which he formed a part, and from
that day he was another Caravan, scrupulously clean, majestic and
condescending.

At home, he said, "my cross," at every moment, and he had become so proud
of it, that he could not bear to see men wearing any other ribbon in
their button-holes. He became especially angry on seeing strange orders:
"Which nobody ought to be allowed to wear in France," and he bore Chenet
a particular grudge, as he met him on a tram-car every evening, wearing a
decoration of one kind or another, white, blue, orange, or green.

The conversation of the two men, from the Arc de Triomphe to Neuilly, was
always the same, and on that day they discussed, first of all, various
local abuses which disgusted them both, and the Mayor of Neuilly received
his full share of their censure. Then, as invariably happens in the
company of medical man Caravan began to enlarge on the chapter of
illness, as in that manner, he hoped to obtain a little gratuitous
advice, if he was careful not to show his hand. His mother had been
causing him no little anxiety for some time; she had frequent and
prolonged fainting fits, and, although she was ninety, she would not take
care of herself.

Caravan grew quite tender-hearted when he mentioned her great age, and
more than once asked Doctor Chenet, emphasizing the word
doctor--although he was not fully qualified, being only an Offcier
de Sante--whether he had often met anyone as old as that. And he
rubbed his hands with pleasure; not, perhaps, that he cared very much
about seeing the good woman last forever here on earth, but because the
long duration of his mother's life was, as it were an earnest of old age
for himself, and he continued:

"In my family, we last long, and I am sure that, unless I meet with an
accident, I shall not die until I am very old."

The doctor looked at him with pity, and glanced for a moment at his
neighbor's red face, his short, thick neck, his "corporation," as Chenet
called it to himself, his two fat, flabby legs, and the apoplectic
rotundity of the old official; and raising the white Panama hat from his
head, he said with a snigger:

"I am not so sure of th