a?" 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 gave
it to the old woman. She pretended not to hear, as she always does when
one tells her unpleasant truths, but she is no more deaf than I am, as
you know. It is all a sham, and the proof of it is, that she went u