tunate convicts who are riveted to their desk. That
unexpected dignity gave him a high and new idea of his own capacities,
and altogether changed him. He immediately left off wearing light
trousers and fancy 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 Officier 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 "corporatio