Short and lean, with a thin face and long and carefully tended beard, he had the bearing of one who is both vain 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.