With their minds at ease as to the future of their children, M. and Madame D'Haberville lived happily to extreme old age. The captain's last words to his son were:
"Serve your new sovereign as faithfully as I have served the King of France; and may God bless you, my dear son, for the comfort that you have been to me!"
Uncle Raoul, dying three years before his brother, bid farewell to life with but one regret. He would have liked to see his little nephew fairly launched on the career of arms, the only career he considered quite worthy of a D'Haberville. Having perceived, however, that the child made great progress in his studies, he comforted himself with the thought that, if not a soldier, his nephew might turn out a _savant_ like himself and keep the torch of learning lighted in the family.
José, who had a constitution of iron and sinews of steel, who had never had an hour of sickness, regarded death as a sort of hypothetical event. One of his friends said to him one day after his master's death:
"Do you know, José, you must be at least eighty years old, and one would scarcely take you to be fifty."
José leaned upon his hip to show his steadiness, blew through his pipe to expel a bit of ashes, fumbled in his pocket with his one remaining hand till he found his tobacco and his flint and steel, and at length replied with great deliberation.
"As you know, I am the foster-brother of our late captain; I was brought up in his house; I have followed him in every campaign that he has made; I have trained his two children; I have begun, do you see, upon a new charge, the care of his grandchildren. Very well, then! As long as a D'Haberville needs my services, I don't propose to leave."
"Do you think, then, that you will live as long as the late Maqueue-salé [Methuselah]?" asked the neighbor.
"Longer still, if need be," replied José.
Then, having taken from his pocket everything which he needed, he filled his pipe, put a bit of lighted tinder on the bowl, and applied himself to smoking while he regarded his friend with the air of a man convinced of the truth of everything which he has said.
José kept his word for a dozen years; but it was in vain that he endeavored to strengthen himself against old age by occupying himself with his usual tasks, despite the remonstrances of his masters, and at last he was forced to keep the house. All the family were anxious about him.