Cousin Pons

M. Camusot senior answered that he had gone out of his depth in railway speculations.  He quite admitted that it was necessary to come to the rescue, but put off the day until shares should rise, as they were expected to do.

This half-promise, extracted some few days before Fraisier’s visit, had plunged the Presidente into depths of affliction.  It was doubtful whether the ex-proprietor of Marville was eligible for re-election without the land qualification.

Fraisier found no difficulty in obtaining speech of Madeleine Vivet; such viper natures own their kinship at once.

“I should like to see Mme. la Presidente for a few moments, mademoiselle,” Fraisier said in bland accents; “I have come on a matter of business which touches her fortune; it is a question of a legacy, be sure to mention that.  I have not the honor of being known to Mme. la Presidente, so my name is of no consequence.  I am not in the habit of leaving my chambers, but I know the respect that is due to a President’s wife, and I took the trouble of coming myself to save all possible delay.”

The matter thus broached, when repeated and amplified by the waiting-maid, naturally brought a favorable answer.  It was a decisive moment for the double ambition hidden in Fraisier’s mind.  Bold as a petty provincial attorney, sharp, rough-spoken, and curt as he was, he felt as captains feel before the decisive battle of a campaign.  As he went into the little drawing-room where Amelie was waiting for him, he felt a slight perspiration breaking out upon his forehead and down his back.  Every sudorific hitherto employed had failed to produce this result upon a skin which horrible diseases had left impervious.  “Even if I fail to make my fortune,” said he to himself, “I shall recover.  Poulain said that if I could only perspire I should recover.”

The Presidente came forward in her morning gown.

“Madame—­” said Fraisier, stopping short to bow with the humility by which officials recognize the superior rank of the person whom they address.

“Take a seat, monsieur,” said the Presidente.  She saw at a glance that this was a man of law.

“Mme. la Presidente, if I take the liberty of calling your attention to a matter which concerns M. le President, it is because I am sure that M. de Marville, occupying, as he does, a high position, would leave matters to take their natural course, and so lose seven or eight hundred thousand francs, a sum which ladies (who, in my opinion, have a far better understanding of private business than the best of magistrates)—­a sum which ladies, I repeat, would by no means despise—­”

“You spoke of a legacy,” interrupted the lady, dazzled by the wealth, and anxious to hide her surprise.  Amelie de Marville, like an impatient novel-reader, wanted the end of the story.

“Yes, madame, a legacy that you are like to lose; yes, to lose altogether; but I can, that is, I could, recover it for you, if—­”

“Speak out, monsieur.”  Mme. de Marville spoke frigidly, scanning Fraisier as she spoke with a sagacious eye.

“Madame, your eminent capacity is known to me; I was once at Mantes.  M. Leboeuf, President of the Tribunal, is acquainted with M. de Marville, and can answer inquiries about me—­”

The Presidente’s shrug was so ruthlessly significant, that Fraisier was compelled to make short work of his parenthetic discourse.

“So distinguished a woman will at once understand why I speak of myself in the first place.  It is the shortest way to the property.”

To this acute observation the lady replied by a gesture.  Fraisier took the sign for a permission to continue.

“I was an attorney, madame, at Mantes.  My connection was all the fortune that I was likely to have.  I took over M. Levroux’s practice.  You knew him, no doubt?”

The Presidente inclined her head.

“With borrowed capital and some ten thousand francs of my own, I went to Mantes.  I had been with Desroches, one of the cleverest attorneys in Paris, I had been his head-clerk for six years.  I was so unlucky as to make an enemy of the attorney for the crown at Mantes, Monsieur—­”

“Olivier Vinet.”

“Son of the Attorney-General, yes, madame.  He was paying his court to a little person—­”

“Whom?”

“Mme. Vatinelle.”

“Oh!  Mme. Vatinelle.  She was very pretty and very—­er—­when I was there—­”

“She was not unkind to me:  inde iroe,” Fraisier continued.  “I was industrious; I wanted to repay my friends and to marry; I wanted work; I went in search of it; and before long I had more on my hands than anybody else.  Bah!  I had every soul in Mantes against me—­attorneys, notaries, and even the bailiffs.  They tried to fasten a quarrel on me.  In our ruthless profession, as you know, madame, if you wish to ruin a man, it is soon done.  I was concerned for both parties in a case, and they found it out.  It was a trifle irregular; but it is sometimes done in Paris, attorneys in certain cases hand the rhubarb and take the senna.  They do things differently at Mantes.  I had done M. Bouyonnet this little service before; but, egged on by his colleagues and the attorney for the crown, he betrayed me.—­I am keeping back nothing, you see.—­There was a great hue and cry about it.  I was a scoundrel; they made me out blacker than Marat; forced me to sell out; ruined me.  And I am in Paris now.  I have tried to get together a practice; but my health is so bad, that I have only two quiet hours out of the twenty-four.

“At this moment I have but one ambition, and a very small one.  Some day,” he continued, “you will be the wife of the Keeper of the Seals, or of the Home Secretary, it may be; but I, poor and sickly as I am, desire nothing but a post in which I can live in peace for the rest of my life, a place without any opening in which to vegetate.  I should like to be a justice of the peace in Paris.  It would be a mere trifle for you and M. le President to gain the appointment for me; for the present Keeper of the Seals must be anxious to keep on good terms with you . . .

“And that is not all, madame,” added Fraisier.  Seeing that Mme. de Marville was about to speak, he cut her short with a gesture.  “I have a friend, the doctor in attendance on the old man who ought to leave his property to M. le President. (We are coming to the point, you see.) The doctor’s co-operation is indispensable, and the doctor is precisely in my position:  he has abilities, he is unlucky.  I learned through him how far your interests were imperiled; for even as I speak, all may be over, and the will disinheriting M. le President may have been made.  This doctor wishes to be head-surgeon of a hospital or of a Government school.  He must have a position in Paris equal to mine. . . .  Pardon me if I have enlarged on a matter so delicate; but we must have no misunderstandings in this business.  The doctor is, besides, much respected and learned; he saved the life of the Comtesse Popinot’s great-uncle, M. Pillerault.

“Now, if you are so good as to promise these two posts—­the appointment of justice of the peace and the sinecure for my friend—­I will undertake to bring you the property, almost intact.—­Almost intact, I say, for the co-operation of the legatee and several other persons is absolutely indispensable, and some obligations will be incurred.  You will not redeem your promises until I have fulfilled mine.”

The Presidente had folded her arms, and for the last minute or two sat like a person compelled to listen to a sermon.  Now she unfolded her arms, and looked at Fraisier as she said, “Monsieur, all that you say concerning your interests has the merit of clearness; but my own interests in the matter are by no means so clear—­”

“A word or two will explain everything, madame.  M. le President is M. Pons’ first cousin once removed, and his sole heir.  M. Pons is very ill; he is about to make his will, if it is not already made, in favor of a German, a friend of his named Schmucke; and he has more than seven hundred thousand francs to leave.  I hope to have an accurate valuation made in two or three days—­”

“If this is so,” said the Presidente, “I made a great mistake in quarreling with him and throwing the blame——­” she thought aloud, amazed by the possibility of such a sum.

“No, madame.  If there had been no rupture, he would be as blithe as a lark at this moment, and might outlive you and M. le President and me. . . .  The ways of Providence are mysterious, let us not seek to fathom them,” he added to palliate to some extent the hideous idea.  “It cannot be helped.  We men of business look at the practical aspects of things.  Now you see clearly, madame, that M. de Marville in his public position would do nothing, and could do nothing, as things are.  He has broken off all relations with his cousin.  You see nothing now of Pons; you have forbidden him the house; you had excellent reasons, no doubt, for doing as you did, but the old man is ill, and he is leaving his property to the only friend left to him.  A President of the Court of Appeal in Paris could say nothing under such circumstances if the will was made out in due form.  But between ourselves, madame, when one has a right to expect seven or eight hundred thousand francs—­or a million, it may be (how should I know?)—­it is very unpleasant to have it slip through one’s fingers, especially if one happens to be the heir-at-law. . . .  But, on the other hand, to prevent this, one is obliged to stoop to dirty work; work so difficult, so ticklish, bringing you cheek by jowl with such low people, servants and subordinates; and into such close contact with them too, that no barrister, no attorney in Paris could take up such a case.

“What you want is a briefless barrister like me,” said he, “a man who should have real and solid ability, who has learned to be devoted, and yet, being in a precarious position, is brought temporarily to a level with such people.  In my arrondissement I undertake business for small tradespeople and working folk.  Yes, madame, you see the straits to which I have been brought by the enmity of an attorney for the crown, now a deputy-public prosecutor in Paris, who could not forgive me my superiority.—­I know you, madame, I know that your influence means a solid certainty; and in such a service rendered to you, I saw the end of my troubles and success for my friend Dr. Poulain.”

The lady sat pensive during a moment of unspeakable torture for Fraisier.  Vinet, an orator of the Centre, attorney-general (procureur-general) for the past sixteen years, nominated half-a-score of times for the chancellorship, the father, moreover, of the attorney for the crown at Mantes who had been appointed to a post in Paris within the last year—­Vinet was an enemy and a rival for the malignant Presidente.  The haughty attorney-general did not hide his contempt for President Camusot.  This fact Fraisier did not know, and could not know.

“Have you nothing on your conscience but the fact that you were concerned for both parties?” asked she, looking steadily at Fraisier.

“Mme. la Presidente can see M. Leboeuf; M. Leboeuf was favorable to me.”

“Do you feel sure that M. Leboeuf will give M. de Marville and M. le Comte Popinot a good account of you?”

“I will answer for it, especially now that M. Olivier Vinet has left Mantes; for between ourselves, good M. Leboeuf was afraid of that crabbed little official.  If you will permit me, Madame La Presidente, I will go to Mantes and see M. Leboeuf.  No time will be lost, for I cannot be certain of the precise value of the property for two or three days.  I do not wish that you should know all the ins and outs of this affair; you ought not to know them, Mme. la Presidente, but is not the reward that I expect for my complete devotion a pledge of my success?”

“Very well.  If M. Leboeuf will speak in your favor, and if the property is worth as much as you think (I doubt it myself), you shall have both appointments, if you succeed, mind you—­”

“I will answer for it, madame.  Only, you must be so good as to have your notary and your attorney here when I shall need them; you must give me a power of attorney to act for M. le President, and tell those gentlemen to follow my instructions, and to do nothing on their own responsibility.”

“The responsibility rests with you,” the Presidente answered solemnly, “so you ought to have full powers.—­But is M. Pons very ill?” she asked, smiling.

“Upon my word, madame, he might pull through, especially with so conscientious a doctor as Poulain in attendance; for this friend of mine, madame, is simply an unconscious spy directed by me in your interests.  Left to himself, he would save the old man’s life; but there is some one else by the sickbed, a portress, who would push him into the grave for thirty thousand francs.  Not that she would kill him outright; she will not give him arsenic, she is not so merciful; she will do worse, she will kill him by inches; she will worry him to death day by day.  If the poor old man were kept quiet and left in peace; if he were taken into the country and cared for and made much of by friends, he would get well again; but he is harassed by a sort of Mme. Evrard.  When the woman was young she was one of thirty Belles Ecailleres, famous in Paris, she is a rough, greedy, gossiping woman; she torments him to make a will and to leave her something handsome, and the end of it will be induration of the liver, calculi are possibly forming at this moment, and he has not enough strength to bear an operation.  The doctor, noble soul, is in a horrible predicament.  He really ought to send the woman away—­”

“Why, then, this vixen is a monster!” cried the lady in thin flute-like tones.

Fraisier smiled inwardly at the likeness between himself and the terrible Presidente; he knew all about those suave modulations of a naturally sharp voice.  He thought of another president, the hero of an anecdote related by Louis XI., stamped by that monarch’s final praise.  Blessed with a wife after the pattern of Socrates’ spouse, and ungifted with the sage’s philosophy, he mingled salt with the corn in the mangers and forbad the grooms to give water to the horses.  As his wife rode along the Seine towards their country-house, the animals bolted into the river with the lady, and the magistrate returned thanks to Providence for ridding him of his wife “in so natural a manner.”  At this present moment Mme. de Marville thanked Heaven for placing at Pons’ bedside a woman so likely to get him “decently” out of the way.

Aloud she said, “I would not take a million at the price of a single scruple.—­Your friend ought to speak to M. Pons and have the woman sent away.”

“In the first place, madame, Messrs. Schmucke and Pons think the woman an angel; they would send my friend away.  And secondly, the doctor lies under an obligation to this horrid oyster-woman; she called him in to attend M. Pillerault.  When he tells her to be as gentle as possible with the patient, he simply shows the creature how to make matters worse.”

“What does your friend think of my cousin’s condition?”

This man’s clear, business-like way of putting the facts of the case frightened Mme. de Marville; she felt that his keen gaze read the thoughts of a heart as greedy as La Cibot’s own.

“In six weeks the property will change hands.”

The Presidente dropped her eyes.

“Poor man!” she sighed, vainly striving after a dolorous expression.

“Have you any message, madame, for M. Leboeuf?  I am taking the train to Mantes.”

“Yes.  Wait a moment, and I will write to ask him to dine with us to-morrow.  I want to see him, so that he may act in concert to repair the injustice to which you have fallen a victim.”

The Presidente left the room.  Fraisier saw himself a justice of the peace.  He felt transformed at the thought; he grew stouter; his lungs were filled with the breath of success, the breeze of prosperity.  He dipped into the mysterious reservoirs of volition for fresh and strong doses of the divine essence.  To reach success, he felt, as Remonencq half felt, that he was ready for anything, for crime itself, provided that no proofs of it remained.  He had faced the Presidente boldly; he had transmuted conjecture into reality; he had made assertions right and left, all to the end that she might authorize him to protect her interests and win her influence.  As he stood there, he represented the infinite misery of two lives, and the no less boundless desires of two men.  He spurned the squalid horrors of the Rue de la Perle.  He saw the glitter of a thousand crowns in fees from La Cibot, and five thousand francs from the Presidente.  This meant an abode such as befitted his future prospects.  Finally, he was repaying Dr. Poulain.

There are hard, ill-natured beings, goaded by distress or disease into active malignity, that yet entertain diametrically opposed sentiments with a like degree of vehemence.  If Richelieu was a good hater, he was no less a good friend.  Fraisier, in his gratitude, would have let himself be cut in two for Poulain.

So absorbed was he in these visions of a comfortable and prosperous life, that he did not see the Presidente come in with the letter in her hand, and she, looking at him, thought him less ugly now than at first.  He was about to be useful to her, and as soon as a tool belongs to us we look upon it with other eyes.

“M.  Fraisier,” said she, “you have convinced me of your intelligence, and I think that you can speak frankly.”

Fraisier replied by an eloquent gesture.

“Very well,” continued the lady, “I must ask you to give a candid reply to this question:  Are we, either of us, M. de Marville or I, likely to be compromised, directly or indirectly, by your action in this matter?”

“I would not have come to you, madame, if I thought that some day I should have to reproach myself for bringing so much as a splash of mud upon you, for in your position a speck the size of a pin’s head is seen by all the world.  You forget, madame, that I must satisfy you if I am to be a justice of the peace in Paris.  I have received one lesson at the outset of my life; it was so sharp that I do not care to lay myself open to a second thrashing.  To sum it up in a last word, madame, I will not take a step in which you are indirectly involved without previously consulting you—­”

“Very good.  Here is the letter.  And now I shall expect to be informed of the exact value of the estate.”

“There is the whole matter,” said Fraisier shrewdly, making his bow to the Presidente with as much graciousness as his countenance could exhibit.

“What a providence!” thought Mme. Camusot de Marville.  “So I am to be rich!  Camusot will be sure of his election if we let loose this Fraisier upon the Bolbec constituency.  What a tool!”

“What a providence!” Fraisier said to himself as he descended the staircase; “and what a sharp woman Mme. Camusot is!  I should want a woman in these circumstances.  Now to work!”

And he departed for Mantes to gain the good graces of a man he scarcely knew; but he counted upon Mme. Vatinelle, to whom, unfortunately, he owed all his troubles—­and some troubles are of a kind that resemble a protested bill while the defaulter is yet solvent, in that they bear interest.

Three days afterwards, while Schmucke slept (for in accordance with the compact he now sat up at night with the patient), La Cibot had a “tiff,” as she was pleased to call it, with Pons.  It will not be out of place to call attention to one particularly distressing symptom of liver complaint.  The sufferer is always more or less inclined to impatience and fits of anger; an outburst of this kind seems to give relief at the time, much as a patient while the fever fit is upon him feels that he has boundless strength; but collapse sets in so soon as the excitement passes off, and the full extent of mischief sustained by the system is discernible.  This is especially the case when the disease has been induced by some great shock; and the prostration is so much the more dangerous because the patient is kept upon a restricted diet.  It is a kind of fever affecting neither the blood nor the brain, but the humoristic mechanism, fretting the whole system, producing melancholy, in which the patient hates himself; in such a crisis anything may cause dangerous irritation.

In spite of all that the doctor could say, La Cibot had no belief in this wear and tear of the nervous system by the humoristic.  She was a woman of the people, without experience or education; Dr. Poulain’s explanations for her were simply “doctor’s notions.”  Like most of her class, she thought that sick people must be fed, and nothing short of Dr. Poulain’s direct order prevented her from administering ham, a nice omelette, or vanilla chocolate upon the sly.

The infatuation of the working classes on this point is very strong.  The reason of their reluctance to enter a hospital is the idea that they will be starved there.  The mortality caused by the food smuggled in by the wives of patients on visiting-days was at one time so great that the doctors were obliged to institute a very strict search for contraband provisions.

If La Cibot was to realize her profits at once, a momentary quarrel must be worked up in some way.  She began by telling Pons about her visit to the theatre, not omitting her passage at arms with Mlle. Heloise the dancer.

“But why did you go?” the invalid asked for the third time.  La Cibot once launched on a stream of words, he was powerless to stop her.

“So, then, when I had given her a piece of my mind, Mademoiselle Heloise saw who I was and knuckled under, and we were the best of friends.—­And now do you ask me why I went?” she added, repeating Pons’ question.

There are certain babblers, babblers of genius are they, who sweep up interruptions, objections, and observations in this way as they go along, by way of provision to swell the matter of their conversation, as if that source were ever in any danger of running dry.

“Why I went?” repeated she.  “I went to get your M. Gaudissart out of a fix.  He wants some music for a ballet, and you are hardly fit to scribble on sheets of paper and do your work, dearie.—­So I understood, things being so, that a M. Garangeot was to be asked to set the Mohicans to music—­”

“Garangeot!” roared Pons in fury. “Garangeot! a man with no talent; I would not have him for first violin!  He is very clever, he is very good at musical criticism, but as to composing—­I doubt it!  And what the devil put the notion of going to the theatre into your head?”

“How confoundedly contrairy the man is!  Look here, dearie, we mustn’t boil over like milk on the fire!  How are you to write music in the state that you are in?  Why, you can’t have looked at yourself in the glass!  Will you have the glass and see?  You are nothing but skin and bone—­you are as weak as a sparrow, and do you think that you are fit to make your notes! why, you would not so much as make out mine. . . .  And that reminds me that I ought to go up to the third floor lodger’s that owes us seventeen francs, for when the chemist has been paid we shall not have twenty left.—­So I had to tell M. Gaudissart (I like that name), a good sort he seems to be,—­a regular Roger Bontemps that would just suit me.—­He will never have liver complaint!—­Well, so I had to tell him how you were.—­Lord! you are not well, and he has put some one else in your place for a bit—­”

“Some one else in my place!” cried Pons in a terrible voice, as he sat right up in bed.  Sick people, generally speaking, and those most particularly who lie within the sweep of the scythe of Death, cling to their places with the same passionate energy that the beginner displays to gain a start in life.  To hear that someone had taken his place was like a foretaste of death to the dying man.

“Why, the doctor told me that I was going on as well as possible,” continued he; “he said that I should soon be about again as usual.  You have killed me, ruined me, murdered me!”

“Tut, tut, tut!” cried La Cibot, “there you go!  I am killing you, am I?  Mercy on us! these are the pretty things that you are always telling M. Schmucke when my back is turned.  I hear all that you say, that I do!  You are a monster of ingratitude.”

“But you do not know that if I am only away for another fortnight, they will tell me that I have had my day, that I am old-fashioned, out of date, Empire, rococo, when I go back.  Garangeot will have made friends all over the theatre, high and low.  He will lower the pitch to suit some actress that cannot sing, he will lick M. Gaudissart’s boots!” cried the sick man, who clung to life.  “He has friends that will praise him in all the newspapers; and when things are like that in such a shop, Mme. Cibot, they can find holes in anybody’s coat. . . .  What fiend drove you to do it?”

“Why! plague take it, M. Schmucke talked it over with me for a week.  What would you have?  You see nothing but yourself!  You are so selfish that other people may die if you can only get better.—­Why poor M. Schmucke has been tired out this month past! he is tied by the leg, he can go nowhere, he cannot give lessons nor take his place at the theatre.  Do you really see nothing?  He sits up with you at night, and I take the nursing in the day.  If I were to sit up at night with you, as I tried to do at first when I thought you were so poor, I should have to sleep all day.  And who would see to the house and look out for squalls!  Illness is illness, it cannot be helped, and here are you—­”

“This was not Schmucke’s idea, it is quite impossible—­”

“That means that it was I who took it into my head to do it, does it?  Do you think that we are made of iron?  Why, if M. Schmucke had given seven or eight lessons every day and conducted the orchestra every evening at the theatre from six o’clock till half-past eleven at night, he would have died in ten days’ time.  Poor man, he would give his life for you, and do you want to be the death of him?  By the authors of my days, I have never seen a sick man to match you!  Where are your senses? have you put them in pawn?  We are all slaving our lives out for you; we do all for the best, and you are not satisfied!  Do you want to drive us raging mad?  I myself, to begin with, am tired out as it is——­”

La Cibot rattled on at her ease; Pons was too angry to say a word.  He writhed on his bed, painfully uttering inarticulate sounds; the blow was killing him.  And at this point, as usual, the scolding turned suddenly to tenderness.  The nurse dashed at her patient, grasped him by the head, made him lie down by main force, and dragged the blankets over him.

“How any one can get into such a state!” exclaimed she.  “After all, it is your illness, dearie.  That is what good M. Poulain says.  See now, keep quiet and be good, my dear little sonny.  Everybody that comes near you worships you, and the doctor himself comes to see you twice a day.  What would he say if he found you in such a way?  You put me out of all patience; you ought not to behave like this.  If you have Ma’am Cibot to nurse you, you should treat her better.  You shout and you talk!—­you ought not to do it, you know that.  Talking irritates you.  And why do you fly into a passion?  The wrong is all on your side; you are always bothering me.  Look here, let us have it out!  If M. Schmucke and I, who love you like our life, thought that we were doing right —­well, my cherub, it was right, you may be sure.”

“Schmucke never could have told you to go to the theatre without speaking to me about it—­”

“And must I wake him, poor dear, when he is sleeping like one of the blest, and call him in as a witness?”

“No, no!” cried Pons.  “If my kind and loving Schmucke made the resolution, perhaps I am worse than I thought.”  His eyes wandered round the room, dwelling on the beautiful things in it with a melancholy look painful to see.

“So I must say good-bye to my dear pictures, to all the things that have come to be like so many friends to me . . . and to my divine friend Schmucke? . . .  Oh! can it be true?”

La Cibot, acting her heartless comedy, held her handkerchief to her eyes; and at that mute response the sufferer fell to dark musing—­so sorely stricken was he by the double stab dealt to health and his interests by the loss of his post and the near prospect of death, that he had no strength left for anger.  He lay, ghastly and wan, like a consumptive patient after a wrestling bout with the Destroyer.

“In M. Schmucke’s interests, you see, you would do well to send for M. Trognon; he is the notary of the quarter and a very good man,” said La Cibot, seeing that her victim was completely exhausted.

“You are always talking about this Trognon—­”

“Oh! he or another, it is all one to me, for anything you will leave me.”

She tossed her head to signify that she despised riches.  There was silence in the room.

A moment later Schmucke came in.  He had slept for six hours, hunger awakened him, and now he stood at Pons’ bedside watching his friend without saying a word, for Mme. Cibot had laid a finger on her lips.

“Hush!” she whispered.  Then she rose and went up to add under her breath, “He is going off to sleep at last, thank Heaven!  He is as cross as a red donkey!—­What can you expect, he is struggling with his illness——­”

“No, on the contrary, I am very patient,” said the victim in a weary voice that told of a dreadful exhaustion; “but, oh!  Schmucke, my dear friend, she has been to the theatre to turn me out of my place.”

There was a pause.  Pons was too weak to say more.  La Cibot took the opportunity and tapped her head significantly.  “Do not contradict him,” she said to Schmucke; “it would kill him.”

Pons gazed into Schmucke’s honest face.  “And she says that you sent her—­” he continued.

“Yes,” Schmucke affirmed heroically.  “It had to pe.  Hush!—­let us safe your life.  It is absurd to vork and train your sdrength gif you haf a dreasure.  Get better; ve vill sell some prick-a-prack und end our tays kvietly in a corner somveres, mit kind Montame Zipod.”

“She has perverted you,” moaned Pons.

Mme. Cibot had taken up her station behind the bed to make signals unobserved.  Pons thought that she had left the room.  “She is murdering me,” he added.

“What is that?  I am murdering you, am I?” cried La Cibot, suddenly appearing, hand on hips and eyes aflame.  “I am as faithful as a dog, and this is all I get!  God Almighty!—­”

She burst into tears and dropped down into the great chair, a tragical movement which wrought a most disastrous revulsion in Pons.

“Very good,” she said, rising to her feet.  The woman’s malignant eyes looked poison and bullets at the two friends.  “Very good.  Nothing that I can do is right here, and I am tired of slaving my life out.  You shall take a nurse.”

Pons and Schmucke exchanged glances in dismay.

“Oh! you may look at each other like actors.  I mean it.  I shall ask Dr. Poulain to find a nurse for you.  And now we will settle accounts.  You shall pay me back the money that I have spent on you, and that I would never have asked you for, I that have gone to M. Pillerault to borrow another five hundred francs of him—­”

“It ees his illness!” cried Schmucke—­he sprang to Mme. Cibot and put an arm round her waist—­“haf batience.”

“As for you, you are an angel, I could kiss the ground you tread upon,” said she.  “But M. Pons never liked me, he always hated me.  Besides, he thinks perhaps that I want to be mentioned in his will—­”

“Hush! you vill kill him!” cried Schmucke.

“Good-bye, sir,” said La Cibot, with a withering look at Pons.  “You may keep well for all the harm I wish you.  When you can speak to me pleasantly, when you can believe that what I do is done for the best, I will come back again.  Till then I shall stay in my own room.  You were like my own child to me; did anybody ever see a child revolt against its mother? . . .  No, no, M. Schmucke, I do not want to hear more.  I will bring you your dinner and wait upon you, but you must take a nurse.  Ask M. Poulain about it.”

And she went out, slamming the door after her so violently that the precious, fragile objects in the room trembled.  To Pons in his torture, the rattle of china was like the final blow dealt by the executioner to a victim broken on the wheel.

An hour later La Cibot called to Schmucke through the door, telling him that his dinner was waiting for him in the dining-room.  She would not cross the threshold.  Poor Schmucke went out to her with a haggard, tear-stained face.

“Mein boor Bons in vandering,” said he; “he says dat you are ein pad voman.  It ees his illness,” he added hastily, to soften La Cibot and excuse his friend.

“Oh, I have had enough of his illness!  Look here, he is neither father, nor husband, nor brother, nor child of mine.  He has taken a dislike to me; well and good, that is enough!  As for you, you see, I would follow you to the end of the world; but when a woman gives her life, her heart, and all her savings, and neglects her husband (for here has Cibot fallen ill), and then hears that she is a bad woman—­it is coming it rather too strong, it is.”

“Too shtrong?”

“Too strong, yes.  Never mind idle words.  Let us come to the facts.  As to that, you owe me for three months at a hundred and ninety francs —­that is five hundred seventy francs; then there is the rent that I have paid twice (here are the receipts), six hundred more, including rates and the sou in the franc for the porter—­something under twelve hundred francs altogether, and with the two thousand francs besides —­without interest, mind you—­the total amounts to three thousand one hundred and ninety-two francs.  And remember that you will want at least two thousand francs before long for the doctor, and the nurse, and the medicine, and the nurse’s board.  That was why I borrowed a thousand francs of M. Pillerault,” and with that she held up Gaudissart’s bank-note.

It may readily be conceived that Schmucke listened to this reckoning with amazement, for he knew about as much of business as a cat knows of music.

“Montame Zipod,” he expostulated, “Bons haf lost his head.  Bardon him, and nurse him as before, und pe our profidence; I peg it of you on mine knees,” and he knelt before La Cibot and kissed the tormentor’s hands.

La Cibot raised Schmucke and kissed him on the forehead.  “Listen, my lamb,” said she, “here is Cibot ill in bed; I have just sent for Dr. Poulain.  So I ought to set my affairs in order.  And what is more, Cibot saw me crying, and flew into such a passion that he will not have me set foot in here again.  It is he who wants the money; it is his, you see.  We women can do nothing when it comes to that.  But if you let him have his money back again—­the three thousand two hundred francs—­he will be quiet perhaps.  Poor man, it is his all, earned by the sweat of his brow, the savings of twenty-six years of life together.  He must have his money to-morrow; there is no getting round him.—­You do not know Cibot; when he is angry he would kill a man.  Well, I might perhaps get leave of him to look after you both as before.  Be easy.  I will just let him say anything that comes into his head.  I will bear it all for love of you, an angel as you are.”

“No, I am ein boor man, dot lof his friend and vould gif his life to save him—­”

“But the money?” broke in La Cibot.  “My good M. Schmucke, let us suppose that you pay me nothing; you will want three thousand francs, and where are they to come from?  Upon my word, do you know what I should do in your place?  I should not think twice, I should just sell seven or eight good-for-nothing pictures and put up some of those instead that are standing in your closet with their faces to the wall for want of room.  One picture or another, what difference does it make?”

“Und vy?”

“He is so cunning.  It is his illness, for he is a lamb when he is well.  He is capable of getting up and prying about; and if by any chance he went into the salon, he is so weak that he could not go beyond the door; he would see that they are all still there.”

“Drue!”

“And when he is quite well, we will tell him about the sale.  And if you wish to confess, throw it all upon me, say that you were obliged to pay me.  Come!  I have a broad back—­”

“I cannot tispose of dings dot are not mine,” the good German answered simply.

“Very well.  I will summons you, you and M. Pons.”

“It vould kill him—­”

“Take your choice!  Dear me, sell the pictures and tell him about it afterwards . . . you can show him the summons—­”

“Ver’ goot.  Summons us.  Dot shall pe mine egscuse.  I shall show him der chudgment.”

Mme. Cibot went down to the court, and that very day at seven o’clock she called to Schmucke.  Schmucke found himself confronted with M. Tabareau the bailiff, who called upon him to pay.  Schmucke made answer, trembling from head to foot, and was forthwith summoned together with Pons, to appear in the county court to hear judgment against him.  The sight of the bailiff and a bit of stamped paper covered with scrawls produced such an effect upon Schmucke, that he held out no longer.

“Sell die bictures,” he said, with tears in his eyes.

Next morning, at six o’clock, Elie Magus and Remonencq took down the paintings of their choice.  Two receipts for two thousand five hundred francs were made out in correct form:—­

“I, the undersigned, representing M. Pons, acknowledge the receipt of two thousand five hundred francs from M. Elie Magus for the four pictures sold to him, the said sum being appropriated to the use of M. Pons.  The first picture, attributed to Durer, is a portrait of a woman; the second, likewise a portrait, is of the Italian School; the third, a Dutch landscape by Breughel; and the fourth, a Holy Family by an unknown master of the Florentine School.”

Remonencq’s receipt was worded in precisely the same way; a Greuze, a Claude Lorraine, a Rubens, and a Van Dyck being disguised as pictures of the French and Flemish schools.

“Der monny makes me beleef dot the chimcracks haf som value,” said Schmucke when the five thousand francs were paid over.

“They are worth something,” said Remonencq.  “I would willingly give you a hundred thousand francs for the lot.”

Remonencq, asked to do a trifling service, hung eight pictures of the proper size in the same frames, taking them from among the less valuable pictures in Schmucke’s bedroom.