"Very well, tell me how to do it," returned La Cibot, curious and delighted.

"I do not know how yet. I have not looked at the strong points of the case yet; I have been busy with the obstacles. But the first thing to be done is to urge him to make a will; you cannot go wrong over that; and find out, first of all, how Pons means to leave his fortune; for if you were his heir—"

"No, no; he does not like me. Ah! if I had but known the value of his gimcracks, and if I had known what I know now about his amours, I should be easy in my mind this day—"

"Keep on, in fact," broke in Fraisier. "Dying folk have queer fancies, my dear madame; they disappoint hopes many a time. Let him make his will, and then we shall see. And of all things, the property must be valued. So I must see this Remonencq and the Jew; they will be very useful to us. Put entire confidence in me, I am at your disposal. When a client is a friend to me, I am his friend through thick and thin. Friend or enemy, that is my character."

"Very well," said La Cibot, "I am yours entirely; and as for fees, M. Poulain—"

"Let us say nothing about that," said Fraisier. "Think how you can keep Poulain at the bedside; he is one of the most upright and conscientious men I know; and, you see, we want some one there whom we can trust. Poulain would do better than I; I have lost my character."

"You look as if you had," said La Cibot; "but, for my own part, I should trust you."

"And you would do well. Come to see me whenever anything happens, and—there!—you are an intelligent woman; all will go well."

"Good-day, M. Fraisier. I hope you will recover your health. Your servant, sir."

Fraisier went to the door with his client. But this time it was he, and not La Cibot, who was struck with an idea on the threshold.

"If you could persuade M. Pons to call me in, it would be a great step."

"I will try," said La Cibot.

Fraisier drew her back into his sanctum. "Look here, old lady, I know M. Trognon, the notary of the quarter, very well. If M. Pons has not a notary, mention M. Trognon to him. Make him take M. Trognon—"

"Right," returned La Cibot.

And as she came out again she heard the rustle of a dress and the sound of a stealthy, heavy footstep.

Out in the street and by herself, Mme. Cibot to some extent recovered her liberty of mind as she walked. Though the influence of the conversation was still upon her, and she had always stood in dread of scaffolds, justice, and judges, she took a very natural resolution which was to bring about a conflict of strategy between her and her formidable legal adviser.

"What do I want with other folk?" said she to herself. "Let us make a round sum, and afterwards I will take all that they offer me to push their interests;" and this thought, as will shortly be seen, hastened the poor old musician's end.



"Well, dear M. Schmucke, and how is our dear, adored patient?" asked La Cibot, as she came into the room.

"Fery pad; Bons haf peen vandering all der night."

"Then, what did he say?"

"Chust nonsense. He vould dot I haf all his fortune, on kondition dot I sell nodings.—Den he cried! Boor mann! It made me ver' sad."

"Never mind, honey," returned the portress. "I have kept you waiting for your breakfast; it is nine o'clock and past; but don't scold me. I have business on hand, you see, business of yours. Here are we without any money, and I have been out to get some."

"Vere?" asked Schmucke.

"Of my uncle."

"Onkel?"

"Up the spout."

"Shpout?"

"Oh! the dear man! how simple he is? No, you are a saint, a love, an archbishop of innocence, a man that ought to be stuffed, as the old actor said. What! you have lived in Paris for twenty-nine years; you saw the Revolution of July, you did, and you have never so much as heard tell of a pawnbroker—a man that lends you money on your things?—I have been pawning our silver spoons and forks, eight of them, thread pattern. Pooh, Cibot can eat his victuals with German silver; it is quite the fashion now, they say. It is not worth while to say anything to our angel there; it would upset him and make him yellower than before, and he is quite cross enough as it is. Let us get him round again first, and afterwards we shall see. What must be must; and we must take things as we find them, eh?"

"Goot voman! nople heart!" cried poor Schmucke, with a great tenderness in his face. He took La Cibot's hand and clasped it to his breast. When he looked up, there were tears in his eyes.

"There, that will do, Papa Schmucke; how funny you are! This is too bad. I am an old daughter of the people—my heart is in my hand. I have something here, you see, like you have, hearts of gold that you are," she added, slapping her chest.

"Baba Schmucke!" continued the musician. "No. To know de tepths of sorrow, to cry mit tears of blood, to mount up in der hefn—dat is mein lot! I shall not lif after Bons—"

"Gracious! I am sure you won't, you are killing yourself.—Listen, pet!"

"Bet?"

"Very well, my sonny—"

"Zonny?"

"My lamb, then, if you like it better."

"It is not more clear."

"Oh, well, let me take care of you and tell you what to do; for if you go on like this, I shall have both of you laid up on my hands, you see. To my little way of thinking, we must do the work between us. You cannot go about Paris to give lessons for it tires you, and then you are not fit to do anything afterwards, and somebody must sit up of a night with M. Pons, now that he is getting worse and worse. I will run round to-day to all your pupils and tell them that you are ill; is it not so? And then you can spend the nights with our lamb, and sleep of a morning from five o'clock till, let us say, two in the afternoon. I myself will take the day, the most tiring part, for there is your breakfast and dinner to get ready, and the bed to make, and the things to change, and the doses of medicine to give. I could not hold out for another ten days at this rate. What would become of you if I were to fall ill? And you yourself, it makes one shudder to see you; just look at yourself, after sitting up with him last night!"

She drew Schmucke to the glass, and Schmucke thought that there was a great change.

"So, if you are of my mind, I'll have your breakfast ready in a jiffy. Then you will look after our poor dear again till two o'clock. Let me have a list of your people, and I will soon arrange it. You will be free for a fortnight. You can go to bed when I come in, and sleep till night."

So prudent did the proposition seem, that Schmucke then and there agreed to it.

"Not a word to M. Pons; he would think it was all over with him, you know, if we were to tell him in this way that his engagement at the theatre and his lessons are put off. He would be thinking that he should not find his pupils again, poor gentleman—stuff and nonsense! M. Poulain says that we shall save our Benjamin if we keep him as quiet as possible."

"Ach! fery goot! Pring up der preakfast; I shall make der bett, and gif you die attresses!—You are right; it vould pe too much for me."

An hour later La Cibot, in her Sunday clothes, departed in great state, to the no small astonishment of the Remonencqs; she promised herself that she would support the character of confidential servant of the pair of nutcrackers, in the boarding-schools and private families in which they gave music-lessons.

It is needless to repeat all the gossip in which La Cibot indulged on her round. The members of every family, the head-mistress of every boarding-school, were treated to a variation upon the theme of Pons' illness. A single scene, which took place in the Illustrious Gaudissart's private room, will give a sufficient idea of the rest. La Cibot met with unheard-of difficulties, but she succeeded in penetrating at last to the presence. Kings and cabinet ministers are less difficult of access than the manager of a theatre in Paris; nor is it hard to understand why such prodigious barriers are raised between them and ordinary mortals: a king has only to defend himself from ambition; the manager of a theatre has reason to dread the wounded vanity of actors and authors.

La Cibot, however, struck up an acquaintance with the portress, and traversed all distances in a brief space. There is a sort of freemasonry among the porter tribe, and, indeed, among the members of every profession; for each calling has its shibboleth, as well as its insulting epithet and the mark with which it brands its followers.

"Ah! madame, you are the portress here," began La Cibot. "I myself am a portress, in a small way, in a house in the Rue de Normandie. M. Pons, your conductor, lodges with us. Oh, how glad I should be to have your place, and see the actors and dancers and authors go past. It is the marshal's baton in our profession, as the old actor said."

"And how is M. Pons going on, good man?" inquired the portress.

"He is not going on at all; he has not left his bed these two months. He will only leave the house feet foremost, that is certain."

"He will be missed."

"Yes. I have come with a message to the manager from him. Just try to get me a word with him, dear."

"A lady from M. Pons to see you, sir!" After this fashion did the youth attached to the service of the manager's office announce La Cibot, whom the portress below had particularly recommended to his care.

Gaudissart had just come in for a rehearsal. Chance so ordered it that no one wished to speak with him; actors and authors were alike late. Delighted to have news of his conductor, he made a Napoleonic gesture, and La Cibot was admitted.

The sometime commercial traveler, now the head of a popular theatre, regarded his sleeping partners in the light of a legitimate wife; they were not informed of all his doings. The flourishing state of his finances had reacted upon his person. Grown big and stout and high-colored with good cheer and prosperity, Gaudissart made no disguise of his transformation into a Mondor.

"We are turning into a city-father," he once said, trying to be the first to laugh.

"You are only in the Turcaret stage yet, though," retorted Bixiou, who often replaced Gaudissart in the company of the leading lady of the ballet, the celebrated Heloise Brisetout.

The former Illustrious Gaudissart, in fact, was exploiting the theatre simply and solely for his own particular benefit, and with brutal disregard of other interests. He first insinuated himself as a collaborator in various ballets, plays, and vaudevilles; then he waited till the author wanted money and bought up the other half of the copyright. These after-pieces and vaudevilles, always added to successful plays, brought him in a daily harvest of gold coins. He trafficked by proxy in tickets, allotting a certain number to himself, as the manager's share, till he took in this way a tithe of the receipts. And Gaudissart had other methods of making money besides these official contributions. He sold boxes, he took presents from indifferent actresses burning to go upon the stage to fill small speaking parts, or simply to appear as queens, or pages, and the like; he swelled his nominal third share of the profits to such purpose that the sleeping partners scarcely received one-tenth instead of the remaining two-thirds of the net receipts. Even so, however, the tenth paid them a dividend of fifteen per cent on their capital. On the strength of that fifteen per cent Gaudissart talked of his intelligence, honesty, and zeal, and the good fortune of his partners. When Count Popinot, showing an interest in the concern, asked Matifat, or General Gouraud (Matifat's son-in-law), or Crevel, whether they were satisfied with Gaudissart, Gouraud, now a peer of France, answered, "They say he robs us; but he is such a clever, good-natured fellow, that we are quite satisfied."

"This is like La Fontaine's fable," smiled the ex-cabinet minister.

Gaudissart found investments for his capital in other ventures. He thought well of Schwab, Brunner, and the Graffs; that firm was promoting railways, he became a shareholder in the lines. His shrewdness was carefully hidden beneath the frank carelessness of a man of pleasure; he seemed to be interested in nothing but amusements and dress, yet he thought everything over, and his wide experience of business gained as a commercial traveler stood him in good stead.

A self-made man, he did not take himself seriously. He gave suppers and banquets to celebrities in rooms sumptuously furnished by the house decorator. Showy by nature, with a taste for doing things handsomely, he affected an easy-going air, and seemed so much the less formidable because he had kept the slang of "the road" (to use his own expression), with a few green-room phrases superadded. Now, artists in the theatrical profession are wont to express themselves with some vigor; Gaudissart borrowed sufficient racy green-room talk to blend with his commercial traveler's lively jocularity, and passed for a wit. He was thinking at that moment of selling his license and "going into another line," as he said. He thought of being chairman of a railway company, of becoming a responsible person and an administrator, and finally of marrying Mlle. Minard, daughter of the richest mayor in Paris. He might hope to get into the Chamber through "his line," and, with Popinot's influence, to take office under the Government.

"Whom have I the honor of addressing?" inquired Gaudissart, looking magisterially at La Cibot.

"I am M. Pons' confidential servant, sir."

"Well, and how is the dear fellow?"

"Ill, sir—very ill."

"The devil he is! I am sorry to hear it—I must come and see him; he is such a man as you don't often find."

"Ah yes! sir, he is a cherub, he is. I have always wondered how he came to be in a theatre."

"Why, madame, the theatre is a house of correction for morals," said Gaudissart. "Poor Pons!—Upon my word, one ought to cultivate the species to keep up the stock. 'Tis a pattern man, and has talent too. When will he be able to take his orchestra again, do you think? A theatre, unfortunately, is like a stage coach: empty or full, it starts at the same time. Here at six o'clock every evening, up goes the curtain; and if we are never sorry for ourselves, it won't make good music. Let us see now—how is he?"

La Cibot pulled out her pocket-handkerchief and held it to her eyes.

"It is a terrible thing to say, my dear sir," said she; "but I am afraid we shall lose him, though we are as careful of him as of the apple of our eyes. And, at the same time, I came to say that you must not count on M. Schmucke, worthy man, for he is going to sit up with him at night. One cannot help doing as if there was hope still left, and trying one's best to snatch the dear, good soul from death. But the doctor has given him up——"

"What is the matter with him?"

"He is dying of grief, jaundice, and liver complaint, with a lot of family affairs to complicate matters."

"And a doctor as well," said Gaudissart. "He ought to have had Lebrun, our doctor; it would have cost him nothing."

"M. Pons' doctor is a Providence on earth. But what can a doctor do, no matter how clever he is, with such complications?"

"I wanted the good pair of nutcrackers badly for the accompaniment of my new fairy piece."

"Is there anything that I can do for them?" asked La Cibot, and her expression would have done credit to a Jocrisse.

Gaudissart burst out laughing.

"I am their housekeeper, sir, and do many things for my gentlemen—" She did not finish her speech, for in the middle of Gaudissart's roar of laughter a woman's voice exclaimed, "If you are laughing, old man, one may come in," and the leading lady of the ballet rushed into the room and flung herself upon the only sofa. The newcomer was Heloise Brisetout, with a splendid algerienne, such as scarves used to be called, about her shoulders.

"Who is amusing you? Is it this lady? What post does she want?" asked this nymph, giving the manager such a glance as artist gives artist, a glance that would make a subject for a picture.

Heloise, a young woman of exceedingly literary tastes, was on intimate terms with great and famous artists in Bohemia. Elegant, accomplished, and graceful, she was more intelligent than dancers usually are. As she put her question, she sniffed at a scent-bottle full of some aromatic perfume.

"One fine woman is as good as another, madame; and if I don't sniff the pestilence out of a scent-bottle, nor daub brickdust on my cheeks—"

"That would be a sinful waste, child, when Nature put it on for you to begin with," said Heloise, with a side glance at her manager.

"I am an honest woman—"

"So much the worse for you. It is not every one by a long chalk that can find some one to keep them, and kept I am, and in slap-up style, madame."

"So much the worse! What do you mean? Oh, you may toss your head and go about in scarves, you will never have as many declarations as I have had, missus. You will never match the Belle Ecaillere of the Cadran Bleu."

Heloise Brisetout rose at once to her feet, stood at attention, and made a military salute, like a soldier who meets his general.

"What?" asked Gaudissart, "are you really La Belle Ecaillere of whom my father used to talk?"

"In that case the cachucha and the polka were after your time; and madame has passed her fiftieth year," remarked Heloise, and striking an attitude, she declaimed, "'Cinna, let us be friends.'"

"Come, Heloise, the lady is not up to this; let her alone."

"Madame is perhaps the New Heloise," suggested La Cibot, with sly innocence.

"Not bad, old lady!" cried Gaudissart.

"It is a venerable joke," said the dancer, "a grizzled pun; find us another old lady—or take a cigarette."

"I beg your pardon, madame, I feel too unhappy to answer you; my two gentlemen are very ill; and to buy nourishment for them and to spare them trouble, I have pawned everything down to my husband's clothes that I pledged this morning. Here is the ticket!"

"Oh! here, the affair is becoming tragic," cried the fair Heloise. "What is it all about?"

"Madame drops down upon us like—"

"Like a dancer," said Heloise; "let me prompt you,—missus!"

"Come, I am busy," said Gaudissart. "The joke has gone far enough. Heloise, this is M. Pons' confidential servant; she had come to tell me that I must not count upon him; our poor conductor is not expected to live. I don't know what to do."

"Oh! poor man; why, he must have a benefit."

"It would ruin him," said Gaudissart. "He might find next day that he owed five hundred francs to charitable institutions, and they refuse to admit that there are any sufferers in Paris except their own. No, look here, my good woman, since you are going in for the Montyon prize——"

He broke off, rang the bell, and the youth before mentioned suddenly appeared.

"Tell the cashier to send me up a thousand-franc note.—Sit down, madame."

"Ah! poor woman, look, she is crying!" exclaimed Heloise. "How stupid! There, there, mother, we will go to see him; don't cry.—I say, now," she continued, taking the manager into a corner, "you want to make me take the leading part in the ballet in Ariane, you Turk. You are going to be married, and you know how I can make you miserable—"

"Heloise, my heart is copper-bottomed like a man-of-war."

"I shall bring your children on the scene! I will borrow some somewhere."

"I have owned up about the attachment."

"Do be nice, and give Pons' post to Garangeot; he has talent, poor fellow, and he has not a penny; and I promise peace."

"But wait till Pons is dead, in case the good man may come back again."

"Oh, as to that, no, sir," said La Cibot. "He began to wander in his mind last night, and now he is delirious. It will soon be over, unfortunately."

"At any rate, take Garangeot as a stop-gap!" pleaded Heloise. "He has the whole press on his side—"

Just at that moment the cashier came in with a note for a thousand francs in his hand.

"Give it to madame here," said Gaudissart. "Good-day, my good woman; take good care of the dear man, and tell him that I am coming to see him to-morrow, or sometime—as soon as I can, in short."

"A drowning man," said Heloise.

"Ah, sir, hearts like yours are only found in a theatre. May God bless you!"

"To what account shall I post this item?" asked the cashier.

"I will countersign the order. Post it to the bonus account."

Before La Cibot went out, she made Mlle. Brisetout a fine courtesy, and heard Gaudissart remark to his mistress:

"Can Garangeot do the dance-music for the Mohicans in twelve days? If he helps me out of my predicament, he shall have Pons' place."

La Cibot had cut off the incomes of the two friends, she had left them without means of subsistence if Pons should chance to recover, and was better rewarded for all this mischief than for any good that she had done. In a few days' time her treacherous trick would bring about the desired result—Elie Magus would have his coveted pictures. But if this first spoliation was to be effected, La Cibot must throw dust in Fraisier's eyes, and lull the suspicions of that terrible fellow-conspirator of her own seeking; and Elie Magus and Remonencq must be bound over to secrecy.

As for Remonencq, he had gradually come to feel such a passion as uneducated people can conceive when they come to Paris from the depths of the country, bringing with them all the fixed ideas bred of the solitary country life; all the ignorance of a primitive nature, all the brute appetites that become so many fixed ideas. Mme. Cibot's masculine beauty, her vivacity, her market-woman's wit, had all been remarked by the marine store-dealer. He thought at first of taking La Cibot from her husband, bigamy among the lower classes in Paris being much more common than is generally supposed; but greed was like a slip-knot drawn more and more tightly about his heart, till reason at length was stifled. When Remonencq computed that the commission paid by himself and Elie Magus amounted to about forty thousand francs, he determined to have La Cibot for his legitimate spouse, and his thoughts turned from a misdemeanor to a crime. A romantic purely speculative dream, persistently followed through a tobacco-smoker's long musings as he lounged in the doorway, had brought him to the point of wishing that the little tailor were dead. At a stroke he beheld his capital trebled; and then he thought of La Cibot. What a good saleswoman she would be! What a handsome figure she would make in a magnificent shop on the boulevards! The twofold covetousness turned Remonencq's head. In fancy he took a shop that he knew of on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, he stocked it with Pons' treasures, and then—after dreaming his dream in sheets of gold, after seeing millions in the blue spiral wreaths that rose from his pipe, he awoke to find himself face to face with the little tailor. Cibot was sweeping the yard, the doorstep, and the pavement just as his neighbor was taking down the shutters and displaying his wares; for since Pons fell ill, La Cibot's work had fallen to her husband.

The Auvergnat began to look upon the little, swarthy, stunted, copper-colored tailor as the one obstacle in his way, and pondered how to be rid of him. Meanwhile this growing passion made La Cibot very proud, for she had reached an age when a woman begins to understand that she may grow old.

So early one morning, she meditatively watched Remonencq as he arranged his odds and ends for sale. She wondered how far his love could go. He came across to her.

"Well," he said, "are things going as you wish?"

"It is you who makes me uneasy," said La Cibot. "I shall be talked about; the neighbors will see you making sheep's eyes at me."

She left the doorway and dived into the Auvergnat's back shop.

"What a notion!" said Remonencq.

"Come here, I have something to say to you," said La Cibot. "M. Pons' heirs are about to make a stir; they are capable of giving us a lot of trouble. God knows what might come of it if they send the lawyers here to poke their noses into the affair like hunting-dogs. I cannot get M. Schmucke to sell a few pictures unless you like me well enough to keep the secret—such a secret!—With your head on the block, you must not say where the pictures come from, nor who it was that sold them. When M. Pons is once dead and buried, you understand, nobody will know how many pictures there ought to be; if there are fifty-three pictures instead of sixty-seven, nobody will be any the wiser. Besides, if M. Pons sold them himself while he was alive, nobody can find fault."

"No," agreed Remonencq, "it is all one to me, but M. Elie Magus will want receipts in due form."

"And you shall have your receipt too, bless your life! Do you suppose that I should write them?—No, M. Schmucke will do that. But tell your Jew that he must keep the secret as closely as you do," she continued.

"We will be as mute as fishes. That is our business. I myself can read, but I cannot write, and that is why I want a capable wife that has had education like you. I have thought of nothing but earning my bread all my days, and now I wish I had some little Remonencqs. Do leave that Cibot of yours."

"Why, here comes your Jew," said the portress; "we can arrange the whole business."

Elie Magus came every third day very early in the morning to know when he could buy his pictures. "Well, my dear lady," said he, "how are we getting on?"

"Has nobody been to speak to you about M. Pons and his gimcracks?" asked La Cibot.

"I received a letter from a lawyer," said Elie Magus, "a rascal that seems to me to be trying to work for himself; I don't like people of that sort, so I took no notice of his letter. Three days afterwards he came to see me, and left his card. I told my porter that I am never at home when he calls."

"You are a love of a Jew," said La Cibot. Little did she know Elie Magus' prudence. "Well, sonnies, in a few days' time I will bring M. Schmucke to the point of selling you seven or eight pictures, ten at most. But on two conditions.—Absolute secrecy in the first place. M. Schmucke will send for you, sir, is not that so? And M. Remonencq suggested that you might be a purchaser, eh?—And, come what may, I will not meddle in it for nothing. You are giving forty-six thousand francs for four pictures, are you not?"

"So be it," groaned the Jew.

"Very good. This is the second condition. You will give me forty-three thousand francs, and pay three thousand only to M. Schmucke; Remonencq will buy four for two thousand francs, and hand over the surplus to me.—But at the same time, you see my dear M. Magus, I am going to help you and Remonencq to a splendid bit of business—on condition that the profits are shared among the three of us. I will introduce you to that lawyer, as he, no doubt, will come here. You shall make a valuation of M. Pons' things at the prices which you can give for them, so that M. Fraisier may know how much the property is worth. But—not until after our sale, you understand!"

"I understand," said the Jew, "but it takes time to look at the things and value them."

"You shall have half a day. But, there, that is my affair. Talk it over between yourselves, my boys, and for that matter the business will be settled by the day after to-morrow. I will go round to speak to this Fraisier; for Dr. Poulain tells him everything that goes on in the house, and it is a great bother to keep that scarecrow quiet."

La Cibot met Fraisier halfway between the Rue de la Perle and the Rue de Normandie; so impatient was he to know the "elements of the case" (to use his own expression), that he was coming to see her.

"I say! I was going to you," said she.

Fraisier grumbled because Elie Magus had refused to see him. But La Cibot extinguished the spark of distrust that gleamed in the lawyer's eyes by informing him that Elie Magus had returned from a journey, and that she would arrange for an interview in Pons' rooms and for the valuation of the property; for the day after to-morrow at latest.

"Deal frankly with me," returned Fraisier. "It is more than probable that I shall act for M. Pons' next-of-kin. In that case, I shall be even better able to serve you."

The words were spoken so drily that La Cibot quaked. This starving limb of the law was sure to manoeuvre on his side as she herself was doing. She resolved forthwith to hurry on the sale of the pictures.

La Cibot was right. The doctor and lawyer had clubbed together to buy a new suit of clothes in which Fraisier could decently present himself before Mme. la Presidente Camusot de Marville. Indeed, if the clothes had been ready, the interview would have taken place sooner, for the fate of the couple hung upon its issues. Fraisier left Mme. Cibot, and went to try on his new clothes. He found them waiting for him, went home, adjusted his new wig, and towards ten o'clock that morning set out in a carriage from a livery stable for the Rue de Hanovre, hoping for an audience. In his white tie, yellow gloves, and new wig, redolent of eau de Portugal, he looked something like a poisonous essence kept in a cut-glass bottle, seeming but the more deadly because everything about it is daintily neat, from the stopper covered with white kid to the label and the thread. His peremptory manner, the eruption on his blotched countenance, the green eyes, and a malignant something about him,—all these things struck the beholder with the same sense of surprise as storm-clouds in a blue sky. If in his private office, as he showed himself to La Cibot, he was the common knife that a murderer catches up for his crime,—now, at the Presidente's door, he was the daintily-wrought dagger which a woman sets among the ornaments on her what-not.

A great change had taken place in the Rue de Hanovre. The Count and Countess Popinot and the young people would not allow the President and his wife to leave the house that they had settled upon their daughter to pay rent elsewhere. M. and Mme. la Presidente, therefore, were installed on the second floor, now left at liberty, for the elderly lady had made up her mind to end her days in the country.

Mme. Camusot took Madeleine Vivet, with her cook and her man-servant, to the second floor, and would have been as much pinched for money as in the early days, if the house had not been rent free, and the President's salary increased to ten thousand francs. This aurea mediocritas was but little satisfactory to Mme. de Marville. Even now she wished for means more in accordance with her ambitions; for when she handed over their fortune to their daughter, she spoiled her husband's prospects. Now Amelie had set her heart upon seeing her husband in the Chamber of Deputies; she was not one of those women who find it easy to give up their way; and she by no means despaired of returning her husband for the arrondissement in which Marville is situated. So for the past two months she had teased her father-in-law, M. le Baron Camusot (for the new peer of France had been advanced to that rank), and done her utmost to extort an advance of a hundred thousand francs of the inheritance which one day would be theirs. She wanted, she said, to buy a small estate worth about two thousand francs per annum set like a wedge within the Marville lands. There she and her husband would be near their children and in their own house, while the addition would round out the Marville property. With that the Presidente laid stress upon the recent sacrifices which she and her husband had been compelled to make in order to marry Cecile to Viscount Popinot, and asked the old man how he could bar his eldest son's way to the highest honors of the magistracy, when such honors were only to be had by those who made themselves a strong position in parliament. Her husband would know how to take up such a position, he would make himself feared by those in office, and so on and so on.

"They do nothing for you unless you tighten a halter round their necks to loosen their tongues," said she. "They are ungrateful. What do they not owe to Camusot! Camusot brought the House of Orleans to the throne by enforcing the ordinances of July."

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.

No sooner was Elie Magus in possession of the four great pictures than he went, taking La Cibot with him, under pretence of settling accounts. But he pleaded poverty, he found fault with the pictures, they needed rebacking, he offered La Cibot thirty thousand francs by way of commission, and finally dazzled her with the sheets of paper on which the Bank of France engraves the words "One thousand francs" in capital letters. Magus thereupon condemned Remonencq to pay the like sum to La Cibot, by lending him the money on the security of his four pictures, which he took with him as a guarantee. So glorious were they, that Magus could not bring himself to part with them, and next day he bought them of Remonencq for six thousand francs over and above the original price, and an invoice was duly made out for the four. Mme. Cibot, the richer by sixty-eight thousand francs, once more swore her two accomplices to absolute secrecy. Then she asked the Jew's advice. She wanted to invest the money in such a way that no one should know of it.

"Buy shares in the Orleans Railway," said he; "they are thirty francs below par, you will double your capital in three years. They will give you scraps of paper, which you keep safe in a portfolio."

"Stay here, M. Magus. I will go and fetch the man of business who acts for M. Pons' family. He wants to know how much you will give him for the whole bag of tricks upstairs. I will go for him now."

"If only she were a widow!" said Remonencq when she was gone. "She would just suit me; she will have plenty of money now—"

"Especially if she puts her money into the Orleans Railway; she will double her capital in two years' time. I have put all my poor little savings into it," added the Jew, "for my daughter's portion.—Come, let us take a turn on the boulevard until this lawyer arrives."

"Cibot is very bad as it is," continued Remonencq; "if it should please God to take him to Himself, I should have a famous wife to keep a shop; I could set up on a large scale—"

"Good-day, M. Fraisier," La Cibot began in an ingratiating tone as she entered her legal adviser's office. "Why, what is this that your porter has been telling me? are you going to move?"

"Yes, my dear Mme. Cibot. I am taking the first floor above Dr. Poulain, and trying to borrow two or three thousand francs so as to furnish the place properly; it is very nice, upon my word, the landlord has just papered and painted it. I am acting, as I told you, in President de Marville's interests and yours.... I am not a solicitor now; I mean to have my name entered on the roll of barristers, and I must be well lodged. A barrister in Paris cannot have his name on the rolls unless he has decent furniture and books and the like. I am a doctor of law, I have kept my terms, and have powerful interest already.... Well, how are we getting on?"

"Perhaps you would accept my savings," said La Cibot. "I have put them in a savings bank. I have not much, only three thousand francs, the fruits of twenty-five years of stinting and scraping. You might give me a bill of exchange, as Remonencq says; for I am ignorant myself, I only know what they tell me."

"No. It is against the rules of the guild for a barrister (avocat) to put his name to a bill. I will give you a receipt, bearing interest at five per cent per annum, on the understanding that if I make an income of twelve hundred francs for you out of old Pons' estate you will cancel it."

La Cibot, caught in the trap, uttered not a word.

"Silence gives consent," Fraisier continued. "Let me have it to-morrow morning."

"Oh! I am quite willing to pay fees in advance," said La Cibot; "it is one way of making sure of my money."

Fraisier nodded. "How are you getting on?" he repeated. "I saw Poulain yesterday; you are hurrying your invalid along, it seems.... One more scene such as yesterday's, and gall-stones will form. Be gentle with him, my dear Mme. Cibot, do not lay up remorse for yourself. Life is not too long."

"Just let me alone with your remorse! Are you going to talk about the guillotine again? M. Pons is a contrairy old thing. You don't know him. It is he that bothers me. There is not a more cross-grained man alive; his relations are in the right of it, he is sly, revengeful, and contrairy.... M. Magus has come, as I told you, and is waiting to see you."

"Right! I will be there as soon as you. Your income depends upon the price the collection will fetch. If it brings in eight hundred thousand francs, you shall have fifteen hundred francs a year. It is a fortune."

"Very well. I will tell them to value the things on their consciences."



An hour later, Pons was fast asleep. The doctor had ordered a soothing draught, which Schmucke administered, all unconscious that La Cibot had doubled the dose. Fraisier, Remonencq, and Magus, three gallows-birds, were examining the seventeen hundred different objects which formed the old musician's collection one by one.

Schmucke had gone to bed. The three kites, drawn by the scent of a corpse, were masters of the field.

"Make no noise," said La Cibot whenever Magus went into ecstasies or explained the value of some work of art to Remonencq. The dying man slept on in the neighboring room, while greed in four different forms appraised the treasures that he must leave behind, and waited impatiently for him to die—a sight to wring the heart.

Three hours went by before they had finished the salon.

"On an average," said the grimy old Jew, "everything here is worth a thousand francs."

"Seventeen hundred thousand francs!" exclaimed Fraisier in bewilderment.

"Not to me," Magus answered promptly, and his eyes grew dull. "I would not give more than a hundred thousand francs myself for the collection. You cannot tell how long you may keep a thing on hand. ... There are masterpieces that wait ten years for a buyer, and meanwhile the purchase money is doubled by compound interest. Still, I should pay cash."

"There is stained glass in the other room, as well as enamels and miniatures and gold and silver snuff-boxes," put in Remonencq.

"Can they be seen?" inquired Fraisier.

"I'll see if he is sound asleep," replied La Cibot. She made a sign, and the three birds of prey came in.

"There are masterpieces yonder!" said Magus, indicating the salon, every bristle of his white beard twitching as he spoke. "But the riches are here! And what riches! Kings have nothing more glorious in royal treasuries."

Remonencq's eyes lighted up till they glowed like carbuncles, at the sight of the gold snuff-boxes. Fraisier, cool and calm as a serpent, or some snake-creature with the power of rising erect, stood with his viper head stretched out, in such an attitude as a painter would choose for Mephistopheles. The three covetous beings, thirsting for gold as devils thirst for the dew of heaven, looked simultaneously, as it chanced, at the owner of all this wealth. Some nightmare troubled Pons; he stirred, and suddenly, under the influence of those diabolical glances, he opened his eyes with a shrill cry.

"Thieves!... There they are!... Help! Murder! Help!"

The nightmare was evidently still upon him, for he sat up in bed, staring before him with blank, wide-open eyes, and had not the power to move.

Elie Magus and Remonencq made for the door, but a word glued them to the spot.

"Magus here!... I am betrayed!"

Instinctively the sick man had known that his beloved pictures were in danger, a thought that touched him at least as closely as any dread for himself, and he awoke. Fraisier meanwhile did not stir.

"Mme. Cibot! who is that gentleman?" cried Pons, shivering at the sight.

"Goodness me! how could I put him out of the door?" she inquired, with a wink and gesture for Fraisier's benefit. "This gentleman came just a minute ago, from your family."

Fraisier could not conceal his admiration for La Cibot.

"Yes, sir," he said, "I have come on behalf of Mme. la Presidente de Marville, her husband, and her daughter, to express their regret. They learned quite by accident that you are ill, and they would like to nurse you themselves. They want you to go to Marville and get well there. Mme. la Vicomtesse Popinot, the little Cecile that you love so much, will be your nurse. She took your part with her mother. She convinced Mme. de Marville that she had made a mistake."

"So my next-of-kin have sent you to me, have they?" Pons exclaimed indignantly, "and sent the best judge and expert in all Paris with you to show you the way? Oh! a nice commission!" he cried, bursting into wild laughter. "You have come to value my pictures and curiosities, my snuff-boxes and miniatures!... Make your valuation. You have a man there who understands everything, and more—he can buy everything, for he is a millionaire ten times over.... My dear relatives will not have long to wait," he added, with bitter irony, "they have choked the last breath out of me.... Ah! Mme. Cibot, you said you were a mother to me, and you bring dealers into the house, and my competitor and the Camusots, while I am asleep!... Get out, all of you!—"

The unhappy man was beside himself with anger and fear; he rose from the bed and stood upright, a gaunt, wasted figure.

"Take my arm, sir," said La Cibot, rushing to the rescue, lest Pons should fall. "Pray calm yourself, the gentlemen are gone."

"I want to see the salon...." said the death-stricken man. La Cibot made a sign to the three ravens to take flight. Then she caught up Pons as if he had been a feather, and put him in bed again, in spite of his cries. When she saw that he was quite helpless and exhausted, she went to shut the door on the staircase. The three who had done Pons to death were still on the landing; La Cibot told them to wait. She heard Fraisier say to Magus:

"Let me have it in writing, and sign it, both of you. Undertake to pay nine hundred thousand francs in cash for M. Pons' collection, and we will see about putting you in the way of making a handsome profit."

With that he said something to La Cibot in a voice so low that the others could not catch it, and went down after the two dealers to the porter's room.

"Have they gone, Mme. Cibot?" asked the unhappy Pons, when she came back again.

"Gone?... who?" asked she.

"Those men."

"What men? There, now, you have seen men," said she. "You have just had a raving fit; if it hadn't been for me you would have gone out the window, and now you are still talking of men in the room. Is it always to be like this?"

"What! was there not a gentleman here just now, saying that my relatives had sent him?"

"Will you still stand me out?" said she. "Upon my word, do you know where you ought to be sent?—To the asylum at Charenton. You see men—"

"Elie Magus, Remonencq, and—"

"Oh! as for Remonencq, you may have seen him, for he came up to tell me that my poor Cibot is so bad that I must clear out of this and come down. My Cibot comes first, you see. When my husband is ill, I can think of nobody else. Try to keep quiet and sleep for a couple of hours; I have sent for Dr. Poulain, and I will come up with him.... Take a drink and be good—"

"Then was there no one in the room just now, when I waked?..."

"No one," said she. "You must have seen M. Remonencq in one of your looking-glasses."

"You are right, Mme. Cibot," said Pons, meek as a lamb.

"Well, now you are sensible again.... Good-bye, my cherub; keep quiet, I shall be back again in a minute."

When Pons heard the outer door close upon her, he summoned up all his remaining strength to rise.

"They are cheating me," he muttered to himself, "they are robbing me! Schmucke is a child that would let them tie him up in a sack."

The terrible scene had seemed so real, it could not be a dream, he thought; a desire to throw light upon the puzzle excited him; he managed to reach the door, opened it after many efforts, and stood on the threshold of his salon. There they were—his dear pictures, his statues, his Florentine bronzes, his porcelain; the sight of them revived him. The old collector walked in his dressing-gown along the narrow spaces between the credence-tables and the sideboards that lined the wall; his feet bare, his head on fire. His first glance of ownership told him that everything was there; he turned to go back to bed again, when he noticed that a Greuze portrait looked out of the frame that had held Sebastian del Piombo's Templar. Suspicion flashed across his brain, making his dark thoughts apparent to him, as a flash of lightning marks the outlines of the cloud-bars on a stormy sky. He looked round for the eight capital pictures of the collection; each one of them was replaced by another. A dark film suddenly overspread his eyes; his strength failed him; he fell fainting upon the polished floor.

So heavy was the swoon, that for two hours he lay as he fell, till Schmucke awoke and went to see his friend, and found him lying unconscious in the salon. With endless pains Schmucke raised the half-dead body and laid it on the bed; but when he came to question the death-stricken man, and saw the look in the dull eyes and heard the vague, inarticulate words, the good German, so far from losing his head, rose to the very heroism of friendship. Man and child as he was, with the pressure of despair came the inspiration of a mother's tenderness, a woman's love. He warmed towels (he found towels!), he wrapped them about Pons' hands, he laid them over the pit of the stomach; he took the cold, moist forehead in his hands, he summoned back life with a might of will worthy of Apollonius of Tyana, laying kisses on his friend's eyelids like some Mary bending over the dead Christ, in a pieta carved in bas-relief by some great Italian sculptor. The divine effort, the outpouring of one life into another, the work of mother and of lover, was crowned with success. In half an hour the warmth revived Pons; he became himself again, the hues of life returned to his eyes, suspended faculties gradually resumed their play under the influence of artificial heat; Schmucke gave him balm-water with a little wine in it; the spirit of life spread through the body; intelligence lighted up the forehead so short a while ago insensible as a stone; and Pons knew that he had been brought back to life, by what sacred devotion, what might of friendship!

"But for you, I should die," he said, and as he spoke he felt the good German's tears falling on his face. Schmucke was laughing and crying at once.

Poor Schmucke! he had waited for those words with a frenzy of hope as costly as the frenzy of despair; and now his strength utterly failed him, he collapsed like a rent balloon. It was his turn to fall; he sank into the easy-chair, clasped his hands, and thanked God in fervent prayer. For him a miracle had just been wrought. He put no belief in the efficacy of the prayer of his deeds; the miracle had been wrought by God in direct answer to his cry. And yet that miracle was a natural effect, such as medical science often records.

A sick man, surrounded by those who love him, nursed by those who wish earnestly that he should live, will recover (other things being equal), when another patient tended by hirelings will die. Doctors decline to see unconscious magnetism in this phenomenon; for them it is the result of intelligent nursing, of exact obedience to their orders; but many a mother knows the virtue of such ardent projection of strong, unceasing prayer.

"My good Schmucke—"

"Say nodings; I shall hear you mit mein heart... rest, rest!" said Schmucke, smiling at him.

"Poor friend, noble creature, child of God, living in God!... The one being that has loved me...." The words came out with pauses between them; there was a new note, a something never heard before, in Pons' voice. All the soul, so soon to take flight, found utterance in the words that filled Schmucke with happiness almost like a lover's rapture.

"Yes, yes. I shall be shtrong as a lion. I shall vork for two!"

"Listen, my good, my faithful, adorable friend. Let me speak, I have not much time left. I am a dead man. I cannot recover from these repeated shocks."

Schmucke was crying like a child.

"Just listen," continued Pons, "and cry afterwards. As a Christian, you must submit. I have been robbed. It is La Cibot's doing.... I ought to open your eyes before I go; you know nothing of life.... Somebody has taken away eight of the pictures, and they were worth a great deal of money."

"Vorgif me—I sold dem."

"You sold them?"

"Yes, I," said poor Schmucke. "Dey summoned us to der court—"

"Summoned?.... Who summoned us?"

"Wait," said Schmucke. He went for the bit of stamped-paper left by the bailiff, and gave it to Pons. Pons read the scrawl through with close attention, then he let the paper drop and lay quite silent for a while. A close observer of the work of men's hands, unheedful so far of the workings of the brain, Pons finally counted out the threads of the plot woven about him by La Cibot. The artist's fire, the intellect that won the Roman scholarship—all his youth came back to him for a little.