"What do you want, Remonencq?" asked this person.

"It is a question of valuing some pictures; there is n.o.body but you in Paris who can tell a poor tinker-fellow like me how much he may give when he has not thousands to spend, like you."

"Where is it?"

"Here is the portress of the house where the gentleman lives; she does for him, and I have arranged with her--"

"Who is the owner?"

"M. Pons!" put in La Cibot.

"Don't know the name," said Magus, with an innocent air, bringing down his foot very gently upon his artist's toes.

Moret the painter, knowing the value of Pons' collection, had looked up suddenly at the name. It was a move too hazardous to try with any one but Remonencq and La Cibot, but the Jew had taken the woman's measure at sight, and his eye was as accurate as a jeweler's scales. It was impossible that either of the couple should know how often Magus and old Pons had matched their claws. And, in truth, both rabid amateurs were jealous of each other. The old Jew had never hoped for a sight of a seraglio so carefully guarded; it seemed to him that his head was swimming. Pons' collection was the one private collection in Paris which could vie with his own. Pons' idea had occurred to Magus twenty years later; but as a dealer-amateur the door of Pons' museum had been closed to him, as for Dusommerard. Pons and Magus had at heart the same jealousy. Neither of them cared about the kind of celebrity dear to the ordinary collector. And now for Elie Magus came his chance to see the poor musician's treasures! An amateur of beauty hiding in a boudoir or a stolen glance at a mistress concealed from him by his friend might feel as Elie Magus felt at that moment.

La Cibot was impressed by Remonencq's respect for this singular person; real power, moreover, even when it cannot be explained, is always felt; the portress was supple and obedient, she dropped the autocratic tone which she was wont to use in her lodge and with the tenants, accepted Magus' conditions, and agreed to admit him into Pons' museum that very day.

So the enemy was to be brought into the citadel, and a stab dealt to Pons' very heart. For ten years Pons had carried his keys about with him; he had forbidden La Cibot to allow any one, no matter whom, to cross his threshold; and La Cibot had so far shared Schmucke's opinions of _bric-a-brac_, that she had obeyed him. The good Schmucke, by speaking of the splendors as "chimcracks," and deploring his friend's mania, had taught La Cibot to despise the old rubbish, and so secured Pons' museum from invasion for many a long year.

When Pons took to his bed, Schmucke filled his place at the theatre and gave lessons for him at his boarding-schools. He did his utmost to do the work of two; but Pons' sorrows weighing heavily upon his mind, the task took all his strength. He only saw his friend in the morning, and again at dinnertime. His pupils and the people at the theatre, seeing the poor German look so unhappy, used to ask for news of Pons; and so great was his grief, that the indifferent would make the grimaces of sensibility which Parisians are wont to reserve for the greatest calamities. The very springs of life had been attacked, the good German was suffering from Pons' pain as well as from his own. When he gave a music lesson, he spent half the time in talking of Pons, interrupting himself to wonder whether his friend felt better to-day, and the little school-girls listening heard lengthy explanations of Pons' symptoms.

He would rush over to the Rue de Normandie in the interval between two lessons for the sake of a quarter of an hour with Pons.

When at last he saw that their common stock was almost exhausted, when Mme. Cibot (who had done her best to swell the expenses of the illness) came to him and frightened him; then the old music-master felt that he had courage of which he never thought himself capable--courage that rose above his anguish. For the first time in his life he set himself to earn money; money was needed at home. One of the school-girl pupils, really touched by their troubles, asked Schmucke how he could leave his friend alone. "Montemoiselle," he answered, with the sublime smile of those who think no evil, "ve haf Montame Zipod, ein dreasure, montemoiselle, ein bearl! Bons is nursed like ein brince."

So while Schmucke trotted about the streets, La Cibot was mistress of the house and ruled the invalid. How should Pons superintend his self-appointed guardian angel, when he had taken no solid food for a fortnight, and lay there so weak and helpless that La Cibot was obliged to lift him up and carry him to the sofa while she made the bed?

La Cibot's visit to Elie Magus was paid (as might be expected) while Schmucke breakfasted. She came in again just as the German was bidding his friend good-bye; for since she learned that Pons possessed a fortune, she never left the old bachelor; she brooded over him and his treasures like a hen. From the depths of a comfortable easy-chair at the foot of the bed she poured forth for Pons' delectation the gossip in which women of her cla.s.s excel. With Machiavelian skill, she had contrived to make Pons think that she was indispensable to him; she coaxed and she wheedled, always uneasy, always on the alert. Mme.

Fontaine's prophecy had frightened La Cibot; she vowed to herself that she would gain her ends by kindness. She would sleep secure on M. Pons'

legacy, but her rascality should keep within the limits of the law. For ten years she had not suspected the value of Pons' collection; she had a clear record behind her of ten years of devotion, honesty, and disinterestedness; it was a magnificent investment, and now she proposed to realize. In one day, Remonencq's hint of money had hatched the serpent's egg, the craving for riches that had lain dormant within her for twenty years. Since she had cherished that craving, it had grown in force with the ferment of all the evil that lurks in the corners of the heart. How she acted upon the counsels whispered by the serpent will presently be seen.

"Well?" she asked of Schmucke, "has this cherub of ours had plenty to drink? Is he better?"

"He is not doing fery vell, tear Montame Zipod, not fery vell," said poor Schmucke, brushing away the tears from his eyes.

"Pooh! you make too much of it, my dear M. Schmucke; we must take things as we find them; Cibot might be at death's door, and I should not take it to heart as you do. Come! the cherub has a good const.i.tution. And he has been steady, it seems, you see; you have no idea what an age sober people live. He is very ill, it is true, but with all the care I take of him, I shall bring him round. Be easy, look after your affairs, I will keep him company and see that he drinks his pints of barley water."

"Gif you vere not here, I should die of anxiety--" said Schmucke, squeezing his kind housekeeper's hand in both his own to express his confidence in her.

La Cibot wiped her eyes as she went back to the invalid's room.

"What is the matter, Mme. Cibot?" asked Pons.

"It is M. Schmucke that has upset me; he is crying as if you were dead,"

said she. "If you are not well, you are not so bad yet that n.o.body need cry over you; but it has given me such a turn! Oh dear! oh dear! how silly it is of me to get so fond of people, and to think more of you than of Cibot! For, after all, you aren't nothing to me, you are only my brother by Adam's side; and yet, whenever you are in the question, it puts me in such a taking, upon my word it does! I would cut off my hand--my left hand, of course--to see you coming and going, eating your meals, and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g bargains out of dealers as usual. If I had had a child of my own, I think I should have loved it as I love you, eh!

There, take a drink, dearie; come now, empty the gla.s.s. Drink it off, monsieur, I tell you! The first thing Dr. Poulain said was, 'If M. Pons has no mind to go to Pere Lachaise, he ought to drink as many buckets full of water in a day as an Auvergnat will sell.' So, come now, drink--"

"But I do drink, Cibot, my good woman; I drink and drink till I am deluged--"

"That is right," said the portress, as she took away the empty gla.s.s.

"That is the way to get better. Dr. Poulain had another patient ill of your complaint; but he had n.o.body to look after him, his children left him to himself, and he died because he didn't drink enough--so you must drink, honey, you see--he died and they buried him two months ago. And if you were to die, you know, you would drag down old M. Schmucke with you, sir. He is like a child. Ah! he loves you, he does, the dear lamb of a man; no woman never loved a man like that! He doesn't care for meat nor drink; he has grown as thin as you are in the last fortnight, and you are nothing but skin and bones.--It makes me jealous to see it, for I am very fond of you; but not to that degree; I haven't lost my appet.i.te, quite the other way; always going up and down stairs, till my legs are so tired that I drop down of an evening like a lump of lead.

Here am I neglecting my poor Cibot for you; Mlle. Remonencq cooks his victuals for him, and he goes on about it and says that nothing is right! At that I tell him that one ought to put up with something for the sake of other people, and that you are so ill that I cannot leave you. In the first place, you can't afford a nurse. And before I would have a nurse here!--I have done for you these ten years; they want wine and sugar, and foot-warmers, and all sorts of comforts. And they rob their patients unless the patients leave them something in their wills.

Have a nurse in here to-day, and to-morrow we should find a picture or something or other gone--"

"Oh! Mme. Cibot!" cried Pons, quite beside himself, "do not leave me! No one must touch anything--"

"I am here," said La Cibot; "so long as I have the strength I shall be here.--Be easy. There was Dr. Poulain wanting to get a nurse for you; perhaps he has his eye on your treasures. I just snubbed him, I did.

'The gentleman won't have any one but me,' I told him. 'He is used to me, and I am used to him.' So he said no more. A nurse, indeed! They are all thieves; I hate that sort of woman, I do. Here is a tale that will show you how sly they are. There was once an old gentleman--it was Dr.

Poulain himself, mind you, who told me this--well, a Mme. Sabatier, a woman of thirty-six that used to sell slippers at the Palais Royal--you remember the Galerie at the Palais that they pulled down?"

Pons nodded.

"Well, at that time she had not done very well; her husband used to drink, and died of spontaneous imbustion; but she had been a fine woman in her time, truth to tell, not that it did her any good, though she had friends among the lawyers. So, being hard up, she became a monthly nurse, and lived in the Rue Barre-du-Bec. Well, she went out to nurse an old gentleman that had a disease of the lurinary guts (saving your presence); they used to tap him like an artesian well, and he needed such care that she used to sleep on a truckle-bed in the same room with him. You would hardly believe such a thing!--'Men respect nothing,'

you'll tell me, 'so selfish as they are.' Well, she used to talk with him, you understand; she never left him, she amused him, she told him stories, she drew him on to talk (just as we are chatting away together now, you and I, eh?), and she found out that his nephews--the old gentleman had nephews--that his nephews were wretches; they had worried him, and final end of it, they had brought on this illness. Well, my dear sir, she saved his life, he married her, and they have a fine child; Ma'am Bordevin, the butcher's wife in the Rue Charlot, a relative of hers, stood G.o.dmother. There is luck for you!

"As for me, I am married; and if I have no children, I don't mind saying that it is Cibot's fault; he is too fond of me, but if I cared--never mind. What would have become of me and my Cibot if we had had a family, when we have not a penny to bless ourselves with after thirty years' of faithful service? I have not a farthing belonging to n.o.body else, that is what comforts me. I have never wronged n.o.body.--Look here, suppose now (there is no harm in supposing when you will be out and about again in six weeks' time, and sauntering along the boulevard); well, suppose that you had put me down in your will; very good, I shouldn't never rest till I had found your heirs and given the money back. Such is my horror of anything that is not earned by the sweat of my brow.

"You will say to me, 'Why, Mme. Cibot, why should you worry yourself like that? You have fairly earned the money; you looked after your two gentlemen as if they had been your children; you saved them a thousand francs a year--' (for there are plenty, sir, you know, that would have had their ten thousand francs put out to interest by now if they had been in my place)--'so if the worthy gentleman leaves you a trifle of an annuity, it is only right.'--Suppose they told me that. Well, now; I am not thinking of myself.--I cannot think how some women can do a kindness thinking of themselves all the time. It is not doing good, sir, is it? I do not go to church myself, I haven't the time; but my conscience tells me what is right.... Don't you fidget like that, my lamb!--Don't scratch yourself!... Dear me, how yellow you grow! So yellow you are--quite brown. How funny it is that one can come to look like a lemon in three weeks!... Honesty is all that poor folk have, and one must surely have something! Suppose that you were just at death's door, I should be the first to tell you that you ought to leave all that you have to M.

Schmucke. It is your duty, for he is all the family you have. He loves you, he does, as a dog loves his master."

"Ah! yes," said Pons; "n.o.body else has ever loved me all my life long--"

"Ah! that is not kind of you, sir," said Mme. Cibot; "then I do not love you, I suppose?"

"I do not say so, my dear Mme. Cibot."

"Good. You take me for a servant, do you, a common servant, as if I hadn't no heart! Goodness me! for eleven years you do for two old bachelors, you think of nothing but their comfort. I have turned half a score of greengrocers' shops upside down for you, I have talked people round to get you good Brie cheese; I have gone down as far as the market for fresh b.u.t.ter for you; I have taken such care of things that nothing of yours hasn't been chipped nor broken in all these ten years; I have just treated you like my own children; and then to hear a 'My dear Mme.

Cibot,' that shows that there is not a bit of feeling for you in the heart of an old gentleman that you have cared for like a king's son!

for the little King of Rome was not so well looked after. He died in his prime; there is proof for you.... Come, sir, you are unjust! You are ungrateful! It is because I am only a poor portress. Goodness me! are _you_ one of those that think we are dogs?--"

"But, my dear Mme. Cibot--"

"Indeed, you that know so much, tell me why we porters are treated like this, and are supposed to have no feelings; people look down on us in these days when they talk of Equality!--As for me, am I not as good as another woman, I that was one of the finest women in Paris, and was called _La belle Ecaillere_, and received declarations seven or eight times a day? And even now if I liked--Look here, sir, you know that little scrubby marine store-dealer downstairs? Very well, he would marry me any day, if I were a widow that is, with his eyes shut; he has had them looking wide open in my direction so often; he is always saying, 'Oh! what fine arms you have, Ma'am Cibot!--I dreamed last night that it was bread and I was b.u.t.ter, and I was spread on the top.' Look, sir, there is an arm!"

She rolled up her sleeve and displayed the shapeliest arm imaginable, as white and fresh as her hand was red and rough; a plump, round, dimpled arm, drawn from its merino sheath like a blade from the scabbard to dazzle Pons, who looked away.

"For every oyster the knife opened, the arm has opened a heart! Well, it belongs to Cibot, and I did wrong when I neglected him, poor dear, HE would throw himself over a precipice at a word from me; while you, sir, that call me 'My dear Mme. Cibot' when I do impossible things for you--"

"Do just listen to me," broke in the patient; "I cannot call you my mother, nor my wife--"

"No, never in all my born days will I take again to anybody--"

"Do let me speak!" continued Pons. "Let me see; I put M. Schmucke first--"

"M. Schmucke! there is a heart for you," cried La Cibot. "Ah! he loves me, but then he is poor. It is money that deadens the heart; and you are rich! Oh, well, take a nurse, you will see what a life she will lead you; she will torment you, you will be like a c.o.c.kchafer on a string.

The doctor will say that you must have plenty to drink, and she will do nothing but feed you. She will bring you to your grave and rob you. You do not deserve to have a Mme. Cibot!--there! When Dr. Poulain comes, ask him for a nurse."

"Oh fiddlestickend!" the patient cried angrily. "_Will_ you listen to me? When I spoke of my friend Schmucke, I was not thinking of women. I know quite well that no one cares for me so sincerely as you do, you and Schmucke--"

"Have the goodness not to irritate yourself in this way!" exclaimed La Cibot, plunging down upon Pons and covering him by force with the bedclothes.