have you put them in p.a.w.n? 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 pa.s.sion? 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 p.r.i.c.k-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 un.o.bserved. 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! G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion 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.