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The savory odor of a stew pervaded the whole courtyard, as Pons returned mechanically home. Mme. Cibot was dishing up Schmucke's dinner, which consisted of scraps of boiled beef from a little cook-shop not above doing a little trade of this kind.
This time La Cibot tossed her head. "There, there, old lady," said Fraisier, with odious familiarity, "you will go a very long way! "You take me for a thief, I suppose?" "Come, now, mamma, you hold a receipt in M. Schmucke's hand which did not cost you much. Ah! you are in the confessional, my lady!
Cibot, in the pride of her heart, enumerated every dish beforehand; a salt and savor once periodically recurrent, had vanished utterly from daily life. Dinner proceeded without le plat couvert, as our grandsires called it. This lay beyond the bounds of Schmucke's powers of comprehension.
As Schmucke's character, his utter lack of ambition or pretence became known, the orchestra recognized him as one of themselves; and as time went on, he was intrusted with the often needed miscellaneous musical instruments which form no part of the regular band of a boulevard theatre.
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 "
"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.
About a month after the perfidious Werther's withdrawal, poor Pons left his bed for the first time after an attack of nervous fever, and walked along the sunny side of the street leaning on Schmucke's arm. Nobody in the Boulevard du Temple laughed at the "pair of nutcrackers," for one of the old men looked so shattered, and the other so touchingly careful of his invalid friend.
La Sauvage, on the lookout in the gateway, half-carried Schmucke's almost unconscious form upstairs. Remonencq and the agent went up with her. "He will be ill!" exclaimed the agent, anxious to make an end of the piece of business which, according to him, was in progress. "I should think he will!" returned Mme. Sauvage.
Villemot held Schmucke's arm while the master of the ceremonies invested Schmucke with the ample, dismal-looking garment worn by heirs-at-law in the procession to and from the house and the church. He tied the black silken cords under the chin, and Schmucke as heir was in "full dress."
"In what way?" queried Pons. "If a will is made in the presence of a notary, and before witnesses who can swear that the testator was in the full possession of his faculties; and if the testator has neither wife nor children, nor father nor mother " "I have none of these; all my affection is centred upon my dear friend Schmucke here." The tears overflowed Schmucke's eyes.
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