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Updated: April 30, 2025
"That is M. Pons' doing; he taught him those disgusting tricks.... But you shall pay for this, my dears," she thought as she went down stairs. "Pooh! if that tight-rope dancer tells him about the thousand francs, I shall say that it is a farce." She seated herself by Cibot's pillow. Cibot complained of a burning sensation in the stomach.
"My dear madame, I have done nothing blameworthy," returned Fraisier. Evidently he meant to deny his nocturnal visit to Pons' rooms. Every hair on La Cibot's head seemed to scorch her, while a sense of icy cold swept over her from head to foot. "What?" . . . she faltered in bewilderment.
I had rather die outright than be crippled." La Cibot crawled downstairs, clinging to the banisters, and writhing and groaning so piteously that the tenants, in alarm, came out upon their landings. Schmucke supported the suffering creature, and told the story of La Cibot's devotion, the tears running down his cheeks as he spoke.
Could so depraved a creature as La Cibot exist? If Pons was right, it seemed to imply that there was no God in the world. He went right down again to Mme. Cibot. "Mein boor vriend Bons feel so ill," he said, "dat he vish to make his vill. Go und pring ein nodary." This was said in the hearing of several persons, for Cibot's life was despaired of.
Schmucke did not know Fraisier, and could not note his satanic countenance and glittering eyes. But two words whispered by Fraisier in La Cibot's ear had prompted a daring piece of acting, somewhat beyond La Cibot's range, it may be, though she played her part throughout in a masterly style.
One morning as he leaned against the door-post, smoking his pipe and dreaming of that fine shop on the Boulevard de la Madeleine where Mme. Cibot, gorgeously arrayed, should some day sit enthroned, his eyes fell upon a copper disc, about the size of a five-franc piece, covered thickly with verdigris. The economical idea of using Cibot's medicine to clean the disc immediately occurred to him.
"Wipe your tears; they do me honor; this is my reward," said La Cibot, melodramatically. "There isn't no more disinterested creature on earth than me; but don't you go into the room with tears in your eyes, or M. Pons will be thinking himself worse than he is." Schmucke was touched by this delicate feeling. He took La Cibot's hand and gave it a final squeeze.
La Cibot's honesty was of the negative order; she and her like are honest until they see their way clear to gain money belonging to somebody else. Positive honesty, the honesty of the bank collector, can wade knee-deep through temptations. A torrent of evil thoughts invaded La Cibot's heart and brain so soon as Remonencq's diabolical suggestion opened the flood-gates of self-interest.
La Cibot's curiosity, kindled by such words, reached an unimaginable pitch. She went downstairs and spent the night at Cibot's bedside, inwardly resolving that Mlle. Remonencq should take her place towards two or three in the morning, when she would go up and have a look at the document. Mlle.
Camusot's immediate successor, the judge with whom he had been most intimate during his term of office, was still President of the Tribunal, and consequently knew all about Fraisier. "Do you know, madame," Fraisier said, when at last the red sluices of La Cibot's torrent tongue were closed, "do you know that your principal enemy will be a man who can send you to the scaffold?"
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