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Updated: April 30, 2025
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.
Knowing that a will had been made, he had come to see how the land lay, for Maitre Trognon, notary, had refused to say a syllable Fraisier's questions were as fruitless as Mme. Cibot's. Naturally the ballet-girl's visit in extremis was not lost upon Fraisier; he vowed to himself that he would turn it to good account. "My dear Mme. Cibot," he began, "now is the critical moment for you."
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?"
They had no rent to pay and no expenses for firing; Cibot's earnings amounted on an average to seven or eight hundred francs, add tips at New Year, and the pair had altogether in income of sixteen hundred francs, every penny of which they spent, for the Cibots lived and fared better than working people usually do. "One can only live once," La Cibot used to say.
La Cibot had treated him as a madman and a visionary; he saw what this meant he saw the Presidente's hate and greed, her revenge in La Cibot's behavior. In the sleepless hours and lonely days of the last two months, the poor man had sifted the events of his past life. It has been the wont of sculptors, ancient and modern, to set a tutelary genius with a lighted torch upon either side of a tomb.
The trace of tarnished copper, commonly called verdigris, poisoned the wholesome draught; a minute dose administered by stealth did incalculable mischief. Behold the results of this criminal homoeopathy! On the third day poor Cibot's hair came out, his teeth were loosened in their sockets, his whole system was deranged by a scarcely perceptible trace of poison. Dr. Poulain racked his brains.
Pons hitherto had dined abroad, eluding her desire to have both of "her gentlemen" entirely under her management; his "troubadour" collector's life had scared away certain vague ideas which hovered in La Cibot's brain; but now her shadowy projects assumed the formidable shape of a definite plan, dating from that memorable dinner.
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.
"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.
He died, as men must, and well, his genuine pictures did not fetch more than two hundred thousand francs! You must let me see these gentlemen. Now for the next-of-kin," and Fraisier again relapsed into his attitude of listener. When President Camusot's name came up, he nodded with a grimace which riveted Mme. Cibot's attention.
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