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"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.
At six o'clock the next morning Mme. Cibot stood in the Rue de la Perle; she was making a survey of the abode of her future adviser, Lawyer Fraisier. The house was one of the old-fashioned kind formerly inhabited by small tradespeople and citizens with small means.
Schmucke meanwhile went back to his friend Pons with the news that Cibot was dying, and Remonencq gone in search of M. Trognon, the notary. Pons was struck by the name. It had come up again and again in La Cibot's interminable talk, and La Cibot always recommended him as honesty incarnate.
Remonencq and his sister, two women from neighboring porters' lodges, two or three servants, and the lodger from the first floor on the side next the street, were all standing outside in the gateway. "Oh! you can just fetch a notary yourself, and have your will made as you please," cried La Cibot, with tears in her eyes. "My poor Cibot is dying, and it is no time to leave him.
A prince won't be no better nursed . . . and besides, you needn't refuse yourself nothing that's necessary, you can afford it. I have just been talking things over with Cibot, for what would he do without me, poor dear? Well, and I talked him round; we are both so fond of you, that he will let me stop up with you of a night.
In vain Pons tried to put in a word; La Cibot talked as the wind blows. Means of arresting steam-engines have been invented, but it would tax a mechanician's genius to discover any plan for stopping a portress' tongue. "I know what you mean," continued she.
Fontaine began to think; for several seconds she did not move; she looked like a corpse, her eyes rolled in their sockets and grew white; then she rose stiff and erect, and a cavernous voice cried: "Here I am!" Automatically she scattered millet for Cleopatre, took up the pack of cards, shuffled them convulsively, and held them out to Mme. Cibot to cut, sighing heavily all the time.
He made up his mind at once. He talked of rupture, and of taking it in time, and thought even worse of the case than La Cibot herself. The portress was plied with various remedies, and finally underwent a sham operation, crowned with complete success.
La Cibot came and went; but her husband, a hard-working man, sat day in day out like a fakir on the table in the window, till his knee-joints were stiffened, the blood stagnated in his body, and his legs grew so thin and crooked that he almost lost the use of them. The deep copper tint of the man's complexion naturally suggested that he had been out of health for a very long time.
In the sitting-room La Cibot explained her position with regard to the pair of nutcrackers at very considerable length. She repeated the history of her loan with added embellishments, and gave a full account of the immense services rendered during the past ten years to MM. Pons and Schmucke. The two old men, to all appearance, could not exist without her motherly care.
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