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Updated: May 16, 2025
The savage luck which dogs Kirkwood and Jane, and the worse than savage the inhuman cruelty of Clem Peckover, who has been compared to the Madame Cibot of Balzac's Le Cousin Pons, render the book an intensely gloomy one; it ends on a note of poignant misery, which gives a certain colour for once to the oft-repeated charge of morbidity and pessimism.
Oh, well, take a nurse, you will see what a life she will lead you; she will torment you, you will be like a cockchafer on a string. The doctor will say that you must have plenty to drink, and she will do nothing but feed you. She will bring you to your grave and rob you. You do not deserve to have a Mme. Cibot! there! When Dr. Poulain comes, ask him for a nurse."
A romantic purely speculative dream, persistently followed through a tobacco-smoker's long musings as he lounged in the doorway, had brought him to the point of wishing that the little tailor were dead. At a stroke he beheld his capital trebled; and then he thought of La Cibot. What a good saleswoman she would be! What a handsome figure she would make in a magnificent shop on the boulevards!
"I should have done far better to follow your advice, my good Schmucke, and dined here every day, and given up going into this society, that has fallen on me with all its weight, like a tumbril cart crushing an egg! And why?" "Come, come, don't complain, M. Pons," said La Cibot; "the doctor told me just how it is " Schmucke tugged at her gown.
"Oh fiddlestickend!" the patient cried angrily. "Will you listen to me? When I spoke of my friend Schmucke, I was not thinking of women. I know quite well that no one cares for me so sincerely as you do, you and Schmucke " "Have the goodness not to irritate yourself in this way!" exclaimed La Cibot, plunging down upon Pons and covering him by force with the bedclothes.
Mme. Cibot went straight to the porter's lodge, and there encountered one of the fraternity, a shoemaker, his wife, and two small children, all housed in a room ten feet square, lighted from the yard at the back. La Cibot mentioned her profession, named herself, and spoke of her house in the Rue de Normandie, and the two women were on cordial terms at once.
Yet M. Poulain's pensive air and uneasy eyes embarrassed Remonencq not a little, and at sight of the doctor he offered eagerly to go in search of M. Trognon, Fraisier's acquaintance. Fraisier turned to La Cibot to say in a low voice, "I shall come back again as soon as the will is made. In spite of your sorrow, you must look for squalls."
"Why, the doctor told me that I was going on as well as possible," continued he; "he said that I should soon be about again as usual. You have killed me, ruined me, murdered me!" "Tut, tut, tut!" cried La Cibot, "there you go! I am killing you, am I? Mercy on us! these are the pretty things that you are always telling M. Schmucke when my back is turned. I hear all that you say, that I do!
Here I am straining myself to carry you, running the risk of doing myself a mischief that I shall feel all my days. Oh dear, oh dear! and the door left open too " "You were talking with some one. Who was it?" "Here are notions!" cried La Cibot. "What next! Am I your bond-slave? Am I to give account of myself to you? Do you know that if you bother me like this, I shall clear out!
Cibot about his troubles and mortifications, she pouring out abuse of the relations the while and showing exceeding tenderness on every fresh sentence in the sad history. She fairly wept at last. To understand the sudden intimacy between the old musician and Mme. Cibot, you have only to imagine the position of an old bachelor lying on his bed of pain, seriously ill for the first time in his life.
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