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Updated: June 14, 2025
"My good M. Schmucke, let us suppose that you pay me nothing; you will want three thousand francs, and where are they to come from? Upon my word, do you know what I should do in your place? I should not think twice, I should just sell seven or eight good-for-nothing pictures and put up some of those instead that are standing in your closet with their faces to the wall for want of room.
Before very long Schwab introduced his friend and partner to M. Pons; Fritz Brunner expressed his thanks for the trouble which Pons had been so good as to take. In the conversation which followed, the two old bachelors Schmucke and Pons extolled the estate of matrimony, going so far as to say, without any malicious intent, "that marriage was the end of man."
But what no pen can describe was the state into which Schmucke, the cat, and the pipe, that existing trinity, had reduced these articles. The pipe had burned the table. The cat and Schmucke's head had greased the green Utrecht velvet of the two arm-chairs and reduced it to a slimy texture.
"And was I in charge of the pictures?" demanded La Cibot. "No; but you were in a position of trust. You were M. Pons' housekeeper, you looked after his affairs, and he has been robbed " "Robbed! Let me tell you this, sir: M. Schmucke sold the pictures, by M. Pons' orders, to meet expenses." "And to whom?" "To Messrs. Elie Magus and Remonencq." "For how much?" "I am sure I do not remember."
Pons had been wont to give him a five-franc piece once a month, knowing that he had a wife and family. "Why, I have come to ask news of M. Pons every morning, sir." "Efery morning! boor Dobinard!" and Schmucke squeezed the man's hand. "But they took me for a relation, no doubt, and did not like my visits at all.
"Finally, my friend Schmucke is to give the Descent from the Cross, Ruben's sketch for his great picture at Antwerp, to adorn a chapel in the parish church, in grateful acknowledgment of M. Duplanty's kindness to me; for to him I owe it that I can die as a Christian and a Catholic." So ran the will. "This is ruin!" mused Fraisier, "the ruin of all my hopes. Ha!
She got as good as she gave, though, the wretched woman. 'You are a thief and a bad lot, I told her; 'you will get into the police-courts for all the things that you have stolen from the gentlemen, and she shut up." The clerk came out to speak to Schmucke. "Would you wish to be present, sir, when the seals are affixed in the next room?"
"I shall vork; Bons shall be nursed like ein brince." "So he shall, M. Schmucke; and look here, don't you trouble about nothing. Cibot and I, between us, have saved a couple of thousand francs; they are yours; I have been spending money on you this long time, I have." "Goot voman!" cried Schmucke, brushing the tears from his eyes. "Vat ein heart!"
In his tender love he tried to protect Schmucke when he should be low in the grave. It was this father's thought that led him to fix his choice upon the leading lady of the ballet. Mlle. Brisetout should help him to baffle surrounding treachery, and those who in all probability would never forgive his innocent universal legatee.
The doctor had ordered a soothing draught, which Schmucke administered, all unconscious that La Cibot had doubled the dose. Fraisier, Remonencq, and Magus, three gallows-birds, were examining the seventeen hundred different objects which formed the old musician's collection one by one. Schmucke had gone to bed. The three kites, drawn by the scent of a corpse, were masters of the field.
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