“I know what you mean,” continued she. “But it does not kill you, my dear gentleman, to make a will when you are out of health; and in your place I might not leave that poor dear alone, for fear that something might happen; he is like God Almighty’s lamb, he knows nothing about nothing, and I should not like him to be at the mercy of those sharks of lawyers and a wretched pack of relations. Let us see now, has one of them come here to see you in twenty years? And would you leave your property to _them_? Do you know, they say that all these things here are worth something.” “Why, yes,” said Pons. “Remonencq, who deals in pictures, and knows that you are an amateur, says that he would be quite ready to pay you an annuity of thirty thousand francs so long as you live, to have the pictures afterwards. ... There is a change! If I were you, I should take it. Why, I thought he said it for a joke when he told me that. You ought to let M. Schmucke know the value of all those things, for he is a man that could be cheated like a child. He has not the slightest idea of the value of these fine things that you have! He so little suspects it, that he would give them away for a morsel of bread if he did not keep them all his life for love of you, always supposing that he lives after you, for he will die of your death. But _I_ am here; I will take his part against anybody and everybody!... I and Cibot will defend him.” “Dear Mme. Cibot!” said Pons, “what would have become of me if it had not been for you and Schmucke?” He felt touched by this horrible prattle; the feeling in it seemed to be ingenuous, as it usually is in the speech of the people. “Ah! we really are your only friends on earth, that is very true, that is. But two good hearts are worth all the families in the world.--Don’t talk of families to me! A family, as the old actor said of the tongue, is the best and the worst of all things.... Where are those relations of yours now? Have you any? I have never seen them--” “They have brought me to lie here,” said Pons, with intense bitterness. “So you have relations!...” cried La Cibot, springing up as if her easy-chair had been heated red-hot. “Oh, well, they are a nice lot, are your relations! What! these three weeks--for this is the twentieth day, to-day, that you have been ill and like to die--in these three weeks they have not come once to ask for news of you? That’s a trifle too strong, that is!... Why, in your place, I would leave all I had to the Foundling Hospital sooner than give them one farthing!” “Well, my dear Mme. Cibot, I meant to leave all that I had to a cousin once removed, the daughter of my first cousin, President Camusot, you know, who came here one morning nearly two months ago.”