“Ah! but for Dr. Poulain I should have been put to bed with a shovel by now, as we shall all be one day. Well, what must be, must, as the old actor said. One must take things philosophically. How did you get on without me?” “Schmucke nursed me,” said the invalid; “but our poor money-box and our lessons have suffered. I do not know how he managed.” “Calm yourself, Bons,” exclaimed Schmucke; “ve haf in Zipod ein panker--” “Do not speak of it, my lamb. You are our children, both of you,” cried La Cibot. “Our savings will be well invested; you are safer than the Bank. So long as we have a morsel of bread, half of it is yours. It is not worth mentioning--” “Boor Montame Zipod!” said Schmucke, and he went. Pons said nothing. “Would you believe it, my cherub?” said La Cibot, as the sick man tossed uneasily, “in my agony--for it was a near squeak for me--the thing that worried me most was the thought that I must leave you alone, with no one to look after you, and my poor Cibot without a farthing.... My savings are such a trifle, that I only mention them in connection with my death and Cibot, an angel that he is! No. He nursed me as if I had been a queen, he did, and cried like a calf over me!... But I counted on you, upon my word. I said to him, ‘There, Cibot! my gentlemen will not let you starve--’” Pons made no reply to this thrust _ad testamentum_; but as the portress waited for him to say something--“I shall recommend you to M. Schmucke,” he said at last. “Ah!” cried La Cibot, “whatever you do will be right; I trust in you and your heart. Let us never talk of this again; you make me feel ashamed, my cherub. Think of getting better, you will outlive us all yet.” Profound uneasiness filled Mme. Cibot’s mind. She cast about for some way of making the sick man understand that she expected a legacy. That evening, when Schmucke was eating his dinner as usual by Pons’ bedside, she went out, hoping to find Dr. Poulain at home. Dr. Poulain lived in the Rue d’Orleans in a small ground floor establishment, consisting of a lobby, a sitting-room, and two bedrooms. A closet, opening into the lobby and the bedroom, had been turned into a study for the doctor. The kitchen, the servant’s bedroom, and a small cellar were situated in a wing of the house, a huge pile built in the time of the Empire, on the site of an old mansion of which the garden still remained, though it had been divided among the three ground floor tenants. Nothing had been changed in the doctor’s house since it was built. Paint and paper and ceilings were all redolent of the Empire. The grimy deposits of forty years lay thick on walls and ceilings, on paper and paint and mirrors and gilding. And yet, this little establishment, in the depths of the Marais, paid a rent of a thousand francs.