Mme. Sauvage had had her instructions already. She had undertaken to weave a web of iron wire about the two musicians, and to watch them as a spider watches a fly caught in the toils; and her reward was to be a tobacconist’s license. Fraisier had found a convenient opportunity of getting rid of his so-called foster-mother, while he posted her as a detective and policeman to supervise Mme. Cantinet. As there was a servant’s bedroom and a little kitchen included in the apartment, La Sauvage could sleep on a truckle-bed and cook for the German. Dr. Poulain came with the two women just as Pons drew his last breath. Schmucke was sitting beside his friend, all unconscious of the crisis, holding the hand that slowly grew colder in his grasp. He signed to Mme. Cantinet to be silent; but Mme. Sauvage’s soldierly figure surprised him so much that he started in spite of himself, a kind of homage to which the virago was quite accustomed. “M. Duplanty answers for this lady,” whispered Mme. Cantinet by way of introduction. “She once was cook to a bishop; she is honesty itself; she will do the cooking.” “Oh! you may talk out loud,” wheezed the stalwart dame. “The poor gentleman is dead.... He has just gone.” A shrill cry broke from Schmucke. He felt Pons’ cold hand stiffening in his, and sat staring into his friend’s eyes; the look in them would have driven him mad, if Mme. Sauvage, doubtless accustomed to scenes of this sort, had not come to the bedside with a mirror which she held over the lips of the dead. When she saw that there was no mist upon the surface, she briskly snatched Schmucke’s hand away. “Just take away your hand, sir; you may not be able to do it in a little while. You do not know how the bones harden. A corpse grows cold very quickly. If you do not lay out a body while it is warm, you have to break the joints later on....” And so it was this terrible woman who closed the poor dead musician’s eyes. With a business-like dexterity acquired in ten years of experience, she stripped and straightened the body, laid the arms by the sides, and covered the face with the bedclothes, exactly as a shopman wraps a parcel. “A sheet will be wanted to lay him out.--Where is there a sheet?” she demanded, turning on the terror-stricken Schmucke. He had watched the religious ritual with its deep reverence for the creature made for such high destinies in heaven; and now he saw his dead friend treated simply as a thing in this packing process--saw with the sharp pain that dissolves the very elements of thought. “Do as you vill----” he answered mechanically. The innocent creature for the first time in his life had seen a man die, and that man was Pons, his only friend, the one human being who understood him and loved him. “I will go and ask Mme. Cibot where the sheets are kept,” said La Sauvage. “A truckle-bed will be wanted for the person to sleep upon,” Mme. Cantinet came to tell Schmucke.