“You hold your tongue too! You are a pair of old libertines. If you were ugly, it don’t make no difference; there was never so ugly a saucepan-lid but it found a pot to match, as the saying is. There is Cibot, he got one of the handsomest oyster-women in Paris to fall in love with him, and you are infinitely better looking than him! You are a nice pair, you are! Come, now, you have sown your wild oats, and God will punish you for deserting your children, like Abraham--” Exhausted though he was, the invalid gathered up all his strength to make a vehement gesture of denial. “Do lie quiet; if you have, it won’t prevent you from living as long as Methuselah.” “Then, pray let me be quiet!” groaned Pons. “I have never known what it is to be loved. I have had no child; I am alone in the world.” “Really, eh?” returned the portress. “You are so kind, and that is what women like, you see--it draws them--and it looked to me impossible that when you were in your prime--” “Take her away,” Pons whispered to Schmucke; “she sets my nerves on edge.” “Then there’s M. Schmucke, he has children. You old bachelors are not all like that--” “_I!_” cried Schmucke, springing to his feet, “vy!--” “Come, then, you have none to come after you either, eh? You both sprung up out of the earth like mushrooms--” “Look here, komm mit me,” said Schmucke. The good German manfully took Mme. Cibot by the waist and carried her off into the next room, in spite of her exclamations. “At your age, you would not take advantage of a defenceless woman!” cried La Cibot, struggling in his arms. “Don’t make a noise!” “You too, the better one of the two!” returned La Cibot. “Ah! it is my fault for talking about love to two old men who have never had nothing to do with women. I have roused your passions,” cried she, as Schmucke’s eyes glittered with wrath. “Help! help! police!” “You are a stoopid!” said the German. “Look here, vat tid de toctor say?” “You are a ruffian to treat me so,” wept La Cibot, now released,--“me that would go through fire and water for you both! Ah! well, well, they say that that is the way with men--and true it is! There is my poor Cibot, _he_ would not be rough with me like this.... And I treated you like my children, for I have none of my own; and yesterday, yes, only yesterday I said to Cibot, ‘God knew well what He was doing, dear,’ I said, ‘when He refused us children, for I have two children there upstairs.’ By the holy crucifix and the soul of my mother, that was what I said to him--” “Eh! but vat did der doctor say?” Schmucke demanded furiously, stamping on the floor for the first time in his life.