“Yes, Montame Zipod, he vill do vat you dell him,” put in Schmucke; “he vants to lif for his boor friend Schmucke’s sake, I’ll pe pound.”

“And of all things, don’t fidget yourself,” continued La Cibot, “for your illness makes you quite bad enough without your making it worse for want of patience.  God sends us our troubles, my dear good gentlemen; He punishes us for our sins.  Haven’t you nothing to reproach yourself with? some poor little bit of a fault or other?”

The invalid shook his head.

“Oh! go on!  You were young once, you had your fling, there is some love-child of yours somewhere—­cold, and starving, and homeless. . . .  What monsters men are!  Their love doesn’t last only for a day, and then in a jiffy they forget, they don’t so much as think of the child at the breast for months. . . .  Poor women!”

“But no one has ever loved me except Schmucke and my mother,” poor Pons broke in sadly.

“Oh! come, you aren’t no saint!  You were young in your time, and a fine-looking young fellow you must have been at twenty.  I should have fallen in love with you myself, so nice as you are—­”

“I always was as ugly as a toad,” Pons put in desperately.

“You say that because you are modest; nobody can’t say that you aren’t modest.”

“My dear Mme. Cibot, no, I tell you.  I always was ugly, and I never was loved in my life.”

“You, indeed!” cried the portress.  “You want to make me believe at this time of day that you are as innocent as a young maid at your time of life.  Tell that to your granny!  A musician at a theatre too!  Why, if a woman told me that, I wouldn’t believe her.”

“Montame Zipod, you irritate him!” cried Schmucke, seeing that Pons was writhing under the bedclothes.

“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—­”