La Cibot’s visit to Elie Magus was paid (as might be expected) while Schmucke breakfasted.  She came in again just as the German was bidding his friend good-bye; for since she learned that Pons possessed a fortune, she never left the old bachelor; she brooded over him and his treasures like a hen.  From the depths of a comfortable easy-chair at the foot of the bed she poured forth for Pons’ delectation the gossip in which women of her class excel.  With Machiavelian skill, she had contrived to make Pons think that she was indispensable to him; she coaxed and she wheedled, always uneasy, always on the alert.  Mme. Fontaine’s prophecy had frightened La Cibot; she vowed to herself that she would gain her ends by kindness.  She would sleep secure on M. Pons’ legacy, but her rascality should keep within the limits of the law.  For ten years she had not suspected the value of Pons’ collection; she had a clear record behind her of ten years of devotion, honesty, and disinterestedness; it was a magnificent investment, and now she proposed to realize.  In one day, Remonencq’s hint of money had hatched the serpent’s egg, the craving for riches that had lain dormant within her for twenty years.  Since she had cherished that craving, it had grown in force with the ferment of all the evil that lurks in the corners of the heart.  How she acted upon the counsels whispered by the serpent will presently be seen.

“Well?” she asked of Schmucke, “has this cherub of ours had plenty to drink?  Is he better?”

“He is not doing fery vell, tear Montame Zipod, not fery vell,” said poor Schmucke, brushing away the tears from his eyes.

“Pooh! you make too much of it, my dear M. Schmucke; we must take things as we find them; Cibot might be at death’s door, and I should not take it to heart as you do.  Come! the cherub has a good constitution.  And he has been steady, it seems, you see; you have no idea what an age sober people live.  He is very ill, it is true, but with all the care I take of him, I shall bring him round.  Be easy, look after your affairs, I will keep him company and see that he drinks his pints of barley water.”

“Gif you vere not here, I should die of anxiety—­” said Schmucke, squeezing his kind housekeeper’s hand in both his own to express his confidence in her.

La Cibot wiped her eyes as she went back to the invalid’s room.

“What is the matter, Mme. Cibot?” asked Pons.

“It is M. Schmucke that has upset me; he is crying as if you were dead,” said she.  “If you are not well, you are not so bad yet that nobody need cry over you; but it has given me such a turn!  Oh dear! oh dear! how silly it is of me to get so fond of people, and to think more of you than of Cibot!  For, after all, you aren’t nothing to me, you are only my brother by Adam’s side; and yet, whenever you are in the question, it puts me in such a taking, upon my word it does!  I would cut off my hand—­my left hand, of