course—­to see you coming and going, eating your meals, and screwing bargains out of dealers as usual.  If I had had a child of my own, I think I should have loved it as I love you, eh!  There, take a drink, dearie; come now, empty the glass.  Drink it off, monsieur, I tell you!  The first thing Dr. Poulain said was, ’If M. Pons has no mind to go to Pere Lachaise, he ought to drink as many buckets full of water in a day as an Auvergnat will sell.’  So, come now, drink—­”

“But I do drink, Cibot, my good woman; I drink and drink till I am deluged—­”

“That is right,” said the portress, as she took away the empty glass.  “That is the way to get better.  Dr. Poulain had another patient ill of your complaint; but he had nobody to look after him, his children left him to himself, and he died because he didn’t drink enough—­so you must drink, honey, you see—­he died and they buried him two months ago.  And if you were to die, you know, you would drag down old M. Schmucke with you, sir.  He is like a child.  Ah! he loves you, he does, the dear lamb of a man; no woman never loved a man like that!  He doesn’t care for meat nor drink; he has grown as thin as you are in the last fortnight, and you are nothing but skin and bones.—­It makes me jealous to see it, for I am very fond of you; but not to that degree; I haven’t lost my appetite, quite the other way; always going up and down stairs, till my legs are so tired that I drop down of an evening like a lump of lead.  Here am I neglecting my poor Cibot for you; Mlle. Remonencq cooks his victuals for him, and he goes on about it and says that nothing is right!  At that I tell him that one ought to put up with something for the sake of other people, and that you are so ill that I cannot leave you.  In the first place, you can’t afford a nurse.  And before I would have a nurse here!—­I have done for you these ten years; they want wine and sugar, and foot-warmers, and all sorts of comforts.  And they rob their patients unless the patients leave them something in their wills.  Have a nurse in here to-day, and to-morrow we should find a picture or something or other gone—­”

“Oh!  Mme. Cibot!” cried Pons, quite beside himself, “do not leave me!  No one must touch anything—­”

“I am here,” said La Cibot; “so long as I have the strength I shall be here.—­Be easy.  There was Dr. Poulain wanting to get a nurse for you; perhaps he has his eye on your treasures.  I just snubbed him, I did.  ‘The gentleman won’t have any one but me,’ I told him.  ’He is used to me, and I am used to him.’  So he said no more.  A nurse, indeed!  They are all thieves; I hate that sort of woman, I do.  Here is a tale that will show you how sly they are.  There was once an old gentleman—­it was Dr. Poulain himself, mind you, who told me this—­well, a Mme. Sabatier, a woman of thirty-six that used to sell slippers at the Palais Royal—­you remember the Galerie at the Palais that they pulled down?”