Pons nodded.

“Well, at that time she had not done very well; her husband used to drink, and died of spontaneous imbustion; but she had been a fine woman in her time, truth to tell, not that it did her any good, though she had friends among the lawyers.  So, being hard up, she became a monthly nurse, and lived in the Rue Barre-du-Bec.  Well, she went out to nurse an old gentleman that had a disease of the lurinary guts (saving your presence); they used to tap him like an artesian well, and he needed such care that she used to sleep on a truckle-bed in the same room with him.  You would hardly believe such a thing!—­’Men respect nothing,’ you’ll tell me, ‘so selfish as they are.’  Well, she used to talk with him, you understand; she never left him, she amused him, she told him stories, she drew him on to talk (just as we are chatting away together now, you and I, eh?), and she found out that his nephews—­the old gentleman had nephews—­that his nephews were wretches; they had worried him, and final end of it, they had brought on this illness.  Well, my dear sir, she saved his life, he married her, and they have a fine child; Ma’am Bordevin, the butcher’s wife in the Rue Charlot, a relative of hers, stood godmother.  There is luck for you!

“As for me, I am married; and if I have no children, I don’t mind saying that it is Cibot’s fault; he is too fond of me, but if I cared —­never mind.  What would have become of me and my Cibot if we had had a family, when we have not a penny to bless ourselves with after thirty years’ of faithful service?  I have not a farthing belonging to nobody else, that is what comforts me.  I have never wronged nobody.  —­Look here, suppose now (there is no harm in supposing when you will be out and about again in six weeks’ time, and sauntering along the boulevard); well, suppose that you had put me down in your will; very good, I shouldn’t never rest till I had found your heirs and given the money back.  Such is my horror of anything that is not earned by the sweat of my brow.

“You will say to me, ’Why, Mme. Cibot, why should you worry yourself like that?  You have fairly earned the money; you looked after your two gentlemen as if they had been your children; you saved them a thousand francs a year—­’ (for there are plenty, sir, you know, that would have had their ten thousand francs put out to interest by now if they had been in my place)—­’so if the worthy gentleman leaves you a trifle of an annuity, it is only right.’—­Suppose they told me that.  Well, now; I am not thinking of myself.—­I cannot think how some women can do a kindness thinking of themselves all the time.  It is not doing good, sir, is it?  I do not go to church myself, I haven’t the time; but my conscience tells me what is right. . . .  Don’t you fidget like that, my lamb!—­Don’t scratch yourself! . . .  Dear me, how yellow you grow!  So yellow you are—­quite brown.  How funny it is that one can come to look like a lemon in three weeks! . . .  Honesty is all that poor folk have, and one must surely have something!  Suppose that you were just at death’s door, I should be the first to tell you that you ought to leave all that you have to M. Schmucke.  It is your duty, for he is all the family you have.  He loves you, he does, as a dog loves his master.”