“Ah! we really are your only friends on earth, that is very true, that is.  But two good hearts are worth all the families in the world.  —­Don’t talk of families to me!  A family, as the old actor said of the tongue, is the best and the worst of all things. . . .  Where are those relations of yours now?  Have you any?  I have never seen them—­”

“They have brought me to lie here,” said Pons, with intense bitterness.

“So you have relations! . . .” cried La Cibot, springing up as if her easy-chair had been heated red-hot.  “Oh, well, they are a nice lot, are your relations!  What! these three weeks—­for this is the twentieth day, to-day, that you have been ill and like to die—­in these three weeks they have not come once to ask for news of you?  That’s a trifle too strong, that is! . . .  Why, in your place, I would leave all I had to the Foundling Hospital sooner than give them one farthing!”

“Well, my dear Mme. Cibot, I meant to leave all that I had to a cousin once removed, the daughter of my first cousin, President Camusot, you know, who came here one morning nearly two months ago.”

“Oh! a little stout man who sent his servants to beg your pardon—­for his wife’s blunder?—­The housemaid came asking me questions about you, an affected old creature she is, my fingers itched to give her velvet tippet a dusting with my broom handle!  A servant wearing a velvet tippet! did anybody ever see the like?  No, upon my word, the world is turned upside down; what is the use of making a Revolution?  Dine twice a day if you can afford it, you scamps of rich folk!  But laws are no good, I tell you, and nothing will be safe if Louis-Philippe does not keep people in their places; for, after all, if we are all equal, eh, sir? a housemaid didn’t ought to have a velvet tippet, while I, Mme. Cibot, haven’t one, after thirty years of honest work.—­There is a pretty thing for you!  People ought to be able to tell who you are.  A housemaid is a housemaid, just as I myself am a portress.  Why do they have silk epaulettes in the army?  Let everybody keep their place.  Look here, do you want me to tell you what all this comes to?  Very well, France is going to the dogs. . . .  If the Emperor had been here, things would have been very different, wouldn’t they, sir? . . .  So I said to Cibot, I said, ’See here, Cibot, a house where the servants wear velvet tippets belongs to people that have no heart in them—­’”

“No heart in them, that is just it,” repeated Pons.  And with that he began to tell Mme. Cibot about his troubles and mortifications, she pouring out abuse of the relations the while and showing exceeding tenderness on every fresh sentence in the sad history.  She fairly wept at last.