“Come, reassure yourself, my dear madame,” he remarked, holding out his hand.  The touch of the cold, serpent-like skin made a terrible impression upon the portress.  It brought about something like a physical reaction, which checked her emotion; Mme. Fontaine’s toad, Astaroth, seemed to her to be less deadly than this poison-sac that wore a sandy wig and spoke in tones like the creaking of a hinge.

“Do not imagine that I am frightening you to no purpose,” Fraisier continued. (La Cibot’s feeling of repulsion had not escaped him.) “The affairs which made Mme. la Presidente’s dreadful reputation are so well known at the law-courts, that you can make inquiries there if you like.  The great person who was all but sent into a lunatic asylum was the Marquis d’Espard.  The Marquis d’Esgrignon was saved from the hulks.  The handsome young man with wealth and a great future before him, who was to have married a daughter of one of the first families of France, and hanged himself in a cell of the Conciergerie, was the celebrated Lucien de Rubempre; the affair made a great deal of noise in Paris at the time.  That was a question of a will.  His mistress, the notorious Esther, died and left him several millions, and they accused the young fellow of poisoning her.  He was not even in Paris at the time of her death, nor did he so much as know the woman had left the money to him!—­One cannot well be more innocent than that!  Well, after M. Camusot examined him, he hanged himself in his cell.  Law, like medicine, has its victims.  In the first case, one man suffers for the many, and in the second, he dies for science,” he added, and an ugly smile stole over his lips.  “Well, I know the risks myself, you see; poor and obscure little attorney as I am, the law has been the ruin of me.  My experience was dearly bought—­it is all at your service.”

“Thank you, no,” said La Cibot; “I will have nothing to do with it, upon my word! . . .  I shall have nourished ingratitude, that is all!  I want nothing but my due; I have thirty years of honesty behind me, sir.  M. Pons says that he will recommend me to his friend Schmucke; well and good, I shall end my days in peace with the German, good man.”

Fraisier had overshot his mark.  He had discouraged La Cibot.  Now he was obliged to remove these unpleasant impressions.

“Do not let us give up,” he said; “just go away quietly home.  Come, now, we will steer the affair to a good end.”

“But what about my rentes, what am I to do to get them, and—­”

“And feel no remorse?” he interrupted quickly.  “Eh! it is precisely for that that men of business were invented; unless you keep within the law, you get nothing.  You know nothing of law; I know a good deal.  I will see that you keep on the right side of it, and you can hold your own in all men’s sight.  As for your conscience, that is your own affair.”

“Very well, tell me how to do it,” returned La Cibot, curious and delighted.