“It is you who makes me uneasy,” said La Cibot.  “I shall be talked about; the neighbors will see you making sheep’s eyes at me.”

She left the doorway and dived into the Auvergnat’s back shop.

“What a notion!” said Remonencq.

“Come here, I have something to say to you,” said La Cibot.  “M.  Pons’ heirs are about to make a stir; they are capable of giving us a lot of trouble.  God knows what might come of it if they send the lawyers here to poke their noses into the affair like hunting-dogs.  I cannot get M. Schmucke to sell a few pictures unless you like me well enough to keep the secret—­such a secret!—­With your head on the block, you must not say where the pictures come from, nor who it was that sold them.  When M. Pons is once dead and buried, you understand, nobody will know how many pictures there ought to be; if there are fifty-three pictures instead of sixty-seven, nobody will be any the wiser.  Besides, if M. Pons sold them himself while he was alive, nobody can find fault.”

“No,” agreed Remonencq, “it is all one to me, but M. Elie Magus will want receipts in due form.”

“And you shall have your receipt too, bless your life!  Do you suppose that I should write them?—­No, M. Schmucke will do that.  But tell your Jew that he must keep the secret as closely as you do,” she continued.

“We will be as mute as fishes.  That is our business.  I myself can read, but I cannot write, and that is why I want a capable wife that has had education like you.  I have thought of nothing but earning my bread all my days, and now I wish I had some little Remonencqs.  Do leave that Cibot of yours.”

“Why, here comes your Jew,” said the portress; “we can arrange the whole business.”

Elie Magus came every third day very early in the morning to know when he could buy his pictures.  “Well, my dear lady,” said he, “how are we getting on?”

“Has nobody been to speak to you about M. Pons and his gimcracks?” asked La Cibot.

“I received a letter from a lawyer,” said Elie Magus, “a rascal that seems to me to be trying to work for himself; I don’t like people of that sort, so I took no notice of his letter.  Three days afterwards he came to see me, and left his card.  I told my porter that I am never at home when he calls.”

“You are a love of a Jew,” said La Cibot.  Little did she know Elie Magus’ prudence.  “Well, sonnies, in a few days’ time I will bring M. Schmucke to the point of selling you seven or eight pictures, ten at most.  But on two conditions.—­Absolute secrecy in the first place.  M. Schmucke will send for you, sir, is not that so?  And M. Remonencq suggested that you might be a purchaser, eh?—­And, come what may, I will not meddle in it for nothing.  You are giving forty-six thousand francs for four pictures, are you not?”

“So be it,” groaned the Jew.