“I would not have come to you, madame, if I thought that some day I should have to reproach myself for bringing so much as a splash of mud upon you, for in your position a speck the size of a pin’s head is seen by all the world.  You forget, madame, that I must satisfy you if I am to be a justice of the peace in Paris.  I have received one lesson at the outset of my life; it was so sharp that I do not care to lay myself open to a second thrashing.  To sum it up in a last word, madame, I will not take a step in which you are indirectly involved without previously consulting you—­”

“Very good.  Here is the letter.  And now I shall expect to be informed of the exact value of the estate.”

“There is the whole matter,” said Fraisier shrewdly, making his bow to the Presidente with as much graciousness as his countenance could exhibit.

“What a providence!” thought Mme. Camusot de Marville.  “So I am to be rich!  Camusot will be sure of his election if we let loose this Fraisier upon the Bolbec constituency.  What a tool!”

“What a providence!” Fraisier said to himself as he descended the staircase; “and what a sharp woman Mme. Camusot is!  I should want a woman in these circumstances.  Now to work!”

And he departed for Mantes to gain the good graces of a man he scarcely knew; but he counted upon Mme. Vatinelle, to whom, unfortunately, he owed all his troubles—­and some troubles are of a kind that resemble a protested bill while the defaulter is yet solvent, in that they bear interest.

Three days afterwards, while Schmucke slept (for in accordance with the compact he now sat up at night with the patient), La Cibot had a “tiff,” as she was pleased to call it, with Pons.  It will not be out of place to call attention to one particularly distressing symptom of liver complaint.  The sufferer is always more or less inclined to impatience and fits of anger; an outburst of this kind seems to give relief at the time, much as a patient while the fever fit is upon him feels that he has boundless strength; but collapse sets in so soon as the excitement passes off, and the full extent of mischief sustained by the system is discernible.  This is especially the case when the disease has been induced by some great shock; and the prostration is so much the more dangerous because the patient is kept upon a restricted diet.  It is a kind of fever affecting neither the blood nor the brain, but the humoristic mechanism, fretting the whole system, producing melancholy, in which the patient hates himself; in such a crisis anything may cause dangerous irritation.

In spite of all that the doctor could say, La Cibot had no belief in this wear and tear of the nervous system by the humoristic.  She was a woman of the people, without experience or education; Dr. Poulain’s explanations for her were simply “doctor’s notions.”  Like most of her class, she thought that sick people must be fed, and nothing short of Dr. Poulain’s direct order prevented her from administering ham, a nice omelette, or vanilla chocolate upon the sly.