The infatuation of the working classes on this point is very strong.  The reason of their reluctance to enter a hospital is the idea that they will be starved there.  The mortality caused by the food smuggled in by the wives of patients on visiting-days was at one time so great that the doctors were obliged to institute a very strict search for contraband provisions.

If La Cibot was to realize her profits at once, a momentary quarrel must be worked up in some way.  She began by telling Pons about her visit to the theatre, not omitting her passage at arms with Mlle. Heloise the dancer.

“But why did you go?” the invalid asked for the third time.  La Cibot once launched on a stream of words, he was powerless to stop her.

“So, then, when I had given her a piece of my mind, Mademoiselle Heloise saw who I was and knuckled under, and we were the best of friends.—­And now do you ask me why I went?” she added, repeating Pons’ question.

There are certain babblers, babblers of genius are they, who sweep up interruptions, objections, and observations in this way as they go along, by way of provision to swell the matter of their conversation, as if that source were ever in any danger of running dry.

“Why I went?” repeated she.  “I went to get your M. Gaudissart out of a fix.  He wants some music for a ballet, and you are hardly fit to scribble on sheets of paper and do your work, dearie.—­So I understood, things being so, that a M. Garangeot was to be asked to set the Mohicans to music—­”

“Garangeot!” roared Pons in fury. “Garangeot! a man with no talent; I would not have him for first violin!  He is very clever, he is very good at musical criticism, but as to composing—­I doubt it!  And what the devil put the notion of going to the theatre into your head?”

“How confoundedly contrairy the man is!  Look here, dearie, we mustn’t boil over like milk on the fire!  How are you to write music in the state that you are in?  Why, you can’t have looked at yourself in the glass!  Will you have the glass and see?  You are nothing but skin and bone—­you are as weak as a sparrow, and do you think that you are fit to make your notes! why, you would not so much as make out mine. . . .  And that reminds me that I ought to go up to the third floor lodger’s that owes us seventeen francs, for when the chemist has been paid we shall not have twenty left.—­So I had to tell M. Gaudissart (I like that name), a good sort he seems to be,—­a regular Roger Bontemps that would just suit me.—­He will never have liver complaint!—­Well, so I had to tell him how you were.—­Lord! you are not well, and he has put some one else in your place for a bit—­”

“Some one else in my place!” cried Pons in a terrible voice, as he sat right up in bed.  Sick people, generally speaking, and those most particularly who lie within the sweep of the scythe of Death, cling to their places with the same passionate energy that the beginner displays to gain a start in life.  To hear that someone had taken his place was like a foretaste of death to the dying man.