“Why, the doctor told me that I was going on as well as possible,” continued he; “he said that I should soon be about again as usual.  You have killed me, ruined me, murdered me!”

“Tut, tut, tut!” cried La Cibot, “there you go!  I am killing you, am I?  Mercy on us! these are the pretty things that you are always telling M. Schmucke when my back is turned.  I hear all that you say, that I do!  You are a monster of ingratitude.”

“But you do not know that if I am only away for another fortnight, they will tell me that I have had my day, that I am old-fashioned, out of date, Empire, rococo, when I go back.  Garangeot will have made friends all over the theatre, high and low.  He will lower the pitch to suit some actress that cannot sing, he will lick M. Gaudissart’s boots!” cried the sick man, who clung to life.  “He has friends that will praise him in all the newspapers; and when things are like that in such a shop, Mme. Cibot, they can find holes in anybody’s coat. . . .  What fiend drove you to do it?”

“Why! plague take it, M. Schmucke talked it over with me for a week.  What would you have?  You see nothing but yourself!  You are so selfish that other people may die if you can only get better.—­Why poor M. Schmucke has been tired out this month past! he is tied by the leg, he can go nowhere, he cannot give lessons nor take his place at the theatre.  Do you really see nothing?  He sits up with you at night, and I take the nursing in the day.  If I were to sit up at night with you, as I tried to do at first when I thought you were so poor, I should have to sleep all day.  And who would see to the house and look out for squalls!  Illness is illness, it cannot be helped, and here are you—­”

“This was not Schmucke’s idea, it is quite impossible—­”

“That means that it was I who took it into my head to do it, does it?  Do you think that we are made of iron?  Why, if M. Schmucke had given seven or eight lessons every day and conducted the orchestra every evening at the theatre from six o’clock till half-past eleven at night, he would have died in ten days’ time.  Poor man, he would give his life for you, and do you want to be the death of him?  By the authors of my days, I have never seen a sick man to match you!  Where are your senses? have you put them in pawn?  We are all slaving our lives out for you; we do all for the best, and you are not satisfied!  Do you want to drive us raging mad?  I myself, to begin with, am tired out as it is——­”

La Cibot rattled on at her ease; Pons was too angry to say a word.  He writhed on his bed, painfully uttering inarticulate sounds; the blow was killing him.  And at this point, as usual, the scolding turned suddenly to tenderness.  The nurse dashed at her patient, grasped him by the head, made him lie down by main force, and dragged the blankets over him.