“Here is money, child,” said La Sauvage, turning to Mme. Cantinet. “I will count it first and take enough to buy everything we want—wine, provisions, wax-candles, all sorts of things, in fact, for there is nothing in the house.... Just look in the drawers for a sheet to bury him in. I certainly was told that the poor gentleman was simple, but I don’t know what he is; he is worse. He is like a new-born child; we shall have to feed him with a funnel.”
The women went about their work, and Schmucke looked on precisely as an idiot might have done. Broken down with sorrow, wholly absorbed, in a half-cataleptic state, he could not take his eyes from the face that seemed to fascinate him, Pons’ face refined by the absolute repose of Death. Schmucke hoped to die; everything was alike indifferent. If the room had been on fire he would not have stirred.
“There are twelve hundred and fifty francs here,” La Sauvage told him.
Schmucke shrugged his shoulders.
But when La Sauvage came near to measure the body by laying the sheet over it, before cutting out the shroud, a horrible struggle ensued between her and the poor German. Schmucke was furious. He behaved like a dog that watches by his dead master’s body, and shows his teeth at all who try to touch it. La Sauvage grew impatient. She grasped him, set him in the armchair, and held him down with herculean strength.
“Go on, child; sew him in his shroud,” she said, turning to Mme. Cantinet.
As soon as this operation was completed, La Sauvage set Schmucke back in his place at the foot of the bed.
“Do you understand?” said she. “The poor dead man lying there must be done up, there is no help for it.”
Schmucke began to cry. The women left him and took possession of the kitchen, whither they brought all the necessaries in a very short time. La Sauvage made out a preliminary statement accounting for three hundred and sixty francs, and then proceeded to prepare a dinner for four persons. And what a dinner! A fat goose (the cobbler’s pheasant) by way of a substantial roast, an omelette with preserves, a salad, and the inevitable broth—the quantities of the ingredients for this last being so excessive that the soup was more like a strong meat-jelly.
At nine o’clock the priest, sent by the curate to watch by the dead, came in with Cantinet, who brought four tall wax candles and some tapers. In the death-chamber Schmucke was lying with his arms about the body of his friend, holding him in a tight clasp; nothing but the authority of religion availed to separate him from his dead. Then the priest settled himself comfortably in the easy-chair and read his prayers while Schmucke, kneeling beside the couch, besought God to work a miracle and unite him to Pons, so that they might be buried in the same grave; and Mme. Cantinet went on her way to the Temple to buy a pallet and complete bedding for Mme. Sauvage. The twelve hundred and fifty francs were regarded as plunder. At eleven o’clock Mme. Cantinet came in to ask if Schmucke would not eat a morsel, but with a gesture he signified that he wished to be left in peace.