The agent led her out upon the landing.
“If you will undertake to get the order for us,” he said confidentially, “I am empowered to offer you forty francs.”
Mme. Sauvage grew placable. “Very well, let me have your address,” said she.
Schmucke meantime being left to himself, and feeling the stronger for the soup and bread that he had been forced to swallow, returned at once to Pons’ rooms, and to his prayers. He had lost himself in the fathomless depths of sorrow, when a voice sounding in his ears drew him back from the abyss of grief, and a young man in a suit of black returned for the eleventh time to the charge, pulling the poor, tortured victim’s coatsleeve until he listened.
“Sir!” said he.
“Vat ees it now?”
“Sir! we owe a supreme discovery to Dr. Gannal; we do not dispute his fame; he has worked miracles of Egypt afresh; but there have been improvements made upon his system. We have obtained surprising results. So, if you would like to see your friend again, as he was when he was alive—”
“See him again!” cried Schmucke. “Shall he speak to me?”
“Not exactly. Speech is the only thing wanting,” continued the embalmer’s agent. “But he will remain as he is after embalming for all eternity. The operation is over in a few seconds. Just an incision in the carotid artery and an injection.—But it is high time; if you wait one single quarter of an hour, sir, you will not have the sweet satisfaction of preserving the body....”
“Go to der teufel!... Bons is ein spirit—und dat spirit is in hefn.”