“Oh! Mme. Cibot,” cried Pons, “for what do you take me? You do not know me.”
“Ah! you will care even more than that for me,” she said, meeting Pons’ eyes. “You will love your kind old Cibot like a mother, will you not? A mother, that is it! I am your mother; you are both of you my children.... Ah, if I only knew them that caused you this sorrow, I would do that which would bring me into the police-courts, and even to prison; I would tear their eyes out! Such people deserve to die at the Barriere Saint-Jacques, and that is too good for such scoundrels. ... So kind, so good as you are (for you have a heart of gold), you were sent into the world to make some woman happy!... Yes, you would have her happy, as anybody can see; you were cut out for that. In the very beginning, when I saw how you were with M. Schmucke, I said to myself, ‘M. Pons has missed the life he was meant for; he was made to be a good husband.’ Come, now, you like women.”
“Ah, yes,” said Pons, “and no woman has been mine.”
“Really?” exclaimed La Cibot, with a provocative air as she came nearer and took Pons’ hand in hers. “Do you not know what it is to love a woman that will do anything for her lover? Is it possible? If I were in your place, I should not wish to leave this world for another until I had known the greatest happiness on earth!... Poor dear! If I was now what I was once, I would leave Cibot for you! upon my word, I would! Why, with a nose shaped like that—for you have a fine nose—how did you manage it, poor cherub?... You will tell me that ‘not every woman knows a man when she sees him’; and a pity it is that they marry so at random as they do, it makes you sorry to see it.—Now, for my own part, I should have thought that you had had mistresses by the dozen—dancers, actresses, and duchesses, for you went out so much. ... When you went out, I used to say to Cibot, ‘Look! there is M. Pons going a-gallivanting,’ on my word, I did, I was so sure that women ran after you. Heaven made you for love.... Why, my dear sir, I found that out the first day that you dined at home, and you were so touched with M. Schmucke’s pleasure. And next day M. Schmucke kept saying to me, ‘Montame Zipod, he haf tined hier,’ with the tears in his eyes, till I cried along with him like a fool, as I am. And how sad he looked when you took to gadding abroad again and dining out! Poor man, you never saw any one so disconsolate! Ah! you are quite right to leave everything to him. Dear worthy man, why he is as good as a family to you, he is! Do not forget him; for if you do, God will not receive you into his Paradise, for those that have been ungrateful to their friends and left them no rentes will not go to heaven.”
In vain Pons tried to put in a word; La Cibot talked as the wind blows. Means of arresting steam-engines have been invented, but it would tax a mechanician’s genius to discover any plan for stopping a portress’ tongue.
“I know what you mean,” continued she. “But it does not kill you, my dear gentleman, to make a will when you are out of health; and in your place I might not leave that poor dear alone, for fear that something might happen; he is like God Almighty’s lamb, he knows nothing about nothing, and I should not like him to be at the mercy of those sharks of lawyers and a wretched pack of relations. Let us see now, has one of them come here to see you in twenty years? And would you leave your property to them? Do you know, they say that all these things here are worth something.”
“Why, yes,” said Pons.
“Remonencq, who deals in pictures, and knows that you are an amateur, says that he would be quite ready to pay you an annuity of thirty thousand francs so long as you live, to have the pictures afterwards. ... There is a change! If I were you, I should take it. Why, I thought he said it for a joke when he told me that. You ought to let M. Schmucke know the value of all those things, for he is a man that could be cheated like a child. He has not the slightest idea of the value of these fine things that you have! He so little suspects it, that he would give them away for a morsel of bread if he did not keep them all his life for love of you, always supposing that he lives after you, for he will die of your death. But I am here; I will take his part against anybody and everybody!... I and Cibot will defend him.”
“Dear Mme. Cibot!” said Pons, “what would have become of me if it had not been for you and Schmucke?” He felt touched by this horrible prattle; the feeling in it seemed to be ingenuous, as it usually is in the speech of the people.
“Ah! we really are your only friends on earth, that is very true, that is. But two good hearts are worth all the families in the world.—Don’t talk of families to me! A family, as the old actor said of the tongue, is the best and the worst of all things.... Where are those relations of yours now? Have you any? I have never seen them—”