“It is no use,” said Monsieur Pratoucy, when he dealt this blow to Papa Chibou. “I cannot go on. Already I owe much, and my creditors are clamouring. People will no longer pay a franc to see a few old dummies when they can see an army of red Indians, Arabs, brigands and dukes in the moving pictures. Monday the Musée Pratoucy closes its doors for ever.”
“But, Monsieur Pratoucy,” exclaimed Papa Chibou, aghast, “what about the people here? What will become of Marie Antoinette, and the martyrs, and Napoleon?”
“Oh,” said the proprietor, “I’ll be able to realize a little on them, perhaps. On Tuesday they will be sold at auction. Someone may buy them to melt up.”
“To melt up, monsieur?” Papa Chibou faltered.
“But certainly. What else are they good for?”
“But surely monsieur will want to keep them; a few of them anyhow?”
“Keep them? Aunt of the devil, but that is a droll idea! Why should any one want to keep shabby old wax dummies?”
“I thought,” murmured Papa Chibou, “that you might keep just one—Napoleon, for example—as a remembrance——”
“Uncle of Satan, but you have odd notions! To keep a souvenir of one’s bankruptcy!”
Papa Chibou went away to his little hole in the wall. He sat on his cot and fingered his moustache for an hour; the news had left him dizzy, had made a cold vacuum under his belt buckle. From under his cot, at last, he took a wooden box, unlocked three separate locks, and extracted a sock. From the sock he took his fortune, his hoard of big copper ten-centime pieces, tips he had saved for years. He counted them over five times most carefully; but no matter how he counted them he could not make the total come to more than two hundred and twenty-one francs.