sight of him was enough for me; I distrusted him from the first."

"But how about the great fortune that you spoke of?" a young married
woman asked shyly.

"The fortune was not nearly so large as they said. These tailors and the
landlord and he all scraped the money together among them, and put all
their savings into this bank that they are starting. What is a bank for
those that begin in these days? Simply a license to ruin themselves.
A banker's wife may lie down at night a millionaire and wake up in the
morning with nothing but her settlement. At first word, at the very
first sight of him, we made up our minds about this gentleman--he is not
one of us. You can tell by his gloves, by his waistcoat, that he is
a working man, the son of a man that kept a pot-house somewhere in
Germany; he has not the instincts of a gentleman; he drinks beer, and
he smokes--smokes? ah! madame, _twenty-five pipes a day!_... What would
have become of poor Lili? ... It makes me shudder even now to think of
it. God has indeed preserved us! And besides, Cecile never liked him....
Who would have expected such a trick from a relative, an old friend of
the house that had dined with us twice a week for twenty years? We have
loaded him with benefits, and he played his game so well, that he said
Cecile was his heir before the Keeper of the Seals and the Attorney
General and the Home Secretary!... That Brunner and M. Pons had their
story ready, and each of them said that the other was worth millions!...
No, I do assure you, all of you would have been taken in by an artist's
hoax like that."

In a few weeks' time, the united forces of the Camusot and Popinot
families gained an easy victory in the world, for nobody undertook
to defend the unfortunate Pons, that parasite, that curmudgeon, that
skinflint, that smooth-faced humbug, on whom everybody heaped scorn; he
was a viper cherished in the bosom of the family, he had not his match
for spite, he was a dangerous mountebank whom nobody ought to mention.

About a month after the perfidious Werther's withdrawal, poor Pons left
his bed for the first time after an attack of nervous fever, and walked
along the sunny side of the street leaning on Schmucke's arm. Nobody in
the Boulevard du Temple laughed at the "pair of nutcrackers," for one of
the old men looked so shattered, and the other so touchingly careful
of his invalid friend. By the time that they reached the Boulevard
Poissonniere, a little