Pons' delectation the gossip
in which women of her class excel. With Machiavelian skill, she had
contrived to make Pons think that she was indispensable to him; she
coaxed and she wheedled, always uneasy, always on the alert. Mme.
Fontaine's prophecy had frightened La Cibot; she vowed to herself that
she would gain her ends by kindness. She would sleep secure on M. Pons'
legacy, but her rascality should keep within the limits of the law. For
ten years she had not suspected the value of Pons' collection; she had
a clear record behind her of ten years of devotion, honesty, and
disinterestedness; it was a magnificent investment, and now she proposed
to realize. In one day, Remonencq's hint of money had hatched the
serpent's egg, the craving for riches that had lain dormant within her
for twenty years. Since she had cherished that craving, it had grown in
force with the ferment of all the evil that lurks in the corners of the
heart. How she acted upon the counsels whispered by the serpent will
presently be seen.

"Well?" she asked of Schmucke, "has this cherub of ours had plenty to
drink? Is he better?"

"He is not doing fery vell, tear Montame Zipod, not fery vell," said
poor Schmucke, brushing away the tears from his eyes.

"Pooh! you make too much of it, my dear M. Schmucke; we must take things
as we find them; Cibot might be at death's door, and I should not take
it to heart as you do. Come! the cherub has a good constitution. And he
has been steady, it seems, you see; you have no idea what an age sober
people live. He is very ill, it is true, but with all the care I take of
him, I shall bring him round. Be easy, look after your affairs, I will
keep him company and see that he drinks his pints of barley water."

"Gif you vere not here, I should die of anxiety--" said Schmucke,
squeezing his kind housekeeper's hand in both his own to express his
confidence in her.

La Cibot wiped her eyes as she went back to the invalid's room.

"What is the matter, Mme. Cibot?" asked Pons.

"It is M. Schmucke that has upset me; he is crying as if you were dead,"
said she. "If you are not well, you are not so bad yet that nobody need
cry over you; but it has given me such a turn! Oh dear! oh dear! how
silly it is of me to get so fond of people, and to think more of you
than of Cibot! For, after all, you aren't nothing to me, you are only
my brother by Adam's side; and yet, whenever you are in the question,
it puts me in such a t