is eye on your treasures. I just snubbed him, I did.
'The gentleman won't have any one but me,' I told him. 'He is used to
me, and I am used to him.' So he said no more. A nurse, indeed! They are
all thieves; I hate that sort of woman, I do. Here is a tale that will
show you how sly they are. There was once an old gentleman--it was Dr.
Poulain himself, mind you, who told me this--well, a Mme. Sabatier, a
woman of thirty-six that used to sell slippers at the Palais Royal--you
remember the Galerie at the Palais that they pulled down?"

Pons nodded.

"Well, at that time she had not done very well; her husband used to
drink, and died of spontaneous imbustion; but she had been a fine woman
in her time, truth to tell, not that it did her any good, though she
had friends among the lawyers. So, being hard up, she became a monthly
nurse, and lived in the Rue Barre-du-Bec. Well, she went out to nurse
an old gentleman that had a disease of the lurinary guts (saving your
presence); they used to tap him like an artesian well, and he needed
such care that she used to sleep on a truckle-bed in the same room with
him. You would hardly believe such a thing!--'Men respect nothing,'
you'll tell me, 'so selfish as they are.' Well, she used to talk with
him, you understand; she never left him, she amused him, she told him
stories, she drew him on to talk (just as we are chatting away together
now, you and I, eh?), and she found out that his nephews--the old
gentleman had nephews--that his nephews were wretches; they had worried
him, and final end of it, they had brought on this illness. Well, my
dear sir, she saved his life, he married her, and they have a fine
child; Ma'am Bordevin, the butcher's wife in the Rue Charlot, a relative
of hers, stood godmother. There is luck for you!

"As for me, I am married; and if I have no children, I don't mind saying
that it is Cibot's fault; he is too fond of me, but if I cared--never
mind. What would have become of me and my Cibot if we had had a family,
when we have not a penny to bless ourselves with after thirty years' of
faithful service? I have not a farthing belonging to nobody else, that
is what comforts me. I have never wronged nobody.--Look here, suppose
now (there is no harm in supposing when you will be out and about again
in six weeks' time, and sauntering along the boulevard); well, suppose
that you had put me down in your will; very good, I shouldn't never rest
till I had found your hei