ing-room La Cibot explained her position with regard to
the pair of nutcrackers at very considerable length. She repeated the
history of her loan with added embellishments, and gave a full account
of the immense services rendered during the past ten years to MM.
Pons and Schmucke. The two old men, to all appearance, could not exist
without her motherly care. She posed as an angel; she told so many lies,
one after another, watering them with her tears, that old Mme. Poulain
was quite touched.

"You understand, my dear sir," she concluded, "that I really ought to
know how far I can depend on M. Pons' intentions, supposing that he
should not die; not that I want him to die, for looking after those two
innocents is my life, madame, you see; still, when one of them is gone
I shall look after the other. For my own part, I was built by Nature to
rival mothers. Without nobody to care for, nobody to take for a child, I
don't know what I should do.... So if M. Poulain only would, he might do
me a service for which I should be very grateful; and that is, to say a
word to M. Pons for me. Goodness me! an annuity of a thousand francs,
is that too much, I ask you?... To. M. Schmucke it would be so much
gained.--Our dear patient said that he should recommend me to the
German, poor man; it is his idea, no doubt, that M. Schmucke should
be his heir. But what is a man that cannot put two ideas together in
French? And besides, he would be quite capable of going back to Germany,
he will be in such despair over his friend's death--"

The doctor grew grave. "My dear Mme. Cibot," he said, "this sort of
thing does not in the least concern a doctor. I should not be allowed to
exercise my profession if it was known that I interfered in the matter
of my patients' testamentary dispositions. The law forbids a doctor to
receive a legacy from a patient--"

"A stupid law! What is to hinder me from dividing my legacy with you?"
La Cibot said immediately.

"I will go further," said the doctor; "my professional conscience will
not permit me to speak to M. Pons of his death. In the first place, he
is not so dangerously ill that there is any need to speak of it, and in
the second, such talk coming from me might give a shock to the system
that would do him real harm, and then his illness might terminate
fatally--"

"_I_ don't put on gloves to tell him to get his affairs in order," cried
Mme. Cibot, "and he is none the worse for that. He is used to it. T