Cibot for his legitimate spouse, and his thoughts turned from
a misdemeanor to a crime. A romantic purely speculative dream,
persistently followed through a tobacco-smoker's long musings as he
lounged in the doorway, had brought him to the point of wishing that the
little tailor were dead. At a stroke he beheld his capital trebled; and
then he thought of La Cibot. What a good saleswoman she would be! What a
handsome figure she would make in a magnificent shop on the boulevards!
The twofold covetousness turned Remonencq's head. In fancy he took a
shop that he knew of on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, he stocked it
with Pons' treasures, and then--after dreaming his dream in sheets of
gold, after seeing millions in the blue spiral wreaths that rose from
his pipe, he awoke to find himself face to face with the little tailor.
Cibot was sweeping the yard, the doorstep, and the pavement just as
his neighbor was taking down the shutters and displaying his wares; for
since Pons fell ill, La Cibot's work had fallen to her husband.

The Auvergnat began to look upon the little, swarthy, stunted,
copper-colored tailor as the one obstacle in his way, and pondered how
to be rid of him. Meanwhile this growing passion made La Cibot very
proud, for she had reached an age when a woman begins to understand that
she may grow old.

So early one morning, she meditatively watched Remonencq as he arranged
his odds and ends for sale. She wondered how far his love could go. He
came across to her.

"Well," he said, "are things going as you wish?"

"It is you who makes me uneasy," said La Cibot. "I shall be talked
about; the neighbors will see you making sheep's eyes at me."

She left the doorway and dived into the Auvergnat's back shop.

"What a notion!" said Remonencq.

"Come here, I have something to say to you," said La Cibot. "M. Pons'
heirs are about to make a stir; they are capable of giving us a lot of
trouble. God knows what might come of it if they send the lawyers here
to poke their noses into the affair like hunting-dogs. I cannot get M.
Schmucke to sell a few pictures unless you like me well enough to keep
the secret--such a secret!--With your head on the block, you must not
say where the pictures come from, nor who it was that sold them. When M.
Pons is once dead and buried, you understand, nobody will know how many
pictures there ought to be; if there are fifty-three pictures instead of
sixty-seven, nobody will be any the wise