good as to have your
notary and your attorney here when I shall need them; you must give me
a power of attorney to act for M. le President, and tell those
gentlemen to follow my instructions, and to do nothing on their own
responsibility."

"The responsibility rests with you," the Presidente answered solemnly,
"so you ought to have full powers.--But is M. Pons very ill?" she asked,
smiling.

"Upon my word, madame, he might pull through, especially with so
conscientious a doctor as Poulain in attendance; for this friend of
mine, madame, is simply an unconscious spy directed by me in your
interests. Left to himself, he would save the old man's life; but there
is some one else by the sickbed, a portress, who would push him into the
grave for thirty thousand francs. Not that she would kill him outright;
she will not give him arsenic, she is not so merciful; she will do
worse, she will kill him by inches; she will worry him to death day by
day. If the poor old man were kept quiet and left in peace; if he were
taken into the country and cared for and made much of by friends, he
would get well again; but he is harassed by a sort of Mme. Evrard. When
the woman was young she was one of thirty _Belles Ecailleres_, famous in
Paris, she is a rough, greedy, gossiping woman; she torments him to make
a will and to leave her something handsome, and the end of it will be
induration of the liver, calculi are possibly forming at this moment,
and he has not enough strength to bear an operation. The doctor, noble
soul, is in a horrible predicament. He really ought to send the woman
away--"

"Why, then, this vixen is a monster!" cried the lady in thin flute-like
tones.

Fraisier smiled inwardly at the likeness between himself and the
terrible Presidente; he knew all about those suave modulations of a
naturally sharp voice. He thought of another president, the hero of an
anecdote related by Louis XI., stamped by that monarch's final praise.
Blessed with a wife after the pattern of Socrates' spouse, and ungifted
with the sage's philosophy, he mingled salt with the corn in the mangers
and forbad the grooms to give water to the horses. As his wife rode
along the Seine towards their country-house, the animals bolted into the
river with the lady, and the magistrate returned thanks to Providence
for ridding him of his wife "in so natural a manner." At this present
moment Mme. de Marville thanked Heaven for placing at Pons' bedside a
woman so