the Boulevard des Capucines. Do you know that I
have made nearly a hundred thousand francs in ten years? And if you will
have as much some day, I will undertake to make a handsome fortune for
you--as my wife. You would be the mistress--my sister should wait on you
and do the work of the house, and--"

A heartrending moan from the little tailor cut the tempter short; the
death agony had begun.

"Go away," said La Cibot. "You are a monster to talk of such things and
my poor man dying like this--"

"Ah! it is because I love you," said Remonencq; "I could let everything
else go to have you--"

"If you loved me, you would say nothing to me just now," returned she.
And Remonencq departed to his shop, sure of marrying La Cibot.

Towards ten o'clock there was a sort of commotion in the street; M.
Cibot was taking the Sacrament. All the friends of the pair, all the
porters and porters' wives in the Rue de Normandie and neighboring
streets, had crowded into the lodge, under the archway, and stood on the
pavement outside. Nobody so much as noticed the arrival of M. Leopold
Hannequin and a brother lawyer. Schwab and Brunner reached Pons' rooms
unseen by Mme. Cibot. The notary, inquiring for Pons, was shown upstairs
by the portress of a neighboring house. Brunner remembered his previous
visit to the museum, and went straight in with his friend Schwab.

Pons formally revoked his previous will and constituted Schmucke his
universal legatee. This accomplished, he thanked Schwab and Brunner, and
earnestly begged M. Leopold Hannequin to protect Schmucke's interests.
The demands made upon him by last night's scene with La Cibot, and this
final settlement of his worldly affairs, left him so faint and exhausted
that Schmucke begged Schwab to go for the Abbe Duplanty; it was Pons'
great desire to take the Sacrament, and Schmucke could not bring himself
to leave his friend.

La Cibot, sitting at the foot of her husband's bed, gave not so much as
a thought to Schmucke's breakfast--for that matter had been forbidden to
return; but the morning's events, the sight of Pons' heroic resignation
in the death agony, so oppressed Schmucke's heart that he was not
conscious of hunger. Towards two o'clock, however, as nothing had been
seen of the old German, La Cibot sent Remonencq's sister to see whether
Schmucke wanted anything; prompted not so much by interest as by
curiosity. The Abbe Duplanty had just heard the old musician's dying
confessio