the oyster, and "he is known in the
neighborhood."

Mme. Cibot, sometime opener of oysters at the _Cadran Bleu_, after all
the adventures which come unsought to the belle of an oyster-bar, left
her post for love of Cibot at the age of twenty-eight. The beauty of
a woman of the people is short-lived, especially if she is planted
espalier fashion at a restaurant door. Her features are hardened
by puffs of hot air from the kitchen; the color of the heeltaps of
customers' bottles, finished in the company of the waiters, gradually
filters into her complexion--no beauty is full blown so soon as the
beauty of an oyster-opener. Luckily for Mme. Cibot, lawful wedlock and
a portress' life were offered to her just in time; while she still
preserved a comeliness of a masculine order slandered by rivals of the
Rue de Normandie, who called her "a great blowsy thing," Mme. Cibot
might have sat as a model to Rubens. Those flesh tints reminded you of
the appetizing sheen on a pat of Isigny butter; but plump as she was, no
woman went about her work with more agility. Mme. Cibot had attained the
time of life when women of her stamp are obliged to shave--which is as
much as to say that she had reached the age of forty-eight. A porter's
wife with a moustache is one of the best possible guarantees of
respectability and security that a landlord can have. If Delacroix
could have seen Mme. Cibot leaning proudly on her broom handle, he would
assuredly have painted her as Bellona.

Strange as it may seem, the circumstances of the Cibots, man and wife
(in the style of an indictment), were one day to affect the lives of the
two friends; wherefore the chronicler, as in duty bound, must give some
particulars as to the Cibots' lodge.

The house brought in about eight thousand francs for there were three
complete sets of apartments--back and front, on the side nearest the Rue
de Normandie, as well as the three floors in the older mansion between
the courtyard and the garden, and a shop kept by a marine store-dealer
named Remonencq, which fronted on the street. During the past few months
this Remonencq had begun to deal in old curiosities, and knew the
value of Pons' collection so well that he took off his hat whenever the
musician came in or went out.

A sou in the livre on eight thousand francs therefore brought in about
four hundred francs to the Cibots. They had no rent to pay and no
expenses for firing; Cibot's earnings amounted on an average