could not catch it, and went down after the two dealers to the
porter's room.

"Have they gone, Mme. Cibot?" asked the unhappy Pons, when she came
back again.

"Gone? . . . who?" asked she.

"Those men."

"What men? There, now, you have seen men," said she. "You have just
had a raving fit; if it hadn't been for me you would have gone out the
window, and now you are still talking of men in the room. Is it always
to be like this?"

"What! was there not a gentleman here just now, saying that my
relatives had sent him?"

"Will you still stand me out?" said she. "Upon my word, do you know
where you ought to be sent?--To the asylum at Charenton. You see
men--"

"Elie Magus, Remonencq, and--"

"Oh! as for Remonencq, you may have seen _him_, for he came up to tell
me that my poor Cibot is so bad that I must clear out of this and come
down. My Cibot comes first, you see. When my husband is ill, I can
think of nobody else. Try to keep quiet and sleep for a couple of
hours; I have sent for Dr. Poulain, and I will come up with him. . . .
Take a drink and be good--"

"Then was there no one in the room just now, when I waked? . . ."

"No one," said she. "You must have seen M. Remonencq in one of your
looking-glasses."

"You are right, Mme. Cibot," said Pons, meek as a lamb.

"Well, now you are sensible again. . . . Good-bye, my cherub; keep
quiet, I shall be back again in a minute."

When Pons heard the outer door close upon her, he summoned up all his
remaining strength to rise.

"They are cheating me," he muttered to himself, "they are robbing me!
Schmucke is a child that would let them tie him up in a sack."

The terrible scene had seemed so real, it could not be a dream, he
thought; a desire to throw light upon the puzzle excited him; he
managed to reach the door, opened it after many efforts, and stood on
the threshold of his salon. There they were--his dear pictures, his
statues, his Florentine bronzes, his porcelain; the sight of them
revived him. The old collector walked in his dressing-gown along the
narrow spaces between the credence-tables and the sideboards that
lined the wall; his feet bare, his head on fire. His first glance of
ownership told him that everything was there; he turned to go back to
bed again, when he noticed that a Greuze portrait looked out of the
frame that had held Sebastian del Piombo's _Templar_. Suspicion
flashed across his brain, making his dark thoughts apparent to him, as
a