ther fortnight, they
will tell me that I have had my day, that I am old-fashioned, out of
date, Empire, rococo, when I go back. Garangeot will have made friends
all over the theatre, high and low. He will lower the pitch to suit some
actress that cannot sing, he will lick M. Gaudissart's boots!" cried the
sick man, who clung to life. "He has friends that will praise him in
all the newspapers; and when things are like that in such a shop, Mme.
Cibot, they can find holes in anybody's coat. ... What fiend drove you
to do it?"

"Why! plague take it, M. Schmucke talked it over with me for a week.
What would you have? You see nothing but yourself! You are so selfish
that other people may die if you can only get better.--Why poor M.
Schmucke has been tired out this month past! he is tied by the leg,
he can go nowhere, he cannot give lessons nor take his place at the
theatre. Do you really see nothing? He sits up with you at night, and I
take the nursing in the day. If I were to sit up at night with you, as
I tried to do at first when I thought you were so poor, I should have to
sleep all day. And who would see to the house and look out for squalls!
Illness is illness, it cannot be helped, and here are you--"

"This was not Schmucke's idea, it is quite impossible--"

"That means that it was _I_ who took it into my head to do it, does it?
Do you think that we are made of iron? Why, if M. Schmucke had given
seven or eight lessons every day and conducted the orchestra every
evening at the theatre from six o'clock till half-past eleven at night,
he would have died in ten days' time. Poor man, he would give his life
for you, and do you want to be the death of him? By the authors of my
days, I have never seen a sick man to match you! Where are your senses?
have you put them in pawn? We are all slaving our lives out for you; we
do all for the best, and you are not satisfied! Do you want to drive us
raging mad? I myself, to begin with, am tired out as it is----"

La Cibot rattled on at her ease; Pons was too angry to say a word. He
writhed on his bed, painfully uttering inarticulate sounds; the blow was
killing him. And at this point, as usual, the scolding turned suddenly
to tenderness. The nurse dashed at her patient, grasped him by the head,
made him lie down by main force, and dragged the blankets over him.

"How any one can get into such a state!" exclaimed she. "After all, it
is your illness, dearie. That is what good M. Poul