ns
the houses on either side, and as a result a stream of filthy ooze
meanders among the cobblestones, filters into the soil, and produces
the mud peculiar to the city. La Cibot came and went; but her husband,
a hard-working man, sat day in day out like a fakir on the table in the
window, till his knee-joints were stiffened, the blood stagnated in his
body, and his legs grew so thin and crooked that he almost lost the
use of them. The deep copper tint of the man's complexion naturally
suggested that he had been out of health for a very long time. The
wife's good health and the husband's illness seemed to the doctor to be
satisfactorily accounted for by this theory.

"Then what is the matter with my poor Cibot?" asked the portress.

"My dear Mme. Cibot, he is dying of the porter's disease," said the
doctor. "Incurable vitiation of the blood is evident from the general
anaemic condition."

No one had anything to gain by a crime so objectless. Dr. Poulain's
first suspicions were effaced by this thought. Who could have any
possible interest in Cibot's death? His wife?--the doctor saw her taste
the herb-tea as she sweetened it. Crimes which escape social vengeance
are many enough, and as a rule they are of this order--to wit, murders
committed without any startling sign of violence, without bloodshed,
bruises, marks of strangling, without any bungling of the business, in
short; if there seems to be no motive for the crime, it most likely goes
unpunished, especially if the death occurs among the poorer classes.
Murder is almost always denounced by its advanced guards, by hatred or
greed well known to those under whose eyes the whole matter has passed.
But in the case of the Cibots, no one save the doctor had any interest
in discovering the actual cause of death. The little copper-faced
tailor's wife adored her husband; he had no money and no enemies; La
Cibot's fortune and the marine-store dealer's motives were alike
hidden in the shade. Poulain knew the portress and her way of thinking
perfectly well; he thought her capable of tormenting Pons, but he
saw that she had neither motive enough nor wit enough for murder; and
besides--every time the doctor came and she gave her husband a draught,
she took a spoonful herself. Poulain himself, the only person who might
have thrown light on the matter, inclined to believe that this was
one of the unaccountable freaks of disease, one of the astonishing
exceptions which make medicine