think they were going to speak to you."

Before going finally off, Madame Cardinal went through a piece of
very deep hypocrisy. We have seen how she hesitated about leaving the
portress alone with the sick man:--

"Madame Perrache," she said to her, "you won't leave him, the poor
darling, will you, till I get back?"

It may have been noticed that Cerizet had not decided on any definite
course of action in the new affair he was now undertaking. The part of
doctor, which for a moment he thought of assuming, frightened him, and
he gave himself out, as we have seen, to Madame Perrache as the business
agent of his accomplice. Once alone, he began to see that his original
idea complicated with a doctor, a nurse, and a notary, presented the
most serious difficulties. A regular will drawn in favor of Madame
Cardinal was not a thing to be improvised in a moment. It would take
some time to acclimatize the idea in the surly and suspicious mind of
the old pauper, and death, which was close at hand, might play them a
trick at any moment, and balk the most careful preparations.

It was true that unless a will were made the income of eight thousand
francs on the Grand Livre and the house in the rue Notre-Dame de
Nazareth would go to the heirs-at-law, and Madame Cardinal would get
only her share of the property; but the abandonment of this visible
portion of the inheritance was the surest means of laying hands on the
invisible part of it. Besides, if the latter were secured, what hindered
their returning to the idea of a will?

Resolving, therefore, to confine the _operation_ to the simplest terms
at first, Cerizet summed them up in the manoeuvre of the poppy-heads,
already mentioned, and he was making his way back to Toupillier's abode,
armed with that single weapon of war, intending to give Madame Cardinal
further instructions, when he met her, bearing on her arm the basket she
had just bought; and in that basket was the sick man's panacea.

"Upon my word!" cried the usurer, "is this the way you keep your watch?"

"I had to go out and buy him wine," replied the Cardinal; "he is howling
like a soul in hell that he wants to be at peace, and to be let alone,
and get his wine! It is his one idea that Roussillon is good for his
disease. Well, when he has drunk it, I dare say he will be quieter."

"You are right," said Cerizet, sententiously; "never contradict a sick
man. But this wine, you know, ought to be improved; by infusing t