s--"

Schmucke tugged at her gown.--"And you will pull through," she
continued, "only we must take great care of you. Be easy, you have a
good friend beside you, and without boasting, a woman as will nurse
you like a mother nurses her first child. I nursed Cibot round once
when Dr. Poulain had given him over; he had the shroud up to his eyes,
as the saying is, and they gave him up for dead. Well, well, you have
not come to that yet, God be thanked, ill though you may be. Count on
me; I would pull you through all by myself, I would! Keep still, don't
you fidget like that."

She pulled the coverlet over the patient's hands as she spoke.

"There, sonny! M. Schmucke and I will sit up with you of nights. A
prince won't be no better nursed . . . and besides, you needn't refuse
yourself nothing that's necessary, you can afford it.--I have just
been talking things over with Cibot, for what would he do without me,
poor dear?--Well, and I talked him round; we are both so fond of you,
that he will let me stop up with you of a night. And that is a good
deal to ask of a man like him, for he is as fond of me as ever he was
the day we were married. I don't know how it is. It is the lodge, you
see; we are always there together! Don't you throw off the things like
that!" she cried, making a dash for the bedhead to draw the coverlet
over Pons' chest. "If you are not good, and don't do just as Dr.
Poulain says--and Dr. Poulain is the image of Providence on earth--I
will have no more to do with you. You must do as I tell you--"

"Yes, Montame Zipod, he vill do vat you dell him," put in Schmucke;
"he vants to lif for his boor friend Schmucke's sake, I'll pe pound."

"And of all things, don't fidget yourself," continued La Cibot, "for
your illness makes you quite bad enough without your making it worse
for want of patience. God sends us our troubles, my dear good
gentlemen; He punishes us for our sins. Haven't you nothing to
reproach yourself with? some poor little bit of a fault or other?"

The invalid shook his head.

"Oh! go on! You were young once, you had your fling, there is some
love-child of yours somewhere--cold, and starving, and homeless. . . .
What monsters men are! Their love doesn't last only for a day, and
then in a jiffy they forget, they don't so much as think of the child
at the breast for months. . . . Poor women!"

"But no one has ever loved me except Schmucke and my mother," poor
Pons broke in sadly.

"Oh! com