re all stiff and powerless. And yet Madame Mantalini was
not weeping upon the body, but was scolding violently upon her chair;
and all this amidst a clamour of tongues perfectly deafening, and which
really appeared to have driven the unfortunate footman to the utmost
verge of distraction.

'What is the matter here?' said Ralph, pressing forward.

At this inquiry, the clamour was increased twenty-fold, and an
astounding string of such shrill contradictions as 'He's poisoned
himself'--'He hasn't'--'Send for a doctor'--'Don't'--'He's dying'--'He
isn't, he's only pretending'--with various other cries, poured forth
with bewildering volubility, until Madame Mantalini was seen to address
herself to Ralph, when female curiosity to know what she would say,
prevailed, and, as if by general consent, a dead silence, unbroken by a
single whisper, instantaneously succeeded.

'Mr Nickleby,' said Madame Mantalini; 'by what chance you came here, I
don't know.'

Here a gurgling voice was heard to ejaculate, as part of the wanderings
of a sick man, the words 'Demnition sweetness!' but nobody heeded
them except the footman, who, being startled to hear such awful tones
proceeding, as it were, from between his very fingers, dropped his
master's head upon the floor with a pretty loud crash, and then, without
an effort to lift it up, gazed upon the bystanders, as if he had done
something rather clever than otherwise.

'I will, however,' continued Madame Mantalini, drying her eyes, and
speaking with great indignation, 'say before you, and before everybody
here, for the first time, and once for all, that I never will supply
that man's extravagances and viciousness again. I have been a dupe and a
fool to him long enough. In future, he shall support himself if he
can, and then he may spend what money he pleases, upon whom and how he
pleases; but it shall not be mine, and therefore you had better pause
before you trust him further.'

Thereupon Madame Mantalini, quite unmoved by some most pathetic
lamentations on the part of her husband, that the apothecary had not
mixed the prussic acid strong enough, and that he must take another
bottle or two to finish the work he had in hand, entered into a
catalogue of that amiable gentleman's gallantries, deceptions,
extravagances, and infidelities (especially the last), winding up with
a protest against being supposed to entertain the smallest remnant
of regard for him; and adducing, in proof of the al