“Mlle Remonencq will take my place with Cibot.  She will know, and open the door; but tap on the window, so as to rouse nobody in the house.”

“Right,” said Fraisier.  “You will have a light, will you not.  A candle will do.”

At midnight poor Schmucke sat in his easy-chair, watching with a breaking heart that shrinking of the features that comes with death; Pons looked so worn out with the day’s exertions, that death seemed very near.

Presently Pons spoke.  “I have just enough strength, I think, to last till to-morrow night,” he said philosophically.  “To-morrow night the death agony will begin; poor Schmucke!  As soon as the notary and your two friends are gone, go for our good Abbe Duplanty, the curate of Saint-Francois.  Good man, he does not know that I am ill, and I wish to take the holy sacrament to-morrow at noon.”

There was a long pause.

“God so willed it that life has not been as I dreamed,” Pons resumed.  “I should so have loved wife and children and home. . . .  To be loved by a very few in some corner—­that was my whole ambition!  Life is hard for every one; I have seen people who had all that I wanted so much and could not have, and yet they were not happy. . . .  Then at the end of my life, God put untold comfort in my way, when He gave me such a friend. . . .  And one thing I have not to reproach myself with—­that I have not known your worth nor appreciated you, my good Schmucke. . . .  I have loved you with my whole heart, with all the strength of love that is in me. . . .  Do not cry, Schmucke; I shall say no more if you cry and it is so sweet to me to talk of ourselves to you. . . .  If I had listened to you, I should not be dying.  I should have left the world and broken off my habits, and then I should not have been wounded to death.  And now, I want to think of no one but you at the last—­”

“You are missdaken—­”

“Do not contradict me—­listen, dear friend. . . .  You are as guileless and simple as a six-year-old child that has never left its mother; one honors you for it—­it seems to me that God Himself must watch over such as you.  But men are so wicked, that I ought to warn you beforehand . . . and then you will lose your generous trust, your saint-like belief in others, the bloom of a purity of soul that only belongs to genius or to hearts like yours. . . .  In a little while you will see Mme. Cibot, who left the door ajar and watched us closely while M. Trognon was here—­in a little while you will see her come for the will, as she believes it to be. . . .  I expect the worthless creature will do her business this morning when she thinks you are asleep.  Now, mind what I say, and carry out my instructions to the letter. . . .  Are you listening?” asked the dying man.

But Schmucke was overcome with grief, his heart was throbbing painfully, his head fell back on the chair, he seemed to have lost consciousness.

“Yes,” he answered, “I can hear, but it is as if you vere doo huntert baces afay from me. . . .  It seem to me dat I am going town into der grafe mit you,” said Schmucke, crushed with pain.