A heartrending moan from the little tailor cut the tempter short; the death agony had begun.

“Go away,” said La Cibot.  “You are a monster to talk of such things and my poor man dying like this—­”

“Ah! it is because I love you,” said Remonencq; “I could let everything else go to have you—­”

“If you loved me, you would say nothing to me just now,” returned she.  And Remonencq departed to his shop, sure of marrying La Cibot.

Towards ten o’clock there was a sort of commotion in the street; M. Cibot was taking the Sacrament.  All the friends of the pair, all the porters and porters’ wives in the Rue de Normandie and neighboring streets, had crowded into the lodge, under the archway, and stood on the pavement outside.  Nobody so much as noticed the arrival of M. Leopold Hannequin and a brother lawyer.  Schwab and Brunner reached Pons’ rooms unseen by Mme. Cibot.  The notary, inquiring for Pons, was shown upstairs by the portress of a neighboring house.  Brunner remembered his previous visit to the museum, and went straight in with his friend Schwab.

Pons formally revoked his previous will and constituted Schmucke his universal legatee.  This accomplished, he thanked Schwab and Brunner, and earnestly begged M. Leopold Hannequin to protect Schmucke’s interests.  The demands made upon him by last night’s scene with La Cibot, and this final settlement of his worldly affairs, left him so faint and exhausted that Schmucke begged Schwab to go for the Abbe Duplanty; it was Pons’ great desire to take the Sacrament, and Schmucke could not bring himself to leave his friend.

La Cibot, sitting at the foot of her husband’s bed, gave not so much as a thought to Schmucke’s breakfast—­for that matter had been forbidden to return; but the morning’s events, the sight of Pons’ heroic resignation in the death agony, so oppressed Schmucke’s heart that he was not conscious of hunger.  Towards two o’clock, however, as nothing had been seen of the old German, La Cibot sent Remonencq’s sister to see whether Schmucke wanted anything; prompted not so much by interest as by curiosity.  The Abbe Duplanty had just heard the old musician’s dying confession, and the administration of the sacrament of extreme unction was disturbed by repeated ringing of the door-bell.  Pons, in his terror of robbery, had made Schmucke promise solemnly to admit no one into the house; so Schmucke did not stir.  Again and again Mlle. Remonencq pulled the cord, and finally went downstairs in alarm to tell La Cibot that Schmucke would not open the door; Fraisier made a note of this.  Schmucke had never seen any one die in his life; before long he would be perplexed by the many difficulties which beset those who are left with a dead body in Paris, this more especially if they are lonely and helpless and have no one to act for them.  Fraisier knew, moreover, that in real affliction people lose their heads, and therefore immediately after breakfast he took up his position in the porter’s lodge, and sitting there in perpetual committee with Dr. Poulain, conceived the idea of directing all Schmucke’s actions himself.