Schmucke looked up at the woman, and she went on, innocent of any barbarous intention, for women of her class are accustomed to take the worst of moral suffering passively, as a matter of course.

“We must have linen for the shroud, sir, we must have money to buy a truckle-bed for the person to sleep upon, and some things for the kitchen—­plates, and dishes, and glasses, for a priest will be coming to pass the night here, and the person says that there is absolutely nothing in the kitchen.”

“And what is more, sir, I must have coal and firing if I am to get the dinner ready,” echoed La Sauvage, “and not a thing can I find.  Not that there is anything so very surprising in that, as La Cibot used to do everything for you—­”

Schmucke lay at the feet of the dead; he heard nothing, knew nothing, saw nothing.  Mme. Cantinet pointed to him.  “My dear woman, you would not believe me,” she said.  “Whatever you say, he does not answer.”

“Very well, child,” said La Sauvage; “now I will show you what to do in a case of this kind.”

She looked round the room as a thief looks in search of possible hiding-places for money; then she went straight to Pons’ chest, opened the first drawer, saw the bag in which Schmucke had put the rest of the money after the sale of the pictures, and held it up before him.  He nodded mechanically.

“Here is money, child,” said La Sauvage, turning to Mme. Cantinet.  “I will count it first and take enough to buy everything we want—­wine, provisions, wax-candles, all sorts of things, in fact, for there is nothing in the house. . . .  Just look in the drawers for a sheet to bury him in.  I certainly was told that the poor gentleman was simple, but I don’t know what he is; he is worse.  He is like a new-born child; we shall have to feed him with a funnel.”

The women went about their work, and Schmucke looked on precisely as an idiot might have done.  Broken down with sorrow, wholly absorbed, in a half-cataleptic state, he could not take his eyes from the face that seemed to fascinate him, Pons’ face refined by the absolute repose of Death.  Schmucke hoped to die; everything was alike indifferent.  If the room had been on fire he would not have stirred.

“There are twelve hundred and fifty francs here,” La Sauvage told him.

Schmucke shrugged his shoulders.

But when La Sauvage came near to measure the body by laying the sheet over it, before cutting out the shroud, a horrible struggle ensued between her and the poor German.  Schmucke was furious.  He behaved like a dog that watches by his dead master’s body, and shows his teeth at all who try to touch it.  La Sauvage grew impatient.  She grasped him, set him in the armchair, and held him down with herculean strength.

“Go on, child; sew him in his shroud,” she said, turning to Mme. Cantinet.

As soon as this operation was completed, La Sauvage set Schmucke back in his place at the foot of the bed.