“Ah!  I say, Topinard, have you independent means?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you on the lookout to better yourself somewhere else?”

“No, sir—­” said Topinard, with a ghastly countenance.

“Why, hang it all, your wife takes the first row of boxes out of respect to my predecessor, who came to grief; I gave you the job of cleaning the lamps in the wings in the daytime, and you put out the scores.  And that is not all, either.  You get twenty sous for acting monsters and managing devils when a hell is required.  There is not a super that does not covet your post, and there are those that are jealous of you, my friend; you have enemies in the theatre.”

“Enemies!” repeated Topinard.

“And you have three children; the oldest takes children’s parts at fifty centimes—­”

“Sir!—­”

“You want to meddle in other people’s business, and put your finger into a will case.—­Why, you wretched man, you would be crushed like an egg-shell!  My patron is His Excellency, Monseigneur le Comte Popinot, a clever man and a man of high character, whom the King in his wisdom has summoned back to the privy council.  This statesman, this great politician, has married his eldest son to a daughter of M. le President de Marville, one of the foremost men among the high courts of justice; one of the leading lights of the law-courts.  Do you know the law-courts?  Very good.  Well, he is cousin and heir to M. Pons, to our old conductor whose funeral you attended this morning.  I do not blame you for going to pay the last respects to him, poor man. . . .  But if you meddle in M. Schmucke’s affairs, you will lose your place.  I wish very well to M. Schmucke, but he is in a delicate position with regard to the heirs—­and as the German is almost nothing to me, and the President and Count Popinot are a great deal, I recommend you to leave the worthy German to get out of his difficulties by himself.  There is a special Providence that watches over Germans, and the part of deputy guardian-angel would not suit you at all.  Do you see?  Stay as you are—­you cannot do better.”

“Very good, monsieur le directeur,” said Topinard, much distressed.  And in this way Schmucke lost the protector sent to him by fate, the one creature that shed a tear for Pons, the poor super for whose return he looked on the morrow.

Next morning poor Schmucke awoke to a sense of his great and heavy loss.  He looked round the empty rooms.  Yesterday and the day before yesterday the preparations for the funeral had made a stir and bustle which distracted his eyes; but the silence which follows the day, when the friend, father, son, or loved wife has been laid in the grave—­the dull, cold silence of the morrow is terrible, is glacial.  Some irresistible force drew him to Pons’ chamber, but the sight of it was more than the poor man could bear; he shrank away and sat down in the dining-room, where Mme. Sauvage was busy making breakfast ready.