“Upon my word!” cried the usurer, “is this the way you keep your watch?”

“I had to go out and buy him wine,” replied the Cardinal; “he is howling like a soul in hell that he wants to be at peace, and to be let alone, and get his wine!  It is his one idea that Roussillon is good for his disease.  Well, when he has drunk it, I dare say he will be quieter.”

“You are right,” said Cerizet, sententiously; “never contradict a sick man.  But this wine, you know, ought to be improved; by infusing these” (and lifting one of the covers of the basket he slipped in the poppies) “you’ll procure the poor man a good, long sleep,—­five or six hours at least.  This evening I’ll come and see you, and nothing, I think, need prevent us from examining a little closer those matters of inheritance.”

“I see,” said Madame Cardinal, winking.

“To-night, then,” said Cerizet, not wishing to prolong the conversation.

He had a strong sense of the difficulty and danger of the affair, and was very reluctant to be seen in the street conversing with his accomplice.

Returning to her uncle’s garret, Madame Cardinal found him still in a state of semi-torpor; she relieved Madame Perrache, and bade her good-bye, going to the door to receive a supply of wood, all sawed, which she had ordered from the Auvergnat in the rue Ferou.

Into an earthen pot, which she had bought of the right size to fit upon the hole in the stoves of the poor where they put their soup-kettles, she now threw the poppies, pouring over them two-thirds of the wine she had brought back with her.  Then she lighted a fire beneath the pot, intending to obtain the decoction agreed upon as quickly as possible.  The crackling of the wood and the heat, which soon spread about the room, brought Toupillier out of his stupor.  Seeing the stove lighted he called out:—­

“Who is making a fire here?  Do you want to burn the house down?”

“Why, uncle,” said the Cardinal, “it is wood I bought with my own money, to warm your wine.  The doctor doesn’t want you to drink it cold.”

“Where is it, that wine?” demanded Toupillier, calming down a little at the thought that the fire was not burning at his expense.

“It must come to a boil,” said his nurse; “the doctor insisted upon that.  Still, if you’ll be good I’ll give you half a glass of it cold, just to wet your whistle.  I’ll take that upon myself, but don’t you tell the doctor.”

“Doctor!  I won’t have a doctor; they are all scoundrels, invented to kill people,” cried Toupillier, whom the idea of drink had revived.  “Come, give me the wine!” he said, in the tone of a man whose patience had come to an end.

Convinced that though this compliance would do no harm it could do no good, Madame Cardinal poured out half a glass, and while she gave it with one hand to the sick man, with the other she raised him to a sitting posture that he might drink it.