The house brought in about eight thousand francs for there were three
complete sets of apartments--back and front, on the side nearest the
Rue de Normandie, as well as the three floors in the older mansion
between the courtyard and the garden, and a shop kept by a marine
store-dealer named Remonencq, which fronted on the street. During the
past few months this Remonencq had begun to deal in old curiosities,
and knew the value of Pons' collection so well that he took off his
hat whenever the musician came in or went out.
A sou in the livre on eight thousand francs therefore brought in about
four hundred francs to the Cibots. They had no rent to pay and no
expenses for firing; Cibot's earnings amounted on an average to seven
or eight hundred francs, add tips at New Year, and the pair had
altogether in income of sixteen hundred francs, every penny of which
they spent, for the Cibots lived and fared better than working people
usually do. "One can only live once," La Cibot used to say. She was
born during the Revolution, you see, and had never learned her
Catechism.
The husband of this portress with the unblenching tawny eyes was an
object of envy to the whole fraternity, for La Cibot had not forgotten
the knowledge of cookery picked up at the _Cadran Bleu_. So it had
come to pass that the Cibots had passed the prime of life, and saw
themselves on the threshold of old age without a hundred francs put by
for the future. Well clad and well fed, they enjoyed among the
neighbors, it is true, the respect due to twenty-six years of strict
honesty; for if they had nothing of their own, they "hadn't nothing
belonging to nobody else," according to La Cibot, who was a prodigal
of negatives.
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