Is a little bit of a porter the man to
make a woman rich--a fine woman like you? Ah, what a figure you would
make in a shop on the boulevard, all among the curiosities, gossiping
with amateurs and twisting them round your fingers! Just you leave
your lodge as soon as you have lined your purse here, and you shall
see what will become of us both."
"Lined my purse!" cried Cibot. "I am incapable of taking the worth of
a single pin; you mind that, Remonencq! I am known in the neighborhood
for an honest woman, I am."
La Cibot's eyes flashed fire.
"There, never mind," said Elie Magus; "this Auvergnat seems to be too
fond of you to mean to insult you."
"How she would draw on the customers!" cried the Auvergnat.
Mme. Cibot softened at this.
"Be fair, sonnies," quoth she, "and judge for yourselves how I am
placed. These ten years past I have been wearing my life out for these
two old bachelors yonder, and neither or them has given me anything
but words. Remonencq will tell you that I feed them by contract, and
lose twenty or thirty sous a day; all my savings have gone that way,
by the soul of my mother (the only author of my days that I ever
knew), this is as true as that I live, and that this is the light of
day, and may my coffee poison me if I lie about a farthing. Well,
there is one up there that will die soon, eh? and he the richer of the
two that I have treated like my own children. Would you believe it, my
dear sir, I have told him over and over again for days past that he is
at death's door (for Dr.
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