"Oh, indeed! It will never happen to the like of us to have our names
mentioned in a will! We have no luck, but we do more than servants,
for all that. We fill a place of trust; we give receipts, we are on
the lookout for squalls, and yet we are treated like dogs, neither
more nor less, and that's the truth!"

"Some find fortune and some miss fortune," said Cibot, coming in with
a coat.

"If I had left Cibot here in his lodge and taken a place as cook, we
should have our thirty thousand francs out at interest," cried Mme.
Cibot, standing chatting with a neighbor, her hands on her prominent
hips. "But I didn't understand how to get on in life; housed inside of
a snug lodge and firing found and want for nothing, but that is all."

In 1836, when the friends took up their abode on the second floor,
they brought about a sort of revolution in the Cibot household. It
befell on this wise. Schmucke, like his friend Pons, usually arranged
that the porter or the porter's wife should undertake the cares of
housekeeping; and being both of one mind on this point when they came
to live in the Rue de Normandie, Mme. Cibot became their housekeeper
at the rate of twenty-five francs per month--twelve francs fifty
centimes for each of them. Before the year was out, the emeritus
portress reigned in the establishment of the two old bachelors, as she
reigned everywhere in the house belonging to M. Pillerault, great
uncle of Mme. le Comtesse Popinot. Their business was her business;
she called them "my gentlemen." And at last, finding the pair of
nutcrackers as mild as lambs, easy to live with, and by no means
suspicious--perfect children, in fact--her heart, the heart of a woman