Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny





COUSIN PONS


By Honore De Balzac



Translated by Ellen Marriage




COUSIN PONS


Towards three o'clock in the afternoon of one October day in the year
1844, a man of sixty or thereabouts, whom anybody might have credited
with more than his actual age, was walking along the Boulevard des
Italiens with his head bent down, as if he were tracking some one. There
was a smug expression about the mouth--he looked like a merchant who
has just done a good stroke of business, or a bachelor emerging from
a boudoir in the best of humors with himself; and in Paris this is
the highest degree of self-satisfaction ever registered by a human
countenance.

As soon as the elderly person appeared in the distance, a smile broke
out over the faces of the frequenters of the boulevard, who daily, from
their chairs, watch the passers-by, and indulge in the agreeable pastime
of analyzing them. That smile is peculiar to Parisians; it says so many
things--ironical, quizzical, pitying; but nothing save the rarest of
human curiosities can summon that look of interest to the faces of
Parisians, sated as they are with every possible sight.

A saying recorded of Hyacinthe, an actor celebrated for his repartees,
will explain the archaeological value of the old gentleman, and the
smile repeated like an echo by all eyes. Somebody once asked Hyacinthe
where the hats were made that set the house in a roar as soon as he
appeared. "I don't have them made," he said; "I keep them!" So also
among the million actors who make up the great troupe of Paris, there
are unconscious Hyacinthes who "keep" all the absurd freaks of vanished
fashions upon their backs; and the apparition of some bygone decade will
startle you into laughter as you walk the streets in bitterness of soul
over the treason of one who was your friend in the past.

In some respects the passer-by adhered so faithfully to the fashions
of the year 1806, that he was not so much a burlesque caricature as a
reproduction of the Empire period. To an observer, accuracy of detail in
a revival of this sort is extremely valuable, but accuracy of detail,
to be properly appreciated, demands the critical attention of an expert
_flaneur_; while the man in the street who raises a laugh as soon as he
comes in sight is bound to be one of those outrageous exhibitions which
stare you in the face, as the saying goes, and produce the kind of
effect which an actor tries to secure for the success of his entry. The
elderly person, a thin, spare man, wore a nut-brown spencer over a coat
of uncertain green, with white metal buttons. A man in a spencer in the
year 1844! it was as if Napoleon himself had vouchsafed to come to life
again for a couple of hours.

The spencer, as its name indicates, was the invention of an English
lord, vain, doubtless, of his handsome shape. Some time before the Peace
of Amiens, this nobleman solved the problem of covering the bust without
destroying the outlines of the figure and encumbering the person with
the hideous boxcoat, now finishing its career on the backs of aged
hackney cabmen; but, elegant figures being in the minority, the success
of the spencer was short-lived in France, English though it was.

At the sight of the spencer, men of forty or fifty mentally invested
the wearer with top-boots, pistachio-colored kerseymere small clothes
adorned with a knot of ribbon; and beheld themselves in the costumes of
their youth. Elderly ladies thought of former conquests; but the younger
men were asking each other why the aged Alcibiades had cut off the
skirts of his overcoat. The rest of the costume was so much in keeping
with the spencer, that you would not have hesitated to call the wearer
"an Empire man," just as you call a certain kind of furniture "Empire
furniture;" yet the newcomer only symbolized the Empire for those who
had known that great and magnificent epoch at any rate _de visu_, for a
certain accuracy of memory was needed for the full appreciation of the
costume, and even now the Empire is so far away that not every one of us
can picture it in its Gallo-Grecian reality.

The stranger's hat, for instance, tipped to the back of his head so as
to leave almost the whole forehead bare, recalled a certain jaunty air,
with which civilians and officials attempted to swagger it with military
men; but the hat itself was a shocking specimen of the fifteen-franc
variety. Constant friction with a pair of enormous ears had left their
marks which no brush could efface from the underside of the brim; the
silk tissue (as usual) fitted badly over the cardboard foundation, and
hung in wrinkles here and there; and some skin-disease (apparently) had
attacked the nap in spite of the hand which rubbed it down of a morning.

Beneath the hat, which seemed ready to drop off at any moment, lay
an expanse of countenance grotesque and droll, as the faces which the
Chinese alone of all people can imagine for their quaint curiosities.
The broad visage was as full of holes as a colander, honeycombed with
the shadows of the dints, hollowed out like a Roman mask. It set all
the laws of anatomy at defiance. Close inspection failed to detect the
substructure. Where you expected to find a bone, you discovered a layer
of cartilaginous tissue, and the hollows of an ordinary human face were
here filled out with flabby bosses. A pair of gray eyes, red-rimmed
and lashless, looked forlornly out of a countenance which was flattened
something after the fashion of a pumpkin, and surmounted by a Don
Quixote nose that rose out of it like a monolith above a plain. It was
the kind of nose, as Cervantes must surely have explained somewhere,
which denotes an inborn enthusiasm for all things great, a tendency
which is apt to degenerate into credulity.

And yet, though the man's ugliness was something almost ludicrous, it
aroused not the slightest inclination to laugh. The exceeding melancholy
which found an outlet in the poor man's faded eyes reached the mocker
himself and froze the gibes on his lips; for all at once the thought
arose that this was a human creature to whom Nature had forbidden any
expression of love or tenderness, since such expression could only be
painful or ridiculous to the woman he loved. In the presence of such
misfortune a Frenchman is silent; to him it seems the most cruel of all
afflictions--to be unable to please!

The man so ill-favored was dressed after the fashion of shabby
gentility, a fashion which the rich not seldom try to copy. He wore
low shoes beneath gaiters of the pattern worn by the Imperial Guard,
doubtless for the sake of economy, because they kept the socks clean.
The rusty tinge of his black breeches, like the cut and the white or
shiny line of the creases, assigned the date of the purchase some three
years back. The roomy garments failed to disguise the lean proportions
of the wearer, due apparently rather to constitution than to a
Pythagorean regimen, for the worthy man was endowed with thick lips
and a sensual mouth; and when he smiled, displayed a set of white teeth
which would have done credit to a shark.

A shawl-waistcoat, likewise of black cloth, was supplemented by a white
under-waistcoat, and yet again beneath this gleamed the edge of a red
knitted under-jacket, to put you in mind of Garat's five waistcoats.
A huge white muslin stock with a conspicuous bow, invented by some
exquisite to charm "the charming sex" in 1809, projected so far above
the wearer's chin that the lower part of his face was lost, as it were,
in a muslin abyss. A silk watch-guard, plaited to resemble the keepsakes
made of hair, meandered down the shirt front and secured his watch from
the improbable theft. The greenish coat, though older by some three
years than the breeches, was remarkably neat; the black velvet collar
and shining metal buttons, recently renewed, told of carefulness which
descended even to trifles.

The particular manner of fixing the hat on the occiput, the triple
waistcoat, the vast cravat engulfing the chin, the gaiters, the metal
buttons on the greenish coat,--all these reminiscences of Imperial
fashions were blended with a sort of afterwaft and lingering perfume of
the coquetry of the Incroyable--with an indescribable finical something
in the folds of the garments, a certain air of stiffness and correctness
in the demeanor that smacked of the school of David, that recalled
Jacob's spindle-legged furniture.

At first sight, moreover, you set him down either for the gentleman by
birth fallen a victim to some degrading habit, or for the man of small
independent means whose expenses are calculated to such a nicety that
the breakage of a windowpane, a rent in a coat, or a visit from the
philanthropic pest who asks you for subscriptions to a charity, absorbs
the whole of a month's little surplus of pocket-money. If you had seen
him that afternoon, you would have wondered how that grotesque face came
to be lighted up with a smile; usually, surely, it must have worn
the dispirited, passive look of the obscure toiler condemned to labor
without ceasing for the barest necessaries of life. Yet when you
noticed that the odd-looking old man was carrying some object (evidently
precious) in his right hand with a mother's care; concealing it under
the skirts of his coat to keep it from collisions in the crowd, and
still more, when you remarked that important air always assumed by an
idler when intrusted with a commission, you would have suspected him of
recovering some piece of lost property, some modern equivalent of the
marquise's poodle; you would have recognized the assiduous gallantry of
the "man of the Empire" returning in triumph from his mission to some
charming woman of sixty, reluctant as yet to dispense with the daily
visit of her elderly _attentif_.

In Paris only among great cities will you see such spectacles as this;
for of her boulevards Paris makes a stage where a never-ending drama is
played gratuitously by the French nation in the interests of Art.

In spite of the rashly assumed spencer, you would scarcely have thought,
after a glance at the contours of the man's bony frame, that this was an
artist--that conventional type which is privileged, in something of the
same way as a Paris gamin, to represent riotous living to the bourgeois
and philistine mind, the most _mirific_ joviality, in short (to use the
old Rabelaisian word newly taken into use). Yet this elderly person had
once taken the medal and the traveling scholarship; he had composed
the first cantata crowned by the Institut at the time of the
re-establishment of the Academie de Rome; he was M. Sylvain Pons, in
fact--M. Sylvain Pons, whose name appears on the covers of well-known
sentimental songs trilled by our mothers, to say nothing of a couple
of operas, played in 1815 and 1816, and divers unpublished scores. The
worthy soul was now ending his days as the conductor of an orchestra
in a boulevard theatre, and a music master in several young ladies'
boarding-schools, a post for which his face particularly recommended
him. He was entirely dependent upon his earnings. Running about to give
private lessons at his age!--Think of it. How many a mystery lies in
that unromantic situation!

But the last man to wear the spencer carried something about him besides
his Empire Associations; a warning and a lesson was written large over
that triple waistcoat. Wherever he went, he exhibited, without fee or
charge, one of the many victims of the fatal system of competition which
still prevails in France in spite of a century of trial without result;
for Poisson de Marigny, brother of the Pompadour and Director of Fine
Arts, somewhere about 1746 invented this method of applying pressure to
the brain. That was a hundred years ago. Try if you can count upon your
fingers the men of genius among the prizemen of those hundred years.

In the first place, no deliberate effort of schoolmaster or
administrator can replace the miracles of chance which produce great
men: of all the mysteries of generation, this most defies the ambitious
modern scientific investigator. In the second--the ancient Egyptians
(we are told) invented incubator-stoves for hatching eggs; what would be
thought of Egyptians who should neglect to fill the beaks of the callow
fledglings? Yet this is precisely what France is doing. She does
her utmost to produce artists by the artificial heat of competitive
examination; but, the sculptor, painter, engraver, or musician once
turned out by this mechanical process, she no more troubles herself
about them and their fate than the dandy cares for yesterday's flower in
his buttonhole. And so it happens that the really great man is a Greuze,
a Watteau, a Felicien David, a Pagnesi, a Gericault, a Decamps, an
Auber, a David d'Angers, an Eugene Delacroix, or a Meissonier--artists
who take but little heed of _grande prix_, and spring up in the open
field under the rays of that invisible sun called Vocation.

To resume. The Government sent Sylvain Pons to Rome to make a great
musician of himself; and in Rome Sylvain Pons acquired a taste for
the antique and works of art. He became an admirable judge of those
masterpieces of the brain and hand which are summed up by the useful
neologism "bric-a-brac;" and when the child of Euterpe returned to
Paris somewhere about the year 1810, it was in the character of a rabid
collector, loaded with pictures, statuettes, frames, wood-carving,
ivories, enamels, porcelains, and the like. He had sunk the greater
part of his patrimony, not so much in the purchases themselves as on the
expenses of transit; and every penny inherited from his mother had
been spent in the course of a three-years' travel in Italy after the
residence in Rome came to an end. He had seen Venice, Milan, Florence,
Bologna, and Naples leisurely, as he wished to see them, as a dreamer of
dreams, and a philosopher; careless of the future, for an artist looks
to his talent for support as the _fille de joie_ counts upon her beauty.

All through those splendid years of travel Pons was as happy as was
possible to a man with a great soul, a sensitive nature, and a face so
ugly that any "success with the fair" (to use the stereotyped formula of
1809) was out of the question; the realities of life always fell short
of the ideals which Pons created for himself; the world without was
not in tune with the soul within, but Pons had made up his mind to the
dissonance. Doubtless the sense of beauty that he had kept pure and
living in his inmost soul was the spring from which the delicate,
graceful, and ingenious music flowed and won him reputation between 1810
and 1814.

Every reputation founded upon the fashion or the fancy of the hour, or
upon the short-lived follies of Paris, produces its Pons. No place in
the world is so inexorable in great things; no city of the globe so
disdainfully indulgent in small. Pons' notes were drowned before long in
floods of German harmony and the music of Rossini; and if in 1824 he
was known as an agreeable musician, a composer of various drawing-room
melodies, judge if he was likely to be famous in 183l! In 1844, the year
in which the single drama of this obscure life began, Sylvain Pons was
of no more value than an antediluvian semiquaver; dealers in music had
never heard of his name, though he was still composing, on scanty pay,
for his own orchestra or for neighboring theatres.

And yet, the worthy man did justice to the great masters of our day; a
masterpiece finely rendered brought tears to his eyes; but his religion
never bordered on mania, as in the case of Hoffmann's Kreislers; he kept
his enthusiasm to himself; his delight, like the paradise reached by
opium or hashish, lay within his own soul.

The gift of admiration, of comprehension, the single faculty by which
the ordinary man becomes the brother of the poet, is rare in the city
of Paris, that inn whither all ideas, like travelers, come to stay for
awhile; so rare is it, that Pons surely deserves our respectful esteem.
His personal failure may seem anomalous, but he frankly admitted that he
was weak in harmony. He had neglected the study of counterpoint; there
was a time when he might have begun his studies afresh and held his
own among modern composers, when he might have been, not certainly a
Rossini, but a Herold. But he was alarmed by the intricacies of modern
orchestration; and at length, in the pleasures of collecting, he found
such ever-renewed compensation for his failure, that if he had been made
to choose between his curiosities and the fame of Rossini--will it be
believed?--Pons would have pronounced for his beloved collection.

Pons was of the opinion of Chenavard, the print-collector, who laid it
down as an axiom--that you only fully enjoy the pleasure of looking at
your Ruysdael, Hobbema, Holbein, Raphael, Murillo, Greuze, Sebastian del
Piombo, Giorgione, Albrecht Durer, or what not, when you have paid less
than sixty francs for your picture. Pons never gave more than a hundred
francs for any purchase. If he laid out as much as fifty francs, he was
careful to assure himself beforehand that the object was worth three
thousand. The most beautiful thing in the world, if it cost three
hundred francs, did not exist for Pons. Rare had been his bargains; but
he possessed the three qualifications for success--a stag's legs, an
idler's disregard of time, and the patience of a Jew.

This system, carried out for forty years, in Rome or Paris alike, had
borne its fruits. Since Pons returned from Italy, he had regularly spent
about two thousand francs a year upon a collection of masterpieces of
every sort and description, a collection hidden away from all eyes but
his own; and now his catalogue had reached the incredible number of
1907. Wandering about Paris between 1811 and 1816, he had picked up
many a treasure for ten francs, which would fetch a thousand or twelve
hundred to-day. Some forty-five thousand canvases change hands annually
in Paris picture sales, and these Pons had sifted through year by year.
Pons had Sevres porcelain, _pate tendre_, bought of Auvergnats, those
satellites of the Black Band who sacked chateaux and carried off the
marvels of Pompadour France in their tumbril carts; he had, in fact,
collected the drifted wreck of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries;
he recognized the genius of the French school, and discerned the merit
of the Lepautres and Lavallee-Poussins and the rest of the great obscure
creators of the Genre Louis Quinze and the Genre Louis Seize. Our modern
craftsmen now draw without acknowledgment from them, pore incessantly
over the treasures of the Cabinet des Estampes, borrow adroitly, and
give out their _pastiches_ for new inventions. Pons had obtained many a
piece by exchange, and therein lies the ineffable joy of the
collector. The joy of buying bric-a-brac is a secondary delight; in
the give-and-take of barter lies the joy of joys. Pons had begun
by collecting snuff-boxes and miniatures; his name was unknown in
bric-a-bracology, for he seldom showed himself in salesrooms or in the
shops of well-known dealers; Pons was not aware that his treasures had
any commercial value.

The late lamented Dusommerard tried his best to gain Pons' confidence,
but the prince of bric-a-brac died before he could gain an entrance to
the Pons museum, the one private collection which could compare with
the famous Sauvageot museum. Pons and M. Sauvageot indeed resembled each
other in more ways than one. M. Sauvageot, like Pons, was a musician;
he was likewise a comparatively poor man, and he had collected his
bric-a-brac in much the same way, with the same love of art, the same
hatred of rich capitalists with well-known names who collect for the
sake of running up prices as cleverly as possible. There was yet another
point of resemblance between the pair; Pons, like his rival competitor
and antagonist, felt in his heart an insatiable craving after specimens
of the craftsman's skill and miracles of workmanship; he loved them as
a man might love a fair mistress; an auction in the salerooms in the
Rue des Jeuneurs, with its accompaniments of hammer strokes and brokers'
men, was a crime of _lese-bric-a-brac_ in Pons' eyes. Pons' museum was
for his own delight at every hour; for the soul created to know and
feel all the beauty of a masterpiece has this in common with the
lover--to-day's joy is as great as the joy of yesterday; possession
never palls; and a masterpiece, happily, never grows old. So the object
that he held in his hand with such fatherly care could only be a "find,"
carried off with what affection amateurs alone know!

After the first outlines of this biographical sketch, every one will
cry at once, "Why! this is the happiest man on earth, in spite of
his ugliness!" And, in truth, no spleen, no dullness can resist the
counter-irritant supplied by a "craze," the intellectual moxa of a
hobby. You who can no longer drink of "the cup of pleasure," as it has
been called through all ages, try to collect something, no matter what
(people have been known to collect placards), so shall you receive the
small change for the gold ingot of happiness. Have you a hobby? You have
transferred pleasure to the plane of ideas. And yet, you need not
envy the worthy Pons; such envy, like all kindred sentiments, would be
founded upon a misapprehension.

With a nature so sensitive, with a soul that lived by tireless
admiration of the magnificent achievements of art, of the high rivalry
between human toil and the work of Nature--Pons was a slave to that one
of the Seven Deadly Sins with which God surely will deal least hardly;
Pons was a glutton. A narrow income, combined with a passion for
bric-a-brac, condemned him to a regimen so abhorrent to a discriminating
palate, that, bachelor as he was, he had cut the knot of the problem by
dining out every day.

Now, in the time of the Empire, celebrities were more sought after than
at present, perhaps because there were so few of them, perhaps because
they made little or no political pretension. In those days, besides,
you could set up for a poet, a musician, or a painter, with so little
expense. Pons, being regarded as the probable rival of Nicolo, Paer, and
Berton, used to receive so many invitations, that he was forced to keep
a list of engagements, much as barristers note down the cases for which
they are retained. And Pons behaved like an artist. He presented his
amphitryons with copies of his songs, he "obliged" at the pianoforte,
he brought them orders for boxes at the Feydeau, his own theatre, he
organized concerts, he was not above taking the fiddle himself sometimes
in a relation's house, and getting up a little impromptu dance. In those
days, all the handsome men in France were away at the wars exchanging
sabre-cuts with the handsome men of the Coalition. Pons was said to
be, not ugly, but "peculiar-looking," after the grand rule laid down by
Moliere in Eliante's famous couplets; but if he sometimes heard himself
described as a "charming man" (after he had done some fair lady a
service), his good fortune went no further than words.

It was between the years 1810 and 1816 that Pons contracted the unlucky
habit of dining out; he grew accustomed to see his hosts taking pains
over the dinner, procuring the first and best of everything, bringing
out their choicest vintages, seeing carefully to the dessert, the
coffee, the liqueurs, giving him of their best, in short; the best,
moreover, of those times of the Empire when Paris was glutted with
kings and queens and princes, and many a private house emulated royal
splendours.

People used to play at Royalty then as they play nowadays at parliament,
creating a whole host of societies with presidents, vice-presidents,
secretaries and what not--agricultural societies, industrial societies,
societies for the promotion of sericulture, viticulture, the growth of
flax, and so forth. Some have even gone so far as to look about them for
social evils in order to start a society to cure them.

But to return to Pons. A stomach thus educated is sure to react upon the
owner's moral fibre; the demoralization of the man varies directly with
his progress in culinary sapience. Voluptuousness, lurking in every
secret recess of the heart, lays down the law therein. Honor and
resolution are battered in breach. The tyranny of the palate has never
been described; as a necessity of life it escapes the criticism of
literature; yet no one imagines how many have been ruined by the table.
The luxury of the table is indeed, in this sense, the courtesan's one
competitor in Paris, besides representing in a manner the credit side in
another account, where she figures as the expenditure.

With Pons' decline and fall as an artist came his simultaneous
transformation from invited guest to parasite and hanger-on; he could
not bring himself to quit dinners so excellently served for the Spartan
broth of a two-franc ordinary. Alas! alas! a shudder ran through him at
the mere thought of the great sacrifices which independence required him
to make. He felt that he was capable of sinking to even lower depths
for the sake of good living, if there were no other way of enjoying the
first and best of everything, of guzzling (vulgar but expressive word)
nice little dishes carefully prepared. Pons lived like a bird, pilfering
his meal, flying away when he had taken his fill, singing a few notes by
way of return; he took a certain pleasure in the thought that he lived
at the expense of society, which asked of him--what but the trifling
toll of grimaces? Like all confirmed bachelors, who hold their lodgings
in horror, and live as much as possible in other people's houses, Pons
was accustomed to the formulas and facial contortions which do duty for
feeling in the world; he used compliments as small change; and as far as
others were concerned, he was satisfied with the labels they bore, and
never plunged a too-curious hand into the sack.

This not intolerable phase lasted for another ten years. Such years!
Pons' life was closing with a rainy autumn. All through those years he
contrived to dine without expense by making himself necessary in the
houses which he frequented. He took the first step in the downward path
by undertaking a host of small commissions; many and many a time Pons
ran on errands instead of the porter or the servant; many a purchase he
made for his entertainers. He became a kind of harmless, well-meaning
spy, sent by one family into another; but he gained no credit with those
for whom he trudged about, and so often sacrificed self-respect.

"Pons is a bachelor," said they; "he is at a loss to know what to do
with his time; he is only too glad to trot about for us.--What else
would he do?"

Very soon the cold which old age spreads about itself began to set in;
the communicable cold which sensibly lowers the social temperature,
especially if the old man is ugly and poor. Old and ugly and poor--is
not this to be thrice old? Pons' winter had begun, the winter which
brings the reddened nose, and frost-nipped cheeks, and the numbed
fingers, numb in how many ways!

Invitations very seldom came for Pons now. So far from seeking the
society of the parasite, every family accepted him much as they accepted
the taxes; they valued nothing that Pons could do for them; real
services from Pons counted for nought. The family circles in which the
worthy artist revolved had no respect for art or letters; they went down
on their knees to practical results; they valued nothing but the fortune
or social position acquired since the year 1830. The bourgeoisie is
afraid of intellect and genius, but Pons' spirit and manner were not
haughty enough to overawe his relations, and naturally he had come at
last to be accounted less than nothing with them, though he was not
altogether despised.

He had suffered acutely among them, but, like all timid creatures, he
kept silence as to his pain; and so by degrees schooled himself to hide
his feelings, and learned to take sanctuary in his inmost self.
Many superficial persons interpret this conduct by the short word
"selfishness;" and, indeed, the resemblance between the egoist and the
solitary human creature is strong enough to seem to justify the harsher
verdict; and this is especially true in Paris, where nobody observes
others closely, where all things pass swift as waves, and last as little
as a Ministry.

So Cousin Pons was accused of selfishness (behind his back); and if the
world accuses any one, it usually finds him guilty and condemns him into
the bargain. Pons bowed to the decision. Do any of us know how such a
timid creature is cast down by an unjust judgment? Who will ever paint
all that the timid suffer? This state of things, now growing daily
worse, explains the sad expression on the poor old musician's face;
he lived by capitulations of which he was ashamed. Every time we sin
against self-respect at the bidding of the ruling passion, we rivet
its hold upon us; the more that passion requires of us, the stronger
it grows, every sacrifice increasing, as it were, the value of a
satisfaction for which so much has been given up, till the negative
sum-total of renouncements looms very large in a man's imagination.
Pons, for instance, after enduring the insolently patronizing looks of
some bourgeois, incased in buckram of stupidity, sipped his glass of
port or finished his quail with breadcrumbs, and relished something of
the savor of revenge, besides. "It is not too dear at the price!" he
said to himself.

After all, in the eyes of the moralist, there were extenuating
circumstances in Pons' case. Man only lives, in fact, by some personal
satisfaction. The passionless, perfectly righteous man is not human; he
is a monster, an angel wanting wings. The angel of Christian mythology
has nothing but a head. On earth, the righteous person is the
sufficiently tiresome Grandison, for whom the very Venus of the
Crosswords is sexless.

Setting aside one or two commonplace adventures in Italy, in which
probably the climate accounted for his success, no woman had ever smiled
upon Pons. Plenty of men are doomed to this fate. Pons was an abnormal
birth; the child of parents well stricken in years, he bore the stigma
of his untimely genesis; his cadaverous complexion might have been
contracted in the flask of spirit-of-wine in which science preserves
some extraordinary foetus. Artist though he was, with his tender,
dreamy, sensitive soul, he was forced to accept the character which
belonged to his face; it was hopeless to think of love, and he remained
a bachelor, not so much of choice as of necessity. Then Gluttony, the
sin of the continent monk, beckoned to Pons; he rushed upon temptation,
as he had thrown his whole soul into the adoration of art and the cult
of music. Good cheer and bric-a-brac gave him the small change for the
love which could spend itself in no other way. As for music, it was
his profession, and where will you find the man who is in love with
his means of earning a livelihood? For it is with a profession as
with marriage: in the long length you are sensible of nothing but the
drawbacks.

Brillat-Savarin has deliberately set himself to justify the gastronome,
but perhaps even he has not dwelt sufficiently on the reality of the
pleasures of the table. The demands of digestion upon the human economy
produce an internal wrestling-bout of human forces which rivals the
highest degree of amorous pleasure. The gastronome is conscious of an
expenditure of vital power, an expenditure so vast that the brain is
atrophied (as it were), that a second brain, located in the diaphragm,
may come into play, and the suspension of all the faculties is in itself
a kind of intoxication. A boa constrictor gorged with an ox is so stupid
with excess that the creature is easily killed. What man, on the wrong
side of forty, is rash enough to work after dinner? And remark in the
same connection, that all great men have been moderate eaters. The
exhilarating effect of the wing of a chicken upon invalids recovering
from serious illness, and long confined to a stinted and carefully
chosen diet, has been frequently remarked. The sober Pons, whose whole
enjoyment was concentrated in the exercise of his digestive organs, was
in the position of chronic convalescence; he looked to his dinner to
give him the utmost degree of pleasurable sensation, and hitherto he had
procured such sensations daily. Who dares to bid farewell to old
habit? Many a man on the brink of suicide has been plucked back on the
threshold of death by the thought of the cafe where he plays his nightly
game of dominoes.

In the year 1835, chance avenged Pons for the indifference of womankind
by finding him a prop for his declining years, as the saying goes; and
he, who had been old from his cradle, found a support in friendship.
Pons took to himself the only life-partner permitted to him among his
kind--an old man and a fellow-musician.

But for La Fontaine's fable, _Les Deux Amis_, this sketch should have
borne the title of _The Two Friends_; but to take the name of this
divine story would surely be a deed of violence, a profanation from
which every true man of letters would shrink. The title ought to be
borne alone and for ever by the fabulist's masterpiece, the revelation
of his soul, and the record of his dreams; those three words were set
once and for ever by the poet at the head of a page which is his by
a sacred right of ownership; for it is a shrine before which all
generations, all over the world, will kneel so long as the art of
printing shall endure.

Pons' friend gave lessons on the pianoforte. They met and struck up
an acquaintance in 1834, one prize day at a boarding-school; and so
congenial were their ways of thinking and living, that Pons used to say
that he had found his friend too late for his happiness. Never, perhaps,
did two souls, so much alike, find each other in the great ocean of
humanity which flowed forth, in disobedience to the will of God, from
its source in the Garden of Eden. Before very long the two musicians
could not live without each other. Confidences were exchanged, and in
a week's time they were like brothers. Schmucke (for that was his name)
had not believed that such a man as Pons existed, nor had Pons imagined
that a Schmucke was possible. Here already you have a sufficient
description of the good couple; but it is not every mind that takes
kindly to the concise synthetic method, and a certain amount of
demonstration is necessary if the credulous are to accept the
conclusion.

This pianist, like all other pianists, was a German. A German, like the
eminent Liszt and the great Mendelssohn, and Steibelt, and Dussek, and
Meyer, and Mozart, and Doelher, and Thalberg, and Dreschok, and Hiller,
and Leopold Hertz, Woertz, Karr, Wolff, Pixis, and Clara Wieck--and
all Germans, generally speaking. Schmucke was a great musical composer
doomed to remain a music master, so utterly did his character lack the
audacity which a musical genius needs if he is to push his way to the
front. A German's naivete does not invariably last him through his life;
in some cases it fails after a certain age; and even as a cultivator
of the soil brings water from afar by means of irrigation channels, so,
from the springs of his youth, does the Teuton draw the simplicity which
disarms suspicion--the perennial supplies with which he fertilizes his
labors in every field of science, art, or commerce. A crafty Frenchman
here and there will turn a Parisian tradesman's stupidity to good
account in the same way. But Schmucke had kept his child's simplicity
much as Pons continued to wear his relics of the Empire--all
unsuspectingly. The true and noble-hearted German was at once the
theatre and the audience, making music within himself for himself
alone. In this city of Paris he lived as a nightingale lives among the
thickets; and for twenty years he sang on, mateless, till he met with a
second self in Pons. [See _Une Fille d'Eve_.]

Both Pons and Schmucke were abundantly given, both by heart and
disposition, to the peculiarly German sentimentality which shows itself
alike in childlike ways--in a passion for flowers, in that form of
nature-worship which prompts a German to plant his garden-beds with big
glass globes for the sake of seeing miniature pictures of the view which
he can behold about him of a natural size; in the inquiring turn of mind
that sets a learned Teuton trudging three hundred miles in his gaiters
in search of a fact which smiles up in his face from a wayside spring,
or lurks laughing under the jessamine leaves in the back-yard; or (to
take a final instance) in the German craving to endow every least detail
in creation with a spiritual significance, a craving which produces
sometimes Hoffmann's tipsiness in type, sometimes the folios with which
Germany hedges the simplest questions round about, lest haply any fool
should fall into her intellectual excavations; and, indeed, if you
fathom these abysses, you find nothing but a German at the bottom.

Both friends were Catholics. They went to Mass and performed the duties
of religion together; and, like children, found nothing to tell their
confessors. It was their firm belief that music is to feeling and
thought as thought and feeling are to speech; and of their converse on
this system there was no end. Each made response to the other in orgies
of sound, demonstrating their convictions, each for each, like lovers.

Schmucke was as absent-minded as Pons was wide-awake. Pons was a
collector, Schmucke a dreamer of dreams; Schmucke was a student of
beauty seen by the soul, Pons a preserver of material beauty. Pons would
catch sight of a china cup and buy it in the time that Schmucke took to
blow his nose, wondering the while within himself whether the musical
phrase that was ringing in his brain--the _motif_ from Rossini or
Bellini or Beethoven or Mozart--had its origin or its counterpart in the
world of human thought and emotion. Schmucke's economies were controlled
by an absent mind, Pons was a spendthrift through passion, and for both
the result was the same--they had not a penny on Saint Sylvester's day.

Perhaps Pons would have given way under his troubles if it had not been
for this friendship; but life became bearable when he found some one to
whom he could pour out his heart. The first time that he breathed a
word of his difficulties, the good German had advised him to live as he
himself did, and eat bread and cheese at home sooner than dine abroad at
such a cost. Alas! Pons did not dare to confess that heart and stomach
were at war within him, that he could digest affronts which pained his
heart, and, cost what it might, a good dinner that satisfied his palate
was a necessity to him, even as your gay Lothario must have a mistress
to tease.

In time Schmucke understood; not just at once, for he was too much of
a Teuton to possess that gift of swift perception in which the French
rejoice; Schmucke understood and loved poor Pons the better. Nothing so
fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is
superior to the other. An angel could not have found a word to say to
Schmucke rubbing his hands over the discovery of the hold that
gluttony had gained over Pons. Indeed, the good German adorned their
breakfast-table next morning with delicacies of which he went in search
himself; and every day he was careful to provide something new for his
friend, for they always breakfasted together at home.

If any one imagines that the pair could not escape ridicule in Paris,
where nothing is respected, he cannot know that city. When Schmucke
and Pons united their riches and poverty, they hit upon the economical
expedient of lodging together, each paying half the rent of the very
unequally divided second-floor of a house in the Rue de Normandie in the
Marais. And as it often happened that they left home together and walked
side by side along their beat of boulevard, the idlers of the quarter
dubbed them "the pair of nutcrackers," a nickname which makes any
portrait of Schmucke quite superfluous, for he was to Pons as the famous
statue of the Nurse of Niobe in the Vatican is to the Tribune Venus.

Mme. Cibot, portress of the house in the Rue de Normandie, was the pivot
on which the domestic life of the nutcrackers turned; but Mme. Cibot
plays so large a part in the drama which grew out of their double
existence, that it will be more appropriate to give her portrait on her
first appearance in this Scene of Parisian Life.

One thing remains to be said of the characters of the pair of friends;
but this one thing is precisely the hardest to make clear to ninety-nine
readers out of a hundred in this forty-seventh year of the nineteenth
century, perhaps by reason of the prodigious financial development
brought about by the railway system. It is a little thing, and yet it
is so much. It is a question, in fact, of giving an idea of the extreme
sensitiveness of their natures. Let us borrow an illustration from the
railways, if only by way of retaliation, as it were, for the loans which
they levy upon us. The railway train of to-day, tearing over the metals,
grinds away fine particles of dust, grains so minute that a traveler
cannot detect them with the eye; but let a single one of those invisible
motes find its way into the kidneys, it will bring about that most
excruciating, and sometimes fatal, disease known as gravel. And our
society, rushing like a locomotive along its metaled track, is heedless
of the all but imperceptible dust made by the grinding of the wheels;
but it was otherwise with the two musicians; the invisible grains of
sand sank perpetually into the very fibres of their being, causing them
intolerable anguish of heart. Tender exceedingly to the pain of
others, they wept for their own powerlessness to help; and their
own susceptibilities were almost morbidly acute. Neither age nor the
continual spectacle of the drama of Paris life had hardened two souls
still young and childlike and pure; the longer they lived, indeed, the
more keenly they felt their inward suffering; for so it is, alas! with
natures unsullied by the world, with the quiet thinker, and with such
poets among the poets as have never fallen into any excess.

Since the old men began housekeeping together, the day's routine was
very nearly the same for them both. They worked together in harness
in the fraternal fashion of the Paris cab-horse; rising every morning,
summer and winter, at seven o'clock, and setting out after breakfast
to give music lessons in the boarding-schools, in which, upon occasion,
they would take lessons for each other. Towards noon Pons repaired to
his theatre, if there was a rehearsal on hand; but all his spare moments
were spent in sauntering on the boulevards. Night found both of them in
the orchestra at the theatre, for Pons had found a place for Schmucke,
and upon this wise.

At the time of their first meeting, Pons had just received that
marshal's baton of the unknown musical composer--an appointment as
conductor of an orchestra. It had come to him unasked, by a favor of
Count Popinot, a bourgeois hero of July, at that time a member of the
Government. Count Popinot had the license of a theatre in his gift,
and Count Popinot had also an old acquaintance of the kind that the
successful man blushes to meet. As he rolls through the streets of Paris
in his carriage, it is not pleasant to see his boyhood's chum down at
heel, with a coat of many improbable colors and trousers innocent of
straps, and a head full of soaring speculations on too grand a scale to
tempt shy, easily scared capital. Moreover, this friend of his youth,
Gaudissart by name, had done not a little in the past towards founding
the fortunes of the great house of Popinot. Popinot, now a Count and a
peer of France, after twice holding a portfolio had no wish to shake off
"the Illustrious Gaudissart." Quite otherwise. The pomps and vanities
of the Court of the Citizen-King had not spoiled the sometime druggist's
kind heart; he wished to put his ex-commercial traveler in the way of
renewing his wardrobe and replenishing his purse. So when Gaudissart,
always an enthusiastic admirer of the fair sex, applied for the license
of a bankrupt theatre, Popinot granted it on condition that Pons (a
parasite of the Hotel Popinot) should be engaged as conductor of the
orchestra; and at the same time, the Count was careful to send certain
elderly amateurs of beauty to the theatre, so that the new manager might
be strongly supported financially by wealthy admirers of feminine charms
revealed by the costume of the ballet.

Gaudissart and Company, who, be it said, made their fortune, hit
upon the grand idea of operas for the people, and carried it out in a
boulevard theatre in 1834. A tolerable conductor, who could adapt or
even compose a little music upon occasion, was a necessity for ballets
and pantomimes; but the last management had so long been bankrupt, that
they could not afford to keep a transposer and copyist. Pons therefore
introduced Schmucke to the company as copier of music, a humble calling
which requires no small musical knowledge; and Schmucke, acting on
Pons' advice, came to an understanding with the _chef-de-service_ at the
Opera-Comique, so saving himself the clerical drudgery.

The partnership between Pons and Schmucke produced one brilliant result.
Schmucke being a German, harmony was his strong point; he looked over
the instrumentation of Pons' compositions, and Pons provided the airs.
Here and there an amateur among the audience admired the new pieces of
music which served as accompaniment to two or three great successes, but
they attributed the improvement vaguely to "progress." No one cared to
know the composer's name; like occupants of the _baignoires_, lost
to view of the house, to gain a view of the stage, Pons and Schmucke
eclipsed themselves by their success. In Paris (especially since the
Revolution of July) no one can hope to succeed unless he will push his
way _quibuscumque viis_ and with all his might through a formidable host
of competitors; but for this feat a man needs thews and sinews, and our
two friends, be it remembered, had that affection of the heart which
cripples all ambitious effort.

Pons, as a rule, only went to his theatre towards eight o'clock, when
the piece in favor came on, and overtures and accompaniments needed the
strict ruling of the baton; most minor theatres are lax in such matters,
and Pons felt the more at ease because he himself had been by no means
grasping in all his dealings with the management; and Schmucke, if
need be, could take his place. Time went by, and Schmucke became an
institution in the orchestra; the Illustrious Gaudissart said nothing,
but he was well aware of the value of Pons' collaborator. He was obliged
to include a pianoforte in the orchestra (following the example of the
leading theatres); the instrument was placed beside the conductor's
chair, and Schmucke played without increase of salary--a volunteer
supernumerary. As Schmucke's character, his utter lack of ambition
or pretence became known, the orchestra recognized him as one of
themselves; and as time went on, he was intrusted with the often needed
miscellaneous musical instruments which form no part of the regular
band of a boulevard theatre. For a very small addition to his stipend,
Schmucke played the viola d'amore, hautboy, violoncello, and harp, as
well as the piano, the castanets for the _cachucha_, the bells, saxhorn,
and the like. If the Germans cannot draw harmony from the mighty
instruments of Liberty, yet to play all instruments of music comes to
them by nature.

The two old artists were exceedingly popular at the theatre, and took
its ways philosophically. They had put, as it were, scales over their
eyes, lest they should see the offences that needs must come when a
_corps de ballet_ is blended with actors and actresses, one of the most
trying combinations ever created by the laws of supply and demand for
the torment of managers, authors, and composers alike.

Every one esteemed Pons with his kindness and his modesty, his great
self-respect and respect for others; for a pure and limpid life wins
something like admiration from the worst nature in every social sphere,
and in Paris a fair virtue meets with something of the success of a
large diamond, so great a rarity it is. No actor, no dancer however
brazen, would have indulged in the mildest practical joke at the expense
of either Pons or Schmucke.

Pons very occasionally put in an appearance in the _foyer_; but all that
Schmucke knew of the theatre was the underground passage from the street
door to the orchestra. Sometimes, however, during an interval, the
good German would venture to make a survey of the house and ask a few
questions of the first flute, a young fellow from Strasbourg, who
came of a German family at Kehl. Gradually under the flute's tuition
Schmucke's childlike imagination acquired a certain amount of knowledge
of the world; he could believe in the existence of that fabulous
creature the _lorette_, the possibility of "marriages at the Thirteenth
Arrondissement," the vagaries of the leading lady, and the contraband
traffic carried on by box-openers. In his eyes the more harmless forms
of vice were the lowest depths of Babylonish iniquity; he did not
believe the stories, he smiled at them for grotesque inventions. The
ingenious reader can see that Pons and Schmucke were exploited, to use
a word much in fashion; but what they lost in money they gained in
consideration and kindly treatment.

It was after the success of the ballet with which a run of success began
for the Gaudissart Company that the management presented Pons with a
piece of plate--a group of figures attributed to Benvenuto Cellini. The
alarming costliness of the gift caused talk in the green-room. It was
a matter of twelve hundred francs! Pons, poor honest soul, was for
returning the present, and Gaudissart had a world of trouble to persuade
him to keep it.

"Ah!" said the manager afterwards, when he told his partner of the
interview, "if we could only find actors up to that sample."

In their joint life, outwardly so quiet, there was the one disturbing
element--the weakness to which Pons sacrificed, the insatiable craving
to dine out. Whenever Schmucke happened to be at home while Pons was
dressing for the evening, the good German would bewail this deplorable
habit.

"Gif only he vas ony fatter vor it!" he many a time cried.

And Schmucke would dream of curing his friend of his degrading vice,
for a true friend's instinct in all that belongs to the inner life is
unerring as a dog's sense of smell; a friend knows by intuition the
trouble in his friend's soul, and guesses at the cause and ponders it in
his heart.

Pons, who always wore a diamond ring on the little finger of his right
hand, an ornament permitted in the time of the Empire, but ridiculous
to-day--Pons, who belonged to the "troubadour time," the sentimental
periods of the first Empire, was too much a child of his age, too much
of a Frenchman to wear the expression of divine serenity which softened
Schmucke's hideous ugliness. From Pons' melancholy looks Schmucke knew
that the profession of parasite was growing daily more difficult and
painful. And, in fact, in that month of October 1844, the number of
houses at which Pons dined was naturally much restricted; reduced to
move round and round the family circle, he had used the word family in
far too wide a sense, as will shortly be seen.

M. Camusot, the rich silk mercer of the Rue des Bourdonnais, had married
Pons' first cousin, Mlle. Pons, only child and heiress of one of the
well-known firm of Pons Brothers, court embroiderers. Pons' own father
and mother retired from a firm founded before the Revolution of 1789,
leaving their capital in the business until Mlle. Pons' father sold
it in 1815 to M. Rivet. M. Camusot had since lost his wife and married
again, and retired from business some ten years, and now in 1844 he was
a member of the Board of Trade, a deputy, and what not. But the Camusot
clan were friendly; and Pons, good man, still considered that he was
some kind of cousin to the children of the second marriage, who were not
relations, or even connected with him in any way.

The second Mme. Camusot being a Mlle. Cardot, Pons introduced himself as
a relative into the tolerably numerous Cardot family, a second bourgeois
tribe which, taken with its connections, formed quite as strong a clan
as the Camusots; for Cardot the notary (brother of the second Mme.
Camusot) had married a Mlle. Chiffreville; and the well-known family of
Chiffreville, the leading firm of manufacturing chemists, was closely
connected with the whole drug trade, of which M. Anselme Popinot was for
many years the undisputed head, until the Revolution of July plunged him
into the very centre of the dynastic movement, as everybody knows.
So Pons, in the wake of the Camusots and Cardots, reached the
Chiffrevilles, and thence the Popinots, always in the character of a
cousin's cousin.

The above concise statement of Pons' relations with his entertainers
explains how it came to pass that an old musician was received in 1844
as one of the family in the houses of four distinguished persons--to
wit, M. le Comte Popinot, peer of France, and twice in office; M.
Cardot, retired notary, mayor and deputy of an arrondissement in Paris;
M. Camusot senior, a member of the Board of Trade and the Municipal
Chamber and a peerage; and lastly, M. Camusot de Marville, Camusot's son
by his first marriage, and Pons' one genuine relation, albeit even he
was a first cousin once removed.

This Camusot, President of a Chamber of the Court of Appeal in Paris,
had taken the name of his estate at Marville to distinguish himself from
his father and a younger half brother.

Cardot the retired notary had married his daughter to his successor,
whose name was Berthier; and Pons, transferred as part of the
connection, acquired a right to dine with the Berthiers "in the presence
of a notary," as he put it.

This was the bourgeois empyrean which Pons called his "family," that
upper world in which he so painfully reserved his right to a knife and
fork.

Of all these houses, some ten in all, the one in which Pons ought to
have met with the kindest reception should by rights have been his own
cousin's; and, indeed, he paid most attention to President Camusot's
family. But, alas! Mme. Camusot de Marville, daughter of the Sieur
Thirion, usher of the cabinet to Louis XVIII. and Charles X., had never
taken very kindly to her husband's first cousin, once removed. Pons had
tried to soften this formidable relative; he wasted his time; for in
spite of the pianoforte lessons which he gave gratuitously to Mlle.
Camusot, a young woman with hair somewhat inclined to red, it was
impossible to make a musician of her.

And now, at this very moment, as he walked with that precious object in
his hand, Pons was bound for the President's house, where he always felt
as if he were at the Tuileries itself, so heavily did the solemn green
curtains, the carmelite-brown hangings, thick piled carpets, heavy
furniture, and general atmosphere of magisterial severity oppress his
soul. Strange as it may seem, he felt more at home in the Hotel Popinot,
Rue Basse-du-Rempart, probably because it was full of works of art; for
the master of the house, since he entered public life, had acquired a
mania for collecting beautiful things, by way of contrast no doubt, for
a politician is obliged to pay for secret services of the ugliest kind.

President de Marville lived in the Rue de Hanovre, in a house which his
wife had bought ten years previously, on the death of her parents, for
the Sieur and Dame Thirion left their daughter about a hundred and fifty
thousand francs, the savings of a lifetime. With its north aspect,
the house looks gloomy enough seen from the street, but the back looks
towards the south over the courtyard, with a rather pretty garden beyond
it. As the President occupied the whole of the first floor, once the
abode of a great financier of the time of Louis XIV., and the second
was let to a wealthy old lady, the house wore a look of dignified repose
befitting a magistrate's residence. President Camusot had invested all
that he inherited from his mother, together with the savings of twenty
years, in the purchase of the splendid Marville estate; a chateau (as
fine a relic of the past as you will find to-day in Normandy) standing
in a hundred acres of park land, and a fine dependent farm, nominally
bringing in twelve thousand francs per annum, though, as it cost the
President at least a thousand crowns to keep up a state almost princely
in our days, his yearly revenue, "all told," as the saying is, was a
bare nine thousand francs. With this and his salary, the President's
income amounted to about twenty thousand francs; but though to all
appearance a wealthy man, especially as one-half of his father's
property would one day revert to him as the only child of the first
marriage, he was obliged to live in Paris as befitted his official
position, and M. and Mme. de Marville spent almost the whole of their
incomes. Indeed, before the year 1834 they felt pinched.

This family schedule sufficiently explains why Mlle. de Marville, aged
three-and-twenty, was still unwed, in spite of a hundred thousand francs
of dowry and tempting prospects, frequently, skilfully, but so far
vainly, held out. For the past five years Pons had listened to Mme. la
Presidente's lamentations as she beheld one young lawyer after another
led to the altar, while all the newly appointed judges at the Tribunal
were fathers of families already; and she, all this time, had displayed
Mlle. de Marville's brilliant expectations before the undazzled eyes of
young Vicomte Popinot, eldest son of the great man of the drug trade,
he of whom it was said by the envious tongues of the neighborhood of the
Rue des Lombards, that the Revolution of July had been brought about at
least as much for his particular benefit as for the sake of the Orleans
branch.

Arrived at the corner of the Rue de Choiseul and the Rue de Hanovre,
Pons suffered from the inexplicable emotions which torment clear
consciences; for a panic terror such as the worst of scoundrels might
feel at sight of a policeman, an agony caused solely by a doubt as
to Mme. de Marville's probable reception of him. That grain of sand,
grating continually on the fibres of his heart, so far from losing its
angles, grew more and more jagged, and the family in the Rue de Hanovre
always sharpened the edges. Indeed, their unceremonious treatment and
Pons' depreciation in value among them had affected the servants; and
while they did not exactly fail in respect, they looked on the poor
relation as a kind of beggar.

Pons' arch-enemy in the house was the ladies'-maid, a thin and wizened
spinster, Madeleine Vivet by name. This Madeleine, in spite of, nay,
perhaps on the strength of, a pimpled complexion and a viper-like length
of spine, had made up her mind that some day she would be Mme. Pons.
But in vain she dangled twenty thousand francs of savings before the
old bachelor's eyes; Pons had declined happiness accompanied by so many
pimples. From that time forth the Dido of the ante-chamber, who fain had
called her master and mistress "cousin," wreaked her spite in petty ways
upon the poor musician. She heard him on the stairs, and cried audibly,
"Oh! here comes the sponger!" She stinted him of wine when she waited at
dinner in the footman's absence; she filled the water-glass to the brim,
to give him the difficult task of lifting it without spilling a drop;
or she would pass the old man over altogether, till the mistress of the
house would remind her (and in what a tone!--it brought the color to the
poor cousin's face); or she would spill the gravy over his clothes. In
short, she waged petty war after the manner of a petty nature, knowing
that she could annoy an unfortunate superior with impunity.

Madeleine Vivet was Mme. de Marville's maid and housekeeper. She had
lived with M. and Mme. Camusot de Marville since their marriage; she had
shared the early struggles in the provinces when M. Camusot was a judge
at Alencon; she had helped them to exist when M. Camusot, President
of the Tribunal of Mantes, came to Paris, in 1828, to be an examining
magistrate. She was, therefore, too much one of the family not to wish,
for reasons of her own, to revenge herself upon them. Beneath her desire
to pay a trick upon her haughty and ambitious mistress, and to call her
master her cousin, there surely lurked a long-stifled hatred, built up
like an avalanche, upon the pebble of some past grievance.

"Here comes your M. Pons, madame, still wearing that spencer of his!"
Madeleine came to tell the Presidente. "He really might tell me how he
manages to make it look the same for five-and-twenty years together."

Mme. Camusot de Marville, hearing a man's footstep in the little
drawing-room between the large drawing-room and her bedroom, looked at
her daughter and shrugged her shoulders.

"You always make these announcements so cleverly that you leave me no
time to think, Madeleine."

"Jean is out, madame, I was all alone; M. Pons rang the bell, I opened
the door; and as he is almost one of the family, I could not prevent him
from coming after me. There he is, taking off his spencer."

"Poor little puss!" said the Presidente, addressing her daughter, "we
are caught. We shall have to dine at home now.--Let us see," she added,
seeing that the "dear puss" wore a piteous face; "must we get rid of him
for good?"

"Oh! poor man!" cried Mlle. Camusot, "deprive him of one of his
dinners?"

Somebody coughed significantly in the next room by way of warning that
he could hear.

"Very well, let him come in!" said Mme. Camusot, looking at Madeleine
with another shrug.

"You are here so early, cousin, that you have come in upon us just as
mother was about to dress," said Cecile Camusot in a coaxing tone. But
Cousin Pons had caught sight of the Presidente's shrug, and felt so
cruelly hurt that he could not find a compliment, and contented himself
with the profound remark, "You are always charming, my little cousin."

Then, turning to the mother, he continued with a bow:

"You will not take it amiss, I think, if I have come a little earlier
than usual, dear cousin; I have brought something for you; you once did
me the pleasure of asking me for it."

Poor Pons! Every time he addressed the President, the President's wife,
or Cecile as "cousin," he gave them excruciating annoyance. As he spoke,
he draw a long, narrow cherry-wood box, marvelously carved, from his
coat-pocket.

"Oh, did I?--I had forgotten," the lady answered drily.

It was a heartless speech, was it not? Did not those few words deny all
merit to the pains taken for her by the cousin whose one offence lay in
the fact that he was a poor relation?

"But it is very kind of you, cousin," she added. "How much to I owe you
for this little trifle?"

Pons quivered inwardly at the question. He had meant the trinket as a
return for his dinners.

"I thought that you would permit me to offer it you----" he faltered
out.

"What?" said Mme. Camusot. "Oh! but there need be no ceremony between
us; we know each other well enough to wash our linen among ourselves. I
know very well that you are not rich enough to give more than you get.
And to go no further, it is quite enough that you should have spent a
good deal of time in running among the dealers--"

"If you were asked to pay the full price of the fan, my dear cousin, you
would not care to have it," answered poor Pons, hurt and insulted; "it
is one of Watteau's masterpieces, painted on both sides; but you may be
quite easy, cousin, I did not give one-hundredth part of its value as a
work of art."

To tell a rich man that he is poor! you might as well tell the
Archbishop of Granada that his homilies show signs of senility. Mme. la
Presidente, proud of her husband's position, of the estate of Marville,
and her invitations to court balls, was keenly susceptible on this
point; and what was worse, the remark came from a poverty-stricken
musician to whom she had been charitable.

"Then the people of whom you buy things of this kind are very stupid,
are they?" she asked quickly.

"Stupid dealers are unknown in Paris," Pons answered almost drily.

"Then you must be very clever," put in Cecile by way of calming the
dispute.

"Clever enough to know a Lancret, a Watteau, a Pater, or Greuze when
I see it, little cousin; but anxious, most of all, to please your dear
mamma."

Mme. de Marville, ignorant and vain, was unwilling to appear to receive
the slightest trifle from the parasite; and here her ignorance served
her admirably, she did not even know the name of Watteau. And, on
the other hand, if anything can measure the extent of the collector's
passion, which, in truth, is one of the most deeply seated of all
passions, rivaling the very vanity of the author--if anything can give
an idea of the lengths to which a collector will go, it is the audacity
which Pons displayed on this occasion, as he held his own against his
lady cousin for the first time in twenty years. He was amazed at his own
boldness. He made Cecile see the beauties of the delicate carving on the
sticks of this wonder, and as he talked to her his face grew serene
and gentle again. But without some sketch of the Presidente, it is
impossible fully to understand the perturbation of heart from which Pons
suffered.

Mme. de Marville had been short and fair, plump and fresh; at forty-six
she was as short as ever, but she looked dried up. An arched forehead
and thin lips, that had been softly colored once, lent a soured look to
a face naturally disdainful, and now grown hard and unpleasant with a
long course of absolute domestic rule. Time had deepened her fair hair
to a harsh chestnut hue; the pride of office, intensified by suppressed
envy, looked out of eyes that had lost none of their brightness nor
their satirical expression. As a matter of fact, Mme. Camusot de
Marville felt almost poor in the society of self-made wealthy bourgeois
with whom Pons dined. She could not forgive the rich retail druggist,
ex-president of the Commercial Court, for his successive elevations as
deputy, member of the Government, count and peer of France. She could
not forgive her father-in-law for putting himself forward instead of his
eldest son as deputy of his arrondissement after Popinot's promotion to
the peerage. After eighteen years of services in Paris, she was still
waiting for the post of Councillor of the Court of Cassation for her
husband. It was Camusot's own incompetence, well known at the Law
Courts, which excluded him from the Council. The Home Secretary of 1844
even regretted Camusot's nomination to the presidency of the Court
of Indictments in 1834, though, thanks to his past experience as an
examining magistrate, he made himself useful in drafting decrees.

These disappointments had told upon Mme. de Marville, who, moreover, had
formed a tolerably correct estimate of her husband. A temper naturally
shrewish was soured till she grew positively terrible. She was not old,
but she had aged; she deliberately set herself to extort by fear all
that the world was inclined to refuse her, and was harsh and rasping
as a file. Caustic to excess she had few friends among women; she
surrounded herself with prim, elderly matrons of her own stamp, who lent
each other mutual support, and people stood in awe of her. As for poor
Pons, his relations with this fiend in petticoats were very much those
of a schoolboy with the master whose one idea of communication is the
ferule.

The Presidente had no idea of the value of the gift. She was puzzled by
her cousin's sudden access of audacity.

"Then, where did you find this?" inquired Cecile, as she looked closely
at the trinket.

"In the Rue de Lappe. A dealer in second-hand furniture there had just
brought it back with him from a chateau that is being pulled down near
Dreux, Aulnay. Mme. de Pompadour used to spend part of her time there
before she built Menars. Some of the most splendid wood-carving ever
known has been saved from destruction; Lienard (our most famous living
wood-carver) had kept a couple of oval frames for models, as the _ne
plus ultra_ of the art, so fine it is.--There were treasures in that
place. My man found the fan in the drawer of an inlaid what-not, which
I should certainly have bought if I were collecting things of the
kind, but it is quite out of the question--a single piece of Riesener's
furniture is worth three or four thousand francs! People here in
Paris are just beginning to find out that the famous French and
German marquetry workers of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries composed perfect pictures in wood. It is a collector's
business to be ahead of the fashion. Why, in five years' time, the
Frankenthal ware, which I have been collecting these twenty years, will
fetch twice the price of Sevres _pata tendre_."

"What is Frankenthal ware?" asked Cecile.

"That is the name of the porcelain made by the Elector of the
Palatinate; it dates further back than our manufactory at Sevres; just
as the famous gardens at Heidelberg, laid waste by Turenne, had the bad
luck to exist before the garden of Versailles. Sevres copied Frankenthal
to a large extent.--In justice to the Germans, it must be said that they
have done admirable work in Saxony and in the Palatinate."

Mother and daughter looked at one another as if Pons were speaking
Chinese. No one can imagine how ignorant and exclusive Parisians are;
they only learn what they are taught, and that only when they choose.

"And how do you know the Frankenthal ware when you see it?"

"Eh! by the mark!" cried Pons with enthusiasm. "There is a mark on every
one of those exquisite masterpieces. Frankenthal ware is marked with a
C and T (for Charles Theodore) interlaced and crowned. On old Dresden
china there are two crossed swords and the number of the order in gilt
figures. Vincennes bears a hunting-horn; Vienna, a V closed and barred.
You can tell Berlin by the two bars, Mayence by the wheel, and Sevres by
the two crossed L's. The queen's porcelain is marked A for Antoinette,
with a royal crown above it. In the eighteenth century, all the
crowned heads of Europe had rival porcelain factories, and workmen were
kidnaped. Watteau designed services for the Dresden factory; they fetch
frantic prices at the present day. One has to know what one is about
with them too, for they are turning out imitations now at Dresden.
Wonderful things they used to make; they will never make the like
again--"

"Oh! pshaw!"

"No, cousin. Some inlaid work and some kinds of porcelain will never be
made again, just as there will never be another Raphael, nor Titian,
nor Rembrandt, nor Van Eyck, nor Cranach.... Well, now! there are the
Chinese; they are very ingenious, very clever; they make modern copies
of their 'grand mandarin' porcelain, as it is called. But a pair of
vases of genuine 'grand mandarin' vases of the largest size, are worth,
six, eight, and ten thousand francs, while you can buy the modern
replicas for a couple of hundred!"

"You are joking."

"You are astonished at the prices, but that is nothing, cousin. A dinner
service of Sevres _pate tendre_ (and _pate tendre_ is not porcelain)--a
complete dinner service of Sevres _pate tendre_ for twelve persons
is not merely worth a hundred thousand francs, but that is the price
charged on the invoice. Such a dinner-service cost fifteen thousand
francs at Sevres in 1750; I have seen the original invoices."

"But let us go back to this fan," said Cecile. Evidently in her opinion
the trinket was an old-fashioned thing.

"You can understand that as soon as your dear mamma did me the honor of
asking for a fan, I went round of all the curiosity shops in Paris, but
I found nothing fine enough. I wanted nothing less than a masterpiece
for the dear Presidente, and thought of giving her one that once
belonged to Marie Antoinette, the most beautiful of all celebrated
fans. But yesterday I was dazzled by this divine _chef-d'oeuvre_, which
certainly must have been ordered by Louis XV. himself. Do you ask how I
came to look for fans in the Rue de Lappe, among an Auvergnat's stock of
brass and iron and ormolu furniture? Well, I myself believe that there
is an intelligence in works of art; they know art-lovers, they call to
them--'Cht-tt!'"

Mme. de Marville shrugged her shoulders and looked at her daughter; Pons
did not notice the rapid pantomime.

"I know all those sharpers," continued Pons, "so I asked him, 'Anything
fresh to-day, Daddy Monistrol?'--(for he always lets me look over his
lots before the big buyers come)--and at that he began to tell me how
Lienard, that did such beautiful work for the Government in the Chapelle
de Dreux, had been at the Aulnay sale and rescued the carved panels out
of the clutches of the Paris dealers, while their heads were running
on china and inlaid furniture.--'I did not do much myself,' he went on,
'but I may make my traveling expenses out of _this_,' and he showed me
a what-not; a marvel! Boucher's designs executed in marquetry, and with
such art!--One could have gone down on one's knees before it.--'Look,
sir,' he said, 'I have just found this fan in a little drawer; it was
locked, I had to force it open. You might tell me where I can sell
it'--and with that he brings out this little carved cherry-wood
box.--'See,' says he, 'it is the kind of Pompadour that looks like
decorated Gothic.'--'Yes,' I told him, 'the box is pretty; the box might
suit me; but as for the fan, Monistrol, I have no Mme. Pons to give the
old trinket to, and they make very pretty new ones nowadays; you can buy
miracles of painting on vellum cheaply enough. There are two thousand
painters in Paris, you know.'--And I opened out the fan carelessly,
keeping down my admiration, looked indifferently at those two exquisite
little pictures, touched off with an ease fit to send you into raptures.
I held Mme. de Pompadour's fan in my hand! Watteau had done his utmost
for this.--'What do you want for the what-not?'--'Oh! a thousand
francs; I have had a bid already.'--I offered him a price for the fan
corresponding with the probable expenses of the journey. We looked each
other in the eyes, and I saw that I had my man. I put the fan back into
the box lest my Auvergnat should begin to look at it, and went into
ecstasies over the box; indeed, it is a jewel.--'If I take it,' said I,
'it is for the sake of the box; the box tempts me. As for the what-not,
you will get more than a thousand francs for that. Just see how the
brass is wrought; it is a model. There is business in it.... It has
never been copied; it is a unique specimen, made solely for Mme. de
Pompadour'--and so on, till my man, all on fire for his what-not,
forgets the fan, and lets me have it for a mere trifle, because I have
pointed out the beauties of his piece of Riesener's furniture. So here
it is; but it needs a great deal of experience to make such a bargain
as that. It is a duel, eye to eye; and who has such eyes as a Jew or an
Auvergnat?"

The old artist's wonderful pantomime, his vivid, eager way of telling
the story of the triumph of his shrewdness over the dealer's ignorance,
would have made a subject for a Dutch painter; but it was all thrown
away upon the audience. Mother and daughter exchanged cold, contemptuous
glances.--"What an oddity!" they seemed to say.

"So it amuses you?" remarked Mme. de Marville. The question sent a cold
chill through Pons; he felt a strong desire to slap the Presidente.

"Why, my dear cousin, that is the way to hunt down a work of art. You
are face to face with antagonists that dispute the game with you. It
is craft against craft! A work of art in the hands of a Norman, an
Auvergnat, or a Jew, is like a princess guarded by magicians in a fairy
tale."

"And how can you tell that this is by Wat--what do you call him?"

"Watteau, cousin. One of the greatest eighteenth century painters
in France. Look! do you not see that it is his work?" (pointing to a
pastoral scene, court-shepherd swains and shepherdesses dancing in
a ring). "The movement! the life in it! the coloring! There it
is--see!--painted with a stroke of the brush, as a writing-master makes
a flourish with a pen. Not a trace of effort here! And, turn it over,
look!--a ball in a drawing-room. Summer and Winter! And what ornaments!
and how well preserved it is! The hinge-pin is gold, you see, and on
cleaning it, I found a tiny ruby at either side."

"If it is so, cousin, I could not think of accepting such a valuable
present from you. It would be better to lay up the money for yourself,"
said Mme. de Marville; but all the same, she asked no better than to
keep the splendid fan.

"It is time that it should pass from the service of Vice into the hands
of Virtue," said the good soul, recovering his assurance. "It has taken
a century to work the miracle. No princess at Court, you may be sure,
will have anything to compare with it; for, unfortunately, men will do
more for a Pompadour than for a virtuous queen, such is human nature."

"Very well," Mme. de Marville said, laughing, "I will accept your
present.--Cecile, my angel, go to Madeleine and see that dinner is
worthy of your cousin."

Mme. de Marville wished to make matters even. Her request, made aloud,
in defiance of all rules of good taste, sounded so much like an attempt
to repay at once the balance due to the poor cousin, that Pons flushed
red, like a girl found out in fault. The grain of sand was a little too
large; for some moments he could only let it work in his heart. Cecile,
a red-haired young woman, with a touch of pedantic affectation, combined
her father's ponderous manner with a trace of her mother's hardness. She
went and left poor Pons face to face with the terrible Presidente.

"How nice she is, my little Lili!" said the mother. She still called her
Cecile by this baby name.

"Charming!" said Pons, twirling his thumbs.

"I _cannot_ understand these times in which we live," broke out the
Presidente. "What is the good of having a President of the Court of
Appeal in Paris and a Commander of the Legion of Honor for your father,
and for a grandfather the richest wholesale silk merchant in Paris, a
deputy, and a millionaire that will be a peer of France some of these
days?"

The President's zeal for the new Government had, in fact, recently
been rewarded with a commander's ribbon--thanks to his friendship with
Popinot, said the envious. Popinot himself, modest though he was, had,
as has been seen, accepted the title of count, "for his son's sake," he
told his numerous friends.

"Men look for nothing but money nowadays," said Cousin Pons. "No one
thinks anything of you unless you are rich, and--"

"What would it have been if Heaven had spared my poor little Charles!--"
cried the lady.

"Oh, with two children you would be poor," returned the cousin. "It
practically means the division of the property. But you need not trouble
yourself, cousin; Cecile is sure to marry sooner or later. She is the
most accomplished girl I know."

To such depths had Pons fallen by adapting himself to the company of
his entertainers! In their houses he echoed their ideas, and said the
obvious thing, after the manner of a chorus in a Greek play. He did not
dare to give free play to the artist's originality, which had overflowed
in bright repartee when he was young; he had effaced himself, till he
had almost lost his individuality; and if the real Pons appeared, as he
had done a moment ago, he was immediately repressed.

"But I myself was married with only twenty thousand francs for my
portion--"

"In 1819, cousin. And it was _you_, a woman with a head on your
shoulders, and the royal protection of Louis XVIII."

"Be still, my child is a perfect angel. She is clever, she has a warm
heart, she will have a hundred thousand francs on her wedding day, to
say nothing of the most brilliant expectations; and yet she stays on our
hands," and so on and so on. For twenty minutes, Mme. de Marville talked
on about herself and her Cecile, pitying herself after the manner of
mothers in bondage to marriageable daughters.

Pons had dined at the house every week for twenty years, and Camusot de
Marville was the only cousin he had in the world; but he had yet to hear
the first word spoken as to his own affairs--nobody cared to know how he
lived. Here and elsewhere the poor cousin was a kind of sink down which
his relatives poured domestic confidences. His discretion was well
known; indeed, was he not bound over to silence when a single imprudent
word would have shut the door of ten houses upon him? And he must
combine his role of listener with a second part; he must applaud
continually, smile on every one, accuse nobody, defend nobody; from his
point of view, every one must be in the right. And so, in the house
of his kinsman, Pons no longer counted as a man; he was a digestive
apparatus.

In the course of a long tirade, Mme. Camusot de Marville avowed with due
circumspection that she was prepared to take almost any son-in-law with
her eyes shut. She was even disposed to think that at eight-and-forty or
so a man with twenty thousand francs a year was a good match.

"Cecile is in her twenty-third year. If it should fall out so
unfortunately that she is not married before she is five or
six-and-twenty, it will be extremely hard to marry her at all. When a
girl reaches that age, people want to know why she has been so long on
hand. We are a good deal talked about in our set. We have come to the
end of all the ordinary excuses--'She is so young.--She is so fond of
her father and mother that she doesn't like to leave them.--She is so
happy at home.--She is hard to please, she would like a good name--' We
are beginning to look silly; I feel that distinctly. And besides, Cecile
is tired of waiting, poor child, she suffers--"

"In what way?" Pons was noodle enough to ask.

"Why, because it is humiliating to her to see all her girl friends
married before her," replied the mother, with a duenna's air.

"But, cousin, has anything happened since the last time that I had the
pleasure of dining here? Why do you think of men of eight-and-forty?"
Pons inquired humbly.

"This has happened," returned the Presidente. "We were to have had an
interview with a Court Councillor; his son is thirty years old and
very well-to-do, and M. de Marville would have obtained a post in
the audit-office for him and paid the money. The young man is a
supernumerary there at present. And now they tell us that he has taken
it into his head to rush off to Italy in the train of a duchess from the
Bal Mabille.... It is nothing but a refusal in disguise. The fact is,
the young man's mother is dead; he has an income of thirty thousand
francs, and more to come at his father's death, and they don't care
about the match for him. You have just come in in the middle of all
this, dear cousin, so you must excuse our bad temper."

While Pons was casting about for the complimentary answer which
invariably occurred to him too late when he was afraid of his host,
Madeleine came in, handed a folded note to the Presidente, and waited
for an answer. The note ran as follows:

  "DEAR MAMMA,--If we pretend that this note comes to you from papa
  at the Palais, and that he wants us both to dine with his friend
  because proposals have been renewed--then the cousin will go, and
  we can carry out our plan of going to the Popinots."

"Who brought the master's note?" the Presidente asked quickly.

"A lad from the Salle du Palais," the withered waiting woman
unblushingly answered, and her mistress knew at once that Madeleine had
woven the plot with Cecile, now at the end of her patience.

"Tell him that we will both be there at half-past five."

Madeleine had no sooner left the room than the Presidente turned to
Cousin Pons with that insincere friendliness which is about as grateful
to a sensitive soul as a mixture of milk and vinegar to the palate of an
epicure.

"Dinner is ordered, dear cousin; you must dine without us; my husband
has just sent word from the court that the question of the marriage has
been reopened, and we are to dine with the Councillor. We need not stand
on ceremony at all. Do just as if you were at home. I have no secrets
from you; I am perfectly open with you, as you see. I am sure you would
not wish to break off the little darling's marriage."

"_I_, cousin? On the contrary, I should like to find some one for her;
but in my circle--"

"Oh, that is not at all likely," said the Presidente, cutting him short
insolently. "Then you will stay, will you not? Cecile will keep you
company while I dress.

"Oh! I can dine somewhere else, cousin."

Cruelly hurt though he was by her way of casting up his poverty to
him, the prospect of being left alone with the servants was even more
alarming.

"But why should you? Dinner is ready; you may just as well have it; if
you do not, the servants will eat it."

At that atrocious speech Pons started up as if he had received a shock
from a galvanic battery, bowed stiffly to the lady, and went to find his
spencer. Now, it so happened that the door of Cecile's bedroom, beyond
the little drawing-room, stood open, and looking into the mirror, he
caught sight of the girl shaking with laughter as she gesticulated and
made signs to her mother. The old artist understood beyond a doubt that
he had been the victim of some cowardly hoax. Pons went slowly down the
stairs; he could not keep back the tears. He understood that he had been
turned out of the house, but why and wherefore he did not know.

"I am growing too old," he told himself. "The world has a horror of
old age and poverty--two ugly things. After this I will not go anywhere
unless I am asked."

Heroic resolve!

Downstairs the great gate was shut, as it usually is in houses occupied
by the proprietor; the kitchen stood exactly opposite the porter's
lodge, and the door was open. Pons was obliged to listen while Madeleine
told the servants the whole story amid the laughter of the servants. She
had not expected him to leave so soon. The footman loudly applauded a
joke at the expense of a visitor who was always coming to the house and
never gave you more than three francs at the year's end.

"Yes," put in the cook; "but if he cuts up rough and does not come back,
there will be three francs the less for some of us on New Year's day."

"Eh! How is he to know?" retorted the footman.

"Pooh!" said Madeleine, "a little sooner or a little later--what
difference does it make? The people at the other houses where he dines
are so tired of him that they are going to turn him out."

"The gate, if you please!"

Madeleine had scarcely uttered the words when they heard the old
musician's call to the porter. It sounded like a cry of pain. There was
a sudden silence in the kitchen.

"He heard!" the footman said.

"Well, and if he did, so much the worser, or rather so much the better,"
retorted Madeleine. "He is an arrant skinflint."

Poor Pons had lost none of the talk in the kitchen; he heard it all,
even to the last word. He made his way home along the boulevards, in
the same state, physical and mental, as an old woman after a desperate
struggle with burglars. As he went he talked to himself in quick
spasmodic jerks; his honor had been wounded, and the pain of it drove
him on as a gust of wind whirls away a straw. He found himself at last
in the Boulevard du Temple; how he had come thither he could not tell.
It was five o'clock, and, strange to say, he had completely lost his
appetite.

But if the reader is to understand the revolution which Pons' unexpected
return at that hour was to work in the Rue de Normandie, the promised
biography of Mme. Cibot must be given in this place.

Any one passing along the Rue de Normandie might be pardoned for
thinking that he was in some small provincial town. Grass runs to
seed in the street, everybody knows everybody else, and the sight of a
stranger is an event. The houses date back to the reign of Henry IV.,
when there was a scheme afoot for a quarter in which every street was to
be named after a French province, and all should converge in a handsome
square to which La France should stand godmother. The Quartier de
l'Europe was a revival of the same idea; history repeats itself
everywhere in the world, and even in the world of speculation.

The house in which the two musicians used to live is an old mansion with
a courtyard in front and a garden at the back; but the front part of the
house which gives upon the street is comparatively modern, built during
the eighteenth century when the Marais was a fashionable quarter. The
friends lived at the back, on the second floor of the old part of
the house. The whole building belongs to M. Pillerault, an old man of
eighty, who left matters very much in the hands of M. and Mme. Cibot,
his porters for the past twenty-six years.

Now, as a porter cannot live by his lodge alone, the aforesaid Cibot had
other means of gaining a livelihood; and supplemented his five per cent
on the rental and his faggot from every cartload of wood by his own
earnings as a tailor. In time Cibot ceased to work for the master
tailors; he made a connection among the little trades-people of the
quarter, and enjoyed a monopoly of the repairs, renovations, and fine
drawing of all the coats and trousers in three adjacent streets. The
lodge was spacious and wholesome, and boasted a second room; wherefore
the Cibot couple were looked upon as among the luckiest porters in the
arrondissement.

Cibot, small and stunted, with a complexion almost olive-colored by
reason of sitting day in day out in Turk-fashion on a table level with
the barred window, made about twelve or fourteen francs a week. He
worked still, though he was fifty-eight years old, but fifty-eight is
the porter's golden age; he is used to his lodge, he and his room
fit each other like the shell and the oyster, and "he is known in the
neighborhood."

Mme. Cibot, sometime opener of oysters at the _Cadran Bleu_, after all
the adventures which come unsought to the belle of an oyster-bar, left
her post for love of Cibot at the age of twenty-eight. The beauty of
a woman of the people is short-lived, especially if she is planted
espalier fashion at a restaurant door. Her features are hardened
by puffs of hot air from the kitchen; the color of the heeltaps of
customers' bottles, finished in the company of the waiters, gradually
filters into her complexion--no beauty is full blown so soon as the
beauty of an oyster-opener. Luckily for Mme. Cibot, lawful wedlock and
a portress' life were offered to her just in time; while she still
preserved a comeliness of a masculine order slandered by rivals of the
Rue de Normandie, who called her "a great blowsy thing," Mme. Cibot
might have sat as a model to Rubens. Those flesh tints reminded you of
the appetizing sheen on a pat of Isigny butter; but plump as she was, no
woman went about her work with more agility. Mme. Cibot had attained the
time of life when women of her stamp are obliged to shave--which is as
much as to say that she had reached the age of forty-eight. A porter's
wife with a moustache is one of the best possible guarantees of
respectability and security that a landlord can have. If Delacroix
could have seen Mme. Cibot leaning proudly on her broom handle, he would
assuredly have painted her as Bellona.

Strange as it may seem, the circumstances of the Cibots, man and wife
(in the style of an indictment), were one day to affect the lives of the
two friends; wherefore the chronicler, as in duty bound, must give some
particulars as to the Cibots' lodge.

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. "There
wasn't never such a love of a man," she would say to her husband. Do you
ask why? You might as well ask the reason of her indifference in matters
of religion.

Both of them were proud of a life lived in open day, of the esteem in
which they were held for six or seven streets round about, and of the
autocratic rule permitted to them by the proprietor ("perprietor," they
called him); but in private they groaned because they had no money lying
at interest. Cibot complained of pains in his hands and legs, and his
wife would lament that her poor, dear Cibot should be forced to work
at his age; and, indeed, the day is not far distant when a porter after
thirty years of such a life will cry shame upon the injustice of the
Government and clamor for the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. Every
time that the gossip of the quarter brought news of such and such a
servant-maid, left an annuity of three or four hundred francs after
eight or ten years of service, the porters' lodges would resound with
complaints, which may give some idea of the consuming jealousies in the
lowest walks of life in Paris.

"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 of the people, prompted her
to protect, adore, and serve them with such thorough devotion, that she
read them a lecture now and again, and saved them from the impositions
which swell the cost of living in Paris. For twenty-five francs a month,
the two old bachelors inadvertently acquired a mother.

As they became aware of Mme. Cibot's full value, they gave her outspoken
praises, and thanks, and little presents which strengthened the bonds
of the domestic alliance. Mme. Cibot a thousand times preferred
appreciation to money payments; it is a well-known fact that the sense
that one is appreciated makes up for a deficiency in wages. And Cibot
did all that he could for his wife's two gentlemen, and ran errands and
did repairs at half-price for them.

The second year brought a new element into the friendship between the
lodge and the second floor, and Schmucke concluded a bargain which
satisfied his indolence and desire for a life without cares. For thirty
sous per day, or forty-five francs per month, Mme. Cibot undertook
to provide Schmucke with breakfast and dinner; and Pons, finding his
friend's breakfast very much to his mind, concluded a separate treaty
for that meal only at the rate of eighteen francs. This arrangement,
which added nearly ninety francs every month to the takings of the
porter and his wife, made two inviolable beings of the lodgers; they
became angels, cherubs, divinities. It is very doubtful whether the King
of the French, who is supposed to understand economy, is as well served
as the pair of nutcrackers used to be in those days.

For them the milk issued pure from the can; they enjoyed a free perusal
of all the morning papers taken by other lodgers, later risers, who
were told, if need be, that the newspapers had not come yet. Mme. Cibot,
moreover, kept their clothes, their rooms, and the landing as clean as
a Flemish interior. As for Schmucke, he enjoyed unhoped-for happiness;
Mme. Cibot had made life easy for him; he paid her about six francs
a month, and she took charge of his linen, washing, and mending.
Altogether, his expenses amounted to sixty-six francs per month (for
he spent fifteen francs on tobacco), and sixty-six francs multiplied by
twelve produces the sum total of seven hundred and ninety-two francs.
Add two hundred and twenty francs for rent, rates, and taxes, and you
have a thousand and twelve francs. Cibot was Schmucke's tailor; his
clothes cost him on average a hundred and fifty francs, which further
swells the total to the sum of twelve hundred. On twelve hundred francs
per annum this profound philosopher lived. How many people in Europe,
whose one thought it is to come to Paris and live there, will be
agreeably surprised to learn that you may exist in comfort upon an
income of twelve hundred francs in the Rue de Normandie in the Marais,
under the wing of a Mme. Cibot.

Mme. Cibot, to resume the story, was amazed beyond expression to see
Pons, good man, return at five o'clock in the evening. Such a thing had
never happened before; and not only so, but "her gentleman" had given
her no greeting--had not so much as seen her!

"Well, well, Cibot," said she to her spouse, "M. Pons has come in for a
million, or gone out of his mind!"

"That is how it looks to me," said Cibot, dropping the coat-sleeve in
which he was making a "dart," in tailor's language.

The savory odor of a stew pervaded the whole courtyard, as Pons returned
mechanically home. Mme. Cibot was dishing up Schmucke's dinner, which
consisted of scraps of boiled beef from a little cook-shop not above
doing a little trade of this kind. These morsels were fricasseed in
brown butter, with thin slices of onion, until the meat and vegetables
had absorbed the gravy and this true porter's dish was browned to the
right degree. With that fricassee, prepared with loving care for Cibot
and Schmucke, and accompanied by a bottle of beer and a piece of cheese,
the old German music-master was quite content. Not King Solomon in all
his glory, be sure, could dine better than Schmucke. A dish of boiled
beef fricasseed with onions, scraps of _saute_ chicken, or beef and
parsley, or venison, or fish served with a sauce of La Cibot's own
invention (a sauce with which a mother might unsuspectingly eat her
child),--such was Schmucke's ordinary, varying with the quantity and
quality of the remnants of food supplied by boulevard restaurants to
the cook-shop in the Rue Boucherat. Schmucke took everything that "goot
Montame Zipod" gave him, and was content, and so from day to day "goot
Montame Zipod" cut down the cost of his dinner, until it could be served
for twenty sous.

"It won't be long afore I find out what is the matter with him, poor
dear," said Mme. Cibot to her husband, "for here is M. Schmucke's dinner
all ready for him."

As she spoke she covered the deep earthenware dish with a plate; and,
notwithstanding her age, she climbed the stair and reached the door
before Schmucke opened it to Pons.

"Vat is de matter mit you, mein goot friend?" asked the German, scared
by the expression of Pons' face.

"I will tell you all about it; but I have come home to have dinner with
you--"

"Tinner! tinner!" cried Schmucke in ecstasy; "but it is impossible!" the
old German added, as he thought of his friend's gastronomical tastes;
and at that very moment he caught sight of Mme. Cibot listening to the
conversation, as she had a right to do as his lawful housewife. Struck
with one of those happy inspirations which only enlighten a friend's
heart, he marched up to the portress and drew her out to the stairhead.

"Montame Zipod," he said, "der goot Pons is fond of goot dings; shoost
go rount to der _Catran Pleu_ und order a dainty liddle tinner, mit
anjovies und maggaroni. Ein tinner for Lugullus, in vact."

"What is that?" inquired La Cibot.

"Oh! ah!" returned Schmucke, "it is veal _a la pourcheoise_"
(_bourgeoise_, he meant), "a nice fisch, ein pottle off Porteaux, und
nice dings, der fery best dey haf, like groquettes of rice und shmoked
pacon! Bay for it, und say nodings; I vill gif you back de monny
to-morrow morning."

Back went Schmucke, radiant and rubbing his hands; but his expression
slowly changed to a look of bewildered astonishment as he heard Pons'
story of the troubles that had but just now overwhelmed him in a moment.
He tried to comfort Pons by giving him a sketch of the world from his
own point of view. Paris, in his opinion, was a perpetual hurly-burly,
the men and women in it were whirled away by a tempestuous waltz; it
was no use expecting anything of the world, which only looked at the
outsides of things, "und not at der inderior." For the hundredth time he
related how that the only three pupils for whom he had really cared, for
whom he was ready to die, the three who had been fond of him, and even
allowed him a little pension of nine hundred francs, each contributing
three hundred to the amount--his favorite pupils had quite forgotten
to come to see him; and so swift was the current of Parisian life which
swept them away, that if he called at their houses, he had not succeeded
in seeing them once in three years--(it is a fact, however, that
Schmucke had always thought fit to call on these great ladies at ten
o'clock in the morning!)--still, his pension was paid quarterly through
the medium of solicitors.

"Und yet, dey are hearts of gold," he concluded. "Dey are my liddle
Saint Cecilias, sharming vimmen, Montame de Bordentuere, Montame de
Fantenesse, und Montame du Dilet. Gif I see dem at all, it is at die
Jambs Elusees, und dey do not see me... yet dey are ver' fond of me, und
I might go to dine mit dem, und dey vould be ver' bleased to see me; und
I might go to deir country-houses, but I vould much rader be mit mine
friend Bons, because I kann see him venefer I like, und efery tay."

Pons took Schmucke's hand and grasped it between his own. All that was
passing in his inmost soul was communicated in that tight pressure. And
so for awhile the friends sat like two lovers, meeting at last after a
long absence.

"Tine here, efery tay!" broke out Schmucke, inwardly blessing Mme.
de Marville for her hardness of heart. "Look here! Ve shall go a
prick-a-pracking togeders, und der teufel shall nefer show his tail
here."

"Ve shall go prick-a-pracking togeders!" for the full comprehension of
those truly heroic words, it must be confessed that Schmucke's ignorance
of bric-a-brac was something of the densest. It required all the
strength of his friendship to keep him from doing heedless damage in the
sitting-room and study which did duty as a museum for Pons. Schmucke,
wholly absorbed in music, a composer for love of his art, took about as
much interest in his friend's little trifles as a fish might take in a
flower-show at the Luxembourg, supposing that it had received a ticket
of admission. A certain awe which he certainly felt for the marvels was
simply a reflection of the respect which Pons showed his treasures when
he dusted them. To Pons' exclamations of admiration, he was wont to
reply with a "Yes, it is ver' bretty," as a mother answers baby-gestures
with meaningless baby-talk. Seven times since the friends had lived
together, Pons had exchanged a good clock for a better one, till at last
he possessed a timepiece in Boule's first and best manner, for Boule had
two manners, as Raphael had three. In the first he combined ebony and
copper; in the second--contrary to his convictions--he sacrificed to
tortoise-shell inlaid work. In spite of Pons' learned dissertations,
Schmucke never could see the slightest difference between the
magnificent clock in Boule's first manner and its six predecessors; but,
for Pons' sake, Schmucke was even more careful among the "chimcracks"
than Pons himself. So it should not be surprising that Schmucke's
sublime words comforted Pons in his despair; for "Ve shall go
prick-a-pracking togeders," meant, being interpreted, "I will put money
into bric-a-brac, if you will only dine here."

"Dinner is ready," Mme. Cibot announced, with astonishing
self-possession.

It is not difficult to imagine Pons' surprise when he saw and relished
the dinner due to Schmucke's friendship. Sensations of this kind, that
came so rarely in a lifetime, are never the outcome of the constant,
close relationship by which friend daily says to friend, "You are a
second self to me"; for this, too, becomes a matter of use and wont.
It is only by contact with the barbarism of the world without that
the happiness of that intimate life is revealed to us as a sudden glad
surprise. It is the outer world which renews the bond between friend and
friend, lover and lover, all their lives long, wherever two great souls
are knit together by friendship or by love.

Pons brushed away two big tears, Schmucke himself wiped his eyes; and
though nothing was said, the two were closer friends than before. Little
friendly nods and glances exchanged across the table were like balm to
Pons, soothing the pain caused by the sand dropped in his heart by the
President's wife. As for Schmucke, he rubbed his hands till they were
sore; for a new idea had occurred to him, one of those great discoveries
which cause a German no surprise, unless they sprout up suddenly in
a Teuton brain frost-bound by the awe and reverence due to sovereign
princes.

"Mine goot Bons?" began Schmucke.

"I can guess what you mean; you would like us both to dine together
here, every day--"

"Gif only I vas rich enof to lif like dis efery tay--" began the good
German in a melancholy voice. But here Mme. Cibot appeared upon the
scene. Pons had given her an order for the theatre from time to time,
and stood in consequence almost as high in her esteem and affection as
her boarder Schmucke.

"Lord love you," said she, "for three francs and wine extra I can give
you both such a dinner every day that you will be ready to lick the
plates as clean as if they were washed."

"It is a fact," Schmucke remarked, "dat die dinners dat Montame Zipod
cooks for me are better as de messes dey eat at der royal dable!" In his
eagerness, Schmucke, usually so full of respect for the powers that
be, so far forgot himself as to imitate the irreverent newspapers which
scoffed at the "fixed-price" dinners of Royalty.

"Really?" said Pons. "Very well, I will try to-morrow."

And at that promise Schmucke sprang from one end of the table to the
other, sweeping off tablecloth, bottles, and dishes as he went, and
hugged Pons to his heart. So might gas rush to combine with gas.

"Vat happiness!" cried he.

Mme. Cibot was quite touched. "Monsieur is going to dine here every
day!" she cried proudly.

That excellent woman departed downstairs again in ignorance of the event
which had brought about this result, entered her room like Josepha in
_William Tell_, set down the plates and dishes on the table with a bang,
and called aloud to her husband:

"Cibot! run to the _Cafe Turc_ for two small cups of coffee, and tell
the man at the stove that it is for me."

Then she sat down and rested her hands on her massive knees, and gazed
out of the window at the opposite wall.

"I will go to-night and see what Ma'am Fontaine says," she thought.
(Madame Fontaine told fortunes on the cards for all the servants in the
quarter of the Marais.) "Since these two gentlemen came here, we have
put two thousand francs in the savings bank. Two thousand francs in
eight years! What luck! Would it be better to make no profit out of M.
Pons' dinner and keep him here at home? Ma'am Fontaine's hen will tell
me that."

Three years ago Mme. Cibot had begun to cherish a hope that her name
might be mentioned in "her gentlemen's" wills; she had redoubled her
zeal since that covetous thought tardily sprouted up in the midst of
that so honest moustache. Pons hitherto had dined abroad, eluding her
desire to have both of "her gentlemen" entirely under her management;
his "troubadour" collector's life had scared away certain vague ideas
which hovered in La Cibot's brain; but now her shadowy projects assumed
the formidable shape of a definite plan, dating from that memorable
dinner. Fifteen minutes later she reappeared in the dining-room with
two cups of excellent coffee, flanked by a couple of tiny glasses of
_kirschwasser_.

"Long lif Montame Zipod!" cried Schmucke; "she haf guessed right!"

The diner-out bemoaned himself a little, while Schmucke met his
lamentations with coaxing fondness, like a home pigeon welcoming back a
wandering bird. Then the pair set out for the theatre.

Schmucke could not leave his friend in the condition to which he had
been brought by the Camusots--mistresses and servants. He knew Pons so
well; he feared lest some cruel, sad thought should seize on him at his
conductor's desk, and undo all the good done by his welcome home to the
nest.

And Schmucke brought his friend back on his arm through the streets at
midnight. A lover could not be more careful of his lady. He pointed out
the edges of the curbstones, he was on the lookout whenever they stepped
on or off the pavement, ready with a warning if there was a gutter
to cross. Schmucke could have wished that the streets were paved with
cotton-down; he would have had a blue sky overhead, and Pons should hear
the music which all the angels in heaven were making for him. He had won
the lost province in his friend's heart!

For nearly three months Pons and Schmucke dined together every day. Pons
was obliged to retrench at once; for dinner at forty-five francs a month
and wine at thirty-five meant precisely eighty francs less to spend on
bric-a-brac. And very soon, in spite of all that Schmucke could do, in
spite of his little German jokes, Pons fell to regretting the delicate
dishes, the liqueurs, the good coffee, the table talk, the insincere
politeness, the guests, and the gossip, and the houses where he used to
dine. On the wrong side of sixty a man cannot break himself of a habit
of thirty-six years' growth. Wine at a hundred and thirty francs per
hogshead is scarcely a generous liquid in a _gourmet's_ glass; every
time that Pons raised it to his lips he thought, with infinite regret,
of the exquisite wines in his entertainers' cellars.

In short, at the end of three months, the cruel pangs which had gone
near to break Pons' sensitive heart had died away; he forgot everything
but the charms of society; and languished for them like some elderly
slave of a petticoat compelled to leave the mistress who too repeatedly
deceives him. In vain he tried to hide his profound and consuming
melancholy; it was too plain that he was suffering from one of the
mysterious complaints which the mind brings upon the body.

A single symptom will throw light upon this case of nostalgia (as it
were) produced by breaking away from an old habit; in itself it is
trifling, one of the myriad nothings which are as rings in a coat of
chain-mail enveloping the soul in a network of iron. One of the keenest
pleasures of Pons' old life, one of the joys of the dinner-table
parasite at all times, was the "surprise," the thrill produced by the
extra dainty dish added triumphantly to the bill of fare by the mistress
of a bourgeois house, to give a festal air to the dinner. Pons' stomach
hankered after that gastronomical satisfaction. Mme. Cibot, in the pride
of her heart, enumerated every dish beforehand; a salt and savor once
periodically recurrent, had vanished utterly from daily life. Dinner
proceeded without _le plat couvert_, as our grandsires called it. This
lay beyond the bounds of Schmucke's powers of comprehension.

Pons had too much delicacy to grumble; but if the case of unappreciated
genius is hard, it goes harder still with the stomach whose claims are
ignored. Slighted affection, a subject of which too much has been made,
is founded upon an illusory longing; for if the creature fails, love
can turn to the Creator who has treasures to bestow. But the stomach!...
Nothing can be compared to its sufferings; for, in the first place, one
must live.

Pons thought wistfully of certain creams--surely the poetry of
cookery!--of certain white sauces, masterpieces of the art; of truffled
chickens, fit to melt your heart; and above these, and more than all
these, of the famous Rhine carp, only known at Paris, served with what
condiments! There were days when Pons, thinking upon Count Popinot's
cook, would sigh aloud, "Ah, Sophie!" Any passer-by hearing the
exclamation might have thought that the old man referred to a lost
mistress; but his fancy dwelt upon something rarer, on a fat Rhine carp
with a sauce, thin in the sauce-boat, creamy upon the palate, a sauce
that deserved the Montyon prize! The conductor of the orchestra, living
on memories of past dinners, grew visibly leaner; he was pining away, a
victim to gastric nostalgia.

By the beginning of the fourth month (towards the end of January, 1845),
Pons' condition attracted attention at the theatre. The flute, a young
man named Wilhelm, like almost all Germans; and Schwab, to distinguish
him from all other Wilhelms, if not from all other Schwabs, judged it
expedient to open Schmucke's eyes to his friend's state of health. It
was a first performance of a piece in which Schmucke's instruments were
all required.

"The old gentleman is failing," said the flute; "there is something
wrong somewhere; his eyes are heavy, and he doesn't beat time as he used
to do," added Wilhelm Schwab, indicating Pons as he gloomily took his
place.

"Dat is alvays de vay, gif a man is sixty years old," answered Schmucke.

The Highland widow, in _The Chronicles of the Canongate_, sent her son
to his death to have him beside her for twenty-four hours; and Schmucke
could have sacrificed Pons for the sake of seeing his face every day
across the dinner-table.

"Everybody in the theatre is anxious about him," continued the flute;
"and, as the _premiere danseuse_, Mlle. Brisetout, says, 'he makes
hardly any noise now when he blows his nose.'"

And, indeed, a peal like a blast of a horn used to resound through
the old musician's bandana handkerchief whenever he raised it to that
lengthy and cavernous feature. The President's wife had more frequently
found fault with him on that score than on any other.

"I vould gif a goot teal to amuse him," said Schmucke, "he gets so
dull."

"M. Pons always seems so much above the like of us poor devils, that,
upon my word, I didn't dare to ask him to my wedding," said Wilhelm
Schwab. "I am going to be married--"

"How?" demanded Schmucke.

"Oh! quite properly," returned Wilhelm Schwab, taking Schmucke's quaint
inquiry for a gibe, of which that perfect Christian was quite incapable.

"Come, gentlemen, take your places!" called Pons, looking round at his
little army, as the stage manager's bell rang for the overture.

The piece was a dramatized fairy tale, a pantomime called _The Devil's
Betrothed_, which ran for two hundred nights. In the interval, after the
first act, Wilhelm Schwab and Schmucke were left alone in the orchestra,
with a house at a temperature of thirty-two degrees Reaumur.

"Tell me your hishdory," said Schmucke.

"Look there! Do you see that young man in the box yonder?... Do you
recognize him?"

"Nefer a pit--"

"Ah! That is because he is wearing yellow gloves and shines with all
the radiance of riches, but that is my friend Fritz Brunner out of
Frankfort-on-the-Main."

"Dat used to komm to see du blav und sit peside you in der orghestra?"

"The same. You would not believe he could look so different, would you?"

The hero of the promised story was a German of that particular type
in which the sombre irony of Goethe's Mephistopheles is blended with
a homely cheerfulness found in the romances of August Lafontaine
of pacific memory; but the predominating element in the compound of
artlessness and guile, of shopkeeper's shrewdness, and the studied
carelessness of a member of the Jockey Club, was that form of disgust
which set a pistol in the hands of a young Werther, bored to death less
by Charlotte than by German princes. It was a thoroughly German face,
full of cunning, full of simplicity, stupidity, and courage; the
knowledge which brings weariness, the worldly wisdom which the veriest
child's trick leaves at fault, the abuse of beer and tobacco,--all these
were there to be seen in it, and to heighten the contrast of opposed
qualities, there was a wild diabolical gleam in the fine blue eyes with
the jaded expression.

Dressed with all the elegance of a city man, Fritz Brunner sat in full
view of the house displaying a bald crown of the tint beloved by Titian,
and a few stray fiery red hairs on either side of it; a remnant spared
by debauchery and want, that the prodigal might have a right to spend
money with the hairdresser when he should come into his fortune. A face,
once fair and fresh as the traditional portrait of Jesus Christ, had
grown harder since the advent of a red moustache; a tawny beard lent
it an almost sinister look. The bright blue eyes had lost something of
their clearness in the struggle with distress. The countless courses by
which a man sells himself and his honor in Paris had left their traces
upon his eyelids and carved lines about the eyes, into which a mother
once looked with a mother's rapture to find a copy of her own fashioned
by God's hand.

This precocious philosopher, this wizened youth was the work of a
stepmother.

Herewith begins the curious history of a prodigal son of
Frankfort-on-the-Main--the most extraordinary and astounding portent
ever beheld by that well-conducted, if central, city.

Gideon Brunner, father of the aforesaid Fritz, was one of the famous
innkeepers of Frankfort, a tribe who make law-authorized incisions in
travelers' purses with the connivance of the local bankers. An innkeeper
and an honest Calvinist to boot, he had married a converted Jewess and
laid the foundations of his prosperity with the money she brought him.

When the Jewess died, leaving a son Fritz, twelve years of age, under
the joint guardianship of his father and maternal uncle, a furrier at
Leipsic, head of the firm of Virlaz and Company, Brunner senior was
compelled by his brother-in-law (who was by no means as soft as his
peltry) to invest little Fritz's money, a goodly quantity of current
coin of the realm, with the house of Al-Sartchild. Not a penny of it
was he allowed to touch. So, by way of revenge for the Israelite's
pertinacity, Brunner senior married again. It was impossible, he said,
to keep his huge hotel single-handed; it needed a woman's eye and hand.
Gideon Brunner's second wife was an innkeeper's daughter, a very pearl,
as he thought; but he had had no experience of only daughters spoiled by
father and mother.

The second Mme. Brunner behaved as German girls may be expected to
behave when they are frivolous and wayward. She squandered her fortune,
she avenged the first Mme. Brunner by making her husband as miserable
a man as you could find in the compass of the free city of
Frankfort-on-the-Main, where the millionaires, it is said, are about to
pass a law compelling womankind to cherish and obey them alone. She was
partial to all the varieties of vinegar commonly called Rhine wine in
Germany; she was fond of _articles Paris_, of horses and dress; indeed,
the one expensive taste which she had not was a liking for women. She
took a dislike to little Fritz, and would perhaps have driven him mad if
that young offspring of Calvinism and Judaism had not had Frankfort for
his cradle and the firm of Virlaz at Leipsic for his guardian. Uncle
Virlaz, however, deep in his furs, confined his guardianship to the
safe-keeping of Fritz's silver marks, and left the boy to the tender
mercies of this stepmother.

That hyena in woman's form was the more exasperated against the pretty
child, the lovely Jewess' son, because she herself could have no
children in spite of efforts worthy of a locomotive engine. A diabolical
impulse prompted her to plunge her young stepson, at twenty-one years of
age, into dissipations contrary to all German habits. The wicked German
hoped that English horses, Rhine vinegar, and Goethe's Marguerites would
ruin the Jewess' child and shorten his days; for when Fritz came of age,
Uncle Virlaz had handed over a very pretty fortune to his nephew. But
while roulette at Baden and elsewhere, and boon companions (Wilhelm
Schwab among them) devoured the substance accumulated by Uncle Virlaz,
the prodigal son himself remained by the will of Providence to point a
moral to younger brothers in the free city of Frankfort; parents held
him up as a warning and an awful example to their offspring to scare
them into steady attendance in their cast-iron counting houses, lined
with silver marks.

But so far from perishing in the flower of his age, Fritz Brunner had
the pleasure of laying his stepmother in one of those charming little
German cemeteries, in which the Teuton indulges his unbridled passion
for horticulture under the specious pretext of honoring his dead. And as
the second Mme. Brunner expired while the authors of her being were yet
alive, Brunner senior was obliged to bear the loss of the sums of which
his wife had drained his coffers, to say nothing of other ills, which
had told upon a Herculean constitution, till at the age of sixty-seven
the innkeeper had wizened and shrunk as if the famous Borgia's poison
had undermined his system. For ten whole years he had supported his
wife, and now he inherited nothing! The innkeeper was a second ruin of
Heidelberg, repaired continually, it is true, by travelers' hotel bills,
much as the remains of the castle of Heidelberg itself are repaired
to sustain the enthusiasm of the tourists who flock to see so fine and
well-preserved a relic of antiquity.

At Frankfort the disappointment caused as much talk as a failure. People
pointed out Brunner, saying, "See what a man may come to with a bad wife
that leaves him nothing and a son brought up in the French fashion."

In Italy and Germany the French nation is the root of all evil, the
target for all bullets. "But the god pursuing his way----" (For the
rest, see Lefranc de Pompignan's Ode.)

The wrath of the proprietor of the Grand Hotel de Hollande fell
on others besides the travelers, whose bills were swelled with his
resentment. When his son was utterly ruined, Gideon, regarding him as
the indirect cause of all his misfortunes, refused him bread and salt,
fire, lodging, and tobacco--the force of the paternal malediction in
a German and an innkeeper could no farther go. Whereupon the local
authorities, making no allowance for the father's misdeeds, regarded him
as one of the most ill-used persons in Frankfort-on-the-Main, came to
his assistance, fastened a quarrel on Fritz (_une querelle d'Allemand_),
and expelled him from the territory of the free city. Justice in
Frankfort is no whit wiser nor more humane than elsewhere, albeit the
city is the seat of the German Diet. It is not often that a magistrate
traces back the stream of wrongdoing and misfortune to the holder of the
urn from which the first beginnings trickled forth. If Brunner forgot
his son, his son's friends speedily followed the old innkeeper's
example.

Ah! if the journalists, the dandies, and some few fair Parisians among
the audience wondered how that German with the tragical countenance had
cropped up on a first night to occupy a side box all to himself when
fashionable Paris filled the house,--if these could have seen the
history played out upon the stage before the prompter's box, they would
have found it far more interesting than the transformation scenes of
_The Devil's Betrothed_, though indeed it was the two hundred thousandth
representation of a sublime allegory performed aforetime in Mesopotamia
three thousand years before Christ was born.

Fritz betook himself on foot to Strasbourg, and there found what the
prodigal son of the Bible failed to find--to wit, a friend. And herein
is revealed the superiority of Alsace, where so many generous hearts
beat to show Germany the beauty of a combination of Gallic wit and
Teutonic solidity. Wilhelm Schwab, but lately left in possession of a
hundred thousand francs by the death of both parents, opened his arms,
his heart, his house, his purse to Fritz. As for describing Fritz's
feelings, when dusty, down on his luck, and almost like a leper, he
crossed the Rhine and found a real twenty-franc piece held out by the
hand of a real friend,--that moment transcends the powers of the prose
writer; Pindar alone could give it forth to humanity in Greek that
should rekindle the dying warmth of friendship in the world.

Put the names of Fritz and Wilheim beside those of Damon and Pythias,
Castor and Pollux, Orestes and Pylades, Dubreuil and Pmejah, Schmucke
and Pons, and all the names that we imagine for the two friends of
Monomotapa, for La Fontaine (man of genius though he was) has made of
them two disembodied spirits--they lack reality. The two new names may
join the illustrious company, and with so much the more reason, since
that Wilhelm who had helped to drink Fritz's inheritance now proceeded,
with Fritz's assistance, to devour his own substance; smoking, needless
to say, every known variety of tobacco.

The pair, strange to relate, squandered the property in the dullest,
stupidest, most commonplace fashion, in Strasbourg _brasseries_, in
the company of ballet-girls of the Strasbourg theatres, and little
Alsaciennes who had not a rag of a tattered reputation left.

Every morning they would say, "We really must stop this, and make up our
minds and do something or other with the money that is left."

"Pooh!" Fritz would retort, "just one more day, and to-morrow"... ah!
to-morrow.

In the lives of Prodigal Sons, _To-day_ is a prodigious coxcomb, but
_To-morrow_ is a very poltroon, taking fright at the big words of his
predecessor. _To-day_ is the truculent captain of old world comedy,
_To-morrow_ the clown of modern pantomime.

When the two friends had reached their last thousand-franc note, they
took places in the mail-coach, styled Royal, and departed for Paris,
where they installed themselves in the attics of the Hotel du Rhin, in
the Rue du Mail, the property of one Graff, formerly Gideon Brunner's
head-waiter. Fritz found a situation as clerk in the Kellers' bank (on
Graff's recommendation), with a salary of six hundred francs. And a
place as book-keeper was likewise found for Wilhelm, in the business of
Graff the fashionable tailor, brother of Graff of the Hotel du Rhin, who
found the scantily-paid employment for the pair of prodigals, for the
sake of old times, and his apprenticeship at the Hotel de Hollande.
These two incidents--the recognition of a ruined man by a well-to-do
friend, and a German innkeeper interesting himself in two penniless
fellow-countrymen--give, no doubt, an air of improbability to the story,
but truth is so much the more like fiction, since modern writers of
fiction have been at such untold pains to imitate truth.

It was not long before Fritz, a clerk with six hundred francs, and
Wilhelm, a book-keeper with precisely the same salary, discovered the
difficulties of existence in a city so full of temptations. In 1837, the
second year of their abode, Wilhelm, who possessed a pretty talent for
the flute, entered Pons' orchestra, to earn a little occasional butter
to put on his dry bread. As to Fritz, his only way to an increase of
income lay through the display of the capacity for business inherited
by a descendant of the Virlaz family. Yet, in spite of his assiduity, in
spite of abilities which possibly may have stood in his way, his salary
only reached the sum of two thousand francs in 1843. Penury, that divine
stepmother, did for the two men all that their mothers had not been able
to do for them; Poverty taught them thrift and worldly wisdom; Poverty
gave them her grand rough education, the lessons which she drives
with hard knocks into the heads of great men, who seldom know a happy
childhood. Fritz and Wilhelm, being but ordinary men, learned as little
as they possibly could in her school; they dodged the blows, shrank
from her hard breast and bony arms, and never discovered the good fairy
lurking within, ready to yield to the caresses of genius. One thing,
however, they learned thoroughly--they discovered the value of money,
and vowed to clip the wings of riches if ever a second fortune should
come to their door.

This was the history which Wilhelm Schwab related in German, at much
greater length, to his friend the pianist, ending with;

"Well, Papa Schmucke, the rest is soon explained. Old Brunner is dead.
He left four millions! He made an immense amount of money out of Baden
railways, though neither his son nor M. Graff, with whom we lodge, had
any idea that the old man was one of the original shareholders. I am
playing the flute here for the last time this evening; I would have left
some days ago, but this was a first performance, and I did not want to
spoil my part."

"Goot, mine friend," said Schmucke. "But who is die prite?"

"She is Mlle. Graff, the daughter of our host, the landlord of the Hotel
du Rhin. I have loved Mlle. Emilie these seven years; she has read so
many immoral novels, that she refused all offers for me, without knowing
what might come of it. She will be a very wealthy young lady; her
uncles, the tailors in the Rue de Richelieu, will leave her all their
money. Fritz is giving me the money we squandered at Strasbourg five
times over! He is putting a million francs in a banking house, M. Graff
the tailor is adding another five hundred thousand francs, and Mlle.
Emilie's father not only allows me to incorporate her portion--two
hundred and fifty thousand francs--with the capital, but he himself will
be a shareholder with as much again. So the firm of Brunner, Schwab and
Company will start with two millions five hundred thousand francs. Fritz
has just bought fifteen hundred thousand francs' worth of shares in
the Bank of France to guarantee our account with them. That is not all
Fritz's fortune. He has his father's house property, supposed to be
worth another million, and he has let the Grand Hotel de Hollande
already to a cousin of the Graffs."

"You look sad ven you look at your friend," remarked Schmucke, who had
listened with great interest. "Kann you pe chealous of him?"

"I am jealous for Fritz's happiness," said Wilhelm. "Does that face look
as if it belonged to a happy man? I am afraid of Paris; I should like
to see him do as I am doing. The old tempter may awake again. Of our two
heads, his carries the less ballast. His dress, and the opera-glass and
the rest of it make me anxious. He keeps looking at the lorettes in
the house. Oh! if you only knew how hard it is to marry Fritz. He has a
horror of 'going a-courting,' as you say; you would have to give him a
drop into a family, just as in England they give a man a drop into the
next world."

During the uproar that usually marks the end of a first night, the flute
delivered his invitation to the conductor. Pons accepted gleefully; and,
for the first time in three months, Schmucke saw a smile on his friend's
face. They went back to the Rue de Normandie in perfect silence; that
sudden flash of joy had thrown a light on the extent of the
disease which was consuming Pons. Oh, that a man so truly noble, so
disinterested, so great in feeling, should have such a weakness!... This
was the thought that struck the stoic Schmucke dumb with amazement. He
grew woefully sad, for he began to see that there was no help for it; he
must even renounce the pleasure of seeing "his goot Bons" opposite him
at the dinner-table, for the sake of Pons' welfare; and he did not
know whether he could give him up; the mere thought of it drove him
distracted.

Meantime, Pons' proud silence and withdrawal to the Mons Aventinus
of the Rue de Normandie had, as might be expected, impressed the
Presidente, not that she troubled herself much about her parasite, now
that she was freed from him. She thought, with her charming daughter,
that Cousin Pons had seen through her little "Lili's" joke. But it was
otherwise with her husband the President.

Camusot de Marville, a short and stout man, grown solemn since his
promotion at the Court, admired Cicero, preferred the Opera-Comique to
the Italiens, compared the actors one with another, and followed the
multitude step by step. He used to recite all the articles in the
Ministerialist journals, as if he were saying something original, and
in giving his opinion at the Council Board he paraphrased the remarks of
the previous speaker. His leading characteristics were sufficiently well
known; his position compelled him to take everything seriously; and he
was particularly tenacious of family ties.

Like most men who are ruled by their wives, the President asserted
his independence in trifles, in which his wife was very careful not
to thwart him. For a month he was satisfied with the Presidente's
commonplace explanations of Pons' disappearance; but at last it
struck him as singular that the old musician, a friend of forty years'
standing, should first make them so valuable a present as a fan that
belonged to Mme. de Pompadour, and then immediately discontinue his
visits. Count Popinot had pronounced the trinket a masterpiece; when its
owner went to Court, the fan had been passed from hand to hand, and her
vanity was not a little gratified by the compliments it received; others
had dwelt on the beauties of the ten ivory sticks, each one covered with
delicate carving, the like of which had never been seen. A Russian
lady (Russian ladies are apt to forget that they are not in Russia)
had offered her six thousand francs for the marvel one day at Count
Popinot's house, and smiled to see it in such hands. Truth to tell, it
was a fan for a Duchess.

"It cannot be denied that poor Cousin Pons understands rubbish of that
sort--" said Cecile, the day after the bid.

"Rubbish!" cried her parent. "Why, Government is just about to buy
the late M. le Conseiller Dusommerard's collection for three hundred
thousand francs; and the State and the Municipality of Paris between
them are spending nearly a million francs over the purchase and repair
of the Hotel de Cluny to house the 'rubbish,' as you call it.--Such
'rubbish,' dear child," he resumed, "is frequently all that remains of
vanished civilizations. An Etruscan jar, and a necklace, which sometimes
fetch forty and fifty thousand francs, is 'rubbish' which reveals the
perfection of art at the time of the siege of Troy, proving that the
Etruscans were Trojan refugees in Italy."

This was the President's cumbrous way of joking; the short, fat man was
heavily ironical with his wife and daughter.

"The combination of various kinds of knowledge required to understand
such 'rubbish,' Cecile," he resumed, "is a science in itself, called
archaeology. Archaeology comprehends architecture, sculpture, painting,
goldsmiths' work, ceramics, cabinetmaking (a purely modern art), lace,
tapestry--in short, human handiwork of every sort and description."

"Then Cousin Pons is learned?" said Cecile.

"Ah! by the by, why is he never to be seen nowadays?" asked the
President. He spoke with the air of a man in whom thousands of forgotten
and dormant impressions have suddenly begun to stir, and shaping
themselves into one idea, reach consciousness with a ricochet, as
sportsmen say.

"He must have taken offence at nothing at all," answered his wife. "I
dare say I was not as fully sensible as I might have been of the value
of the fan that he gave me. I am ignorant enough, as you know, of--"

"_You!_ One of Servin's best pupils, and you don't know Watteau?" cried
the President.

"I know Gerard and David and Gros and Griodet, and M. de Forbin and M.
Turpin de Crisse--"

"You ought--"

"Ought what, sir?" demanded the lady, gazing at her husband with the air
of a Queen of Sheba.

"To know a Watteau when you see it, my dear. Watteau is very much in
fashion," answered the President with meekness, that told plainly how
much he owed to his wife.

This conversation took place a few days before that night of first
performance of _The Devil's Betrothed_, when the whole orchestra
noticed how ill Pons was looking. But by that time all the circle of
dinner-givers who were used to seeing Pons' face at their tables, and
to send him on errands, had begun to ask each other for news of him, and
uneasiness increased when it was reported by some who had seen him that
he was always in his place at the theatre. Pons had been very careful to
avoid his old acquaintances whenever he met them in the streets; but one
day it so fell out that he met Count Popinot, the ex-cabinet minister,
face to face in the bric-a-brac dealer's shop in the new Boulevard
Beaumarchais. The dealer was none other than that Monistrol of whom Pons
had spoken to the Presidente, one of the famous and audacious vendors
whose cunning enthusiasm leads them to set more and more value daily on
their wares; for curiosities, they tell you, are growing so scarce that
they are hardly to be found at all nowadays.

"Ah, my dear Pons, how comes it that we never see you now? We miss
you very much, and Mme. Popinot does not know what to think of your
desertion."

"M. le Comte," said the good man, "I was made to feel in the house of a
relative that at my age one is not wanted in the world. I have never had
much consideration shown me, but at any rate I had not been insulted.
I have never asked anything of any man," he broke out with an artist's
pride. "I have often made myself useful in return for hospitality. But
I have made a mistake, it seems; I am indefinitely beholden to those who
honor me by allowing me to sit at table with them; my friends, and
my relatives.... Well and good; I have sent in my resignation as
smellfeast. At home I find daily something which no other house has
offered me--a real friend."

The old artist's power had not failed him; with tone and gesture he put
such bitterness into the words, that the peer of France was struck by
them. He drew Pons aside.

"Come, now, my old friend, what is it? What has hurt you? Could you not
tell me in confidence? You will permit me to say that at my house surely
you have always met with consideration--"

"You are the one exception," said the artist. "And besides, you are a
great lord and a statesman, you have so many things to think about. That
would excuse anything, if there were need for it."

The diplomatic skill that Popinot had acquired in the management of men
and affairs was brought to bear upon Pons, till at length the story of
his misfortunes in the President's house was drawn from him.

Popinot took up the victim's cause so warmly that he told the story
to Mme. Popinot as soon as he went home, and that excellent and
noble-natured woman spoke to the Presidente on the subject at the first
opportunity. As Popinot himself likewise said a word or two to the
President, there was a general explanation in the family of Camusot de
Marville.

Camusot was not exactly master in his own house; but this time his
remonstrance was so well founded in law and in fact, that his wife
and daughter were forced to acknowledge the truth. They both humbled
themselves and threw the blame on the servants. The servants, first
bidden, and then chidden, only obtained pardon by a full confession,
which made it clear to the President's mind that Pons had done rightly
to stop away. The President displayed himself before the servants in all
his masculine and magisterial dignity, after the manner of men who are
ruled by their wives. He informed his household that they should be
dismissed forthwith, and forfeit any advantages which their long term
of service in his house might have brought them, unless from that time
forward his cousin and all those who did him the honor of coming to
his house were treated as he himself was. At which speech Madeleine was
moved to smile.

"You have only one chance of salvation as it is," continued the
President. "Go to my cousin, make your excuses to him, and tell him that
you will lose your situations unless he forgives you, for I shall turn
you all away if he does not."

Next morning the President went out fairly early to pay a call on his
cousin before going down to the court. The apparition of M. le President
de Marville, announced by Mme. Cibot, was an event in the house. Pons,
thus honored for the first time in his life saw reparation ahead.

"At last, my dear cousin," said the President after the ordinary
greetings; "at last I have discovered the cause of your retreat. Your
behavior increases, if that were possible, my esteem for you. I have but
one word to say in that connection. My servants have all been dismissed.
My wife and daughter are in despair; they want to see you to have an
explanation. In all this, my cousin, there is one innocent person, and
he is an old judge; you will not punish me, will you, for the escapade
of a thoughtless child who wished to dine with the Popinots? especially
when I come to beg for peace, admitting that all the wrong has been on
our side?... An old friendship of thirty-six years, even suppose that
there had been a misunderstanding, has still some claims. Come, sign a
treaty of peace by dining with us to-night--"

Pons involved himself in a diffuse reply, and ended by informing his
cousin that he was to sign a marriage contract that evening; how that
one of the orchestra was not only going to be married, but also about to
fling his flute to the winds to become a banker.

"Very well. To-morrow."

"Mme. la Comtesse Popinot has done me the honor of asking me, cousin.
She was so kind as to write--"

"The day after to-morrow then."

"M. Brunner, a German, my first flute's future partner, returns the
compliment paid him to-day by the young couple--"

"You are such pleasant company that it is not surprising that people
dispute for the honor of seeing you. Very well, next Sunday? Within a
week, as we say at the courts?"

"On Sunday we are to dine with M. Graff, the flute's father-in-law."

"Very well, on Saturday. Between now and then you will have time to
reassure a little girl who has shed tears already over her fault. God
asks no more than repentance; you will not be more severe than the
Eternal father with poor little Cecile?--"

Pons, thus reached on his weak side, again plunged into formulas more
than polite, and went as far as the stairhead with the President.

An hour later the President's servants arrived in a troop on poor Pons'
second floor. They behaved after the manner of their kind; they cringed
and fawned; they wept. Madeleine took M. Pons aside and flung herself
resolutely at his feet.

"It is all my fault; and monsieur knows quite well that I love him,"
here she burst into tears. "It was vengeance boiling in my veins;
monsieur ought to throw all the blame of the unhappy affair on that. We
are all to lose our pensions.... Monsieur, I was mad, and I would not
have the rest suffer for my fault.... I can see now well enough that
fate did not make me for monsieur. I have come to my senses, I aimed too
high, but I love you still, monsieur. These ten years I have thought of
nothing but the happiness of making you happy and looking after things
here. What a lot!... Oh! if monsieur but knew how much I love him! But
monsieur must have seen it through all my mischief-making. If I were to
die to-morrow, what would they find?--A will in your favor, monsieur....
Yes, monsieur, in my trunk under my best things."

Madeleine had set a responsive chord vibrating; the passion inspired in
another may be unwelcome, but it will always be gratifying to self-love;
this was the case with the old bachelor. After generously pardoning
Madeleine, he extended his forgiveness to the other servants, promising
to use his influence with his cousin the Presidente on their behalf.

It was unspeakably pleasant to Pons to find all his old enjoyments
restored to him without any loss of self-respect. The world had come to
Pons, he had risen in the esteem of his circle; but Schmucke looked so
downcast and dubious when he heard the story of the triumph, that Pons
felt hurt. When, however, the kind-hearted German saw the sudden change
wrought in Pons' face, he ended by rejoicing with his friend, and made
a sacrifice of the happiness that he had known during those four months
that he had had Pons all to himself. Mental suffering has this immense
advantage over physical ills--when the cause is removed it ceases
at once. Pons was not like the same man that morning. The old man,
depressed and visibly failing, had given place to the serenely contented
Pons, who entered the Presidente's house that October afternoon with the
Marquise de Pompadour's fan in his pocket. Schmucke, on the other hand,
pondered deeply over this phenomenon, and could not understand it; your
true stoic never can understand the courtier that dwells in a Frenchman.
Pons was a born Frenchman of the Empire; a mixture of eighteenth century
gallantry and that devotion to womankind so often celebrated in songs of
the type of _Partant pour la Syrie_.

So Schmucke was fain to bury his chagrin beneath the flowers of his
German philosophy; but a week later he grew so yellow that Mme. Cibot
exerted her ingenuity to call in the parish doctor. The leech had fears
of icterus, and left Mme. Cibot frightened half out of her wits by the
Latin word for an attack of the jaundice.

Meantime the two friends went out to dinner together, perhaps for
the first time in their lives. For Schmucke it was a return to the
Fatherland; for Johann Graff of the Hotel du Rhin and his daughter
Emilie, Wolfgang Graff the tailor and his wife, Fritz Brunner and
Wilhelm Schwab, were Germans, and Pons and the notary were the only
Frenchmen present at the banquet. The Graffs of the tailor's business
owned a splendid house in the Rue de Richelieu, between the Rue
Neuve-des-Petits-Champs and the Rue Villedo; they had brought up their
niece, for Emilie's father, not without reason, had feared contact
with the very mixed society of an inn for his daughter. The good tailor
Graffs, who loved Emilie as if she had been their own daughter, were
giving up the ground floor of their great house to the young couple, and
here the bank of Brunner, Schwab and Company was to be established. The
arrangements for the marriage had been made about a month ago; some time
must elapse before Fritz Brunner, author of all this felicity, could
settle his deceased father's affairs, and the famous firm of tailors
had taken advantage of the delay to redecorate the first floor and to
furnish it very handsomely for the bride and bridegroom. The offices of
the bank had been fitted into the wing which united a handsome business
house with the hotel at the back, between courtyard and garden.

On the way from the Rue de Normandie to the Rue de Richelieu, Pons drew
from the abstracted Schmucke the details of the story of the modern
prodigal son, for whom Death had killed the fatted innkeeper. Pons, but
newly reconciled with his nearest relatives, was immediately smitten
with a desire to make a match between Fritz Brunner and Cecile de
Marville. Chance ordained that the notary was none other than Berthier,
old Cardot's son-in-law and successor, the sometime second clerk with
whom Pons had been wont to dine.

"Ah! M. Berthier, you here!" he said, holding out a hand to his host of
former days.

"We have not had the pleasure of seeing you at dinner lately; how is
it?" returned the notary. "My wife has been anxious about you. We saw
you at the first performance of _The Devil's Betrothed_, and our anxiety
became curiosity?"

"Old folk are sensitive," replied the worthy musician; "they make the
mistake of being a century behind the times, but how can it be helped?
It is quite enough to represent one century--they cannot entirely belong
to the century which sees them die."

"Ah!" said the notary, with a shrewd look, "one cannot run two centuries
at once."

"By the by," continued Pons, drawing the young lawyer into a corner,
"why do you not find some one for my cousin Cecile de Marville--"

"Ah! why--?" answered Berthier. "In this century, when luxury has
filtered down to our very porters' lodges, a young fellow hesitates
before uniting his lot with the daughter of a President of the Court of
Appeal in Paris if she brings him only a hundred thousand francs. In the
rank of life in which Mlle. de Marville's husband would take, the wife
was never yet known that did not cost her husband three thousand francs
a year; the interest on a hundred thousand francs would scarcely
find her in pin-money. A bachelor with an income of fifteen or twenty
thousand francs can live on an entre-sol; he is not expected to cut
any figure; he need not keep more than one servant, and all his surplus
income he can spend on his amusements; he puts himself in the hands of
a good tailor, and need not trouble any further about keeping up
appearances. Far-sighted mothers make much of him; he is one of the
kings of fashion in Paris.

"But a wife changes everything. A wife means a properly furnished
house," continued the lawyer; "she wants the carriage for herself; if
she goes to the play, she wants a box, while the bachelor has only a
stall to pay for; in short, a wife represents the whole of the income
which the bachelor used to spend on himself. Suppose that husband and
wife have thirty thousand francs a year between them--practically, the
sometime bachelor is a poor devil who thinks twice before he drives out
to Chantilly. Bring children on the scene--he is pinched for money at
once.

"Now, as M. and Mme. de Marville are scarcely turned fifty, Cecile's
expectations are bills that will not fall due for fifteen or twenty
years to come; and no young fellow cares to keep them so long in
his portfolio. The young featherheads who are dancing the polka with
lorettes at the Jardin Mabille, are so cankered with self-interest, that
they don't stand in need of us to explain both sides of the problem to
them. Between ourselves, I may say that Mlle. de Marville scarcely sets
hearts throbbing so fast but that their owners can perfectly keep their
heads, and they are full of these anti-matrimonial reflections. If any
eligible young man, in full possession of his senses and an income
of twenty thousand francs, happens to be sketching out a programme of
marriage that will satisfy his ambitions, Mlle. de Marville does not
altogether answer the description--"

"And why not?" asked the bewildered musician.

"Oh!--" said the notary, "well--a young man nowadays may be as ugly as
you and I, my dear Pons, but he is almost sure to have the impertinence
to want six hundred thousand francs, a girl of good family, with wit and
good looks and good breeding--flawless perfection in short."

"Then it will not be easy to marry her?"

"She will not be married so long as M. and Mme. de Marville cannot make
up their minds to settle Marville on her when she marries; if they had
chosen, she might have been the Vicomtesse Popinot by now. But here
comes M. Brunner.--We are about to read the deed of partnership and the
marriage contract."

Greetings and introductions over, the relations made Pons promise to
sign the contract. He listened to the reading of the documents, and
towards half-past five the party went into the dining-room. The dinner
was magnificent, as a city merchant's dinner can be, when he allows
himself a respite from money-making. Graff of the Hotel du Rhin was
acquainted with the first provision dealers in Paris; never had Pons nor
Schmucke fared so sumptuously. The dishes were a rapture to think of!
Italian paste, delicate of flavor, unknown to the public; smelts fried
as never smelts were fried before; fish from Lake Leman, with a real
Genevese sauce, and a cream for plum-pudding which would have astonished
the London doctor who is said to have invented it. It was nearly ten
o'clock before they rose from table. The amount of wine, German and
French, consumed at that dinner would amaze the contemporary dandy;
nobody knows the amount of liquor that a German can imbibe and yet keep
calm and quiet; to have even an idea of the quantity, you must dine in
Germany and watch bottle succeed to bottle, like wave rippling after
wave along the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, and disappear as if
the Teuton possessed the absorbing power of sponges or sea sand. Perfect
harmony prevails meanwhile; there is none of the racket that there would
be over the liquor in France; the talk is as sober as a money-lender's
extempore speech; countenances flush, like the faces of the brides in
frescoes by Cornelius or Schnorr (imperceptibly, that is to say), and
reminiscences are poured out slowly while the smoke puffs from the
pipes.

About half-past ten that evening Pons and Schmucke found themselves
sitting on a bench out in the garden, with the ex-flute between them;
they were explaining their characters, opinions, and misfortunes, with
no very clear idea as to why or how they had come to this point. In the
thick of a potpourri of confidences, Wilhelm spoke of his strong desire
to see Fritz married, expressing himself with vehement and vinous
eloquence.

"What do you say to this programme for your friend Brunner?" cried
Pons in confidential tones. "A charming and sensible young lady of
twenty-four, belonging to a family of the highest distinction. The
father holds a very high position as a judge; there will be a hundred
thousand francs paid down and a million to come."

"Wait!" answered Schwab; "I will speak to Fritz this instant."

The pair watched Brunner and his friend as they walked round and round
the garden; again and again they passed the bench, sometimes one spoke,
sometimes the other.

Pons was not exactly intoxicated; his head was a little heavy, but his
thoughts, on the contrary, seemed all the lighter; he watched Fritz
Brunner's face through the rainbow mist of fumes of wine, and tried
to read auguries favorable to his family. Before very long Schwab
introduced his friend and partner to M. Pons; Fritz Brunner expressed
his thanks for the trouble which Pons had been so good as to take.

In the conversation which followed, the two old bachelors Schmucke and
Pons extolled the estate of matrimony, going so far as to say, without
any malicious intent, "that marriage was the end of man." Tea and ices,
punches and cakes, were served in the future home of the betrothed
couple. The wine had begun to tell upon the honest merchants, and the
general hilarity reached its height when it was announced that Schwab's
partner thought of following his example.

At two o'clock that morning, Schmucke and Pons walked home along the
boulevards, philosophizing _a perte de raison_ as they went on the
harmony pervading the arrangements of this our world below.

On the morrow of the banquet, Cousin Pons betook himself to his fair
cousin the Presidente, overjoyed--poor dear noble soul!--to return good
for evil. Surely he had attained to a sublime height, as every one will
allow, for we live in an age when the Montyon prize is given to those
who do their duty by carrying out the precepts of the Gospel.

"Ah!" said Pons to himself, as he turned the corner of the Rue de
Choiseul, "they will lie under immense obligations to their parasite."

Any man less absorbed in his contentment, any man of the world, any
distrustful nature would have watched the President's wife and daughter
very narrowly on this first return to the house. But the poor musician
was a child, he had all the simplicity of an artist, believing in
goodness as he believed in beauty; so he was delighted when Cecile and
her mother made much of him. After all the vaudevilles, tragedies, and
comedies which had been played under the worthy man's eyes for twelve
long years, he could not detect the insincerity and grimaces of social
comedy, no doubt because he had seen too much of it. Any one who goes
into society in Paris, and knows the type of woman, dried up, body and
soul, by a burning thirst for social position, and a fierce desire to
be thought virtuous, any one familiar with the sham piety and the
domineering character of a woman whose word is law in her own house, may
imagine the lurking hatred she bore this husband's cousin whom she had
wronged.

All the demonstrative friendliness of mother and daughter was lined with
a formidable longing for revenge, evidently postponed. For the first
time in Amelie de Marville's life she had been put in the wrong, and
that in the sight of the husband over whom she tyrannized; and not only
so--she was obliged to be amiable to the author of her defeat! You can
scarcely find a match for this position save in the hypocritical
dramas which are sometimes kept up for years in the sacred college of
cardinals, or in chapters of certain religious orders.

At three o'clock, when the President came back from the law-courts, Pons
had scarcely made an end of the marvelous history of his acquaintance,
M. Frederic Brunner. Cecile had gone straight to the point. She wanted
to know how Frederic Brunner was dressed, how he looked, his height and
figure, the color of his hair and eyes; and when she had conjectured a
distinguished air for Frederic, she admired his generosity of character.

"Think of his giving five hundred thousand francs to his companion
in misfortune! Oh! mamma, I shall have a carriage and a box at the
Italiens----" Cecile grew almost pretty as she thought that all her
mother's ambitions for her were about to be realized, that the hopes
which had almost left her were to come to something after all.

As for the Presidente, all that she said was, "My dear little girl, you
may perhaps be married within the fortnight."

All mothers with daughters of three-and-twenty address them as "little
girl."

"Still," added the President, "in any case, we must have time to make
inquiries; never will I give my daughter to just anybody--"

"As to inquiries," said Pons, "Berthier is drawing up the deeds. As to
the young man himself, my dear cousin, you remember what you told me?
Well, he is quite forty years old; he is bald. He wishes to find in
family life a haven after a storm; I did not dissuade him; every man has
his tastes--"

"One reason the more for a personal interview," returned the President.
"I am not going to give my daughter to a valetudinarian."

"Very good, cousin, you shall see my suitor in five days if you like;
for, with your views, a single interview would be enough"--(Cecile
and her mother signified their rapture)--"Frederic is decidedly a
distinguished amateur; he begged me to allow him to see my little
collection at his leisure. You have never seen my pictures and
curiosities; come and see them," he continued, looking at his relatives.
"You can come simply as two ladies, brought by my friend Schmucke, and
make M. Brunner's acquaintance without betraying yourselves. Frederic
need not in the least know who you are."

"Admirable!" cried the President.

The attention they paid to the once scorned parasite may be left to
the imagination! Poor Pons that day became the Presidente's cousin.
The happy mother drowned her dislike in floods of joy; her looks, her
smiles, her words sent the old man into ecstasies over the good that he
had done, over the future that he saw by glimpses. Was he not sure
to find dinners such as yesterday's banquet over the signing of the
contract, multiplied indefinitely by three, in the houses of Brunner,
Schwab, and Graff? He saw before him a land of plenty--a _vie de
cocagne_, a miraculous succession of _plats couverts_, of delicate
surprise dishes, of exquisite wines.

"If Cousin Pons brings this through," said the President, addressing
his wife after Pons had departed, "we ought to settle an income upon him
equal to his salary at the theatre."

"Certainly," said the lady; and Cecile was informed that if the proposed
suitor found favor in her eyes, she must undertake to induce the old
musician to accept a munificence in such bad taste.

Next day the President went to Berthier. He was anxious to make sure of
M. Frederic Brunner's financial position. Berthier, forewarned by Mme.
de Marville, had asked his new client Schwab to come. Schwab the banker
was dazzled by the prospect of such a match for his friend (everybody
knows how deeply a German venerates social distinctions, so much so,
that in Germany a wife takes her husband's (official) title, and is
the Frau General, the Frau Rath, and so forth)--Schwab therefore was as
accommodating as a collector who imagines that he is cheating a dealer.

"In the first place," said Cecile's father, "as I shall make over my
estate of Marville to my daughter, I should wish the contract to be
drawn up on the dotal system. In that case, M. Brunner would invest a
million francs in land to increase the estate, and by settling the land
on his wife he would secure her and his children from any share in the
liabilities of the bank."

Berthier stroked his chin. "He is coming on well, is M. le President,"
thought he.

When the dotal system had been explained to Schwab, he seemed much
inclined that way for his friend. He had heard Fritz say that he wished
to find some way of insuring himself against another lapse into poverty.

"There is a farm and pasture land worth twelve hundred thousand francs
in the market at this moment," remarked the President.

"If we take up shares in the Bank of France to the amount of a million
francs, that will be quite enough to guarantee our account," said
Schwab. "Fritz does not want to invest more than two million francs in
business; he will do as you wish, I am sure, M. le President."

The President's wife and daughter were almost wild with joy when he
brought home this news. Never, surely, did so rich a capture swim so
complacently into the nets of matrimony.

"You will be Mme. Brunner de Marville," said the parent, addressing his
child; "I will obtain permission for your husband to add the name to
his, and afterwards he can take out letters of naturalization. If I
should be a peer of France some day, he will succeed me!"

The five days were spent by Mme. de Marville in preparations. On the
great day she dressed Cecile herself, taking as much pains as the
admiral of the British fleet takes over the dressing of the pleasure
yacht for Her Majesty of England when she takes a trip to Germany.

Pons and Schmucke, on their side, cleaned, swept, and dusted Pons'
museum rooms and furniture with the agility of sailors cleaning down
a man-of-war. There was not a speck of dust on the carved wood; not an
inch of brass but it glistened. The glasses over the pastels obscured
nothing of the work of Latour, Greuze, and Liotard (illustrious painter
of _The Chocolate Girl_), miracles of an art, alas! so fugitive. The
inimitable lustre of Florentine bronze took all the varying hues of
the light; the painted glass glowed with color. Every line shone
out brilliantly, every object threw in its phrase in a harmony of
masterpieces arranged by two musicians--both of whom alike had attained
to be poets.

With a tact which avoided the difficulties of a late appearance on the
scene of action, the women were the first to arrive; they wished to be
on their own ground. Pons introduced his friend Schmucke, who seemed
to his fair visitors to be an idiot; their heads were so full of the
eligible gentleman with the four millions of francs, that they paid but
little attention to the worthy Pons' dissertations upon matters of which
they were completely ignorant.

They looked with indifferent eyes at Petitot's enamels, spaced over
crimson velvet, set in three frames of marvelous workmanship. Flowers by
Van Huysum, David, and Heim; butterflies painted by Abraham Mignon;
Van Eycks, undoubted Cranachs and Albrecht Durers; the Giorgione, the
Sebastian del Piombo; Backhuijzen, Hobbema, Gericault, the rarities of
painting--none of these things so much as aroused their curiosity; they
were waiting for the sun to arise and shine upon these treasures. Still,
they were surprised by the beauty of some of the Etruscan trinkets and
the solid value of the snuff-boxes, and out of politeness they went into
ecstasies over some Florentine bronzes which they held in their hands
when Mme. Cibot announced M. Brunner! They did not turn; they took
advantage of a superb Venetian mirror framed in huge masses of carved
ebony to scan this phoenix of eligible young men.

Frederic, forewarned by Wilhelm, had made the most of the little hair
that remained to him. He wore a neat pair of trousers, a soft shade of
some dark color, a silk waistcoat of superlative elegance and the very
newest cut, a shirt with open-work, its linen hand-woven by a Friesland
woman, and a blue-and-white cravat. His watch chain, like the head of
his cane, came from Messrs. Florent and Chanor; and the coat, cut by old
Graff himself, was of the very finest cloth. The Suede gloves proclaimed
the man who had run through his mother's fortune. You could have seen
the banker's neat little brougham and pair of horses mirrored in the
surface of his speckless varnished boots, even if two pairs of sharp
ears had not already caught the sound of wheels outside in the Rue de
Normandie.

When the prodigal of twenty years is a kind of chrysalis from which
a banker emerges at the age of forty, the said banker is usually
an observer of human nature; and so much the more shrewd if, as in
Brunner's case, he understands how to turn his German simplicity to good
account. He had assumed for the occasion the abstracted air of a man who
is hesitating between family life and the dissipations of bachelorhood.
This expression in a Frenchified German seemed to Cecile to be in the
highest degree romantic; the descendant of the Virlaz was a second
Werther in her eyes--where is the girl who will not allow herself to
weave a little novel about her marriage? Cecile thought herself the
happiest of women when Brunner, looking round at the magnificent works
of art so patiently collected during forty years, waxed enthusiastic,
and Pons, to his no small satisfaction, found an appreciative admirer of
his treasures for the first time in his life.

"He is poetical," the young lady said to herself; "he sees millions in
the things. A poet is a man that cannot count and leaves his wife to
look after his money--an easy man to manage and amuse with trifles."

Every pane in the two windows was a square of Swiss painted glass; the
least of them was worth a thousand francs; and Pons possessed sixteen
of these unrivaled works of art for which amateurs seek so eagerly
nowadays. In 1815 the panes could be bought for six or ten francs
apiece. The value of the glorious collection of pictures, flawless great
works, authentic, untouched since they left the master's hands, could
only be proved in the fiery furnace of a saleroom. Not a picture but
was set in a costly frame; there were frames of every kind--Venetians,
carved with heavy ornaments, like English plate of the present day;
Romans, distinguishable among the others for a certain dash that artists
call _flafla_; Spanish wreaths in bold relief; Flemings and Germans with
quaint figures, tortoise-shell frames inlaid with copper and brass and
mother-of-pearl and ivory; frames of ebony and boxwood in the styles of
Louis Treize, Louis Quatorze, Louis Quinze, and Louis Seize--in short,
it was a unique collection of the finest models. Pons, luckier than
the art museums of Dresden and Vienna, possessed a frame by the famous
Brustoloni--the Michael Angelo of wood-carvers.

Mlle. de Marville naturally asked for explanations of each new
curiosity, and was initiated into the mysteries of art by Brunner. Her
exclamations were so childish, she seemed so pleased to have the value
and beauty of the paintings, carvings, or bronzes pointed out to her,
that the German gradually thawed and looked quite young again, and both
were led on further than they intended at this (purely accidental) first
meeting.

The private view lasted for three hours. Brunner offered his arm when
Cecile went downstairs. As they descended slowly and discreetly, Cecile,
still talking fine art, wondered that M. Brunner should admire her
cousin's gimcracks so much.

"Do you really think that these things that we have just seen are worth
a great deal of money?"

"Mademoiselle, if your cousin would sell his collection, I would give
eight hundred thousand francs for it this evening, and I should not make
a bad bargain. The pictures alone would fetch more than that at a public
sale."

"Since you say so, I believe it," returned she; "the things took up so
much of your attention that it must be so."

"On! mademoiselle!" protested Brunner. "For all answer to your reproach,
I will ask your mother's permission to call, so that I may have the
pleasure of seeing you again."

"How clever she is, that 'little girl' of mine!" thought the Presidente,
following closely upon her daughter's heels. Aloud she said, "With the
greatest pleasure, monsieur. I hope that you will come at dinner-time
with our Cousin Pons. The President will be delighted to make your
acquaintance.--Thank you, cousin."

The lady squeezed Pons' arm with deep meaning; she could not have said
more if she had used the consecrated formula, "Let us swear an eternal
friendship." The glance which accompanied that "Thank you, cousin," was
a caress.

When the young lady had been put into the carriage, and the jobbed
brougham had disappeared down the Rue Charlot, Brunner talked
bric-a-brac to Pons, and Pons talked marriage.

"Then you see no obstacle?" said Pons.

"Oh!" said Brunner, "she is an insignificant little thing, and the
mother is a trifle prim.--We shall see."

"A handsome fortune one of these days.... More than a million--"

"Good-bye till Monday!" interrupted the millionaire. "If you should
care to sell your collection of pictures, I would give you five or six
hundred thousand francs--"

"Ah!" said Pons; he had no idea that he was so rich. "But they are my
great pleasure in life, and I could not bring myself to part with them.
I could only sell my collection to be delivered after my death."

"Very well. We shall see."

"Here we have two affairs afoot!" said Pons; he was thinking only of the
marriage.

Brunner shook hands and drove away in his splendid carriage. Pons
watched it out of sight. He did not notice that Remonencq was smoking
his pipe in the doorway.

That evening Mme. de Marville went to ask advice of her father-in-law,
and found the whole Popinot family at the Camusots' house. It was only
natural that a mother who had failed to capture an eldest son should be
tempted to take her little revenge; so Mme. de Marville threw out hints
of the splendid marriage that her Cecile was about to make.--"Whom can
Cecile be going to marry?" was the question upon all lips. And Cecile's
mother, without suspecting that she was betraying her secret, let
fall words and whispered confidences, afterwards supplemented by Mme.
Berthier, till gossip circulating in the bourgeois empyrean where
Pons accomplished his gastronomical evolutions took something like the
following form:

"Cecile de Marville is engaged to be married to a young German, a banker
from philanthropic motives, for he has four millions; he is like a hero
in a novel, a perfect Werther, charming and kind-hearted. He has sown
his wild oats, and he is distractedly in love with Cecile; it is a case
of love at first sight; and so much the more certain, since Cecile had
all Pons' paintings of Madonnas for rivals," and so forth and so forth.

Two or three of the set came to call on the Presidente, ostensibly to
congratulate, but really to find out whether or not the marvelous tale
were true. For their benefit Mme. de Marville executed the following
admirable variations on the theme of son-in-law which mothers may
consult, as people used to refer to the _Complete Letter Writer_.

"A marriage is not an accomplished fact," she told Mme. Chiffreville,
"until you have been in the mayor's office and the church. We have only
come as far as a personal interview; so I count upon your friendship to
say nothing of our hopes."

"You are very fortunate, madame; marriages are so difficult to arrange
in these days."

"What can one do? It was chance; but marriages are often made in that
way."

"Ah! well. So you are going to marry Cecile?" said Mme. Cardot.

"Yes," said Cecile's mother, fully understanding the meaning of the
"so." "We were very particular, or Cecile would have been established
before this. But now we have found everything we wish: money, good
temper, good character, and good looks; and my sweet little girl
certainly deserves nothing less. M. Brunner is a charming young man,
most distinguished; he is fond of luxury, he knows life; he is wild
about Cecile, he loves her sincerely; and in spite of his three or four
millions, Cecile is going to accept him.--We had not looked so high for
her; still, store is no sore."

"It was not so much the fortune as the affection inspired by my daughter
which decided us," the Presidente told Mme. Lebas. "M. Brunner is in
such a hurry that he wants the marriage to take place with the least
possible delay."

"Is he a foreigner?"

"Yes, madame; but I am very fortunate, I confess. No, I shall not have
a son-in-law, but a son. M. Brunner's delicacy has quite won our hearts.
No one would imagine how anxious he was to marry under the dotal system.
It is a great security for families. He is going to invest twelve
hundred thousand francs in grazing land, which will be added to Marville
some day."

More variations followed on the morrow. For instance--M. Brunner was a
great lord, doing everything in lordly fashion; he did not haggle. If
M. de Marville could obtain letters of naturalization, qualifying M.
Brunner for an office under Government (and the Home Secretary surely
could strain a point for M. de Marville), his son-in-law would be a peer
of France. Nobody knew how much money M. Brunner possessed; "he had the
finest horses and the smartest carriages in Paris!" and so on and so on.

From the pleasure with which the Camusots published their hopes, it was
pretty clear that this triumph was unexpected.

Immediately after the interview in Pons' museum, M. de Marville, at his
wife's instance, begged the Home Secretary, his chief, and the attorney
for the crown to dine with him on the occasion of the introduction of
this phoenix of a son-in-law.

The three great personages accepted the invitation, albeit it was given
on short notice; they all saw the part that they were to play in the
family politics, and readily came to the father's support. In France we
are usually pretty ready to assist the mother of marriageable daughters
to hook an eligible son-in-law. The Count and Countess Popinot likewise
lent their presence to complete the splendor of the occasion, although
they thought the invitation in questionable taste.

There were eleven in all. Cecile's grandfather, old Camusot, came, of
course, with his wife to a family reunion purposely arranged to elicit a
proposal from M. Brunner.

The Camusot de Marvilles had given out that the guest of the evening
was one of the richest capitalists in Germany, a man of taste (he was in
love with "the little girl"), a future rival of the Nucingens, Kellers,
du Tillets, and their like.

"It is our day," said the Presidente with elaborate simplicity, when she
had named her guests one by one for the German whom she already regarded
as her son-in-law. "We have only a few intimate friends--first, my
husband's father, who, as you know, is sure to be raised to the peerage;
M. le Comte and Mme. la Comtesse Popinot, whose son was not thought rich
enough for Cecile; the Home Secretary; our First President; our attorney
for the crown; our personal friends, in short.--We shall be obliged to
dine rather late to-night, because the Chamber is sitting, and people
cannot get away before six."

Brunner looked significantly at Pons, and Pons rubbed his hands as if to
say, "Our friends, you see! _My_ friends!"

Mme. de Marville, as a clever tactician, had something very particular
to say to her cousin, that Cecile and her Werther might be left together
for a moment. Cecile chattered away volubly, and contrived that Frederic
should catch sight of a German dictionary, a German grammar, and a
volume of Goethe hidden away in a place where he was likely to find
them.

"Ah! are you learning German?" asked Brunner, flushing red.

(For laying traps of this kind the Frenchwoman has not her match!)

"Oh! how naughty you are!" she cried; "it is too bad of you, monsieur,
to explore my hiding-places like this. I want to read Goethe in the
original," she added; "I have been learning German for two years."

"Then the grammar must be very difficult to learn, for scarcely ten
pages have been cut--" Brunner remarked with much candor.

Cecile, abashed, turned away to hide her blushes. A German cannot resist
a display of this kind; Brunner caught Cecile's hand, made her turn, and
watched her confusion under his gaze, after the manner of the heroes of
the novels of Auguste Lafontaine of chaste memory.

"You are adorable," said he.

Cecile's petulant gesture replied, "So are you--who could help liking
you?"

"It is all right, mamma," she whispered to her parent, who came up at
that moment with Pons.

The sight of a family party on these occasions is not to be described.
Everybody was well satisfied to see a mother put her hand on an eligible
son-in-law. Compliments, double-barreled and double-charged, were paid
to Brunner (who pretended to understand nothing); to Cecile, on whom
nothing was lost; and to the Presidente, who fished for them. Pons heard
the blood singing in his ears, the light of all the blazing gas-jets of
the theatre footlights seemed to be dazzling his eyes, when Cecile, in
a low voice and with the most ingenious circumspection, spoke of her
father's plan of the annuity of twelve hundred francs. The old artist
positively declined the offer, bringing forward the value of his fortune
in furniture, only now made known to him by Brunner.

The Home Secretary, the First President, the attorney for the crown, the
Popinots, and those who had other engagements, all went; and before long
no one was left except M. Camusot senior, and Cardot the old notary, and
his assistant and son-in-law Berthier. Pons, worthy soul, looking round
and seeing no one but the family, blundered out a speech of thanks to
the President and his wife for the proposal which Cecile had just made
to him. So it is with those who are guided by their feelings; they
act upon impulse. Brunner, hearing of an annuity offered in this way,
thought that it had very much the look of a commission paid to Pons; he
made an Israelite's return upon himself, his attitude told of more than
cool calculation.

Meanwhile Pons was saying to his astonished relations, "My collection or
its value will, in any case, go to your family, whether I come to terms
with our friend Brunner or keep it." The Camusots were amazed to hear
that Pons was so rich.

Brunner, watching, saw how all these ignorant people looked favorably
upon a man once believed to be poor so soon as they knew that he had
great possessions. He had seen, too, already that Cecile was spoiled by
her father and mother; he amused himself, therefore, by astonishing the
good bourgeois.

"I was telling mademoiselle," said he, "that M. Pons' pictures were
worth that sum to _me_; but the prices of works of art have risen so
much of late, that no one can tell how much the collection might sell
for at public auction. The sixty pictures might fetch a million francs;
several that I saw the other day were worth fifty thousand apiece."

"It is a fine thing to be your heir!" remarked old Cardot, looking at
Pons.

"My heir is my Cousin Cecile here," answered Pons, insisting on the
relationship. There was a flutter of admiration at this.

"She will be a very rich heiress," laughed old Cardot, as he took his
departure.

Camusot senior, the President and his wife, Cecile, Brunner, Berthier,
and Pons were now left together; for it was assumed that the formal
demand for Cecile's hand was about to be made. No sooner was Cardot
gone, indeed, than Brunner began with an inquiry which augured well.

"I think I understood," he said, turning to Mme. de Marville, "that
mademoiselle is your only daughter."

"Certainly," the lady said proudly.

"Nobody will make any difficulties," Pons, good soul, put in by way of
encouraging Brunner to bring out his proposal.

But Brunner grew thoughtful, and an ominous silence brought on a
coolness of the strangest kind. The Presidente might have admitted that
her "little girl" was subject to epileptic fits. The President, thinking
that Cecile ought not to be present, signed to her to go. She went.
Still Brunner said nothing. They all began to look at one another. The
situation was growing awkward.

Camusot senior, a man of experience, took the German to Mme. de
Marville's room, ostensibly to show him Pons' fan. He saw that some
difficulty had arisen, and signed to the rest to leave him alone with
Cecile's suitor-designate.

"Here is the masterpiece," said Camusot, opening out the fan.

Brunner took it in his hand and looked at it. "It is worth five thousand
francs," he said after a moment.

"Did you not come here, sir, to ask for my granddaughter?" inquired the
future peer of France.

"Yes, sir," said Brunner; "and I beg you to believe that no possible
marriage could be more flattering to my vanity. I shall never find any
one more charming nor more amiable, nor a young lady who answers to my
ideas like Mlle. Cecile; but--"

"Oh, no _buts_!" old Camusot broke in; "or let us have the translation
of your 'buts' at once, my dear sir."

"I am very glad, sir, that the matter has gone no further on either
side," Brunner answered gravely. "I had no idea that Mlle. Cecile was an
only daughter. Anybody else would consider this an advantage; but to me,
believe me, it is an insurmountable obstacle to--"

"What, sir!" cried Camusot, amazed beyond measure. "Do you find a
positive drawback in an immense advantage? Your conduct is really
extraordinary; I should very much like to hear the explanation of it."

"I came here this evening, sir," returned the German phlegmatically,
"intending to ask M. le President for his daughter's hand. It was my
desire to give Mlle. Cecile a brilliant future by offering her so much
of my fortune as she would consent to accept. But an only daughter is
a child whose will is law to indulgent parents, who has never been
contradicted. I have had the opportunity of observing this in many
families, where parents worship divinities of this kind. And
your granddaughter is not only the idol of the house, but Mme. la
Presidente... you know what I mean. I have seen my father's house turned
into a hell, sir, from this very cause. My stepmother, the source of
all my misfortunes, an only daughter, idolized by her parents, the most
charming betrothed imaginable, after marriage became a fiend incarnate.
I do not doubt that Mlle. Cecile is an exception to the rule; but I am
not a young man, I am forty years old, and the difference between our
ages entails difficulties which would put it out of my power to make
the young lady happy, when Mme. la Presidente always carried out her
daughter's every wish and listened to her as if Mademoiselle was an
oracle. What right have I to expect Mlle. Cecile to change her habits
and ideas? Instead of a father and mother who indulge her every whim,
she would find an egotistic man of forty; if she should resist, the man
of forty would have the worst of it. So, as an honest man--I withdraw.
If there should be any need to explain my visit here, I desire to be
entirely sacrificed--"

"If these are your motives, sir," said the future peer of France,
"however singular they may be, they are plausible--"

"Do not call my sincerity in question, sir," Brunner interrupted
quickly. "If you know of a penniless girl, one of a large family, well
brought up but without fortune, as happens very often in France; and if
her character offers me security, I will marry her."

A pause followed; Frederic Brunner left Cecile's grandfather and
politely took leave of his host and hostess. When he was gone, Cecile
appeared, a living commentary upon her Werther's leave-taking; she was
ghastly pale. She had hidden in her mother's wardrobe and overheard the
whole conversation.

"Refused!..." she said in a low voice for her mother's ear.

"And why?" asked the Presidente, fixing her eyes upon her embarrassed
father-in-law.

"Upon the fine pretext that an only daughter is a spoilt child," replied
that gentleman. "And he is not altogether wrong there," he added,
seizing an opportunity of putting the blame on the daughter-in-law, who
had worried him not a little for twenty years.

"It will kill my child!" cried the Presidente, "and it is your doing!"
she exclaimed, addressing Pons, as she supported her fainting daughter,
for Cecile thought well to make good her mother's words by sinking into
her arms. The President and his wife carried Cecile to an easy-chair,
where she swooned outright. The grandfather rang for the servants.

"It is a plot of his weaving; I see it all now," said the infuriated
mother.

Pons sprang up as if the trump of doom were sounding in his ears.

"Yes!" said the lady, her eyes like two springs of green bile, "this
gentleman wished to repay a harmless joke by an insult. Who will believe
that that German was right in his mind? He is either an accomplice in
a wicked scheme of revenge, or he is crazy. I hope, M. Pons, that in
future you will spare us the annoyance of seeing you in the house where
you have tried to bring shame and dishonor."

Pons stood like a statue, with his eyes fixed on the pattern of the
carpet.

"Well! Are you still here, monster of ingratitude?" cried she, turning
round on Pons, who was twirling his thumbs.--"Your master and I are
never at home, remember, if this gentleman calls," she continued,
turning to the servants.--"Jean, go for the doctor; and bring hartshorn,
Madeleine."

In the Presidente's eyes, the reason given by Brunner was simply an
excuse, there was something else behind; but, at the same time, the fact
that the marriage was broken off was only the more certain. A woman's
mind works swiftly in great crises, and Mme. de Marville had hit at once
upon the one method of repairing the check. She chose to look upon it as
a scheme of revenge. This notion of ascribing a fiendish scheme to
Pons satisfied family honor. Faithful to her dislike of the cousin, she
treated a feminine suspicion as a fact. Women, generally speaking, hold
a creed peculiar to themselves, a code of their own; to them anything
which serves their interests or their passions is true. The Presidente
went a good deal further. In the course of the evening she talked
the President into her belief, and next morning found the magistrate
convinced of his cousin's culpability.

Every one, no doubt, will condemn the lady's horrible conduct; but what
mother in Mme. Camusot's position will not do the same? Put the choice
between her own daughter and an alien, she will prefer to sacrifice the
honor of the latter. There are many ways of doing this, but the end in
view is the same.

The old musician fled down the staircase in haste; but he went slowly
along the boulevards to his theatre, he turned in mechanically at the
door, and mechanically he took his place and conducted the orchestra. In
the interval he gave such random answers to Schmucke's questions, that
his old friend dissembled his fear that Pons' mind had given way. To
so childlike a nature, the recent scene took the proportions of a
catastrophe. He had meant to make every one happy, and he had aroused
a terrible slumbering feeling of hate; everything had been turned
topsy-turvy. He had at last seen mortal hate in the Presidente's eyes,
tones, and gesture.

On the morrow, Mme. Camusot de Marville made a great resolution;
the President likewise sanctioned the step now forced upon them by
circumstances. It was determined that the estate of Marville should be
settled upon Cecile at the time of her marriage, as well as the house in
the Rue de Hanovre and a hundred thousand francs. In the course of the
morning, the Presidente went to call upon the Comtesse Popinot; for she
saw plainly that nothing but a settled marriage could enable them
to recover after such a check. To the Comtesse Popinot she told the
shocking story of Pons' revenge, Pons' hideous hoax. It all seemed
probable enough when it came out that the marriage had been broken off
simply on the pretext that Cecile was an only daughter. The Presidente
next dwelt artfully upon the advantage of adding "de Marville" to the
name of Popinot; and the immense dowry. At the present price fetched by
land in Normandy, at two per cent, the property represented nine hundred
thousand francs, and the house in the Rue de Hanovre about two hundred
and fifty thousand. No reasonable family could refuse such an alliance.
The Comte and Comtesse Popinot accepted; and as they were now touched by
the honor of the family which they were about to enter, they promised to
help explain away yesterday evening's mishap.

And now in the house of the elder Camusot, before the very persons who
had heard Mme. de Marville singing Frederic Brunner's praises but a
few days ago, that lady, to whom nobody ventured to speak on the topic,
plunged courageously into explanations.

"Really, nowadays" (she said), "one could not be too careful if a
marriage was in question, especially if one had to do with foreigners."

"And why, madame?"

"What has happened to you?" asked Mme. Chiffreville.

"Do you not know about our adventure with that Brunner, who had the
audacity to aspire to marry Cecile? His father was a German that kept a
wine-shop, and his uncle is a dealer in rabbit-skins!"

"Is it possible? So clear-sighted as you are!..." murmured a lady.

"These adventurers are so cunning. But we found out everything through
Berthier. His friend is a beggar that plays the flute. He is friendly
with a person who lets furnished lodgings in the Rue du Mail and some
tailor or other.... We found out that he had led a most disreputable
life, and no amount of fortune would be enough for a scamp that has run
through his mother's property."

"Why, Mlle. de Marville would have been wretched!" said Mme. Berthier.

"How did he come to your house?" asked old Mme. Lebas.

"It was M. Pons. Out of revenge, he introduced this fine gentleman
to us, to make us ridiculous.... This Brunner (it is the same name
as Fontaine in French)--this Brunner, that was made out to be such a
grandee, has poor enough health, he is bald, and his teeth are bad. The
first sight of him was enough for me; I distrusted him from the first."

"But how about the great fortune that you spoke of?" a young married
woman asked shyly.

"The fortune was not nearly so large as they said. These tailors and the
landlord and he all scraped the money together among them, and put all
their savings into this bank that they are starting. What is a bank for
those that begin in these days? Simply a license to ruin themselves.
A banker's wife may lie down at night a millionaire and wake up in the
morning with nothing but her settlement. At first word, at the very
first sight of him, we made up our minds about this gentleman--he is not
one of us. You can tell by his gloves, by his waistcoat, that he is
a working man, the son of a man that kept a pot-house somewhere in
Germany; he has not the instincts of a gentleman; he drinks beer, and
he smokes--smokes? ah! madame, _twenty-five pipes a day!_... What would
have become of poor Lili? ... It makes me shudder even now to think of
it. God has indeed preserved us! And besides, Cecile never liked him....
Who would have expected such a trick from a relative, an old friend of
the house that had dined with us twice a week for twenty years? We have
loaded him with benefits, and he played his game so well, that he said
Cecile was his heir before the Keeper of the Seals and the Attorney
General and the Home Secretary!... That Brunner and M. Pons had their
story ready, and each of them said that the other was worth millions!...
No, I do assure you, all of you would have been taken in by an artist's
hoax like that."

In a few weeks' time, the united forces of the Camusot and Popinot
families gained an easy victory in the world, for nobody undertook
to defend the unfortunate Pons, that parasite, that curmudgeon, that
skinflint, that smooth-faced humbug, on whom everybody heaped scorn; he
was a viper cherished in the bosom of the family, he had not his match
for spite, he was a dangerous mountebank whom nobody ought to mention.



About a month after the perfidious Werther's withdrawal, poor Pons left
his bed for the first time after an attack of nervous fever, and walked
along the sunny side of the street leaning on Schmucke's arm. Nobody in
the Boulevard du Temple laughed at the "pair of nutcrackers," for one of
the old men looked so shattered, and the other so touchingly careful
of his invalid friend. By the time that they reached the Boulevard
Poissonniere, a little color came back to Pons' face; he was breathing
the air of the boulevards, he felt the vitalizing power of the
atmosphere of the crowded street, the life-giving property of the air
that is noticeable in quarters where human life abounds; in the filthy
Roman Ghetto, for instance, with its swarming Jewish population, where
malaria is unknown. Perhaps, too, the sight of the streets, the great
spectacle of Paris, the daily pleasure of his life, did the invalid
good. They walked on side by side, though Pons now and again left his
friend to look at the shop windows. Opposite the Theatre des Varietes he
saw Count Popinot, and went up to him very respectfully, for of all men
Pons esteemed and venerated the ex-Minister.

The peer of France answered him severely:

"I am at a loss to understand, sir, how you can have no more tact than
to speak to a near connection of a family whom you tried to brand with
shame and ridicule by a trick which no one but an artist could devise.
Understand this, sir, that from to-day we must be complete strangers
to each other. Mme. la Comtesse Popinot, like every one else, feels
indignant at your behavior to the Marvilles."

And Count Popinot passed on, leaving Pons thunderstruck. Passion,
justice, policy, and great social forces never take into account the
condition of the human creature whom they strike down. The statesman,
driven by family considerations to crush Pons, did not so much as see
the physical weakness of his redoubtable enemy.

"Vat is it, mine boor friend?" exclaimed Schmucke, seeing how white Pons
had grown.

"It is a fresh stab in the heart," Pons replied, leaning heavily on
Schmucke's arm. "I think that no one, save God in heaven, can have any
right to do good, and that is why all those who meddle in His work are
so cruelly punished."

The old artist's sarcasm was uttered with a supreme effort; he was
trying, excellent creature, to quiet the dismay visible in Schmucke's
face.

"So I dink," Schmucke replied simply.

Pons could not understand it. Neither the Camusots nor the Popinots had
sent him notice of Cecile's wedding.

On the Boulevard des Italiens Pons saw M. Cardot coming towards them.
Warned by Count Popinot's allocution, Pons was very careful not to
accost the old acquaintance with whom he had dined once a fortnight for
the last year; he lifted his hat, but the other, mayor and deputy
of Paris, threw him an indignant glance and went by. Pons turned to
Schmucke.

"Do go and ask him what it is that they all have against me," he said to
the friend who knew all the details of the catastrophe that Pons could
tell him.

"Mennseir," Schmucke began diplomatically, "mine friend Bons is chust
recofering from an illness; you haf no doubt fail to rekognize him?"

"Not in the least."

"But mit vat kann you rebroach him?"

"You have a monster of ingratitude for a friend, sir; if he is still
alive, it is because nothing kills ill weeds. People do well to mistrust
artists; they are as mischievous and spiteful as monkeys. This friend
of yours tried to dishonor his own family, and to blight a young girl's
character, in revenge for a harmless joke. I wish to have nothing to do
with him; I shall do my best to forget that I have known him, or that
such a man exists. All the members of his family and my own share the
wish, sir, so do all the persons who once did the said Pons the honor of
receiving him."

"Boot, mennseir, you are a reasonaple mann; gif you vill bermit me, I
shall exblain die affair--"

"You are quite at liberty to remain his friend, sir, if you are minded
that way," returned Cardot, "but you need go no further; for I must give
you warning that in my opinion those who try to excuse or defend his
conduct are just as much to blame."

"To chustify it?"

"Yes, for his conduct can neither be justified nor qualified." And with
that word, the deputy for the Seine went his way; he would not hear
another syllable.

"I have two powers in the State against me," smiled poor Pons, when
Schmucke had repeated these savage speeches.

"Eferpody is against us," Schmucke answered dolorously. "Let us go avay
pefore we shall meed oder fools."

Never before in the course of a truly ovine life had Schmucke uttered
such words as these. Never before had his almost divine meekness been
ruffled. He had smiled childlike on all the mischances that befell him,
but he could not look and see his sublime Pons maltreated; his Pons, his
unknown Aristides, the genius resigned to his lot, the nature that knew
no bitterness, the treasury of kindness, the heart of gold!...
Alceste's indignation filled Schmucke's soul--he was moved to call Pons'
amphitryons "fools." For his pacific nature that impulse equaled the
wrath of Roland.

With wise foresight, Schmucke turned to go home by the way of the
Boulevard du Temple, Pons passively submitting like a fallen fighter,
heedless of blows; but chance ordered that he should know that all his
world was against him. The House of Peers, the Chamber of Deputies,
strangers and the family, the strong, the weak, and the innocent, all
combined to send down the avalanche.

In the Boulevard Poissonniere, Pons caught sight of that very M.
Cardot's daughter, who, young as she was, had learned to be charitable
to others through trouble of her own. Her husband knew a secret by which
he kept her in bondage. She was the only one among Pons' hostesses
whom he called by her Christian name; he addressed Mme. Berthier as
"Felicie," and he thought that she understood him. The gentle creature
seemed to be distressed by the sight of Cousin Pons, as he was called
(though he was in no way related to the family of the second wife of a
cousin by marriage). There was no help for it, however; Felicie Berthier
stopped to speak to the invalid.

"I did not think you were cruel, cousin," she said; "but if even a
quarter of all that I hear of you is true, you are very false.... Oh!
do not justify yourself," she added quickly, seeing Pons' significant
gesture, "it is useless, for two reasons. In the first place, I have no
right to accuse or judge or condemn anybody, for I myself know so well
how much may be said for those who seem to be most guilty; secondly,
your explanation would do no good. M. Berthier drew up the marriage
contract for Mlle. de Marville and the Vicomte Popinot; he is so
exasperated, that if he knew that I had so much as spoken one word to
you, one word for the last time, he would scold me. Everybody is against
you."

"So it seems indeed, madame," Pons said, his voice shaking as he lifted
his hat respectfully.

Painfully he made his way back to the Rue de Normandie. The old German
knew from the heavy weight on his arm that his friend was struggling
bravely against failing physical strength. That third encounter was like
the verdict of the Lamb at the foot of the throne of God; and the anger
of the Angel of the Poor, the symbol of the Peoples, is the last word of
Heaven. They reached home without another word.

There are moments in our lives when the sense that our friend is near
is all that we can bear. Our wounds smart under the consoling words that
only reveal the depths of pain. The old pianist, you see, possessed a
genius for friendship, the tact of those who, having suffered much, knew
the customs of suffering.

Pons was never to take a walk again. From one illness he fell into
another. He was of a sanguine-bilious temperament, the bile passed into
his blood, and a violent liver attack was the result. He had never known
a day's illness in his life till a month ago; he had never consulted a
doctor; so La Cibot, with almost motherly care and intentions at first
of the very best, called in "the doctor of the quarter."

In every quarter of Paris there is a doctor whose name and address are
only known to the working classes, to the little tradespeople and the
porters, and in consequence he is called "the doctor of the quarter."
He undertakes confinement cases, he lets blood, he is in the medical
profession pretty much what the "general servant" of the advertising
column is in the scale of domestic service. He must perforce be kind
to the poor, and tolerably expert by reason of much practice, and he
is generally popular. Dr. Poulain, called in by Mme. Cibot, gave an
inattentive ear to the old musician's complainings. Pons groaned out
that his skin itched; he had scratched himself all night long, till he
could scarcely feel. The look of his eyes, with the yellow circles about
them, corroborated the symptoms.

"Had you some violent shock a couple of days ago?" the doctor asked the
patient.

"Yes, alas!"

"You have the same complaint that this gentleman was threatened with,"
said Dr. Poulain, looking at Schmucke as he spoke; "it is an attack
of jaundice, but you will soon get over it," he added, as he wrote a
prescription.

But in spite of that comfortable phrase, the doctor's eyes had told
another tale as he looked professionally at the patient; and the
death-sentence, though hidden under stereotyped compassion, can always
be read by those who wish to know the truth. Mme. Cibot gave a spy's
glance at the doctor, and read his thought; his bedside manner did not
deceive her; she followed him out of the room.

"Do you think he will get over it?" asked Mme. Cibot, at the stairhead.

"My dear Mme. Cibot, your lodger is a dead man; not because of the bile
in the system, but because his vitality is low. Still, with great care,
your patient may pull through. Somebody ought to take him away for a
change--"

"How is he to go?" asked Mme. Cibot. "He has nothing to live upon but
his salary; his friend has just a little money from some great ladies,
very charitable ladies, in return for his services, it seems. They are
two children. I have looked after them for nine years."

"I spend my life watching people die, not of their disease, but of
another bad and incurable complaint--the want of money," said the
doctor. "How often it happens that so far from taking a fee, I am
obliged to leave a five-franc piece on the mantel-shelf when I go--"

"Poor, dear M. Poulain!" cried Mme. Cibot. "Ah, if you hadn't only
the hundred thousand livres a year, what some stingy folks has in
the quarter (regular devils from hell they are), you would be like
Providence on earth."

Dr. Poulain had made the little practice, by which he made a bare
subsistence, chiefly by winning the esteem of the porters' lodges in his
district. So he raised his eyes to heaven and thanked Mme. Cibot with a
solemn face worthy of Tartuffe.

"Then you think that with careful nursing our dear patient will get
better, my dear M. Poulain?"

"Yes, if this shock has not been too much for him."

"Poor man! who can have vexed him? There isn't nobody like him on earth
except his friend M. Schmucke. I will find out what is the matter, and
I will undertake to give them that upset my gentleman a hauling over the
coals--"

"Look here, my dear Mme. Cibot," said the doctor as they stood in
the gateway, "one of the principal symptoms of his complaint is great
irritability; and as it is hardly to be supposed that he can afford a
nurse, the task of nursing him will fall to you. So--"

"Are you talking of Mouchieu Ponsh?" asked the marine store-dealer. He
was sitting smoking on the curb-post in the gateway, and now he rose to
join in the conversation.

"Yes, Daddy Remonencq."

"All right," said Remonencq, "ash to moneysh, he ish better off than
Mouchieu Monishtrol and the big men in the curioshity line. I know
enough in the art line to tell you thish--the dear man has treasursh!"
he spoke with a broad Auvergne dialect.

"Look here, I thought you were laughing at me the other day when my
gentlemen were out and I showed you the old rubbish upstairs," said Mme.
Cibot.

In Paris, where walls have ears, where doors have tongues, and window
bars have eyes, there are few things more dangerous than the practice
of standing to chat in a gateway. Partings are like postscripts to a
letter--indiscreet utterances that do as much mischief to the speaker
as to those who overhear them. A single instance will be sufficient as a
parallel to an event in this history.

In the time of the Empire, when men paid considerable attention to their
hair, one of the first coiffeurs of the day came out of a house where
he had just been dressing a pretty woman's head. This artist in question
enjoyed the custom of all the lower floor inmates of the house;
and among these, there flourished an elderly bachelor guarded by a
housekeeper who detested her master's next-of-kin. The _ci-devant_ young
man, falling seriously ill, the most famous of doctors of the day (they
were not as yet styled the "princes of science") had been called in to
consult upon his case; and it so chanced that the learned gentlemen were
taking leave of one another in the gateway just as the hairdresser came
out. They were talking as doctors usually talk among themselves when
the farce of a consultation is over. "He is a dead man," quoth Dr.
Haudry.--"He had not a month to live," added Desplein, "unless a miracle
takes place."--These were the words overheard by the hairdresser.

Like all hairdressers, he kept up a good understanding with his
customers' servants. Prodigious greed sent the man upstairs again;
he mounted to the _ci-devant_ young man's apartment, and promised the
servant-mistress a tolerably handsome commission to persuade her master
to sink a large portion of his money in an annuity. The dying bachelor,
fifty-six by count of years, and twice as old as his age by reason of
amorous campaigns, owned, among other property, a splendid house in
the Rue de Richelieu, worth at that time about two hundred and fifty
thousand francs. It was this house that the hairdresser coveted; and
on agreement to pay an annuity of thirty thousand francs so long as the
bachelor lived, it passed into his hands. This happened in 1806. And
in this year 1846 the hairdresser is still paying that annuity. He has
retired from business, he is seventy years old; the _ci-devant_ young
man is in his dotage; and as he has married his Mme. Evrard, he may last
for a long while yet. As the hairdresser gave the woman thirty thousand
francs, his bit of real estate has cost him, first and last, more than
a million, and the house at this day is worth eight or nine hundred
thousand francs.

Like the hairdresser, Remonencq the Auvergnat had overheard Brunner's
parting remark in the gateway on the day of Cecile's first interview
with that phoenix of eligible men. Remonencq at once longed to gain a
sight of Pons' museum; and as he lived on good terms with his neighbors
the Cibots, it was not very long before the opportunity came one day
when the friends were out. The sight of such treasures dazzled him; he
saw a "good haul," in dealers' phrase, which being interpreted means a
chance to steal a fortune. He had been meditating this for five or six
days.

"I am sho far from joking," he said, in reply to Mme. Cibot's remark,
"that we will talk the thing over; and if the good shentleman will take
an annuity, of fifty thousand francsh, I will shtand a hamper of wine,
if--"

"Fifty thousand francs!" interrupted the doctor; "what are you
thinking about? Why, if the good man is so well off as that, with me in
attendance, and Mme. Cibot to nurse him, he may get better--for liver
complaint is a disease that attacks strong constitutions."

"Fifty, did I shay? Why, a shentleman here, on your very doorshtep,
offered him sheven hundred thoushand francsh, shimply for the pictursh,
_fouchtra_!"

While Remonencq made this announcement, Mme. Cibot was looking at Dr.
Poulain. There was a strange expression in her eyes; the devil might
have kindled that sinister glitter in their tawny depths.

"Oh, come! we must not pay any attention to such idle tales," said the
doctor, well pleased, however, to find that his patient could afford to
pay for his visits.

"If my dear Mme. Cibot, here, would let me come and bring an ekshpert
(shinsh the shentleman upshtairs ish in bed), I will shertainly find the
money in a couple of hoursh, even if sheven hundred thousand francsh ish
in queshtion--"

"All right, my friend," said the doctor. "Now, Mme. Cibot, be careful
never to contradict the invalid. You must be prepared to be very patient
with him, for he will find everything irritating and wearisome, even
your services; nothing will please him; you must expect grumbling--"

"He will be uncommonly hard to please," said La Cibot.

"Look here, mind what I tell you," the doctor said in a tone of
authority, "M. Pons' life is in the hands of those that nurse him; I
shall come perhaps twice a day. I shall take him first on my round."

The doctor's profound indifference to the fate of a poor patient had
suddenly given place to a most tender solicitude when he saw that
the speculator was serious, and that there was a possible fortune in
question.

"He will be nursed like a king," said Madame Cibot, forcing up
enthusiasm. She waited till the doctor turned the corner into the Rue
Charlot; then she fell to talking again with the dealer in old iron.
Remonencq had finished smoking his pipe, and stood in the doorway of his
shop, leaning against the frame; he had purposely taken this position;
he meant the portress to come to him.

The shop had once been a cafe. Nothing had been changed there since the
Auvergnat discovered it and took over the lease; you could still read
"Cafe de Normandie" on the strip left above the windows in all
modern shops. Remonencq had found somebody, probably a housepainter's
apprentice, who did the work for nothing, to paint another inscription
in the remaining space below--"REMONENCQ," it ran, "DEALER IN MARINE
STORES, FURNITURE BOUGHT"--painted in small black letters. All the
mirrors, tables, seats, shelves, and fittings of the Cafe de Normandie
had been sold, as might have been expected, before Remonencq took
possession of the shop as it stood, paying a yearly rent of six hundred
francs for the place, with a back shop, a kitchen, and a single room
above, where the head-waiter used to sleep, for the house belonging to
the Cafe de Normandie was let separately. Of the former splendor of
the cafe, nothing now remained save the plain light green paper on the
walls, and the strong iron bolts and bars of the shop-front.

When Remonencq came hither in 1831, after the Revolution of July, he
began by displaying a selection of broken doorbells, cracked plates,
old iron, and the obsolete scales and weights abolished by a Government
which alone fails to carry out its own regulations, for pence and half
pence of the time of Louis XVI. are still in circulation. After a time
this Auvergnat, a match for five ordinary Auvergnats, bought up old
saucepans and kettles, old picture-frames, old copper, and chipped
china. Gradually, as the shop was emptied and filled, the quality of the
stock-in-trade improved, like Nicolet's farces. Remonencq persisted in
an unfailing and prodigiously profitable martingale, a "system" which
any philosophical idler may study as he watches the increasing value of
the stock kept by this intelligent class of trader. Picture-frames and
copper succeed to tin-ware, argand lamps, and damaged crockery; china
marks the next transition; and after no long tarriance in the "omnium
gatherum" stage, the shop becomes a museum. Some day or other the
dusty windows are cleaned, the interior is restored, the Auvergnat
relinquishes velveteen and jackets for a great-coat, and there he sits
like a dragon guarding his treasure, surrounded by masterpieces! He is a
cunning connoisseur by this time; he has increased his capital tenfold;
he is not to be cheated; he knows the tricks of the trade. The monster
among his treasures looks like some old hag among a score of young girls
that she offers to the public. Beauty and miracles of art are alike
indifferent to him; subtle and dense as he is, he has a keen eye to
profits, he talks roughly to those who know less than he does; he has
learned to act a part, he pretends to love his pictures, or again he
lets you know the price he himself gave for the things, he offers to let
you see the memoranda of the sale. He is a Proteus; in one hour he can
be Jocrisse, Janot, _Queue-rouge_, Mondor, Hapagon, or Nicodeme.

The third year found armor, and old pictures, and some tolerably fine
clocks in Remonencq's shop. He sent for his sister, and La Remonencq
came on foot all the way from Auvergne to take charge of the shop while
her brother was away. A big and very ugly woman, dressed like a Japanese
idol, a half-idiotic creature with a vague, staring gaze she would not
bate a centime of the prices fixed by her brother. In the intervals
of business she did the work of the house, and solved the apparently
insoluble problem--how to live on "the mists of the Seine." The
Remonencqs' diet consisted of bread and herrings, with the outside
leaves of lettuce or vegetable refuse selected from the heaps deposited
in the kennel before the doors of eating-houses. The two between them
did not spend more than fivepence a day on food (bread included), and La
Remonencq earned the money by sewing or spinning.

Remonencq came to Paris in the first instance to work as an errand-boy.
Between the years 1825 and 1831 he ran errands for dealers in
curiosities in the Boulevard Beaumarchais or coppersmiths in the Rue
de Lappe. It is the usual start in life in his line of business. Jews,
Normans, Auvergnats, and Savoyards, those four different races of men
all have the same instincts, and make their fortunes in the same way;
they spend nothing, make small profits, and let them accumulate at
compound interest. Such is their trading charter, and _that_ charter is
no delusion.

Remonencq at this moment had made it up with his old master Monistrol;
he did business with wholesale dealers, he was a _chineur_ (the
technical word), plying his trade in the _banlieue_, which, as everybody
knows, extends for some forty leagues round Paris.

After fourteen years of business, he had sixty thousand francs in hand
and a well-stocked shop. He lived in the Rue de Normandie because the
rent was low, but casual customers were scarce, most of his goods were
sold to other dealers, and he was content with moderate gains. All
his business transactions were carried on in the Auvergue dialect or
_charabia_, as people call it.

Remonencq cherished a dream! He wished to establish himself on a
boulevard, to be a rich dealer in curiosities, and do a direct trade
with amateurs some day. And, indeed, within him there was a formidable
man of business. His countenance was the more inscrutable because it was
glazed over by a deposit of dust and particles of metal glued together
by the sweat of his brow; for he did everything himself, and the use
and wont of bodily labor had given him something of the stoical
impassibility of the old soldiers of 1799.

In personal appearance Remonencq was short and thin; his little
eyes were set in his head in porcine fashion; a Jew's slyness and
concentrated greed looked out of those dull blue circles, though in his
case the false humility that masks the Hebrew's unfathomed contempt for
the Gentile was lacking.

The relations between the Cibots and the Remonencqs were those of
benefactors and recipients. Mme. Cibot, convinced that the Auvergnats
were wretchedly poor, used to let them have the remainder of "her
gentlemen's" dinners at ridiculous prices. The Remonencqs would buy
a pound of broken bread, crusts and crumbs, for a farthing, a
porringer-full of cold potatoes for something less, and other scraps in
proportion. Remonencq shrewdly allowed them to believe that he was
not in business on his own account, he worked for Monistrol, the rich
shopkeepers preyed upon him, he said, and the Cibots felt sincerely
sorry for Remonencq. The velveteen jacket, waistcoat, and trousers,
particularly affected by Auvergnats, were covered with patches of
Cibot's making, and not a penny had the little tailor charged for
repairs which kept the three garments together after eleven years of
wear.

Thus we see that all Jews are not in Israel.

"You are not laughing at me, Remonencq, are you?" asked the portress.
"Is it possible that M. Pons has such a fortune, living as he does?
There is not a hundred francs in the place--"

"Amateursh are all like that," Remonencq remarked sententiously.

"Then do you think that my gentleman has worth of seven hundred thousand
francs, eh?--"

"In pictures alone," continued Remonencq (it is needless, for the
sake of clearness in the story, to give any further specimens of his
frightful dialect). "If he would take fifty thousand francs for one up
there that I know of, I would find the money if I had to hang myself.
Do you remember those little frames full of enameled copper on crimson
velvet, hanging among the portraits?... Well, those are Petitot's
enamels; and there is a cabinet minister as used to be a druggist that
will give three thousand francs apiece for them."

La Cibot's eyes opened wide. "There are thirty of them in the pair of
frames!" she said.

"Very well, you can judge for yourself how much he is worth."

Mme. Cibot's head was swimming; she wheeled round. In a moment came the
thought that she would have a legacy, _she_ would sleep sound on old
Pons' will, like the other servant-mistresses whose annuities had
aroused such envy in the Marais. Her thoughts flew to some commune in
the neighborhood of Paris; she saw herself strutting proudly about her
house in the country, looking after her garden and poultry yard, ending
her days, served like a queen, along with her poor dear Cibot, who
deserved such good fortune, like all angelic creatures whom nobody knows
nor appreciates.

Her abrupt, unthinking movement told Remonencq that success was sure.
In the _chineur's_ way of business--the _chineur_, be it explained, goes
about the country picking up bargains at the expense of the ignorant--in
the _chineur's_ way of business, the one real difficulty is the problem
of gaining an entrance to a house. No one can imagine the Scapin's
roguery, the tricks of a Sganarelle, the wiles of a Dorine by which the
_chineur_ contrives to make a footing for himself. These comedies are
as good as a play, and founded indeed on the old stock theme of the
dishonesty of servants. For thirty francs in money or goods, servants,
and especially country servants, will sometimes conclude a bargain on
which the _chineur_ makes a profit of a thousand or two thousand francs.
If we could but know the history of such and such a service of Sevres
porcelain, _pate tendre_, we should find that all the intellect, all the
diplomatic subtlety displayed at Munster, Nimeguen, Utrecht, Ryswick,
and Vienna was surpassed by the _chineur_. His is the more frank comedy;
his methods of action fathom depths of personal interest quite as
profound as any that plenipotentiaries can explore in their difficult
search for any means of breaking up the best cemented alliances.

"I have set La Cibot nicely on fire," Remonencq told his sister, when
she came to take up her position again on the ramshackle chair. "And
now," he continued, "I shall go to consult the only man that knows, our
Jew, a good sort of Jew that did not ask more than fifteen per cent of
us for his money."

Remonencq had read La Cibot's heart. To will is to act with women of her
stamp. Let them see the end in view; they will stick at nothing to gain
it, and pass from scrupulous honesty to the last degree of scoundrelism
in the twinkling of an eye. Honesty, like most dispositions of mind, is
divided into two classes--negative and positive. La Cibot's honesty was
of the negative order; she and her like are honest until they see their
way clear to gain money belonging to somebody else. Positive honesty,
the honesty of the bank collector, can wade knee-deep through
temptations.

A torrent of evil thoughts invaded La Cibot's heart and brain so soon
as Remonencq's diabolical suggestion opened the flood-gates of
self-interest. La Cibot climbed, or, to be more accurate, fled up the
stairs, opened the door on the landing, and showed a face disguised in
false solicitude in the doorway of the room where Pons and Schmucke
were bemoaning themselves. As soon as she came in, Schmucke made her a
warning sign; for, true friend and sublime German that he was, he too
had read the doctor's eyes, and he was afraid that Mme. Cibot might
repeat the verdict. Mme. Cibot answered by a shake of the head
indicative of deep woe.

"Well, my dear monsieur," asked she, "how are you feeling?" She sat down
on the foot of the bed, hands on hips, and fixed her eyes lovingly upon
the patient; but what a glitter of metal there was in them, a terrible,
tiger-like gleam if any one had watched her.

"I feel very ill," answered poor Pons. "I have not the slightest
appetite left.--Oh! the world, the world!" he groaned, squeezing
Schmucke's hand. Schmucke was sitting by his bedside, and doubtless the
sick man was talking of the causes of his illness.--"I should have done
far better to follow your advice, my good Schmucke, and dined here every
day, and given up going into this society, that has fallen on me with
all its weight, like a tumbril cart crushing an egg! And why?"

"Come, come, don't complain, M. Pons," said La Cibot; "the doctor told
me just how it is--"

Schmucke tugged at her gown.--"And you will pull through," she
continued, "only we must take great care of you. Be easy, you have a
good friend beside you, and without boasting, a woman as will nurse you
like a mother nurses her first child. I nursed Cibot round once when
Dr. Poulain had given him over; he had the shroud up to his eyes, as the
saying is, and they gave him up for dead. Well, well, you have not come
to that yet, God be thanked, ill though you may be. Count on me; I would
pull you through all by myself, I would! Keep still, don't you fidget
like that."

She pulled the coverlet over the patient's hands as she spoke.

"There, sonny! M. Schmucke and I will sit up with you of nights. A
prince won't be no better nursed... and besides, you needn't refuse
yourself nothing that's necessary, you can afford it.--I have just been
talking things over with Cibot, for what would he do without me, poor
dear?--Well, and I talked him round; we are both so fond of you, that he
will let me stop up with you of a night. And that is a good deal to ask
of a man like him, for he is as fond of me as ever he was the day we
were married. I don't know how it is. It is the lodge, you see; we are
always there together! Don't you throw off the things like that!" she
cried, making a dash for the bedhead to draw the coverlet over Pons'
chest. "If you are not good, and don't do just as Dr. Poulain says--and
Dr. Poulain is the image of Providence on earth--I will have no more to
do with you. You must do as I tell you--"

"Yes, Montame Zipod, he vill do vat you dell him," put in Schmucke; "he
vants to lif for his boor friend Schmucke's sake, I'll pe pound."

"And of all things, don't fidget yourself," continued La Cibot, "for
your illness makes you quite bad enough without your making it worse for
want of patience. God sends us our troubles, my dear good gentlemen; He
punishes us for our sins. Haven't you nothing to reproach yourself with?
some poor little bit of a fault or other?"

The invalid shook his head.

"Oh! go on! You were young once, you had your fling, there is some
love-child of yours somewhere--cold, and starving, and homeless.... What
monsters men are! Their love doesn't last only for a day, and then in
a jiffy they forget, they don't so much as think of the child at the
breast for months.... Poor women!"

"But no one has ever loved me except Schmucke and my mother," poor Pons
broke in sadly.

"Oh! come, you aren't no saint! You were young in your time, and a
fine-looking young fellow you must have been at twenty. I should have
fallen in love with you myself, so nice as you are--"

"I always was as ugly as a toad," Pons put in desperately.

"You say that because you are modest; nobody can't say that you aren't
modest."

"My dear Mme. Cibot, _no_, I tell you. I always was ugly, and I never
was loved in my life."

"You, indeed!" cried the portress. "You want to make me believe at this
time of day that you are as innocent as a young maid at your time of
life. Tell that to your granny! A musician at a theatre too! Why, if a
woman told me that, I wouldn't believe her."

"Montame Zipod, you irritate him!" cried Schmucke, seeing that Pons was
writhing under the bedclothes.

"You hold your tongue too! You are a pair of old libertines. If you
were ugly, it don't make no difference; there was never so ugly a
saucepan-lid but it found a pot to match, as the saying is. There is
Cibot, he got one of the handsomest oyster-women in Paris to fall in
love with him, and you are infinitely better looking than him! You are
a nice pair, you are! Come, now, you have sown your wild oats, and God
will punish you for deserting your children, like Abraham--"

Exhausted though he was, the invalid gathered up all his strength to
make a vehement gesture of denial.

"Do lie quiet; if you have, it won't prevent you from living as long as
Methuselah."

"Then, pray let me be quiet!" groaned Pons. "I have never known what it
is to be loved. I have had no child; I am alone in the world."

"Really, eh?" returned the portress. "You are so kind, and that is what
women like, you see--it draws them--and it looked to me impossible that
when you were in your prime--"

"Take her away," Pons whispered to Schmucke; "she sets my nerves on
edge."

"Then there's M. Schmucke, he has children. You old bachelors are not
all like that--"

"_I!_" cried Schmucke, springing to his feet, "vy!--"

"Come, then, you have none to come after you either, eh? You both sprung
up out of the earth like mushrooms--"

"Look here, komm mit me," said Schmucke. The good German manfully took
Mme. Cibot by the waist and carried her off into the next room, in spite
of her exclamations.

"At your age, you would not take advantage of a defenceless woman!"
cried La Cibot, struggling in his arms.

"Don't make a noise!"

"You too, the better one of the two!" returned La Cibot. "Ah! it is my
fault for talking about love to two old men who have never had nothing
to do with women. I have roused your passions," cried she, as Schmucke's
eyes glittered with wrath. "Help! help! police!"

"You are a stoopid!" said the German. "Look here, vat tid de toctor
say?"

"You are a ruffian to treat me so," wept La Cibot, now released,--"me
that would go through fire and water for you both! Ah! well, well, they
say that that is the way with men--and true it is! There is my poor
Cibot, _he_ would not be rough with me like this.... And I treated you
like my children, for I have none of my own; and yesterday, yes, only
yesterday I said to Cibot, 'God knew well what He was doing, dear,'
I said, 'when He refused us children, for I have two children there
upstairs.' By the holy crucifix and the soul of my mother, that was what
I said to him--"

"Eh! but vat did der doctor say?" Schmucke demanded furiously, stamping
on the floor for the first time in his life.

"Well," said Mme. Cibot, drawing Schmucke into the dining-room, "he just
said this--that our dear, darling love lying ill there would die if he
wasn't carefully nursed; but I am here, in spite of all your brutality,
for brutal you were, you that I thought so gentle. And you are one
of that sort! Ah! now, you would not abuse a woman at your age, great
blackguard--"

"Placard? I? Vill you not oonderstand that I lof nopody but Bons?"

"Well and good, you will let me alone, won't you?" said she, smiling at
Schmucke. "You had better; for if Cibot knew that anybody had attempted
his honor, he would break every bone in his skin."

"Take crate care of him, dear Montame Zipod," answered Schmucke, and he
tried to take the portress' hand.

"Oh! look here now, _again_."

"Chust listen to me. You shall haf all dot I haf, gif ve safe him."

"Very well; I will go round to the chemist's to get the things that are
wanted; this illness is going to cost a lot, you see, sir, and what will
you do?"

"I shall vork; Bons shall be nursed like ein brince."

"So he shall, M. Schmucke; and look here, don't you trouble about
nothing. Cibot and I, between us, have saved a couple of thousand
francs; they are yours; I have been spending money on you this long
time, I have."

"Goot voman!" cried Schmucke, brushing the tears from his eyes. "Vat ein
heart!"

"Wipe your tears; they do me honor; this is my reward," said La Cibot,
melodramatically. "There isn't no more disinterested creature on earth
than me; but don't you go into the room with tears in your eyes, or M.
Pons will be thinking himself worse than he is."

Schmucke was touched by this delicate feeling. He took La Cibot's hand
and gave it a final squeeze.

"Spare me!" cried the ex-oysterseller, leering at Schmucke.

"Bons," the good German said when he returned "Montame Zipod is an
anchel; 'tis an anchel dat brattles, but an anchel all der same."

"Do you think so? I have grown suspicious in the past month," said the
invalid, shaking his head. "After all I have been through, one comes to
believe in nothing but God and my friend--"

"Get bedder, and ve vill lif like kings, all tree of us," exclaimed
Schmucke.



"Cibot!" panted the portress as she entered the lodge. "Oh, my dear, our
fortune is made. My two gentlemen haven't nobody to come after them, no
natural children, no nothing, in short! Oh, I shall go round to Ma'am
Fontaine's and get her to tell my fortune on the cards, then we shall
know how much we are going to have--"

"Wife," said the little tailor, "it's ill counting on dead men's shoes."

"Oh, I say, are _you_ going to worry me?" asked she, giving her spouse a
playful tap. "I know what I know! Dr. Poulain has given up M. Pons. And
we are going to be rich! My name will be down in the will.... I'll see
to that. Draw your needle in and out, and look after the lodge; you will
not do it for long now. We will retire, and go into the country, out
at Batignolles. A nice house and a fine garden; you will amuse yourself
with gardening, and I shall keep a servant!"

"Well, neighbor, and how are things going on upstairs?" The words were
spoken with the thick Auvergnat accent, and Remonencq put his head in at
the door. "Do you know what the collection is worth?"

"No, no, not yet. One can't go at that rate, my good man. I have begun,
myself, by finding out more important things--"

"More important!" exclaimed Remonencq; "why, what things can be more
important?"

"Come, let me do the steering, ragamuffin," said La Cibot
authoritatively.

"But thirty per cent on seven hundred thousand francs," persisted the
dealer in old iron; "you could be your own mistress for the rest of your
days on that."

"Be easy, Daddy Remonencq; when we want to know the value of the things
that the old man has got together, then we will see."

La Cibot went for the medicine ordered by Dr. Poulain, and put off her
consultation with Mme. Fontaine until the morrow; the oracle's faculties
would be fresher and clearer in the morning, she thought; and she would
go early, before everybody else came, for there was often a crowd at
Mme. Fontaine's.

Mme. Fontaine was at this time the oracle of the Marais; she had
survived the rival of forty years, the celebrated Mlle. Lenormand. No
one imagines the part that fortune-tellers play among Parisians of
the lower classes, nor the immense influence which they exert over the
uneducated; general servants, portresses, kept women, workmen, all
the many in Paris who live on hope, consult the privileged beings who
possess the mysterious power of reading the future.

The belief of the occult science is far more widely spread than
scholars, lawyers, doctors, magistrates, and philosophers imagine. The
instincts of the people are ineradicable. One among those instincts, so
foolishly styled "superstition," runs in the blood of the populace, and
tinges no less the intellects of better educated folk. More than one
French statesman has been known to consult the fortune-teller's cards.
For sceptical minds, astrology, in French, so oddly termed _astrologie
judiciare_, is nothing more than a cunning device for making a profit
out of one of the strongest of all the instincts of human nature--to
wit, curiosity. The sceptical mind consequently denies that there is any
connection between human destiny and the prognostications obtained by
the seven or eight principal methods known to astrology; and the
occult sciences, like many natural phenomena, are passed over by the
freethinker or the materialist philosopher, _id est_, by those who
believe in nothing but visible and tangible facts, in the results given
by the chemist's retort and the scales of modern physical science.
The occult sciences still exist; they are at work, but they make no
progress, for the greatest intellects of two centuries have abandoned
the field.

If you only look at the practical side of divination, it seems absurd
to imagine that events in a man's past life and secrets known only to
himself can be represented on the spur of the moment by a pack of cards
which he shuffles and cuts for the fortune-teller to lay out in piles
according to certain mysterious rules; but then the steam-engine was
condemned as absurd, aerial navigation is still said to be absurd, so
in their time were the inventions of gunpowder, printing, spectacles,
engraving, and that latest discovery of all--the daguerreotype. If any
man had come to Napoleon to tell him that a building or a figure is at
all times and in all places represented by an image in the atmosphere,
that every existing object has a spectral intangible double which may
become visible, the Emperor would have sent his informant to Charenton
for a lunatic, just as Richelieu before his day sent that Norman martyr,
Salomon de Caux, to the Bicetre for announcing his immense triumph, the
idea of navigation by steam. Yet Daguerre's discovery amounts to nothing
more nor less than this.

And if for some clairvoyant eyes God has written each man's destiny over
his whole outward and visible form, if a man's body is the record of his
fate, why should not the hand in a manner epitomize the body?--since the
hand represents the deed of man, and by his deeds he is known.

Herein lies the theory of palmistry. Does not Society imitate God? At
the sight of a soldier we can predict that he will fight; of a lawyer,
that he will talk; of a shoemaker, that he shall make shoes or boots; of
a worker of the soil, that he shall dig the ground and dung it; and is
it a more wonderful thing that such an one with the "seer's" gift should
foretell the events of a man's life from his hand?

To take a striking example. Genius is so visible in a man that a great
artist cannot walk about the streets of Paris but the most ignorant
people are conscious of his passing. He is a sun, as it were, in the
mental world, shedding light that colors everything in its path. And who
does not know an idiot at once by an impression the exact opposite of
the sensation of the presence of genius? Most observers of human nature
in general, and Parisian nature in particular, can guess the profession
or calling of the man in the street.

The mysteries of the witches' Sabbath, so wonderfully painted in the
sixteenth century, are no mysteries for us. The Egyptian ancestors of
that mysterious people of Indian origin, the gypsies of the present day,
simply used to drug their clients with hashish, a practice that
fully accounts for broomstick rides and flights up the chimney, the
real-seeming visions, so to speak, of old crones transformed into young
damsels, the frantic dances, the exquisite music, and all the fantastic
tales of devil-worship.

So many proven facts have been first discovered by occult science, that
some day we shall have professors of occult science, as we already have
professors of chemistry and astronomy. It is even singular that here in
Paris, where we are founding chairs of Mantchu and Slave and literatures
so little professable (to coin a word) as the literatures of the North
(which, so far from providing lessons, stand very badly in need of
them); when the curriculum is full of the everlasting lectures on
Shakespeare and the sixteenth century,--it is strange that some one has
not restored the teaching of the occult philosophies, once the glory of
the University of Paris, under the title of anthropology. Germany, so
childlike and so great, has outstripped France in this particular;
in Germany they have professors of a science of far more use than a
knowledge of the heterogeneous philosophies, which all come to the same
thing at bottom.

Once admit that certain beings have the power of discerning the future
in its germ-form of the Cause, as the great inventor sees a glimpse of
the industry latent in his invention, or a science in something that
happens every day unnoticed by ordinary eyes--once allow this, and there
is nothing to cause an outcry in such phenomena, no violent exception
to nature's laws, but the operation of a recognized faculty; possibly a
kind of mental somnambulism, as it were. If, therefore, the hypothesis
upon which the various ways of divining the future are based seem
absurd, the facts remain. Remark that it is not really more wonderful
that the seer should foretell the chief events of the future than that
he should read the past. Past and future, on the sceptic's system,
equally lie beyond the limits of knowledge. If the past has left traces
behind it, it is not improbable that future events have, as it were,
their roots in the present.

If a fortune-teller gives you minute details of past facts known only
to yourself, why should he not foresee the events to be produced by
existing causes? The world of ideas is cut out, so to speak, on the
pattern of the physical world; the same phenomena should be discernible
in both, allowing for the difference of the medium. As, for instance,
a corporeal body actually projects an image upon the atmosphere--a
spectral double detected and recorded by the daguerreotype; so also
ideas, having a real and effective existence, leave an impression, as it
were, upon the atmosphere of the spiritual world; they likewise produce
effects, and exist spectrally (to coin a word to express phenomena for
which no words exist), and certain human beings are endowed with the
faculty of discerning these "forms" or traces of ideas.

As for the material means employed to assist the seer--the objects
arranged by the hands of the consultant that the accidents of his life
may be revealed to him,--this is the least inexplicable part of the
process. Everything in the material world is part of a series of causes
and effects. Nothing happens without a cause, every cause is a part of a
whole, and consequently the whole leaves its impression on the
slightest accident. Rabelais, the greatest mind among moderns, resuming
Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Aristophanes, and Dante, pronounced three
centuries ago that "man is a microcosm"--a little world. Three hundred
years later, the great seer Swedenborg declared that "the world was
a man." The prophet and the precursor of incredulity meet thus in the
greatest of all formulas.

Everything in human life is predestined, so it is also with the
existence of the planet. The least event, the most futile phenomena,
are all subordinate parts of a scheme. Great things, therefore, great
designs, and great thoughts are of necessity reflected in the smallest
actions, and that so faithfully, that should a conspirator shuffle and
cut a pack of playing-cards, he will write the history of his plot for
the eyes of the seer styled gypsy, fortune-teller, charlatan, or what
not. If you once admit fate, which is to say, the chain of links of
cause and effect, astrology has a _locus standi_, and becomes what
it was of yore, a boundless science, requiring the same faculty of
deduction by which Cuvier became so great, a faculty to be exercised
spontaneously, however, and not merely in nights of study in the closet.

For seven centuries astrology and divination have exercised an influence
not only (as at present) over the uneducated, but over the greatest
minds, over kings and queens and wealthy people. Animal magnetism, one
of the great sciences of antiquity, had its origin in occult philosophy;
chemistry is the outcome of alchemy; phrenology and neurology are no
less the fruit of similar studies. The first illustrious workers in
these, to all appearance, untouched fields, made one mistake, the
mistake of all inventors; that is to say, they erected an absolute
system on a basis of isolated facts for which modern analysis as yet
cannot account. The Catholic Church, the law of the land, and modern
philosophy, in agreement for once, combined to prescribe, persecute, and
ridicule the mysteries of the Cabala as well as the adepts; the result
is a lamentable interregnum of a century in occult philosophy. But the
uneducated classes, and not a few cultivated people (women especially),
continue to pay a tribute to the mysterious power of those who can raise
the veil of the future; they go to buy hope, strength, and courage of
the fortune-teller; in other words, to ask of him all that religion
alone can give. So the art is still practised in spite of a certain
amount of risk. The eighteenth century encyclopaedists procured
tolerance for the sorcerer; he is no longer amenable to a court of law,
unless, indeed, he lends himself to fraudulent practices, and frightens
his "clients" to extort money from them, in which case he may be
prosecuted on a charge of obtaining money under false pretences.
Unluckily, the exercise of the sublime art is only too often used as a
method of obtaining money under false pretences, and for the following
reasons.

The seer's wonderful gifts are usually bestowed upon those who are
described by the epithets rough and uneducated. The rough and uneducated
are the chosen vessels into which God pours the elixirs at which we
marvel. From among the rough and uneducated, prophets arise--an Apostle
Peter, or St. Peter the Hermit. Wherever mental power is imprisoned,
and remains intact and entire for want of an outlet in conversation,
in politics, in literature, in the imaginings of the scholar, in the
efforts of the statesman, in the conceptions of the inventor, or the
soldier's toils of war; the fire within is apt to flash out in gleams
of marvelously vivid light, like the sparks hidden in an unpolished
diamond. Let the occasion come, and the spirit within kindles and glows,
finds wings to traverse space, and the god-like power of beholding
all things. The coal of yesterday under the play of some mysterious
influence becomes a radiant diamond. Better educated people, many-sided
and highly polished, continually giving out all that is in them, can
never exhibit this supreme power, save by one of the miracles which God
sometimes vouchsafes to work. For this reason the soothsayer is almost
always a beggar, whose mind is virgin soil, a creature coarse to all
appearance, a pebble borne along the torrent of misery and left in the
ruts of life, where it spends nothing of itself save in mere physical
suffering.

The prophet, the seer, in short, is some _Martin le Laboureur_ making
a Louis XVIII. tremble by telling him a secret known only to the king
himself; or it is a Mlle. Lenormand, or a domestic servant like Mme.
Fontaine, or again, perhaps it is some half-idiotic negress, some
herdsman living among his cattle, who receives the gift of vision; some
Hindoo fakir, seated by a pagoda, mortifying the flesh till the spirit
gains the mysterious power of the somnambulist.

Asia, indeed, through all time, has been the home of the heroes of
occult science. Persons of this kind, recovering their normal state,
are usually just as they were before. They fulfil, in some sort, the
chemical and physical functions of bodies which conduct electricity;
at times inert metal, at other times a channel filled with a mysterious
current. In their normal condition they are given to practices which
bring them before the magistrate, yea, verily, like the notorious
Balthazar, even unto the criminal court, and so to the hulks. You could
hardly find a better proof of the immense influence of fortune-telling
upon the working classes than the fact that poor Pons' life and death
hung upon the prediction that Mme. Fontaine was to make from the cards.

Although a certain amount of repetition is inevitable in a canvas so
considerable and so full of detail as a complete picture of French
society in the nineteenth century, it is needless to repeat the
description of Mme. Fontaine's den, already given in _Les Comediens
sans le savoir_; suffice it to say that Mme. Cibot used to go to
Mme. Fontaine's house in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple as regularly as
frequenters of the Cafe Anglais drop in at that restaurant for lunch.
Mme. Cibot, being a very old customer, often introduced young persons
and old gossips consumed with curiosity to the wise woman.

The old servant who acted as provost marshal flung open the door of
the sanctuary with no further ceremony than the remark, "It's Mme.
Cibot.--Come in, there's nobody here."

"Well, child, what can bring you here so early of a morning?" asked
the sorceress, as Mme. Fontaine might well be called, for she was
seventy-eight years old, and looked like one of the Parcae.

"Something has given me a turn," said La Cibot; "I want the _grand jeu_;
it is a question of my fortune." Therewith she explained her position,
and wished to know if her sordid hopes were likely to be realized.

"Do you know what the _grand jeu_ means?" asked Mme. Fontaine, with much
solemnity.

"No, I haven't never seen the trick, I am not rich enough.--A hundred
francs! It's not as if it cost so much! Where was the money to come
from? But now I can't help myself, I must have it."

"I don't do it often, child," returned Mme. Fontaine; "I only do it for
rich people on great occasions, and they pay me twenty-five louis for
doing it; it tires me, you see, it wears me out. The 'Spirit' rives my
inside, here. It is like going to the 'Sabbath,' as they used to say."

"But when I tell you that it means my whole future, my dear good Ma'am
Fontaine--"

"Well, as it is you that have come to consult me so often, I will submit
myself to the Spirit!" replied Mme. Fontaine, with a look of genuine
terror on her face.

She rose from her filthy old chair by the fireside, and went to a table
covered with a green cloth so worn that you could count the threads.
A huge toad sat dozing there beside a cage inhabited by a black
disheveled-looking fowl.

"Astaroth! here, my son!" she said, and the creature looked up
intelligently at her as she rapped him on the back with a long
knitting-needle.--"And you, Mademoiselle Cleopatre!--attention!" she
continued, tapping the ancient fowl on the beak.

Then Mme. Fontaine began to think; for several seconds she did not move;
she looked like a corpse, her eyes rolled in their sockets and grew
white; then she rose stiff and erect, and a cavernous voice cried:

"Here I am!"

Automatically she scattered millet for Cleopatre, took up the pack of
cards, shuffled them convulsively, and held them out to Mme. Cibot to
cut, sighing heavily all the time. At the sight of that image of Death
in the filthy turban and uncanny-looking bed-jacket, watching the black
fowl as it pecked at the millet-grains, calling to the toad Astaroth to
walk over the cards that lay out on the table, a cold thrill ran through
Mme. Cibot; she shuddered. Nothing but strong belief can give strong
emotions. An assured income, to be or not to be, that was the question.

The sorceress opened a magical work and muttered some unintelligible
words in a sepulchral voice, looked at the remaining millet-seeds, and
watched the way in which the toad retired. Then after seven or eight
minutes, she turned her white eyes on the cards and expounded them.

"You will succeed, although nothing in the affair will fall out as you
expect. You will have many steps to take, but you will reap the fruits
of your labors. You will behave very badly; it will be with you as it is
with all those who sit by a sick-bed and covet part of the inheritance.
Great people will help you in this work of wrongdoing. Afterwards in the
death agony you will repent. Two escaped convicts, a short man with red
hair and an old man with a bald head, will murder you for the sake of
the money you will be supposed to have in the village whither you will
retire with your second husband. Now, my daughter, it is still open to
you to choose your course."

The excitement which seemed to glow within, lighting up the bony hollows
about the eyes, was suddenly extinguished. As soon as the horoscope was
pronounced, Mme. Fontaine's face wore a dazed expression; she looked
exactly like a sleep-walker aroused from sleep, gazed about her with
an astonished air, recognized Mme. Cibot, and seemed surprised by her
terrified face.

"Well, child," she said, in a totally different voice, "are you
satisfied?"

Mme. Cibot stared stupidly at the sorceress, and could not answer.

"Ah! you would have the _grand jeu_; I have treated you as an old
acquaintance. I only want a hundred francs--"

"Cibot,--going to die?" gasped the portress.

"So I have been telling you very dreadful things, have I?" asked Mme.
Fontaine, with an extremely ingenuous air.

"Why, yes!" said La Cibot, taking a hundred francs from her pocket and
laying them down on the edge of the table. "Going to be murdered, think
of it--"

"Ah! there it is! You would have the _grand jeu_; but don't take on so,
all the folk that are murdered on the cards don't die."

"But is it possible, Ma'am Fontaine?"

"Oh, _I_ know nothing about it, my pretty dear! You would rap at the
door of the future; I pull the cord, and it came."

"_It_, what?" asked Mme. Cibot.

"Well, then, the Spirit!" cried the sorceress impatiently.

"Good-bye, Ma'am Fontaine," exclaimed the portress. "I did not know
what the _grand jeu_ was like. You have given me a good fright, that you
have."

"The mistress will not put herself in that state twice in a month," said
the servant, as she went with La Cibot to the landing. "She would do
herself to death if she did, it tires her so. She will eat cutlets now
and sleep for three hours afterwards."

Out in the street La Cibot took counsel of herself as she went
along, and, after the manner of all who ask for advice of any sort or
description, she took the favorable part of the prediction and rejected
the rest. The next day found her confirmed in her resolutions--she would
set all in train to become rich by securing a part of Pons' collection.
Nor for some time had she any other thought than the combination of
various plans to this end. The faculty of self-concentration seen in
rough, uneducated persons, explained on a previous page, the reserve
power accumulated in those whose mental energies are unworn by the daily
wear and tear of social life, and brought into action so soon as that
terrible weapon the "fixed idea" is brought into play,--all this was
pre-eminently manifested in La Cibot. Even as the "fixed idea" works
miracles of evasion, and brings forth prodigies of sentiment, so greed
transformed the portress till she became as formidable as a Nucingen
at bay, as subtle beneath her seeming stupidity as the irresistible La
Palferine.

About seven o'clock one morning, a few days afterwards, she saw
Remonencq taking down his shutters. She went across to him.

"How could one find out how much the things yonder in my gentlemen's
rooms are worth?" she asked in a wheedling tone.

"Oh! that is quite easy," replied the owner of the old curiosity shop.
"If you will play fair and above board with me, I will tell you of
somebody, a very honest man, who will know the value of the pictures to
a farthing--"

"Who?"

"M. Magus, a Jew. He only does business to amuse himself now."

Elie Magus has appeared so often in the _Comedie Humaine_, that it is
needless to say more of him here. Suffice it to add that he had retired
from business, and as a dealer was following the example set by Pons
the amateur. Well-known valuers like Henry, Messrs. Pigeot and Moret,
Theret, Georges, and Roehn, the experts of the Musee, in fact, were but
children compared with Elie Magus. He could see a masterpiece beneath
the accumulated grime of a century; he knew all schools, and the
handwriting of all painters.

He had come to Paris from Bordeaux, and so long ago as 1835 he had
retired from business without making any change for the better in his
dress, so faithful is the race to old tradition. The persecutions of the
Middle Ages compelled them to wear rags, to snuffle and whine and groan
over their poverty in self-defence, till the habits induced by the
necessities of other times have come to be, as usual, instinctive, a
racial defect.

Elie Magus had amassed a vast fortune by buying and selling diamonds,
pictures, lace, enamels, delicate carvings, old jewelry, and rarities of
all kinds, a kind of commerce which has developed enormously of late, so
much so indeed that the number of dealers has increased tenfold during
the last twenty years in this city of Paris, whither all the curiosities
in the world come to rub against one another. And for pictures there are
but three marts in the world--Rome, London, and Paris.

Elie Magus lived in the Chausee des Minimes, a short, broad street
leading to the Place Royale. He had bought the house, an old-fashioned
mansion, for a song, as the saying is, in 1831. Yet there were sumptuous
apartments within it, decorated in the time of Louis XV.; for it had
once been the Hotel Maulaincourt, built by the great President of the
Cour des Aides, and its remote position had saved it at the time of the
Revolution.

You may be quite sure that the old Jew had sound reasons for buying
house property, contrary to the Hebrew law and custom. He had ended, as
most of us end, with a hobby that bordered on a craze. He was as miserly
as his friend, the late lamented Gobseck; but he had been caught by the
snare of the eyes, by the beauty of the pictures in which he dealt. As
his taste grew more and more fastidious, it became one of the passions
which princes alone can indulge when they are wealthy and art-lovers. As
the second King of Prussia found nothing that so kindled enthusiasm as
the spectacle of a grenadier over six feet high, and gave extravagant
sums for a new specimen to add to his living museum of a regiment, so
the retired picture-dealer was roused to passion-pitch only by some
canvas in perfect preservation, untouched since the master laid down
the brush; and what was more, it must be a picture of the painter's best
time. No great sales, therefore, took place but Elie Magus was there;
every mart knew him; he traveled all over Europe. The ice-cold,
money-worshiping soul in him kindled at the sight of a perfect work
of art, precisely as a libertine, weary of fair women, is roused from
apathy by the sight of a beautiful girl, and sets out afresh upon the
quest of flawless loveliness. A Don Juan among fair works of art, a
worshiper of the Ideal, Elie Magus had discovered joys that transcend
the pleasure of a miser gloating over his gold--he lived in a seraglio
of great paintings.

His masterpieces were housed as became the children of princes; the
whole first floor of the great old mansion was given up to them.
The rooms had been restored under Elie Magus' orders, and with what
magnificence!

The windows were hung with the richest Venetian brocade; the most
splendid carpets from the Savonnerie covered the parquetry flooring.
The frames of the pictures, nearly a hundred in number, were magnificent
specimens, regilded cunningly by Servais, the one gilder in Paris whom
Elie Magus thought sufficiently painstaking; the old Jew himself had
taught him to use the English leaf, which is infinitely superior to that
produced by French gold-beaters. Servais is among gilders as Thouvenin
among bookbinders--an artist among craftsmen, making his work a labor
of love. Every window in that gallery was protected by iron-barred
shutters. Elie Magus himself lived in a couple of attics on the floor
above; the furniture was wretched, the rooms were full of rags, and the
whole place smacked of the Ghetto; Elie Magus was finishing his days
without any change in his life.

The whole of the ground floor was given up to the picture trade (for the
Jew still dealt in works of art). Here he stored his canvases, here also
packing-cases were stowed on their arrival from other countries; and
still there was room for a vast studio, where Moret, most skilful of
restorers of pictures, a craftsman whom the Musee ought to employ, was
almost always at work for Magus. The rest of the rooms on the ground
floor were given up to Magus' daughter, the child of his old age, a
Jewess as beautiful as a Jewess can be when the Semitic type reappears
in its purity and nobility in a daughter of Israel. Noemi was guarded by
two servants, fanatical Jewesses, to say nothing of an advanced-guard,
a Polish Jew, Abramko by name, once involved in a fabulous manner
in political troubles, from which Elie Magus saved him as a business
speculation. Abramko, porter of the silent, grim, deserted mansion,
divided his office and his lodge with three remarkably ferocious
animals--an English bull-dog, a Newfoundland dog, and another of the
Pyrenean breed.

Behold the profound observations of human nature upon which Elie Magus
based his feeling of security, for secure he felt; he left home without
misgivings, slept with both ears shut, and feared no attempt upon his
daughter (his chief treasure), his pictures, or his money. In the first
place, Abramko's salary was increased every year by two hundred francs
so long as his master should live; and Magus, moreover, was training
Abramko as a money-lender in a small way. Abramko never admitted anybody
until he had surveyed them through a formidable grated opening. He was
a Hercules for strength, he worshiped Elie Magus, as Sancho Panza
worshiped Don Quixote. All day long the dogs were shut up without food;
at nightfall Abramko let them loose; and by a cunning device the old Jew
kept each animal at his post in the courtyard or the garden by hanging
a piece of meat just out of reach on the top of a pole. The animals
guarded the house, and sheer hunger guarded the dogs. No odor that
reached their nostrils could tempt them from the neighborhood of that
piece of meat; they would not have left their places at the foot of the
poles for the most engaging female of the canine species. If a stranger
by any chance intruded, the dogs suspected him of ulterior designs upon
their rations, which were only taken down in the morning by Abramko
himself when he awoke. The advantages of this fiendish scheme are
patent. The animals never barked, Magus' ingenuity had made savages of
them; they were treacherous as Mohicans. And now for the result.

One night burglars, emboldened by the silence, decided too hastily that
it would be easy enough to "clean out" the old Jew's strong box. One of
their number told off to advance to the assault scrambled up the garden
wall and prepared to descend. This the bull-dog allowed him to do. The
animal, knowing perfectly well what was coming, waited for the burglar
to reach the ground; but when that gentleman directed a kick at him, the
bull-dog flew at the visitor's shins, and, making but one bite of it,
snapped the ankle-bone clean in two. The thief had the courage to tear
him away, and returned, walking upon the bare bone of the mutilated
stump till he reached the rest of the gang, when he fell fainting, and
they carried him off. The _Police News_, of course, did not fail to
report this delightful night incident, but no one believed in it.

Magus at this time was seventy-five years old, and there was no reason
why he should not live to a hundred. Rich man though he was, he lived
like the Remonencqs. His necessary expenses, including the money he
lavished on his daughter, did not exceed three thousand francs. No
life could be more regular; the old man rose as soon as it was light,
breakfasted on bread rubbed with a clove of garlic, and ate no more food
until dinner-time. Dinner, a meal frugal enough for a convent, he took
at home. All the forenoons he spent among his treasures, walking up
and down the gallery where they hung in their glory. He would dust
everything himself, furniture and pictures; he never wearied of
admiring. Then he would go downstairs to his daughter, drink deep of
a father's happiness, and start out upon his walks through Paris, to
attend sales or visit exhibitions and the like.

If Elie Magus found a great work of art under the right conditions, the
discovery put new life into the man; here was a bit of sharp practice, a
bargain to make, a battle of Marengo to win. He would pile ruse on ruse
to buy the new sultana as cheaply as possible. Magus had a map of Europe
on which all great pictures were marked; his co-religionists in every
city spied out business for him, and received a commission on the
purchase. And then, what rewards for all his pains! The two lost
Raphaels so earnestly sought after by Raphael lovers are both in his
collection. Elie Magus owns the original portrait of _Giorgione's
Mistress_, the woman for whom the painter died; the so-called originals
are merely copies of the famous picture, which is worth five hundred
thousand francs, according to its owner's estimation. This Jew possesses
Titian's masterpiece, an _Entombment_ painted for Charles V., sent by
the great man to the great Emperor with a holograph letter, now fastened
down upon the lower part of the canvas. And Magus has yet another
Titian, the original sketch from which all the portraits of Philip II.
were painted. His remaining ninety-seven pictures are all of the same
rank and distinction. Wherefore Magus laughs at our national collection,
raked by the sunlight which destroys the fairest paintings, pouring in
through panes of glass that act as lenses. Picture galleries can only be
lighted from above; Magus opens and closes his shutters himself; he is
as careful of his pictures as of his daughter, his second idol. And well
the old picture-fancier knows the laws of the lives of pictures. To hear
him talk, a great picture has a life of its own; it is changeable,
it takes its beauty from the color of the light. Magus talks of his
paintings as Dutch fanciers used to talk of their tulips; he will come
home on purpose to see some one picture in the hour of its glory, when
the light is bright and clean.

And Magus himself was a living picture among the motionless figures
on the wall--a little old man, dressed in a shabby overcoat, a silk
waistcoat, renewed twice in a score of years, and a very dirty pair of
trousers, with a bald head, a face full of deep hollows, a wrinkled,
callous skin, a beard that had a trick of twitching its long white
bristles, a menacing pointed chin, a toothless mouth, eyes bright as the
eyes of his dogs in the yard, and a nose like an obelisk--there he stood
in his gallery smiling at the beauty called into being by genius. A Jew
surrounded by his millions will always be one of the finest spectacles
which humanity can give. Robert Medal, our great actor, cannot rise to
this height of poetry, sublime though he is.

Paris of all the cities of the world holds most of such men as Magus,
strange beings with a strange religion in their heart of hearts.
The London "eccentric" always finds that worship, like life, brings
weariness and satiety in the end; the Parisian monomaniac lives
cheerfully in concubinage with his crotchet to the last.

Often shall you meet in Paris some Pons, some Elie Magus, dressed badly
enough, with his face turned from the rising sun (like the countenance
of the perpetual secretary of the Academie), apparently heeding nothing,
conscious of nothing, paying no attention to shop-windows nor to fair
passers-by, walking at random, so to speak, with nothing in his pockets,
and to all appearance an equally empty head. Do you ask to what Parisian
tribe this manner of man belongs? He is a collector, a millionaire, one
of the most impassioned souls upon earth; he and his like are capable of
treading the miry ways that lead to the police-court if so they may gain
possession of a cup, a picture, or some such rare unpublished piece as
Elie Magus once picked up one memorable day in Germany.

This was the expert to whom Remonencq with much mystery conducted La
Cibot. Remonencq always asked advice of Elie Magus when he met him
in the streets; and more than once Magus had lent him money through
Abramko, knowing Remonencq's honesty. The Chaussee des Minimes is close
to the Rue de Normandie, and the two fellow-conspirators reached the
house in ten minutes.

"You will see the richest dealer in curiosities, the greatest
connoisseur in Paris," Remonencq had said. And Mme. Cibot, therefore,
was struck dumb with amazement to be confronted with a little old man in
a great-coat too shabby for Cibot to mend, standing watching a painter
at work upon an old picture in the chilly room on the vast ground floor.
The old man's eyes, full of cold feline malignance, were turned upon
her, and La Cibot shivered.

"What do you want, Remonencq?" asked this person.

"It is a question of valuing some pictures; there is nobody but you in
Paris who can tell a poor tinker-fellow like me how much he may give
when he has not thousands to spend, like you."

"Where is it?"

"Here is the portress of the house where the gentleman lives; she does
for him, and I have arranged with her--"

"Who is the owner?"

"M. Pons!" put in La Cibot.

"Don't know the name," said Magus, with an innocent air, bringing down
his foot very gently upon his artist's toes.

Moret the painter, knowing the value of Pons' collection, had looked up
suddenly at the name. It was a move too hazardous to try with any one
but Remonencq and La Cibot, but the Jew had taken the woman's measure
at sight, and his eye was as accurate as a jeweler's scales. It was
impossible that either of the couple should know how often Magus and old
Pons had matched their claws. And, in truth, both rabid amateurs were
jealous of each other. The old Jew had never hoped for a sight of
a seraglio so carefully guarded; it seemed to him that his head was
swimming. Pons' collection was the one private collection in Paris which
could vie with his own. Pons' idea had occurred to Magus twenty years
later; but as a dealer-amateur the door of Pons' museum had been
closed to him, as for Dusommerard. Pons and Magus had at heart the same
jealousy. Neither of them cared about the kind of celebrity dear to the
ordinary collector. And now for Elie Magus came his chance to see the
poor musician's treasures! An amateur of beauty hiding in a boudoir or a
stolen glance at a mistress concealed from him by his friend might feel
as Elie Magus felt at that moment.

La Cibot was impressed by Remonencq's respect for this singular person;
real power, moreover, even when it cannot be explained, is always felt;
the portress was supple and obedient, she dropped the autocratic tone
which she was wont to use in her lodge and with the tenants, accepted
Magus' conditions, and agreed to admit him into Pons' museum that very
day.

So the enemy was to be brought into the citadel, and a stab dealt to
Pons' very heart. For ten years Pons had carried his keys about with
him; he had forbidden La Cibot to allow any one, no matter whom, to
cross his threshold; and La Cibot had so far shared Schmucke's opinions
of _bric-a-brac_, that she had obeyed him. The good Schmucke, by
speaking of the splendors as "chimcracks," and deploring his friend's
mania, had taught La Cibot to despise the old rubbish, and so secured
Pons' museum from invasion for many a long year.

When Pons took to his bed, Schmucke filled his place at the theatre and
gave lessons for him at his boarding-schools. He did his utmost to do
the work of two; but Pons' sorrows weighing heavily upon his mind, the
task took all his strength. He only saw his friend in the morning, and
again at dinnertime. His pupils and the people at the theatre, seeing
the poor German look so unhappy, used to ask for news of Pons; and so
great was his grief, that the indifferent would make the grimaces
of sensibility which Parisians are wont to reserve for the greatest
calamities. The very springs of life had been attacked, the good German
was suffering from Pons' pain as well as from his own. When he gave a
music lesson, he spent half the time in talking of Pons, interrupting
himself to wonder whether his friend felt better to-day, and the little
school-girls listening heard lengthy explanations of Pons' symptoms.
He would rush over to the Rue de Normandie in the interval between two
lessons for the sake of a quarter of an hour with Pons.

When at last he saw that their common stock was almost exhausted, when
Mme. Cibot (who had done her best to swell the expenses of the illness)
came to him and frightened him; then the old music-master felt that he
had courage of which he never thought himself capable--courage that rose
above his anguish. For the first time in his life he set himself to earn
money; money was needed at home. One of the school-girl pupils, really
touched by their troubles, asked Schmucke how he could leave his friend
alone. "Montemoiselle," he answered, with the sublime smile of those who
think no evil, "ve haf Montame Zipod, ein dreasure, montemoiselle, ein
bearl! Bons is nursed like ein brince."

So while Schmucke trotted about the streets, La Cibot was mistress
of the house and ruled the invalid. How should Pons superintend his
self-appointed guardian angel, when he had taken no solid food for a
fortnight, and lay there so weak and helpless that La Cibot was obliged
to lift him up and carry him to the sofa while she made the bed?

La Cibot's visit to Elie Magus was paid (as might be expected) while
Schmucke breakfasted. She came in again just as the German was bidding
his friend good-bye; for since she learned that Pons possessed a
fortune, she never left the old bachelor; she brooded over him and his
treasures like a hen. From the depths of a comfortable easy-chair at
the foot of the bed she poured forth for Pons' delectation the gossip
in which women of her class excel. With Machiavelian skill, she had
contrived to make Pons think that she was indispensable to him; she
coaxed and she wheedled, always uneasy, always on the alert. Mme.
Fontaine's prophecy had frightened La Cibot; she vowed to herself that
she would gain her ends by kindness. She would sleep secure on M. Pons'
legacy, but her rascality should keep within the limits of the law. For
ten years she had not suspected the value of Pons' collection; she had
a clear record behind her of ten years of devotion, honesty, and
disinterestedness; it was a magnificent investment, and now she proposed
to realize. In one day, Remonencq's hint of money had hatched the
serpent's egg, the craving for riches that had lain dormant within her
for twenty years. Since she had cherished that craving, it had grown in
force with the ferment of all the evil that lurks in the corners of the
heart. How she acted upon the counsels whispered by the serpent will
presently be seen.

"Well?" she asked of Schmucke, "has this cherub of ours had plenty to
drink? Is he better?"

"He is not doing fery vell, tear Montame Zipod, not fery vell," said
poor Schmucke, brushing away the tears from his eyes.

"Pooh! you make too much of it, my dear M. Schmucke; we must take things
as we find them; Cibot might be at death's door, and I should not take
it to heart as you do. Come! the cherub has a good constitution. And he
has been steady, it seems, you see; you have no idea what an age sober
people live. He is very ill, it is true, but with all the care I take of
him, I shall bring him round. Be easy, look after your affairs, I will
keep him company and see that he drinks his pints of barley water."

"Gif you vere not here, I should die of anxiety--" said Schmucke,
squeezing his kind housekeeper's hand in both his own to express his
confidence in her.

La Cibot wiped her eyes as she went back to the invalid's room.

"What is the matter, Mme. Cibot?" asked Pons.

"It is M. Schmucke that has upset me; he is crying as if you were dead,"
said she. "If you are not well, you are not so bad yet that nobody need
cry over you; but it has given me such a turn! Oh dear! oh dear! how
silly it is of me to get so fond of people, and to think more of you
than of Cibot! For, after all, you aren't nothing to me, you are only
my brother by Adam's side; and yet, whenever you are in the question,
it puts me in such a taking, upon my word it does! I would cut off my
hand--my left hand, of course--to see you coming and going, eating your
meals, and screwing bargains out of dealers as usual. If I had had
a child of my own, I think I should have loved it as I love you, eh!
There, take a drink, dearie; come now, empty the glass. Drink it off,
monsieur, I tell you! The first thing Dr. Poulain said was, 'If M. Pons
has no mind to go to Pere Lachaise, he ought to drink as many buckets
full of water in a day as an Auvergnat will sell.' So, come now,
drink--"

"But I do drink, Cibot, my good woman; I drink and drink till I am
deluged--"

"That is right," said the portress, as she took away the empty glass.
"That is the way to get better. Dr. Poulain had another patient ill of
your complaint; but he had nobody to look after him, his children left
him to himself, and he died because he didn't drink enough--so you must
drink, honey, you see--he died and they buried him two months ago. And
if you were to die, you know, you would drag down old M. Schmucke with
you, sir. He is like a child. Ah! he loves you, he does, the dear lamb
of a man; no woman never loved a man like that! He doesn't care for meat
nor drink; he has grown as thin as you are in the last fortnight, and
you are nothing but skin and bones.--It makes me jealous to see it,
for I am very fond of you; but not to that degree; I haven't lost my
appetite, quite the other way; always going up and down stairs, till my
legs are so tired that I drop down of an evening like a lump of lead.
Here am I neglecting my poor Cibot for you; Mlle. Remonencq cooks his
victuals for him, and he goes on about it and says that nothing is
right! At that I tell him that one ought to put up with something for
the sake of other people, and that you are so ill that I cannot leave
you. In the first place, you can't afford a nurse. And before I would
have a nurse here!--I have done for you these ten years; they want wine
and sugar, and foot-warmers, and all sorts of comforts. And they rob
their patients unless the patients leave them something in their wills.
Have a nurse in here to-day, and to-morrow we should find a picture or
something or other gone--"

"Oh! Mme. Cibot!" cried Pons, quite beside himself, "do not leave me! No
one must touch anything--"

"I am here," said La Cibot; "so long as I have the strength I shall be
here.--Be easy. There was Dr. Poulain wanting to get a nurse for you;
perhaps he has his eye on your treasures. I just snubbed him, I did.
'The gentleman won't have any one but me,' I told him. 'He is used to
me, and I am used to him.' So he said no more. A nurse, indeed! They are
all thieves; I hate that sort of woman, I do. Here is a tale that will
show you how sly they are. There was once an old gentleman--it was Dr.
Poulain himself, mind you, who told me this--well, a Mme. Sabatier, a
woman of thirty-six that used to sell slippers at the Palais Royal--you
remember the Galerie at the Palais that they pulled down?"

Pons nodded.

"Well, at that time she had not done very well; her husband used to
drink, and died of spontaneous imbustion; but she had been a fine woman
in her time, truth to tell, not that it did her any good, though she
had friends among the lawyers. So, being hard up, she became a monthly
nurse, and lived in the Rue Barre-du-Bec. Well, she went out to nurse
an old gentleman that had a disease of the lurinary guts (saving your
presence); they used to tap him like an artesian well, and he needed
such care that she used to sleep on a truckle-bed in the same room with
him. You would hardly believe such a thing!--'Men respect nothing,'
you'll tell me, 'so selfish as they are.' Well, she used to talk with
him, you understand; she never left him, she amused him, she told him
stories, she drew him on to talk (just as we are chatting away together
now, you and I, eh?), and she found out that his nephews--the old
gentleman had nephews--that his nephews were wretches; they had worried
him, and final end of it, they had brought on this illness. Well, my
dear sir, she saved his life, he married her, and they have a fine
child; Ma'am Bordevin, the butcher's wife in the Rue Charlot, a relative
of hers, stood godmother. There is luck for you!

"As for me, I am married; and if I have no children, I don't mind saying
that it is Cibot's fault; he is too fond of me, but if I cared--never
mind. What would have become of me and my Cibot if we had had a family,
when we have not a penny to bless ourselves with after thirty years' of
faithful service? I have not a farthing belonging to nobody else, that
is what comforts me. I have never wronged nobody.--Look here, suppose
now (there is no harm in supposing when you will be out and about again
in six weeks' time, and sauntering along the boulevard); well, suppose
that you had put me down in your will; very good, I shouldn't never rest
till I had found your heirs and given the money back. Such is my horror
of anything that is not earned by the sweat of my brow.

"You will say to me, 'Why, Mme. Cibot, why should you worry yourself
like that? You have fairly earned the money; you looked after your two
gentlemen as if they had been your children; you saved them a thousand
francs a year--' (for there are plenty, sir, you know, that would have
had their ten thousand francs put out to interest by now if they had
been in my place)--'so if the worthy gentleman leaves you a trifle of an
annuity, it is only right.'--Suppose they told me that. Well, now; I am
not thinking of myself.--I cannot think how some women can do a kindness
thinking of themselves all the time. It is not doing good, sir, is it? I
do not go to church myself, I haven't the time; but my conscience tells
me what is right.... Don't you fidget like that, my lamb!--Don't scratch
yourself!... Dear me, how yellow you grow! So yellow you are--quite
brown. How funny it is that one can come to look like a lemon in three
weeks!... Honesty is all that poor folk have, and one must surely have
something! Suppose that you were just at death's door, I should be
the first to tell you that you ought to leave all that you have to M.
Schmucke. It is your duty, for he is all the family you have. He loves
you, he does, as a dog loves his master."

"Ah! yes," said Pons; "nobody else has ever loved me all my life long--"

"Ah! that is not kind of you, sir," said Mme. Cibot; "then I do not love
you, I suppose?"

"I do not say so, my dear Mme. Cibot."

"Good. You take me for a servant, do you, a common servant, as if
I hadn't no heart! Goodness me! for eleven years you do for two old
bachelors, you think of nothing but their comfort. I have turned half a
score of greengrocers' shops upside down for you, I have talked people
round to get you good Brie cheese; I have gone down as far as the market
for fresh butter for you; I have taken such care of things that nothing
of yours hasn't been chipped nor broken in all these ten years; I have
just treated you like my own children; and then to hear a 'My dear Mme.
Cibot,' that shows that there is not a bit of feeling for you in the
heart of an old gentleman that you have cared for like a king's son!
for the little King of Rome was not so well looked after. He died in
his prime; there is proof for you.... Come, sir, you are unjust! You are
ungrateful! It is because I am only a poor portress. Goodness me! are
_you_ one of those that think we are dogs?--"

"But, my dear Mme. Cibot--"

"Indeed, you that know so much, tell me why we porters are treated like
this, and are supposed to have no feelings; people look down on us in
these days when they talk of Equality!--As for me, am I not as good
as another woman, I that was one of the finest women in Paris, and was
called _La belle Ecaillere_, and received declarations seven or eight
times a day? And even now if I liked--Look here, sir, you know that
little scrubby marine store-dealer downstairs? Very well, he would marry
me any day, if I were a widow that is, with his eyes shut; he has had
them looking wide open in my direction so often; he is always saying,
'Oh! what fine arms you have, Ma'am Cibot!--I dreamed last night that
it was bread and I was butter, and I was spread on the top.' Look, sir,
there is an arm!"

She rolled up her sleeve and displayed the shapeliest arm imaginable, as
white and fresh as her hand was red and rough; a plump, round, dimpled
arm, drawn from its merino sheath like a blade from the scabbard to
dazzle Pons, who looked away.

"For every oyster the knife opened, the arm has opened a heart! Well,
it belongs to Cibot, and I did wrong when I neglected him, poor dear, HE
would throw himself over a precipice at a word from me; while you, sir,
that call me 'My dear Mme. Cibot' when I do impossible things for you--"

"Do just listen to me," broke in the patient; "I cannot call you my
mother, nor my wife--"

"No, never in all my born days will I take again to anybody--"

"Do let me speak!" continued Pons. "Let me see; I put M. Schmucke
first--"

"M. Schmucke! there is a heart for you," cried La Cibot. "Ah! he loves
me, but then he is poor. It is money that deadens the heart; and you
are rich! Oh, well, take a nurse, you will see what a life she will lead
you; she will torment you, you will be like a cockchafer on a string.
The doctor will say that you must have plenty to drink, and she will do
nothing but feed you. She will bring you to your grave and rob you. You
do not deserve to have a Mme. Cibot!--there! When Dr. Poulain comes, ask
him for a nurse."

"Oh fiddlestickend!" the patient cried angrily. "_Will_ you listen to
me? When I spoke of my friend Schmucke, I was not thinking of women. I
know quite well that no one cares for me so sincerely as you do, you and
Schmucke--"

"Have the goodness not to irritate yourself in this way!" exclaimed
La Cibot, plunging down upon Pons and covering him by force with the
bedclothes.

"How should I not love you?" said poor Pons.

"You love me, really?... There, there, forgive me, sir!" she said,
crying and wiping her eyes. "Ah, yes, of course, you love me, as you
love a servant, that is the way!--a servant to whom you throw an annuity
of six hundred francs like a crust you fling into a dog's kennel--"

"Oh! Mme. Cibot," cried Pons, "for what do you take me? You do not know
me."

"Ah! you will care even more than that for me," she said, meeting Pons'
eyes. "You will love your kind old Cibot like a mother, will you not?
A mother, that is it! I am your mother; you are both of you my
children.... Ah, if I only knew them that caused you this sorrow, I
would do that which would bring me into the police-courts, and even to
prison; I would tear their eyes out! Such people deserve to die at the
Barriere Saint-Jacques, and that is too good for such scoundrels. ... So
kind, so good as you are (for you have a heart of gold), you were sent
into the world to make some woman happy!... Yes, you would have her
happy, as anybody can see; you were cut out for that. In the very
beginning, when I saw how you were with M. Schmucke, I said to myself,
'M. Pons has missed the life he was meant for; he was made to be a good
husband.' Come, now, you like women."

"Ah, yes," said Pons, "and no woman has been mine."

"Really?" exclaimed La Cibot, with a provocative air as she came nearer
and took Pons' hand in hers. "Do you not know what it is to love a woman
that will do anything for her lover? Is it possible? If I were in your
place, I should not wish to leave this world for another until I had
known the greatest happiness on earth!... Poor dear! If I was now what I
was once, I would leave Cibot for you! upon my word, I would! Why, with
a nose shaped like that--for you have a fine nose--how did you manage
it, poor cherub?... You will tell me that 'not every woman knows a man
when she sees him'; and a pity it is that they marry so at random as
they do, it makes you sorry to see it.--Now, for my own part, I
should have thought that you had had mistresses by the dozen--dancers,
actresses, and duchesses, for you went out so much. ... When you
went out, I used to say to Cibot, 'Look! there is M. Pons going
a-gallivanting,' on my word, I did, I was so sure that women ran after
you. Heaven made you for love.... Why, my dear sir, I found that out
the first day that you dined at home, and you were so touched with
M. Schmucke's pleasure. And next day M. Schmucke kept saying to me,
'Montame Zipod, he haf tined hier,' with the tears in his eyes, till I
cried along with him like a fool, as I am. And how sad he looked when
you took to gadding abroad again and dining out! Poor man, you never saw
any one so disconsolate! Ah! you are quite right to leave everything to
him. Dear worthy man, why he is as good as a family to you, he is!
Do not forget him; for if you do, God will not receive you into his
Paradise, for those that have been ungrateful to their friends and left
them no _rentes_ will not go to heaven."

In vain Pons tried to put in a word; La Cibot talked as the wind blows.
Means of arresting steam-engines have been invented, but it would tax
a mechanician's genius to discover any plan for stopping a portress'
tongue.

"I know what you mean," continued she. "But it does not kill you, my
dear gentleman, to make a will when you are out of health; and in your
place I might not leave that poor dear alone, for fear that something
might happen; he is like God Almighty's lamb, he knows nothing about
nothing, and I should not like him to be at the mercy of those sharks
of lawyers and a wretched pack of relations. Let us see now, has one
of them come here to see you in twenty years? And would you leave your
property to _them_? Do you know, they say that all these things here are
worth something."

"Why, yes," said Pons.

"Remonencq, who deals in pictures, and knows that you are an amateur,
says that he would be quite ready to pay you an annuity of thirty
thousand francs so long as you live, to have the pictures afterwards.
... There is a change! If I were you, I should take it. Why, I thought
he said it for a joke when he told me that. You ought to let M. Schmucke
know the value of all those things, for he is a man that could be
cheated like a child. He has not the slightest idea of the value of
these fine things that you have! He so little suspects it, that he would
give them away for a morsel of bread if he did not keep them all his
life for love of you, always supposing that he lives after you, for he
will die of your death. But _I_ am here; I will take his part against
anybody and everybody!... I and Cibot will defend him."

"Dear Mme. Cibot!" said Pons, "what would have become of me if it
had not been for you and Schmucke?" He felt touched by this horrible
prattle; the feeling in it seemed to be ingenuous, as it usually is in
the speech of the people.

"Ah! we really are your only friends on earth, that is very true, that
is. But two good hearts are worth all the families in the world.--Don't
talk of families to me! A family, as the old actor said of the tongue,
is the best and the worst of all things.... Where are those relations of
yours now? Have you any? I have never seen them--"

"They have brought me to lie here," said Pons, with intense bitterness.

"So you have relations!..." cried La Cibot, springing up as if her
easy-chair had been heated red-hot. "Oh, well, they are a nice lot, are
your relations! What! these three weeks--for this is the twentieth day,
to-day, that you have been ill and like to die--in these three weeks
they have not come once to ask for news of you? That's a trifle too
strong, that is!... Why, in your place, I would leave all I had to the
Foundling Hospital sooner than give them one farthing!"

"Well, my dear Mme. Cibot, I meant to leave all that I had to a cousin
once removed, the daughter of my first cousin, President Camusot, you
know, who came here one morning nearly two months ago."

"Oh! a little stout man who sent his servants to beg your pardon--for
his wife's blunder?--The housemaid came asking me questions about you,
an affected old creature she is, my fingers itched to give her velvet
tippet a dusting with my broom handle! A servant wearing a velvet
tippet! did anybody ever see the like? No, upon my word, the world is
turned upside down; what is the use of making a Revolution? Dine twice a
day if you can afford it, you scamps of rich folk! But laws are no good,
I tell you, and nothing will be safe if Louis-Philippe does not keep
people in their places; for, after all, if we are all equal, eh, sir?
a housemaid didn't ought to have a velvet tippet, while I, Mme. Cibot,
haven't one, after thirty years of honest work.--There is a pretty thing
for you! People ought to be able to tell who you are. A housemaid is
a housemaid, just as I myself am a portress. Why do they have silk
epaulettes in the army? Let everybody keep their place. Look here, do
you want me to tell you what all this comes to? Very well, France is
going to the dogs.... If the Emperor had been here, things would have
been very different, wouldn't they, sir?... So I said to Cibot, I said,
'See here, Cibot, a house where the servants wear velvet tippets belongs
to people that have no heart in them--'"

"No heart in them, that is just it," repeated Pons. And with that he
began to tell Mme. Cibot about his troubles and mortifications, she
pouring out abuse of the relations the while and showing exceeding
tenderness on every fresh sentence in the sad history. She fairly wept
at last.

To understand the sudden intimacy between the old musician and Mme.
Cibot, you have only to imagine the position of an old bachelor lying on
his bed of pain, seriously ill for the first time in his life. Pons felt
that he was alone in the world; the days that he spent by himself were
all the longer because he was struggling with the indefinable nausea of
a liver complaint which blackens the brightest life. Cut off from all
his many interests, the sufferer falls a victim to a kind of nostalgia;
he regrets the many sights to be seen for nothing in Paris. The
isolation, the darkened days, the suffering that affects the mind and
spirits even more than the body, the emptiness of the life,--all these
things tend to induce him to cling to the human being who waits on him
as a drowned man clings to a plank; and this especially if the
bachelor patient's character is as weak as his nature is sensitive and
incredulous.

Pons was charmed to hear La Cibot's tittle-tattle. Schmucke, Mme. Cibot,
and Dr. Poulain meant all humanity to him now, when his sickroom became
the universe. If invalid's thoughts, as a rule, never travel beyond in
the little space over which his eyes can wander; if their selfishness,
in its narrow sphere, subordinates all creatures and all things to
itself, you can imagine the lengths to which an old bachelor may go.
Before three weeks were out he had even gone so far as to regret, once
and again, that he had not married Madeleine Vivet! Mme. Cibot, too, had
made immense progress in his esteem in those three weeks; without her
he felt that he should have been utterly lost; for as for Schmucke, the
poor invalid looked upon him as a second Pons. La Cibot's prodigious
art consisted in expressing Pons' own ideas, and this she did quite
unconsciously.

"Ah! here comes the doctor!" she exclaimed, as the bell rang, and away
she went, knowing very well that Remonencq had come with the Jew.

"Make no noise, gentlemen," said she, "he must not know anything. He is
all on the fidget when his precious treasures are concerned."

"A walk round will be enough," said the Hebrew, armed with a
magnifying-glass and a lorgnette.

The greater part of Pons' collection was installed in a great
old-fashioned salon such as French architects used to build for the old
_noblesse_; a room twenty-five feet broad, some thirty feet in length,
and thirteen in height. Pons' pictures to the number of sixty-seven hung
upon the white-and-gold paneled walls; time, however, had reddened the
gold and softened the white to an ivory tint, so that the whole was
toned down, and the general effect subordinated to the effect of the
pictures. Fourteen statues stood on pedestals set in the corners of the
room, or among the pictures, or on brackets inlaid by Boule; sideboards
of carved ebony, royally rich, surrounded the walls to elbow height, all
the shelves filled with curiosities; in the middle of the room stood
a row of carved credence-tables, covered with rare miracles of
handicraft--with ivories and bronzes, wood-carvings and enamels, jewelry
and porcelain.

As soon as Elie Magus entered the sanctuary, he went straight to the
four masterpieces; he saw at a glance that these were the gems of Pons'
collection, and masters lacking in his own. For Elie Magus these were
the naturalist's _desiderata_ for which men undertake long voyages from
east to west, through deserts and tropical countries, across southern
savannahs, through virgin forests.

The first was a painting by Sebastian del Piombo, the second a Fra
Bartolommeo della Porta, the third a Hobbema landscape, and the fourth
and last a Durer--a portrait of a woman. Four diamonds indeed! In the
history of art, Sebastian del Piombo is like a shining point in which
three schools meet, each bringing its pre-eminent qualities. A Venetian
painter, he came to Rome to learn the manner of Raphael under the
direction of Michael Angelo, who would fain oppose Raphael on his own
ground by pitting one of his own lieutenants against the reigning king
of art. And so it came to pass that in Del Piombo's indolent genius
Venetian color was blended with Florentine composition and a something
of Raphael's manner in the few pictures which he deigned to paint, and
the sketches were made for him, it is said, by Michael Angelo himself.

If you would see the perfection to which the painter attained (armed
as he was with triple power), go to the Louvre and look at the Baccio
Bandinelli portrait; you might place it beside Titian's _Man with a
Glove_, or by that other _Portrait of an Old Man_ in which Raphael's
consummate skill blends with Correggio's art; or, again, compare it
with Leonardo da Vinci's _Charles VIII._, and the picture would scarcely
lose. The four pearls are equal; there is the same lustre and sheen, the
same rounded completeness, the same brilliancy. Art can go no further
than this. Art has risen above Nature, since Nature only gives her
creatures a few brief years of life.

Pons possessed one example of this immortal great genius and incurably
indolent painter; it was a _Knight of Malta_, a Templar kneeling in
prayer. The picture was painted on slate, and in its unfaded color and
its finish was immeasurably finer than the _Baccio Bandinelli_.

Fra Bartolommeo was represented by a _Holy Family_, which many
connoisseurs might have taken for a Raphael. The Hobbema would have
fetched sixty thousand francs at a public sale; and as for the Durer, it
was equal to the famous _Holzschuer_ portrait at Nuremberg for which the
kings of Bavaria, Holland, and Prussia have vainly offered two hundred
thousand francs again and again. Was it the portrait of the wife or
the daughter of Holzschuer, Albrecht Durer's personal friend?--The
hypothesis seems to be a certainty, for the attitude of the figure in
Pons' picture suggests that it is meant for a pendant, the position of
the coat-of-arms is the same as in the Nuremberg portrait; and, finally,
the _oetatis suoe XLI._ accords perfectly with the age inscribed on
the picture religiously kept by the Holzschuers of Nuremberg, and but
recently engraved.

The tears stood in Elie Magus' eyes as he looked from one masterpiece to
another. He turned round to La Cibot, "I will give you a commission of
two thousand francs on each of the pictures if you can arrange that I
shall have them for forty thousand francs," he said. La Cibot was amazed
at this good fortune dropped from the sky. Admiration, or, to be more
accurate, delirious joy, had wrought such havoc in the Jew's brain, that
it had actually unsettled his habitual greed, and he fell headlong into
enthusiasm, as you see.

"And I?----" put in Remonencq, who knew nothing about pictures.

"Everything here is equally good," the Jew said cunningly, lowering his
voice for Remonencq's ears; "take ten pictures just as they come and on
the same conditions. Your fortune will be made."

Again the three thieves looked each other in the face, each one of them
overcome with the keenest of all joys--sated greed. All of a sudden
the sick man's voice rang through the room; the tones vibrated like the
strokes of a bell:

"Who is there?" called Pons.

"Monsieur! just go back to bed!" exclaimed La Cibot, springing upon
Pons and dragging him by main force. "What next! Have you a mind to kill
yourself?--Very well, then, it is not Dr. Poulain, it is Remonencq, good
soul, so anxious that he has come to ask after you!--Everybody is so
fond of you that the whole house is in a flutter. So what is there to
fear?"

"It seems to me that there are several of you," said Pons.

"Several? that is good! What next! Are you dreaming!--You will go off
your head before you have done, upon my word!--Here, look!"--and La
Cibot flung open the door, signed to Magus to go, and beckoned to
Remonencq.

"Well, my dear sir," said the Auvergnat, now supplied with something to
say, "I just came to ask after you, for the whole house is alarmed about
you.--Nobody likes Death to set foot in a house!--And lastly, Daddy
Monistrol, whom you know very well, told me to tell you that if you
wanted money he was at your service----"

"He sent you here to take a look round at my knick-knacks!" returned the
old collector from his bed; and the sour tones of his voice were full of
suspicion.

A sufferer from liver complaint nearly always takes momentary and
special dislikes to some person or thing, and concentrates all his
ill-humor upon the object. Pons imagined that some one had designs upon
his precious collection; the thought of guarding it became a fixed idea
with him; Schmucke was continually sent to see if any one had stolen
into the sanctuary.

"Your collection is fine enough to attract the attention of _chineurs_,"
Remonencq answered astutely. "I am not much in the art line myself; but
you are supposed to be such a great connoisseur, sir, that with my eyes
shut--supposing, for instance, that you should need money some time or
other, for nothing costs so much as these confounded illnesses; there
was my sister now, when she would have got better again just as well
without. Doctors are rascals that take advantage of your condition to--"

"Thank you, good-day, good-day," broke in Pons, eying the marine
store-dealer uneasily.

"I will go to the door with him, for fear he should touch something," La
Cibot whispered to her patient.

"Yes, yes," answered the invalid, thanking her by a glance.

La Cibot shut the bedroom door behind her, and Pons' suspicions awoke
again at once.

She found Magus standing motionless before the four pictures. His
immobility, his admiration, can only be understood by other souls open
to ideal beauty, to the ineffable joy of beholding art made
perfect; such as these can stand for whole hours before the
_Antiope_--Correggio's masterpiece--before Leonardo's _Gioconda_,
Titian's _Mistress_, Andrea del Sarto's _Holy Family_, Domenichino's
_Children Among the Flowers_, Raphael's little cameo, or his _Portrait
of an Old Man_--Art's greatest masterpieces.

"Be quick and go, and make no noise," said La Cibot.

The Jew walked slowly backwards, giving the pictures such a farewell
gaze as a lover gives his love. Outside on the landing, La Cibot tapped
his bony arm. His rapt contemplations had put an idea into her head.

"Make it _four_ thousand francs for each picture," said she, "or I do
nothing."

"I am so poor!..." began Magus. "I want the pictures simply for their
own sake, simply and solely for the love of art, my dear lady."

"I can understand that love, sonny, you are so dried up. But if you do
not promise me sixteen thousand francs now, before Remonencq here, I
shall want twenty to-morrow."

"Sixteen; I promise," returned the Jew, frightened by the woman's
rapacity.

La Cibot turned to Remonencq.

"What oath can a Jew swear?" she inquired.

"You may trust him," replied the marine store-dealer. "He is as honest
as I am."

"Very well; and you?" asked she, "if I get him to sell them to you, what
will you give me?"

"Half-share of profits," Remonencq answered briskly.

"I would rather have a lump sum," returned La Cibot; "I am not in
business myself."

"You understand business uncommonly well!" put in Elie Magus, smiling;
"a famous saleswoman you would make!"

"I want her to take me into partnership, me and my goods," said the
Auvergnat, as he took La Cibot's plump arm and gave it playful taps like
hammer-strokes. "I don't ask her to bring anything into the firm but her
good looks! You are making a mistake when your stick to your Turk of
a Cibot and his needle. 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.
Poulain has given him up), he could not say less about putting my name
down in his will. We shall only get our due by taking it, upon my word,
as an honest woman, for as for trusting to the next-of-kin!--No fear!
There! look you here, words don't stink; it is a bad world!"

"That is true," Elie Magus answered cunningly, "that is true; and it
is just the like of us that are among the best," he added, looking at
Remonencq.

"Just let me be," returned La Cibot; "I am not speaking of you.
'Pressing company is always accepted,' as the old actor said. I swear to
you that the two gentlemen already owe me nearly three thousand francs;
the little I have is gone by now in medicine and things on their
account; and now suppose they refuse to recognize my advances? I am so
stupidly honest that I did not dare to say nothing to them about it.
Now, you that are in business, my dear sir, do you advise me to got to a
lawyer?"

"A lawyer?" cried Remonencq; "you know more about it than all the
lawyers put together--"

Just at that moment a sound echoed in the great staircase, a sound as if
some heavy body had fallen in the dining-room.

"Oh, goodness me!" exclaimed La Cibot; "it seems to me that monsieur has
just taken a ticket for the ground floor."

She pushed her fellow-conspirators out at the door, and while the
pair descended the stairs with remarkable agility, she ran to the
dining-room, and there beheld Pons, in his shirt, stretched out upon
the tiles. He had fainted. She lifted him as if he had been a feather,
carried him back to his room, laid him in bed, burned feathers under his
nose, bathed his temples with eau-de-cologne, and at last brought him to
consciousness. When she saw his eyes unclose and life return, she stood
over him, hands on hips.

"No slippers! In your shirt! That is the way to kill yourself! Why do
you suspect me?--If this is to be the way of it, I wish you good-day,
sir. Here have I served you these ten years, I have spent money on you
till my savings are all gone, to spare trouble to that poor M. Schmucke,
crying like a child on the stairs--and _this_ is my reward! You have
been spying on me. God has punished you! It serves you right! Here I
am straining myself to carry you, running the risk of doing myself a
mischief that I shall feel all my days. Oh dear, oh dear! and the door
left open too--"

"You were talking with some one. Who was it?"

"Here are notions!" cried La Cibot. "What next! Am I your bond-slave?
Am I to give account of myself to you? Do you know that if you bother me
like this, I shall clear out! You shall take a nurse."

Frightened by this threat, Pons unwittingly allowed La Cibot to see the
extent of the power of her sword of Damocles.

"It is my illness!" he pleaded piteously.

"It is as you please," La Cibot answered roughly.

She went. Pons, confused, remorseful, admiring his nurse's scalding
devotion, reproached himself for his behavior. The fall on the paved
floor of the dining-room had shaken and bruised him, and aggravated his
illness, but Pons was scarcely conscious of his physical sufferings.

La Cibot met Schmucke on the staircase.

"Come here, sir," she said. "There is bad news, that there is! M. Pons
is going off his head! Just think of it! he got up with nothing on,
he came after me--and down he came full-length. Ask him why--he knows
nothing about it. He is in a bad way. I did nothing to provoke such
violence, unless, perhaps, I waked up ideas by talking to him of his
early amours. Who knows men? Old libertines that they are. I ought
not to have shown him my arms when his eyes were glittering like
_carbuckles_."

Schmucke listened. Mme. Cibot might have been talking Hebrew for
anything that he understood.

"I have given myself a wrench that I shall feel all my days," added she,
making as though she were in great pain. (Her arms did, as a matter of
fact, ache a little, and the muscular fatigue suggested an idea, which
she proceeded to turn to profit.) "So stupid I am. When I saw him lying
there on the floor, I just took him up in my arms as if he had been a
child, and carried him back to bed, I did. And I strained myself, I can
feel it now. Ah! how it hurts!--I am going downstairs. Look after our
patient. I will send Cibot for Dr. Poulain. I had rather die outright
than be crippled."

La Cibot crawled downstairs, clinging to the banisters, and writhing and
groaning so piteously that the tenants, in alarm, came out upon their
landings. Schmucke supported the suffering creature, and told the story
of La Cibot's devotion, the tears running down his cheeks as he spoke.
Before very long the whole house, the whole neighborhood indeed, had
heard of Mme. Cibot's heroism; she had given herself a dangerous strain,
it was said, with lifting one of the "nutcrackers."

Schmucke meanwhile went to Pons' bedside with the tale. Their factotum
was in a frightful state. "What shall we do without her?" they said,
as they looked at each other; but Pons was so plainly the worse for his
escapade, that Schmucke did not dare to scold him.

"Gonfounded pric-a-prac! I would sooner purn dem dan loose mein friend!"
he cried, when Pons told him of the cause of the accident. "To suspect
Montame Zipod, dot lend us her safings! It is not goot; but it is der
illness--"

"Ah! what an illness! I am not the same man, I can feel it," said Pons.
"My dear Schmucke, if only you did not suffer through me!"

"Scold me," Schmucke answered, "und leaf Montame Zipod in beace."

As for Mme. Cibot, she soon recovered in Dr. Poulain's hands; and her
restoration, bordering on the miraculous, shed additional lustre on
her name and fame in the Marais. Pons attributed the success to the
excellent constitution of the patient, who resumed her ministrations
seven days later to the great satisfaction of her two gentlemen.
Her influence in their household and her tyranny was increased
a hundred-fold by the accident. In the course of a week, the two
nutcrackers ran into debt; Mme. Cibot paid the outstanding amounts, and
took the opportunity to obtain from Schmucke (how easily!) a receipt for
two thousand francs, which she had lent, she said, to the friends.

"Oh, what a doctor M. Poulain is!" cried La Cibot, for Pons' benefit.
"He will bring you through, my dear sir, for he pulled me out of my
coffin! Cibot, poor man, thought I was dead.... Well, Dr. Poulain will
have told you that while I was in bed I thought of nothing but you. 'God
above,' said I, 'take me, and let my dear Mr. Pons live--'"

"Poor dear Mme. Cibot, you all but crippled yourself for me."

"Ah! but for Dr. Poulain I should have been put to bed with a shovel by
now, as we shall all be one day. Well, what must be, must, as the old
actor said. One must take things philosophically. How did you get on
without me?"

"Schmucke nursed me," said the invalid; "but our poor money-box and our
lessons have suffered. I do not know how he managed."

"Calm yourself, Bons," exclaimed Schmucke; "ve haf in Zipod ein
panker--"

"Do not speak of it, my lamb. You are our children, both of you," cried
La Cibot. "Our savings will be well invested; you are safer than the
Bank. So long as we have a morsel of bread, half of it is yours. It is
not worth mentioning--"

"Boor Montame Zipod!" said Schmucke, and he went.

Pons said nothing.

"Would you believe it, my cherub?" said La Cibot, as the sick man tossed
uneasily, "in my agony--for it was a near squeak for me--the thing that
worried me most was the thought that I must leave you alone, with no one
to look after you, and my poor Cibot without a farthing.... My savings
are such a trifle, that I only mention them in connection with my death
and Cibot, an angel that he is! No. He nursed me as if I had been a
queen, he did, and cried like a calf over me!... But I counted on you,
upon my word. I said to him, 'There, Cibot! my gentlemen will not let
you starve--'"

Pons made no reply to this thrust _ad testamentum_; but as the portress
waited for him to say something--"I shall recommend you to M. Schmucke,"
he said at last.

"Ah!" cried La Cibot, "whatever you do will be right; I trust in you and
your heart. Let us never talk of this again; you make me feel ashamed,
my cherub. Think of getting better, you will outlive us all yet."

Profound uneasiness filled Mme. Cibot's mind. She cast about for some
way of making the sick man understand that she expected a legacy. That
evening, when Schmucke was eating his dinner as usual by Pons' bedside,
she went out, hoping to find Dr. Poulain at home.

Dr. Poulain lived in the Rue d'Orleans in a small ground floor
establishment, consisting of a lobby, a sitting-room, and two bedrooms.
A closet, opening into the lobby and the bedroom, had been turned into
a study for the doctor. The kitchen, the servant's bedroom, and a small
cellar were situated in a wing of the house, a huge pile built in the
time of the Empire, on the site of an old mansion of which the garden
still remained, though it had been divided among the three ground floor
tenants.

Nothing had been changed in the doctor's house since it was built.
Paint and paper and ceilings were all redolent of the Empire. The grimy
deposits of forty years lay thick on walls and ceilings, on paper and
paint and mirrors and gilding. And yet, this little establishment, in
the depths of the Marais, paid a rent of a thousand francs.

Mme. Poulain, the doctor's mother, aged sixty-seven, was ending her days
in the second bedroom. She worked for a breeches-maker, stitching men's
leggings, breeches, belts, and braces, anything, in fact, that is made
in a way of business which has somewhat fallen off of late years. Her
whole time was spent in keeping her son's house and superintending
the one servant; she never went abroad, and took the air in the little
garden entered through the glass door of the sitting-room. Twenty years
previously, when her husband died, she sold his business to his best
workman, who gave his master's widow work enough to earn a daily wage
of thirty sous. She had made every sacrifice to educate her son. At all
costs, he should occupy a higher station than his father before him;
and now she was proud of her Aesculapius, she believed in him, and
sacrificed everything to him as before. She was happy to take care of
him, to work and put by a little money, and dream of nothing but his
welfare, and love him with an intelligent love of which every mother is
not capable. For instance, Mme. Poulain remembered that she had been a
working girl. She would not injure her son's prospects; he should not be
ashamed by his mother (for the good woman's grammar was something of
the same kind as Mme. Cibot's); and for this reason she kept in the
background, and went to her room of her own accord if any distinguished
patient came to consult the doctor, or if some old schoolfellow or
fellow-student chanced to call. Dr. Poulain had never had occasion to
blush for the mother whom he revered; and this sublime love of hers more
than atoned for a defective education.

The breeches-maker's business sold for about twenty thousand francs, and
the widow invested the money in the Funds in 1820. The income of eleven
hundred francs per annum derived from this source was, at one time, her
whole fortune. For many a year the neighbors used to see the doctor's
linen hanging out to dry upon a clothes-line in the garden, and the
servant and Mme. Poulain thriftily washed everything at home; a piece of
domestic economy which did not a little to injure the doctor's practice,
for it was thought that if he was so poor, it must be through his own
fault. Her eleven hundred francs scarcely did more than pay the rent.
During those early days, Mme. Poulain, good, stout, little old woman,
was the breadwinner, and the poor household lived upon her earnings.
After twelve years of perseverance upon a rough and stony road, Dr.
Poulain at last was making an income of three thousand francs, and Mme.
Poulain had an income of about five thousand francs at her disposal.
Five thousand francs for those who know Paris means a bare subsistence.

The sitting-room, where patients waited for an interview, was shabbily
furnished. There was the inevitable mahogany sofa covered with
yellow-flowered Utrecht velvet, four easy-chairs, a tea-table, a
console, and half-a-dozen chairs, all the property of the deceased
breeches-maker, and chosen by him. A lyre-shaped clock between two
Egyptian candlesticks still preserved its glass shade intact. You
asked yourself how the yellow chintz window-curtains, covered with red
flowers, had contrived to hang together for so long; for evidently they
had come from the Jouy factory, and Oberkampf received the Emperor's
congratulations upon similar hideous productions of the cotton industry
in 1809.

The doctor's consulting-room was fitted up in the same style,
with household stuff from the paternal chamber. It looked stiff,
poverty-stricken, and bare. What patient could put faith in the skill of
any unknown doctor who could not even furnish his house? And this in a
time when advertising is all-powerful; when we gild the gas-lamps in
the Place de la Concorde to console the poor man for his poverty by
reminding him that he is rich as a citizen.

The ante-chamber did duty as a dining-room. The servant sat at her
sewing there whenever she was not busy in the kitchen or keeping the
doctor's mother company. From the dingy short curtains in the windows
you would have guessed at the shabby thrift behind them without setting
foot in the dreary place. What could those wall-cupboards contain but
stale scraps of food, chipped earthenware, corks used over and over
again indefinitely, soiled table-linen, odds and ends that could descend
but one step lower into the dust-heap, and all the squalid necessities
of a pinched household in Paris?

In these days, when the five-franc piece is always lurking in our
thoughts and intruding itself into our speech, Dr. Poulain, aged
thirty-three, was still a bachelor. Heaven had bestowed on him a mother
with no connections. In ten years he had not met with the faintest
pretext for a romance in his professional career; his practice lay among
clerks and small manufacturers, people in his own sphere of life, with
homes very much like his own. His richer patients were butchers, bakers,
and the more substantial tradespeople of the neighborhood. These, for
the most part, attributed their recovery to Nature, as an excuse for
paying for the services of a medical man, who came on foot, at the rate
of two francs per visit. In his profession, a carriage is more necessary
than medical skill.

A humdrum monotonous life tells in the end upon the most adventurous
spirit. A man fashions himself to his lot, he accepts a commonplace
existence; and Dr. Poulain, after ten years of his practice, continued
his labors of Sisyphus without the despair that made early days so
bitter. And yet--like every soul in Paris--he cherished a dream.
Remonencq was happy in his dream; La Cibot had a dream of her own; and
Dr. Poulain, too, dreamed. Some day he would be called in to attend
a rich and influential patient, would effect a positive cure, and the
patient would procure a post for him; he would be head surgeon to a
hospital, medical officer of a prison or police-court, or doctor to the
boulevard theatres. He had come by his present appointment as doctor
to the Mairie in this very way. La Cibot had called him in when the
landlord of the house in the Rue de Normandie fell ill; he had treated
the case with complete success; M. Pillerault, the patient, took
an interest in the young doctor, called to thank him, and saw his
carefully-hidden poverty. Count Popinot, the cabinet minister, had
married M. Pillerault's grand-niece, and greatly respected her uncle; of
him, therefore, M. Pillerault had asked for the post, which Poulain had
now held for two years. That appointment and its meagre salary came just
in time to prevent a desperate step; Poulain was thinking of emigration;
and for a Frenchman, it is a kind of death to leave France.

Dr. Poulain went, you may be sure, to thank Count Popinot; but as Count
Popinot's family physician was the celebrated Horace Bianchon, it was
pretty clear that his chances of gaining a footing in that house were
something of the slenderest. The poor doctor had fondly hoped for the
patronage of a powerful cabinet minister, one of the twelve or fifteen
cards which a cunning hand has been shuffling for sixteen years on the
green baize of the council table, and now he dropped back again into his
Marais, his old groping life among the poor and the small tradespeople,
with the privilege of issuing certificates of death for a yearly stipend
of twelve hundred francs.

Dr. Poulain had distinguished himself to some extent as a house-student;
he was a prudent practitioner, and not without experience. His deaths
caused no scandal; he had plenty of opportunities of studying all kinds
of complaints _in anima vili_. Judge, therefore, of the spleen that
he nourished! The expression of his countenance, lengthy and not
too cheerful to begin with, at times was positively appalling. Set a
Tartuffe's all-devouring eyes, and the sour humor of an Alceste in
a sallow-parchment visage, and try to imagine for yourself the gait,
bearing, and expression of a man who thought himself as good a doctor as
the illustrious Bianchon, and felt that he was held down in his narrow
lot by an iron hand. He could not help comparing his receipts (ten
francs a day if he was fortunate) with Bianchon's five or six hundred.

Are the hatreds and jealousies of democracy incomprehensible after this?
Ambitious and continually thwarted, he could not reproach himself.
He had once already tried his fortune by inventing a purgative pill,
something like Morrison's, and intrusted the business operations to an
old hospital chum, a house-student who afterwards took a retail drug
business; but, unluckily, the druggist, smitten with the charms of a
ballet-dancer of the Ambigu-Comique, found himself at length in the
bankruptcy court; and as the patent had been taken out in his name,
his partner was literally without a remedy, and the important discovery
enriched the purchaser of the business. The sometime house-student set
sail for Mexico, that land of gold, taking poor Poulain's little savings
with him; and, to add insult to injury, the opera-dancer treated him as
an extortioner when he applied to her for his money.

Not a single rich patient had come to him since he had the luck to cure
old M. Pillerault. Poulain made his rounds on foot, scouring the Marais
like a lean cat, and obtained from two to forty sous out of a score
of visits. The paying patient was a phenomenon about as rare as that
anomalous fowl known as a "white blackbird" in all sublunary regions.

The briefless barrister, the doctor without a patient, are pre-eminently
the two types of a decorous despair peculiar to this city of Paris;
it is mute, dull despair in human form, dressed in a black coat and
trousers with shining seams that recall the zinc on an attic roof, a
glistening satin waistcoat, a hat preserved like a relic, a pair of old
gloves, and a cotton shirt. The man is the incarnation of a melancholy
poem, sombre as the secrets of the Conciergerie. Other kinds of poverty,
the poverty of the artist--actor, painter, musician, or poet--are
relieved and lightened by the artist's joviality, the reckless gaiety
of the Bohemian border country--the first stage of the journey to the
Thebaid of genius. But these two black-coated professions that go afoot
through the street are brought continually in contact with disease and
dishonor; they see nothing of human nature but its sores; in the
forlorn first stages and beginnings of their career they eye competitors
suspiciously and defiantly; concentrated dislike and ambition flashes
out in glances like the breaking forth of hidden flames. Let two
schoolfellows meet after twenty years, the rich man will avoid the poor;
he does not recognize him, he is afraid even to glance into the gulf
which Fate has set between him and the friend of other years. The one
has been borne through life on the mettlesome steed called Fortune, or
wafted on the golden clouds of success; the other has been making his
way in underground Paris through the sewers, and bears the marks of his
career upon him. How many a chum of old days turned aside at the sight
of the doctor's greatcoat and waistcoat!

With this explanation, it should be easy to understand how Dr. Poulain
came to lend himself so readily to the farce of La Cibot's illness and
recovery. Greed of every kind, ambition of every nature, is not easy to
hide. The doctor examined his patient, found that every organ was sound
and healthy, admired the regularity of her pulse and the perfect ease of
her movements; and as she continued to moan aloud, he saw that for some
reason she found it convenient to lie at Death's door. The speedy cure
of a serious imaginary disease was sure to cause a sensation in the
neighborhood; the doctor would be talked about. He made up his mind at
once. He talked of rupture, and of taking it in time, and thought even
worse of the case than La Cibot herself. The portress was plied with
various remedies, and finally underwent a sham operation, crowned with
complete success. Poulain repaired to the Arsenal Library, looked out a
grotesque case in some of Desplein's records of extraordinary cures, and
fitted the details to Mme. Cibot, modestly attributing the success of
the treatment to the great surgeon, in whose steps (he said) he walked.
Such is the impudence of beginners in Paris. Everything is made to serve
as a ladder by which to climb upon the scene; and as everything, even
the rungs of a ladder, will wear out in time, the new members of every
profession are at a loss to find the right sort of wood of which to make
steps for themselves.

There are moments when the Parisian is not propitious. He grows tired
of raising pedestals, pouts like a spoiled child, and will have no
more idols; or, to state it more accurately, Paris cannot always find
a proper object for infatuation. Now and then the vein of genius gives
out, and at such times the Parisian may turn supercilious; he is not
always willing to bow down and gild mediocrity.



Mme. Cibot, entering in her usual unceremonious fashion, found the
doctor and his mother at table, before a bowl of lamb's lettuce, the
cheapest of all salad-stuffs. The dessert consisted of a thin wedge of
Brie cheese flanked by a plate of specked foreign apples and a dish
of mixed dry fruits, known as _quatre-mendiants_, in which the raisin
stalks were abundantly conspicuous.

"You can stay, mother," said the doctor, laying a hand on Mme. Poulain's
arm; "this is Mme. Cibot, of whom I have told you."

"My respects to you, madame, and my duty to you, sir," said La Cibot,
taking the chair which the doctor offered. "Ah! is this your mother,
sir? She is very happy to have a son who has such talent; he saved my
life, madame, brought me back from the depths."

The widow, hearing Mme. Cibot praise her son in this way, thought her a
delightful woman.

"I have just come to tell you, that, between ourselves, poor M. Pons is
doing very badly, sir, and I have something to say to you about him--"

"Let us go into the sitting-room," interrupted the doctor, and with a
significant gesture he indicated the servant.

In the sitting-room La Cibot explained her position with regard to
the pair of nutcrackers at very considerable length. She repeated the
history of her loan with added embellishments, and gave a full account
of the immense services rendered during the past ten years to MM.
Pons and Schmucke. The two old men, to all appearance, could not exist
without her motherly care. She posed as an angel; she told so many lies,
one after another, watering them with her tears, that old Mme. Poulain
was quite touched.

"You understand, my dear sir," she concluded, "that I really ought to
know how far I can depend on M. Pons' intentions, supposing that he
should not die; not that I want him to die, for looking after those two
innocents is my life, madame, you see; still, when one of them is gone
I shall look after the other. For my own part, I was built by Nature to
rival mothers. Without nobody to care for, nobody to take for a child, I
don't know what I should do.... So if M. Poulain only would, he might do
me a service for which I should be very grateful; and that is, to say a
word to M. Pons for me. Goodness me! an annuity of a thousand francs,
is that too much, I ask you?... To. M. Schmucke it would be so much
gained.--Our dear patient said that he should recommend me to the
German, poor man; it is his idea, no doubt, that M. Schmucke should
be his heir. But what is a man that cannot put two ideas together in
French? And besides, he would be quite capable of going back to Germany,
he will be in such despair over his friend's death--"

The doctor grew grave. "My dear Mme. Cibot," he said, "this sort of
thing does not in the least concern a doctor. I should not be allowed to
exercise my profession if it was known that I interfered in the matter
of my patients' testamentary dispositions. The law forbids a doctor to
receive a legacy from a patient--"

"A stupid law! What is to hinder me from dividing my legacy with you?"
La Cibot said immediately.

"I will go further," said the doctor; "my professional conscience will
not permit me to speak to M. Pons of his death. In the first place, he
is not so dangerously ill that there is any need to speak of it, and in
the second, such talk coming from me might give a shock to the system
that would do him real harm, and then his illness might terminate
fatally--"

"_I_ don't put on gloves to tell him to get his affairs in order," cried
Mme. Cibot, "and he is none the worse for that. He is used to it. There
is nothing to fear."

"Not a word more about it, my dear Mme. Cibot! These things are not
within a doctor's province; it is a notary's business--"

"But, my dear M. Poulain, suppose that M. Pons of his own accord should
ask you how he is, and whether he had better make his arrangements;
then, would you refuse to tell him that if you want to get better it is
an excellent plan to set everything in order? Then you might just slip
in a little word for me--"

"Oh, if _he_ talks of making his will, I certainly shall not dissuade
him," said the doctor.

"Very well, that is settled. I came to thank you for your care of me,"
she added, as she slipped a folded paper containing three gold coins
into the doctor's hands. "It is all I can do at the moment. Ah! my dear
M. Poulain, if I were rich, you should be rich, you that are the image
of Providence on earth.--Madame, you have an angel for a son."

La Cibot rose to her feet, Mme. Poulain bowed amiably, and the doctor
went to the door with the visitor. Just then a sudden, lurid gleam of
light flashed across the mind of this Lady Macbeth of the streets. She
saw clearly that the doctor was her accomplice--he had taken the fee for
the sham illness.

"M. Poulain," she began, "how can you refuse to say a word or two to
save me from want, when you helped me in the affair of my accident?"

The doctor felt that the devil had him by the hair, as the saying is; he
felt, too, that the hair was being twisted round the pitiless red claw.
Startled and afraid lest he should sell his honesty for such a trifle,
he answered the diabolical suggestion by another no less diabolical.

"Listen, my dear Mme. Cibot," he said, as he drew her into his
consulting-room. "I will now pay a debt of gratitude that I owe you for
my appointment to the mairie--"

"We go shares?" she asked briskly.

"In what?"

"In the legacy."

"You do not know me," said Dr. Poulain, drawing himself up like Valerius
Publicola. "Let us have no more of that. I have a friend, an old
schoolfellow of mine, a very intelligent young fellow; and we are so
much the more intimate, because, our lives have fallen out very much in
the same way. He was studying law while I was a house-student, he was
engrossing deeds in Maitre Couture's office. His father was a shoemaker,
and mine was a breeches-maker; he has not found anyone to take much
interest in his career, nor has he any capital; for, after all, capital
is only to be had from sympathizers. He could only afford to buy
a provincial connection--at Mantes--and so little do provincials
understand the Parisian intellect, that they set all sorts of intrigues
on foot against him."

"The wretches!" cried La Cibot.

"Yes," said the doctor. "They combined against him to such purpose, that
they forced him to sell his connection by misrepresenting something that
he had done; the attorney for the crown interfered, he belonged to the
place, and sided with his fellow-townsmen. My friend's name is Fraisier.
He is lodged as I am, and he is even leaner and more threadbare. He took
refuge in our arrondissement, and is reduced to appear for clients in
the police-court or before the magistrate. He lives in the Rue de la
Perle close by. Go to No. 9, third floor, and you will see his name on
the door on the landing, painted in gilt letters on a small square
of red leather. Fraisier makes a special point of disputes among the
porters, workmen, and poor folk in the arrondissement, and his charges
are low. He is an honest man; for I need not tell you that if he had
been a scamp, he would be keeping his carriage by now. I will call and
see my friend Fraisier this evening. Go to him early to-morrow; he knows
M. Louchard, the bailiff; M. Tabareau, the clerk of the court; and the
justice of the peace, M. Vitel; and M. Trognon, the notary. He is even
now looked upon as one of the best men of business in the Quarter. If
he takes charge of your interests, if you can secure him as M. Pons'
adviser, you will have a second self in him, you see. But do not make
dishonorable proposals to him, as you did just now to me; he has a
head on his shoulders, you will understand each other. And as for
acknowledging his services, I will be your intermediary--"

Mme. Cibot looked askance at the doctor.

"Is that the lawyer who helped Mme. Florimond the haberdasher in the Rue
Vieille-du-Temple out of a fix in that matter of her friend's legacy?"

"The very same."

"Wasn't it a shame that she did not marry him after he had gained two
thousand francs a year for her?" exclaimed La Cibot. "And she thought to
clear off scores by making him a present of a dozen shirts and a couple
of dozen pocket-handkerchiefs; an outfit, in short."

"My dear Mme. Cibot, that outfit cost a thousand francs, and Fraisier
was just setting up for himself in the Quarter, and wanted the things
very badly. And what was more, she paid the bill without asking any
questions. That affair brought him clients, and now he is very busy; but
in my line a practice brings--"

"It is only the righteous that suffer here below," said La Cibot. "Well,
M. Poulain, good-day and thank you."

And herewith begins the tragedy, or, if you like to have it so,
a terrible comedy--the death of an old bachelor delivered over by
circumstances too strong for him to the rapacity and greed that gathered
about his bed. And other forces came to the support of rapacity and
greed; there was the picture collector's mania, that most intense of all
passions; there was the cupidity of the Sieur Fraisier, whom you shall
presently behold in his den, a sight to make you shudder; and lastly,
there was the Auvergnat thirsting for money, ready for anything--even
for a crime--that should bring him the capital he wanted. The first part
of the story serves in some sort as a prelude to this comedy in which
all the actors who have hitherto occupied the stage will reappear.

The degradation of a word is one of those curious freaks of manners
upon which whole volumes of explanation might be written. Write to an
attorney and address him as "Lawyer So-and-so," and you insult him as
surely as you would insult a wholesale colonial produce merchant by
addressing your letter to "Mr. So-and-so, Grocer." There are plenty
of men of the world who ought to be aware, since the knowledge of such
subtle distinctions is their province, that you cannot insult a French
writer more cruelly than by calling him _un homme de lettres_--a
literary man. The word _monsieur_ is a capital example of the life and
death of words. Abbreviated from monseigneur, once so considerable a
title, and even now, in the form of _sire_, reserved for emperors and
kings, it is bestowed indifferently upon all and sundry; while the
twin-word _messire_, which is nothing but its double and equivalent, if
by any chance it slips into a certificate of burial, produces an outcry
in the Republican papers.

Magistrates, councillors, jurisconsults, judges, barristers, officers
for the crown, bailiffs, attorneys, clerks of the court, procurators,
solicitors, and agents of various kinds, represent or misrepresent
Justice. The "lawyer" and the bailiff's men (commonly called "the
brokers") are the two lowest rungs of the ladder. Now, the bailiff's man
is an outsider, an adventitious minister of justice, appearing to
see that judgment is executed; he is, in fact, a kind of inferior
executioner employed by the county court. But the word "lawyer"
(homme de loi) is a depreciatory term applied to the legal profession.
Consuming professional jealousy finds similar disparaging epithets
for fellow-travelers in every walk of life, and every calling has its
special insult. The scorn flung into the words _homme de loi, homme
de lettres_, is wanting in the plural form, which may be used without
offence; but in Paris every profession, learned or unlearned, has its
_omega_, the individual who brings it down to the level of the lowest
class; and the written law has its connecting link with the custom
right of the streets. There are districts where the pettifogging man of
business, known as Lawyer So-and-So, is still to be found. M. Fraisier
was to the member of the Incorporated Law Society as the money-lender
of the Halles, offering small loans for a short period at an exorbitant
interest, is to the great capitalist.

Working people, strange to say are as shy of officials as of fashionable
restaurants, they take advice from irregular sources as they turn into
a little wineshop to drink. Each rank in life finds its own level, and
there abides. None but a chosen few care to climb the heights, few can
feel at ease in the presence of their betters, or take their place among
them, like a Beaumarchais letting fall the watch of the great lord who
tried to humiliate him. And if there are few who can even rise to
a higher social level, those among them who can throw off their
swaddling-clothes are rare and great exceptions.



At six o'clock the next morning Mme. Cibot stood in the Rue de la Perle;
she was making a survey of the abode of her future adviser, Lawyer
Fraisier. The house was one of the old-fashioned kind formerly inhabited
by small tradespeople and citizens with small means. A cabinetmaker's
shop occupied almost the whole of the ground floor, as well as the
little yard behind, which was covered with his workshops and warehouses;
the small remaining space being taken up by the porter's lodge and the
passage entry in the middle. The staircase walls were half rotten with
damp and covered with saltpetre to such a degree that the house seemed
to be stricken with leprosy.

Mme. Cibot went straight to the porter's lodge, and there encountered
one of the fraternity, a shoemaker, his wife, and two small children,
all housed in a room ten feet square, lighted from the yard at the back.
La Cibot mentioned her profession, named herself, and spoke of her house
in the Rue de Normandie, and the two women were on cordial terms at
once. After a quarter of an hour spent in gossip while the shoemaker's
wife made breakfast ready for her husband and the children, Mme. Cibot
turned the conversation to the subject of the lodgers, and spoke of the
lawyer.

"I have come to see him on business," she said. "One of his friends, Dr.
Poulain, recommended me to him. Do you know Dr. Poulain?"

"I should think I do," said the lady of the Rue de la Perle. "He saved
my little girl's life when she had the croup."

"He saved my life, too, madame. What sort of a man is this M. Fraisier?"

"He is the sort of man, my dear lady, out of whom it is very difficult
to get the postage-money at the end of the month."

To a person of La Cibot's intelligence this was enough.

"One may be poor and honest," observed she.

"I am sure I hope so," returned Fraisier's portress. "We are not
rolling in coppers, let alone gold or silver; but we have not a farthing
belonging to anybody else."

This sort of talk sounded familiar to La Cibot.

"In short, one can trust him, child, eh?"

"Lord! when M. Fraisier means well by any one, there is not his like, so
I have heard Mme. Florimond say."

"And why didn't she marry him when she owed her fortune to him?" La
Cibot asked quickly. "It is something for a little haberdasher, kept by
an old man, to be a barrister's wife--"

"Why?--" asked the portress, bringing Mme. Cibot out into the passage.
"Why?--You are going to see him, are you not, madame?--Very well, when
you are in his office you will know why."

From the state of the staircase, lighted by sash-windows on the side of
the yard, it was pretty evident that the inmates of the house, with the
exception of the landlord and M. Fraisier himself, were all workmen.
There were traces of various crafts in the deposit of mud upon the
steps--brass-filings, broken buttons, scraps of gauze, and esparto grass
lay scattered about. The walls of the upper stories were covered with
apprentices' ribald scrawls and caricatures. The portress' last remark
had roused La Cibot's curiosity; she decided, not unnaturally, that she
would consult Dr. Poulain's friend; but as for employing him, that must
depend upon her impressions.

"I sometimes wonder how Mme. Sauvage can stop in his service," said the
portress, by way of comment; she was following in Mme. Cibot's wake. "I
will come up with you, madame" she added; "I am taking the milk and the
newspaper up to my landlord."

Arrived on the second floor above the entresol, La Cibot beheld a door
of the most villainous description. The doubtful red paint was coated
for seven or eight inches round the keyhole with a filthy glaze, a grimy
deposit from which the modern house-decorator endeavors to protect the
doors of more elegant apartments by glass "finger-plates." A grating,
almost stopped up with some compound similar to the deposit with which
a restaurant-keeper gives an air of cellar-bound antiquity to a merely
middle-aged bottle, only served to heighten the general resemblance to
a prison door; a resemblance further heightened by the trefoil-shaped
iron-work, the formidable hinges, the clumsy nail-heads. A miser, or a
pamphleteer at strife with the world at large, must surely have invented
these fortifications. A leaden sink, which received the waste water
of the household, contributed its quota to the fetid atmosphere of the
staircase, and the ceiling was covered with fantastic arabesques traced
by candle-smoke--such arabesques! On pulling a greasy acorn tassel
attached to the bell-rope, a little bell jangled feebly somewhere
within, complaining of the fissure in its metal sides.

Every detail was in keeping with the general dismal effect. La Cibot
heard a heavy footstep, and the asthmatic wheezing of a virago within,
and Mme. Sauvage presently showed herself. Adrien Brauwer might have
painted just such a hag for his picture of _Witches starting for the
Sabbath_; a stout, unwholesome slattern, five feet six inches in height,
with a grenadier countenance and a beard which far surpassed La
Cibot's own; she wore a cheap, hideously ugly cotton gown, a bandana
handkerchief knotted over hair which she still continued to put in curl
papers (using for that purpose the printed circulars which her master
received), and a huge pair of gold earrings like cart-wheels in her
ears. This female Cerberus carried a battered skillet in one hand,
and opening the door, set free an imprisoned odor of scorched milk--a
nauseous and penetrating smell, that lost itself at once, however, among
the fumes outside.

"What can I do for you, missus?" demanded Mme. Sauvage, and with a
truculent air she looked La Cibot over; evidently she was of the opinion
that the visitor was too well dressed, and her eyes looked the more
murderous because they were naturally bloodshot.

"I have come to see M. Fraisier; his friend, Dr. Poulain, sent me."

"Oh! come in, missus," said La Sauvage, grown very amiable of a sudden,
which proves that she was prepared for this morning visit.

With a sweeping courtesy, the stalwart woman flung open the door of
a private office, which looked upon the street, and discovered the
ex-attorney of Mantes.

The room was a complete picture of a third-rate solicitor's office; with
the stained wooden cases, the letter-files so old that they had grown
beards (in ecclesiastical language), the red tape dangling limp and
dejected, the pasteboard boxes covered with traces of the gambols of
mice, the dirty floor, the ceiling tawny with smoke. A frugal allowance
of wood was smouldering on a couple of fire-dogs on the hearth. And on
the chimney-piece above stood a foggy mirror and a modern clock with
an inlaid wooden case; Fraisier had picked it up at an execution sale,
together with the tawdry imitation rococo candlesticks, with the zinc
beneath showing through the lacquer in several places.

M. Fraisier was small, thin, and unwholesome looking; his red face,
covered with an eruption, told of tainted blood; and he had, moreover, a
trick of continually scratching his right arm. A wig pushed to the back
of his head displayed a brick-colored cranium of ominous conformation.
This person rose from a cane-seated armchair, in which he sat on a green
leather cushion, assumed an agreeable expression, and brought forward a
chair.

"Mme. Cibot, I believe?" queried he, in dulcet tones.

"Yes, sir," answered the portress. She had lost her habitual assurance.

Something in the tones of a voice which strongly resembled the sounds of
the little door-bell, something in a glance even sharper than the sharp
green eyes of her future legal adviser, scared Mme. Cibot. Fraisier's
presence so pervaded the room, that any one might have thought there
was pestilence in the air; and in a flash Mme. Cibot understood why Mme.
Florimond had not become Mme. Fraisier.

"Poulain told me about you, my dear madame," said the lawyer, in the
unnatural fashion commonly described by the words "mincing tones"; tones
sharp, thin, and grating as verjuice, in spite of all his efforts.

Arrived at this point, he tried to draw the skirts of his dressing-gown
over a pair of angular knees encased in threadbare felt. The robe was
an ancient printed cotton garment, lined with wadding which took the
liberty of protruding itself through various slits in it here and there;
the weight of this lining had pulled the skirts aside, disclosing a
dingy-hued flannel waistcoat beneath. With something of a coxcomb's
manner, Fraisier fastened this refractory article of dress, tightening
the girdle to define his reedy figure; then with a blow of the tongs,
he effected a reconciliation between two burning brands that had long
avoided one another, like brothers after a family quarrel. A sudden
bright idea struck him, and he rose from his chair.

"Mme. Sauvage!" called he.

"Well?"

"I am not at home to anybody!"

"Eh! bless your life, there's no need to say that!"

"She is my old nurse," the lawyer said in some confusion.

"And she has not recovered her figure yet," remarked the heroine of the
Halles.

Fraisier laughed, and drew the bolt lest his housekeeper should
interrupt Mme. Cibot's confidences.

"Well, madame, explain your business," said he, making another effort
to drape himself in the dressing-gown. "Any one recommended to me by
the only friend I have in the world may count upon me--I may
say--absolutely."

For half an hour Mme. Cibot talked, and the man of law made no
interruption of any sort; his face wore the expression of curious
interest with which a young soldier listens to a pensioner of "The Old
Guard." Fraisier's silence and acquiescence, the rapt attention with
which he appeared to listen to a torrent of gossip similar to the
samples previously given, dispelled some of the prejudices inspired in
La Cibot's mind by his squalid surroundings. The little lawyer with the
black-speckled green eyes was in reality making a study of his client.
When at length she came to a stand and looked to him to speak, he was
seized with a fit of the complaint known as a "churchyard cough," and
had recourse to an earthenware basin half full of herb tea, which he
drained.

"But for Poulain, my dear madame, I should have been dead before this,"
said Fraisier, by way of answer to the portress' look of motherly
compassion; "but he will bring me round, he says--"

As all the client's confidences appeared to have slipped from the memory
of her legal adviser, she began to cast about for a way of taking leave
of a man so apparently near death.

"In an affair of this kind, madame," continued the attorney from Mantes,
suddenly returning to business, "there are two things which it is
most important to know. In the first place, whether the property is
sufficient to be worth troubling about; and in the second, who the
next-of-kin may be; for if the property is the booty, the next-of-kin is
the enemy."

La Cibot immediately began to talk of Remonencq and Elie Magus, and
said that the shrewd couple valued the pictures at six hundred thousand
francs.

"Would they take them themselves at that price?" inquired the lawyer.
"You see, madame, that men of business are shy of pictures. A picture
may mean a piece of canvas worth a couple of francs or a painting worth
two hundred thousand. Now, paintings worth two hundred thousand francs
are usually well known; and what errors in judgment people make in
estimating even the most famous pictures of all! There was once a great
capitalist whose collection was admired, visited, and engraved--actually
engraved! He was supposed to have spent millions of francs on it. He
died, as men must, and--well, his _genuine_ pictures did not fetch
more than two hundred thousand francs! You must let me see these
gentlemen.--Now for the next-of-kin," and Fraisier again relapsed into
his attitude of listener.

When President Camusot's name came up, he nodded with a grimace which
riveted Mme. Cibot's attention. She tried to read the forehead and the
villainous face, and found what is called in business a "wooden head."

"Yes, my dear sir," repeated La Cibot. "Yes, my M. Pons is own cousin
to President Camusot de Marville; he tells me that ten times a day. M.
Camusot the silk mercer was married twice--"

"He that has just been nominated for a peer of France?--"

"And his first wife was a Mlle. Pons, M. Pons' first cousin."

"Then they are first cousins once removed--"

"They are 'not cousins.' They have quarreled."

It may be remembered that before M. Camusot de Marville came to Paris,
he was President of the Tribunal of Mantes for five years; and not only
was his name still remembered there, but he had kept up a correspondence
with Mantes. Camusot's immediate successor, the judge with whom he had
been most intimate during his term of office, was still President of the
Tribunal, and consequently knew all about Fraisier.

"Do you know, madame," Fraisier said, when at last the red sluices of
La Cibot's torrent tongue were closed, "do you know that your principal
enemy will be a man who can send you to the scaffold?"

The portress started on her chair, making a sudden spring like a
jack-in-the-box.

"Calm yourself, dear madame," continued Fraisier. "You may not have
known the name of the President of the Chamber of Indictments at the
Court of Appeal in Paris; but you ought to have known that M. Pons must
have an heir-at-law. M. le President de Marville is your invalid's sole
heir; but as he is a collateral in the third degree, M. Pons is entitled
by law to leave his fortune as he pleases. You are not aware either
that, six weeks ago at least, M. le President's daughter married the
eldest son of M. le Comte Popinot, peer of France, once Minister of
Agriculture, and President of the Board of Trade, one of the most
influential politicians of the day. President de Marville is even more
formidable through this marriage than in his own quality of head of the
Court of Assize."

At that word La Cibot shuddered.

"Yes, and it is he who sends you there," continued Fraisier. "Ah! my
dear madame, you little know what a red robe means! It is bad enough
to have a plain black gown against you! You see me here, ruined, bald,
broken in health--all because, unwittingly, I crossed a mere attorney
for the crown in the provinces. I was forced to sell my connection at a
loss, and very lucky I was to come off with the loss of my money. If
I had tried to stand out, my professional position would have gone as
well.

"One thing more you do not know," he continued, "and this it is. If you
had only to do with President Camusot himself, it would be nothing; but
he has a wife, mind you!--and if you ever find yourself face to face
with that wife, you will shake in your shoes as if you were on the first
step of the scaffold, your hair will stand on end. The Presidente is so
vindictive that she would spend ten years over setting a trap to kill
you. She sets that husband of hers spinning like a top. Through her a
charming young fellow committed suicide at the Conciergerie. A count was
accused of forgery--she made his character as white as snow. She all
but drove a person of the highest quality from the Court of Charles X.
Finally, she displaced the Attorney-General, M. de Granville--"

"That lived in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, at the corner of the Rue
Saint-Francois?"

"The very same. They say that she means to make her husband Home
Secretary, and I do not know that she will not gain her end.--If she
were to take it into her head to send us both to the Criminal Court
first and the hulks afterwards--I should apply for a passport and set
sail for America, though I am as innocent as a new-born babe. So well I
know what justice means. Now, see here, my dear Mme. Cibot; to marry
her only daughter to young Vicomte Popinot (heir to M. Pillerault, your
landlord, it is said)--to make that match, she stripped herself of her
whole fortune, so much so that the President and his wife have nothing
at this moment except his official salary. Can you suppose, my dear
madame, that under the circumstances Mme. la Presidente will let M.
Pons' property go out of the family without a word?--Why, I would sooner
face guns loaded with grape-shot than have such a woman for my enemy--"

"But they have quarreled," put in La Cibot.

"What has that got to do with it?" asked Fraisier. "It is one reason
the more for fearing her. To kill a relative of whom you are tired,
is something; but to inherit his property afterwards--that is a real
pleasure!"

"But the old gentleman has a horror of his relatives. He says over and
over again that these people--M. Cardot, M. Berthier, and the rest of
them (I can't remember their names)--have crushed him as a tumbril cart
crushes an egg--"

"Have you a mind to be crushed too?"

"Oh dear! oh dear!" cried La Cibot. "Ah! Ma'am Fontaine was right when
she said that I should meet with difficulties: still, she said that I
should succeed--"

"Listen, my dear Mme. Cibot.--As for making some thirty thousand
francs out of this business--that is possible; but for the whole of
the property, it is useless to think of it. We talked over your case
yesterday evening, Dr. Poulain and I--"

La Cibot started again.

"Well, what is the matter?"

"But if you knew about the affair, why did you let me chatter away like
a magpie?"

"Mme. Cibot, I knew all about your business, but I knew nothing of Mme.
Cibot. So many clients, so many characters--"

Mme. Cibot gave her legal adviser a queer look at this; all her
suspicions gleamed in her eyes. Fraisier saw this.

"I resume," he continued. "So, our friend Poulain was once called in
by you to attend old M. Pillerault, the Countess Popinot's great-uncle;
that is one of your claims to my devotion. Poulain goes to see your
landlord (mark this!) once a fortnight; he learned all these particulars
from him. M. Pillerault was present at his grand-nephew's wedding--for
he is an uncle with money to leave; he has an income of fifteen thousand
francs, though he has lived like a hermit for the last five-and-twenty
years, and scarcely spends a thousand crowns--well, _he_ told Poulain
all about this marriage. It seems that your old musician was precisely
the cause of the row; he tried to disgrace his own family by way of
revenge.--If you only hear one bell, you only hear one sound.--Your
invalid says that he meant no harm, but everybody thinks him a monster
of--"

"And it would not astonish me if he was!" cried La Cibot. "Just imagine
it!--For these ten years past I have been money out of pocket for him,
spending my savings on him, and he knows it, and yet he will not let me
lie down to sleep on a legacy!--No, sir! he will _not_. He is obstinate,
a regular mule he is.--I have talked to him these ten days, and the
cross-grained cur won't stir no more than a sign-post. He shuts his
teeth and looks at me like--The most that he would say was that he would
recommend me to M. Schmucke."

"Then he means to make his will in favor of this Schmucke?"

"Everything will go to him--"

"Listen, my dear Mme. Cibot, if I am to arrive at any definite
conclusions and think of a plan, I must know M. Schmucke. I must see the
property and have some talk with this Jew of whom you speak; and then,
let me direct you--"

"We shall see, M. Fraisier."

"What is this? 'We shall see?'" repeated Fraisier, speaking in the voice
natural to him, as he gave La Cibot a viperous glance. "Am I your legal
adviser or am I not, I say? Let us know exactly where we stand."

La Cibot felt that he read her thoughts. A cold chill ran down her back.

"I have told you all I know," she said. She saw that she was at the
tiger's mercy.

"We attorneys are accustomed to treachery. Just think carefully over
your position; it is superb.--If you follow my advice point by point,
you will have thirty or forty thousand francs. But there is a reverse
side to this beautiful medal. How if the Presidente comes to hear that
M. Pons' property is worth a million of francs, and that you mean to
have a bit out of it?--for there is always somebody ready to take that
kind of errand--" he added parenthetically.

This remark, and the little pause that came before and after it, sent
another shudder through La Cibot. She thought at once that Fraisier
himself would probably undertake that office.

"And then, my dear client, in ten minutes old Pillerault is asked to
dismiss you, and then on a couple of hours' notice--"

"What does that matter to me?" said La Cibot, rising to her feet like a
Bellona; "I shall stay with the gentlemen as their housekeeper."

"And then, a trap will be set for you, and some fine morning you
and your husband will wake up in a prison cell, to be tried for your
lives--"

"_I?_" cried La Cibot, "I that have not a farthing that doesn't belong
to me?... _I!_... _I!_"

For five minutes she held forth, and Fraisier watched the great artist
before him as she executed a concerto of self-praise. He was quite
untouched, and even amused by the performance. His keen glances pricked
La Cibot like stilettos; he chuckled inwardly, till his shrunken wig was
shaking with laughter. He was a Robespierre at an age when the Sylla of
France was make couplets.

"And how? and why? And on what pretext?" demanded she, when she had come
to an end.

"You wish to know how you may come to the guillotine?"

La Cibot turned pale as death at the words; the words fell like a knife
upon her neck. She stared wildly at Fraisier.

"Listen to me, my dear child," began Fraisier, suppressing his inward
satisfaction at his client's discomfiture.

"I would sooner leave things as they are--" murmured La Cibot, and she
rose to go.

"Stay," Fraisier said imperiously. "You ought to know the risks that you
are running; I am bound to give you the benefit of my lights.--You are
dismissed by M. Pillerault, we will say; there is no doubt about that,
is there? You enter the service of these two gentlemen. Very good!
That is a declaration of war against the Presidente. You mean to do
everything you can to gain possession of the property, and to get a
slice of it at any rate--

"Oh, I am not blaming you," Fraisier continued, in answer to a gesture
from his client. "It is not my place to do so. This is a battle, and
you will be led on further than you think for. One grows full of one's
ideas, one hits hard--"

Another gesture of denial. This time La Cibot tossed her head.

"There, there, old lady," said Fraisier, with odious familiarity, "you
will go a very long way!--"

"You take me for a thief, I suppose?"

"Come, now, mamma, you hold a receipt in M. Schmucke's hand which did
not cost you much.--Ah! you are in the confessional, my lady! Don't
deceive your confessor, especially when the confessor has the power of
reading your thoughts."

La Cibot was dismayed by the man's perspicacity; now she knew why he had
listened to her so intently.

"Very good," continued he, "you can admit at once that the Presidente
will not allow you to pass her in the race for the property.--You
will be watched and spied upon.--You get your name into M. Pons' will;
nothing could be better. But some fine day the law steps in, arsenic
is found in a glass, and you and your husband are arrested, tried, and
condemned for attempting the life of the Sieur Pons, so as to come by
your legacy. I once defended a poor woman at Versailles; she was in
reality as innocent as you would be in such a case. Things were as I
have told you, and all that I could do was to save her life. The unhappy
creature was sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude. She is working
out her time now at St. Lazare."

Mme. Cibot's terror grew to the highest pitch. She grew paler and paler,
staring at the little, thin man with the green eyes, as some wretched
Moor, accused of adhering to her own religion, might gaze at the
inquisitor who doomed her to the stake.

"Then, do you tell me, that if I leave you to act, and put my interests
in your hands, I shall get something without fear?"

"I guarantee you thirty thousand francs," said Fraisier, speaking like a
man sure of the fact.

"After all, you know how fond I am of dear Dr. Poulain," she began again
in her most coaxing tones; "he told me to come to you, worthy man,
and he did not send me here to be told that I shall be guillotined for
poisoning some one."

The thought of the guillotine so moved her that she burst into tears,
her nerves were shaken, terror clutched at her heart, she lost her head.
Fraisier gloated over his triumph. When he saw his client hesitate, he
thought that he had lost his chance; he had set himself to frighten
and quell La Cibot till she was completely in his power, bound hand and
foot. She had walked into his study as a fly walks into a spider's web;
there she was doomed to remain, entangled in the toils of the little
lawyer who meant to feed upon her. Out of this bit of business, indeed,
Fraisier meant to gain the living of old days; comfort, competence,
and consideration. He and his friend Dr. Poulain had spent the whole
previous evening in a microscopic examination of the case; they had made
mature deliberations. The doctor described Schmucke for his friend's
benefit, and the alert pair had plumbed all hypotheses and scrutinized
all risks and resources, till Fraisier, exultant, cried aloud, "Both
our fortunes lie in this!" He had gone so far as to promise Poulain a
hospital, and as for himself, he meant to be justice of the peace of an
arrondissement.

To be a justice of the peace! For this man with his abundant capacity,
for this doctor of law without a pair of socks to his name, the dream
was a hippogriff so restive, that he thought of it as a deputy-advocate
thinks of the silk gown, as an Italian priest thinks of the tiara. It
was indeed a wild dream!

M. Vitel, the justice of the peace before whom Fraisier pleaded, was
a man of sixty-nine, in failing health; he talked of retiring on a
pension; and Fraisier used to talk with Poulain of succeeding him, much
as Poulain talked of saving the life of some rich heiress and marrying
her afterwards. No one knows how greedily every post in the gift of
authority is sought after in Paris. Every one wants to live in Paris. If
a stamp or tobacco license falls in, a hundred women rise up as one and
stir all their friends to obtain it. Any vacancy in the ranks of the
twenty-four collectors of taxes sends a flood of ambitious folk surging
in upon the Chamber of Deputies. Decisions are made in committee, all
appointments are made by the Government. Now the salary of a justice
of the peace, the lowest stipendiary magistrate in Paris, is about six
thousand francs. The post of registrar to the court is worth a hundred
thousand francs. Few places are more coveted in the administration.
Fraisier, as a justice of the peace, with the head physician of a
hospital for his friend, would make a rich marriage himself and a good
match for Dr. Poulain. Each would lend a hand to each.

Night set its leaden seal upon the plans made by the sometime attorney
of Mantes, and a formidable scheme sprouted up, a flourishing scheme,
fertile in harvests of gain and intrigue. La Cibot was the hinge upon
which the whole matter turned; and for this reason, any rebellion on the
part of the instrument must be at once put down; such action on her part
was quite unexpected; but Fraisier had put forth all the strength of
his rancorous nature, and the audacious portress lay trampled under his
feet.

"Come, reassure yourself, my dear madame," he remarked, holding out
his hand. The touch of the cold, serpent-like skin made a terrible
impression upon the portress. It brought about something like a physical
reaction, which checked her emotion; Mme. Fontaine's toad, Astaroth,
seemed to her to be less deadly than this poison-sac that wore a sandy
wig and spoke in tones like the creaking of a hinge.

"Do not imagine that I am frightening you to no purpose," Fraisier
continued. (La Cibot's feeling of repulsion had not escaped him.) "The
affairs which made Mme. la Presidente's dreadful reputation are so well
known at the law-courts, that you can make inquiries there if you like.
The great person who was all but sent into a lunatic asylum was the
Marquis d'Espard. The Marquis d'Esgrignon was saved from the hulks. The
handsome young man with wealth and a great future before him, who was
to have married a daughter of one of the first families of France, and
hanged himself in a cell of the Conciergerie, was the celebrated Lucien
de Rubempre; the affair made a great deal of noise in Paris at the time.
That was a question of a will. His mistress, the notorious Esther, died
and left him several millions, and they accused the young fellow of
poisoning her. He was not even in Paris at the time of her death, nor
did he so much as know the woman had left the money to him!--One cannot
well be more innocent than that! Well, after M. Camusot examined him, he
hanged himself in his cell. Law, like medicine, has its victims. In the
first case, one man suffers for the many, and in the second, he dies for
science," he added, and an ugly smile stole over his lips. "Well, I know
the risks myself, you see; poor and obscure little attorney as I am, the
law has been the ruin of me. My experience was dearly bought--it is all
at your service."

"Thank you, no," said La Cibot; "I will have nothing to do with it,
upon my word!... I shall have nourished ingratitude, that is all! I want
nothing but my due; I have thirty years of honesty behind me, sir. M.
Pons says that he will recommend me to his friend Schmucke; well and
good, I shall end my days in peace with the German, good man."

Fraisier had overshot his mark. He had discouraged La Cibot. Now he was
obliged to remove these unpleasant impressions.

"Do not let us give up," he said; "just go away quietly home. Come, now,
we will steer the affair to a good end."

"But what about my _rentes_, what am I to do to get them, and--"

"And feel no remorse?" he interrupted quickly. "Eh! it is precisely for
that that men of business were invented; unless you keep within the law,
you get nothing. You know nothing of law; I know a good deal. I will see
that you keep on the right side of it, and you can hold your own in all
men's sight. As for your conscience, that is your own affair."

"Very well, tell me how to do it," returned La Cibot, curious and
delighted.

"I do not know how yet. I have not looked at the strong points of the
case yet; I have been busy with the obstacles. But the first thing to be
done is to urge him to make a will; you cannot go wrong over that; and
find out, first of all, how Pons means to leave his fortune; for if you
were his heir--"

"No, no; he does not like me. Ah! if I had but known the value of his
gimcracks, and if I had known what I know now about his amours, I should
be easy in my mind this day--"

"Keep on, in fact," broke in Fraisier. "Dying folk have queer fancies,
my dear madame; they disappoint hopes many a time. Let him make his
will, and then we shall see. And of all things, the property must be
valued. So I must see this Remonencq and the Jew; they will be very
useful to us. Put entire confidence in me, I am at your disposal. When a
client is a friend to me, I am his friend through thick and thin. Friend
or enemy, that is my character."

"Very well," said La Cibot, "I am yours entirely; and as for fees, M.
Poulain--"

"Let us say nothing about that," said Fraisier. "Think how you can keep
Poulain at the bedside; he is one of the most upright and conscientious
men I know; and, you see, we want some one there whom we can trust.
Poulain would do better than I; I have lost my character."

"You look as if you had," said La Cibot; "but, for my own part, I should
trust you."

"And you would do well. Come to see me whenever anything happens,
and--there!--you are an intelligent woman; all will go well."

"Good-day, M. Fraisier. I hope you will recover your health. Your
servant, sir."

Fraisier went to the door with his client. But this time it was he, and
not La Cibot, who was struck with an idea on the threshold.

"If you could persuade M. Pons to call me in, it would be a great step."

"I will try," said La Cibot.

Fraisier drew her back into his sanctum. "Look here, old lady, I know
M. Trognon, the notary of the quarter, very well. If M. Pons has not a
notary, mention M. Trognon to him. Make him take M. Trognon--"

"Right," returned La Cibot.

And as she came out again she heard the rustle of a dress and the sound
of a stealthy, heavy footstep.

Out in the street and by herself, Mme. Cibot to some extent recovered
her liberty of mind as she walked. Though the influence of the
conversation was still upon her, and she had always stood in dread of
scaffolds, justice, and judges, she took a very natural resolution which
was to bring about a conflict of strategy between her and her formidable
legal adviser.

"What do I want with other folk?" said she to herself. "Let us make a
round sum, and afterwards I will take all that they offer me to push
their interests;" and this thought, as will shortly be seen, hastened
the poor old musician's end.



"Well, dear M. Schmucke, and how is our dear, adored patient?" asked La
Cibot, as she came into the room.

"Fery pad; Bons haf peen vandering all der night."

"Then, what did he say?"

"Chust nonsense. He vould dot I haf all his fortune, on kondition dot I
sell nodings.--Den he cried! Boor mann! It made me ver' sad."

"Never mind, honey," returned the portress. "I have kept you waiting for
your breakfast; it is nine o'clock and past; but don't scold me. I have
business on hand, you see, business of yours. Here are we without any
money, and I have been out to get some."

"Vere?" asked Schmucke.

"Of my uncle."

"Onkel?"

"Up the spout."

"Shpout?"

"Oh! the dear man! how simple he is? No, you are a saint, a love, an
archbishop of innocence, a man that ought to be stuffed, as the old
actor said. What! you have lived in Paris for twenty-nine years; you
saw the Revolution of July, you did, and you have never so much as heard
tell of a pawnbroker--a man that lends you money on your things?--I have
been pawning our silver spoons and forks, eight of them, thread pattern.
Pooh, Cibot can eat his victuals with German silver; it is quite the
fashion now, they say. It is not worth while to say anything to our
angel there; it would upset him and make him yellower than before, and
he is quite cross enough as it is. Let us get him round again first, and
afterwards we shall see. What must be must; and we must take things as
we find them, eh?"

"Goot voman! nople heart!" cried poor Schmucke, with a great tenderness
in his face. He took La Cibot's hand and clasped it to his breast. When
he looked up, there were tears in his eyes.

"There, that will do, Papa Schmucke; how funny you are! This is too
bad. I am an old daughter of the people--my heart is in my hand. I have
something _here_, you see, like you have, hearts of gold that you are,"
she added, slapping her chest.

"Baba Schmucke!" continued the musician. "No. To know de tepths of
sorrow, to cry mit tears of blood, to mount up in der hefn--dat is mein
lot! I shall not lif after Bons--"

"Gracious! I am sure you won't, you are killing yourself.--Listen, pet!"

"Bet?"

"Very well, my sonny--"

"Zonny?"

"My lamb, then, if you like it better."

"It is not more clear."

"Oh, well, let _me_ take care of you and tell you what to do; for if you
go on like this, I shall have both of you laid up on my hands, you see.
To my little way of thinking, we must do the work between us. You cannot
go about Paris to give lessons for it tires you, and then you are not
fit to do anything afterwards, and somebody must sit up of a night with
M. Pons, now that he is getting worse and worse. I will run round to-day
to all your pupils and tell them that you are ill; is it not so? And
then you can spend the nights with our lamb, and sleep of a morning from
five o'clock till, let us say, two in the afternoon. I myself will take
the day, the most tiring part, for there is your breakfast and dinner to
get ready, and the bed to make, and the things to change, and the doses
of medicine to give. I could not hold out for another ten days at this
rate. What would become of you if I were to fall ill? And you yourself,
it makes one shudder to see you; just look at yourself, after sitting up
with him last night!"

She drew Schmucke to the glass, and Schmucke thought that there was a
great change.

"So, if you are of my mind, I'll have your breakfast ready in a jiffy.
Then you will look after our poor dear again till two o'clock. Let me
have a list of your people, and I will soon arrange it. You will be
free for a fortnight. You can go to bed when I come in, and sleep till
night."

So prudent did the proposition seem, that Schmucke then and there agreed
to it.

"Not a word to M. Pons; he would think it was all over with him, you
know, if we were to tell him in this way that his engagement at the
theatre and his lessons are put off. He would be thinking that he
should not find his pupils again, poor gentleman--stuff and nonsense! M.
Poulain says that we shall save our Benjamin if we keep him as quiet as
possible."

"Ach! fery goot! Pring up der preakfast; I shall make der bett, and gif
you die attresses!--You are right; it vould pe too much for me."

An hour later La Cibot, in her Sunday clothes, departed in great state,
to the no small astonishment of the Remonencqs; she promised herself
that she would support the character of confidential servant of the pair
of nutcrackers, in the boarding-schools and private families in which
they gave music-lessons.

It is needless to repeat all the gossip in which La Cibot indulged
on her round. The members of every family, the head-mistress of every
boarding-school, were treated to a variation upon the theme of
Pons' illness. A single scene, which took place in the Illustrious
Gaudissart's private room, will give a sufficient idea of the rest. La
Cibot met with unheard-of difficulties, but she succeeded in penetrating
at last to the presence. Kings and cabinet ministers are less difficult
of access than the manager of a theatre in Paris; nor is it hard to
understand why such prodigious barriers are raised between them and
ordinary mortals: a king has only to defend himself from ambition; the
manager of a theatre has reason to dread the wounded vanity of actors
and authors.

La Cibot, however, struck up an acquaintance with the portress, and
traversed all distances in a brief space. There is a sort of freemasonry
among the porter tribe, and, indeed, among the members of every
profession; for each calling has its shibboleth, as well as its
insulting epithet and the mark with which it brands its followers.

"Ah! madame, you are the portress here," began La Cibot. "I myself am a
portress, in a small way, in a house in the Rue de Normandie. M. Pons,
your conductor, lodges with us. Oh, how glad I should be to have your
place, and see the actors and dancers and authors go past. It is the
marshal's baton in our profession, as the old actor said."

"And how is M. Pons going on, good man?" inquired the portress.

"He is not going on at all; he has not left his bed these two months. He
will only leave the house feet foremost, that is certain."

"He will be missed."

"Yes. I have come with a message to the manager from him. Just try to
get me a word with him, dear."

"A lady from M. Pons to see you, sir!" After this fashion did the youth
attached to the service of the manager's office announce La Cibot, whom
the portress below had particularly recommended to his care.

Gaudissart had just come in for a rehearsal. Chance so ordered it that
no one wished to speak with him; actors and authors were alike late.
Delighted to have news of his conductor, he made a Napoleonic gesture,
and La Cibot was admitted.

The sometime commercial traveler, now the head of a popular theatre,
regarded his sleeping partners in the light of a legitimate wife;
they were not informed of all his doings. The flourishing state of
his finances had reacted upon his person. Grown big and stout and
high-colored with good cheer and prosperity, Gaudissart made no disguise
of his transformation into a Mondor.

"We are turning into a city-father," he once said, trying to be the
first to laugh.

"You are only in the Turcaret stage yet, though," retorted Bixiou, who
often replaced Gaudissart in the company of the leading lady of the
ballet, the celebrated Heloise Brisetout.

The former Illustrious Gaudissart, in fact, was exploiting the theatre
simply and solely for his own particular benefit, and with brutal
disregard of other interests. He first insinuated himself as a
collaborator in various ballets, plays, and vaudevilles; then he
waited till the author wanted money and bought up the other half of
the copyright. These after-pieces and vaudevilles, always added to
successful plays, brought him in a daily harvest of gold coins. He
trafficked by proxy in tickets, allotting a certain number to himself,
as the manager's share, till he took in this way a tithe of the
receipts. And Gaudissart had other methods of making money besides these
official contributions. He sold boxes, he took presents from indifferent
actresses burning to go upon the stage to fill small speaking parts,
or simply to appear as queens, or pages, and the like; he swelled his
nominal third share of the profits to such purpose that the sleeping
partners scarcely received one-tenth instead of the remaining two-thirds
of the net receipts. Even so, however, the tenth paid them a dividend of
fifteen per cent on their capital. On the strength of that fifteen per
cent Gaudissart talked of his intelligence, honesty, and zeal, and the
good fortune of his partners. When Count Popinot, showing an interest in
the concern, asked Matifat, or General Gouraud (Matifat's son-in-law),
or Crevel, whether they were satisfied with Gaudissart, Gouraud, now a
peer of France, answered, "They say he robs us; but he is such a clever,
good-natured fellow, that we are quite satisfied."

"This is like La Fontaine's fable," smiled the ex-cabinet minister.

Gaudissart found investments for his capital in other ventures. He
thought well of Schwab, Brunner, and the Graffs; that firm was promoting
railways, he became a shareholder in the lines. His shrewdness was
carefully hidden beneath the frank carelessness of a man of pleasure;
he seemed to be interested in nothing but amusements and dress, yet he
thought everything over, and his wide experience of business gained as a
commercial traveler stood him in good stead.

A self-made man, he did not take himself seriously. He gave suppers
and banquets to celebrities in rooms sumptuously furnished by the house
decorator. Showy by nature, with a taste for doing things handsomely,
he affected an easy-going air, and seemed so much the less formidable
because he had kept the slang of "the road" (to use his own expression),
with a few green-room phrases superadded. Now, artists in the theatrical
profession are wont to express themselves with some vigor; Gaudissart
borrowed sufficient racy green-room talk to blend with his commercial
traveler's lively jocularity, and passed for a wit. He was thinking at
that moment of selling his license and "going into another line," as he
said. He thought of being chairman of a railway company, of becoming a
responsible person and an administrator, and finally of marrying Mlle.
Minard, daughter of the richest mayor in Paris. He might hope to get
into the Chamber through "his line," and, with Popinot's influence, to
take office under the Government.

"Whom have I the honor of addressing?" inquired Gaudissart, looking
magisterially at La Cibot.

"I am M. Pons' confidential servant, sir."

"Well, and how is the dear fellow?"

"Ill, sir--very ill."

"The devil he is! I am sorry to hear it--I must come and see him; he is
such a man as you don't often find."

"Ah yes! sir, he is a cherub, he is. I have always wondered how he came
to be in a theatre."

"Why, madame, the theatre is a house of correction for morals," said
Gaudissart. "Poor Pons!--Upon my word, one ought to cultivate the
species to keep up the stock. 'Tis a pattern man, and has talent too.
When will he be able to take his orchestra again, do you think? A
theatre, unfortunately, is like a stage coach: empty or full, it
starts at the same time. Here at six o'clock every evening, up goes the
curtain; and if we are never sorry for ourselves, it won't make good
music. Let us see now--how is he?"

La Cibot pulled out her pocket-handkerchief and held it to her eyes.

"It is a terrible thing to say, my dear sir," said she; "but I am afraid
we shall lose him, though we are as careful of him as of the apple of
our eyes. And, at the same time, I came to say that you must not count
on M. Schmucke, worthy man, for he is going to sit up with him at night.
One cannot help doing as if there was hope still left, and trying one's
best to snatch the dear, good soul from death. But the doctor has given
him up----"

"What is the matter with him?"

"He is dying of grief, jaundice, and liver complaint, with a lot of
family affairs to complicate matters."

"And a doctor as well," said Gaudissart. "He ought to have had Lebrun,
our doctor; it would have cost him nothing."

"M. Pons' doctor is a Providence on earth. But what can a doctor do, no
matter how clever he is, with such complications?"

"I wanted the good pair of nutcrackers badly for the accompaniment of my
new fairy piece."

"Is there anything that I can do for them?" asked La Cibot, and her
expression would have done credit to a Jocrisse.

Gaudissart burst out laughing.

"I am their housekeeper, sir, and do many things for my gentlemen--"
She did not finish her speech, for in the middle of Gaudissart's roar of
laughter a woman's voice exclaimed, "If you are laughing, old man, one
may come in," and the leading lady of the ballet rushed into the
room and flung herself upon the only sofa. The newcomer was Heloise
Brisetout, with a splendid _algerienne_, such as scarves used to be
called, about her shoulders.

"Who is amusing you? Is it this lady? What post does she want?" asked
this nymph, giving the manager such a glance as artist gives artist, a
glance that would make a subject for a picture.

Heloise, a young woman of exceedingly literary tastes, was on intimate
terms with great and famous artists in Bohemia. Elegant, accomplished,
and graceful, she was more intelligent than dancers usually are. As she
put her question, she sniffed at a scent-bottle full of some aromatic
perfume.

"One fine woman is as good as another, madame; and if I don't sniff the
pestilence out of a scent-bottle, nor daub brickdust on my cheeks--"

"That would be a sinful waste, child, when Nature put it on for you to
begin with," said Heloise, with a side glance at her manager.

"I am an honest woman--"

"So much the worse for you. It is not every one by a long chalk that
can find some one to keep them, and kept I am, and in slap-up style,
madame."

"So much the worse! What do you mean? Oh, you may toss your head and
go about in scarves, you will never have as many declarations as I have
had, missus. You will never match the _Belle Ecaillere of the Cadran
Bleu_."

Heloise Brisetout rose at once to her feet, stood at attention, and made
a military salute, like a soldier who meets his general.

"What?" asked Gaudissart, "are you really _La Belle Ecaillere_ of whom
my father used to talk?"

"In that case the cachucha and the polka were after your time; and
madame has passed her fiftieth year," remarked Heloise, and striking an
attitude, she declaimed, "'Cinna, let us be friends.'"

"Come, Heloise, the lady is not up to this; let her alone."

"Madame is perhaps the New Heloise," suggested La Cibot, with sly
innocence.

"Not bad, old lady!" cried Gaudissart.

"It is a venerable joke," said the dancer, "a grizzled pun; find us
another old lady--or take a cigarette."

"I beg your pardon, madame, I feel too unhappy to answer you; my two
gentlemen are very ill; and to buy nourishment for them and to spare
them trouble, I have pawned everything down to my husband's clothes that
I pledged this morning. Here is the ticket!"

"Oh! here, the affair is becoming tragic," cried the fair Heloise. "What
is it all about?"

"Madame drops down upon us like--"

"Like a dancer," said Heloise; "let me prompt you,--missus!"

"Come, I am busy," said Gaudissart. "The joke has gone far enough.
Heloise, this is M. Pons' confidential servant; she had come to tell me
that I must not count upon him; our poor conductor is not expected to
live. I don't know what to do."

"Oh! poor man; why, he must have a benefit."

"It would ruin him," said Gaudissart. "He might find next day that he
owed five hundred francs to charitable institutions, and they refuse to
admit that there are any sufferers in Paris except their own. No, look
here, my good woman, since you are going in for the Montyon prize----"

He broke off, rang the bell, and the youth before mentioned suddenly
appeared.

"Tell the cashier to send me up a thousand-franc note.--Sit down,
madame."

"Ah! poor woman, look, she is crying!" exclaimed Heloise. "How stupid!
There, there, mother, we will go to see him; don't cry.--I say, now,"
she continued, taking the manager into a corner, "you want to make me
take the leading part in the ballet in _Ariane_, you Turk. You are going
to be married, and you know how I can make you miserable--"

"Heloise, my heart is copper-bottomed like a man-of-war."

"I shall bring your children on the scene! I will borrow some
somewhere."

"I have owned up about the attachment."

"Do be nice, and give Pons' post to Garangeot; he has talent, poor
fellow, and he has not a penny; and I promise peace."

"But wait till Pons is dead, in case the good man may come back again."

"Oh, as to that, no, sir," said La Cibot. "He began to wander in
his mind last night, and now he is delirious. It will soon be over,
unfortunately."

"At any rate, take Garangeot as a stop-gap!" pleaded Heloise. "He has
the whole press on his side--"

Just at that moment the cashier came in with a note for a thousand
francs in his hand.

"Give it to madame here," said Gaudissart. "Good-day, my good woman;
take good care of the dear man, and tell him that I am coming to see him
to-morrow, or sometime--as soon as I can, in short."

"A drowning man," said Heloise.

"Ah, sir, hearts like yours are only found in a theatre. May God bless
you!"

"To what account shall I post this item?" asked the cashier.

"I will countersign the order. Post it to the bonus account."

Before La Cibot went out, she made Mlle. Brisetout a fine courtesy, and
heard Gaudissart remark to his mistress:

"Can Garangeot do the dance-music for the _Mohicans_ in twelve days? If
he helps me out of my predicament, he shall have Pons' place."

La Cibot had cut off the incomes of the two friends, she had left them
without means of subsistence if Pons should chance to recover, and was
better rewarded for all this mischief than for any good that she had
done. In a few days' time her treacherous trick would bring about the
desired result--Elie Magus would have his coveted pictures. But if
this first spoliation was to be effected, La Cibot must throw dust
in Fraisier's eyes, and lull the suspicions of that terrible
fellow-conspirator of her own seeking; and Elie Magus and Remonencq must
be bound over to secrecy.

As for Remonencq, he had gradually come to feel such a passion as
uneducated people can conceive when they come to Paris from the depths
of the country, bringing with them all the fixed ideas bred of the
solitary country life; all the ignorance of a primitive nature, all the
brute appetites that become so many fixed ideas. Mme. Cibot's masculine
beauty, her vivacity, her market-woman's wit, had all been remarked by
the marine store-dealer. He thought at first of taking La Cibot from her
husband, bigamy among the lower classes in Paris being much more common
than is generally supposed; but greed was like a slip-knot drawn more
and more tightly about his heart, till reason at length was stifled.
When Remonencq computed that the commission paid by himself and Elie
Magus amounted to about forty thousand francs, he determined to have
La Cibot for his legitimate spouse, and his thoughts turned from
a misdemeanor to a crime. A romantic purely speculative dream,
persistently followed through a tobacco-smoker's long musings as he
lounged in the doorway, had brought him to the point of wishing that the
little tailor were dead. At a stroke he beheld his capital trebled; and
then he thought of La Cibot. What a good saleswoman she would be! What a
handsome figure she would make in a magnificent shop on the boulevards!
The twofold covetousness turned Remonencq's head. In fancy he took a
shop that he knew of on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, he stocked it
with Pons' treasures, and then--after dreaming his dream in sheets of
gold, after seeing millions in the blue spiral wreaths that rose from
his pipe, he awoke to find himself face to face with the little tailor.
Cibot was sweeping the yard, the doorstep, and the pavement just as
his neighbor was taking down the shutters and displaying his wares; for
since Pons fell ill, La Cibot's work had fallen to her husband.

The Auvergnat began to look upon the little, swarthy, stunted,
copper-colored tailor as the one obstacle in his way, and pondered how
to be rid of him. Meanwhile this growing passion made La Cibot very
proud, for she had reached an age when a woman begins to understand that
she may grow old.

So early one morning, she meditatively watched Remonencq as he arranged
his odds and ends for sale. She wondered how far his love could go. He
came across to her.

"Well," he said, "are things going as you wish?"

"It is you who makes me uneasy," said La Cibot. "I shall be talked
about; the neighbors will see you making sheep's eyes at me."

She left the doorway and dived into the Auvergnat's back shop.

"What a notion!" said Remonencq.

"Come here, I have something to say to you," said La Cibot. "M. Pons'
heirs are about to make a stir; they are capable of giving us a lot of
trouble. God knows what might come of it if they send the lawyers here
to poke their noses into the affair like hunting-dogs. I cannot get M.
Schmucke to sell a few pictures unless you like me well enough to keep
the secret--such a secret!--With your head on the block, you must not
say where the pictures come from, nor who it was that sold them. When M.
Pons is once dead and buried, you understand, nobody will know how many
pictures there ought to be; if there are fifty-three pictures instead of
sixty-seven, nobody will be any the wiser. Besides, if M. Pons sold them
himself while he was alive, nobody can find fault."

"No," agreed Remonencq, "it is all one to me, but M. Elie Magus will
want receipts in due form."

"And you shall have your receipt too, bless your life! Do you suppose
that _I_ should write them?--No, M. Schmucke will do that. But tell your
Jew that he must keep the secret as closely as you do," she continued.

"We will be as mute as fishes. That is our business. I myself can read,
but I cannot write, and that is why I want a capable wife that has had
education like you. I have thought of nothing but earning my bread all
my days, and now I wish I had some little Remonencqs. Do leave that
Cibot of yours."

"Why, here comes your Jew," said the portress; "we can arrange the whole
business."

Elie Magus came every third day very early in the morning to know when
he could buy his pictures. "Well, my dear lady," said he, "how are we
getting on?"

"Has nobody been to speak to you about M. Pons and his gimcracks?" asked
La Cibot.

"I received a letter from a lawyer," said Elie Magus, "a rascal that
seems to me to be trying to work for himself; I don't like people of
that sort, so I took no notice of his letter. Three days afterwards he
came to see me, and left his card. I told my porter that I am never at
home when he calls."

"You are a love of a Jew," said La Cibot. Little did she know Elie
Magus' prudence. "Well, sonnies, in a few days' time I will bring M.
Schmucke to the point of selling you seven or eight pictures, ten at
most. But on two conditions.--Absolute secrecy in the first place.
M. Schmucke will send for you, sir, is not that so? And M. Remonencq
suggested that you might be a purchaser, eh?--And, come what may, I will
not meddle in it for nothing. You are giving forty-six thousand francs
for four pictures, are you not?"

"So be it," groaned the Jew.

"Very good. This is the second condition. You will give me _forty-three_
thousand francs, and pay three thousand only to M. Schmucke; Remonencq
will buy four for two thousand francs, and hand over the surplus to
me.--But at the same time, you see my dear M. Magus, I am going to help
you and Remonencq to a splendid bit of business--on condition that the
profits are shared among the three of us. I will introduce you to that
lawyer, as he, no doubt, will come here. You shall make a valuation of
M. Pons' things at the prices which you can give for them, so that M.
Fraisier may know how much the property is worth. But--not until after
our sale, you understand!"

"I understand," said the Jew, "but it takes time to look at the things
and value them."

"You shall have half a day. But, there, that is my affair. Talk it over
between yourselves, my boys, and for that matter the business will be
settled by the day after to-morrow. I will go round to speak to this
Fraisier; for Dr. Poulain tells him everything that goes on in the
house, and it is a great bother to keep that scarecrow quiet."

La Cibot met Fraisier halfway between the Rue de la Perle and the Rue
de Normandie; so impatient was he to know the "elements of the case" (to
use his own expression), that he was coming to see her.

"I say! I was going to you," said she.

Fraisier grumbled because Elie Magus had refused to see him. But La
Cibot extinguished the spark of distrust that gleamed in the lawyer's
eyes by informing him that Elie Magus had returned from a journey,
and that she would arrange for an interview in Pons' rooms and for the
valuation of the property; for the day after to-morrow at latest.

"Deal frankly with me," returned Fraisier. "It is more than probable
that I shall act for M. Pons' next-of-kin. In that case, I shall be even
better able to serve you."

The words were spoken so drily that La Cibot quaked. This starving limb
of the law was sure to manoeuvre on his side as she herself was doing.
She resolved forthwith to hurry on the sale of the pictures.

La Cibot was right. The doctor and lawyer had clubbed together to buy
a new suit of clothes in which Fraisier could decently present himself
before Mme. la Presidente Camusot de Marville. Indeed, if the clothes
had been ready, the interview would have taken place sooner, for the
fate of the couple hung upon its issues. Fraisier left Mme. Cibot, and
went to try on his new clothes. He found them waiting for him, went
home, adjusted his new wig, and towards ten o'clock that morning set out
in a carriage from a livery stable for the Rue de Hanovre, hoping for an
audience. In his white tie, yellow gloves, and new wig, redolent of _eau
de Portugal_, he looked something like a poisonous essence kept in a
cut-glass bottle, seeming but the more deadly because everything about
it is daintily neat, from the stopper covered with white kid to the
label and the thread. His peremptory manner, the eruption on his
blotched countenance, the green eyes, and a malignant something about
him,--all these things struck the beholder with the same sense of
surprise as storm-clouds in a blue sky. If in his private office, as
he showed himself to La Cibot, he was the common knife that a murderer
catches up for his crime,--now, at the Presidente's door, he was the
daintily-wrought dagger which a woman sets among the ornaments on her
what-not.

A great change had taken place in the Rue de Hanovre. The Count and
Countess Popinot and the young people would not allow the President and
his wife to leave the house that they had settled upon their daughter to
pay rent elsewhere. M. and Mme. la Presidente, therefore, were installed
on the second floor, now left at liberty, for the elderly lady had made
up her mind to end her days in the country.

Mme. Camusot took Madeleine Vivet, with her cook and her man-servant,
to the second floor, and would have been as much pinched for money as in
the early days, if the house had not been rent free, and the President's
salary increased to ten thousand francs. This _aurea mediocritas_ was
but little satisfactory to Mme. de Marville. Even now she wished for
means more in accordance with her ambitions; for when she handed over
their fortune to their daughter, she spoiled her husband's prospects.
Now Amelie had set her heart upon seeing her husband in the Chamber of
Deputies; she was not one of those women who find it easy to give up
their way; and she by no means despaired of returning her husband for
the arrondissement in which Marville is situated. So for the past two
months she had teased her father-in-law, M. le Baron Camusot (for the
new peer of France had been advanced to that rank), and done her utmost
to extort an advance of a hundred thousand francs of the inheritance
which one day would be theirs. She wanted, she said, to buy a small
estate worth about two thousand francs per annum set like a wedge
within the Marville lands. There she and her husband would be near their
children and in their own house, while the addition would round out the
Marville property. With that the Presidente laid stress upon the recent
sacrifices which she and her husband had been compelled to make in order
to marry Cecile to Viscount Popinot, and asked the old man how he could
bar his eldest son's way to the highest honors of the magistracy, when
such honors were only to be had by those who made themselves a strong
position in parliament. Her husband would know how to take up such a
position, he would make himself feared by those in office, and so on and
so on.

"They do nothing for you unless you tighten a halter round their necks
to loosen their tongues," said she. "They are ungrateful. What do they
not owe to Camusot! Camusot brought the House of Orleans to the throne
by enforcing the ordinances of July."

M. Camusot senior answered that he had gone out of his depth in railway
speculations. He quite admitted that it was necessary to come to the
rescue, but put off the day until shares should rise, as they were
expected to do.

This half-promise, extracted some few days before Fraisier's visit,
had plunged the Presidente into depths of affliction. It was doubtful
whether the ex-proprietor of Marville was eligible for re-election
without the land qualification.

Fraisier found no difficulty in obtaining speech of Madeleine Vivet;
such viper natures own their kinship at once.

"I should like to see Mme. la Presidente for a few moments,
mademoiselle," Fraisier said in bland accents; "I have come on a matter
of business which touches her fortune; it is a question of a legacy,
be sure to mention that. I have not the honor of being known to Mme. la
Presidente, so my name is of no consequence. I am not in the habit of
leaving my chambers, but I know the respect that is due to a President's
wife, and I took the trouble of coming myself to save all possible
delay."

The matter thus broached, when repeated and amplified by the
waiting-maid, naturally brought a favorable answer. It was a decisive
moment for the double ambition hidden in Fraisier's mind. Bold as a
petty provincial attorney, sharp, rough-spoken, and curt as he was, he
felt as captains feel before the decisive battle of a campaign. As he
went into the little drawing-room where Amelie was waiting for him, he
felt a slight perspiration breaking out upon his forehead and down
his back. Every sudorific hitherto employed had failed to produce this
result upon a skin which horrible diseases had left impervious. "Even
if I fail to make my fortune," said he to himself, "I shall recover.
Poulain said that if I could only perspire I should recover."

The Presidente came forward in her morning gown.

"Madame--" said Fraisier, stopping short to bow with the humility by
which officials recognize the superior rank of the person whom they
address.

"Take a seat, monsieur," said the Presidente. She saw at a glance that
this was a man of law.

"Mme. la Presidente, if I take the liberty of calling your attention to
a matter which concerns M. le President, it is because I am sure that M.
de Marville, occupying, as he does, a high position, would leave
matters to take their natural course, and so lose seven or eight hundred
thousand francs, a sum which ladies (who, in my opinion, have a
far better understanding of private business than the best of
magistrates)--a sum which ladies, I repeat, would by no means despise--"

"You spoke of a legacy," interrupted the lady, dazzled by the wealth,
and anxious to hide her surprise. Amelie de Marville, like an impatient
novel-reader, wanted the end of the story.

"Yes, madame, a legacy that you are like to lose; yes, to lose
altogether; but I can, that is, I _could_, recover it for you, if--"

"Speak out, monsieur." Mme. de Marville spoke frigidly, scanning
Fraisier as she spoke with a sagacious eye.

"Madame, your eminent capacity is known to me; I was once at Mantes. M.
Leboeuf, President of the Tribunal, is acquainted with M. de Marville,
and can answer inquiries about me--"

The Presidente's shrug was so ruthlessly significant, that Fraisier was
compelled to make short work of his parenthetic discourse.

"So distinguished a woman will at once understand why I speak of myself
in the first place. It is the shortest way to the property."

To this acute observation the lady replied by a gesture. Fraisier took
the sign for a permission to continue.

"I was an attorney, madame, at Mantes. My connection was all the fortune
that I was likely to have. I took over M. Levroux's practice. You knew
him, no doubt?"

The Presidente inclined her head.

"With borrowed capital and some ten thousand francs of my own, I went
to Mantes. I had been with Desroches, one of the cleverest attorneys in
Paris, I had been his head-clerk for six years. I was so unlucky as to
make an enemy of the attorney for the crown at Mantes, Monsieur--"

"Olivier Vinet."

"Son of the Attorney-General, yes, madame. He was paying his court to a
little person--"

"Whom?"

"Mme. Vatinelle."

"Oh! Mme. Vatinelle. She was very pretty and very--er--when I was
there--"

"She was not unkind to me: _inde iroe_," Fraisier continued. "I was
industrious; I wanted to repay my friends and to marry; I wanted work;
I went in search of it; and before long I had more on my hands than
anybody else. Bah! I had every soul in Mantes against me--attorneys,
notaries, and even the bailiffs. They tried to fasten a quarrel on me.
In our ruthless profession, as you know, madame, if you wish to ruin a
man, it is soon done. I was concerned for both parties in a case, and
they found it out. It was a trifle irregular; but it is sometimes done
in Paris, attorneys in certain cases hand the rhubarb and take the
senna. They do things differently at Mantes. I had done M. Bouyonnet
this little service before; but, egged on by his colleagues and the
attorney for the crown, he betrayed me.--I am keeping back nothing, you
see.--There was a great hue and cry about it. I was a scoundrel; they
made me out blacker than Marat; forced me to sell out; ruined me. And I
am in Paris now. I have tried to get together a practice; but my health
is so bad, that I have only two quiet hours out of the twenty-four.

"At this moment I have but one ambition, and a very small one. Some
day," he continued, "you will be the wife of the Keeper of the Seals, or
of the Home Secretary, it may be; but I, poor and sickly as I am, desire
nothing but a post in which I can live in peace for the rest of my life,
a place without any opening in which to vegetate. I should like to be a
justice of the peace in Paris. It would be a mere trifle for you and M.
le President to gain the appointment for me; for the present Keeper of
the Seals must be anxious to keep on good terms with you...

"And that is not all, madame," added Fraisier. Seeing that Mme. de
Marville was about to speak, he cut her short with a gesture. "I have a
friend, the doctor in attendance on the old man who ought to leave his
property to M. le President. (We are coming to the point, you see.) The
doctor's co-operation is indispensable, and the doctor is precisely in
my position: he has abilities, he is unlucky. I learned through him how
far your interests were imperiled; for even as I speak, all may be over,
and the will disinheriting M. le President may have been made. This
doctor wishes to be head-surgeon of a hospital or of a Government
school. He must have a position in Paris equal to mine.... Pardon me
if I have enlarged on a matter so delicate; but we must have no
misunderstandings in this business. The doctor is, besides, much
respected and learned; he saved the life of the Comtesse Popinot's
great-uncle, M. Pillerault.

"Now, if you are so good as to promise these two posts--the appointment
of justice of the peace and the sinecure for my friend--I will undertake
to bring you the property, _almost_ intact.--Almost intact, I say, for
the co-operation of the legatee and several other persons is absolutely
indispensable, and some obligations will be incurred. You will not
redeem your promises until I have fulfilled mine."

The Presidente had folded her arms, and for the last minute or two sat
like a person compelled to listen to a sermon. Now she unfolded her
arms, and looked at Fraisier as she said, "Monsieur, all that you
say concerning your interests has the merit of clearness; but my own
interests in the matter are by no means so clear--"

"A word or two will explain everything, madame. M. le President is M.
Pons' first cousin once removed, and his sole heir. M. Pons is very ill;
he is about to make his will, if it is not already made, in favor of
a German, a friend of his named Schmucke; and he has more than seven
hundred thousand francs to leave. I hope to have an accurate valuation
made in two or three days--"

"If this is so," said the Presidente, "I made a great mistake in
quarreling with him and throwing the blame----" she thought aloud,
amazed by the possibility of such a sum.

"No, madame. If there had been no rupture, he would be as blithe as a
lark at this moment, and might outlive you and M. le President and me.
... The ways of Providence are mysterious, let us not seek to fathom
them," he added to palliate to some extent the hideous idea. "It cannot
be helped. We men of business look at the practical aspects of things.
Now you see clearly, madame, that M. de Marville in his public position
would do nothing, and could do nothing, as things are. He has broken
off all relations with his cousin. You see nothing now of Pons; you have
forbidden him the house; you had excellent reasons, no doubt, for doing
as you did, but the old man is ill, and he is leaving his property to
the only friend left to him. A President of the Court of Appeal in Paris
could say nothing under such circumstances if the will was made out in
due form. But between ourselves, madame, when one has a right to expect
seven or eight hundred thousand francs--or a million, it may be (how
should I know?)--it is very unpleasant to have it slip through one's
fingers, especially if one happens to be the heir-at-law.... But, on the
other hand, to prevent this, one is obliged to stoop to dirty work;
work so difficult, so ticklish, bringing you cheek by jowl with such low
people, servants and subordinates; and into such close contact with them
too, that no barrister, no attorney in Paris could take up such a case.

"What you want is a briefless barrister like me," said he, "a man who
should have real and solid ability, who has learned to be devoted, and
yet, being in a precarious position, is brought temporarily to a level
with such people. In my arrondissement I undertake business for small
tradespeople and working folk. Yes, madame, you see the straits to which
I have been brought by the enmity of an attorney for the crown, now
a deputy-public prosecutor in Paris, who could not forgive me my
superiority.--I know you, madame, I know that your influence means a
solid certainty; and in such a service rendered to you, I saw the end of
my troubles and success for my friend Dr. Poulain."

The lady sat pensive during a moment of unspeakable torture
for Fraisier. Vinet, an orator of the Centre, attorney-general
(_procureur-general_) for the past sixteen years, nominated half-a-score
of times for the chancellorship, the father, moreover, of the attorney
for the crown at Mantes who had been appointed to a post in Paris
within the last year--Vinet was an enemy and a rival for the malignant
Presidente. The haughty attorney-general did not hide his contempt for
President Camusot. This fact Fraisier did not know, and could not know.

"Have you nothing on your conscience but the fact that you were
concerned for both parties?" asked she, looking steadily at Fraisier.

"Mme. la Presidente can see M. Leboeuf; M. Leboeuf was favorable to me."

"Do you feel sure that M. Leboeuf will give M. de Marville and M. le
Comte Popinot a good account of you?"

"I will answer for it, especially now that M. Olivier Vinet has left
Mantes; for between ourselves, good M. Leboeuf was afraid of that
crabbed little official. If you will permit me, Madame La Presidente, I
will go to Mantes and see M. Leboeuf. No time will be lost, for I cannot
be certain of the precise value of the property for two or three days.
I do not wish that you should know all the ins and outs of this affair;
you ought not to know them, Mme. la Presidente, but is not the reward
that I expect for my complete devotion a pledge of my success?"

"Very well. If M. Leboeuf will speak in your favor, and if the property
is worth as much as you think (I doubt it myself), you shall have both
appointments, _if_ you succeed, mind you--"

"I will answer for it, madame. Only, you must be so good as to have your
notary and your attorney here when I shall need them; you must give me
a power of attorney to act for M. le President, and tell those
gentlemen to follow my instructions, and to do nothing on their own
responsibility."

"The responsibility rests with you," the Presidente answered solemnly,
"so you ought to have full powers.--But is M. Pons very ill?" she asked,
smiling.

"Upon my word, madame, he might pull through, especially with so
conscientious a doctor as Poulain in attendance; for this friend of
mine, madame, is simply an unconscious spy directed by me in your
interests. Left to himself, he would save the old man's life; but there
is some one else by the sickbed, a portress, who would push him into the
grave for thirty thousand francs. Not that she would kill him outright;
she will not give him arsenic, she is not so merciful; she will do
worse, she will kill him by inches; she will worry him to death day by
day. If the poor old man were kept quiet and left in peace; if he were
taken into the country and cared for and made much of by friends, he
would get well again; but he is harassed by a sort of Mme. Evrard. When
the woman was young she was one of thirty _Belles Ecailleres_, famous in
Paris, she is a rough, greedy, gossiping woman; she torments him to make
a will and to leave her something handsome, and the end of it will be
induration of the liver, calculi are possibly forming at this moment,
and he has not enough strength to bear an operation. The doctor, noble
soul, is in a horrible predicament. He really ought to send the woman
away--"

"Why, then, this vixen is a monster!" cried the lady in thin flute-like
tones.

Fraisier smiled inwardly at the likeness between himself and the
terrible Presidente; he knew all about those suave modulations of a
naturally sharp voice. He thought of another president, the hero of an
anecdote related by Louis XI., stamped by that monarch's final praise.
Blessed with a wife after the pattern of Socrates' spouse, and ungifted
with the sage's philosophy, he mingled salt with the corn in the mangers
and forbad the grooms to give water to the horses. As his wife rode
along the Seine towards their country-house, the animals bolted into the
river with the lady, and the magistrate returned thanks to Providence
for ridding him of his wife "in so natural a manner." At this present
moment Mme. de Marville thanked Heaven for placing at Pons' bedside a
woman so likely to get him "decently" out of the way.

Aloud she said, "I would not take a million at the price of a single
scruple.--Your friend ought to speak to M. Pons and have the woman sent
away."

"In the first place, madame, Messrs. Schmucke and Pons think the woman
an angel; they would send my friend away. And secondly, the doctor lies
under an obligation to this horrid oyster-woman; she called him in to
attend M. Pillerault. When he tells her to be as gentle as possible with
the patient, he simply shows the creature how to make matters worse."

"What does your friend think of _my_ cousin's condition?"

This man's clear, business-like way of putting the facts of the case
frightened Mme. de Marville; she felt that his keen gaze read the
thoughts of a heart as greedy as La Cibot's own.

"In six weeks the property will change hands."

The Presidente dropped her eyes.

"Poor man!" she sighed, vainly striving after a dolorous expression.

"Have you any message, madame, for M. Leboeuf? I am taking the train to
Mantes."

"Yes. Wait a moment, and I will write to ask him to dine with us
to-morrow. I want to see him, so that he may act in concert to repair
the injustice to which you have fallen a victim."

The Presidente left the room. Fraisier saw himself a justice of the
peace. He felt transformed at the thought; he grew stouter; his lungs
were filled with the breath of success, the breeze of prosperity. He
dipped into the mysterious reservoirs of volition for fresh and strong
doses of the divine essence. To reach success, he felt, as Remonencq
half felt, that he was ready for anything, for crime itself, provided
that no proofs of it remained. He had faced the Presidente boldly; he
had transmuted conjecture into reality; he had made assertions right
and left, all to the end that she might authorize him to protect her
interests and win her influence. As he stood there, he represented the
infinite misery of two lives, and the no less boundless desires of two
men. He spurned the squalid horrors of the Rue de la Perle. He saw the
glitter of a thousand crowns in fees from La Cibot, and five thousand
francs from the Presidente. This meant an abode such as befitted his
future prospects. Finally, he was repaying Dr. Poulain.

There are hard, ill-natured beings, goaded by distress or disease into
active malignity, that yet entertain diametrically opposed sentiments
with a like degree of vehemence. If Richelieu was a good hater, he
was no less a good friend. Fraisier, in his gratitude, would have let
himself be cut in two for Poulain.

So absorbed was he in these visions of a comfortable and prosperous
life, that he did not see the Presidente come in with the letter in her
hand, and she, looking at him, thought him less ugly now than at first.
He was about to be useful to her, and as soon as a tool belongs to us we
look upon it with other eyes.

"M. Fraisier," said she, "you have convinced me of your intelligence,
and I think that you can speak frankly."

Fraisier replied by an eloquent gesture.

"Very well," continued the lady, "I must ask you to give a candid reply
to this question: Are we, either of us, M. de Marville or I, likely to
be compromised, directly or indirectly, by your action in this matter?"

"I would not have come to you, madame, if I thought that some day I
should have to reproach myself for bringing so much as a splash of mud
upon you, for in your position a speck the size of a pin's head is seen
by all the world. You forget, madame, that I must satisfy you if I am
to be a justice of the peace in Paris. I have received one lesson at the
outset of my life; it was so sharp that I do not care to lay myself open
to a second thrashing. To sum it up in a last word, madame, I will not
take a step in which you are indirectly involved without previously
consulting you--"

"Very good. Here is the letter. And now I shall expect to be informed of
the exact value of the estate."

"There is the whole matter," said Fraisier shrewdly, making his bow
to the Presidente with as much graciousness as his countenance could
exhibit.

"What a providence!" thought Mme. Camusot de Marville. "So I am to be
rich! Camusot will be sure of his election if we let loose this Fraisier
upon the Bolbec constituency. What a tool!"

"What a providence!" Fraisier said to himself as he descended the
staircase; "and what a sharp woman Mme. Camusot is! I should want a
woman in these circumstances. Now to work!"

And he departed for Mantes to gain the good graces of a man he scarcely
knew; but he counted upon Mme. Vatinelle, to whom, unfortunately, he
owed all his troubles--and some troubles are of a kind that resemble
a protested bill while the defaulter is yet solvent, in that they bear
interest.

Three days afterwards, while Schmucke slept (for in accordance with the
compact he now sat up at night with the patient), La Cibot had a "tiff,"
as she was pleased to call it, with Pons. It will not be out of place
to call attention to one particularly distressing symptom of liver
complaint. The sufferer is always more or less inclined to impatience
and fits of anger; an outburst of this kind seems to give relief at the
time, much as a patient while the fever fit is upon him feels that he
has boundless strength; but collapse sets in so soon as the excitement
passes off, and the full extent of mischief sustained by the system
is discernible. This is especially the case when the disease has been
induced by some great shock; and the prostration is so much the more
dangerous because the patient is kept upon a restricted diet. It is
a kind of fever affecting neither the blood nor the brain, but the
humoristic mechanism, fretting the whole system, producing melancholy,
in which the patient hates himself; in such a crisis anything may cause
dangerous irritation.

In spite of all that the doctor could say, La Cibot had no belief in
this wear and tear of the nervous system by the humoristic. She was
a woman of the people, without experience or education; Dr. Poulain's
explanations for her were simply "doctor's notions." Like most of her
class, she thought that sick people must be fed, and nothing short of
Dr. Poulain's direct order prevented her from administering ham, a nice
omelette, or vanilla chocolate upon the sly.

The infatuation of the working classes on this point is very strong.
The reason of their reluctance to enter a hospital is the idea that they
will be starved there. The mortality caused by the food smuggled in by
the wives of patients on visiting-days was at one time so great that the
doctors were obliged to institute a very strict search for contraband
provisions.

If La Cibot was to realize her profits at once, a momentary quarrel must
be worked up in some way. She began by telling Pons about her visit to
the theatre, not omitting her passage at arms with Mlle. Heloise the
dancer.

"But why did you go?" the invalid asked for the third time. La Cibot
once launched on a stream of words, he was powerless to stop her.

"So, then, when I had given her a piece of my mind, Mademoiselle Heloise
saw who I was and knuckled under, and we were the best of friends.--And
now do you ask me why I went?" she added, repeating Pons' question.

There are certain babblers, babblers of genius are they, who sweep
up interruptions, objections, and observations in this way as they go
along, by way of provision to swell the matter of their conversation, as
if that source were ever in any danger of running dry.

"Why I went?" repeated she. "I went to get your M. Gaudissart out of
a fix. He wants some music for a ballet, and you are hardly fit to
scribble on sheets of paper and do your work, dearie.--So I understood,
things being so, that a M. Garangeot was to be asked to set the
_Mohicans_ to music--"

"Garangeot!" roared Pons in fury. "_Garangeot!_ a man with no talent; I
would not have him for first violin! He is very clever, he is very good
at musical criticism, but as to composing--I doubt it! And what the
devil put the notion of going to the theatre into your head?"

"How confoundedly contrairy the man is! Look here, dearie, we mustn't
boil over like milk on the fire! How are you to write music in the state
that you are in? Why, you can't have looked at yourself in the glass!
Will you have the glass and see? You are nothing but skin and bone--you
are as weak as a sparrow, and do you think that you are fit to make your
notes! why, you would not so much as make out mine.... And that reminds
me that I ought to go up to the third floor lodger's that owes us
seventeen francs, for when the chemist has been paid we shall not have
twenty left.--So I had to tell M. Gaudissart (I like that name), a good
sort he seems to be,--a regular Roger Bontemps that would just suit
me.--_He_ will never have liver complaint!--Well, so I had to tell him
how you were.--Lord! you are not well, and he has put some one else in
your place for a bit--"

"Some one else in my place!" cried Pons in a terrible voice, as he
sat right up in bed. Sick people, generally speaking, and those most
particularly who lie within the sweep of the scythe of Death, cling to
their places with the same passionate energy that the beginner displays
to gain a start in life. To hear that someone had taken his place was
like a foretaste of death to the dying man.

"Why, the doctor told me that I was going on as well as possible,"
continued he; "he said that I should soon be about again as usual. You
have killed me, ruined me, murdered me!"

"Tut, tut, tut!" cried La Cibot, "there you go! I am killing you, am I?
Mercy on us! these are the pretty things that you are always telling M.
Schmucke when my back is turned. I hear all that you say, that I do! You
are a monster of ingratitude."

"But you do not know that if I am only away for another fortnight, they
will tell me that I have had my day, that I am old-fashioned, out of
date, Empire, rococo, when I go back. Garangeot will have made friends
all over the theatre, high and low. He will lower the pitch to suit some
actress that cannot sing, he will lick M. Gaudissart's boots!" cried the
sick man, who clung to life. "He has friends that will praise him in
all the newspapers; and when things are like that in such a shop, Mme.
Cibot, they can find holes in anybody's coat. ... What fiend drove you
to do it?"

"Why! plague take it, M. Schmucke talked it over with me for a week.
What would you have? You see nothing but yourself! You are so selfish
that other people may die if you can only get better.--Why poor M.
Schmucke has been tired out this month past! he is tied by the leg,
he can go nowhere, he cannot give lessons nor take his place at the
theatre. Do you really see nothing? He sits up with you at night, and I
take the nursing in the day. If I were to sit up at night with you, as
I tried to do at first when I thought you were so poor, I should have to
sleep all day. And who would see to the house and look out for squalls!
Illness is illness, it cannot be helped, and here are you--"

"This was not Schmucke's idea, it is quite impossible--"

"That means that it was _I_ who took it into my head to do it, does it?
Do you think that we are made of iron? Why, if M. Schmucke had given
seven or eight lessons every day and conducted the orchestra every
evening at the theatre from six o'clock till half-past eleven at night,
he would have died in ten days' time. Poor man, he would give his life
for you, and do you want to be the death of him? By the authors of my
days, I have never seen a sick man to match you! Where are your senses?
have you put them in pawn? We are all slaving our lives out for you; we
do all for the best, and you are not satisfied! Do you want to drive us
raging mad? I myself, to begin with, am tired out as it is----"

La Cibot rattled on at her ease; Pons was too angry to say a word. He
writhed on his bed, painfully uttering inarticulate sounds; the blow was
killing him. And at this point, as usual, the scolding turned suddenly
to tenderness. The nurse dashed at her patient, grasped him by the head,
made him lie down by main force, and dragged the blankets over him.

"How any one can get into such a state!" exclaimed she. "After all, it
is your illness, dearie. That is what good M. Poulain says. See now,
keep quiet and be good, my dear little sonny. Everybody that comes near
you worships you, and the doctor himself comes to see you twice a day.
What would he say if he found you in such a way? You put me out of all
patience; you ought not to behave like this. If you have Ma'am Cibot
to nurse you, you should treat her better. You shout and you talk!--you
ought not to do it, you know that. Talking irritates you. And why do
you fly into a passion? The wrong is all on your side; you are always
bothering me. Look here, let us have it out! If M. Schmucke and I,
who love you like our life, thought that we were doing right--well, my
cherub, it was right, you may be sure."

"Schmucke never could have told you to go to the theatre without
speaking to me about it--"

"And must I wake him, poor dear, when he is sleeping like one of the
blest, and call him in as a witness?"

"No, no!" cried Pons. "If my kind and loving Schmucke made the
resolution, perhaps I am worse than I thought." His eyes wandered round
the room, dwelling on the beautiful things in it with a melancholy look
painful to see.

"So I must say good-bye to my dear pictures, to all the things that
have come to be like so many friends to me... and to my divine friend
Schmucke?... Oh! can it be true?"

La Cibot, acting her heartless comedy, held her handkerchief to her
eyes; and at that mute response the sufferer fell to dark musing--so
sorely stricken was he by the double stab dealt to health and his
interests by the loss of his post and the near prospect of death, that
he had no strength left for anger. He lay, ghastly and wan, like a
consumptive patient after a wrestling bout with the Destroyer.

"In M. Schmucke's interests, you see, you would do well to send for M.
Trognon; he is the notary of the quarter and a very good man," said La
Cibot, seeing that her victim was completely exhausted.

"You are always talking about this Trognon--"

"Oh! he or another, it is all one to me, for anything you will leave
me."

She tossed her head to signify that she despised riches. There was
silence in the room.

A moment later Schmucke came in. He had slept for six hours, hunger
awakened him, and now he stood at Pons' bedside watching his friend
without saying a word, for Mme. Cibot had laid a finger on her lips.

"Hush!" she whispered. Then she rose and went up to add under her
breath, "He is going off to sleep at last, thank Heaven! He is as
cross as a red donkey!--What can you expect, he is struggling with his
illness----"

"No, on the contrary, I am very patient," said the victim in a weary
voice that told of a dreadful exhaustion; "but, oh! Schmucke, my dear
friend, she has been to the theatre to turn me out of my place."

There was a pause. Pons was too weak to say more. La Cibot took the
opportunity and tapped her head significantly. "Do not contradict him,"
she said to Schmucke; "it would kill him."

Pons gazed into Schmucke's honest face. "And she says that you sent
her--" he continued.

"Yes," Schmucke affirmed heroically. "It had to pe. Hush!--let us safe
your life. It is absurd to vork and train your sdrength gif you haf a
dreasure. Get better; ve vill sell some prick-a-prack und end our tays
kvietly in a corner somveres, mit kind Montame Zipod."

"She has perverted you," moaned Pons.

Mme. Cibot had taken up her station behind the bed to make signals
unobserved. Pons thought that she had left the room. "She is murdering
me," he added.

"What is that? I am murdering you, am I?" cried La Cibot, suddenly
appearing, hand on hips and eyes aflame. "I am as faithful as a dog, and
this is all I get! God Almighty!--"

She burst into tears and dropped down into the great chair, a tragical
movement which wrought a most disastrous revulsion in Pons.

"Very good," she said, rising to her feet. The woman's malignant eyes
looked poison and bullets at the two friends. "Very good. Nothing that
I can do is right here, and I am tired of slaving my life out. You shall
take a nurse."

Pons and Schmucke exchanged glances in dismay.

"Oh! you may look at each other like actors. I mean it. I shall ask Dr.
Poulain to find a nurse for you. And now we will settle accounts. You
shall pay me back the money that I have spent on you, and that I would
never have asked you for, I that have gone to M. Pillerault to borrow
another five hundred francs of him--"

"It ees his illness!" cried Schmucke--he sprang to Mme. Cibot and put an
arm round her waist--"haf batience."

"As for you, you are an angel, I could kiss the ground you tread upon,"
said she. "But M. Pons never liked me, he always hated me. Besides, he
thinks perhaps that I want to be mentioned in his will--"

"Hush! you vill kill him!" cried Schmucke.

"Good-bye, sir," said La Cibot, with a withering look at Pons. "You
may keep well for all the harm I wish you. When you can speak to me
pleasantly, when you can believe that what I do is done for the best,
I will come back again. Till then I shall stay in my own room. You were
like my own child to me; did anybody ever see a child revolt against its
mother?... No, no, M. Schmucke, I do not want to hear more. I will bring
you _your_ dinner and wait upon _you_, but you must take a nurse. Ask M.
Poulain about it."

And she went out, slamming the door after her so violently that the
precious, fragile objects in the room trembled. To Pons in his torture,
the rattle of china was like the final blow dealt by the executioner to
a victim broken on the wheel.

An hour later La Cibot called to Schmucke through the door, telling him
that his dinner was waiting for him in the dining-room. She would not
cross the threshold. Poor Schmucke went out to her with a haggard,
tear-stained face.

"Mein boor Bons in vandering," said he; "he says dat you are ein pad
voman. It ees his illness," he added hastily, to soften La Cibot and
excuse his friend.

"Oh, I have had enough of his illness! Look here, he is neither father,
nor husband, nor brother, nor child of mine. He has taken a dislike to
me; well and good, that is enough! As for you, you see, I would follow
_you_ to the end of the world; but when a woman gives her life, her
heart, and all her savings, and neglects her husband (for here has Cibot
fallen ill), and then hears that she is a bad woman--it is coming it
rather too strong, it is."

"Too shtrong?"

"Too strong, yes. Never mind idle words. Let us come to the facts. As to
that, you owe me for three months at a hundred and ninety francs--that
is five hundred seventy francs; then there is the rent that I have paid
twice (here are the receipts), six hundred more, including rates and the
sou in the franc for the porter--something under twelve hundred francs
altogether, and with the two thousand francs besides--without interest,
mind you--the total amounts to three thousand one hundred and ninety-two
francs. And remember that you will want at least two thousand francs
before long for the doctor, and the nurse, and the medicine, and
the nurse's board. That was why I borrowed a thousand francs of M.
Pillerault," and with that she held up Gaudissart's bank-note.

It may readily be conceived that Schmucke listened to this reckoning
with amazement, for he knew about as much of business as a cat knows of
music.

"Montame Zipod," he expostulated, "Bons haf lost his head. Bardon him,
and nurse him as before, und pe our profidence; I peg it of you on mine
knees," and he knelt before La Cibot and kissed the tormentor's hands.

La Cibot raised Schmucke and kissed him on the forehead. "Listen, my
lamb," said she, "here is Cibot ill in bed; I have just sent for Dr.
Poulain. So I ought to set my affairs in order. And what is more, Cibot
saw me crying, and flew into such a passion that he will not have me set
foot in here again. It is _he_ who wants the money; it is his, you see.
We women can do nothing when it comes to that. But if you let him have
his money back again--the three thousand two hundred francs--he will be
quiet perhaps. Poor man, it is his all, earned by the sweat of his brow,
the savings of twenty-six years of life together. He must have his money
to-morrow; there is no getting round him.--You do not know Cibot; when
he is angry he would kill a man. Well, I might perhaps get leave of
him to look after you both as before. Be easy. I will just let him say
anything that comes into his head. I will bear it all for love of you,
an angel as you are."

"No, I am ein boor man, dot lof his friend and vould gif his life to
save him--"

"But the money?" broke in La Cibot. "My good M. Schmucke, let us suppose
that you pay me nothing; you will want three thousand francs, and where
are they to come from? Upon my word, do you know what I should do in
your place? I should not think twice, I should just sell seven or eight
good-for-nothing pictures and put up some of those instead that are
standing in your closet with their faces to the wall for want of room.
One picture or another, what difference does it make?"

"Und vy?"

"He is so cunning. It is his illness, for he is a lamb when he is well.
He is capable of getting up and prying about; and if by any chance he
went into the salon, he is so weak that he could not go beyond the door;
he would see that they are all still there."

"Drue!"

"And when he is quite well, we will tell him about the sale. And if you
wish to confess, throw it all upon me, say that you were obliged to pay
me. Come! I have a broad back--"

"I cannot tispose of dings dot are not mine," the good German answered
simply.

"Very well. I will summons you, you and M. Pons."

"It vould kill him--"

"Take your choice! Dear me, sell the pictures and tell him about it
afterwards... you can show him the summons--"

"Ver' goot. Summons us. Dot shall pe mine egscuse. I shall show him der
chudgment."

Mme. Cibot went down to the court, and that very day at seven o'clock
she called to Schmucke. Schmucke found himself confronted with M.
Tabareau the bailiff, who called upon him to pay. Schmucke made answer,
trembling from head to foot, and was forthwith summoned together with
Pons, to appear in the county court to hear judgment against him. The
sight of the bailiff and a bit of stamped paper covered with scrawls
produced such an effect upon Schmucke, that he held out no longer.

"Sell die bictures," he said, with tears in his eyes.

Next morning, at six o'clock, Elie Magus and Remonencq took down the
paintings of their choice. Two receipts for two thousand five hundred
francs were made out in correct form:--

"I, the undersigned, representing M. Pons, acknowledge the receipt
of two thousand five hundred francs from M. Elie Magus for the four
pictures sold to him, the said sum being appropriated to the use of M.
Pons. The first picture, attributed to Durer, is a portrait of a woman;
the second, likewise a portrait, is of the Italian School; the third,
a Dutch landscape by Breughel; and the fourth, a _Holy Family_ by an
unknown master of the Florentine School."

Remonencq's receipt was worded in precisely the same way; a Greuze, a
Claude Lorraine, a Rubens, and a Van Dyck being disguised as pictures of
the French and Flemish schools.

"Der monny makes me beleef dot the chimcracks haf som value," said
Schmucke when the five thousand francs were paid over.

"They are worth something," said Remonencq. "I would willingly give you
a hundred thousand francs for the lot."

Remonencq, asked to do a trifling service, hung eight pictures of the
proper size in the same frames, taking them from among the less valuable
pictures in Schmucke's bedroom.

No sooner was Elie Magus in possession of the four great pictures than
he went, taking La Cibot with him, under pretence of settling accounts.
But he pleaded poverty, he found fault with the pictures, they needed
rebacking, he offered La Cibot thirty thousand francs by way of
commission, and finally dazzled her with the sheets of paper on which
the Bank of France engraves the words "One thousand francs" in capital
letters. Magus thereupon condemned Remonencq to pay the like sum to La
Cibot, by lending him the money on the security of his four pictures,
which he took with him as a guarantee. So glorious were they, that Magus
could not bring himself to part with them, and next day he bought them
of Remonencq for six thousand francs over and above the original price,
and an invoice was duly made out for the four. Mme. Cibot, the richer
by sixty-eight thousand francs, once more swore her two accomplices to
absolute secrecy. Then she asked the Jew's advice. She wanted to invest
the money in such a way that no one should know of it.

"Buy shares in the Orleans Railway," said he; "they are thirty francs
below par, you will double your capital in three years. They will give
you scraps of paper, which you keep safe in a portfolio."

"Stay here, M. Magus. I will go and fetch the man of business who acts
for M. Pons' family. He wants to know how much you will give him for the
whole bag of tricks upstairs. I will go for him now."

"If only she were a widow!" said Remonencq when she was gone. "She would
just suit me; she will have plenty of money now--"

"Especially if she puts her money into the Orleans Railway; she will
double her capital in two years' time. I have put all my poor little
savings into it," added the Jew, "for my daughter's portion.--Come, let
us take a turn on the boulevard until this lawyer arrives."

"Cibot is very bad as it is," continued Remonencq; "if it should please
God to take him to Himself, I should have a famous wife to keep a shop;
I could set up on a large scale--"

"Good-day, M. Fraisier," La Cibot began in an ingratiating tone as she
entered her legal adviser's office. "Why, what is this that your porter
has been telling me? are you going to move?"

"Yes, my dear Mme. Cibot. I am taking the first floor above Dr. Poulain,
and trying to borrow two or three thousand francs so as to furnish the
place properly; it is very nice, upon my word, the landlord has just
papered and painted it. I am acting, as I told you, in President de
Marville's interests and yours.... I am not a solicitor now; I mean
to have my name entered on the roll of barristers, and I must be well
lodged. A barrister in Paris cannot have his name on the rolls unless
he has decent furniture and books and the like. I am a doctor of law, I
have kept my terms, and have powerful interest already.... Well, how are
we getting on?"

"Perhaps you would accept my savings," said La Cibot. "I have put them
in a savings bank. I have not much, only three thousand francs, the
fruits of twenty-five years of stinting and scraping. You might give me
a bill of exchange, as Remonencq says; for I am ignorant myself, I only
know what they tell me."

"No. It is against the rules of the guild for a barrister (_avocat_) to
put his name to a bill. I will give you a receipt, bearing interest at
five per cent per annum, on the understanding that if I make an income
of twelve hundred francs for you out of old Pons' estate you will cancel
it."

La Cibot, caught in the trap, uttered not a word.

"Silence gives consent," Fraisier continued. "Let me have it to-morrow
morning."

"Oh! I am quite willing to pay fees in advance," said La Cibot; "it is
one way of making sure of my money."

Fraisier nodded. "How are you getting on?" he repeated. "I saw Poulain
yesterday; you are hurrying your invalid along, it seems.... One more
scene such as yesterday's, and gall-stones will form. Be gentle with
him, my dear Mme. Cibot, do not lay up remorse for yourself. Life is not
too long."

"Just let me alone with your remorse! Are you going to talk about the
guillotine again? M. Pons is a contrairy old thing. You don't know him.
It is he that bothers me. There is not a more cross-grained man alive;
his relations are in the right of it, he is sly, revengeful, and
contrairy.... M. Magus has come, as I told you, and is waiting to see
you."

"Right! I will be there as soon as you. Your income depends upon the
price the collection will fetch. If it brings in eight hundred thousand
francs, you shall have fifteen hundred francs a year. It is a fortune."

"Very well. I will tell them to value the things on their consciences."



An hour later, Pons was fast asleep. The doctor had ordered a soothing
draught, which Schmucke administered, all unconscious that La Cibot had
doubled the dose. Fraisier, Remonencq, and Magus, three gallows-birds,
were examining the seventeen hundred different objects which formed the
old musician's collection one by one.

Schmucke had gone to bed. The three kites, drawn by the scent of a
corpse, were masters of the field.

"Make no noise," said La Cibot whenever Magus went into ecstasies or
explained the value of some work of art to Remonencq. The dying man
slept on in the neighboring room, while greed in four different
forms appraised the treasures that he must leave behind, and waited
impatiently for him to die--a sight to wring the heart.

Three hours went by before they had finished the salon.

"On an average," said the grimy old Jew, "everything here is worth a
thousand francs."

"Seventeen hundred thousand francs!" exclaimed Fraisier in bewilderment.

"Not to me," Magus answered promptly, and his eyes grew dull. "I would
not give more than a hundred thousand francs myself for the collection.
You cannot tell how long you may keep a thing on hand. ... There are
masterpieces that wait ten years for a buyer, and meanwhile the purchase
money is doubled by compound interest. Still, I should pay cash."

"There is stained glass in the other room, as well as enamels and
miniatures and gold and silver snuff-boxes," put in Remonencq.

"Can they be seen?" inquired Fraisier.

"I'll see if he is sound asleep," replied La Cibot. She made a sign, and
the three birds of prey came in.

"There are masterpieces yonder!" said Magus, indicating the salon, every
bristle of his white beard twitching as he spoke. "But the riches
are here! And what riches! Kings have nothing more glorious in royal
treasuries."

Remonencq's eyes lighted up till they glowed like carbuncles, at the
sight of the gold snuff-boxes. Fraisier, cool and calm as a serpent, or
some snake-creature with the power of rising erect, stood with his viper
head stretched out, in such an attitude as a painter would choose for
Mephistopheles. The three covetous beings, thirsting for gold as devils
thirst for the dew of heaven, looked simultaneously, as it chanced, at
the owner of all this wealth. Some nightmare troubled Pons; he stirred,
and suddenly, under the influence of those diabolical glances, he opened
his eyes with a shrill cry.

"Thieves!... There they are!... Help! Murder! Help!"

The nightmare was evidently still upon him, for he sat up in bed,
staring before him with blank, wide-open eyes, and had not the power to
move.

Elie Magus and Remonencq made for the door, but a word glued them to the
spot.

"_Magus_ here!... I am betrayed!"

Instinctively the sick man had known that his beloved pictures were in
danger, a thought that touched him at least as closely as any dread for
himself, and he awoke. Fraisier meanwhile did not stir.

"Mme. Cibot! who is that gentleman?" cried Pons, shivering at the sight.

"Goodness me! how could I put him out of the door?" she inquired, with
a wink and gesture for Fraisier's benefit. "This gentleman came just a
minute ago, from your family."

Fraisier could not conceal his admiration for La Cibot.

"Yes, sir," he said, "I have come on behalf of Mme. la Presidente de
Marville, her husband, and her daughter, to express their regret. They
learned quite by accident that you are ill, and they would like to nurse
you themselves. They want you to go to Marville and get well there. Mme.
la Vicomtesse Popinot, the little Cecile that you love so much, will be
your nurse. She took your part with her mother. She convinced Mme. de
Marville that she had made a mistake."

"So my next-of-kin have sent you to me, have they?" Pons exclaimed
indignantly, "and sent the best judge and expert in all Paris with you
to show you the way? Oh! a nice commission!" he cried, bursting into
wild laughter. "You have come to value my pictures and curiosities, my
snuff-boxes and miniatures!... Make your valuation. You have a man there
who understands everything, and more--he can buy everything, for he is
a millionaire ten times over.... My dear relatives will not have long
to wait," he added, with bitter irony, "they have choked the last breath
out of me.... Ah! Mme. Cibot, you said you were a mother to me, and you
bring dealers into the house, and my competitor and the Camusots, while
I am asleep!... Get out, all of you!--"

The unhappy man was beside himself with anger and fear; he rose from the
bed and stood upright, a gaunt, wasted figure.

"Take my arm, sir," said La Cibot, rushing to the rescue, lest Pons
should fall. "Pray calm yourself, the gentlemen are gone."

"I want to see the salon...." said the death-stricken man. La Cibot made
a sign to the three ravens to take flight. Then she caught up Pons as if
he had been a feather, and put him in bed again, in spite of his cries.
When she saw that he was quite helpless and exhausted, she went to shut
the door on the staircase. The three who had done Pons to death were
still on the landing; La Cibot told them to wait. She heard Fraisier say
to Magus:

"Let me have it in writing, and sign it, both of you. Undertake to pay
nine hundred thousand francs in cash for M. Pons' collection, and we
will see about putting you in the way of making a handsome profit."

With that he said something to La Cibot in a voice so low that the
others could not catch it, and went down after the two dealers to the
porter's room.

"Have they gone, Mme. Cibot?" asked the unhappy Pons, when she came back
again.

"Gone?... who?" asked she.

"Those men."

"What men? There, now, you have seen men," said she. "You have just
had a raving fit; if it hadn't been for me you would have gone out the
window, and now you are still talking of men in the room. Is it always
to be like this?"

"What! was there not a gentleman here just now, saying that my relatives
had sent him?"

"Will you still stand me out?" said she. "Upon my word, do you know
where you ought to be sent?--To the asylum at Charenton. You see men--"

"Elie Magus, Remonencq, and--"

"Oh! as for Remonencq, you may have seen _him_, for he came up to tell
me that my poor Cibot is so bad that I must clear out of this and come
down. My Cibot comes first, you see. When my husband is ill, I can think
of nobody else. Try to keep quiet and sleep for a couple of hours; I
have sent for Dr. Poulain, and I will come up with him.... Take a drink
and be good--"

"Then was there no one in the room just now, when I waked?..."

"No one," said she. "You must have seen M. Remonencq in one of your
looking-glasses."

"You are right, Mme. Cibot," said Pons, meek as a lamb.

"Well, now you are sensible again.... Good-bye, my cherub; keep quiet, I
shall be back again in a minute."

When Pons heard the outer door close upon her, he summoned up all his
remaining strength to rise.

"They are cheating me," he muttered to himself, "they are robbing me!
Schmucke is a child that would let them tie him up in a sack."

The terrible scene had seemed so real, it could not be a dream, he
thought; a desire to throw light upon the puzzle excited him; he managed
to reach the door, opened it after many efforts, and stood on the
threshold of his salon. There they were--his dear pictures, his statues,
his Florentine bronzes, his porcelain; the sight of them revived him.
The old collector walked in his dressing-gown along the narrow spaces
between the credence-tables and the sideboards that lined the wall; his
feet bare, his head on fire. His first glance of ownership told him that
everything was there; he turned to go back to bed again, when he noticed
that a Greuze portrait looked out of the frame that had held Sebastian
del Piombo's _Templar_. Suspicion flashed across his brain, making
his dark thoughts apparent to him, as a flash of lightning marks the
outlines of the cloud-bars on a stormy sky. He looked round for the
eight capital pictures of the collection; each one of them was replaced
by another. A dark film suddenly overspread his eyes; his strength
failed him; he fell fainting upon the polished floor.

So heavy was the swoon, that for two hours he lay as he fell, till
Schmucke awoke and went to see his friend, and found him lying
unconscious in the salon. With endless pains Schmucke raised the
half-dead body and laid it on the bed; but when he came to question
the death-stricken man, and saw the look in the dull eyes and heard the
vague, inarticulate words, the good German, so far from losing his head,
rose to the very heroism of friendship. Man and child as he was, with
the pressure of despair came the inspiration of a mother's tenderness, a
woman's love. He warmed towels (he found towels!), he wrapped them about
Pons' hands, he laid them over the pit of the stomach; he took the cold,
moist forehead in his hands, he summoned back life with a might of will
worthy of Apollonius of Tyana, laying kisses on his friend's eyelids
like some Mary bending over the dead Christ, in a _pieta_ carved in
bas-relief by some great Italian sculptor. The divine effort, the
outpouring of one life into another, the work of mother and of lover,
was crowned with success. In half an hour the warmth revived Pons; he
became himself again, the hues of life returned to his eyes, suspended
faculties gradually resumed their play under the influence of artificial
heat; Schmucke gave him balm-water with a little wine in it; the spirit
of life spread through the body; intelligence lighted up the forehead so
short a while ago insensible as a stone; and Pons knew that he had been
brought back to life, by what sacred devotion, what might of friendship!

"But for you, I should die," he said, and as he spoke he felt the good
German's tears falling on his face. Schmucke was laughing and crying at
once.

Poor Schmucke! he had waited for those words with a frenzy of hope as
costly as the frenzy of despair; and now his strength utterly failed
him, he collapsed like a rent balloon. It was his turn to fall; he
sank into the easy-chair, clasped his hands, and thanked God in fervent
prayer. For him a miracle had just been wrought. He put no belief in the
efficacy of the prayer of his deeds; the miracle had been wrought by God
in direct answer to his cry. And yet that miracle was a natural effect,
such as medical science often records.

A sick man, surrounded by those who love him, nursed by those who wish
earnestly that he should live, will recover (other things being equal),
when another patient tended by hirelings will die. Doctors decline to
see unconscious magnetism in this phenomenon; for them it is the result
of intelligent nursing, of exact obedience to their orders; but many a
mother knows the virtue of such ardent projection of strong, unceasing
prayer.

"My good Schmucke--"

"Say nodings; I shall hear you mit mein heart... rest, rest!" said
Schmucke, smiling at him.

"Poor friend, noble creature, child of God, living in God!... The one
being that has loved me...." The words came out with pauses between
them; there was a new note, a something never heard before, in Pons'
voice. All the soul, so soon to take flight, found utterance in the
words that filled Schmucke with happiness almost like a lover's rapture.

"Yes, yes. I shall be shtrong as a lion. I shall vork for two!"

"Listen, my good, my faithful, adorable friend. Let me speak, I have not
much time left. I am a dead man. I cannot recover from these repeated
shocks."

Schmucke was crying like a child.

"Just listen," continued Pons, "and cry afterwards. As a Christian, you
must submit. I have been robbed. It is La Cibot's doing.... I ought to
open your eyes before I go; you know nothing of life.... Somebody has
taken away eight of the pictures, and they were worth a great deal of
money."

"Vorgif me--I sold dem."

"_You_ sold them?"

"Yes, I," said poor Schmucke. "Dey summoned us to der court--"

"_Summoned?_.... Who summoned us?"

"Wait," said Schmucke. He went for the bit of stamped-paper left by the
bailiff, and gave it to Pons. Pons read the scrawl through with close
attention, then he let the paper drop and lay quite silent for a while.
A close observer of the work of men's hands, unheedful so far of the
workings of the brain, Pons finally counted out the threads of the plot
woven about him by La Cibot. The artist's fire, the intellect that won
the Roman scholarship--all his youth came back to him for a little.

"My good Schmucke," he said at last, "you must do as I tell you, and
obey like a soldier. Listen! go downstairs into the lodge and tell that
abominable woman that I should like to see the person sent to me by
my cousin the President; and that unless he comes, I shall leave my
collection to the Musee. Say that a will is in question."

Schmucke went on his errand; but at the first word, La Cibot answered by
a smile.

"My good M. Schmucke, our dear invalid has had a delirious fit; he
thought that there were men in the room. On my word, as an honest woman,
no one has come from the family."

Schmucke went back with his answer, which he repeated word for word.

"She is cleverer, more astute and cunning and wily, than I thought,"
said Pons with a smile. "She lies even in her room. Imagine it! This
morning she brought a Jew here, Elie Magus by name, and Remonencq, and a
third whom I do not know, more terrific than the other two put together.
She meant to make a valuation while I was asleep; I happened to wake,
and saw them all three, estimating the worth of my snuff-boxes. The
stranger said, indeed, that the Camusots had sent him here; I spoke to
him.... That shameless woman stood me out that I was dreaming!... My
good Schmucke, it was not a dream. I heard the man perfectly plainly; he
spoke to me.... The two dealers took fright and made for the door....
I thought that La Cibot would contradict herself--the experiment
failed.... I will lay another snare, and trap the wretched woman....
Poor Schmucke, you think that La Cibot is an angel; and for this month
past she has been killing me by inches to gain her covetous ends. I
would not believe that a woman who served us faithfully for years could
be so wicked. That doubt has been my ruin.... How much did the eight
pictures fetch?"

"Vife tausend vrancs."

"Good heavens! they were worth twenty times as much!" cried Pons; "the
gems of the collection! I have not time now to institute proceedings;
and if I did, you would figure in court as the dupe of those rascals.
... A lawsuit would be the death of you. You do not know what justice
means--a court of justice is a sink of iniquity.... At the sight of such
horrors, a soul like yours would give way. And besides, you will have
enough. The pictures cost me forty thousand francs. I have had them for
thirty-six years.... Oh, we have been robbed with surprising dexterity.
I am on the brink of the grave, I care for nothing now but thee--for
thee, the best soul under the sun....

"I will not have you plundered; all that I have is yours. So you must
trust nobody, Schmucke, you that have never suspected any one in your
life. I know God watches over you, but He may forget for one moment,
and you will be seized like a vessel among pirates.... La Cibot is a
monster! She is killing me; and you think her an angel! You shall see
what she is. Go and ask her to give you the name of a notary, and I will
show you her with her hand in the bag."

Schmucke listened as if Pons proclaimed an apocalypse. Could so depraved
a creature as La Cibot exist? If Pons was right, it seemed to imply that
there was no God in the world. He went right down again to Mme. Cibot.

"Mein boor vriend Bons feel so ill," he said, "dat he vish to make his
vill. Go und pring ein nodary."

This was said in the hearing of several persons, for Cibot's life was
despaired of. Remonencq and his sister, two women from neighboring
porters' lodges, two or three servants, and the lodger from the first
floor on the side next the street, were all standing outside in the
gateway.

"Oh! you can just fetch a notary yourself, and have your will made as
you please," cried La Cibot, with tears in her eyes. "My poor Cibot is
dying, and it is no time to leave him. I would give all the Ponses in
the world to save Cibot, that has never given me an ounce of unhappiness
in these thirty years since we were married."

And in she went, leaving Schmucke in confusion.

"Is M. Pons really seriously ill, sir?" asked the first-floor lodger,
one Jolivard, a clerk in the registrar's office at the Palais de
Justice.

"He nearly died chust now," said Schmucke, with deep sorrow in his
voice.

"M. Trognon lives near by in the Rue Saint-Louis," said M. Jolivard, "he
is the notary of the quarter."

"Would you like me to go for him?" asked Remonencq.

"I should pe fery glad," said Schmucke; "for gif Montame Zipod cannot pe
mit mine vriend, I shall not vish to leaf him in der shtate he is in--"

"Mme. Cibot told us that he was going out of his mind," resumed
Jolivard.

"Bons! out off his mind!" cried Schmucke, terror-stricken by the idea.
"Nefer vas he so clear in der head... dat is chust der reason vy I am
anxious for him."

The little group of persons listened to the conversation with a very
natural curiosity, which stamped the scene upon their memories. Schmucke
did not know Fraisier, and could not note his satanic countenance and
glittering eyes. But two words whispered by Fraisier in La Cibot's ear
had prompted a daring piece of acting, somewhat beyond La Cibot's range,
it may be, though she played her part throughout in a masterly style. To
make others believe that the dying man was out of his mind--it was
the very corner-stone of the edifice reared by the petty lawyer. The
morning's incident had done Fraisier good service; but for him, La Cibot
in her trouble might have fallen into the snare innocently spread by
Schmucke, when he asked her to send back the person sent by the family.

Remonencq saw Dr. Poulain coming towards them, and asked no better than
to vanish. The fact was that for the last ten days the Auvergnat had
been playing Providence in a manner singularly displeasing to Justice,
which claims the monopoly of that part. He had made up his mind to rid
himself at all costs of the one obstacle in his way to happiness,
and happiness for him meant capital trebled and marriage with the
irresistibly charming portress. He had watched the little tailor
drinking his herb-tea, and a thought struck him. He would convert the
ailment into mortal sickness; his stock of old metals supplied him with
the means.

One morning as he leaned against the door-post, smoking his pipe and
dreaming of that fine shop on the Boulevard de la Madeleine where Mme.
Cibot, gorgeously arrayed, should some day sit enthroned, his eyes
fell upon a copper disc, about the size of a five-franc piece, covered
thickly with verdigris. The economical idea of using Cibot's medicine to
clean the disc immediately occurred to him. He fastened the thing in a
bit of twine, and came over every morning to inquire for tidings of
his friend the tailor, timing his visit during La Cibot's visit to her
gentlemen upstairs. He dropped the disc into the tumbler, allowed it to
steep there while he talked, and drew it out again by the string when he
went away.

The trace of tarnished copper, commonly called verdigris, poisoned
the wholesome draught; a minute dose administered by stealth did
incalculable mischief. Behold the results of this criminal homoeopathy!
On the third day poor Cibot's hair came out, his teeth were loosened in
their sockets, his whole system was deranged by a scarcely perceptible
trace of poison. Dr. Poulain racked his brains. He was enough of a man
of science to see that some destructive agent was at work. He privately
carried off the decoction, analyzed it himself, but found nothing. It so
chanced that Remonencq had taken fright and omitted to dip the disc in
the tumbler that day.

Then Dr. Poulain fell back on himself and science and got out of the
difficulty with a theory. A sedentary life in a damp room; a cramped
position before the barred window--these conditions had vitiated the
blood in the absence of proper exercise, especially as the patient
continually breathed an atmosphere saturated with the fetid exhalations
of the gutter. The Rue de Normandie is one of the old-fashioned streets
that slope towards the middle; the municipal authorities of Paris as yet
have laid on no water supply to flush the central kennel which drains
the houses on either side, and as a result a stream of filthy ooze
meanders among the cobblestones, filters into the soil, and produces
the mud peculiar to the city. La Cibot came and went; but her husband,
a hard-working man, sat day in day out like a fakir on the table in the
window, till his knee-joints were stiffened, the blood stagnated in his
body, and his legs grew so thin and crooked that he almost lost the
use of them. The deep copper tint of the man's complexion naturally
suggested that he had been out of health for a very long time. The
wife's good health and the husband's illness seemed to the doctor to be
satisfactorily accounted for by this theory.

"Then what is the matter with my poor Cibot?" asked the portress.

"My dear Mme. Cibot, he is dying of the porter's disease," said the
doctor. "Incurable vitiation of the blood is evident from the general
anaemic condition."

No one had anything to gain by a crime so objectless. Dr. Poulain's
first suspicions were effaced by this thought. Who could have any
possible interest in Cibot's death? His wife?--the doctor saw her taste
the herb-tea as she sweetened it. Crimes which escape social vengeance
are many enough, and as a rule they are of this order--to wit, murders
committed without any startling sign of violence, without bloodshed,
bruises, marks of strangling, without any bungling of the business, in
short; if there seems to be no motive for the crime, it most likely goes
unpunished, especially if the death occurs among the poorer classes.
Murder is almost always denounced by its advanced guards, by hatred or
greed well known to those under whose eyes the whole matter has passed.
But in the case of the Cibots, no one save the doctor had any interest
in discovering the actual cause of death. The little copper-faced
tailor's wife adored her husband; he had no money and no enemies; La
Cibot's fortune and the marine-store dealer's motives were alike
hidden in the shade. Poulain knew the portress and her way of thinking
perfectly well; he thought her capable of tormenting Pons, but he
saw that she had neither motive enough nor wit enough for murder; and
besides--every time the doctor came and she gave her husband a draught,
she took a spoonful herself. Poulain himself, the only person who might
have thrown light on the matter, inclined to believe that this was
one of the unaccountable freaks of disease, one of the astonishing
exceptions which make medicine so perilous a profession. And in truth,
the little tailor's unwholesome life and unsanitary surroundings
had unfortunately brought him to such a pass that the trace of
copper-poisoning was like the last straw. Gossips and neighbors took it
upon themselves to explain the sudden death, and no suspicion of blame
lighted upon Remonencq.

"Oh! this long time past I have said that M. Cibot was not well," cried
one.

"He worked too hard, he did," said another; "he heated his blood."

"He would not listen to me," put in a neighbor; "I advised him to walk
out of a Sunday and keep Saint Monday; two days in the week is not too
much for amusement."

In short, the gossip of the quarter, the tell-tale voice to which
Justice, in the person of the commissary of police, the king of the
poorer classes, lends an attentive ear--gossip explained the little
tailor's demise in a perfectly satisfactory manner. Yet M. Poulain's
pensive air and uneasy eyes embarrassed Remonencq not a little, and at
sight of the doctor he offered eagerly to go in search of M. Trognon,
Fraisier's acquaintance. Fraisier turned to La Cibot to say in a low
voice, "I shall come back again as soon as the will is made. In spite
of your sorrow, you must look for squalls." Then he slipped away like a
shadow and met his friend the doctor.

"Ah, Poulain!" he exclaimed, "it is all right. We are safe! I will tell
you about it to-night. Look out a post that will suit you, you shall
have it! For my own part, I am a justice of the peace. Tabareau will not
refuse me now for a son-in-law. And as for you, I will undertake that
you shall marry Mlle. Vitel, granddaughter of our justice of the peace."

Fraisier left Poulain reduced to dumb bewilderment by these wild words;
bounced like a ball into the boulevard, hailed an omnibus, and was set
down ten minutes later by the modern coach at the corner of the Rue de
Choiseul. By this time it was nearly four o'clock. Fraisier felt quite
sure of a word in private with the Presidente, for officials seldom
leave the Palais de Justice before five o'clock.

Mme. de Marville's reception of him assured Fraisier that M. Leboeuf
had kept his promise made to Mme. Vatinelle and spoken favorably of the
sometime attorney at Mantes. Amelie's manner was almost caressing. So
might the Duchesse de Montpensier have treated Jacques Clement. The
petty attorney was a knife to her hand. But when Fraisier produced the
joint-letter signed by Elie Magus and Remonencq offering the sum of
nine hundred thousand francs in cash for Pons' collection, then the
Presidente looked at her man of business and the gleam of the money
flashed from her eyes. That ripple of greed reached the attorney.

"M. le President left a message with me," she said; "he hopes that you
will dine with us to-morrow. It will be a family party. M. Godeschal,
Desroches' successor and my attorney, will come to meet you, and
Berthier, our notary, and my daughter and son-in-law. After dinner, you
and I and the notary and attorney will have the little consultation for
which you ask, and I will give you full powers. The two gentlemen
will do as you require and act upon your inspiration; and see that
_everything_ goes well. You shall have a power of attorney from M. de
Marville as soon as you want it."

"I shall want it on the day of the decease."

"It shall be in readiness."

"Mme. la Presidente, if I ask for a power of attorney, and would prefer
that your attorney's name should not appear I wish it less in my own
interest than in yours.... When I give myself, it is without reserve.
And in return, madame, I ask the same fidelity; I ask my patrons (I do
not venture to call you my clients) to put the same confidence in
me. You may think that in acting thus I am trying to fasten upon this
affair--no, no, madame; there may be reprehensible things done; with an
inheritance in view one is dragged on... especially with nine hundred
thousand francs in the balance. Well, now, you could not disavow a man
like Maitre Godeschal, honesty itself, but you can throw all the blame
on the back of a miserable pettifogging lawyer--"

Mme. Camusot de Marville looked admiringly at Fraisier.

"You ought to go very high," said she, "or sink very low. In your place,
instead of asking to hide myself away as a justice of the peace, I would
aim at the crown attorney's appointment--at, say, Mantes!--and make a
great career for myself."

"Let me have my way, madame. The post of justice of the peace is an
ambling pad for M. Vitel; for me it shall be a war-horse."

And in this way the Presidente proceeded to a final confidence.

"You seem to be so completely devoted to our interests," she began,
"that I will tell you about the difficulties of our position and our
hopes. The President's great desire, ever since a match was projected
between his daughter and an adventurer who recently started a bank,--the
President's wish, I say, has been to round out the Marville estate with
some grazing land, at that time in the market. We dispossessed ourselves
of fine property, as you know, to settle it upon our daughter; but I
wish very much, my daughter being an only child, to buy all that remains
of the grass land. Part has been sold already. The estate belongs to an
Englishman who is returning to England after a twenty years' residence
in France. He built the most charming cottage in a delightful situation,
between Marville Park and the meadows which once were part of the
Marville lands; he bought up covers, copse, and gardens at fancy prices
to make the grounds about the cottage. The house and its surroundings
make a feature of the landscape, and it lies close to my daughter's park
palings. The whole, land and house, should be bought for seven hundred
thousand francs, for the net revenue is about twenty thousand francs....
But if Mr. Wadman finds out that _we_ think of buying it, he is sure to
add another two or three hundred thousand francs to the price; for he
will lose money if the house counts for nothing, as it usually does when
you buy land in the country--"

"Why, madame," Fraisier broke in, "in my opinion you can be so sure that
the inheritance is yours that I will offer to act the part of purchaser
for you. I will undertake that you shall have the land at the best
possible price, and have a written engagement made out under private
seal, like a contract to deliver goods.... I will go to the Englishman
in the character of buyer. I understand that sort of thing; it was my
specialty at Mantes. Vatinelle doubled the value of his practice, while
I worked in his name."

"Hence your connection with little Madame Vatinelle. He must be very
well off--"

"But Mme. Vatinelle has expensive tastes.... So be easy, madame--I will
serve you up the Englishman done to a turn--"

"If you can manage that you will have eternal claims to my gratitude.
Good-day, my dear M. Fraisier. Till to-morrow--"

Fraisier went. His parting bow was a degree less cringing than on the
first occasion.

"I am to dine to-morrow with President de Marville!" he said to himself.
"Come now, I have these folk in my power. Only, to be absolute master,
I ought to be the German's legal adviser in the person of Tabareau, the
justice's clerk. Tabareau will not have me now for his daughter, his
only daughter, but he will give her to me when I am a justice of the
peace. I shall be eligible. Mlle. Tabareau, that tall, consumptive
girl with the red hair, has a house in the Place Royale in right of her
mother. At her father's death she is sure to come in for six thousand
francs, you must not look too hard at the plank."

As he went back to the Rue de Normandie by way of the boulevards, he
dreamed out his golden dream, he gave himself up to the happiness of the
thought that he should never know want again. He would marry his friend
Poulain to Mlle. Vitel, the daughter of the justice of the peace;
together, he and his friend the doctor would reign like kings in the
quarter; he would carry all the elections--municipal, military, or
political. The boulevards seem short if, while you pace afoot, you mount
your ambition on the steed of fancy in this way.

Schmucke meanwhile went back to his friend Pons with the news that Cibot
was dying, and Remonencq gone in search of M. Trognon, the notary. Pons
was struck by the name. It had come up again and again in La Cibot's
interminable talk, and La Cibot always recommended him as honesty
incarnate. And with that a luminous idea occurred to Pons, in whom
mistrust had grown paramount since the morning, an idea which completed
his plan for outwitting La Cibot and unmasking her completely for the
too-credulous Schmucke.

So many unexpected things had happened that day that poor Schmucke was
quite bewildered. Pons took his friend's hand.

"There must be a good deal of confusion in the house, Schmucke; if the
porter is at death's door, we are almost free for a minute or two; that
is to say, there will be no spies--for we are watched, you may be sure
of that. Go out, take a cab, go to the theatre, and tell Mlle. Heloise
Brisetout that I should like to see her before I die. Ask her to come
here to-night when she leaves the theatre. Then go to your friends
Brunner and Schwab and beg them to come to-morrow morning at nine
o'clock to inquire after me; let them come up as if they were just
passing by and called in to see me."

The old artist felt that he was dying, and this was the scheme that
he forged. He meant Schmucke to be his universal legatee. To protect
Schmucke from any possible legal quibbles, he proposed to dictate his
will to a notary in the presence of witnesses, lest his sanity should be
called in question and the Camusots should attempt upon that pretext
to dispute the will. At the name of Trognon he caught a glimpse of
machinations of some kind; perhaps a flaw purposely inserted, or
premeditated treachery on La Cibot's part. He would prevent this.
Trognon should dictate a holograph will which should be signed and
deposited in a sealed envelope in a drawer. Then Schmucke, hidden in one
of the cabinets in his alcove, should see La Cibot search for the will,
find it, open the envelope, read it through, and seal it again. Next
morning, at nine o'clock, he would cancel the will and make a new one in
the presence of two notaries, everything in due form and order. La Cibot
had treated him as a madman and a visionary; he saw what this meant--he
saw the Presidente's hate and greed, her revenge in La Cibot's behavior.
In the sleepless hours and lonely days of the last two months, the poor
man had sifted the events of his past life.

It has been the wont of sculptors, ancient and modern, to set a tutelary
genius with a lighted torch upon either side of a tomb. Those torches
that light up the paths of death throw light for dying eyes upon the
spectacle of a life's mistakes and sins; the carved stone figures
express great ideas, they are symbols of a fact in human experience. The
agony of death has its own wisdom. Not seldom a simple girl, scarcely
more than a child, will grow wise with the experience of a hundred
years, will gain prophetic vision, judge her family, and see clearly
through all pretences, at the near approach of Death. Herein lies
Death's poetry. But, strange and worthy of remark it is, there are two
manners of death.

The poetry of prophecy, the gift of seeing clearly into the future or
the past, only belongs to those whose bodies are stricken, to those
who die by the destruction of the organs of physical life. Consumptive
patients, for instance, or those who die of gangrene like Louis XIV.,
of fever like Pons, of a stomach complaint like Mme. de Mortsauf, or
of wounds received in the full tide of life like soldiers on the
battlefield--all these may possess this supreme lucidity to the full;
their deaths fill us with surprise and wonder. But many, on the other
hand, die of _intelligential_ diseases, as they may be called; of
maladies seated in the brain or in that nervous system which acts as a
kind of purveyor of thought fuel--and these die wholly, body and spirit
are darkened together. The former are spirits deserted by the body,
realizing for us our ideas of the spirits of Scripture; the latter are
bodies untenanted by a spirit.

Too late the virgin nature, the epicure-Cato, the righteous man almost
without sin, was discovering the Presidente's real character--the sac
of gall that did duty for her heart. He knew the world now that he was
about to leave it, and for the past few hours he had risen gaily to his
part, like a joyous artist finding a pretext for caricature and laughter
in everything. The last links that bound him to life, the chains
of admiration, the strong ties that bind the art lover to Art's
masterpieces, had been snapped that morning. When Pons knew that La
Cibot had robbed him, he bade farewell, like a Christian, to the pomps
and vanities of Art, to his collection, to all his old friendships with
the makers of so many fair things. Our forefathers counted the day of
death as a Christian festival, and in something of the same spirit
Pons' thoughts turned to the coming end. In his tender love he tried
to protect Schmucke when he should be low in the grave. It was this
father's thought that led him to fix his choice upon the leading lady
of the ballet. Mlle. Brisetout should help him to baffle surrounding
treachery, and those who in all probability would never forgive his
innocent universal legatee.

Heloise Brisetout was one of the few natures that remain true in a
false position. She was an opera-girl of the school of Josepha and Jenny
Cadine, capable of playing any trick on a paying adorer; yet she was a
good comrade, dreading no power on earth, accustomed as she was to see
the weak side of the strong and to hold her own with the police at the
scarcely idyllic Bal de Mabille and the carnival.

"If she asked for my place for Garangeot, she will think that she owes
me a good turn by so much the more," said Pons to himself.

Thanks to the prevailing confusion in the porter's lodge, Schmucke
succeeded in getting out of the house. He returned with the utmost
speed, fearing to leave Pons too long alone. M. Trognon reached the
house just as Schmucke came in. Albeit Cibot was dying, his wife came
upstairs with the notary, brought him into the bedroom, and withdrew,
leaving Schmucke and Pons with M. Trognon; but she left the door ajar,
and went no further than the next room. Providing herself with a little
hand-glass of curious workmanship, she took up her station in the
doorway, so that she could not only hear but see all that passed at the
supreme moment.

"Sir," said Pons, "I am in the full possession of my faculties,
unfortunately for me, for I feel that I am about to die; and doubtless,
by the will of God, I shall be spared nothing of the agony of death.
This is M. Schmucke"--(the notary bowed to M. Schmucke)--"my one friend
on earth," continued Pons. "I wish to make him my universal legatee.
Now, tell me how to word the will, so that my friend, who is a German
and knows nothing of French law, may succeed to my possessions without
any dispute."

"Anything is liable to be disputed, sir," said the notary; "that is the
drawback of human justice. But in the matter of wills, there are wills
so drafted that they cannot be upset--"

"In what way?" queried Pons.

"If a will is made in the presence of a notary, and before witnesses who
can swear that the testator was in the full possession of his faculties;
and if the testator has neither wife nor children, nor father nor
mother--"

"I have none of these; all my affection is centred upon my dear friend
Schmucke here."

The tears overflowed Schmucke's eyes.

"Then, if you have none but distant relatives, the law leaves you free
to dispose of both personalty and real estate as you please, so long as
you bequeath them for no unlawful purpose; for you must have come across
cases of wills disputed on account of the testator's eccentricities. A
will made in the presence of a notary is considered to be authentic;
for the person's identity is established, the notary certifies that the
testator was sane at the time, and there can be no possible dispute over
the signature.--Still, a holograph will, properly and clearly worded, is
quite as safe."

"I have decided, for reasons of my own, to make a holograph will at your
dictation, and to deposit it with my friend here. Is this possible?"

"Quite possible," said the notary. "Will you write? I will begin to
dictate--"

"Schmucke, bring me my little Boule writing-desk.--Speak low, sir," he
added; "we may be overheard."

"Just tell me, first of all, what you intend," demanded the notary.

Ten minutes later La Cibot saw the notary look over the will, while
Schmucke lighted a taper (Pons watching her reflection all the while in
a mirror). She saw the envelope sealed, saw Pons give it to Schmucke,
and heard him say that it must be put away in a secret drawer in his
bureau. Then the testator asked for the key, tied it to the corner of
his handkerchief, and slipped it under his pillow.

The notary himself, by courtesy, was appointed executor. To him Pons
left a picture of price, such a thing as the law permits a notary to
receive. Trognon went out and came upon Mme. Cibot in the salon.

"Well, sir, did M. Pons remember me?"

"You do not expect a notary to betray secrets confided to him, my dear,"
returned M. Trognon. "I can only tell you this--there will be many
disappointments, and some that are anxious after the money will be
foiled. M. Pons has made a good and very sensible will, a patriotic
will, which I highly approve."

La Cibot's curiosity, kindled by such words, reached an unimaginable
pitch. She went downstairs and spent the night at Cibot's bedside,
inwardly resolving that Mlle. Remonencq should take her place towards
two or three in the morning, when she would go up and have a look at the
document.

Mlle. Brisetout's visit towards half-past ten that night seemed natural
enough to La Cibot; but in her terror lest the ballet-girl should
mention Gaudissart's gift of a thousand francs, she went upstairs with
her, lavishing polite speeches and flattery as if Mlle. Heloise had been
a queen.

"Ah! my dear, you are much nicer here on your own ground than at the
theatre," Heloise remarked. "I advise you to keep to your employment."

Heloise was splendidly dressed. Bixiou, her lover, had brought her in
his carriage on the way to an evening party at Mariette's. It so
fell out that the first-floor lodger, M. Chapoulot, a retired braid
manufacturer from the Rue Saint-Denis, returning from the Ambigu-Comique
with his wife and daughter, was dazzled by a vision of such a costume
and such a charming woman upon their staircase.

"Who is that, Mme. Cibot?" asked Mme. Chapoulot.

"A no-better-than-she-should-be, a light-skirts that you may see
half-naked any evening for a couple of francs," La Cibot answered in an
undertone for Mme. Chapoulot's ear.

"Victorine!" called the braid manufacturer's wife, "let the lady pass,
child."

The matron's alarm signal was not lost upon Heloise.

"Your daughter must be more inflammable than tinder, madame, if you are
afraid that she will catch fire by touching me," she said.

M. Chapoulot waited on the landing. "She is uncommonly handsome off the
stage," he remarked. Whereupon Mme. Chapoulot pinched him sharply and
drove him indoors.

"Here is a second-floor lodger that has a mind to set up for being on
the fourth floor," said Heloise as she continued to climb.

"But mademoiselle is accustomed to going higher and higher."

"Well, old boy," said Heloise, entering the bedroom and catching sight
of the old musician's white, wasted face. "Well, old boy, so we are
not very well? Everybody at the theatre is asking after you; but though
one's heart may be in the right place, every one has his own affairs,
you know, and cannot find time to go to see friends. Gaudissart talks of
coming round every day, and every morning the tiresome management gets
hold of him. Still, we are all of us fond of you--"

"Mme. Cibot," said the patient, "be so kind as to leave us; we want
to talk about the theatre and my post as conductor, with this lady.
Schmucke, will you go to the door with Mme. Cibot?"

At a sign from Pons, Schmucke saw Mme. Cibot out at the door, and drew
the bolts.

"Ah, that blackguard of a German! Is he spoiled, too?" La Cibot said to
herself as she heard the significant sounds. "That is M. Pons' doing;
he taught him those disgusting tricks.... But you shall pay for this, my
dears," she thought as she went down stairs. "Pooh! if that tight-rope
dancer tells him about the thousand francs, I shall say that it is a
farce."

She seated herself by Cibot's pillow. Cibot complained of a burning
sensation in the stomach. Remonencq had called in and given him a
draught while his wife was upstairs.

As soon as Schmucke had dismissed La Cibot, Pons turned to the
ballet-girl.

"Dear child, I can trust no one else to find me a notary, an honest man,
and send him here to make my will to-morrow morning at half-past
nine precisely. I want to leave all that I have to Schmucke. If he is
persecuted, poor German that he is, I shall reckon upon the notary;
the notary must defend him. And for that reason I must have a wealthy
notary, highly thought of, a man above the temptations to which
pettifogging lawyers yield. He must succor my poor friend. I cannot
trust Berthier, Cardot's successor. And you know so many people--"

"Oh! I have the very man for you," Heloise broke in; "there is the
notary that acts for Florine and the Comtesse du Bruel, Leopold
Hannequin, a virtuous man that does not know what a _lorette_ is! He
is a sort of chance-come father--a good soul that will not let you play
ducks and drakes with your earnings; I call him _Le Pere aux Rats_,
because he instils economical notions into the minds of all my friends.
In the first place, my dear fellow, he has a private income of sixty
thousand francs; and he is a notary of the real old sort, a notary while
he walks or sleeps; his children must be little notaries and notaresses.
He is a heavy, pedantic creature, and that's the truth; but on his own
ground, he is not the man to flinch before any power in creation.... No
woman ever got money out of him; he is a fossil pater-familias, his
wife worships him, and does not deceive him, although she is a notary's
wife.--What more do you want? as a notary he has not his match in Paris.
He is in the patriarchal style; not queer and amusing, as Cardot used
to be with Malaga; but he will never decamp like little What's-his-name
that lived with Antonia. So I will send round my man to-morrow morning
at eight o'clock.... You may sleep in peace. And I hope, in the first
place, that you will get better, and make charming music for us again;
and yet, after all, you see, life is very dreary--managers chisel
you, and kings mizzle and ministers fizzle and rich fold
economizzle.--Artists have nothing left _here_" (tapping her
breast)--"it is a time to die in. Good-bye, old boy."

"Heloise, of all things, I ask you to keep my counsel."

"It is not a theatre affair," she said; "it is sacred for an artist."

"Who is your gentleman, child?"

"M. Baudoyer, the mayor of your arrondissement, a man as stupid as the
late Crevel; Crevel once financed Gaudissart, you know, and a few days
ago he died and left me nothing, not so much as a pot of pomatum. That
made me say just now that this age of ours is something sickening."

"What did he die of?"

"Of his wife. If he had stayed with me, he would be living now.
Good-bye, dear old boy, I am talking of going off, because I can see
that you will be walking about the boulevards in a week or two, hunting
up pretty little curiosities again. You are not ill; I never saw your
eyes look so bright." And she went, fully convinced that her protege
Garangeot would conduct the orchestra for good.

Every door stood ajar as she went downstairs. Every lodger, on tip-toe,
watched the lady of the ballet pass on her way out. It was quite an
event in the house.

Fraisier, like the bulldog that sets his teeth and never lets go, was on
the spot. He stood beside La Cibot when Mlle. Brisetout passed under
the gateway and asked for the door to be opened. Knowing that a will
had been made, he had come to see how the land lay, for Maitre Trognon,
notary, had refused to say a syllable--Fraisier's questions were
as fruitless as Mme. Cibot's. Naturally the ballet-girl's visit _in
extremis_ was not lost upon Fraisier; he vowed to himself that he would
turn it to good account.

"My dear Mme. Cibot," he began, "now is the critical moment for you."

"Ah, yes... my poor Cibot!" said she. "When I think that he will not
live to enjoy anything I may get--"

"It is a question of finding out whether M. Pons has left you anything
at all; whether your name is mentioned or left out, in fact," he
interrupted. "I represent the next-of-kin, and to them you must look
in any case. It is a holograph will, and consequently very easy to
upset.--Do you know where our man has put it?"

"In a secret drawer in his bureau, and he has the key of it. He tied it
to a corner of his handkerchief, and put it under his pillow. I saw it
all."

"Is the will sealed?"

"Yes, alas!"

"It is a criminal offence if you carry off a will and suppress it, but
it is only a misdemeanor to look at it; and anyhow, what does it amount
to? A peccadillo, and nobody will see you. Is your man a heavy sleeper?"

"Yes. But when you tried to see all the things and value them, he ought
to have slept like a top, and yet he woke up. Still, I will see about
it. I will take M. Schmucke's place about four o'clock this morning;
and if you care to come, you shall have the will in your hands for ten
minutes."

"Good. I will come up about four o'clock, and I will knock very
softly--"

"Mlle Remonencq will take my place with Cibot. She will know, and open
the door; but tap on the window, so as to rouse nobody in the house."

"Right," said Fraisier. "You will have a light, will you not. A candle
will do."



At midnight poor Schmucke sat in his easy-chair, watching with a
breaking heart that shrinking of the features that comes with death;
Pons looked so worn out with the day's exertions, that death seemed very
near.

Presently Pons spoke. "I have just enough strength, I think, to last
till to-morrow night," he said philosophically. "To-morrow night the
death agony will begin; poor Schmucke! As soon as the notary and your
two friends are gone, go for our good Abbe Duplanty, the curate of
Saint-Francois. Good man, he does not know that I am ill, and I wish to
take the holy sacrament to-morrow at noon."

There was a long pause.

"God so willed it that life has not been as I dreamed," Pons resumed.
"I should so have loved wife and children and home.... To be loved by
a very few in some corner--that was my whole ambition! Life is hard
for every one; I have seen people who had all that I wanted so much and
could not have, and yet they were not happy.... Then at the end of
my life, God put untold comfort in my way, when He gave me such a
friend.... And one thing I have not to reproach myself with--that I have
not known your worth nor appreciated you, my good Schmucke.... I have
loved you with my whole heart, with all the strength of love that is in
me.... Do not cry, Schmucke; I shall say no more if you cry and it is so
sweet to me to talk of ourselves to you.... If I had listened to you,
I should not be dying. I should have left the world and broken off my
habits, and then I should not have been wounded to death. And now, I
want to think of no one but you at the last--"

"You are missdaken--"

"Do not contradict me--listen, dear friend.... You are as guileless
and simple as a six-year-old child that has never left its mother; one
honors you for it--it seems to me that God Himself must watch over such
as you. But men are so wicked, that I ought to warn you beforehand...
and then you will lose your generous trust, your saint-like belief in
others, the bloom of a purity of soul that only belongs to genius or
to hearts like yours.... In a little while you will see Mme. Cibot, who
left the door ajar and watched us closely while M. Trognon was here--in
a little while you will see her come for the will, as she believes it to
be.... I expect the worthless creature will do her business this morning
when she thinks you are asleep. Now, mind what I say, and carry out my
instructions to the letter.... Are you listening?" asked the dying man.

But Schmucke was overcome with grief, his heart was throbbing painfully,
his head fell back on the chair, he seemed to have lost consciousness.

"Yes," he answered, "I can hear, but it is as if you vere doo huntert
baces afay from me.... It seem to me dat I am going town into der grafe
mit you," said Schmucke, crushed with pain.

He went over to the bed, took one of Pons' hands in both his own, and
within himself put up a fervent prayer.

"What is that that you are mumbling in German?"

"I asked Gott dat He vould take us poth togedders to Himself!" Schmucke
answered simply when he had finished his prayer.

Pons bent over--it was a great effort, for he was suffering intolerable
pain; but he managed to reach Schmucke, and kissed him on the forehead,
pouring out his soul, as it were, in benediction upon a nature that
recalled the lamb that lies at the foot of the Throne of God.

"See here, listen, my good Schmucke, you must do as dying people tell
you--"

"I am lisdening."

"The little door in the recess in your bedroom opens into that closet."

"Yes, but it is blocked up mit bictures."

"Clear them away at once, without making too much noise."

"Yes."

"Clear a passage on both sides, so that you can pass from your room into
mine.--Now, leave the door ajar.--When La Cibot comes to take your place
(and she is capable of coming an hour earlier than usual), you can go
away to bed as if nothing had happened, and look very tired. Try to
look sleepy. As soon as she settles down into the armchair, go into the
closet, draw aside the muslin curtains over the glass door, and watch
her.... Do you understand?"

"I oondershtand; you belief dat die pad voman is going to purn der
vill."

"I do not know what she will do; but I am sure of this--that you will
not take her for an angel afterwards.--And now play for me; improvise
and make me happy. It will divert your thoughts; your gloomy ideas will
vanish, and for me the dark hours will be filled with your dreams...."

Schmucke sat down at the piano. Here he was in his element; and in a few
moments, musical inspiration, quickened by the pain with which he was
quivering and the consequent irritation that followed came upon the
kindly German, and, after his wont, he was caught up and borne above
the world. On one sublime theme after another he executed variations,
putting into them sometimes Chopin's sorrow, Chopin's Raphael-like
perfection; sometimes the stormy Dante's grandeur of Liszt--the
two musicians who most nearly approach Paganini's temperament. When
execution reaches this supreme degree, the executant stands beside the
poet, as it were; he is to the composer as the actor is to the writer of
plays, a divinely inspired interpreter of things divine. But that
night, when Schmucke gave Pons an earnest of diviner symphonies, of that
heavenly music for which Saint Cecile let fall her instruments, he
was at once Beethoven and Paganini, creator and interpreter. It was an
outpouring of music inexhaustible as the nightingale's song--varied
and full of delicate undergrowth as the forest flooded with her trills;
sublime as the sky overhead. Schmucke played as he had never played
before, and the soul of the old musician listening to him rose to
ecstasy such as Raphael once painted in a picture which you may see at
Bologna.

A terrific ringing of the door-bell put an end to these visions. The
first-floor lodgers sent up a servant with a message. Would Schmucke
please stop the racket overhead. Madame, Monsieur, and Mademoiselle
Chapoulot had been wakened, and could not sleep for the noise; they
called his attention to the fact that the day was quite long enough
for rehearsals of theatrical music, and added that people ought not to
"strum" all night in a house in the Marais.--It was then three o'clock
in the morning. At half-past three, La Cibot appeared, just as Pons had
predicted. He might have actually heard the conference between Fraisier
and the portress: "Did I not guess exactly how it would be?" his eyes
seemed to say as he glanced at Schmucke, and, turning a little, he
seemed to be fast asleep.

Schmucke's guileless simplicity was an article of belief with La Cibot
(and be it noted that this faith in simplicity is the great source and
secret of the success of all infantine strategy); La Cibot, therefore,
could not suspect Schmucke of deceit when he came to say to her, with a
face half of distress, half of glad relief:

"I haf had a derrible night! a derrible dime of it! I vas opliged to
play to keep him kviet, and the virst-floor lodgers vas komm up to tell
_me_ to be kviet!... It was frightful, for der life of mein friend vas
at shtake. I am so tired mit der blaying all night, dat dis morning I am
all knocked up."

"My poor Cibot is very bad, too; one more day like yesterday, and he
will have no strength left.... One can't help it; it is God's will."

"You haf a heart so honest, a soul so peautiful, dot gif der Zipod die,
ve shall lif togedder," said the cunning Schmucke.

The craft of simple, straightforward folk is formidable indeed; they are
exactly like children, setting their unsuspected snares with the perfect
craft of the savage.

"Oh, well go and sleep, sonny!" returned La Cibot. "Your eyes look
tired, they are as big as my fist. But there! if anything could comfort
me for losing Cibot, it would be the thought of ending my days with
a good man like you. Be easy. I will give Mme. Chapoulot a dressing
down.... To think of a retired haberdasher's wife giving herself such
airs!"

Schmucke went to his room and took up his post in the closet.

La Cibot had left the door ajar on the landing; Fraisier came in and
closed it noiselessly as soon as he heard Schmucke shut his bedroom
door. He had brought with him a lighted taper and a bit of very fine
wire to open the seal of the will. La Cibot, meanwhile, looking under
the pillow, found the handkerchief with the key of the bureau knotted to
one corner; and this so much the more easily because Pons purposely left
the end hanging over the bolster, and lay with his face to the wall.

La Cibot went straight to the bureau, opened it cautiously so as to make
as little noise as possible, found the spring of the secret drawer,
and hurried into the salon with the will in her hand. Her flight roused
Pons' curiosity to the highest pitch; and as for Schmucke, he trembled
as if he were the guilty person.

"Go back," said Fraisier, when she handed over the will. "He may wake,
and he must find you there."

Fraisier opened the seal with a dexterity which proved that his was
no 'prentice hand, and read the following curious document, headed "My
Will," with ever-deepening astonishment:

  "On this fifteenth day of April, eighteen hundred and forty-five,
  I, being in my sound mind (as this my Will, drawn up in concert
  with M. Trognon, will testify), and feeling that I must shortly
  die of the malady from which I have suffered since the beginning
  of February last, am anxious to dispose of my property, and have
  herein recorded my last wishes:--

  "I have always been impressed by the untoward circumstances that
  injure great pictures, and not unfrequently bring about total
  destruction. I have felt sorry for the beautiful paintings
  condemned to travel from land to land, never finding some fixed
  abode whither admirers of great masterpieces may travel to see
  them. And I have always thought that the truly deathless work of a
  great master ought to be national property; put where every one of
  every nation may see it, even as the light, God's masterpiece,
  shines for all His children.

  "And as I have spent my life in collecting together and choosing a
  few pictures, some of the greatest masters' most glorious work,
  and as these pictures are as the master left them--genuine
  examples, neither repainted nor retouched,--it has been a painful
  thought to me that the paintings which have been the joy of my
  life, may be sold by public auction, and go, some to England, some
  to Russia, till they are all scattered abroad again as if they had
  never been gathered together. From this wretched fate I have
  determined to save both them and the frames in which they are set,
  all of them the work of skilled craftsmen.

  "On these grounds, therefore, I give and bequeath the pictures
  which compose my collection to the King, for the gallery in the
  Louvre, subject to the charge (if the legacy is accepted) of a
  life-annuity of two thousand four hundred francs to my friend
  Wilhelm Schmucke.

  "If the King, as usufructuary of the Louvre collection, should
  refuse the legacy with the charge upon it, the said pictures shall
  form a part of the estate which I leave to my friend, Schmucke, on
  condition that he shall deliver the _Monkey's Head_, by Goya, to
  my cousin, President Camusot; a _Flower-piece_, the tulips, by
  Abraham Mignon, to M. Trognon, notary (whom I appoint as my
  executor): and allow Mme. Cibot, who has acted as my housekeeper
  for ten years, the sum of two hundred francs per annum.

  "Finally, my friend Schmucke is to give the _Descent from the
  Cross_, Ruben's sketch for his great picture at Antwerp, to adorn
  a chapel in the parish church, in grateful acknowledgment of M.
  Duplanty's kindness to me; for to him I owe it that I can die as a
  Christian and a Catholic."--So ran the will.

"This is ruin!" mused Fraisier, "the ruin of all my hopes. Ha! I begin
to believe all that the Presidente told me about this old artist and his
cunning."

"Well?" La Cibot came back to say.

"Your gentleman is a monster. He is leaving everything to the Crown.
Now, you cannot plead against the Crown.... The will cannot be
disputed.... We are robbed, ruined, spoiled, and murdered!"

"What has he left to me?"

"Two hundred francs a year."

"A pretty come-down!... Why, he is a finished scoundrel."

"Go and see," said Fraisier, "and I will put your scoundrel's will back
again in the envelope."

While Mme. Cibot's back was turned, Fraisier nimbly slipped a sheet of
blank paper into the envelope; the will he put in his pocket. He next
proceeded to seal the envelope again so cleverly that he showed the
seal to Mme. Cibot when she returned, and asked her if she could see the
slightest trace of the operation. La Cibot took up the envelope, felt it
over, assured herself that it was not empty, and heaved a deep sigh.
She had entertained hopes that Fraisier himself would have burned the
unlucky document while she was out of the room.

"Well, my dear M. Fraisier, what is to be done?"

"Oh! that is your affair! I am not one of the next-of-kin, myself;
but if I had the slightest claim to any of _that_" (indicating the
collection), "I know very well what I should do."

"That is just what I want to know," La Cibot answered, with sufficient
simplicity.

"There is a fire in the grate----" he said. Then he rose to go.

"After all, no one will know about it, but you and me----" began La
Cibot.

"It can never be proved that a will existed," asserted the man of law.

"And you?"

"I?... If M. Pons dies intestate, you shall have a hundred thousand
francs."

"Oh yes, no doubt," returned she. "People promise you heaps of money,
and when they come by their own, and there is talk of paying they
swindle you like--" "Like Elie Magus," she was going to say, but she
stopped herself just in time.

"I am going," said Fraisier; "it is not to your interest that I should
be found here; but I shall see you again downstairs."

La Cibot shut the door and returned with the sealed packet in her hand.
She had quite made up her mind to burn it; but as she went towards
the bedroom fireplace, she felt the grasp of a hand on each arm, and
saw--Schmucke on one hand, and Pons himself on the other, leaning
against the partition wall on either side of the door.

La Cibot cried out, and fell face downwards in a fit; real or feigned,
no one ever knew the truth. This sight produced such an impression on
Pons that a deadly faintness came upon him, and Schmucke left the woman
on the floor to help Pons back to bed. The friends trembled in every
limb; they had set themselves a hard task, it was done, but it had been
too much for their strength. When Pons lay in bed again, and Schmucke
had regained strength to some extent, he heard a sound of sobbing. La
Cibot, on her knees, bursting into tears, held out supplicating hands to
them in very expressive pantomime.

"It was pure curiosity!" she sobbed, when she saw that Pons and Schmucke
were paying attention to her proceedings. "Pure curiosity; a woman's
fault, you know. But I did not know how else to get a sight of your
will, and I brought it back again--"

"Go!" said Schmucke, standing erect, his tall figure gaining in height
by the full height of his indignation. "You are a monster! You dried to
kill mein goot Bons! He is right. You are worse than a monster, you are
a lost soul!"

La Cibot saw the look of abhorrence in the frank German's face; she
rose, proud as Tartuffe, gave Schmucke a glance which made him quake,
and went out, carrying off under her dress an exquisite little picture
of Metzu's pointed out by Elie Magus. "A diamond," he had called it.
Fraisier downstairs in the porter's lodge was waiting to hear that La
Cibot had burned the envelope and the sheet of blank paper inside it.
Great was his astonishment when he beheld his fair client's agitation
and dismay.

"What has happened?"

"_This_ has happened, my dear M. Fraisier. Under pretence of giving me
good advice and telling me what to do, you have lost me my annuity and
the gentlemen's confidence...."

One of the word-tornadoes in which she excelled was in full progress,
but Fraisier cut her short.

"This is idle talk. The facts, the facts! and be quick about it."

"Well; it came about in this way,"--and she told him of the scene which
she had just come through.

"You have lost nothing through me," was Fraisier's comment. "The
gentlemen had their doubts, or they would not have set this trap for
you. They were lying in wait and spying upon you.... You have not told
me everything," he added, with a tiger's glance at the woman before him.

"_I_ hide anything from you!" cried she--"after all that we have done
together!" she added with a shudder.

"My dear madame, _I_ have done nothing blameworthy," returned Fraisier.
Evidently he meant to deny his nocturnal visit to Pons' rooms.

Every hair on La Cibot's head seemed to scorch her, while a sense of icy
cold swept over her from head to foot.

"_What?_"... she faltered in bewilderment.

"Here is a criminal charge on the face of it.... You may be accused of
suppressing the will," Fraisier made answer drily.

La Cibot started.

"Don't be alarmed; I am your legal adviser. I only wished to show you
how easy it is, in one way or another, to do as I once explained to you.
Let us see, now; what have you done that this simple German should be
hiding in the room?"

"Nothing at all, unless it was that scene the other day when I stood M.
Pons out that his eyes dazzled. And ever since, the two gentlemen have
been as different as can be. So you have brought all my troubles upon
me; I might have lost my influence with M. Pons, but I was sure of the
German; just now he was talking of marrying me or of taking me with
him--it is all one."

The excuse was so plausible that Fraisier was fain to be satisfied with
it. "You need fear nothing," he resumed. "I gave you my word that you
shall have your money, and I shall keep my word. The whole matter, so
far, was up in the air, but now it is as good as bank-notes.... You
shall have at least twelve hundred francs per annum.... But, my good
lady, you must act intelligently under my orders."

"Yes, my dear M. Fraisier," said La Cibot with cringing servility. She
was completely subdued.

"Very good. Good-bye," and Fraisier went, taking the dangerous document
with him. He reached home in great spirits. The will was a terrible
weapon.

"Now," thought he, "I have a hold on Mme. la Presidente de Marville;
she must keep her word with me. If she did not, she would lose the
property."

At daybreak, when Remonencq had taken down his shutters and left his
sister in charge of the shop, he came, after his wont of late, to
inquire for his good friend Cibot. The portress was contemplating the
Metzu, privately wondering how a little bit of painted wood could be
worth such a lot of money.

"Aha!" said he, looking over her shoulder, "that is the one picture
which M. Elie Magus regretted; with that little bit of a thing, he says,
his happiness would be complete."

"What would he give for it?" asked La Cibot.

"Why, if you will promise to marry me within a year of widowhood, I
will undertake to get twenty thousand francs for it from Elie Magus;
and unless you marry me you will never get a thousand francs for the
picture."

"Why not?"

"Because you would be obliged to give a receipt for the money, and then
you might have a lawsuit with the heirs-at-law. If you were my wife, I
myself should sell the thing to M. Magus, and in the way of business it
is enough to make an entry in the day-book, and I should note that M.
Schmucke sold it to me. There, leave the panel with me. ... If your
husband were to die you might have a lot of bother over it, but no one
would think it odd that I should have a picture in the shop.... You know
me quite well. Besides, I will give you a receipt if you like."

The covetous portress felt that she had been caught; she agreed to
a proposal which was to bind her for the rest of her life to the
marine-store dealer.

"You are right," said she, as she locked the picture away in a chest;
"bring me the bit of writing."

Remonencq beckoned her to the door.

"I can see, neighbor, that we shall not save our poor dear Cibot," he
said lowering his voice. "Dr. Poulain gave him up yesterday evening, and
said that he could not last out the day.... It is a great misfortune.
But after all, this was not the place for you.... You ought to be in a
fine curiosity shop on the Boulevard des Capucines. Do you know that I
have made nearly a hundred thousand francs in ten years? And if you will
have as much some day, I will undertake to make a handsome fortune for
you--as my wife. You would be the mistress--my sister should wait on you
and do the work of the house, and--"

A heartrending moan from the little tailor cut the tempter short; the
death agony had begun.

"Go away," said La Cibot. "You are a monster to talk of such things and
my poor man dying like this--"

"Ah! it is because I love you," said Remonencq; "I could let everything
else go to have you--"

"If you loved me, you would say nothing to me just now," returned she.
And Remonencq departed to his shop, sure of marrying La Cibot.

Towards ten o'clock there was a sort of commotion in the street; M.
Cibot was taking the Sacrament. All the friends of the pair, all the
porters and porters' wives in the Rue de Normandie and neighboring
streets, had crowded into the lodge, under the archway, and stood on the
pavement outside. Nobody so much as noticed the arrival of M. Leopold
Hannequin and a brother lawyer. Schwab and Brunner reached Pons' rooms
unseen by Mme. Cibot. The notary, inquiring for Pons, was shown upstairs
by the portress of a neighboring house. Brunner remembered his previous
visit to the museum, and went straight in with his friend Schwab.

Pons formally revoked his previous will and constituted Schmucke his
universal legatee. This accomplished, he thanked Schwab and Brunner, and
earnestly begged M. Leopold Hannequin to protect Schmucke's interests.
The demands made upon him by last night's scene with La Cibot, and this
final settlement of his worldly affairs, left him so faint and exhausted
that Schmucke begged Schwab to go for the Abbe Duplanty; it was Pons'
great desire to take the Sacrament, and Schmucke could not bring himself
to leave his friend.

La Cibot, sitting at the foot of her husband's bed, gave not so much as
a thought to Schmucke's breakfast--for that matter had been forbidden to
return; but the morning's events, the sight of Pons' heroic resignation
in the death agony, so oppressed Schmucke's heart that he was not
conscious of hunger. Towards two o'clock, however, as nothing had been
seen of the old German, La Cibot sent Remonencq's sister to see whether
Schmucke wanted anything; prompted not so much by interest as by
curiosity. The Abbe Duplanty had just heard the old musician's dying
confession, and the administration of the sacrament of extreme unction
was disturbed by repeated ringing of the door-bell. Pons, in his terror
of robbery, had made Schmucke promise solemnly to admit no one into the
house; so Schmucke did not stir. Again and again Mlle. Remonencq pulled
the cord, and finally went downstairs in alarm to tell La Cibot that
Schmucke would not open the door; Fraisier made a note of this.
Schmucke had never seen any one die in his life; before long he would be
perplexed by the many difficulties which beset those who are left with a
dead body in Paris, this more especially if they are lonely and helpless
and have no one to act for them. Fraisier knew, moreover, that in real
affliction people lose their heads, and therefore immediately after
breakfast he took up his position in the porter's lodge, and sitting
there in perpetual committee with Dr. Poulain, conceived the idea of
directing all Schmucke's actions himself.

To obtain the important result, the doctor and the lawyer took their
measures on this wise:--

The beadle of Saint-Francois, Cantinet by name, at one time a retail
dealer in glassware, lived in the Rue d'Orleans, next door to Dr.
Poulain and under the same roof. Mme. Cantinet, who saw to the letting
of the chairs at Saint-Francois, once had fallen ill and Dr. Poulain had
attended her gratuitously; she was, as might be expected, grateful, and
often confided her troubles to him. The "nutcrackers," punctual in
their attendance at Saint-Francois on Sundays and saints'-days, were on
friendly terms with the beadle and the lowest ecclesiastical rank and
file, commonly called in Paris _le bas clerge_, to whom the devout
usually give little presents from time to time. Mme. Cantinet therefore
knew Schmucke almost as well as Schmucke knew her. And Mme. Cantinet was
afflicted with two sore troubles which enabled the lawyer to use her as
a blind and involuntary agent. Cantinet junior, a stage-struck youth,
had deserted the paths of the Church and turned his back on the
prospect of one day becoming a beadle, to make his _debut_ among the
supernumeraries of the Cirque-Olympique; he was leading a wild life,
breaking his mother's heart and draining her purse by frequent forced
loans. Cantinet senior, much addicted to spirituous liquors and
idleness, had, in fact, been driven to retire from business by those
two failings. So far from reforming, the incorrigible offender had found
scope in his new occupation for the indulgence of both cravings; he
did nothing, and he drank with drivers of wedding-coaches, with the
undertaker's men at funerals, with poor folk relieved by the vicar, till
his morning's occupation was set forth in rubric on his countenance by
noon.

Mme. Cantinet saw no prospect but want in her old age, and yet she had
brought her husband twelve thousand francs, she said. The tale of her
woes related for the hundredth time suggested an idea to Dr. Poulain.
Once introduce her into the old bachelor's quarters, and it would
be easy by her means to establish Mme. Sauvage there as working
housekeeper. It was quite impossible to present Mme. Sauvage herself,
for the "nutcrackers" had grown suspicious of every one. Schmucke's
refusal to admit Mlle. Remonencq had sufficiently opened Fraisier's
eyes. Still, it seemed evident that Pons and Schmucke, being pious
souls, would take any one recommended by the Abbe, with blind
confidence. Mme. Cantinet should bring Mme. Sauvage with her, and to
put in Fraisier's servant was almost tantamount to installing Fraisier
himself.

The Abbe Duplanty, coming downstairs, found the gateway blocked by the
Cibots' friends, all of them bent upon showing their interest in one of
the oldest and most respectable porters in the Marais.

Dr. Poulain raised his hat, and took the Abbe aside.

"I am just about to go to poor M. Pons," he said. "There is still a
chance of recovery; but it is a question of inducing him to undergo an
operation. The calculi are perceptible to the touch, they are setting up
an inflammatory condition which will end fatally, but perhaps it is
not too late to remove them. You should really use your influence to
persuade the patient to submit to surgical treatment; I will answer
for his life, provided that no untoward circumstance occurs during the
operation."

"I will return as soon as I have taken the sacred ciborium back to the
church," said the Abbe Duplanty, "for M. Schmucke's condition claims the
support of religion."

"I have just heard that he is alone," said Dr. Poulain. "The German,
good soul, had a little altercation this morning with Mme. Cibot, who
has acted as housekeeper to them both for the past ten years. They have
quarreled (for the moment only, no doubt), but under the circumstances
they must have some one in to help upstairs. It would be a charity to
look after him.--I say, Cantinet," continued the doctor, beckoning to
the beadle, "just go and ask your wife if she will nurse M. Pons, and
look after M. Schmucke, and take Mme. Cibot's place for a day or two....
Even without the quarrel, Mme. Cibot would still require a substitute.
Mme. Cantinet is honest," added the doctor, turning to M. Duplanty.

"You could not make a better choice," said the good priest; "she is
intrusted with the letting of chairs in the church."

A few minutes later, Dr. Poulain stood by Pons' pillow watching the
progress made by death, and Schmucke's vain efforts to persuade his
friend to consent to the operation. To all the poor German's despairing
entreaties Pons only replied by a shake of the head and occasional
impatient movements; till, after awhile, he summoned up all his
fast-failing strength to say, with a heartrending look:

"Do let me die in peace!"

Schmucke almost died of sorrow, but he took Pons' hand and softly kissed
it, and held it between his own, as if trying a second time to give his
own vitality to his friend.

Just at this moment the bell rang, and Dr. Poulain, going to the door,
admitted the Abbe Duplanty.

"Our poor patient is struggling in the grasp of death," he said. "All
will be over in a few hours. You will send a priest, no doubt, to watch
to-night. But it is time that Mme. Cantinet came, as well as a woman to
do the work, for M. Schmucke is quite unfit to think of anything: I am
afraid for his reason; and there are valuables here which ought to be in
the custody of honest persons."

The Abbe Duplanty, a kindly, upright priest, guileless and unsuspicious,
was struck with the truth of Dr. Poulain's remarks. He had, moreover, a
certain belief in the doctor of the quarter. So on the threshold of the
death-chamber he stopped and beckoned to Schmucke, but Schmucke could
not bring himself to loosen the grasp of the hand that grew tighter and
tighter. Pons seemed to think that he was slipping over the edge of
a precipice and must catch at something to save himself. But, as many
know, the dying are haunted by an hallucination that leads them to
snatch at things about them, like men eager to save their most precious
possessions from a fire. Presently Pons released Schmucke to clutch at
the bed-clothes, dragging them and huddling them about himself with a
hasty, covetous movement significant and painful to see.

"What will you do, left alone with your dead friend?" asked M. l'Abbe
Duplanty when Schmucke came to the door. "You have not Mme. Cibot now--"

"Ein monster dat haf killed Bons!"

"But you must have somebody with you," began Dr. Poulain. "Some one must
sit up with the body to-night."

"I shall sit up; I shall say die prayers to Gott," the innocent German
answered.

"But you must eat--and who is to cook for you now?" asked the doctor.

"Grief haf taken afay mein abbetite," Schmucke said, simply.

"And some one must give notice to the registrar," said Poulain, "and lay
out the body, and order the funeral; and the person who sits up with the
body and the priest will want meals. Can you do all this by yourself? A
man cannot die like a dog in the capital of the civilized world."

Schmucke opened wide eyes of dismay. A brief fit of madness seized him.

"But Bons shall not tie!..." he cried aloud. "I shall safe him!"

"You cannot go without sleep much longer, and who will take your place?
Some one must look after M. Pons, and give him drink, and nurse him--"

"Ah! dat is drue."

"Very well," said the Abbe, "I am thinking of sending your Mme.
Cantinet, a good and honest creature--"

The practical details of the care of the dead bewildered Schmucke, till
he was fain to die with his friend.

"He is a child," said the doctor, turning to the Abbe Duplanty.

"Ein child," Schmucke repeated mechanically.

"There, then," said the curate; "I will speak to Mme. Cantinet, and send
her to you."

"Do not trouble yourself," said the doctor; "I am going home, and she
lives in the next house."

The dying seem to struggle with Death as with an invisible assassin;
in the agony at the last, as the final thrust is made, the act of dying
seems to be a conflict, a hand-to-hand fight for life. Pons had reached
the supreme moment. At the sound of his groans and cries, the three
standing in the doorway hurried to the bedside. Then came the last blow,
smiting asunder the bonds between soul and body, striking down to life's
sources; and suddenly Pons regained for a few brief moments the perfect
calm that follows the struggle. He came to himself, and with the
serenity of death in his face he looked round almost smilingly at them.

"Ah, doctor, I have had a hard time of it; but you were right, I am
doing better. Thank you, my good Abbe; I was wondering what had become
of Schmucke--"

"Schmucke has had nothing to eat since yesterday evening, and now it is
four o'clock! You have no one with you now and it would be wise to send
for Mme. Cibot."

"She is capable of anything!" said Pons, without attempting to conceal
all his abhorrence at the sound of her name. "It is true, Schmucke ought
to have some trustworthy person."

"M. Duplanty and I have been thinking about you both--"

"Ah! thank you, I had not thought of that."

"--And M. Duplanty suggests that you should have Mme. Cantinet--"

"Oh! Mme. Cantinet who lets the chairs!" exclaimed Pons. "Yes, she is an
excellent creature."

"She has no liking for Mme. Cibot," continued the doctor, "and she would
take good care of M. Schmucke--"

"Send her to me, M. Duplanty... send her and her husband too. I shall be
easy. Nothing will be stolen here."

Schmucke had taken Pons' hand again, and held it joyously in his own.
Pons was almost well again, he thought.

"Let us go, Monsieur l'Abbe," said the doctor. "I will send Mme.
Cantinet round at once. I see how it is. She perhaps may not find M.
Pons alive."



While the Abbe Duplanty was persuading Pons to engage Mme. Cantinet as
his nurse, Fraisier had sent for her. He had plied the beadle's wife
with sophistical reasoning and subtlety. It was difficult to resist his
corrupting influence. And as for Mme. Cantinet--a lean, sallow woman,
with large teeth and thin lips--her intelligence, as so often happens
with women of the people, had been blunted by a hard life, till she
had come to look upon the slenderest daily wage as prosperity. She soon
consented to take Mme. Sauvage with her as general servant.

Mme. Sauvage had had her instructions already. She had undertaken to
weave a web of iron wire about the two musicians, and to watch them as
a spider watches a fly caught in the toils; and her reward was to be a
tobacconist's license. Fraisier had found a convenient opportunity of
getting rid of his so-called foster-mother, while he posted her as
a detective and policeman to supervise Mme. Cantinet. As there was a
servant's bedroom and a little kitchen included in the apartment,
La Sauvage could sleep on a truckle-bed and cook for the German. Dr.
Poulain came with the two women just as Pons drew his last breath.
Schmucke was sitting beside his friend, all unconscious of the crisis,
holding the hand that slowly grew colder in his grasp. He signed to Mme.
Cantinet to be silent; but Mme. Sauvage's soldierly figure surprised him
so much that he started in spite of himself, a kind of homage to which
the virago was quite accustomed.

"M. Duplanty answers for this lady," whispered Mme. Cantinet by way of
introduction. "She once was cook to a bishop; she is honesty itself; she
will do the cooking."

"Oh! you may talk out loud," wheezed the stalwart dame. "The poor
gentleman is dead.... He has just gone."

A shrill cry broke from Schmucke. He felt Pons' cold hand stiffening in
his, and sat staring into his friend's eyes; the look in them would have
driven him mad, if Mme. Sauvage, doubtless accustomed to scenes of this
sort, had not come to the bedside with a mirror which she held over the
lips of the dead. When she saw that there was no mist upon the surface,
she briskly snatched Schmucke's hand away.

"Just take away your hand, sir; you may not be able to do it in a little
while. You do not know how the bones harden. A corpse grows cold very
quickly. If you do not lay out a body while it is warm, you have to
break the joints later on...."

And so it was this terrible woman who closed the poor dead musician's
eyes.

With a business-like dexterity acquired in ten years of experience,
she stripped and straightened the body, laid the arms by the sides,
and covered the face with the bedclothes, exactly as a shopman wraps a
parcel.

"A sheet will be wanted to lay him out.--Where is there a sheet?" she
demanded, turning on the terror-stricken Schmucke.

He had watched the religious ritual with its deep reverence for the
creature made for such high destinies in heaven; and now he saw his dead
friend treated simply as a thing in this packing process--saw with the
sharp pain that dissolves the very elements of thought.

"Do as you vill----" he answered mechanically. The innocent creature for
the first time in his life had seen a man die, and that man was Pons,
his only friend, the one human being who understood him and loved him.

"I will go and ask Mme. Cibot where the sheets are kept," said La
Sauvage.

"A truckle-bed will be wanted for the person to sleep upon," Mme.
Cantinet came to tell Schmucke.

Schmucke nodded and broke out into weeping. Mme. Cantinet left the
unhappy man in peace; but an hour later she came back to say:

"Have you any money, sir, to pay for the things?"

The look that Schmucke gave Mme. Cantinet would have disarmed the
fiercest hate; it was the white, blank, peaked face of death that he
turned upon her, as an explanation that met everything.

"Dake it all and leaf me to mein prayers and tears," he said, and knelt.

Mme. Sauvage went to Fraisier with the news of Pons' death. Fraisier
took a cab and went to the Presidente. To-morrow she must give him the
power of attorney to enable him to act for the heirs.

Another hour went by, and Mme. Cantinet came again to Schmucke.

"I have been to Mme. Cibot, sir, who knows all about things here," she
said. "I asked her to tell me where everything is kept. But she almost
jawed me to death with her abuse.... Sir, do listen to me...."

Schmucke looked up at the woman, and she went on, innocent of any
barbarous intention, for women of her class are accustomed to take the
worst of moral suffering passively, as a matter of course.

"We must have linen for the shroud, sir, we must have money to buy
a truckle-bed for the person to sleep upon, and some things for the
kitchen--plates, and dishes, and glasses, for a priest will be coming
to pass the night here, and the person says that there is absolutely
nothing in the kitchen."

"And what is more, sir, I must have coal and firing if I am to get the
dinner ready," echoed La Sauvage, "and not a thing can I find. Not that
there is anything so very surprising in that, as La Cibot used to do
everything for you--"

Schmucke lay at the feet of the dead; he heard nothing, knew nothing,
saw nothing. Mme. Cantinet pointed to him. "My dear woman, you would not
believe me," she said. "Whatever you say, he does not answer."

"Very well, child," said La Sauvage; "now I will show you what to do in
a case of this kind."

She looked round the room as a thief looks in search of possible
hiding-places for money; then she went straight to Pons' chest, opened
the first drawer, saw the bag in which Schmucke had put the rest of
the money after the sale of the pictures, and held it up before him. He
nodded mechanically.

"Here is money, child," said La Sauvage, turning to Mme. Cantinet. "I
will count it first and take enough to buy everything we want--wine,
provisions, wax-candles, all sorts of things, in fact, for there is
nothing in the house.... Just look in the drawers for a sheet to bury
him in. I certainly was told that the poor gentleman was simple, but
I don't know what he is; he is worse. He is like a new-born child; we
shall have to feed him with a funnel."

The women went about their work, and Schmucke looked on precisely as an
idiot might have done. Broken down with sorrow, wholly absorbed, in a
half-cataleptic state, he could not take his eyes from the face that
seemed to fascinate him, Pons' face refined by the absolute repose of
Death. Schmucke hoped to die; everything was alike indifferent. If the
room had been on fire he would not have stirred.

"There are twelve hundred and fifty francs here," La Sauvage told him.

Schmucke shrugged his shoulders.

But when La Sauvage came near to measure the body by laying the sheet
over it, before cutting out the shroud, a horrible struggle ensued
between her and the poor German. Schmucke was furious. He behaved like
a dog that watches by his dead master's body, and shows his teeth at all
who try to touch it. La Sauvage grew impatient. She grasped him, set him
in the armchair, and held him down with herculean strength.

"Go on, child; sew him in his shroud," she said, turning to Mme.
Cantinet.

As soon as this operation was completed, La Sauvage set Schmucke back in
his place at the foot of the bed.

"Do you understand?" said she. "The poor dead man lying there must be
done up, there is no help for it."

Schmucke began to cry. The women left him and took possession of the
kitchen, whither they brought all the necessaries in a very short time.
La Sauvage made out a preliminary statement accounting for three hundred
and sixty francs, and then proceeded to prepare a dinner for four
persons. And what a dinner! A fat goose (the cobbler's pheasant) by way
of a substantial roast, an omelette with preserves, a salad, and the
inevitable broth--the quantities of the ingredients for this last being
so excessive that the soup was more like a strong meat-jelly.

At nine o'clock the priest, sent by the curate to watch by the dead,
came in with Cantinet, who brought four tall wax candles and some
tapers. In the death-chamber Schmucke was lying with his arms about
the body of his friend, holding him in a tight clasp; nothing but the
authority of religion availed to separate him from his dead. Then
the priest settled himself comfortably in the easy-chair and read his
prayers while Schmucke, kneeling beside the couch, besought God to work
a miracle and unite him to Pons, so that they might be buried in the
same grave; and Mme. Cantinet went on her way to the Temple to buy a
pallet and complete bedding for Mme. Sauvage. The twelve hundred and
fifty francs were regarded as plunder. At eleven o'clock Mme. Cantinet
came in to ask if Schmucke would not eat a morsel, but with a gesture he
signified that he wished to be left in peace.

"Your supper is ready, M. Pastelot," she said, addressing the priest,
and they went.

Schmucke, left alone in the room, smiled to himself like a madman free
at last to gratify a desire like the longing of pregnancy. He flung
himself down beside Pons, and yet again he held his friend in a long,
close embrace. At midnight the priest came back and scolded him, and
Schmucke returned to his prayers. At daybreak the priest went, and at
seven o'clock in the morning the doctor came to see Schmucke, and spoke
kindly and tried hard to persuade him to eat, but the German refused.

"If you do not eat now you will feel very hungry when you come back,"
the doctor told him, "for you must go to the mayor's office and take
a witness with you, so that the registrar may issue a certificate of
death."

"_I_ must go!" cried Schmucke in frightened tones.

"Who else?... You must go, for you were the one person who saw him die."

"Mein legs vill nicht carry me," pleaded Schmucke, imploring the doctor
to come to the rescue.

"Take a cab," the hypocritical doctor blandly suggested. "I have given
notice already. Ask some one in the house to go with you. The two women
will look after the place while you are away."

No one imagines how the requirements of the law jar upon a heartfelt
sorrow. The thought of it is enough to make one turn from civilization
and choose rather the customs of the savage. At nine o'clock that
morning Mme. Sauvage half-carried Schmucke downstairs, and from the cab
he was obliged to beg Remonencq to come with him to the registrar as
a second witness. Here in Paris, in this land of ours besotted with
Equality, the inequality of conditions is glaringly apparent everywhere
and in everything. The immutable tendency of things peeps out even in
the practical aspects of Death. In well-to-do families, a relative, a
friend, or a man of business spares the mourners these painful details;
but in this, as in the matter of taxation, the whole burden falls
heaviest upon the shoulders of the poor.

"Ah! you have good reason to regret him," said Remonencq in answer to
the poor martyr's moan; "he was a very good, a very honest man, and he
has left a fine collection behind him. But being a foreigner, sir, do
you know that you are like to find yourself in a great predicament--for
everybody says that M. Pons left everything to you?"

Schmucke was not listening. He was sounding the dark depths of sorrow
that border upon madness. There is such a thing as tetanus of the soul.

"And you would do well to find some one--some man of business--to advise
you and act for you," pursued Remonencq.

"Ein mann of pizness!" echoed Schmucke.

"You will find that you will want some one to act for you. If I were
you, I should take an experienced man, somebody well known to you in the
quarter, a man you can trust.... I always go to Tabareau myself for my
bits of affairs--he is the bailiff. If you give his clerk power to act
for you, you need not trouble yourself any further."

Remonencq and La Cibot, prompted by Fraisier, had agreed beforehand to
make a suggestion which stuck in Schmucke's memory; for there are times
in our lives when grief, as it were, congeals the mind by arresting
all its functions, and any chance impression made at such moments is
retained by a frost-bound memory. Schmucke heard his companion with such
a fixed, mindless stare, that Remonencq said no more.

"If he is always to be idiotic like this," thought Remonencq, "I might
easily buy the whole bag of tricks up yonder for a hundred thousand
francs; if it is really his.... Here we are at the mayor's office, sir."

Remonencq was obliged to take Schmucke out of the cab and to half-carry
him to the registrar's department, where a wedding-party was assembled.
Here they had to wait for their turn, for, by no very uncommon chance,
the clerk had five or six certificates to make out that morning; and
here it was appointed that poor Schmucke should suffer excruciating
anguish.

"Monsieur is M. Schmucke?" remarked a person in a suit of black,
reducing Schmucke to stupefaction by the mention of his name. He looked
up with the same blank, unseeing eyes that he had turned upon Remonencq,
who now interposed.

"What do you want with him?" he said. "Just leave him in peace; you can
plainly see that he is in trouble."

"The gentleman has just lost his friend, and proposes, no doubt, to do
honor to his memory, being, as he is, the sole heir. The gentleman, no
doubt, will not haggle over it, he will buy a piece of ground outright
for a grave. And as M. Pons was such a lover of the arts, it would be a
great pity not to put Music, Painting, and Sculpture on his tomb--three
handsome full-length figures, weeping--"

Remonencq waved the speaker away, in Auvergnat fashion, but the man
replied with another gesture, which being interpreted means "Don't spoil
sport"; a piece of commercial free-masonry, as it were, which the dealer
understood.

"I represent the firm of Sonet and Company, monumental stone-masons;
Sir Walter Scott would have dubbed me _Young Mortality_," continued this
person. "If you, sir, should decide to intrust your orders to us,
we would spare you the trouble of the journey to purchase the ground
necessary for the interment of a friend lost to the arts--"

At this Remonencq nodded assent, and jogged Schmucke's elbow.

"Every day we receive orders from families to arrange all formalities,"
continued he of the black coat, thus encouraged by Remonencq. "In the
first moment of bereavement, the heir-at-law finds it very difficult to
attend to such matters, and we are accustomed to perform these little
services for our clients. Our charges, sir, are on a fixed scale, so
much per foot, freestone or marble. Family vaults a specialty.--We
undertake everything at the most moderate prices. Our firm executed the
magnificent monument erected to the fair Esther Gobseck and Lucien de
Rubempre, one of the finest ornaments of Pere-Lachaise. We only
employ the best workmen, and I must warn you, sir, against small
contractors--who turn out nothing but trash," he added, seeing that
another person in a black suit was coming up to say a word for another
firm of marble-workers.

It is often said that "death is the end of a journey," but the aptness
of the simile is realized most fully in Paris. Any arrival, especially
of a person of condition, upon the "dark brink," is hailed in much the
same way as the traveler recently landed is hailed by hotel touts
and pestered with their recommendations. With the exception of a few
philosophically-minded persons, or here and there a family secure
of handing down a name to posterity, nobody thinks beforehand of the
practical aspects of death. Death always comes before he is expected;
and, from a sentiment easy to understand, the heirs usually act as if
the event were impossible. For which reason, almost every one that loses
father or mother, wife or child, is immediately beset by scouts that
profit by the confusion caused by grief to snare others. In former days,
agents for monuments used to live round about the famous cemetery of
Pere-Lachaise, and were gathered together in a single thoroughfare,
which should by rights have been called the Street of Tombs; issuing
thence, they fell upon the relatives of the dead as they came from the
cemetery, or even at the grave-side. But competition and the spirit
of speculation induced them to spread themselves further and further
afield, till descending into Paris itself they reached the very
precincts of the mayor's office. Indeed, the stone-mason's agent has
often been known to invade the house of mourning with a design for the
sepulchre in his hand.

"I am in treaty with this gentleman," said the representative of the
firm of Sonet to another agent who came up.

"Pons deceased!..." called the clerk at this moment. "Where are the
witnesses?"

"This way, sir," said the stone-mason's agent, this time addressing
Remonencq.

Schmucke stayed where he had been placed on the bench, an inert mass.
Remonencq begged the agent to help him, and together they pulled
Schmucke towards the balustrade, behind which the registrar shelters
himself from the mourning public. Remonencq, Schmucke's Providence, was
assisted by Dr. Poulain, who filled in the necessary information as to
Pons' age and birthplace; the German knew but one thing--that Pons was
his friend. So soon as the signatures were affixed, Remonencq and the
doctor (followed by the stone-mason's man), put Schmucke into a cab,
the desperate agent whisking in afterwards, bent upon taking a definite
order.

La Sauvage, on the lookout in the gateway, half-carried Schmucke's
almost unconscious form upstairs. Remonencq and the agent went up with
her.

"He will be ill!" exclaimed the agent, anxious to make an end of the
piece of business which, according to him, was in progress.

"I should think he will!" returned Mme. Sauvage. "He has been crying
for twenty-four hours on end, and he would not take anything. There is
nothing like grief for giving one a sinking in the stomach."

"My dear client," urged the representative of the firm of Sonet, "do
take some broth. You have so much to do; some one must go to the Hotel
de Ville to buy the ground in the cemetery on which you mean to erect
a monument to perpetuate the memory of the friend of the arts, and bear
record to your gratitude."

"Why, there is no sense in this!" added Mme. Cantinet, coming in with
broth and bread.

"If you are as weak as this, you ought to think of finding some one to
act for you," added Remonencq, "for you have a good deal on your hands,
my dear sir. There is the funeral to order. You would not have your
friend buried like a pauper!"

"Come, come, my dear sir," put in La Sauvage, seizing a moment when
Schmucke laid his head back in the great chair to pour a spoonful of
soup into his mouth. She fed him as if he had been a child, and almost
in spite of himself.

"Now, if you were wise, sir, since you are inclined to give yourself up
quietly to grief, you would find some one to act for you--"

"As you are thinking of raising a magnificent monument to the memory
of your friend, sir, you have only to leave it all to me; I will
undertake--"

"What is all this? What is all this?" asked La Sauvage. "Has M. Schmucke
ordered something? Who may you be?"

"I represent the firm of Sonet, my dear madame, the biggest
monumental stone-masons in Paris," said the person in black, handing a
business-card to the stalwart Sauvage.

"Very well, that will do. Some one will go with you when the time comes;
but you must not take advantage of the gentleman's condition now. You
can quite see that he is not himself----"

The agent led her out upon the landing.

"If you will undertake to get the order for us," he said confidentially,
"I am empowered to offer you forty francs."

Mme. Sauvage grew placable. "Very well, let me have your address," said
she.

Schmucke meantime being left to himself, and feeling the stronger for
the soup and bread that he had been forced to swallow, returned at
once to Pons' rooms, and to his prayers. He had lost himself in the
fathomless depths of sorrow, when a voice sounding in his ears drew
him back from the abyss of grief, and a young man in a suit of black
returned for the eleventh time to the charge, pulling the poor, tortured
victim's coatsleeve until he listened.

"Sir!" said he.

"Vat ees it now?"

"Sir! we owe a supreme discovery to Dr. Gannal; we do not dispute
his fame; he has worked miracles of Egypt afresh; but there have been
improvements made upon his system. We have obtained surprising results.
So, if you would like to see your friend again, as he was when he was
alive--"

"See him again!" cried Schmucke. "Shall he speak to me?"

"Not exactly. Speech is the only thing wanting," continued the
embalmer's agent. "But he will remain as he is after embalming for all
eternity. The operation is over in a few seconds. Just an incision in
the carotid artery and an injection.--But it is high time; if you
wait one single quarter of an hour, sir, you will not have the sweet
satisfaction of preserving the body...."

"Go to der teufel!... Bons is ein spirit--und dat spirit is in hefn."

"That man has no gratitude in his composition," remarked the youthful
agent of one of the famous Gannal's rivals; "he will not embalm his
friend."

The words were spoken under the archway, and addressed to La Cibot, who
had just submitted her beloved to the process.

"What would you have, sir!" she said. "He is the heir, the universal
legatee. As soon as they get what they want, the dead are nothing to
them."

An hour later, Schmucke saw Mme. Sauvage come into the room, followed by
another man in a suit of black, a workman, to all appearance.

"Cantinet has been so obliging as to send this gentleman, sir," she
said; "he is coffin-maker to the parish."

The coffin-maker made his bow with a sympathetic and compassionate air,
but none the less he had a business-like look, and seemed to know that
he was indispensable. He turned an expert's eye upon the dead.

"How does the gentleman wish 'it' to be made? Deal, plain oak, or oak
lead-lined? Oak with a lead lining is the best style. The body is
a stock size,"--he felt for the feet, and proceeded to take the
measure--"one metre seventy!" he added. "You will be thinking of
ordering the funeral service at the church, sir, no doubt?"

Schmucke looked at him as a dangerous madman might look before striking
a blow. La Sauvage put in a word.

"You ought to find somebody to look after all these things," she said.

"Yes----" the victim murmured at length.

"Shall I fetch M. Tabareau?--for you will have a good deal on your hands
before long. M. Tabareau is the most honest man in the quarter, you
see."

"Yes. Mennesir Dapareau! Somepody vas speaking of him chust now--" said
Schmucke, completely beaten.

"Very well. You can be quiet, sir, and give yourself up to grief, when
you have seen your deputy."

It was nearly two o'clock when M. Tabareau's head-clerk, a young man
who aimed at a bailiff's career, modestly presented himself. Youth
has wonderful privileges; no one is alarmed by youth. This young man
Villemot by name, sat down by Schmucke's side and waited his opportunity
to speak. His diffidence touched Schmucke very much.

"I am M. Tabareau's head-clerk, sir," he said; "he sent me here to take
charge of your interests, and to superintend the funeral arrangements.
Is this your wish?"

"You cannot safe my life, I haf not long to lif; but you vill leaf me in
beace!"

"Oh! you shall not be disturbed," said Villemot.

"Ver' goot. Vat must I do for dat?"

"Sign this paper appointing M. Tabareau to act for you in all matters
relating to the settlement of the affairs of the deceased."

"Goot! gif it to me," said Schmucke, anxious only to sign it at once.

"No, I must read it over to you first."

"Read it ofer."

Schmucke paid not the slightest attention to the reading of the power
of attorney, but he set his name to it. The young clerk took Schmucke's
orders for the funeral, the interment, and the burial service;
undertaking that he should not be troubled again in any way, nor asked
for money.

"I vould gif all dat I haf to be left in beace," said the unhappy man.
And once more he knelt beside the dead body of his friend.

Fraisier had triumphed. Villemot and La Sauvage completed the circle
which he had traced about Pons' heir.

There is no sorrow that sleep cannot overcome. Towards the end of
the day La Sauvage, coming in, found Schmucke stretched asleep at the
bed-foot. She carried him off, put him to bed, tucked him in maternally,
and till the morning Schmucke slept.

When he awoke, or rather when the truce was over and he again became
conscious of his sorrows, Pons' coffin lay under the gateway in such a
state as a third-class funeral may claim, and Schmucke, seeking vainly
for his friend, wandered from room to room, across vast spaces, as it
seemed to him, empty of everything save hideous memories. La Sauvage
took him in hand, much as a nurse manages a child; she made him take his
breakfast before starting for the church; and while the poor sufferer
forced himself to eat, she discovered, with lamentations worthy of
Jeremiah, that he had not a black coat in his possession. La Cibot took
entire charge of his wardrobe; since Pons fell ill, his apparel, like
his dinner, had been reduced to the lowest terms--to a couple of coats
and two pairs of trousers.

"And you are going just as you are to M. Pons' funeral? It is an
unheard-of thing; the whole quarter will cry shame upon us!"

"Und how vill you dat I go?"

"Why, in mourning--"

"Mourning!"

"It is the proper thing."

"Der bropper ding!... Confound all dis stupid nonsense!" cried poor
Schmucke, driven to the last degree of exasperation which a childlike
soul can reach under stress of sorrow.

"Why, the man is a monster of ingratitude!" said La Sauvage, turning
to a personage who just then appeared. At the sight of this functionary
Schmucke shuddered. The newcomer wore a splendid suit of black, black
knee-breeches, black silk stockings, a pair of white cuffs, an extremely
correct white muslin tie, and white gloves. A silver chain with a coin
attached ornamented his person. A typical official, stamped with the
official expression of decorous gloom, an ebony wand in his hand by
way of insignia of office, he stood waiting with a three-cornered hat
adorned with the tricolor cockade under his arm.

"I am the master of the ceremonies," this person remarked in a subdued
voice.

Accustomed daily to superintend funerals, to move among families plunged
in one and the same kind of tribulation, real or feigned, this man, like
the rest of his fraternity, spoke in hushed and soothing tones; he was
decorous, polished, and formal, like an allegorical stone figure of
Death.

Schmucke quivered through every nerve as if he were confronting his
executioner.

"Is this gentleman the son, brother, or father of the deceased?"
inquired the official.

"I am all dat and more pesides--I am his friend," said Schmucke through
a torrent of weeping.

"Are you his heir?"

"Heir?..." repeated Schmucke. "Noding matters to me more in dis vorld,"
returning to his attitude of hopeless sorrow.

"Where are the relatives, the friends?" asked the master of the
ceremonies.

"All here!" exclaimed the German, indicating the pictures and rarities.
"Not von of dem haf efer gifn bain to mein boor Bons.... Here ees
everydings dot he lofed, after me."

Schmucke had taken his seat again, and looked as vacant as before; he
dried his eyes mechanically. Villemot came up at that moment; he had
ordered the funeral, and the master of the ceremonies, recognizing him,
made an appeal to the newcomer.

"Well, sir, it is time to start. The hearse is here; but I have not
often seen such a funeral as this. Where are the relatives and friends?"

"We have been pressed for time," replied Villemot. "This gentleman was
in such deep grief that he could think of nothing. And there is only one
relative."

The master of the ceremonies looked compassionately at Schmucke; this
expert in sorrow knew real grief when he saw it. He went across to him.

"Come, take heart, my dear sir. Think of paying honor to your friend's
memory."

"We forgot to send out cards; but I took care to send a special message
to M. le Presidente de Marville, the one relative that I mentioned to
you.--There are no friends.--M. Pons was conductor of an orchestra at a
theatre, but I do not think that any one will come.--This gentleman is
the universal legatee, I believe."

"Then he ought to be chief mourner," said the master of the
ceremonies.--"Have you a black coat?" he continued, noticing Schmucke's
costume.

"I am all in plack insite!" poor Schmucke replied in heartrending tones;
"so plack it is dot I feel death in me.... Gott in hefn is going to haf
pity upon me; He vill send me to mein friend in der grafe, und I dank
Him for it--"

He clasped his hands.

"I have told our management before now that we ought to have a wardrobe
department and lend the proper mourning costumes on hire," said the
master of the ceremonies, addressing Villemot; "it is a want that
is more and more felt every day, and we have even now introduced
improvements. But as this gentleman is chief mourner, he ought to wear a
cloak, and this one that I have brought with me will cover him from
head to foot; no one need know that he is not in proper mourning
costume.--Will you be so kind as to rise?"

Schmucke rose, but he tottered on his feet.

"Support him," said the master of the ceremonies, turning to Villemot;
"you are his legal representative."

Villemot held Schmucke's arm while the master of the ceremonies invested
Schmucke with the ample, dismal-looking garment worn by heirs-at-law in
the procession to and from the house and the church. He tied the black
silken cords under the chin, and Schmucke as heir was in "full dress."

"And now comes a great difficulty," continued the master of the
ceremonies; "we want four bearers for the pall.... If nobody comes to
the funeral, who is to fill the corners? It is half-past ten already,"
he added, looking at his watch; "they are waiting for us at the church."

"Oh! here comes Fraisier!" Villemot exclaimed, very imprudently; but
there was no one to hear the tacit confession of complicity.

"Who is this gentleman?" inquired the master of the ceremonies.

"Oh! he comes on behalf of the family."

"Whose family?"

"The disinherited family. He is M. Camusot de Marville's
representative."

"Good," said the master of the ceremonies, with a satisfied air. "We
shall have two pall-bearers at any rate--you and he."

And, happy to find two of the places filled up, he took out some
wonderful white buckskin gloves, and politely presented Fraisier and
Villemot with a pair apiece.

"If you gentlemen will be so good as to act as pall-bearers--" said he.

Fraisier, in black from head to foot, pretentiously dressed, with his
white tie and official air, was a sight to shudder at; he embodied a
hundred briefs.

"Willingly, sir," said he.

"If only two more persons will come, the four corners will be filled
up," said the master of the ceremonies.

At that very moment the indefatigable representative of the firm of
Sonet came up, and, closely following him, the man who remembered
Pons and thought of paying him a last tribute of respect. This was a
supernumerary at the theatre, the man who put out the scores on the
music-stands for the orchestra. Pons had been wont to give him a
five-franc piece once a month, knowing that he had a wife and family.

"Oh, Dobinard (Topinard)!" Schmucke cried out at the sight of him,
"_you_ love Bons!"

"Why, I have come to ask news of M. Pons every morning, sir."

"Efery morning! boor Dobinard!" and Schmucke squeezed the man's hand.

"But they took me for a relation, no doubt, and did not like my visits
at all. I told them that I belonged to the theatre and came to inquire
after M. Pons; but it was no good. They saw through that dodge, they
said. I asked to see the poor dear man, but they never would let me come
upstairs."

"Dat apominable Zipod!" said Schmucke, squeezing Topinard's horny hand
to his heart.

"He was the best of men, that good M. Pons. Every month he use to give
me five francs.... He knew that I had three children and a wife. My wife
has gone to the church."

"I shall difide mein pread mit you," cried Schmucke, in his joy at
finding at his side some one who loved Pons.

"If this gentleman will take a corner of the pall, we shall have all
four filled up," said the master of the ceremonies.

There had been no difficulty over persuading the agent for monuments.
He took a corner the more readily when he was shown the handsome pair of
gloves which, according to custom, was to be his property.

"A quarter to eleven! We absolutely must go down. They are waiting for
us at the church."

The six persons thus assembled went down the staircase.

The cold-blooded lawyer remained a moment to speak to the two women on
the landing. "Stop here, and let nobody come in," he said, "especially
if you wish to remain in charge, Mme. Cantinet. Aha! two francs a day,
you know!"

By a coincidence in nowise extraordinary in Paris, two hearses were
waiting at the door, and two coffins standing under the archway; Cibot's
funeral and the solitary state in which Pons was lying was made even
more striking in the street. Schmucke was the only mourner that followed
Pons' coffin; Schmucke, supported by one of the undertaker's men, for he
tottered at every step. From the Rue de Normandie to the Rue d'Orleans
and the Church of Saint-Francois the two funerals went between a double
row of curious onlookers for everything (as was said before) makes a
sensation in the quarter. Every one remarked the splendor of the white
funeral car, with a big embroidered P suspended on a hatchment, and the
one solitary mourner behind it; while the cheap bier that came after it
was followed by an immense crowd. Happily, Schmucke was so bewildered by
the throng of idlers and the rows of heads in the windows, that he heard
no remarks and only saw the faces through a mist of tears.

"Oh, it is the nutcracker!" said one, "the musician, you know--"

"Who can the pall-bearers be?"

"Pooh! play-actors."

"I say, just look at poor old Cibot's funeral. There is one worker the
less. What a man! he could never get enough of work!"

"He never went out."

"He never kept Saint Monday."

"How fond he was of his wife!"

"Ah! There is an unhappy woman!"

Remonencq walked behind his victim's coffin. People condoled with him on
the loss of his neighbor.

The two funerals reached the church. Cantinet and the doorkeeper saw
that no beggars troubled Schmucke. Villemot had given his word that
Pons' heir should be left in peace; he watched over his client, and gave
the requisite sums; and Cibot's humble bier, escorted by sixty or eighty
persons, drew all the crowd after it to the cemetery. At the church door
Pons' funeral possession mustered four mourning-coaches, one for the
priest and three for the relations; but one only was required, for the
representative of the firm of Sonet departed during mass to give notice
to his principal that the funeral was on the way, so that the design
for the monument might be ready for the survivor at the gates of the
cemetery. A single coach sufficed for Fraisier, Villemot, Schmucke, and
Topinard; but the remaining two, instead of returning to the undertaker,
followed in the procession to Pere-Lachaise--a useless procession, not
unfrequently seen; there are always too many coaches when the dead are
unknown beyond their own circle and there is no crowd at the funeral.
Dear, indeed, the dead must have been in their lifetime if relative or
friend will go with them so far as the cemetery in this Paris, where
every one would fain have twenty-five hours in the day. But with the
coachmen it is different; they lose their tips if they do not make the
journey; so, empty or full, the mourning coaches go to the church and
cemetery and return to the house for gratuities. A death is a sort
of drinking-fountain for an unimagined crowd of thirsty mortals. The
attendants at the church, the poor, the undertaker's men, the drivers
and sextons, are creatures like sponges that dip into a hearse and come
out again saturated.

From the church door, where he was beset with a swarm of beggars
(promptly dispersed by the beadle), to Pere-Lachaise, poor Schmucke went
as criminals went in old times from the Palais de Justice to the
Place de Greve. It was his own funeral that he followed, clinging to
Topinard's hand, to the one living creature besides himself who felt a
pang of real regret for Pons' death.

As for Topinard, greatly touched by the honor of the request to act as
pall-bearer, content to drive in a carriage, the possessor of a new pair
of gloves,--it began to dawn upon him that this was to be one of the
great days of his life. Schmucke was driven passively along the road, as
some unlucky calf is driven in a butcher's cart to the slaughter-house.
Fraisier and Villemot sat with their backs to the horses. Now, as those
know whose sad fortune it has been to accompany many of their friends to
their last resting-place, all hypocrisy breaks down in the coach during
the journey (often a very long one) from the church to the eastern
cemetery, to that one of the burying-grounds of Paris in which all
vanities, all kinds of display, are met, so rich is it in sumptuous
monuments. On these occasions those who feel least begin to talk
soonest, and in the end the saddest listen, and their thoughts are
diverted.

"M. le President had already started for the Court." Fraisier told
Villemot, "and I did not think it necessary to tear him away from
business; he would have come too late, in any case. He is the
next-of-kin; but as he has been disinherited, and M. Schmucke gets
everything, I thought that if his legal representative were present it
would be enough."

Topinard lent an ear to this.

"Who was the queer customer that took the fourth corner?" continued
Fraisier.

"He is an agent for a firm of monumental stone-masons. He would like an
order for a tomb, on which he proposes to put three sculptured marble
figures--Music, Painting, and Sculpture shedding tears over the
deceased."

"It is an idea," said Fraisier; "the old gentleman certainly deserved
that much; but the monument would cost seven or eight hundred francs."

"Oh! quite that!"

"If M. Schmucke gives the order, it cannot affect the estate. You might
eat up a whole property with such expenses."

"There would be a lawsuit, but you would gain it--"

"Very well," said Fraisier, "then it will be his affair.--It would be a
nice practical joke to play upon the monument-makers," Fraisier added in
Villemot's ear; "for if the will is upset (and I can answer for that),
or if there is no will at all, who would pay them?"

Villemot grinned like a monkey, and the pair began to talk
confidentially, lowering their voices; but the man from the theatre,
with his wits and senses sharpened in the world behind the scenes, could
guess at the nature of their discourse; in spite of the rumbling of
the carriage and other hindrances, he began to understand that these
representatives of justice were scheming to plunge poor Schmucke into
difficulties; and when at last he heard the ominous word "Clichy," the
honest and loyal servitor of the stage made up his mind to watch over
Pons' friend.

At the cemetery, where three square yards of ground had been purchased
through the good offices of the firm of Sonet (Villemot having announced
Schmucke's intention of erecting a magnificent monument), the master of
ceremonies led Schmucke through a curious crowd to the grave into which
Pons' coffin was about to be lowered; but here, at the sight of the
square hole, the four men waiting with ropes to lower the bier, and the
clergy saying the last prayer for the dead at the grave-side, something
clutched tightly at the German's heart. He fainted away.

Sonet's agent and M. Sonet himself came to help Topinard to carry
poor Schmucke into the marble-works hard by, where Mme. Sonet and Mme.
Vitelot (Sonet's partner's wife) were eagerly prodigal of efforts to
revive him. Topinard stayed. He had seen Fraisier in conversation with
Sonet's agent, and Fraisier, in his opinion, had gallows-bird written on
his face.

An hour later, towards half-past two o'clock, the poor, innocent German
came to himself. Schmucke thought that he had been dreaming for the past
two days; if he could only wake, he should find Pons still alive. So
many wet towels had been laid on his forehead, he had been made to
inhale salts and vinegar to such an extent, that he opened his eyes at
last. Mme. Sonet make him take some meat-soup, for they had put the pot
on the fire at the marble-works.

"Our clients do not often take things to heart like this; still, it
happens once in a year or two--"

At last Schmucke talked of returning to the Rue de Normandie, and at
this Sonet began at once.

"Here is the design, sir," he said; "Vitelot drew it expressly for you,
and sat up last night to do it.... And he has been happily inspired, it
will look fine--"

"One of the finest in Pere-Lachaise!" said the little Mme. Sonet. "But
you really ought to honor the memory of a friend who left you all his
fortune."

The design, supposed to have been drawn on purpose, had, as a matter
of fact, been prepared for de Marsay, the famous cabinet minister.
His widow, however, had given the commission to Stidmann; people were
disgusted with the tawdriness of the project, and it was refused. The
three figures at that period represented the three days of July which
brought the eminent minister to power. Subsequently, Sonet and Vitelot
had turned the Three Glorious Days--"_les trois glorieuses_"--into the
Army, Finance, and the Family, and sent in the design for the sepulchre
of the late lamented Charles Keller; and here again Stidmann took the
commission. In the eleven years that followed, the sketch had been
modified to suit all kinds of requirements, and now in Vitelot's fresh
tracing they reappeared as Music, Sculpture, and Painting.

"It is a mere trifle when you think of the details and cost of setting
it up; for it will take six months," said Vitelot. "Here is the estimate
and the order-form--seven thousand francs, sketch in plaster not
included."

"If M. Schmucke would like marble," put in Sonet (marble being his
special department), "it would cost twelve thousand francs, and monsieur
would immortalize himself as well as his friend."

Topinard turned to Vitelot.

"I have just heard that they are going to dispute the will," he
whispered, "and the relatives are likely to come by their property.
Go and speak to M. Camusot, for this poor, harmless creature has not a
farthing."

"This is the kind of customer that you always bring us," said Mme.
Vitelot, beginning a quarrel with the agent.

Topinard led Schmucke away, and they returned home on foot to the Rue de
Normandie, for the mourning-coaches had been sent back.

"Do not leaf me," Schmucke said, when Topinard had seen him safe into
Mme. Sauvage's hands, and wanted to go.

"It is four o'clock, dear M. Schmucke. I must go home to dinner. My wife
is a box-opener--she will not know what has become of me. The theatre
opens at a quarter to six, you know."

"Yes, I know... but remember dat I am alone in die earth, dat I haf
no friend. You dat haf shed a tear for Bons enliden me; I am in teep
tarkness, und Bons said dat I vas in der midst of shcoundrels."

"I have seen that plainly already; I have just prevented them from
sending you to Clichy."

"_Gligy!_" repeated Schmucke; "I do not understand."

"Poor man! Well, never mind, I will come to you. Good-bye."

"Goot-bye; komm again soon," said Schmucke, dropping half-dead with
weariness.

"Good-bye, mosieu," said Mme. Sauvage, and there was something in her
tone that struck Topinard.

"Oh, come, what is the matter now?" he asked, banteringly. "You are
attitudinizing like a traitor in a melodrama."

"Traitor yourself! Why have you come meddling here? Do you want to have
a hand in the master's affairs, and swindle him, eh?"

"Swindle him!... Your very humble servant!" Topinard answered with
superb disdain. "I am only a poor super at a theatre, but I am something
of an artist, and you may as well know that I never asked anything of
anybody yet! Who asked anything of you? Who owes you anything? eh, old
lady!"

"You are employed at a theatre, and your name is--?"

"Topinard, at your service."

"Kind regards to all at home," said La Sauvage, "and my compliments to
your missus, if you are married, mister.... That was all I wanted to
know."

"Why, what is the matter, dear?" asked Mme. Cantinet, coming out.

"This, child--stop here and look after the dinner while I run round to
speak to monsieur."

"He is down below, talking with poor Mme. Cibot, that is crying her eyes
out," said Mme. Cantinet.

La Sauvage dashed down in such headlong haste that the stairs trembled
beneath her tread.

"Monsieur!" she called, and drew him aside a few paces to point out
Topinard.

Topinard was just going away, proud at heart to have made some return
already to the man who had done him so many kindnesses. He had saved
Pons' friend from a trap, by a stratagem from that world behind the
scenes in which every one has more or less ready wit. And within himself
he vowed to protect a musician in his orchestra from future snares set
for his simple sincerity.

"Do you see that little wretch?" said La Sauvage. "He is a kind of
honest man that has a mind to poke his nose into M. Schmucke's affairs."

"Who is he?" asked Fraisier.

"Oh! he is a nobody."

"In business there is no such thing as a nobody."

"Oh, he is employed at the theatre," said she; "his name is Topinard."

"Good, Mme. Sauvage! Go on like this, and you shall have your
tobacconist's shop."

And Fraisier resumed his conversation with Mme. Cibot.

"So I say, my dear client, that you have not played openly and
above-board with me, and that one is not bound in any way to a partner
who cheats."

"And how have I cheated you?" asked La Cibot, hands on hips. "Do you
think that you will frighten me with your sour looks and your frosty
airs? You look about for bad reasons for breaking your promises, and
you call yourself an honest man! Do you know what you are? You are a
blackguard! Yes! yes! scratch your arm; but just pocket that--"

"No words, and keep your temper, dearie. Listen to me. You have been
feathering your nest.... I found this catalogue this morning while we
were getting ready for the funeral; it is all in M. Pons' handwriting,
and made out in duplicate. And as it chanced, my eyes fell on this--"

And opening the catalogue, he read:

  "No. 7. _Magnificent portrait painted on marble, by Sebastian del
  Piombo, in 1546. Sold by a family who had it removed from Terni
  Cathedral. The picture, which represents a Knight-Templar kneeling
  in prayer, used to hang above a tomb of the Rossi family with a
  companion portrait of a Bishop, afterwards purchased by an
  Englishman. The portrait might be attributed to Raphael, but for
  the date. This example is, to my mind, superior to the portrait of
  Baccio Bandinelli in the Musee; the latter is a little hard, while
  the Templar, being painted upon 'lavagna,' or slate, has preserved
  its freshness of coloring._"

"When I come to look for No. 7," continued Fraisier, "I find a portrait
of a lady, signed 'Chardin,' without a number on it! I went through the
pictures with the catalogue while the master of ceremonies was making up
the number of pall-bearers, and found that eight of those indicated
as works of capital importance by M. Pons had disappeared, and
eight paintings of no special merit, and without numbers, were
there instead.... And finally, one was missing altogether, a little
panel-painting by Metzu, described in the catalogue as a masterpiece."

"And was _I_ in charge of the pictures?" demanded La Cibot.

"No; but you were in a position of trust. You were M. Pons' housekeeper,
you looked after his affairs, and he has been robbed--"

"Robbed! Let me tell you this, sir: M. Schmucke sold the pictures, by M.
Pons' orders, to meet expenses."

"And to whom?"

"To Messrs. Elie Magus and Remonencq."

"For how much?"

"I am sure I do not remember."

"Look here, my dear madame; you have been feathering your nest, and very
snugly. I shall keep an eye upon you; I have you safe. Help me, I will
say nothing! In any case, you know that since you deemed it expedient to
plunder M. le President Camusot, you ought not to expect anything from
_him_."

"I was sure that this would all end in smoke, for me," said La Cibot,
mollified by the words "I will say nothing."

Remonencq chimed in at this point.

"Here are you finding fault with Mme. Cibot; that is not right!" he
said. "The pictures were sold by private treaty between M. Pons, M.
Magus, and me. We waited for three days before we came to terms with the
deceased; he slept on his pictures. We took receipts in proper form; and
if we gave Madame Cibot a few forty-franc pieces, it is the custom of
the trade--we always do so in private houses when we conclude a bargain.
Ah! my dear sir, if you think to cheat a defenceless woman, you will not
make a good bargain! Do you understand, master lawyer?--M. Magus rules
the market, and if you do not come down off the high horse, if you do
not keep your word to Mme. Cibot, I shall wait till the collection is
sold, and you shall see what you will lose if you have M. Magus and
me against you; we can get the dealers in a ring. Instead of realizing
seven or eight hundred thousand francs, you will not so much as make two
hundred thousand."

"Good, good, we shall see. We are not going to sell; or if we do, it
will be in London."

"We know London," said Remonencq. "M. Magus is as powerful there as at
Paris."

"Good-day, madame; I shall sift these matters to the bottom," said
Fraisier--"unless you continue to do as I tell you" he added.

"You little pickpocket!--"

"Take care! I shall be a justice of the peace before long." And with
threats understood to the full upon either side, they separated.

"Thank you, Remonencq!" said La Cibot; "it is very pleasant to a poor
widow to find a champion."



Towards ten o'clock that evening, Gaudissart sent for Topinard.
The manager was standing with his back to the fire, in a Napoleonic
attitude--a trick which he had learned since be began to command his
army of actors, dancers, _figurants_, musicians, and stage carpenters.
He grasped his left-hand brace with his right hand, always thrust into
his waistcoat; the head was flung far back, his eyes gazed out into
space.

"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.

Schmucke drew his chair to the table, but he could eat nothing. A
sudden, somewhat sharp ringing of the door-bell rang through the house,
and Mme. Cantinet and Mme. Sauvage allowed three black-coated personages
to pass. First came Vitel, the justice of the peace, with his highly
respectable clerk; third was Fraisier, neither sweeter nor milder for
the disappointing discovery of a valid will canceling the formidable
instrument so audaciously stolen by him.

"We have come to affix seals on the property," the justice of the peace
said gently, addressing Schmucke. But the remark was Greek to Schmucke;
he gazed in dismay at his three visitors.

"We have come at the request of M. Fraisier, legal representative of M.
Camusot de Marville, heir of the late Pons--" added the clerk.

"The collection is here in this great room, and in the bedroom of the
deceased," remarked Fraisier.

"Very well, let us go into the next room.--Pardon us, sir; do not let us
interrupt with your breakfast."

The invasion struck an icy chill of terror into poor Schmucke.
Fraisier's venomous glances seemed to possess some magnetic influence
over his victims, like the power of a spider over a fly.

"M. Schmucke understood how to turn a will, made in the presence of
a notary, to his own advantage," he said, "and he surely must have
expected some opposition from the family. A family does not allow itself
to be plundered by a stranger without some protest; and we shall
see, sir, which carries the day--fraud and corruption or the rightful
heirs.... We have a right as next of kin to affix seals, and seals shall
be affixed. I mean to see that the precaution is taken with the utmost
strictness."

"Ach, mein Gott! how haf I offended against Hefn?" cried the innocent
Schmucke.

"There is a good deal of talk about you in the house," said La Sauvage.
"While you were asleep, a little whipper-snapper in a black suit came
here, a puppy that said he was M. Hannequin's head-clerk, and must see
you at all costs; but as you were asleep and tired out with the funeral
yesterday, I told him that M. Villemot, Tabareau's head-clerk, was
acting for you, and if it was a matter of business, I said, he might
speak to M. Villemot. 'Ah, so much the better!' the youngster said. 'I
shall come to an understanding with him. We will deposit the will at the
Tribunal, after showing it to the President.' So at that, I told him to
ask M. Villemot to come here as soon as he could.--Be easy, my dear sir,
there are those that will take care of you. They shall not shear the
fleece off your back. You will have some one that has beak and claws.
M. Villemot will give them a piece of his mind. I have put myself in a
passion once already with that abominable hussy, La Cibot, a porter's
wife that sets up to judge her lodgers, forsooth, and insists that you
have filched the money from the heirs; you locked M. Pons up, she says,
and worked upon him till he was stark, staring mad. She got as good as
she gave, though, the wretched woman. 'You are a thief and a bad lot,'
I told her; 'you will get into the police-courts for all the things that
you have stolen from the gentlemen,' and she shut up."

The clerk came out to speak to Schmucke.

"Would you wish to be present, sir, when the seals are affixed in the
next room?"

"Go on, go on," said Schmucke; "I shall pe allowed to die in beace, I
bresume?"

"Oh, under any circumstances a man has a right to die," the clerk
answered, laughing; "most of our business relates to wills. But, in my
experience, the universal legatee very seldom follows the testator to
the tomb."

"I am going," said Schmucke. Blow after blow had given him an
intolerable pain at the heart.

"Oh! here comes M. Villemot!" exclaimed La Sauvage.

"Mennesir Fillemod," said poor Schmucke, "rebresent me."

"I hurried here at once," said Villemot. "I have come to tell you that
the will is completely in order; it will certainly be confirmed by the
court, and you will be put in possession. You will have a fine fortune."

"_I?_ Ein fein vordune?" cried Schmucke, despairingly. That he of all
men should be suspected of caring for the money!

"And meantime what is the justice of the peace doing here with his wax
candles and his bits of tape?" asked La Sauvage.

"Oh, he is affixing seals.... Come, M. Schmucke, you have a right to be
present."

"No--go in yourself."

"But where is the use of the seals if M. Schmucke is in his own house
and everything belongs to him?" asked La Sauvage, doing justice in
feminine fashion, and interpreting the Code according to their fancy,
like one and all of her sex.

"M. Schmucke is not in possession, madame; he is in M. Pons' house.
Everything will be his, no doubt; but the legatee cannot take possession
without an authorization--an order from the Tribunal. And if the
next-of-kin set aside by the testator should dispute the order, a
lawsuit is the result. And as nobody knows what may happen, everything
is sealed up, and the notaries representing either side proceed to draw
up an inventory during the delay prescribed by the law.... And there you
are!"

Schmucke, hearing such talk for the first time in his life, was
completely bewildered by it; his head sank down upon the back of his
chair--he could not support it, it had grown so heavy.

Villemot meanwhile went off to chat with the justice of the peace and
his clerk, assisting with professional coolness to affix the seals--a
ceremony which always involves some buffoonery and plentiful comments on
the objects thus secured, unless, indeed, one of the family happens to
be present. At length the party sealed up the chamber and returned to
the dining-room, whither the clerk betook himself. Schmucke watched the
mechanical operation which consists in setting the justice's seal
at either end of a bit of tape stretched across the opening of a
folding-door; or, in the case of a cupboard or ordinary door, from edge
to edge above the door-handle.

"Now for this room," said Fraisier, pointing to Schmucke's bedroom,
which opened into the dining-room.

"But that is M. Schmucke's own room," remonstrated La Sauvage, springing
in front of the door.

"We found the lease among the papers," Fraisier said ruthlessly; "there
was no mention of M. Schmucke in it; it is taken out in M. Pons' name
only. The whole place, and every room in it, is a part of the estate.
And besides"--flinging open the door--"look here, monsieur le juge de la
paix, it is full of pictures."

"So it is," answered the justice of the peace, and Fraisier thereupon
gained his point.

"Wait a bit, gentlemen," said Villemot. "Do you know that you are
turning the universal legatee out of doors, and as yet his right has not
been called in question?"

"Yes, it has," said Fraisier; "we are opposing the transfer of the
property."

"And upon what grounds?"

"You shall know that by and by, my boy," Fraisier replied, banteringly.
"At this moment, if the legatee withdraws everything that he declares
to be his, we shall raise no objections, but the room itself will be
sealed. And M. Schmucke may lodge where he pleases."

"No," said Villemot; "M. Schmucke is going to stay in his room."

"And how?"

"I shall demand an immediate special inquiry," continued Villemot, "and
prove that we pay half the rent. You shall not turn us out. Take away
the pictures, decide on the ownership of the various articles, but here
my client stops--'my boy.'"

"I shall go out!" the old musician suddenly said. He had recovered
energy during the odious dispute.

"You had better," said Fraisier. "Your course will save expense to you,
for your contention would not be made good. The lease is evidence--"

"The lease! the lease!" cried Villemot, "it is a question of good
faith--"

"That could only be proved in a criminal case, by calling witnesses.--Do
you mean to plunge into experts' fees and verifications, and orders
to show cause why judgment should not be given, and law proceedings
generally?"

"No, no!" cried Schmucke in dismay. "I shall turn out; I am used to
it--"

In practice Schmucke was a philosopher, an unconscious cynic, so greatly
had he simplified his life. Two pairs of shoes, a pair of boots,
a couple of suits of clothes, a dozen shirts, a dozen bandana
handkerchiefs, four waistcoats, a superb pipe given to him by Pons, with
an embroidered tobacco-pouch--these were all his belongings. Overwrought
by a fever of indignation, he went into his room and piled his clothes
upon a chair.

"All dese are mine," he said, with simplicity worthy of Cincinnatus.
"Der biano is also mine."

Fraisier turned to La Sauvage. "Madame, get help," he said; "take that
piano out and put it on the landing."

"You are too rough into the bargain," said Villemot, addressing
Fraisier. "The justice of the peace gives orders here; he is supreme."

"There are valuables in the room," put in the clerk.

"And besides," added the justice of the peace, "M. Schmucke is going out
of his own free will."

"Did any one ever see such a client!" Villemot cried indignantly,
turning upon Schmucke. "You are as limp as a rag--"

"Vat dos it matter vere von dies?" Schmucke said as he went out. "Dese
men haf tiger faces.... I shall send somebody to vetch mein bits of
dings."

"Where are you going, sir?"

"Vere it shall blease Gott," returned Pons' universal legatee with
supreme indifference.

"Send me word," said Villemot.

Fraisier turned to the head-clerk. "Go after him," he whispered.

Mme. Cantinet was left in charge, with a provision of fifty francs paid
out of the money that they found. The justice of the peace looked out;
there Schmucke stood in the courtyard looking up at the windows for the
last time.

"You have found a man of butter," remarked the justice.

"Yes," said Fraisier, "yes. The thing is as good as done. You need not
hesitate to marry your granddaughter to Poulain; he will be head-surgeon
at the Quinze-Vingts." (The Asylum founded by St. Louis for three
hundred blind people.)

"We shall see.--Good-day, M. Fraisier," said the justice of the peace
with a friendly air.

"There is a man with a head on his shoulders," remarked the justice's
clerk. "The dog will go a long way."

By this time it was eleven o'clock. The old German went like an
automaton down the road along which Pons and he had so often walked
together. Wherever he went he saw Pons, he almost thought that Pons was
by his side; and so he reached the theatre just as his friend Topinard
was coming out of it after a morning spent in cleaning the lamps and
meditating on the manager's tyranny.

"Oh, shoost der ding for me!" cried Schmucke, stopping his acquaintance.
"Dopinart! you haf a lodging someveres, eh?"

"Yes, sir."

"A home off your own?"

"Yes, sir."

"Are you villing to take me for ein poarder? Oh! I shall pay ver'
vell; I haf nine hundert vrancs of inkomm, und--I haf not ver' long ter
lif.... I shall gif no drouble vatefer.... I can eat onydings--I only
vant to shmoke mein bipe. Und--you are der only von dat haf shed a tear
for Bons, mit me; und so, I lof you."

"I should be very glad, sir; but, to begin with, M. Gaudissart has given
me a proper wigging--"

"_Vigging?_"

"That is one way of saying that he combed my hair for me."

"_Combed your hair?_"

"He gave me a scolding for meddling in your affairs.... So we must be
very careful if you come to me. But I doubt whether you will stay when
you have seen the place; you do not know how we poor devils live."

"I should rader der boor home of a goot-hearted mann dot haf mourned
Bons, dan der Duileries mit men dot haf ein tiger face.... I haf chust
left tigers in Bons' house; dey vill eat up everydings--"

"Come with me, sir, and you shall see. But--well, anyhow, there is a
garret. Let us see what Mme. Topinard says."

Schmucke followed like a sheep, while Topinard led the way into one of
the squalid districts which might be called the cancers of Paris--a spot
known as the Cite Bordin. It is a slum out of the Rue de Bondy, a double
row of houses run up by the speculative builder, under the shadow of the
huge mass of the Porte Saint-Martin theatre. The pavement at the higher
end lies below the level of the Rue de Bondy; at the lower it falls away
towards the Rue des Mathurins du Temple. Follow its course and you
find that it terminates in another slum running at right angles to the
first--the Cite Bordin is, in fact, a T-shaped blind alley. Its two
streets thus arranged contain some thirty houses, six or seven stories
high; and every story, and every room in every story, is a workshop and
a warehouse for goods of every sort and description, for this wart upon
the face of Paris is a miniature Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Cabinet-work
and brasswork, theatrical costumes, blown glass, painted porcelain--all
the various fancy goods known as _l'article Paris_ are made here. Dirty
and productive like commerce, always full of traffic--foot-passengers,
vans, and drays--the Cite Bourdin is an unsavory-looking neighborhood,
with a seething population in keeping with the squalid surroundings. It
is a not unintelligent artisan population, though the whole power of the
intellect is absorbed by the day's manual labor. Topinard, like every
other inhabitant of the Cite Bourdin, lived in it for the sake of
comparatively low rent, the cause of its existence and prosperity. His
sixth floor lodging, in the second house to the left, looked out upon
the belt of green garden, still in existence, at the back of three or
four large mansions in the Rue de Bondy.

Topinard's apartment consisted of a kitchen and two bedrooms. The first
was a nursery with two little deal bedsteads and a cradle in it, the
second was the bedroom, and the kitchen did duty as a dining-room.
Above, reached by a short ladder, known among builders as a
"trap-ladder," there was a kind of garret, six feet high, with a
sash-window let into the roof. This room, given as a servants' bedroom,
raised the Topinards' establishment from mere "rooms" to the dignity of
a tenement, and the rent to a corresponding sum of four hundred francs.
An arched lobby, lighted from the kitchen by a small round window, did
duty as an ante-chamber, and filled the space between the bedroom, the
kitchen, and house doors--three doors in all. The rooms were paved with
bricks, and hung with a hideous wall-paper at threepence apiece; the
chimneypieces that adorned them were of the kind called _capucines_--a
shelf set on a couple of brackets painted to resemble wood. Here in
these three rooms dwelt five human beings, three of them children. Any
one, therefore, can imagine how the walls were covered with scores and
scratches so far as an infant arm can reach.

Rich people can scarcely realize the extreme simplicity of a poor man's
kitchen. A Dutch oven, a kettle, a gridiron, a saucepan, two or three
dumpy cooking-pots, and a frying-pan--that was all. All the crockery in
the place, white and brown earthenware together, was not worth more than
twelve francs. Dinner was served on the kitchen table, which, with a
couple of chairs and a couple of stools, completed the furniture. The
stock of fuel was kept under the stove with a funnel-shaped chimney,
and in a corner stood the wash-tub in which the family linen lay, often
steeping over-night in soapsuds. The nursery ceiling was covered with
clothes-lines, the walls were variegated with theatrical placards and
wood-cuts from newspapers or advertisements. Evidently the eldest boy,
the owner of the school-books stacked in a corner, was left in
charge while his parents were absent at the theatre. In many a French
workingman's family, so soon as a child reaches the age of six or seven,
it plays the part of mother to younger sisters and brothers.

From this bare outline, it may be imagined that the Topinards, to use
the hackneyed formula, were "poor but honest." Topinard himself was
verging on forty; Mme. Topinard, once leader of a chorus--mistress, too,
it was said, of Gaudissart's predecessor, was certainly thirty years
old. Lolotte had been a fine woman in her day; but the misfortunes of
the previous management had told upon her to such an extent, that it
had seemed to her to be both advisable and necessary to contract a
stage-marriage with Topinard. She did not doubt but that, as soon as
they could muster the sum of a hundred and fifty francs, her Topinard
would perform his vows agreeably to the civil law, were it only to
legitimize the three children, whom he worshiped. Meantime, Mme.
Topinard sewed for the theatre wardrobe in the morning; and with
prodigious effort, the brave couple made nine hundred francs per annum
between them.

"One more flight!" Topinard had twice repeated since they reached the
third floor. Schmucke, engulfed in his sorrow, did not so much as know
whether he was going up or coming down.

In another minute Topinard had opened the door; but before he appeared
in his white workman's blouse Mme. Topinard's voice rang from the
kitchen:

"There, there! children, be quiet! here comes papa!"

But the children, no doubt, did as they pleased with papa, for the
oldest member of the family, sitting astride a broomstick, continued to
command a charge of cavalry (a reminiscence of the Cirque-Olympique),
the second blew a tin trumpet, while the third did its best to keep up
with the main body of the army. Their mother was at work on a theatrical
costume.

"Be quiet! or I shall slap you!" shouted Topinard in a formidable
voice; then in an aside for Schmucke's benefit--"Always have to say
that!--Here, little one," he continued, addressing his Lolotte, "this is
M. Schmucke, poor M. Pons' friend. He does not know where to go, and
he would like to live with us. I told him that we were not very
spick-and-span up here, that we lived on the sixth floor, and had only
the garret to offer him; but it was no use, he would come--"

Schmucke had taken the chair which the woman brought him, and the
children, stricken with sudden shyness, had gathered together to
give the stranger that mute, earnest, so soon-finished scrutiny
characteristic of childhood. For a child, like a dog, is wont to judge
by instinct rather than reason. Schmucke looked up; his eyes rested on
that charming little picture; he saw the performer on the tin trumpet, a
little five-year-old maiden with wonderful golden hair.

"She looks like ein liddle German girl," said Schmucke, holding out his
arms to the child.

"Monsieur will not be very comfortable here," said Mme. Topinard. "I
would propose that he should have our room at once, but I am obliged to
have the children near me."

She opened the door as she spoke, and bade Schmucke come in. Such
splendor as their abode possessed was all concentrated here. Blue
cotton curtains with a white fringe hung from the mahogany bedstead, and
adorned the window; the chest of drawers, bureau, and chairs, though all
made of mahogany, were neatly kept. The clock and candlesticks on the
chimneypiece were evidently the gift of the bankrupt manager, whose
portrait, a truly frightful performance of Pierre Grassou's, looked
down upon the chest of drawers. The children tried to peep in at the
forbidden glories.

"Monsieur might be comfortable in here," said their mother.

"No, no," Schmucke replied. "Eh! I haf not ver' long to lif, I only vant
a corner to die in."

The door was closed, and the three went up to the garret. "Dis is der
ding for me," Schmucke cried at once. "Pefore I lifd mid Bons, I vas
nefer better lodged."

"Very well. A truckle-bed, a couple of mattresses, a bolster, a pillow,
a couple of chairs, and a table--that is all that you need to buy. That
will not ruin you--it may cost a hundred and fifty francs, with the
crockeryware and strip of carpet for the bedside."

Everything was settled--save the money, which was not forthcoming.
Schmucke saw that his new friends were very poor, and recollecting that
the theatre was only a few steps away, it naturally occurred to him
to apply to the manager for his salary. He went at once, and found
Gaudissart in his office. Gaudissart received him in the somewhat
stiffly polite manner which he reserved for professionals. Schmucke's
demand for a month's salary took him by surprise, but on inquiry he
found that it was due.

"Oh, confound it, my good man, a German can always count, even if he has
tears in his eyes.... I thought that you would have taken the thousand
francs that I sent you into account, as a final year's salary, and that
we were quits."

"We haf receifed nodings," said Schmucke; "und gif I komm to you, it ees
because I am in der shtreet, und haf not ein benny. How did you send us
der bonus?"

"By your portress."

"By Montame Zipod!" exclaimed Schmucke. "She killed Bons, she robbed
him, she sold him--she tried to purn his vill--she is a pad creature, a
monster!"

"But, my good man, how come you to be out in the street without a roof
over your head or a penny in your pocket, when you are the sole heir?
That does not necessarily follow, as the saying is."

"They haf put me out at der door. I am a voreigner, I know nodings of
die laws."

"Poor man!" thought Gaudissart, foreseeing the probable end of the
unequal contest.--"Listen," he began, "do you know what you ought to do
in this business?"

"I haf ein mann of pizness!"

"Very good, come to terms at once with the next-of-kin; make them
pay you a lump sum of money down and an annuity, and you can live in
peace--"

"I ask noding more."

"Very well. Let me arrange it for you," said Gaudissart. Fraisier had
told him the whole story only yesterday, and he thought that he saw his
way to making interest out of the case with the young Vicomtesse Popinot
and her mother. He would finish a dirty piece of work, and some day he
would be a privy councillor, at least; or so he told himself.

"I gif you full powers."

"Well. Let me see. Now, to begin with," said Gaudissart, Napoleon of
the boulevard theatres, "to begin with, here are a hundred crowns--" (he
took fifteen louis from his purse and handed them to Schmucke).

"That is yours, on account of six months' salary. If you leave the
theatre, you can repay me the money. Now for your budget. What are your
yearly expenses? How much do you want to be comfortable? Come, now,
scheme out a life for a Sardanapalus--"

"I only need two suits of clothes, von for der vinter, von for der
sommer."

"Three hundred francs," said Gaudissart.

"Shoes. Vour bairs."

"Sixty francs."

"Shtockings--"

"A dozen pairs--thirty-six francs."

"Half a tozzen shirts."

"Six calico shirts, twenty-four francs; as many linen shirts,
forty-eight francs; let us say seventy-two. That makes four hundred and
sixty-eight francs altogether.--Say five hundred, including cravats and
pocket-handkerchiefs; a hundred francs for the laundress--six hundred.
And now, how much for your board--three francs a day?"

"No, it ees too much."

"After all, you want hats; that brings it to fifteen hundred. Five
hundred more for rent; that makes two thousand. If I can get two
thousand francs per annum for you, are you willing?... Good securities."

"Und mein tobacco."

"Two thousand four hundred, then.... Oh! Papa Schmucke, do you call
that tobacco? Very well, the tobacco shall be given in.--So that is two
thousand four hundred francs per annum."

"Dat ees not all! I should like som monny."

"Pin-money!--Just so. Oh, these Germans! And calls himself an innocent,
the old Robert Macaire!" thought Gaudissart. Aloud he said, "How much do
you want? But this must be the last."

"It ees to bay a zacred debt."

"A debt!" said Gaudissart to himself. What a shark it is! He is worse
than an eldest son. He will invent a bill or two next! We must cut this
short. This Fraisier cannot take large views.--What debt is this, my
good man? Speak out."

"Dere vas but von mann dot haf mourned Bons mit me.... He haf a tear
liddle girl mit wunderschones haar; it vas as if I saw mein boor
Deutschland dot I should nefer haf left.... Baris is no blace for die
Germans; dey laugh at dem" (with a little nod as he spoke, and the air
of a man who knows something of life in this world below).

"He is off his head," Gaudissart said to himself. And a sudden pang of
pity for this poor innocent before him brought a tear to the manager's
eyes.

"Ah! you understand, mennesir le directeur! Ver' goot. Dat mann mit die
liddle taughter is Dobinard, vat tidies der orchestra and lights die
lamps. Bons vas fery fond of him, und helped him. He vas der only von
dat accombanied mein only friend to die church und to die grafe.... I
vant dree tausend vrancs for him, und dree tausend for die liddle von--"

"Poor fellow!" said Gaudissart to himself.

Rough, self-made man though he was, he felt touched by this nobleness of
nature, by a gratitude for a mere trifle, as the world views it; though
for the eyes of this divine innocence the trifle, like Bossuet's cup of
water, was worth more than the victories of great captains. Beneath all
Gaudissart's vanity, beneath the fierce desire to succeed in life at all
costs, to rise to the social level of his old friend Popinot, there lay
a warm heart and a kindly nature. Wherefore he canceled his too hasty
judgments and went over to Schmucke's side.

"You shall have it all! But I will do better still, my dear Schmucke.
Topinard is a good sort--"

"Yes. I haf chust peen to see him in his boor home, vere he ees happy
mit his children--"

"I will give him the cashier's place. Old Baudrand is going to leave."

"Ah! Gott pless you!" cried Schmucke.

"Very well, my good, kind fellow, meet me at Berthier's office about
four o'clock this afternoon. Everything shall be ready, and you shall
be secured from want for the rest of your days. You shall draw your six
thousand francs, and you shall have the same salary with Garangeot that
you used to have with Pons."

"No," Schmucke answered. "I shall not lif.... I haf no heart for
anydings; I feel that I am attacked--"

"Poor lamb!" Gaudissart muttered to himself as the German took his
leave. "But, after all, one lives on mutton; and, as the sublime
Beranger says, 'Poor sheep! you were made to be shorn,'" and he hummed
the political squib by way of giving vent to his feelings. Then he rang
for the office-boy.

"Call my carriage," he said.

"Rue de Hanovre," he told the coachman.

The man of ambitions by this time had reappeared; he saw the way to the
Council of State lying straight before him.



And Schmucke? He was busy buying flowers and cakes for Topinard's
children, and went home almost joyously.

"I am gifing die bresents..." he said, and he smiled. It was the first
smile for three months, but any one who had seen Schmucke's face would
have shuddered to see it there.

"But dere is ein condition--"

"It is too kind of you, sir," said the mother.

"De liddle girl shall gif me a kiss and put die flowers in her hair,
like die liddle German maidens--"

"Olga, child, do just as the gentleman wishes," said the mother,
assuming an air of discipline.

"Do not scold mein liddle German girl," implored Schmucke. It seemed to
him that the little one was his dear Germany. Topinard came in.

"Three porters are bringing up the whole bag of tricks," he said.

"Oh! Here are two hundred vrancs to bay for eferydings..." said
Schmucke. "But, mein friend, your Montame Dobinard is ver' nice; you
shall marry her, is it not so? I shall gif you tausend crowns, and die
liddle vone shall haf tausend crowns for her toury, and you shall infest
it in her name.... Und you are not to pe ein zuper any more--you are to
pe de cashier at de teatre--"

"_I_?--instead of old Baudrand?"

"Yes."

"Who told you so?"

"Mennesir Gautissart!"

"Oh! it is enough to send one wild with joy!... Eh! I say, Rosalie, what
a rumpus there will be at the theatre! But it is not possible--"

"Our benefactor must not live in a garret--"

"Pshaw! for die few tays dat I haf to lif it ees fery komfortable," said
Schmucke. "Goot-pye; I am going to der zemetery, to see vat dey haf don
mit Bons, und to order som flowers for his grafe."



Mme. Camusot de Marville was consumed by the liveliest apprehensions.
At a council held with Fraisier, Berthier, and Godeschal, the two
last-named authorities gave it as their opinion that it was hopeless
to dispute a will drawn up by two notaries in the presence of two
witnesses, so precisely was the instrument worded by Leopold Hannequin.
Honest Godeschal said that even if Schmucke's own legal adviser should
succeed in deceiving him, he would find out the truth at last, if it
were only from some officious barrister, the gentlemen of the robe being
wont to perform such acts of generosity and disinterestedness by way
of self-advertisement. And the two officials took their leave of the
Presidente with a parting caution against Fraisier, concerning whom they
had naturally made inquiries.

At that very moment Fraisier, straight from the affixing of the seals
in the Rue de Normandie, was waiting for an interview with Mme. de
Marville. Berthier and Godeschal had suggested that he should be shown
into the study; the whole affair was too dirty for the President to
look into (to use their own expression), and they wished to give Mme. de
Marville their opinion in Fraisier's absence.

"Well, madame, where are these gentlemen?" asked Fraisier, admitted to
audience.

"They are gone. They advise me to give up," said Mme. de Marville.

"Give up!" repeated Fraisier, suppressed fury in his voice. "Give up!
... Listen to this, madame:--

  "'At the request of'... and so forth (I will omit the
  formalities)... 'Whereas there has been deposited in the hands
  of M. le President of the Court of First Instance, a will drawn up
  by Maitres Leopold Hannequin and Alexandre Crottat, notaries of
  Paris, and in the presence of two witnesses, the Sieurs Brunner
  and Schwab, aliens domiciled at Paris, and by the said will the
  Sieur Pons, deceased, has bequeathed his property to one Sieur
  Schmucke, a German, to the prejudice of his natural heirs:

  "'Whereas the applicant undertakes to prove that the said will
  was obtained under undue influence and by unlawful means; and
  persons of credit are prepared to show that it was the testator's
  intention to leave his fortune to Mlle. Cecile, daughter of the
  aforesaid Sieur de Marville, and the applicant can show that the
  said will was extorted from the testator's weakness, he being
  unaccountable for his actions at the time:

  "'Whereas as the Sieur Schmucke, to obtain a will in his favor,
  sequestrated the testator, and prevented the family from
  approaching the deceased during his last illness; and his
  subsequent notorious ingratitude was of a nature to scandalize the
  house and residents in the quarter who chanced to witness it when
  attending the funeral of the porter at the testator's place of
  abode:

  "'Whereas as still more serious charges, of which applicant is
  collecting proofs, will be formally made before their worships the
  judges:

  "'I, the undersigned Registrar of the Court, etc., etc., on
  behalf of the aforesaid, etc., have summoned the Sieur Schmucke,
  pleading, etc., to appear before their worships the judges of the
  first chamber of the Tribunal, and to be present when application
  is made that the will received by Maitres Hannequin and Crottat,
  being evidently obtained by undue influence, shall be regarded as
  null and void in law; and I, the undersigned, on behalf of the
  aforesaid, etc., have likewise given notice of protest, should the
  Sieur Schmucke as universal legatee make application for an order
  to be put into possession of the estate, seeing that the applicant
  opposes such order, and makes objection by his application bearing
  date of to-day, of which a copy has been duly deposited with the
  Sieur Schmucke, costs being charged to... etc., etc.'

"I know the man, Mme. le Presidente. He will come to terms as soon as he
reads this little love-letter. He will take our terms. Are you going to
give the thousand crowns per annum?"

"Certainly. I only wish I were paying the first installment now."

"It will be done in three days. The summons will come down upon him
while he is stupefied with grief, for the poor soul regrets Pons and is
taking the death to heart."

"Can the application be withdrawn?" inquired the lady.

"Certainly, madame. You can withdraw it at any time."

"Very well, monsieur, let it be so... go on! Yes, the purchase of land
that you have arranged for me is worth the trouble; and, besides, I
have managed Vitel's business--he is to retire, and you must pay Vitel's
sixty thousand francs out of Pons' property. So, you see, you must
succeed."

"Have you Vitel's resignation?"

"Yes, monsieur. M. Vitel has put himself in M. de Marville's hands."

"Very good, madame. I have already saved you sixty thousand francs which
I expected to give to that vile creature Mme. Cibot. But I still require
the tobacconist's license for the woman Sauvage, and an appointment to
the vacant place of head-physician at the Quinze-Vingts for my friend
Poulain."

"Agreed--it is all arranged."

"Very well. There is no more to be said. Every one is for you in this
business, even Gaudissart, the manager of the theatre. I went to look
him up yesterday, and he undertook to crush the workman who seemed
likely to give us trouble."

"Oh, I know M. Gaudissart is devoted to the Popinots."

Fraisier went out. Unluckily, he missed Gaudissart, and the fatal
summons was served forthwith.

If all covetous minds will sympathize with the Presidente, all honest
folk will turn in abhorrence from her joy when Gaudissart came twenty
minutes later to report his conversation with poor Schmucke. She
gave her full approval; she was obliged beyond all expression for
the thoughtful way in which the manager relieved her of any remaining
scruples by observations which seemed to her to be very sensible and
just.

"I thought as I came, Mme. la Presidente, that the poor devil would not
know what to do with the money. 'Tis a patriarchally simple nature. He
is a child, he is a German, he ought to be stuffed and put in a glass
case like a waxen image. Which is to say that, in my opinion, he is
quite puzzled enough already with his income of two thousand five
hundred francs, and here you are provoking him into extravagance--"

"It is very generous of him to wish to enrich the poor fellow who
regrets the loss of our cousin," pronounced the Presidente. "For my own
part, I am sorry for the little squabble that estranged M. Pons and me.
If he had come back again, all would have been forgiven. If you only
knew how my husband misses him! M. de Marville received no notice of the
death, and was in despair; family claims are sacred for him, he would
have gone to the service and the interment, and I myself would have been
at the mass--"

"Very well, fair lady," said Gaudissart. "Be so good as to have the
documents drawn up, and at four o'clock I will bring this German to you.
Please remember me to your charming daughter the Vicomtesse, and ask
her to tell my illustrious friend the great statesman, her good and
excellent father-in-law, how deeply I am devoted to him and his, and ask
him to continue his valued favors. I owe my life to his uncle the judge,
and my success in life to him; and I should wish to be bound to both you
and your daughter by the high esteem which links us with persons of rank
and influence. I wish to leave the theatre and become a serious person."

"As you are already, monsieur!" said the Presidente.

"Adorable!" returned Gaudissart, kissing the lady's shriveled fingers.

At four o'clock that afternoon several people were gathered together
at Berthier's office; Fraisier, arch-concocter of the whole scheme,
Tabareau, appearing on behalf of Schmucke, and Schmucke himself.
Gaudissart had come with him. Fraisier had been careful to spread out
the money on Berthier's desk, and so dazzled was Schmucke by the sight
of the six thousand-franc bank-notes for which he had asked, and six
hundred francs for the first quarter's allowance, that he paid no heed
whatsoever to the reading of the document. Poor man, he was scarcely in
full possession of his faculties, shaken as they had already been by
so many shocks. Gaudissart had snatched him up on his return from the
cemetery, where he had been talking with Pons, promising to join him
soon--very soon. So Schmucke did not listen to the preamble in which it
was set forth that Maitre Tabareau, bailiff, was acting as his proxy,
and that the Presidente, in the interests of her daughter, was taking
legal proceedings against him. Altogether, in that preamble the German
played a sorry part, but he put his name to the document, and thereby
admitted the truth of Fraisier's abominable allegations; and so joyous
was he over receiving the money for the Topinards, so glad to bestow
wealth according to his little ideas upon the one creature who loved
Pons, that he heard not a word of lawsuit nor compromise.

But in the middle of the reading a clerk came into the private office to
speak to his employer. "There is a man here, sir, who wishes to speak to
M. Schmucke," said he.

The notary looked at Fraisier, and, taking his cue from him, shrugged
his shoulders.

"Never disturb us when we are signing documents. Just ask his name--is
it a man or a gentleman? Is he a creditor?"

The clerk went and returned. "He insists that he must speak to M.
Schmucke."

"His name?"

"His name is Topinard, he says."

"I will go out to him. Sign without disturbing yourself," said
Gaudissart, addressing Schmucke. "Make an end of it; I will find out
what he wants with us."

Gaudissart understood Fraisier; both scented danger.

"Why are you here?" Gaudissart began. "So you have no mind to be cashier
at the theatre? Discretion is a cashier's first recommendation."

"Sir--"

"Just mind your own business; you will never be anything if you meddle
in other people's affairs."

"Sir, I cannot eat bread if every mouthful of it is to stick in my
throat.... Monsieur Schmucke!--M. Schmucke!" he shouted aloud.

Schmucke came out at the sound of Topinard's voice. He had just signed.
He held the money in his hand.

"Thees ees for die liddle German maiden und for you," he said.

"Oh! my dear M. Schmucke, you have given away your wealth to inhuman
wretches, to people who are trying to take away your good name. I took
this paper to a good man, an attorney who knows this Fraisier, and he
says that you ought to punish such wickedness; you ought to let them
summon you and leave them to get out of it.--Read this," and Schmucke's
imprudent friend held out the summons delivered in the Cite Bordin.

Standing in the notary's gateway, Schmucke read the document, saw
the imputations made against him, and, all ignorant as he was of the
amenities of the law, the blow was deadly. The little grain of sand
stopped his heart's beating. Topinard caught him in his arms, hailed
a passing cab, and put the poor German into it. He was suffering from
congestion of the brain; his eyes were dim, his head was throbbing, but
he had enough strength left to put the money into Topinard's hands.

Schmucke rallied from the first attack, but he never recovered
consciousness, and refused to eat. Ten days afterwards he died without
a complaint; to the last he had not spoken a word. Mme. Topinard nursed
him, and Topinard laid him by Pons' side. It was an obscure funeral;
Topinard was the only mourner who followed the son of Germany to his
last resting-place.



Fraisier, now a justice of the peace, is very intimate with the
President's family, and much valued by the Presidente. She could not
think of allowing him to marry "that girl of Tabareau's," and promised
infinitely better things for the clever man to whom she considers she
owes not merely the pasture-land and the English cottage at Marville,
but also the President's seat in the Chamber of Deputies, for M. le
President was returned at the general election in 1846.

Every one, no doubt, wishes to know what became of the heroine of a
story only too veracious in its details; a chronicle which, taken with
its twin sister the preceding volume, _La Cousine Bette_, proves that
Character is a great social force. You, O amateurs, connoisseurs, and
dealers, will guess at once that Pons' collection is now in question.
Wherefore it will suffice if we are present during a conversation that
took place only a few days ago in Count Popinot's house. He was showing
his splendid collection to some visitors.

"M. le Comte, you possess treasures indeed," remarked a distinguished
foreigner.

"Oh! as to pictures, nobody can hope to rival an obscure collector, one
Elie Magus, a Jew, an old monomaniac, the prince of picture-lovers," the
Count replied modestly. "And when I say nobody, I do not speak of Paris
only, but of all Europe. When the old Croesus dies, France ought
to spare seven or eight millions of francs to buy the gallery. For
curiosities, my collection is good enough to be talked about--"

"But how, busy as you are, and with a fortune so honestly earned in the
first instance in business--"

"In the drug business," broke in Popinot; "you ask how I can continue to
interest myself in things that are a drug in the market--"

"No," returned the foreign visitor, "no, but how do you find time to
collect? The curiosities do not come to find you."

"My father-in-law owned the nucleus of the collection," said the young
Vicomtess; "he loved the arts and beautiful work, but most of his
treasures came to him through me."

"Through you, madame?--So young! and yet have you such vices as this?"
asked a Russian prince.

Russians are by nature imitative; imitative indeed to such an extent
that the diseases of civilization break out among them in epidemics. The
bric-a-brac mania had appeared in an acute form in St. Petersburg,
and the Russians caused such a rise of prices in the "art line," as
Remonencq would say, that collection became impossible. The prince who
spoke had come to Paris solely to buy bric-a-brac.

"The treasures came to me, prince, on the death of a cousin. He was very
fond of me," added the Vicomtesse Popinot, "and he had spent some forty
odd years since 1805 in picking up these masterpieces everywhere, but
more especially in Italy--"

"And what was his name?" inquired the English lord.

"Pons," said President Camusot.

"A charming man he was," piped the Presidente in her thin, flute tones,
"very clever, very eccentric, and yet very good-hearted. This fan that
you admire once belonged to Mme. de Pompadour; he gave it to me one
morning with a pretty speech which you must permit me not to repeat,"
and she glanced at her daughter.

"Mme. la Vicomtesse, tell us the pretty speech," begged the Russian
prince.

"The speech was as pretty as the fan," returned the Vicomtesse, who
brought out the stereotyped remark on all occasions. "He told my mother
that it was quite time that it should pass from the hands of vice into
those of virtue."

The English lord looked at Mme. Camusot de Marville with an air of doubt
not a little gratifying to so withered a woman.

"He used to dine at our house two or three times a week," she said; "he
was so fond of us! We could appreciate him, and artists like the
society of those who relish their wit. My husband was, besides, his one
surviving relative. So when, quite unexpectedly, M. de Marville
came into the property, M. le Comte preferred to take over the whole
collection to save it from a sale by auction; and we ourselves much
preferred to dispose of it in that way, for it would have been so
painful to us to see the beautiful things, in which our dear cousin was
so much interested, all scattered abroad. Elie Magus valued them, and in
that way I became possessed of the cottage that your uncle built, and I
hope you will do us the honor of coming to see us there."


Gaudissart's theatre passed into other hands a year ago, but M. Topinard
is still the cashier. M. Topinard, however, has grown gloomy and
misanthropic; he says little. People think that he has something on his
conscience. Wags at the theatre suggest that his gloom dates from
his marriage with Lolotte. Honest Topinard starts whenever he hears
Fraisier's name mentioned. Some people may think it strange that the one
nature worthy of Pons and Schmucke should be found on the third floor
beneath the stage of a boulevard theatre.

Mme. Remonencq, much impressed with Mme. Fontaine's prediction, declines
to retire to the country. She is still living in her splendid shop on
the Boulevard de la Madeleine, but she is a widow now for the second
time. Remonencq, in fact, by the terms of the marriage contract, settled
the property upon the survivor, and left a little glass of vitriol
about for his wife to drink by mistake; but his wife, with the very best
intentions, put the glass elsewhere, and Remonencq swallowed the draught
himself. The rascal's appropriate end vindicates Providence, as well as
the chronicler of manners, who is sometimes accused of neglect on this
head, perhaps because Providence has been so overworked by playwrights
of late.




ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

     Baudoyer, Isidore
       The Government Clerks
       The Middle Classes

     Berthier (Parisian notary)
       Cousin Betty

     Berthier, Madame
       The Muse of the Department

     Bixiou, Jean-Jacques
       The Purse
       A Bachelor's Establishment
       The Government Clerks
       Modeste Mignon
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
       The Firm of Nucingen
       The Muse of the Department
       Cousin Betty
       The Member for Arcis
       Beatrix
       A Man of Business
       Gaudissart II.
       The Unconscious Humorists

     Braulard
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       Cousin Betty

     Brisetout, Heloise
       Cousin Betty
       The Middle Classes

     Camusot
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       A Bachelor's Establishment
       The Muse of the Department
       Cesar Birotteau
       At the Sign of the Cat and Racket

     Camusot de Marville
       Jealousies of a Country Town
       The Commission in Lunacy
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

     Camusot de Marville, Madame
       The Vendetta
       Cesar Birotteau
       Jealousies of a Country Town
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

     Cardot (Parisian notary)
       The Muse of the Department
       A Man of Business
       Jealousies of a Country Town
       Pierre Grassou
       The Middle Classes

     Chanor
       Cousin Betty

     Crevel, Celestin
       Cesar Birotteau
       Cousin Betty

     Crottat, Alexandre
       Cesar Birotteau
       Colonel Chabert
       A Start in Life
       A Woman of Thirty

     Desplein
       The Atheist's Mass
       Lost Illusions
       The Thirteen
       The Government Clerks
       Pierrette
       A Bachelor's Establishment
       The Seamy Side of History
       Modeste Mignon
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
       Honorine

     Florent
       Cousin Betty

     Fontaine, Madame
       The Unconscious Humorists

     Gaudissart, Felix
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
       Cesar Birotteau
       Honorine
       Gaudissart the Great

     Godeschal, Francois-Claude-Marie
       Colonel Chabert
       A Bachelor's Establishment
       A Start in Life
       The Commission in Lunacy
       The Middle Classes

     Godeschal, Marie
       A Bachelor's Establishment
       A Start in Life
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

     Gouraud, General, Baron
       Pierrette

     Graff, Wolfgang
       Cousin Betty

     Granville, Vicomte de (later Comte)
       The Gondreville Mystery
       Honorine
       A Second Home
       Farewell (Adieu)
       Cesar Birotteau
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
       A Daughter of Eve

     Grassou, Pierre
       Pierre Grassou
       A Bachelor's Establishment
       Cousin Betty
       The Middle Classes

     Hannequin, Leopold
       Albert Savarus
       Beatrix
       Cousin Betty

     Haudry (doctor)
       Cesar Birotteau
       The Thirteen
       A Bachelor's Establishment
       The Seamy Side of History

     Lebrun (physician)
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

     Louchard
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

     Madeleine
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

     Magus, Elie
       The Vendetta
       A Marriage Settlement
       A Bachelor's Establishment
       Pierre Grassou

     Matifat (wealthy druggist)
       Cesar Birotteau
       A Bachelor's Establishment
       Lost Illusions
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       The Firm of Nucingen

     Minard, Prudence
       The Middle Classes

     Pillerault, Claude-Joseph
       Cesar Birotteau

     Popinot, Anselme
       Cesar Birotteau
       Gaudissart the Great
       Cousin Betty

     Popinot, Madame Anselme
       Cesar Birotteau
       A Prince of Bohemia
       Cousin Betty

     Popinot, Vicomte
       Cousin Betty

     Rivet, Achille
       Cousin Betty

     Schmucke, Wilhelm
       A Daughter of Eve
       Ursule Mirouet
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

     Stevens, Dinah
       A Marriage Settlement

     Stidmann
       Modeste Mignon
       Beatrix
       The Member for Arcis
       Cousin Betty
       The Unconscious Humorists

     Thouvenin
       Cesar Birotteau

     Vinet
       Pierrette
       The Member for Arcis
       The Middle Classes

     Vinet, Olivier
       The Member for Arcis
       The Middle Classes

     Vivet, Madeleine
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life