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.