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.