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.