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.”