another may be unwelcome, but it will always be gratifying to self-love;
this was the case with the old bachelor. After generously pardoning
Madeleine, he extended his forgiveness to the other servants, promising
to use his influence with his cousin the Presidente on their behalf.
It was unspeakably pleasant to Pons to find all his old enjoyments
restored to him without any loss of self-respect. The world had come to
Pons, he had risen in the esteem of his circle; but Schmucke looked so
downcast and dubious when he heard the story of the triumph, that Pons
felt hurt. When, however, the kind-hearted German saw the sudden change
wrought in Pons’ face, he ended by rejoicing with his friend, and made
a sacrifice of the happiness that he had known during those four months
that he had had Pons all to himself. Mental suffering has this immense
advantage over physical ills--when the cause is removed it ceases
at once. Pons was not like the same man that morning. The old man,
depressed and visibly failing, had given place to the serenely contented
Pons, who entered the Presidente’s house that October afternoon with the
Marquise de Pompadour’s fan in his pocket. Schmucke, on the other hand,
pondered deeply over this phenomenon, and could not understand it; your
true stoic never can understand the courtier that dwells in a Frenchman.
Pons was a born Frenchman of the Empire; a mixture of eighteenth century
gallantry and that devotion to womankind so often celebrated in songs of
the type of _Partant pour la Syrie_.
So Schmucke was fain to bury his chagrin beneath the flowers of his
German philosophy; but a week later he grew so yellow that Mme. Cibot
exerted her ingenuity to call in the parish doctor. The leech had fears
of icterus, and left Mme. Cibot frightened half out of her wits by the
Latin word for an attack of the jaundice.
Meantime the two friends went out to dinner together, perhaps for
the first time in their lives. For Schmucke it was a return to the
Fatherland; for Johann Graff of the Hotel du Rhin and his daughter
Emilie, Wolfgang Graff the tailor and his wife, Fritz Brunner and
Wilhelm Schwab, were Germans, and Pons and the notary were the only
Frenchmen present at the banquet. The Graffs of the tailor’s business
owned a splendid house in the Rue de Richelieu, between the Rue
Neuve-des-Petits-Champs and the Rue Villedo; they had brought up their
niece, for Emilie’s father, not without reason, had feared contact
with the very mixed society of an inn for his daughter. The good tailor
Graffs, who loved Emilie as if she had been their own daughter, were
giving up the ground floor of their great house to the young couple, and
here the bank of Brunner, Schwab and Company was to be established. The
arrangements for the marriage had been made about a month ago; some time
must elapse before Fritz Brunner, author of all this felicity, could
settle his deceased father’s affairs, and the famous firm of tailors
had taken advantage of the delay to redecorate the first floor and to
furnish it very handsomely for the bride and bridegroom. The offices of
the bank had been fitted into the wing which united a handsome business
house with the hotel at the back, between courtyard and garden.
On the way from the Rue de Normandie to the Rue de Richelieu, Pons drew
from the abstracted Schmucke the details of the story of the modern
prodigal son, for whom Death had killed the fatted innkeeper. Pons, but
newly reconciled with his nearest relatives, was immediately smitten
with a desire to make a match between Fritz Brunner and Cecile de
Marville. Chance ordained that the notary was none other than Berthier,
old Cardot’s son-in-law and successor, the sometime second clerk with
whom Pons had been wont to dine.
“Ah! M. Berthier, you here!” he said, holding out a hand to his host of
former days.
“We have not had the pleasure of seeing you at dinner lately; how is
it?” returned the notary. “My wife has been anxious about you. We saw
you at the first performance of _The Devil’s Betrothed_, and our anxiety
became curiosity?”
“Old folk are sensitive,” replied the worthy musician; “they make the
mistake of being a century behind the times, but how can it be helped?
It is quite enough to represent one century--they cannot entirely belong
to the century which sees them die.”
“Ah!” said the notary, with a shrewd look, “one cannot run two centuries
at once.”
“By the by,” continued Pons, drawing the young lawyer into a corner,
“why do you not find some one for my cousin Cecile de Marville--”
“Ah! why--?” answered Berthier. “In this century, when luxury has
filtered down to our very porters’ lodges, a young fellow hesitates
before uniting his lot with the daughter of a President of the Court of
Appeal in Paris if she brings him only a hundred thousand francs. In the
rank of life in which Mlle. de Marville’s husband would take, the wife
was never yet known that did not cost her husband three thousand francs
a year; the interest on a hundred thousand francs would scarcely
find her in pin-money. A bachelor with an income of fifteen or twenty
thousand francs can live on an entre-sol; he is not expected to cut
any figure; he need not keep more than one servant, and all his surplus
income he can spend on his amusements; he puts himself in the hands of
a good tailor, and need not trouble any further about keeping up
appearances. Far-sighted mothers make much of him; he is one of the
kings of fashion in Paris.
“But a wife changes everything. A wife means a properly furnished
house,” continued the lawyer; “she wants the carriage for herself; if
she goes to the play, she wants a box, while the bachelor has only a
stall to pay for; in short, a wife represents the whole of the income
which the bachelor used to spend on himself. Suppose that husband and
wife have thirty thousand francs a year between them--practically, the
sometime bachelor is a poor devil who thinks twice before he drives out
to Chantilly. Bring children on the scene--he is pinched for money at
once.
“Now, as M. and Mme. de Marville are scarcely turned fifty, Cecile’s
expectations are bills that will not fall due for fifteen or twenty
years to come; and no young fellow cares to keep them so long in
his portfolio. The young featherheads who are dancing the polka with
lorettes at the Jardin Mabille, are so cankered with self-interest, that
they don’t stand in need of us to explain both sides of the problem to
them. Between ourselves, I may say that Mlle. de Marville scarcely sets
hearts throbbing so fast but that their owners can perfectly keep their
heads, and they are full of these anti-matrimonial reflections. If any
eligible young man, in full possession of his senses and an income
of twenty thousand francs, happens to be sketching out a programme of
marriage that will satisfy his ambitions, Mlle. de Marville does not
altogether answer the description--”
“And why not?” asked the bewildered musician.
“Oh!--” said the notary, “well--a young man nowadays may be as ugly as
you and I, my dear Pons, but he is almost sure to have the impertinence
to want six hundred thousand francs, a girl of good family, with wit and
good looks and good breeding--flawless perfection in short.”
“Then it will not be easy to marry her?”
“She will not be married so long as M. and Mme. de Marville cannot make
up their minds to settle Marville on her when she marries; if they had
chosen, she might have been the Vicomtesse Popinot by now. But here
comes M. Brunner.--We are about to read the deed of partnership and the
marriage contract.”
Greetings and introductions over, the relations made Pons promise to
sign the contract. He listened to the reading of the documents, and
towards half-past five the party went into the dining-room. The dinner
was magnificent, as a city merchant’s dinner can be, when he allows
himself a respite from money-making. Graff of the Hotel du Rhin was
acquainted with the first provision dealers in Paris; never had Pons nor
Schmucke fared so sumptuously. The dishes were a rapture to think of!
Italian paste, delicate of flavor, unknown to the public; smelts fried
as never smelts were fried before; fish from Lake Leman, with a real
Genevese sauce, and a cream for plum-pudding which would have astonished
the London doctor who is said to have invented it. It was nearly ten
o’clock before they rose from table. The amount of wine, German and
French, consumed at that dinner would amaze the contemporary dandy;
nobody knows the amount of liquor that a German can imbibe and yet keep
calm and quiet; to have even an idea of the quantity, you must dine in
Germany and watch bottle succeed to bottle, like wave rippling after
wave along the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, and disappear as if
the Teuton possessed the absorbing power of sponges or sea sand. Perfect
harmony prevails meanwhile; there is none of the racket that there would
be over the liquor in France; the talk is as sober as a money-lender’s
extempore speech; countenances flush, like the faces of the brides in
frescoes by Cornelius or Schnorr (imperceptibly, that is to say), and
reminiscences are poured out slowly while the smoke puffs from the
pipes.
About half-past ten that evening Pons and Schmucke found themselves
sitting on a bench out in the garden, with the ex-flute between them;
they were explaining their characters, opinions, and misfortunes, with
no very clear idea as to why or how they had come to this point. In the
thick of a potpourri of confidences, Wilhelm spoke of his strong desire
to see Fritz married, expressing himself with vehement and vinous
eloquence.
“What do you say to this programme for your friend Brunner?” cried
Pons in confidential tones. “A charming and sensible young lady of
twenty-four, belonging to a family of the highest distinction. The
father holds a very high position as a judge; there will be a hundred
thousand francs paid down and a million to come.”
“Wait!” answered Schwab; “I will speak to Fritz this instant.”
The pair watched Brunner and his friend as they walked round and round
the garden; again and again they passed the bench, sometimes one spoke,
sometimes the other.
Pons was not exactly intoxicated; his head was a little heavy, but his
thoughts, on the contrary, seemed all the lighter; he watched Fritz
Brunner’s face through the rainbow mist of fumes of wine, and tried
to read auguries favorable to his family. Before very long Schwab
introduced his friend and partner to M. Pons; Fritz Brunner expressed
his thanks for the trouble which Pons had been so good as to take.
In the conversation which followed, the two old bachelors Schmucke and
Pons extolled the estate of matrimony, going so far as to say, without
any malicious intent, “that marriage was the end of man.” Tea and ices,
punches and cakes, were served in the future home of the betrothed
couple. The wine had begun to tell upon the honest merchants, and the
general hilarity reached its height when it was announced that Schwab’s
partner thought of following his example.
At two o’clock that morning, Schmucke and Pons walked home along the
boulevards, philosophizing _a perte de raison_ as they went on the
harmony pervading the arrangements of this our world below.
On the morrow of the banquet, Cousin Pons betook himself to his fair
cousin the Presidente, overjoyed--poor dear noble soul!--to return good
for evil. Surely he had attained to a sublime height, as every one will
allow, for we live in an age when the Montyon prize is given to those
who do their duty by carrying out the precepts of the Gospel.
“Ah!” said Pons to himself, as he turned the corner of the Rue de
Choiseul, “they will lie under immense obligations to their parasite.”
Any man less absorbed in his contentment, any man of the world, any
distrustful nature would have watched the President’s wife and daughter
very narrowly on this first return to the house. But the poor musician
was a child, he had all the simplicity of an artist, believing in
goodness as he believed in beauty; so he was delighted when Cecile and
her mother made much of him. After all the vaudevilles, tragedies, and
comedies which had been played under the worthy man’s eyes for twelve
long years, he could not detect the insincerity and grimaces of social
comedy, no doubt because he had seen too much of it. Any one who goes
into society in Paris, and knows the type of woman, dried up, body and
soul, by a burning thirst for social position, and a fierce desire to
be thought virtuous, any one familiar with the sham piety and the
domineering character of a woman whose word is law in her own house, may
imagine the lurking hatred she bore this husband’s cousin whom she had
wronged.
All the demonstrative friendliness of mother and daughter was lined with
a formidable longing for revenge, evidently postponed. For the first
time in Amelie de Marville’s life she had been put in the wrong, and
that in the sight of the husband over whom she tyrannized; and not only
so--she was obliged to be amiable to the author of her defeat! You can
scarcely find a match for this position save in the hypocritical
dramas which are sometimes kept up for years in the sacred college of
cardinals, or in chapters of certain religious orders.
At three o’clock, when the President came back from the law-courts, Pons
had scarcely made an end of the marvelous history of his acquaintance,
M. Frederic Brunner. Cecile had gone straight to the point. She wanted
to know how Frederic Brunner was dressed, how he looked, his height and
figure, the color of his hair and eyes; and when she had conjectured a
distinguished air for Frederic, she admired his generosity of character.
“Think of his giving five hundred thousand francs to his companion
in misfortune! Oh! mamma, I shall have a carriage and a box at the
Italiens----” Cecile grew almost pretty as she thought that all her
mother’s ambitions for her were about to be realized, that the hopes
which had almost left her were to come to something after all.
As for the Presidente, all that she said was, “My dear little girl, you
may perhaps be married within the fortnight.”
All mothers with daughters of three-and-twenty address them as “little
girl.”
“Still,” added the President, “in any case, we must have time to make
inquiries; never will I give my daughter to just anybody--”
“As to inquiries,” said Pons, “Berthier is drawing up the deeds. As to
the young man himself, my dear cousin, you remember what you told me?
Well, he is quite forty years old; he is bald. He wishes to find in
family life a haven after a storm; I did not dissuade him; every man has
his tastes--”
“One reason the more for a personal interview,” returned the President.
“I am not going to give my daughter to a valetudinarian.”
“Very good, cousin, you shall see my suitor in five days if you like;
for, with your views, a single interview would be enough”--(Cecile
and her mother signified their rapture)--“Frederic is decidedly a
distinguished amateur; he begged me to allow him to see my little
collection at his leisure. You have never seen my pictures and
curiosities; come and see them,” he continued, looking at his relatives.
“You can come simply as two ladies, brought by my friend Schmucke, and
make M. Brunner’s acquaintance without betraying yourselves. Frederic
need not in the least know who you are.”
“Admirable!” cried the President.
The attention they paid to the once scorned parasite may be left to
the imagination! Poor Pons that day became the Presidente’s cousin.
The happy mother drowned her dislike in floods of joy; her looks, her
smiles, her words sent the old man into ecstasies over the good that he
had done, over the future that he saw by glimpses. Was he not sure
to find dinners such as yesterday’s banquet over the signing of the
contract, multiplied indefinitely by three, in the houses of Brunner,
Schwab, and Graff? He saw before him a land of plenty--a _vie de
cocagne_, a miraculous succession of _plats couverts_, of delicate
surprise dishes, of exquisite wines.
“If Cousin Pons brings this through,” said the President, addressing
his wife after Pons had departed, “we ought to settle an income upon him
equal to his salary at the theatre.”
“Certainly,” said the lady; and Cecile was informed that if the proposed
suitor found favor in her eyes, she must undertake to induce the old
musician to accept a munificence in such bad taste.
Next day the President went to Berthier. He was anxious to make sure of
M. Frederic Brunner’s financial position. Berthier, forewarned by Mme.
de Marville, had asked his new client Schwab to come. Schwab the banker
was dazzled by the prospect of such a match for his friend (everybody
knows how deeply a German venerates social distinctions, so much so,
that in Germany a wife takes her husband’s (official) title, and is
the Frau General, the Frau Rath, and so forth)--Schwab therefore was as
accommodating as a collector who imagines that he is cheating a dealer.
“In the first place,” said Cecile’s father, “as I shall make over my
estate of Marville to my daughter, I should wish the contract to be
drawn up on the dotal system. In that case, M. Brunner would invest a
million francs in land to increase the estate, and by settling the land
on his wife he would secure her and his children from any share in the
liabilities of the bank.”
Berthier stroked his chin. “He is coming on well, is M. le President,”
thought he.
When the dotal system had been explained to Schwab, he seemed much
inclined that way for his friend. He had heard Fritz say that he wished
to find some way of insuring himself against another lapse into poverty.
“There is a farm and pasture land worth twelve hundred thousand francs
in the market at this moment,” remarked the President.
“If we take up shares in the Bank of France to the amount of a million
francs, that will be quite enough to guarantee our account,” said
Schwab. “Fritz does not want to invest more than two million francs in
business; he will do as you wish, I am sure, M. le President.”
The President’s wife and daughter were almost wild with joy when he
brought home this news. Never, surely, did so rich a capture swim so
complacently into the nets of matrimony.
“You will be Mme. Brunner de Marville,” said the parent, addressing his
child; “I will obtain permission for your husband to add the name to
his, and afterwards he can take out letters of naturalization. If I
should be a peer of France some day, he will succeed me!”
The five days were spent by Mme. de Marville in preparations. On the
great day she dressed Cecile herself, taking as much pains as the
admiral of the British fleet takes over the dressing of the pleasure
yacht for Her Majesty of England when she takes a trip to Germany.
Pons and Schmucke, on their side, cleaned, swept, and dusted Pons’
museum rooms and furniture with the agility of sailors cleaning down
a man-of-war. There was not a speck of dust on the carved wood; not an
inch of brass but it glistened. The glasses over the pastels obscured
nothing of the work of Latour, Greuze, and Liotard (illustrious painter
of _The Chocolate Girl_), miracles of an art, alas! so fugitive. The
inimitable lustre of Florentine bronze took all the varying hues of
the light; the painted glass glowed with color. Every line shone
out brilliantly, every object threw in its phrase in a harmony of
masterpieces arranged by two musicians--both of whom alike had attained
to be poets.
With a tact which avoided the difficulties of a late appearance on the
scene of action, the women were the first to arrive; they wished to be
on their own ground. Pons introduced his friend Schmucke, who seemed
to his fair visitors to be an idiot; their heads were so full of the
eligible gentleman with the four millions of francs, that they paid but
little attention to the worthy Pons’ dissertations upon matters of which
they were completely ignorant.
They looked with indifferent eyes at Petitot’s enamels, spaced over
crimson velvet, set in three frames of marvelous workmanship. Flowers by
Van Huysum, David, and Heim; butterflies painted by Abraham Mignon;
Van Eycks, undoubted Cranachs and Albrecht Durers; the Giorgione, the
Sebastian del Piombo; Backhuijzen, Hobbema, Gericault, the rarities of
painting--none of these things so much as aroused their curiosity; they
were waiting for the sun to arise and shine upon these treasures. Still,
they were surprised by the beauty of some of the Etruscan trinkets and
the solid value of the snuff-boxes, and out of politeness they went into
ecstasies over some Florentine bronzes which they held in their hands
when Mme. Cibot announced M. Brunner! They did not turn; they took
advantage of a superb Venetian mirror framed in huge masses of carved
ebony to scan this phoenix of eligible young men.
Frederic, forewarned by Wilhelm, had made the most of the little hair
that remained to him. He wore a neat pair of trousers, a soft shade of
some dark color, a silk waistcoat of superlative elegance and the very
newest cut, a shirt with open-work, its linen hand-woven by a Friesland
woman, and a blue-and-white cravat. His watch chain, like the head of
his cane, came from Messrs. Florent and Chanor; and the coat, cut by old
Graff himself, was of the very finest cloth. The Suede gloves proclaimed
the man who had run through his mother’s fortune. You could have seen
the banker’s neat little brougham and pair of horses mirrored in the
surface of his speckless varnished boots, even if two pairs of sharp
ears had not already caught the sound of wheels outside in the Rue de
Normandie.
When the prodigal of twenty years is a kind of chrysalis from which
a banker emerges at the age of forty, the said banker is usually
an observer of human nature; and so much the more shrewd if, as in
Brunner’s case, he understands how to turn his German simplicity to good
account. He had assumed for the occasion the abstracted air of a man who
is hesitating between family life and the dissipations of bachelorhood.
This expression in a Frenchified German seemed to Cecile to be in the
highest degree romantic; the descendant of the Virlaz was a second
Werther in her eyes--where is the girl who will not allow herself to
weave a little novel about her marriage? Cecile thought herself the
happiest of women when Brunner, looking round at the magnificent works
of art so patiently collected during forty years, waxed enthusiastic,
and Pons, to his no small satisfaction, found an appreciative admirer of
his treasures for the first time in his life.
“He is poetical,” the young lady said to herself; “he sees millions in
the things. A poet is a man that cannot count and leaves his wife to
look after his money--an easy man to manage and amuse with trifles.”
Every pane in the two windows was a square of Swiss painted glass; the
least of them was worth a thousand francs; and Pons possessed sixteen
of these unrivaled works of art for which amateurs seek so eagerly
nowadays. In 1815 the panes could be bought for six or ten francs
apiece. The value of the glorious collection of pictures, flawless great
works, authentic, untouched since they left the master’s hands, could
only be proved in the fiery furnace of a saleroom. Not a picture but
was set in a costly frame; there were frames of every kind--Venetians,
carved with heavy ornaments, like English plate of the present day;
Romans, distinguishable among the others for a certain dash that artists
call _flafla_; Spanish wreaths in bold relief; Flemings and Germans with
quaint figures, tortoise-shell frames inlaid with copper and brass and
mother-of-pearl and ivory; frames of ebony and boxwood in the styles of
Louis Treize, Louis Quatorze, Louis Quinze, and Louis Seize--in short,
it was a unique collection of the finest models. Pons, luckier than
the art museums of Dresden and Vienna, possessed a frame by the famous
Brustoloni--the Michael Angelo of wood-carvers.