landlord and he all scraped the money together among them, and put all
their savings into this bank that they are starting. What is a bank for
those that begin in these days? Simply a license to ruin themselves.
A banker’s wife may lie down at night a millionaire and wake up in the
morning with nothing but her settlement. At first word, at the very
first sight of him, we made up our minds about this gentleman--he is not
one of us. You can tell by his gloves, by his waistcoat, that he is
a working man, the son of a man that kept a pot-house somewhere in
Germany; he has not the instincts of a gentleman; he drinks beer, and
he smokes--smokes? ah! madame, _twenty-five pipes a day!_... What would
have become of poor Lili? ... It makes me shudder even now to think of
it. God has indeed preserved us! And besides, Cecile never liked him....
Who would have expected such a trick from a relative, an old friend of
the house that had dined with us twice a week for twenty years? We have
loaded him with benefits, and he played his game so well, that he said
Cecile was his heir before the Keeper of the Seals and the Attorney
General and the Home Secretary!... That Brunner and M. Pons had their
story ready, and each of them said that the other was worth millions!...
No, I do assure you, all of you would have been taken in by an artist’s
hoax like that.”
In a few weeks’ time, the united forces of the Camusot and Popinot
families gained an easy victory in the world, for nobody undertook
to defend the unfortunate Pons, that parasite, that curmudgeon, that
skinflint, that smooth-faced humbug, on whom everybody heaped scorn; he
was a viper cherished in the bosom of the family, he had not his match
for spite, he was a dangerous mountebank whom nobody ought to mention.
About a month after the perfidious Werther’s withdrawal, poor Pons left
his bed for the first time after an attack of nervous fever, and walked
along the sunny side of the street leaning on Schmucke’s arm. Nobody in
the Boulevard du Temple laughed at the “pair of nutcrackers,” for one of
the old men looked so shattered, and the other so touchingly careful
of his invalid friend. By the time that they reached the Boulevard
Poissonniere, a little color came back to Pons’ face; he was breathing
the air of the boulevards, he felt the vitalizing power of the
atmosphere of the crowded street, the life-giving property of the air
that is noticeable in quarters where human life abounds; in the filthy
Roman Ghetto, for instance, with its swarming Jewish population, where
malaria is unknown. Perhaps, too, the sight of the streets, the great
spectacle of Paris, the daily pleasure of his life, did the invalid
good. They walked on side by side, though Pons now and again left his
friend to look at the shop windows. Opposite the Theatre des Varietes he
saw Count Popinot, and went up to him very respectfully, for of all men
Pons esteemed and venerated the ex-Minister.
The peer of France answered him severely:
“I am at a loss to understand, sir, how you can have no more tact than
to speak to a near connection of a family whom you tried to brand with
shame and ridicule by a trick which no one but an artist could devise.
Understand this, sir, that from to-day we must be complete strangers
to each other. Mme. la Comtesse Popinot, like every one else, feels
indignant at your behavior to the Marvilles.”
And Count Popinot passed on, leaving Pons thunderstruck. Passion,
justice, policy, and great social forces never take into account the
condition of the human creature whom they strike down. The statesman,
driven by family considerations to crush Pons, did not so much as see
the physical weakness of his redoubtable enemy.
“Vat is it, mine boor friend?” exclaimed Schmucke, seeing how white Pons
had grown.
“It is a fresh stab in the heart,” Pons replied, leaning heavily on
Schmucke’s arm. “I think that no one, save God in heaven, can have any
right to do good, and that is why all those who meddle in His work are
so cruelly punished.”
The old artist’s sarcasm was uttered with a supreme effort; he was
trying, excellent creature, to quiet the dismay visible in Schmucke’s
face.
“So I dink,” Schmucke replied simply.
Pons could not understand it. Neither the Camusots nor the Popinots had
sent him notice of Cecile’s wedding.
On the Boulevard des Italiens Pons saw M. Cardot coming towards them.
Warned by Count Popinot’s allocution, Pons was very careful not to
accost the old acquaintance with whom he had dined once a fortnight for
the last year; he lifted his hat, but the other, mayor and deputy
of Paris, threw him an indignant glance and went by. Pons turned to
Schmucke.
“Do go and ask him what it is that they all have against me,” he said to
the friend who knew all the details of the catastrophe that Pons could
tell him.
“Mennseir,” Schmucke began diplomatically, “mine friend Bons is chust
recofering from an illness; you haf no doubt fail to rekognize him?”
“Not in the least.”
“But mit vat kann you rebroach him?”
“You have a monster of ingratitude for a friend, sir; if he is still
alive, it is because nothing kills ill weeds. People do well to mistrust
artists; they are as mischievous and spiteful as monkeys. This friend
of yours tried to dishonor his own family, and to blight a young girl’s
character, in revenge for a harmless joke. I wish to have nothing to do
with him; I shall do my best to forget that I have known him, or that
such a man exists. All the members of his family and my own share the
wish, sir, so do all the persons who once did the said Pons the honor of
receiving him.”
“Boot, mennseir, you are a reasonaple mann; gif you vill bermit me, I
shall exblain die affair--”
“You are quite at liberty to remain his friend, sir, if you are minded
that way,” returned Cardot, “but you need go no further; for I must give
you warning that in my opinion those who try to excuse or defend his
conduct are just as much to blame.”
“To chustify it?”
“Yes, for his conduct can neither be justified nor qualified.” And with
that word, the deputy for the Seine went his way; he would not hear
another syllable.
“I have two powers in the State against me,” smiled poor Pons, when
Schmucke had repeated these savage speeches.
“Eferpody is against us,” Schmucke answered dolorously. “Let us go avay
pefore we shall meed oder fools.”
Never before in the course of a truly ovine life had Schmucke uttered
such words as these. Never before had his almost divine meekness been
ruffled. He had smiled childlike on all the mischances that befell him,
but he could not look and see his sublime Pons maltreated; his Pons, his
unknown Aristides, the genius resigned to his lot, the nature that knew
no bitterness, the treasury of kindness, the heart of gold!...
Alceste’s indignation filled Schmucke’s soul--he was moved to call Pons’
amphitryons “fools.” For his pacific nature that impulse equaled the
wrath of Roland.
With wise foresight, Schmucke turned to go home by the way of the
Boulevard du Temple, Pons passively submitting like a fallen fighter,
heedless of blows; but chance ordered that he should know that all his
world was against him. The House of Peers, the Chamber of Deputies,
strangers and the family, the strong, the weak, and the innocent, all
combined to send down the avalanche.
In the Boulevard Poissonniere, Pons caught sight of that very M.
Cardot’s daughter, who, young as she was, had learned to be charitable
to others through trouble of her own. Her husband knew a secret by which
he kept her in bondage. She was the only one among Pons’ hostesses
whom he called by her Christian name; he addressed Mme. Berthier as
“Felicie,” and he thought that she understood him. The gentle creature
seemed to be distressed by the sight of Cousin Pons, as he was called
(though he was in no way related to the family of the second wife of a
cousin by marriage). There was no help for it, however; Felicie Berthier
stopped to speak to the invalid.
“I did not think you were cruel, cousin,” she said; “but if even a
quarter of all that I hear of you is true, you are very false.... Oh!
do not justify yourself,” she added quickly, seeing Pons’ significant
gesture, “it is useless, for two reasons. In the first place, I have no
right to accuse or judge or condemn anybody, for I myself know so well
how much may be said for those who seem to be most guilty; secondly,
your explanation would do no good. M. Berthier drew up the marriage
contract for Mlle. de Marville and the Vicomte Popinot; he is so
exasperated, that if he knew that I had so much as spoken one word to
you, one word for the last time, he would scold me. Everybody is against
you.”
“So it seems indeed, madame,” Pons said, his voice shaking as he lifted
his hat respectfully.
Painfully he made his way back to the Rue de Normandie. The old German
knew from the heavy weight on his arm that his friend was struggling
bravely against failing physical strength. That third encounter was like
the verdict of the Lamb at the foot of the throne of God; and the anger
of the Angel of the Poor, the symbol of the Peoples, is the last word of
Heaven. They reached home without another word.
There are moments in our lives when the sense that our friend is near
is all that we can bear. Our wounds smart under the consoling words that
only reveal the depths of pain. The old pianist, you see, possessed a
genius for friendship, the tact of those who, having suffered much, knew
the customs of suffering.
Pons was never to take a walk again. From one illness he fell into
another. He was of a sanguine-bilious temperament, the bile passed into
his blood, and a violent liver attack was the result. He had never known
a day’s illness in his life till a month ago; he had never consulted a
doctor; so La Cibot, with almost motherly care and intentions at first
of the very best, called in “the doctor of the quarter.”
In every quarter of Paris there is a doctor whose name and address are
only known to the working classes, to the little tradespeople and the
porters, and in consequence he is called “the doctor of the quarter.”
He undertakes confinement cases, he lets blood, he is in the medical
profession pretty much what the “general servant” of the advertising
column is in the scale of domestic service. He must perforce be kind
to the poor, and tolerably expert by reason of much practice, and he
is generally popular. Dr. Poulain, called in by Mme. Cibot, gave an
inattentive ear to the old musician’s complainings. Pons groaned out
that his skin itched; he had scratched himself all night long, till he
could scarcely feel. The look of his eyes, with the yellow circles about
them, corroborated the symptoms.
“Had you some violent shock a couple of days ago?” the doctor asked the
patient.
“Yes, alas!”
“You have the same complaint that this gentleman was threatened with,”
said Dr. Poulain, looking at Schmucke as he spoke; “it is an attack
of jaundice, but you will soon get over it,” he added, as he wrote a
prescription.
But in spite of that comfortable phrase, the doctor’s eyes had told
another tale as he looked professionally at the patient; and the
death-sentence, though hidden under stereotyped compassion, can always
be read by those who wish to know the truth. Mme. Cibot gave a spy’s
glance at the doctor, and read his thought; his bedside manner did not
deceive her; she followed him out of the room.
“Do you think he will get over it?” asked Mme. Cibot, at the stairhead.
“My dear Mme. Cibot, your lodger is a dead man; not because of the bile
in the system, but because his vitality is low. Still, with great care,
your patient may pull through. Somebody ought to take him away for a
change--”
“How is he to go?” asked Mme. Cibot. “He has nothing to live upon but
his salary; his friend has just a little money from some great ladies,
very charitable ladies, in return for his services, it seems. They are
two children. I have looked after them for nine years.”
“I spend my life watching people die, not of their disease, but of
another bad and incurable complaint--the want of money,” said the
doctor. “How often it happens that so far from taking a fee, I am
obliged to leave a five-franc piece on the mantel-shelf when I go--”
“Poor, dear M. Poulain!” cried Mme. Cibot. “Ah, if you hadn’t only
the hundred thousand livres a year, what some stingy folks has in
the quarter (regular devils from hell they are), you would be like
Providence on earth.”
Dr. Poulain had made the little practice, by which he made a bare
subsistence, chiefly by winning the esteem of the porters’ lodges in his
district. So he raised his eyes to heaven and thanked Mme. Cibot with a
solemn face worthy of Tartuffe.
“Then you think that with careful nursing our dear patient will get
better, my dear M. Poulain?”
“Yes, if this shock has not been too much for him.”
“Poor man! who can have vexed him? There isn’t nobody like him on earth
except his friend M. Schmucke. I will find out what is the matter, and
I will undertake to give them that upset my gentleman a hauling over the
coals--”
“Look here, my dear Mme. Cibot,” said the doctor as they stood in
the gateway, “one of the principal symptoms of his complaint is great
irritability; and as it is hardly to be supposed that he can afford a
nurse, the task of nursing him will fall to you. So--”
“Are you talking of Mouchieu Ponsh?” asked the marine store-dealer. He
was sitting smoking on the curb-post in the gateway, and now he rose to
join in the conversation.
“Yes, Daddy Remonencq.”
“All right,” said Remonencq, “ash to moneysh, he ish better off than
Mouchieu Monishtrol and the big men in the curioshity line. I know
enough in the art line to tell you thish--the dear man has treasursh!”
he spoke with a broad Auvergne dialect.
“Look here, I thought you were laughing at me the other day when my
gentlemen were out and I showed you the old rubbish upstairs,” said Mme.
Cibot.
In Paris, where walls have ears, where doors have tongues, and window
bars have eyes, there are few things more dangerous than the practice
of standing to chat in a gateway. Partings are like postscripts to a
letter--indiscreet utterances that do as much mischief to the speaker
as to those who overhear them. A single instance will be sufficient as a
parallel to an event in this history.
In the time of the Empire, when men paid considerable attention to their
hair, one of the first coiffeurs of the day came out of a house where
he had just been dressing a pretty woman’s head. This artist in question
enjoyed the custom of all the lower floor inmates of the house;
and among these, there flourished an elderly bachelor guarded by a
housekeeper who detested her master’s next-of-kin. The _ci-devant_ young
man, falling seriously ill, the most famous of doctors of the day (they
were not as yet styled the “princes of science”) had been called in to
consult upon his case; and it so chanced that the learned gentlemen were
taking leave of one another in the gateway just as the hairdresser came
out. They were talking as doctors usually talk among themselves when
the farce of a consultation is over. “He is a dead man,” quoth Dr.
Haudry.--“He had not a month to live,” added Desplein, “unless a miracle
takes place.”--These were the words overheard by the hairdresser.
Like all hairdressers, he kept up a good understanding with his
customers’ servants. Prodigious greed sent the man upstairs again;
he mounted to the _ci-devant_ young man’s apartment, and promised the
servant-mistress a tolerably handsome commission to persuade her master
to sink a large portion of his money in an annuity. The dying bachelor,
fifty-six by count of years, and twice as old as his age by reason of
amorous campaigns, owned, among other property, a splendid house in
the Rue de Richelieu, worth at that time about two hundred and fifty
thousand francs. It was this house that the hairdresser coveted; and
on agreement to pay an annuity of thirty thousand francs so long as the
bachelor lived, it passed into his hands. This happened in 1806. And
in this year 1846 the hairdresser is still paying that annuity. He has
retired from business, he is seventy years old; the _ci-devant_ young
man is in his dotage; and as he has married his Mme. Evrard, he may last
for a long while yet. As the hairdresser gave the woman thirty thousand
francs, his bit of real estate has cost him, first and last, more than
a million, and the house at this day is worth eight or nine hundred
thousand francs.
Like the hairdresser, Remonencq the Auvergnat had overheard Brunner’s
parting remark in the gateway on the day of Cecile’s first interview
with that phoenix of eligible men. Remonencq at once longed to gain a
sight of Pons’ museum; and as he lived on good terms with his neighbors
the Cibots, it was not very long before the opportunity came one day
when the friends were out. The sight of such treasures dazzled him; he
saw a “good haul,” in dealers’ phrase, which being interpreted means a
chance to steal a fortune. He had been meditating this for five or six
days.
“I am sho far from joking,” he said, in reply to Mme. Cibot’s remark,
“that we will talk the thing over; and if the good shentleman will take
an annuity, of fifty thousand francsh, I will shtand a hamper of wine,
if--”
“Fifty thousand francs!” interrupted the doctor; “what are you
thinking about? Why, if the good man is so well off as that, with me in
attendance, and Mme. Cibot to nurse him, he may get better--for liver
complaint is a disease that attacks strong constitutions.”
“Fifty, did I shay? Why, a shentleman here, on your very doorshtep,
offered him sheven hundred thoushand francsh, shimply for the pictursh,
_fouchtra_!”
While Remonencq made this announcement, Mme. Cibot was looking at Dr.
Poulain. There was a strange expression in her eyes; the devil might
have kindled that sinister glitter in their tawny depths.
“Oh, come! we must not pay any attention to such idle tales,” said the
doctor, well pleased, however, to find that his patient could afford to
pay for his visits.
“If my dear Mme. Cibot, here, would let me come and bring an ekshpert
(shinsh the shentleman upshtairs ish in bed), I will shertainly find the
money in a couple of hoursh, even if sheven hundred thousand francsh ish
in queshtion--”
“All right, my friend,” said the doctor. “Now, Mme. Cibot, be careful
never to contradict the invalid. You must be prepared to be very patient
with him, for he will find everything irritating and wearisome, even
your services; nothing will please him; you must expect grumbling--”
“He will be uncommonly hard to please,” said La Cibot.
“Look here, mind what I tell you,” the doctor said in a tone of
authority, “M. Pons’ life is in the hands of those that nurse him; I
shall come perhaps twice a day. I shall take him first on my round.”
The doctor’s profound indifference to the fate of a poor patient had
suddenly given place to a most tender solicitude when he saw that
the speculator was serious, and that there was a possible fortune in
question.
“He will be nursed like a king,” said Madame Cibot, forcing up
enthusiasm. She waited till the doctor turned the corner into the Rue
Charlot; then she fell to talking again with the dealer in old iron.
Remonencq had finished smoking his pipe, and stood in the doorway of his
shop, leaning against the frame; he had purposely taken this position;
he meant the portress to come to him.
The shop had once been a cafe. Nothing had been changed there since the
Auvergnat discovered it and took over the lease; you could still read
“Cafe de Normandie” on the strip left above the windows in all
modern shops. Remonencq had found somebody, probably a housepainter’s
apprentice, who did the work for nothing, to paint another inscription
in the remaining space below--“REMONENCQ,” it ran, “DEALER IN MARINE
STORES, FURNITURE BOUGHT”--painted in small black letters. All the
mirrors, tables, seats, shelves, and fittings of the Cafe de Normandie
had been sold, as might have been expected, before Remonencq took
possession of the shop as it stood, paying a yearly rent of six hundred
francs for the place, with a back shop, a kitchen, and a single room
above, where the head-waiter used to sleep, for the house belonging to
the Cafe de Normandie was let separately. Of the former splendor of
the cafe, nothing now remained save the plain light green paper on the
walls, and the strong iron bolts and bars of the shop-front.
When Remonencq came hither in 1831, after the Revolution of July, he
began by displaying a selection of broken doorbells, cracked plates,
old iron, and the obsolete scales and weights abolished by a Government
which alone fails to carry out its own regulations, for pence and half
pence of the time of Louis XVI. are still in circulation. After a time
this Auvergnat, a match for five ordinary Auvergnats, bought up old
saucepans and kettles, old picture-frames, old copper, and chipped
china. Gradually, as the shop was emptied and filled, the quality of the
stock-in-trade improved, like Nicolet’s farces. Remonencq persisted in
an unfailing and prodigiously profitable martingale, a “system” which
any philosophical idler may study as he watches the increasing value of
the stock kept by this intelligent class of trader. Picture-frames and
copper succeed to tin-ware, argand lamps, and damaged crockery; china
marks the next transition; and after no long tarriance in the “omnium
gatherum” stage, the shop becomes a museum. Some day or other the
dusty windows are cleaned, the interior is restored, the Auvergnat
relinquishes velveteen and jackets for a great-coat, and there he sits
like a dragon guarding his treasure, surrounded by masterpieces! He is a
cunning connoisseur by this time; he has increased his capital tenfold;
he is not to be cheated; he knows the tricks of the trade. The monster
among his treasures looks like some old hag among a score of young girls
that she offers to the public. Beauty and miracles of art are alike
indifferent to him; subtle and dense as he is, he has a keen eye to
profits, he talks roughly to those who know less than he does; he has
learned to act a part, he pretends to love his pictures, or again he
lets you know the price he himself gave for the things, he offers to let
you see the memoranda of the sale. He is a Proteus; in one hour he can
be Jocrisse, Janot, _Queue-rouge_, Mondor, Hapagon, or Nicodeme.
The third year found armor, and old pictures, and some tolerably fine
clocks in Remonencq’s shop. He sent for his sister, and La Remonencq
came on foot all the way from Auvergne to take charge of the shop while
her brother was away. A big and very ugly woman, dressed like a Japanese
idol, a half-idiotic creature with a vague, staring gaze she would not
bate a centime of the prices fixed by her brother. In the intervals
of business she did the work of the house, and solved the apparently
insoluble problem--how to live on “the mists of the Seine.” The
Remonencqs’ diet consisted of bread and herrings, with the outside
leaves of lettuce or vegetable refuse selected from the heaps deposited
in the kennel before the doors of eating-houses. The two between them
did not spend more than fivepence a day on food (bread included), and La
Remonencq earned the money by sewing or spinning.
Remonencq came to Paris in the first instance to work as an errand-boy.
Between the years 1825 and 1831 he ran errands for dealers in
curiosities in the Boulevard Beaumarchais or coppersmiths in the Rue
de Lappe. It is the usual start in life in his line of business. Jews,
Normans, Auvergnats, and Savoyards, those four different races of men
all have the same instincts, and make their fortunes in the same way;
they spend nothing, make small profits, and let them accumulate at
compound interest. Such is their trading charter, and _that_ charter is
no delusion.
Remonencq at this moment had made it up with his old master Monistrol;
he did business with wholesale dealers, he was a _chineur_ (the
technical word), plying his trade in the _banlieue_, which, as everybody
knows, extends for some forty leagues round Paris.
After fourteen years of business, he had sixty thousand francs in hand
and a well-stocked shop. He lived in the Rue de Normandie because the
rent was low, but casual customers were scarce, most of his goods were
sold to other dealers, and he was content with moderate gains. All
his business transactions were carried on in the Auvergue dialect or
_charabia_, as people call it.
Remonencq cherished a dream! He wished to establish himself on a
boulevard, to be a rich dealer in curiosities, and do a direct trade
with amateurs some day. And, indeed, within him there was a formidable
man of business. His countenance was the more inscrutable because it was
glazed over by a deposit of dust and particles of metal glued together
by the sweat of his brow; for he did everything himself, and the use
and wont of bodily labor had given him something of the stoical
impassibility of the old soldiers of 1799.
In personal appearance Remonencq was short and thin; his little
eyes were set in his head in porcine fashion; a Jew’s slyness and
concentrated greed looked out of those dull blue circles, though in his
case the false humility that masks the Hebrew’s unfathomed contempt for
the Gentile was lacking.