enough, with his face turned from the rising sun (like the countenance
of the perpetual secretary of the Academie), apparently heeding nothing,
conscious of nothing, paying no attention to shop-windows nor to fair
passers-by, walking at random, so to speak, with nothing in his pockets,
and to all appearance an equally empty head. Do you ask to what Parisian
tribe this manner of man belongs? He is a collector, a millionaire, one
of the most impassioned souls upon earth; he and his like are capable of
treading the miry ways that lead to the police-court if so they may gain
possession of a cup, a picture, or some such rare unpublished piece as
Elie Magus once picked up one memorable day in Germany.
This was the expert to whom Remonencq with much mystery conducted La
Cibot. Remonencq always asked advice of Elie Magus when he met him
in the streets; and more than once Magus had lent him money through
Abramko, knowing Remonencq’s honesty. The Chaussee des Minimes is close
to the Rue de Normandie, and the two fellow-conspirators reached the
house in ten minutes.
“You will see the richest dealer in curiosities, the greatest
connoisseur in Paris,” Remonencq had said. And Mme. Cibot, therefore,
was struck dumb with amazement to be confronted with a little old man in
a great-coat too shabby for Cibot to mend, standing watching a painter
at work upon an old picture in the chilly room on the vast ground floor.
The old man’s eyes, full of cold feline malignance, were turned upon
her, and La Cibot shivered.
“What do you want, Remonencq?” asked this person.
“It is a question of valuing some pictures; there is nobody but you in
Paris who can tell a poor tinker-fellow like me how much he may give
when he has not thousands to spend, like you.”
“Where is it?”
“Here is the portress of the house where the gentleman lives; she does
for him, and I have arranged with her--”
“Who is the owner?”
“M. Pons!” put in La Cibot.
“Don’t know the name,” said Magus, with an innocent air, bringing down
his foot very gently upon his artist’s toes.
Moret the painter, knowing the value of Pons’ collection, had looked up
suddenly at the name. It was a move too hazardous to try with any one
but Remonencq and La Cibot, but the Jew had taken the woman’s measure
at sight, and his eye was as accurate as a jeweler’s scales. It was
impossible that either of the couple should know how often Magus and old
Pons had matched their claws. And, in truth, both rabid amateurs were
jealous of each other. The old Jew had never hoped for a sight of
a seraglio so carefully guarded; it seemed to him that his head was
swimming. Pons’ collection was the one private collection in Paris which
could vie with his own. Pons’ idea had occurred to Magus twenty years
later; but as a dealer-amateur the door of Pons’ museum had been
closed to him, as for Dusommerard. Pons and Magus had at heart the same
jealousy. Neither of them cared about the kind of celebrity dear to the
ordinary collector. And now for Elie Magus came his chance to see the
poor musician’s treasures! An amateur of beauty hiding in a boudoir or a
stolen glance at a mistress concealed from him by his friend might feel
as Elie Magus felt at that moment.
La Cibot was impressed by Remonencq’s respect for this singular person;
real power, moreover, even when it cannot be explained, is always felt;
the portress was supple and obedient, she dropped the autocratic tone
which she was wont to use in her lodge and with the tenants, accepted
Magus’ conditions, and agreed to admit him into Pons’ museum that very
day.
So the enemy was to be brought into the citadel, and a stab dealt to
Pons’ very heart. For ten years Pons had carried his keys about with
him; he had forbidden La Cibot to allow any one, no matter whom, to
cross his threshold; and La Cibot had so far shared Schmucke’s opinions
of _bric-a-brac_, that she had obeyed him. The good Schmucke, by
speaking of the splendors as “chimcracks,” and deploring his friend’s
mania, had taught La Cibot to despise the old rubbish, and so secured
Pons’ museum from invasion for many a long year.
When Pons took to his bed, Schmucke filled his place at the theatre and
gave lessons for him at his boarding-schools. He did his utmost to do
the work of two; but Pons’ sorrows weighing heavily upon his mind, the
task took all his strength. He only saw his friend in the morning, and
again at dinnertime. His pupils and the people at the theatre, seeing
the poor German look so unhappy, used to ask for news of Pons; and so
great was his grief, that the indifferent would make the grimaces
of sensibility which Parisians are wont to reserve for the greatest
calamities. The very springs of life had been attacked, the good German
was suffering from Pons’ pain as well as from his own. When he gave a
music lesson, he spent half the time in talking of Pons, interrupting
himself to wonder whether his friend felt better to-day, and the little
school-girls listening heard lengthy explanations of Pons’ symptoms.
He would rush over to the Rue de Normandie in the interval between two
lessons for the sake of a quarter of an hour with Pons.
When at last he saw that their common stock was almost exhausted, when
Mme. Cibot (who had done her best to swell the expenses of the illness)
came to him and frightened him; then the old music-master felt that he
had courage of which he never thought himself capable--courage that rose
above his anguish. For the first time in his life he set himself to earn
money; money was needed at home. One of the school-girl pupils, really
touched by their troubles, asked Schmucke how he could leave his friend
alone. “Montemoiselle,” he answered, with the sublime smile of those who
think no evil, “ve haf Montame Zipod, ein dreasure, montemoiselle, ein
bearl! Bons is nursed like ein brince.”
So while Schmucke trotted about the streets, La Cibot was mistress
of the house and ruled the invalid. How should Pons superintend his
self-appointed guardian angel, when he had taken no solid food for a
fortnight, and lay there so weak and helpless that La Cibot was obliged
to lift him up and carry him to the sofa while she made the bed?
La Cibot’s visit to Elie Magus was paid (as might be expected) while
Schmucke breakfasted. She came in again just as the German was bidding
his friend good-bye; for since she learned that Pons possessed a
fortune, she never left the old bachelor; she brooded over him and his
treasures like a hen. From the depths of a comfortable easy-chair at
the foot of the bed she poured forth for Pons’ delectation the gossip
in which women of her class excel. With Machiavelian skill, she had
contrived to make Pons think that she was indispensable to him; she
coaxed and she wheedled, always uneasy, always on the alert. Mme.
Fontaine’s prophecy had frightened La Cibot; she vowed to herself that
she would gain her ends by kindness. She would sleep secure on M. Pons’
legacy, but her rascality should keep within the limits of the law. For
ten years she had not suspected the value of Pons’ collection; she had
a clear record behind her of ten years of devotion, honesty, and
disinterestedness; it was a magnificent investment, and now she proposed
to realize. In one day, Remonencq’s hint of money had hatched the
serpent’s egg, the craving for riches that had lain dormant within her
for twenty years. Since she had cherished that craving, it had grown in
force with the ferment of all the evil that lurks in the corners of the
heart. How she acted upon the counsels whispered by the serpent will
presently be seen.
“Well?” she asked of Schmucke, “has this cherub of ours had plenty to
drink? Is he better?”
“He is not doing fery vell, tear Montame Zipod, not fery vell,” said
poor Schmucke, brushing away the tears from his eyes.
“Pooh! you make too much of it, my dear M. Schmucke; we must take things
as we find them; Cibot might be at death’s door, and I should not take
it to heart as you do. Come! the cherub has a good constitution. And he
has been steady, it seems, you see; you have no idea what an age sober
people live. He is very ill, it is true, but with all the care I take of
him, I shall bring him round. Be easy, look after your affairs, I will
keep him company and see that he drinks his pints of barley water.”
“Gif you vere not here, I should die of anxiety--” said Schmucke,
squeezing his kind housekeeper’s hand in both his own to express his
confidence in her.
La Cibot wiped her eyes as she went back to the invalid’s room.
“What is the matter, Mme. Cibot?” asked Pons.
“It is M. Schmucke that has upset me; he is crying as if you were dead,”
said she. “If you are not well, you are not so bad yet that nobody need
cry over you; but it has given me such a turn! Oh dear! oh dear! how
silly it is of me to get so fond of people, and to think more of you
than of Cibot! For, after all, you aren’t nothing to me, you are only
my brother by Adam’s side; and yet, whenever you are in the question,
it puts me in such a taking, upon my word it does! I would cut off my
hand--my left hand, of course--to see you coming and going, eating your
meals, and screwing bargains out of dealers as usual. If I had had
a child of my own, I think I should have loved it as I love you, eh!
There, take a drink, dearie; come now, empty the glass. Drink it off,
monsieur, I tell you! The first thing Dr. Poulain said was, ‘If M. Pons
has no mind to go to Pere Lachaise, he ought to drink as many buckets
full of water in a day as an Auvergnat will sell.’ So, come now,
drink--”
“But I do drink, Cibot, my good woman; I drink and drink till I am
deluged--”
“That is right,” said the portress, as she took away the empty glass.
“That is the way to get better. Dr. Poulain had another patient ill of
your complaint; but he had nobody to look after him, his children left
him to himself, and he died because he didn’t drink enough--so you must
drink, honey, you see--he died and they buried him two months ago. And
if you were to die, you know, you would drag down old M. Schmucke with
you, sir. He is like a child. Ah! he loves you, he does, the dear lamb
of a man; no woman never loved a man like that! He doesn’t care for meat
nor drink; he has grown as thin as you are in the last fortnight, and
you are nothing but skin and bones.--It makes me jealous to see it,
for I am very fond of you; but not to that degree; I haven’t lost my
appetite, quite the other way; always going up and down stairs, till my
legs are so tired that I drop down of an evening like a lump of lead.
Here am I neglecting my poor Cibot for you; Mlle. Remonencq cooks his
victuals for him, and he goes on about it and says that nothing is
right! At that I tell him that one ought to put up with something for
the sake of other people, and that you are so ill that I cannot leave
you. In the first place, you can’t afford a nurse. And before I would
have a nurse here!--I have done for you these ten years; they want wine
and sugar, and foot-warmers, and all sorts of comforts. And they rob
their patients unless the patients leave them something in their wills.
Have a nurse in here to-day, and to-morrow we should find a picture or
something or other gone--”
“Oh! Mme. Cibot!” cried Pons, quite beside himself, “do not leave me! No
one must touch anything--”
“I am here,” said La Cibot; “so long as I have the strength I shall be
here.--Be easy. There was Dr. Poulain wanting to get a nurse for you;
perhaps he has his eye on your treasures. I just snubbed him, I did.
‘The gentleman won’t have any one but me,’ I told him. ‘He is used to
me, and I am used to him.’ So he said no more. A nurse, indeed! They are
all thieves; I hate that sort of woman, I do. Here is a tale that will
show you how sly they are. There was once an old gentleman--it was Dr.
Poulain himself, mind you, who told me this--well, a Mme. Sabatier, a
woman of thirty-six that used to sell slippers at the Palais Royal--you
remember the Galerie at the Palais that they pulled down?”
Pons nodded.
“Well, at that time she had not done very well; her husband used to
drink, and died of spontaneous imbustion; but she had been a fine woman
in her time, truth to tell, not that it did her any good, though she
had friends among the lawyers. So, being hard up, she became a monthly
nurse, and lived in the Rue Barre-du-Bec. Well, she went out to nurse
an old gentleman that had a disease of the lurinary guts (saving your
presence); they used to tap him like an artesian well, and he needed
such care that she used to sleep on a truckle-bed in the same room with
him. You would hardly believe such a thing!--‘Men respect nothing,’
you’ll tell me, ‘so selfish as they are.’ Well, she used to talk with
him, you understand; she never left him, she amused him, she told him
stories, she drew him on to talk (just as we are chatting away together
now, you and I, eh?), and she found out that his nephews--the old
gentleman had nephews--that his nephews were wretches; they had worried
him, and final end of it, they had brought on this illness. Well, my
dear sir, she saved his life, he married her, and they have a fine
child; Ma’am Bordevin, the butcher’s wife in the Rue Charlot, a relative
of hers, stood godmother. There is luck for you!
“As for me, I am married; and if I have no children, I don’t mind saying
that it is Cibot’s fault; he is too fond of me, but if I cared--never
mind. What would have become of me and my Cibot if we had had a family,
when we have not a penny to bless ourselves with after thirty years’ of
faithful service? I have not a farthing belonging to nobody else, that
is what comforts me. I have never wronged nobody.--Look here, suppose
now (there is no harm in supposing when you will be out and about again
in six weeks’ time, and sauntering along the boulevard); well, suppose
that you had put me down in your will; very good, I shouldn’t never rest
till I had found your heirs and given the money back. Such is my horror
of anything that is not earned by the sweat of my brow.
“You will say to me, ‘Why, Mme. Cibot, why should you worry yourself
like that? You have fairly earned the money; you looked after your two
gentlemen as if they had been your children; you saved them a thousand
francs a year--’ (for there are plenty, sir, you know, that would have
had their ten thousand francs put out to interest by now if they had
been in my place)--‘so if the worthy gentleman leaves you a trifle of an
annuity, it is only right.’--Suppose they told me that. Well, now; I am
not thinking of myself.--I cannot think how some women can do a kindness
thinking of themselves all the time. It is not doing good, sir, is it? I
do not go to church myself, I haven’t the time; but my conscience tells
me what is right.... Don’t you fidget like that, my lamb!--Don’t scratch
yourself!... Dear me, how yellow you grow! So yellow you are--quite
brown. How funny it is that one can come to look like a lemon in three
weeks!... Honesty is all that poor folk have, and one must surely have
something! Suppose that you were just at death’s door, I should be
the first to tell you that you ought to leave all that you have to M.
Schmucke. It is your duty, for he is all the family you have. He loves
you, he does, as a dog loves his master.”
“Ah! yes,” said Pons; “nobody else has ever loved me all my life long--”
“Ah! that is not kind of you, sir,” said Mme. Cibot; “then I do not love
you, I suppose?”
“I do not say so, my dear Mme. Cibot.”
“Good. You take me for a servant, do you, a common servant, as if
I hadn’t no heart! Goodness me! for eleven years you do for two old
bachelors, you think of nothing but their comfort. I have turned half a
score of greengrocers’ shops upside down for you, I have talked people
round to get you good Brie cheese; I have gone down as far as the market
for fresh butter for you; I have taken such care of things that nothing
of yours hasn’t been chipped nor broken in all these ten years; I have
just treated you like my own children; and then to hear a ‘My dear Mme.
Cibot,’ that shows that there is not a bit of feeling for you in the
heart of an old gentleman that you have cared for like a king’s son!
for the little King of Rome was not so well looked after. He died in
his prime; there is proof for you.... Come, sir, you are unjust! You are
ungrateful! It is because I am only a poor portress. Goodness me! are
_you_ one of those that think we are dogs?--”
“But, my dear Mme. Cibot--”
“Indeed, you that know so much, tell me why we porters are treated like
this, and are supposed to have no feelings; people look down on us in
these days when they talk of Equality!--As for me, am I not as good
as another woman, I that was one of the finest women in Paris, and was
called _La belle Ecaillere_, and received declarations seven or eight
times a day? And even now if I liked--Look here, sir, you know that
little scrubby marine store-dealer downstairs? Very well, he would marry
me any day, if I were a widow that is, with his eyes shut; he has had
them looking wide open in my direction so often; he is always saying,
‘Oh! what fine arms you have, Ma’am Cibot!--I dreamed last night that
it was bread and I was butter, and I was spread on the top.’ Look, sir,
there is an arm!”
She rolled up her sleeve and displayed the shapeliest arm imaginable, as
white and fresh as her hand was red and rough; a plump, round, dimpled
arm, drawn from its merino sheath like a blade from the scabbard to
dazzle Pons, who looked away.
“For every oyster the knife opened, the arm has opened a heart! Well,
it belongs to Cibot, and I did wrong when I neglected him, poor dear, HE
would throw himself over a precipice at a word from me; while you, sir,
that call me ‘My dear Mme. Cibot’ when I do impossible things for you--”
“Do just listen to me,” broke in the patient; “I cannot call you my
mother, nor my wife--”
“No, never in all my born days will I take again to anybody--”
“Do let me speak!” continued Pons. “Let me see; I put M. Schmucke
first--”
“M. Schmucke! there is a heart for you,” cried La Cibot. “Ah! he loves
me, but then he is poor. It is money that deadens the heart; and you
are rich! Oh, well, take a nurse, you will see what a life she will lead
you; she will torment you, you will be like a cockchafer on a string.
The doctor will say that you must have plenty to drink, and she will do
nothing but feed you. She will bring you to your grave and rob you. You
do not deserve to have a Mme. Cibot!--there! When Dr. Poulain comes, ask
him for a nurse.”
“Oh fiddlestickend!” the patient cried angrily. “_Will_ you listen to
me? When I spoke of my friend Schmucke, I was not thinking of women. I
know quite well that no one cares for me so sincerely as you do, you and
Schmucke--”
“Have the goodness not to irritate yourself in this way!” exclaimed
La Cibot, plunging down upon Pons and covering him by force with the
bedclothes.
“How should I not love you?” said poor Pons.
“You love me, really?... There, there, forgive me, sir!” she said,
crying and wiping her eyes. “Ah, yes, of course, you love me, as you
love a servant, that is the way!--a servant to whom you throw an annuity
of six hundred francs like a crust you fling into a dog’s kennel--”
“Oh! Mme. Cibot,” cried Pons, “for what do you take me? You do not know
me.”
“Ah! you will care even more than that for me,” she said, meeting Pons’
eyes. “You will love your kind old Cibot like a mother, will you not?
A mother, that is it! I am your mother; you are both of you my
children.... Ah, if I only knew them that caused you this sorrow, I
would do that which would bring me into the police-courts, and even to
prison; I would tear their eyes out! Such people deserve to die at the
Barriere Saint-Jacques, and that is too good for such scoundrels. ... So
kind, so good as you are (for you have a heart of gold), you were sent
into the world to make some woman happy!... Yes, you would have her
happy, as anybody can see; you were cut out for that. In the very
beginning, when I saw how you were with M. Schmucke, I said to myself,
‘M. Pons has missed the life he was meant for; he was made to be a good
husband.’ Come, now, you like women.”
“Ah, yes,” said Pons, “and no woman has been mine.”
“Really?” exclaimed La Cibot, with a provocative air as she came nearer
and took Pons’ hand in hers. “Do you not know what it is to love a woman
that will do anything for her lover? Is it possible? If I were in your
place, I should not wish to leave this world for another until I had
known the greatest happiness on earth!... Poor dear! If I was now what I
was once, I would leave Cibot for you! upon my word, I would! Why, with
a nose shaped like that--for you have a fine nose--how did you manage
it, poor cherub?... You will tell me that ‘not every woman knows a man
when she sees him’; and a pity it is that they marry so at random as
they do, it makes you sorry to see it.--Now, for my own part, I
should have thought that you had had mistresses by the dozen--dancers,
actresses, and duchesses, for you went out so much. ... When you
went out, I used to say to Cibot, ‘Look! there is M. Pons going
a-gallivanting,’ on my word, I did, I was so sure that women ran after
you. Heaven made you for love.... Why, my dear sir, I found that out
the first day that you dined at home, and you were so touched with
M. Schmucke’s pleasure. And next day M. Schmucke kept saying to me,
‘Montame Zipod, he haf tined hier,’ with the tears in his eyes, till I
cried along with him like a fool, as I am. And how sad he looked when
you took to gadding abroad again and dining out! Poor man, you never saw
any one so disconsolate! Ah! you are quite right to leave everything to
him. Dear worthy man, why he is as good as a family to you, he is!
Do not forget him; for if you do, God will not receive you into his
Paradise, for those that have been ungrateful to their friends and left
them no _rentes_ will not go to heaven.”
In vain Pons tried to put in a word; La Cibot talked as the wind blows.
Means of arresting steam-engines have been invented, but it would tax
a mechanician’s genius to discover any plan for stopping a portress’
tongue.
“I know what you mean,” continued she. “But it does not kill you, my
dear gentleman, to make a will when you are out of health; and in your
place I might not leave that poor dear alone, for fear that something
might happen; he is like God Almighty’s lamb, he knows nothing about
nothing, and I should not like him to be at the mercy of those sharks
of lawyers and a wretched pack of relations. Let us see now, has one
of them come here to see you in twenty years? And would you leave your
property to _them_? Do you know, they say that all these things here are
worth something.”
“Why, yes,” said Pons.
“Remonencq, who deals in pictures, and knows that you are an amateur,
says that he would be quite ready to pay you an annuity of thirty
thousand francs so long as you live, to have the pictures afterwards.
... There is a change! If I were you, I should take it. Why, I thought
he said it for a joke when he told me that. You ought to let M. Schmucke
know the value of all those things, for he is a man that could be
cheated like a child. He has not the slightest idea of the value of
these fine things that you have! He so little suspects it, that he would
give them away for a morsel of bread if he did not keep them all his
life for love of you, always supposing that he lives after you, for he
will die of your death. But _I_ am here; I will take his part against
anybody and everybody!... I and Cibot will defend him.”
“Dear Mme. Cibot!” said Pons, “what would have become of me if it
had not been for you and Schmucke?” He felt touched by this horrible
prattle; the feeling in it seemed to be ingenuous, as it usually is in
the speech of the people.
“Ah! we really are your only friends on earth, that is very true, that
is. But two good hearts are worth all the families in the world.--Don’t
talk of families to me! A family, as the old actor said of the tongue,
is the best and the worst of all things.... Where are those relations of
yours now? Have you any? I have never seen them--”
“They have brought me to lie here,” said Pons, with intense bitterness.
“So you have relations!...” cried La Cibot, springing up as if her
easy-chair had been heated red-hot. “Oh, well, they are a nice lot, are
your relations! What! these three weeks--for this is the twentieth day,
to-day, that you have been ill and like to die--in these three weeks
they have not come once to ask for news of you? That’s a trifle too
strong, that is!... Why, in your place, I would leave all I had to the
Foundling Hospital sooner than give them one farthing!”
“Well, my dear Mme. Cibot, I meant to leave all that I had to a cousin
once removed, the daughter of my first cousin, President Camusot, you
know, who came here one morning nearly two months ago.”