restaurants, they take advice from irregular sources as they turn into
a little wineshop to drink. Each rank in life finds its own level, and
there abides. None but a chosen few care to climb the heights, few can
feel at ease in the presence of their betters, or take their place among
them, like a Beaumarchais letting fall the watch of the great lord who
tried to humiliate him. And if there are few who can even rise to
a higher social level, those among them who can throw off their
swaddling-clothes are rare and great exceptions.
At six o’clock the next morning Mme. Cibot stood in the Rue de la Perle;
she was making a survey of the abode of her future adviser, Lawyer
Fraisier. The house was one of the old-fashioned kind formerly inhabited
by small tradespeople and citizens with small means. A cabinetmaker’s
shop occupied almost the whole of the ground floor, as well as the
little yard behind, which was covered with his workshops and warehouses;
the small remaining space being taken up by the porter’s lodge and the
passage entry in the middle. The staircase walls were half rotten with
damp and covered with saltpetre to such a degree that the house seemed
to be stricken with leprosy.
Mme. Cibot went straight to the porter’s lodge, and there encountered
one of the fraternity, a shoemaker, his wife, and two small children,
all housed in a room ten feet square, lighted from the yard at the back.
La Cibot mentioned her profession, named herself, and spoke of her house
in the Rue de Normandie, and the two women were on cordial terms at
once. After a quarter of an hour spent in gossip while the shoemaker’s
wife made breakfast ready for her husband and the children, Mme. Cibot
turned the conversation to the subject of the lodgers, and spoke of the
lawyer.
“I have come to see him on business,” she said. “One of his friends, Dr.
Poulain, recommended me to him. Do you know Dr. Poulain?”
“I should think I do,” said the lady of the Rue de la Perle. “He saved
my little girl’s life when she had the croup.”
“He saved my life, too, madame. What sort of a man is this M. Fraisier?”
“He is the sort of man, my dear lady, out of whom it is very difficult
to get the postage-money at the end of the month.”
To a person of La Cibot’s intelligence this was enough.
“One may be poor and honest,” observed she.
“I am sure I hope so,” returned Fraisier’s portress. “We are not
rolling in coppers, let alone gold or silver; but we have not a farthing
belonging to anybody else.”
This sort of talk sounded familiar to La Cibot.
“In short, one can trust him, child, eh?”
“Lord! when M. Fraisier means well by any one, there is not his like, so
I have heard Mme. Florimond say.”
“And why didn’t she marry him when she owed her fortune to him?” La
Cibot asked quickly. “It is something for a little haberdasher, kept by
an old man, to be a barrister’s wife--”
“Why?--” asked the portress, bringing Mme. Cibot out into the passage.
“Why?--You are going to see him, are you not, madame?--Very well, when
you are in his office you will know why.”
From the state of the staircase, lighted by sash-windows on the side of
the yard, it was pretty evident that the inmates of the house, with the
exception of the landlord and M. Fraisier himself, were all workmen.
There were traces of various crafts in the deposit of mud upon the
steps--brass-filings, broken buttons, scraps of gauze, and esparto grass
lay scattered about. The walls of the upper stories were covered with
apprentices’ ribald scrawls and caricatures. The portress’ last remark
had roused La Cibot’s curiosity; she decided, not unnaturally, that she
would consult Dr. Poulain’s friend; but as for employing him, that must
depend upon her impressions.
“I sometimes wonder how Mme. Sauvage can stop in his service,” said the
portress, by way of comment; she was following in Mme. Cibot’s wake. “I
will come up with you, madame” she added; “I am taking the milk and the
newspaper up to my landlord.”
Arrived on the second floor above the entresol, La Cibot beheld a door
of the most villainous description. The doubtful red paint was coated
for seven or eight inches round the keyhole with a filthy glaze, a grimy
deposit from which the modern house-decorator endeavors to protect the
doors of more elegant apartments by glass “finger-plates.” A grating,
almost stopped up with some compound similar to the deposit with which
a restaurant-keeper gives an air of cellar-bound antiquity to a merely
middle-aged bottle, only served to heighten the general resemblance to
a prison door; a resemblance further heightened by the trefoil-shaped
iron-work, the formidable hinges, the clumsy nail-heads. A miser, or a
pamphleteer at strife with the world at large, must surely have invented
these fortifications. A leaden sink, which received the waste water
of the household, contributed its quota to the fetid atmosphere of the
staircase, and the ceiling was covered with fantastic arabesques traced
by candle-smoke--such arabesques! On pulling a greasy acorn tassel
attached to the bell-rope, a little bell jangled feebly somewhere
within, complaining of the fissure in its metal sides.
Every detail was in keeping with the general dismal effect. La Cibot
heard a heavy footstep, and the asthmatic wheezing of a virago within,
and Mme. Sauvage presently showed herself. Adrien Brauwer might have
painted just such a hag for his picture of _Witches starting for the
Sabbath_; a stout, unwholesome slattern, five feet six inches in height,
with a grenadier countenance and a beard which far surpassed La
Cibot’s own; she wore a cheap, hideously ugly cotton gown, a bandana
handkerchief knotted over hair which she still continued to put in curl
papers (using for that purpose the printed circulars which her master
received), and a huge pair of gold earrings like cart-wheels in her
ears. This female Cerberus carried a battered skillet in one hand,
and opening the door, set free an imprisoned odor of scorched milk--a
nauseous and penetrating smell, that lost itself at once, however, among
the fumes outside.
“What can I do for you, missus?” demanded Mme. Sauvage, and with a
truculent air she looked La Cibot over; evidently she was of the opinion
that the visitor was too well dressed, and her eyes looked the more
murderous because they were naturally bloodshot.
“I have come to see M. Fraisier; his friend, Dr. Poulain, sent me.”
“Oh! come in, missus,” said La Sauvage, grown very amiable of a sudden,
which proves that she was prepared for this morning visit.
With a sweeping courtesy, the stalwart woman flung open the door of
a private office, which looked upon the street, and discovered the
ex-attorney of Mantes.
The room was a complete picture of a third-rate solicitor’s office; with
the stained wooden cases, the letter-files so old that they had grown
beards (in ecclesiastical language), the red tape dangling limp and
dejected, the pasteboard boxes covered with traces of the gambols of
mice, the dirty floor, the ceiling tawny with smoke. A frugal allowance
of wood was smouldering on a couple of fire-dogs on the hearth. And on
the chimney-piece above stood a foggy mirror and a modern clock with
an inlaid wooden case; Fraisier had picked it up at an execution sale,
together with the tawdry imitation rococo candlesticks, with the zinc
beneath showing through the lacquer in several places.
M. Fraisier was small, thin, and unwholesome looking; his red face,
covered with an eruption, told of tainted blood; and he had, moreover, a
trick of continually scratching his right arm. A wig pushed to the back
of his head displayed a brick-colored cranium of ominous conformation.
This person rose from a cane-seated armchair, in which he sat on a green
leather cushion, assumed an agreeable expression, and brought forward a
chair.
“Mme. Cibot, I believe?” queried he, in dulcet tones.
“Yes, sir,” answered the portress. She had lost her habitual assurance.
Something in the tones of a voice which strongly resembled the sounds of
the little door-bell, something in a glance even sharper than the sharp
green eyes of her future legal adviser, scared Mme. Cibot. Fraisier’s
presence so pervaded the room, that any one might have thought there
was pestilence in the air; and in a flash Mme. Cibot understood why Mme.
Florimond had not become Mme. Fraisier.
“Poulain told me about you, my dear madame,” said the lawyer, in the
unnatural fashion commonly described by the words “mincing tones”; tones
sharp, thin, and grating as verjuice, in spite of all his efforts.
Arrived at this point, he tried to draw the skirts of his dressing-gown
over a pair of angular knees encased in threadbare felt. The robe was
an ancient printed cotton garment, lined with wadding which took the
liberty of protruding itself through various slits in it here and there;
the weight of this lining had pulled the skirts aside, disclosing a
dingy-hued flannel waistcoat beneath. With something of a coxcomb’s
manner, Fraisier fastened this refractory article of dress, tightening
the girdle to define his reedy figure; then with a blow of the tongs,
he effected a reconciliation between two burning brands that had long
avoided one another, like brothers after a family quarrel. A sudden
bright idea struck him, and he rose from his chair.
“Mme. Sauvage!” called he.
“Well?”
“I am not at home to anybody!”
“Eh! bless your life, there’s no need to say that!”
“She is my old nurse,” the lawyer said in some confusion.
“And she has not recovered her figure yet,” remarked the heroine of the
Halles.
Fraisier laughed, and drew the bolt lest his housekeeper should
interrupt Mme. Cibot’s confidences.
“Well, madame, explain your business,” said he, making another effort
to drape himself in the dressing-gown. “Any one recommended to me by
the only friend I have in the world may count upon me--I may
say--absolutely.”
For half an hour Mme. Cibot talked, and the man of law made no
interruption of any sort; his face wore the expression of curious
interest with which a young soldier listens to a pensioner of “The Old
Guard.” Fraisier’s silence and acquiescence, the rapt attention with
which he appeared to listen to a torrent of gossip similar to the
samples previously given, dispelled some of the prejudices inspired in
La Cibot’s mind by his squalid surroundings. The little lawyer with the
black-speckled green eyes was in reality making a study of his client.
When at length she came to a stand and looked to him to speak, he was
seized with a fit of the complaint known as a “churchyard cough,” and
had recourse to an earthenware basin half full of herb tea, which he
drained.
“But for Poulain, my dear madame, I should have been dead before this,”
said Fraisier, by way of answer to the portress’ look of motherly
compassion; “but he will bring me round, he says--”
As all the client’s confidences appeared to have slipped from the memory
of her legal adviser, she began to cast about for a way of taking leave
of a man so apparently near death.
“In an affair of this kind, madame,” continued the attorney from Mantes,
suddenly returning to business, “there are two things which it is
most important to know. In the first place, whether the property is
sufficient to be worth troubling about; and in the second, who the
next-of-kin may be; for if the property is the booty, the next-of-kin is
the enemy.”
La Cibot immediately began to talk of Remonencq and Elie Magus, and
said that the shrewd couple valued the pictures at six hundred thousand
francs.
“Would they take them themselves at that price?” inquired the lawyer.
“You see, madame, that men of business are shy of pictures. A picture
may mean a piece of canvas worth a couple of francs or a painting worth
two hundred thousand. Now, paintings worth two hundred thousand francs
are usually well known; and what errors in judgment people make in
estimating even the most famous pictures of all! There was once a great
capitalist whose collection was admired, visited, and engraved--actually
engraved! He was supposed to have spent millions of francs on it. He
died, as men must, and--well, his _genuine_ pictures did not fetch
more than two hundred thousand francs! You must let me see these
gentlemen.--Now for the next-of-kin,” and Fraisier again relapsed into
his attitude of listener.
When President Camusot’s name came up, he nodded with a grimace which
riveted Mme. Cibot’s attention. She tried to read the forehead and the
villainous face, and found what is called in business a “wooden head.”
“Yes, my dear sir,” repeated La Cibot. “Yes, my M. Pons is own cousin
to President Camusot de Marville; he tells me that ten times a day. M.
Camusot the silk mercer was married twice--”
“He that has just been nominated for a peer of France?--”
“And his first wife was a Mlle. Pons, M. Pons’ first cousin.”
“Then they are first cousins once removed--”
“They are ‘not cousins.’ They have quarreled.”
It may be remembered that before M. Camusot de Marville came to Paris,
he was President of the Tribunal of Mantes for five years; and not only
was his name still remembered there, but he had kept up a correspondence
with Mantes. Camusot’s immediate successor, the judge with whom he had
been most intimate during his term of office, was still President of the
Tribunal, and consequently knew all about Fraisier.
“Do you know, madame,” Fraisier said, when at last the red sluices of
La Cibot’s torrent tongue were closed, “do you know that your principal
enemy will be a man who can send you to the scaffold?”
The portress started on her chair, making a sudden spring like a
jack-in-the-box.
“Calm yourself, dear madame,” continued Fraisier. “You may not have
known the name of the President of the Chamber of Indictments at the
Court of Appeal in Paris; but you ought to have known that M. Pons must
have an heir-at-law. M. le President de Marville is your invalid’s sole
heir; but as he is a collateral in the third degree, M. Pons is entitled
by law to leave his fortune as he pleases. You are not aware either
that, six weeks ago at least, M. le President’s daughter married the
eldest son of M. le Comte Popinot, peer of France, once Minister of
Agriculture, and President of the Board of Trade, one of the most
influential politicians of the day. President de Marville is even more
formidable through this marriage than in his own quality of head of the
Court of Assize.”
At that word La Cibot shuddered.
“Yes, and it is he who sends you there,” continued Fraisier. “Ah! my
dear madame, you little know what a red robe means! It is bad enough
to have a plain black gown against you! You see me here, ruined, bald,
broken in health--all because, unwittingly, I crossed a mere attorney
for the crown in the provinces. I was forced to sell my connection at a
loss, and very lucky I was to come off with the loss of my money. If
I had tried to stand out, my professional position would have gone as
well.
“One thing more you do not know,” he continued, “and this it is. If you
had only to do with President Camusot himself, it would be nothing; but
he has a wife, mind you!--and if you ever find yourself face to face
with that wife, you will shake in your shoes as if you were on the first
step of the scaffold, your hair will stand on end. The Presidente is so
vindictive that she would spend ten years over setting a trap to kill
you. She sets that husband of hers spinning like a top. Through her a
charming young fellow committed suicide at the Conciergerie. A count was
accused of forgery--she made his character as white as snow. She all
but drove a person of the highest quality from the Court of Charles X.
Finally, she displaced the Attorney-General, M. de Granville--”
“That lived in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, at the corner of the Rue
Saint-Francois?”
“The very same. They say that she means to make her husband Home
Secretary, and I do not know that she will not gain her end.--If she
were to take it into her head to send us both to the Criminal Court
first and the hulks afterwards--I should apply for a passport and set
sail for America, though I am as innocent as a new-born babe. So well I
know what justice means. Now, see here, my dear Mme. Cibot; to marry
her only daughter to young Vicomte Popinot (heir to M. Pillerault, your
landlord, it is said)--to make that match, she stripped herself of her
whole fortune, so much so that the President and his wife have nothing
at this moment except his official salary. Can you suppose, my dear
madame, that under the circumstances Mme. la Presidente will let M.
Pons’ property go out of the family without a word?--Why, I would sooner
face guns loaded with grape-shot than have such a woman for my enemy--”
“But they have quarreled,” put in La Cibot.
“What has that got to do with it?” asked Fraisier. “It is one reason
the more for fearing her. To kill a relative of whom you are tired,
is something; but to inherit his property afterwards--that is a real
pleasure!”
“But the old gentleman has a horror of his relatives. He says over and
over again that these people--M. Cardot, M. Berthier, and the rest of
them (I can’t remember their names)--have crushed him as a tumbril cart
crushes an egg--”
“Have you a mind to be crushed too?”
“Oh dear! oh dear!” cried La Cibot. “Ah! Ma’am Fontaine was right when
she said that I should meet with difficulties: still, she said that I
should succeed--”
“Listen, my dear Mme. Cibot.--As for making some thirty thousand
francs out of this business--that is possible; but for the whole of
the property, it is useless to think of it. We talked over your case
yesterday evening, Dr. Poulain and I--”
La Cibot started again.
“Well, what is the matter?”
“But if you knew about the affair, why did you let me chatter away like
a magpie?”
“Mme. Cibot, I knew all about your business, but I knew nothing of Mme.
Cibot. So many clients, so many characters--”
Mme. Cibot gave her legal adviser a queer look at this; all her
suspicions gleamed in her eyes. Fraisier saw this.
“I resume,” he continued. “So, our friend Poulain was once called in
by you to attend old M. Pillerault, the Countess Popinot’s great-uncle;
that is one of your claims to my devotion. Poulain goes to see your
landlord (mark this!) once a fortnight; he learned all these particulars
from him. M. Pillerault was present at his grand-nephew’s wedding--for
he is an uncle with money to leave; he has an income of fifteen thousand
francs, though he has lived like a hermit for the last five-and-twenty
years, and scarcely spends a thousand crowns--well, _he_ told Poulain
all about this marriage. It seems that your old musician was precisely
the cause of the row; he tried to disgrace his own family by way of
revenge.--If you only hear one bell, you only hear one sound.--Your
invalid says that he meant no harm, but everybody thinks him a monster
of--”
“And it would not astonish me if he was!” cried La Cibot. “Just imagine
it!--For these ten years past I have been money out of pocket for him,
spending my savings on him, and he knows it, and yet he will not let me
lie down to sleep on a legacy!--No, sir! he will _not_. He is obstinate,
a regular mule he is.--I have talked to him these ten days, and the
cross-grained cur won’t stir no more than a sign-post. He shuts his
teeth and looks at me like--The most that he would say was that he would
recommend me to M. Schmucke.”
“Then he means to make his will in favor of this Schmucke?”
“Everything will go to him--”
“Listen, my dear Mme. Cibot, if I am to arrive at any definite
conclusions and think of a plan, I must know M. Schmucke. I must see the
property and have some talk with this Jew of whom you speak; and then,
let me direct you--”
“We shall see, M. Fraisier.”
“What is this? ‘We shall see?’” repeated Fraisier, speaking in the voice
natural to him, as he gave La Cibot a viperous glance. “Am I your legal
adviser or am I not, I say? Let us know exactly where we stand.”
La Cibot felt that he read her thoughts. A cold chill ran down her back.
“I have told you all I know,” she said. She saw that she was at the
tiger’s mercy.
“We attorneys are accustomed to treachery. Just think carefully over
your position; it is superb.--If you follow my advice point by point,
you will have thirty or forty thousand francs. But there is a reverse
side to this beautiful medal. How if the Presidente comes to hear that
M. Pons’ property is worth a million of francs, and that you mean to
have a bit out of it?--for there is always somebody ready to take that
kind of errand--” he added parenthetically.
This remark, and the little pause that came before and after it, sent
another shudder through La Cibot. She thought at once that Fraisier
himself would probably undertake that office.
“And then, my dear client, in ten minutes old Pillerault is asked to
dismiss you, and then on a couple of hours’ notice--”
“What does that matter to me?” said La Cibot, rising to her feet like a
Bellona; “I shall stay with the gentlemen as their housekeeper.”
“And then, a trap will be set for you, and some fine morning you
and your husband will wake up in a prison cell, to be tried for your
lives--”
“_I?_” cried La Cibot, “I that have not a farthing that doesn’t belong
to me?... _I!_... _I!_”
For five minutes she held forth, and Fraisier watched the great artist
before him as she executed a concerto of self-praise. He was quite
untouched, and even amused by the performance. His keen glances pricked
La Cibot like stilettos; he chuckled inwardly, till his shrunken wig was
shaking with laughter. He was a Robespierre at an age when the Sylla of
France was make couplets.
“And how? and why? And on what pretext?” demanded she, when she had come
to an end.
“You wish to know how you may come to the guillotine?”
La Cibot turned pale as death at the words; the words fell like a knife
upon her neck. She stared wildly at Fraisier.
“Listen to me, my dear child,” began Fraisier, suppressing his inward
satisfaction at his client’s discomfiture.
“I would sooner leave things as they are--” murmured La Cibot, and she
rose to go.
“Stay,” Fraisier said imperiously. “You ought to know the risks that you
are running; I am bound to give you the benefit of my lights.--You are
dismissed by M. Pillerault, we will say; there is no doubt about that,
is there? You enter the service of these two gentlemen. Very good!
That is a declaration of war against the Presidente. You mean to do
everything you can to gain possession of the property, and to get a
slice of it at any rate--
“Oh, I am not blaming you,” Fraisier continued, in answer to a gesture
from his client. “It is not my place to do so. This is a battle, and
you will be led on further than you think for. One grows full of one’s
ideas, one hits hard--”
Another gesture of denial. This time La Cibot tossed her head.
“There, there, old lady,” said Fraisier, with odious familiarity, “you
will go a very long way!--”
“You take me for a thief, I suppose?”
“Come, now, mamma, you hold a receipt in M. Schmucke’s hand which did
not cost you much.--Ah! you are in the confessional, my lady! Don’t
deceive your confessor, especially when the confessor has the power of
reading your thoughts.”
La Cibot was dismayed by the man’s perspicacity; now she knew why he had
listened to her so intently.
“Very good,” continued he, “you can admit at once that the Presidente
will not allow you to pass her in the race for the property.--You
will be watched and spied upon.--You get your name into M. Pons’ will;
nothing could be better. But some fine day the law steps in, arsenic
is found in a glass, and you and your husband are arrested, tried, and
condemned for attempting the life of the Sieur Pons, so as to come by
your legacy. I once defended a poor woman at Versailles; she was in
reality as innocent as you would be in such a case. Things were as I
have told you, and all that I could do was to save her life. The unhappy
creature was sentenced to twenty years’ penal servitude. She is working
out her time now at St. Lazare.”
Mme. Cibot’s terror grew to the highest pitch. She grew paler and paler,
staring at the little, thin man with the green eyes, as some wretched
Moor, accused of adhering to her own religion, might gaze at the
inquisitor who doomed her to the stake.
“Then, do you tell me, that if I leave you to act, and put my interests
in your hands, I shall get something without fear?”