Heloise, this is M. Pons’ confidential servant; she had come to tell me
that I must not count upon him; our poor conductor is not expected to
live. I don’t know what to do.”
“Oh! poor man; why, he must have a benefit.”
“It would ruin him,” said Gaudissart. “He might find next day that he
owed five hundred francs to charitable institutions, and they refuse to
admit that there are any sufferers in Paris except their own. No, look
here, my good woman, since you are going in for the Montyon prize----”
He broke off, rang the bell, and the youth before mentioned suddenly
appeared.
“Tell the cashier to send me up a thousand-franc note.--Sit down,
madame.”
“Ah! poor woman, look, she is crying!” exclaimed Heloise. “How stupid!
There, there, mother, we will go to see him; don’t cry.--I say, now,”
she continued, taking the manager into a corner, “you want to make me
take the leading part in the ballet in _Ariane_, you Turk. You are going
to be married, and you know how I can make you miserable--”
“Heloise, my heart is copper-bottomed like a man-of-war.”
“I shall bring your children on the scene! I will borrow some
somewhere.”
“I have owned up about the attachment.”
“Do be nice, and give Pons’ post to Garangeot; he has talent, poor
fellow, and he has not a penny; and I promise peace.”
“But wait till Pons is dead, in case the good man may come back again.”
“Oh, as to that, no, sir,” said La Cibot. “He began to wander in
his mind last night, and now he is delirious. It will soon be over,
unfortunately.”
“At any rate, take Garangeot as a stop-gap!” pleaded Heloise. “He has
the whole press on his side--”
Just at that moment the cashier came in with a note for a thousand
francs in his hand.
“Give it to madame here,” said Gaudissart. “Good-day, my good woman;
take good care of the dear man, and tell him that I am coming to see him
to-morrow, or sometime--as soon as I can, in short.”
“A drowning man,” said Heloise.
“Ah, sir, hearts like yours are only found in a theatre. May God bless
you!”
“To what account shall I post this item?” asked the cashier.
“I will countersign the order. Post it to the bonus account.”
Before La Cibot went out, she made Mlle. Brisetout a fine courtesy, and
heard Gaudissart remark to his mistress:
“Can Garangeot do the dance-music for the _Mohicans_ in twelve days? If
he helps me out of my predicament, he shall have Pons’ place.”
La Cibot had cut off the incomes of the two friends, she had left them
without means of subsistence if Pons should chance to recover, and was
better rewarded for all this mischief than for any good that she had
done. In a few days’ time her treacherous trick would bring about the
desired result--Elie Magus would have his coveted pictures. But if
this first spoliation was to be effected, La Cibot must throw dust
in Fraisier’s eyes, and lull the suspicions of that terrible
fellow-conspirator of her own seeking; and Elie Magus and Remonencq must
be bound over to secrecy.
As for Remonencq, he had gradually come to feel such a passion as
uneducated people can conceive when they come to Paris from the depths
of the country, bringing with them all the fixed ideas bred of the
solitary country life; all the ignorance of a primitive nature, all the
brute appetites that become so many fixed ideas. Mme. Cibot’s masculine
beauty, her vivacity, her market-woman’s wit, had all been remarked by
the marine store-dealer. He thought at first of taking La Cibot from her
husband, bigamy among the lower classes in Paris being much more common
than is generally supposed; but greed was like a slip-knot drawn more
and more tightly about his heart, till reason at length was stifled.
When Remonencq computed that the commission paid by himself and Elie
Magus amounted to about forty thousand francs, he determined to have
La Cibot for his legitimate spouse, and his thoughts turned from
a misdemeanor to a crime. A romantic purely speculative dream,
persistently followed through a tobacco-smoker’s long musings as he
lounged in the doorway, had brought him to the point of wishing that the
little tailor were dead. At a stroke he beheld his capital trebled; and
then he thought of La Cibot. What a good saleswoman she would be! What a
handsome figure she would make in a magnificent shop on the boulevards!
The twofold covetousness turned Remonencq’s head. In fancy he took a
shop that he knew of on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, he stocked it
with Pons’ treasures, and then--after dreaming his dream in sheets of
gold, after seeing millions in the blue spiral wreaths that rose from
his pipe, he awoke to find himself face to face with the little tailor.
Cibot was sweeping the yard, the doorstep, and the pavement just as
his neighbor was taking down the shutters and displaying his wares; for
since Pons fell ill, La Cibot’s work had fallen to her husband.
The Auvergnat began to look upon the little, swarthy, stunted,
copper-colored tailor as the one obstacle in his way, and pondered how
to be rid of him. Meanwhile this growing passion made La Cibot very
proud, for she had reached an age when a woman begins to understand that
she may grow old.
So early one morning, she meditatively watched Remonencq as he arranged
his odds and ends for sale. She wondered how far his love could go. He
came across to her.
“Well,” he said, “are things going as you wish?”
“It is you who makes me uneasy,” said La Cibot. “I shall be talked
about; the neighbors will see you making sheep’s eyes at me.”
She left the doorway and dived into the Auvergnat’s back shop.
“What a notion!” said Remonencq.
“Come here, I have something to say to you,” said La Cibot. “M. Pons’
heirs are about to make a stir; they are capable of giving us a lot of
trouble. God knows what might come of it if they send the lawyers here
to poke their noses into the affair like hunting-dogs. I cannot get M.
Schmucke to sell a few pictures unless you like me well enough to keep
the secret--such a secret!--With your head on the block, you must not
say where the pictures come from, nor who it was that sold them. When M.
Pons is once dead and buried, you understand, nobody will know how many
pictures there ought to be; if there are fifty-three pictures instead of
sixty-seven, nobody will be any the wiser. Besides, if M. Pons sold them
himself while he was alive, nobody can find fault.”
“No,” agreed Remonencq, “it is all one to me, but M. Elie Magus will
want receipts in due form.”
“And you shall have your receipt too, bless your life! Do you suppose
that _I_ should write them?--No, M. Schmucke will do that. But tell your
Jew that he must keep the secret as closely as you do,” she continued.
“We will be as mute as fishes. That is our business. I myself can read,
but I cannot write, and that is why I want a capable wife that has had
education like you. I have thought of nothing but earning my bread all
my days, and now I wish I had some little Remonencqs. Do leave that
Cibot of yours.”
“Why, here comes your Jew,” said the portress; “we can arrange the whole
business.”
Elie Magus came every third day very early in the morning to know when
he could buy his pictures. “Well, my dear lady,” said he, “how are we
getting on?”
“Has nobody been to speak to you about M. Pons and his gimcracks?” asked
La Cibot.
“I received a letter from a lawyer,” said Elie Magus, “a rascal that
seems to me to be trying to work for himself; I don’t like people of
that sort, so I took no notice of his letter. Three days afterwards he
came to see me, and left his card. I told my porter that I am never at
home when he calls.”
“You are a love of a Jew,” said La Cibot. Little did she know Elie
Magus’ prudence. “Well, sonnies, in a few days’ time I will bring M.
Schmucke to the point of selling you seven or eight pictures, ten at
most. But on two conditions.--Absolute secrecy in the first place.
M. Schmucke will send for you, sir, is not that so? And M. Remonencq
suggested that you might be a purchaser, eh?--And, come what may, I will
not meddle in it for nothing. You are giving forty-six thousand francs
for four pictures, are you not?”
“So be it,” groaned the Jew.
“Very good. This is the second condition. You will give me _forty-three_
thousand francs, and pay three thousand only to M. Schmucke; Remonencq
will buy four for two thousand francs, and hand over the surplus to
me.--But at the same time, you see my dear M. Magus, I am going to help
you and Remonencq to a splendid bit of business--on condition that the
profits are shared among the three of us. I will introduce you to that
lawyer, as he, no doubt, will come here. You shall make a valuation of
M. Pons’ things at the prices which you can give for them, so that M.
Fraisier may know how much the property is worth. But--not until after
our sale, you understand!”
“I understand,” said the Jew, “but it takes time to look at the things
and value them.”
“You shall have half a day. But, there, that is my affair. Talk it over
between yourselves, my boys, and for that matter the business will be
settled by the day after to-morrow. I will go round to speak to this
Fraisier; for Dr. Poulain tells him everything that goes on in the
house, and it is a great bother to keep that scarecrow quiet.”
La Cibot met Fraisier halfway between the Rue de la Perle and the Rue
de Normandie; so impatient was he to know the “elements of the case” (to
use his own expression), that he was coming to see her.
“I say! I was going to you,” said she.
Fraisier grumbled because Elie Magus had refused to see him. But La
Cibot extinguished the spark of distrust that gleamed in the lawyer’s
eyes by informing him that Elie Magus had returned from a journey,
and that she would arrange for an interview in Pons’ rooms and for the
valuation of the property; for the day after to-morrow at latest.
“Deal frankly with me,” returned Fraisier. “It is more than probable
that I shall act for M. Pons’ next-of-kin. In that case, I shall be even
better able to serve you.”
The words were spoken so drily that La Cibot quaked. This starving limb
of the law was sure to manoeuvre on his side as she herself was doing.
She resolved forthwith to hurry on the sale of the pictures.
La Cibot was right. The doctor and lawyer had clubbed together to buy
a new suit of clothes in which Fraisier could decently present himself
before Mme. la Presidente Camusot de Marville. Indeed, if the clothes
had been ready, the interview would have taken place sooner, for the
fate of the couple hung upon its issues. Fraisier left Mme. Cibot, and
went to try on his new clothes. He found them waiting for him, went
home, adjusted his new wig, and towards ten o’clock that morning set out
in a carriage from a livery stable for the Rue de Hanovre, hoping for an
audience. In his white tie, yellow gloves, and new wig, redolent of _eau
de Portugal_, he looked something like a poisonous essence kept in a
cut-glass bottle, seeming but the more deadly because everything about
it is daintily neat, from the stopper covered with white kid to the
label and the thread. His peremptory manner, the eruption on his
blotched countenance, the green eyes, and a malignant something about
him,--all these things struck the beholder with the same sense of
surprise as storm-clouds in a blue sky. If in his private office, as
he showed himself to La Cibot, he was the common knife that a murderer
catches up for his crime,--now, at the Presidente’s door, he was the
daintily-wrought dagger which a woman sets among the ornaments on her
what-not.
A great change had taken place in the Rue de Hanovre. The Count and
Countess Popinot and the young people would not allow the President and
his wife to leave the house that they had settled upon their daughter to
pay rent elsewhere. M. and Mme. la Presidente, therefore, were installed
on the second floor, now left at liberty, for the elderly lady had made
up her mind to end her days in the country.
Mme. Camusot took Madeleine Vivet, with her cook and her man-servant,
to the second floor, and would have been as much pinched for money as in
the early days, if the house had not been rent free, and the President’s
salary increased to ten thousand francs. This _aurea mediocritas_ was
but little satisfactory to Mme. de Marville. Even now she wished for
means more in accordance with her ambitions; for when she handed over
their fortune to their daughter, she spoiled her husband’s prospects.
Now Amelie had set her heart upon seeing her husband in the Chamber of
Deputies; she was not one of those women who find it easy to give up
their way; and she by no means despaired of returning her husband for
the arrondissement in which Marville is situated. So for the past two
months she had teased her father-in-law, M. le Baron Camusot (for the
new peer of France had been advanced to that rank), and done her utmost
to extort an advance of a hundred thousand francs of the inheritance
which one day would be theirs. She wanted, she said, to buy a small
estate worth about two thousand francs per annum set like a wedge
within the Marville lands. There she and her husband would be near their
children and in their own house, while the addition would round out the
Marville property. With that the Presidente laid stress upon the recent
sacrifices which she and her husband had been compelled to make in order
to marry Cecile to Viscount Popinot, and asked the old man how he could
bar his eldest son’s way to the highest honors of the magistracy, when
such honors were only to be had by those who made themselves a strong
position in parliament. Her husband would know how to take up such a
position, he would make himself feared by those in office, and so on and
so on.
“They do nothing for you unless you tighten a halter round their necks
to loosen their tongues,” said she. “They are ungrateful. What do they
not owe to Camusot! Camusot brought the House of Orleans to the throne
by enforcing the ordinances of July.”
M. Camusot senior answered that he had gone out of his depth in railway
speculations. He quite admitted that it was necessary to come to the
rescue, but put off the day until shares should rise, as they were
expected to do.
This half-promise, extracted some few days before Fraisier’s visit,
had plunged the Presidente into depths of affliction. It was doubtful
whether the ex-proprietor of Marville was eligible for re-election
without the land qualification.
Fraisier found no difficulty in obtaining speech of Madeleine Vivet;
such viper natures own their kinship at once.
“I should like to see Mme. la Presidente for a few moments,
mademoiselle,” Fraisier said in bland accents; “I have come on a matter
of business which touches her fortune; it is a question of a legacy,
be sure to mention that. I have not the honor of being known to Mme. la
Presidente, so my name is of no consequence. I am not in the habit of
leaving my chambers, but I know the respect that is due to a President’s
wife, and I took the trouble of coming myself to save all possible
delay.”
The matter thus broached, when repeated and amplified by the
waiting-maid, naturally brought a favorable answer. It was a decisive
moment for the double ambition hidden in Fraisier’s mind. Bold as a
petty provincial attorney, sharp, rough-spoken, and curt as he was, he
felt as captains feel before the decisive battle of a campaign. As he
went into the little drawing-room where Amelie was waiting for him, he
felt a slight perspiration breaking out upon his forehead and down
his back. Every sudorific hitherto employed had failed to produce this
result upon a skin which horrible diseases had left impervious. “Even
if I fail to make my fortune,” said he to himself, “I shall recover.
Poulain said that if I could only perspire I should recover.”
The Presidente came forward in her morning gown.
“Madame--” said Fraisier, stopping short to bow with the humility by
which officials recognize the superior rank of the person whom they
address.
“Take a seat, monsieur,” said the Presidente. She saw at a glance that
this was a man of law.
“Mme. la Presidente, if I take the liberty of calling your attention to
a matter which concerns M. le President, it is because I am sure that M.
de Marville, occupying, as he does, a high position, would leave
matters to take their natural course, and so lose seven or eight hundred
thousand francs, a sum which ladies (who, in my opinion, have a
far better understanding of private business than the best of
magistrates)--a sum which ladies, I repeat, would by no means despise--”
“You spoke of a legacy,” interrupted the lady, dazzled by the wealth,
and anxious to hide her surprise. Amelie de Marville, like an impatient
novel-reader, wanted the end of the story.
“Yes, madame, a legacy that you are like to lose; yes, to lose
altogether; but I can, that is, I _could_, recover it for you, if--”
“Speak out, monsieur.” Mme. de Marville spoke frigidly, scanning
Fraisier as she spoke with a sagacious eye.
“Madame, your eminent capacity is known to me; I was once at Mantes. M.
Leboeuf, President of the Tribunal, is acquainted with M. de Marville,
and can answer inquiries about me--”
The Presidente’s shrug was so ruthlessly significant, that Fraisier was
compelled to make short work of his parenthetic discourse.
“So distinguished a woman will at once understand why I speak of myself
in the first place. It is the shortest way to the property.”
To this acute observation the lady replied by a gesture. Fraisier took
the sign for a permission to continue.
“I was an attorney, madame, at Mantes. My connection was all the fortune
that I was likely to have. I took over M. Levroux’s practice. You knew
him, no doubt?”
The Presidente inclined her head.
“With borrowed capital and some ten thousand francs of my own, I went
to Mantes. I had been with Desroches, one of the cleverest attorneys in
Paris, I had been his head-clerk for six years. I was so unlucky as to
make an enemy of the attorney for the crown at Mantes, Monsieur--”
“Olivier Vinet.”
“Son of the Attorney-General, yes, madame. He was paying his court to a
little person--”
“Whom?”
“Mme. Vatinelle.”
“Oh! Mme. Vatinelle. She was very pretty and very--er--when I was
there--”
“She was not unkind to me: _inde iroe_,” Fraisier continued. “I was
industrious; I wanted to repay my friends and to marry; I wanted work;
I went in search of it; and before long I had more on my hands than
anybody else. Bah! I had every soul in Mantes against me--attorneys,
notaries, and even the bailiffs. They tried to fasten a quarrel on me.
In our ruthless profession, as you know, madame, if you wish to ruin a
man, it is soon done. I was concerned for both parties in a case, and
they found it out. It was a trifle irregular; but it is sometimes done
in Paris, attorneys in certain cases hand the rhubarb and take the
senna. They do things differently at Mantes. I had done M. Bouyonnet
this little service before; but, egged on by his colleagues and the
attorney for the crown, he betrayed me.--I am keeping back nothing, you
see.--There was a great hue and cry about it. I was a scoundrel; they
made me out blacker than Marat; forced me to sell out; ruined me. And I
am in Paris now. I have tried to get together a practice; but my health
is so bad, that I have only two quiet hours out of the twenty-four.
“At this moment I have but one ambition, and a very small one. Some
day,” he continued, “you will be the wife of the Keeper of the Seals, or
of the Home Secretary, it may be; but I, poor and sickly as I am, desire
nothing but a post in which I can live in peace for the rest of my life,
a place without any opening in which to vegetate. I should like to be a
justice of the peace in Paris. It would be a mere trifle for you and M.
le President to gain the appointment for me; for the present Keeper of
the Seals must be anxious to keep on good terms with you...
“And that is not all, madame,” added Fraisier. Seeing that Mme. de
Marville was about to speak, he cut her short with a gesture. “I have a
friend, the doctor in attendance on the old man who ought to leave his
property to M. le President. (We are coming to the point, you see.) The
doctor’s co-operation is indispensable, and the doctor is precisely in
my position: he has abilities, he is unlucky. I learned through him how
far your interests were imperiled; for even as I speak, all may be over,
and the will disinheriting M. le President may have been made. This
doctor wishes to be head-surgeon of a hospital or of a Government
school. He must have a position in Paris equal to mine.... Pardon me
if I have enlarged on a matter so delicate; but we must have no
misunderstandings in this business. The doctor is, besides, much
respected and learned; he saved the life of the Comtesse Popinot’s
great-uncle, M. Pillerault.
“Now, if you are so good as to promise these two posts--the appointment
of justice of the peace and the sinecure for my friend--I will undertake
to bring you the property, _almost_ intact.--Almost intact, I say, for
the co-operation of the legatee and several other persons is absolutely
indispensable, and some obligations will be incurred. You will not
redeem your promises until I have fulfilled mine.”
The Presidente had folded her arms, and for the last minute or two sat
like a person compelled to listen to a sermon. Now she unfolded her
arms, and looked at Fraisier as she said, “Monsieur, all that you
say concerning your interests has the merit of clearness; but my own
interests in the matter are by no means so clear--”
“A word or two will explain everything, madame. M. le President is M.
Pons’ first cousin once removed, and his sole heir. M. Pons is very ill;
he is about to make his will, if it is not already made, in favor of
a German, a friend of his named Schmucke; and he has more than seven
hundred thousand francs to leave. I hope to have an accurate valuation
made in two or three days--”
“If this is so,” said the Presidente, “I made a great mistake in
quarreling with him and throwing the blame----” she thought aloud,
amazed by the possibility of such a sum.
“No, madame. If there had been no rupture, he would be as blithe as a
lark at this moment, and might outlive you and M. le President and me.
... The ways of Providence are mysterious, let us not seek to fathom
them,” he added to palliate to some extent the hideous idea. “It cannot
be helped. We men of business look at the practical aspects of things.
Now you see clearly, madame, that M. de Marville in his public position
would do nothing, and could do nothing, as things are. He has broken
off all relations with his cousin. You see nothing now of Pons; you have
forbidden him the house; you had excellent reasons, no doubt, for doing
as you did, but the old man is ill, and he is leaving his property to
the only friend left to him. A President of the Court of Appeal in Paris
could say nothing under such circumstances if the will was made out in
due form. But between ourselves, madame, when one has a right to expect
seven or eight hundred thousand francs--or a million, it may be (how
should I know?)--it is very unpleasant to have it slip through one’s
fingers, especially if one happens to be the heir-at-law.... But, on the
other hand, to prevent this, one is obliged to stoop to dirty work;
work so difficult, so ticklish, bringing you cheek by jowl with such low
people, servants and subordinates; and into such close contact with them
too, that no barrister, no attorney in Paris could take up such a case.
“What you want is a briefless barrister like me,” said he, “a man who
should have real and solid ability, who has learned to be devoted, and
yet, being in a precarious position, is brought temporarily to a level
with such people. In my arrondissement I undertake business for small
tradespeople and working folk. Yes, madame, you see the straits to which
I have been brought by the enmity of an attorney for the crown, now
a deputy-public prosecutor in Paris, who could not forgive me my
superiority.--I know you, madame, I know that your influence means a
solid certainty; and in such a service rendered to you, I saw the end of
my troubles and success for my friend Dr. Poulain.”