natural curiosity, which stamped the scene upon their memories. Schmucke
did not know Fraisier, and could not note his satanic countenance and
glittering eyes. But two words whispered by Fraisier in La Cibot’s ear
had prompted a daring piece of acting, somewhat beyond La Cibot’s range,
it may be, though she played her part throughout in a masterly style. To
make others believe that the dying man was out of his mind--it was
the very corner-stone of the edifice reared by the petty lawyer. The
morning’s incident had done Fraisier good service; but for him, La Cibot
in her trouble might have fallen into the snare innocently spread by
Schmucke, when he asked her to send back the person sent by the family.
Remonencq saw Dr. Poulain coming towards them, and asked no better than
to vanish. The fact was that for the last ten days the Auvergnat had
been playing Providence in a manner singularly displeasing to Justice,
which claims the monopoly of that part. He had made up his mind to rid
himself at all costs of the one obstacle in his way to happiness,
and happiness for him meant capital trebled and marriage with the
irresistibly charming portress. He had watched the little tailor
drinking his herb-tea, and a thought struck him. He would convert the
ailment into mortal sickness; his stock of old metals supplied him with
the means.
One morning as he leaned against the door-post, smoking his pipe and
dreaming of that fine shop on the Boulevard de la Madeleine where Mme.
Cibot, gorgeously arrayed, should some day sit enthroned, his eyes
fell upon a copper disc, about the size of a five-franc piece, covered
thickly with verdigris. The economical idea of using Cibot’s medicine to
clean the disc immediately occurred to him. He fastened the thing in a
bit of twine, and came over every morning to inquire for tidings of
his friend the tailor, timing his visit during La Cibot’s visit to her
gentlemen upstairs. He dropped the disc into the tumbler, allowed it to
steep there while he talked, and drew it out again by the string when he
went away.
The trace of tarnished copper, commonly called verdigris, poisoned
the wholesome draught; a minute dose administered by stealth did
incalculable mischief. Behold the results of this criminal homoeopathy!
On the third day poor Cibot’s hair came out, his teeth were loosened in
their sockets, his whole system was deranged by a scarcely perceptible
trace of poison. Dr. Poulain racked his brains. He was enough of a man
of science to see that some destructive agent was at work. He privately
carried off the decoction, analyzed it himself, but found nothing. It so
chanced that Remonencq had taken fright and omitted to dip the disc in
the tumbler that day.
Then Dr. Poulain fell back on himself and science and got out of the
difficulty with a theory. A sedentary life in a damp room; a cramped
position before the barred window--these conditions had vitiated the
blood in the absence of proper exercise, especially as the patient
continually breathed an atmosphere saturated with the fetid exhalations
of the gutter. The Rue de Normandie is one of the old-fashioned streets
that slope towards the middle; the municipal authorities of Paris as yet
have laid on no water supply to flush the central kennel which drains
the houses on either side, and as a result a stream of filthy ooze
meanders among the cobblestones, filters into the soil, and produces
the mud peculiar to the city. La Cibot came and went; but her husband,
a hard-working man, sat day in day out like a fakir on the table in the
window, till his knee-joints were stiffened, the blood stagnated in his
body, and his legs grew so thin and crooked that he almost lost the
use of them. The deep copper tint of the man’s complexion naturally
suggested that he had been out of health for a very long time. The
wife’s good health and the husband’s illness seemed to the doctor to be
satisfactorily accounted for by this theory.
“Then what is the matter with my poor Cibot?” asked the portress.
“My dear Mme. Cibot, he is dying of the porter’s disease,” said the
doctor. “Incurable vitiation of the blood is evident from the general
anaemic condition.”
No one had anything to gain by a crime so objectless. Dr. Poulain’s
first suspicions were effaced by this thought. Who could have any
possible interest in Cibot’s death? His wife?--the doctor saw her taste
the herb-tea as she sweetened it. Crimes which escape social vengeance
are many enough, and as a rule they are of this order--to wit, murders
committed without any startling sign of violence, without bloodshed,
bruises, marks of strangling, without any bungling of the business, in
short; if there seems to be no motive for the crime, it most likely goes
unpunished, especially if the death occurs among the poorer classes.
Murder is almost always denounced by its advanced guards, by hatred or
greed well known to those under whose eyes the whole matter has passed.
But in the case of the Cibots, no one save the doctor had any interest
in discovering the actual cause of death. The little copper-faced
tailor’s wife adored her husband; he had no money and no enemies; La
Cibot’s fortune and the marine-store dealer’s motives were alike
hidden in the shade. Poulain knew the portress and her way of thinking
perfectly well; he thought her capable of tormenting Pons, but he
saw that she had neither motive enough nor wit enough for murder; and
besides--every time the doctor came and she gave her husband a draught,
she took a spoonful herself. Poulain himself, the only person who might
have thrown light on the matter, inclined to believe that this was
one of the unaccountable freaks of disease, one of the astonishing
exceptions which make medicine so perilous a profession. And in truth,
the little tailor’s unwholesome life and unsanitary surroundings
had unfortunately brought him to such a pass that the trace of
copper-poisoning was like the last straw. Gossips and neighbors took it
upon themselves to explain the sudden death, and no suspicion of blame
lighted upon Remonencq.
“Oh! this long time past I have said that M. Cibot was not well,” cried
one.
“He worked too hard, he did,” said another; “he heated his blood.”
“He would not listen to me,” put in a neighbor; “I advised him to walk
out of a Sunday and keep Saint Monday; two days in the week is not too
much for amusement.”
In short, the gossip of the quarter, the tell-tale voice to which
Justice, in the person of the commissary of police, the king of the
poorer classes, lends an attentive ear--gossip explained the little
tailor’s demise in a perfectly satisfactory manner. Yet M. Poulain’s
pensive air and uneasy eyes embarrassed Remonencq not a little, and at
sight of the doctor he offered eagerly to go in search of M. Trognon,
Fraisier’s acquaintance. Fraisier turned to La Cibot to say in a low
voice, “I shall come back again as soon as the will is made. In spite
of your sorrow, you must look for squalls.” Then he slipped away like a
shadow and met his friend the doctor.
“Ah, Poulain!” he exclaimed, “it is all right. We are safe! I will tell
you about it to-night. Look out a post that will suit you, you shall
have it! For my own part, I am a justice of the peace. Tabareau will not
refuse me now for a son-in-law. And as for you, I will undertake that
you shall marry Mlle. Vitel, granddaughter of our justice of the peace.”
Fraisier left Poulain reduced to dumb bewilderment by these wild words;
bounced like a ball into the boulevard, hailed an omnibus, and was set
down ten minutes later by the modern coach at the corner of the Rue de
Choiseul. By this time it was nearly four o’clock. Fraisier felt quite
sure of a word in private with the Presidente, for officials seldom
leave the Palais de Justice before five o’clock.
Mme. de Marville’s reception of him assured Fraisier that M. Leboeuf
had kept his promise made to Mme. Vatinelle and spoken favorably of the
sometime attorney at Mantes. Amelie’s manner was almost caressing. So
might the Duchesse de Montpensier have treated Jacques Clement. The
petty attorney was a knife to her hand. But when Fraisier produced the
joint-letter signed by Elie Magus and Remonencq offering the sum of
nine hundred thousand francs in cash for Pons’ collection, then the
Presidente looked at her man of business and the gleam of the money
flashed from her eyes. That ripple of greed reached the attorney.
“M. le President left a message with me,” she said; “he hopes that you
will dine with us to-morrow. It will be a family party. M. Godeschal,
Desroches’ successor and my attorney, will come to meet you, and
Berthier, our notary, and my daughter and son-in-law. After dinner, you
and I and the notary and attorney will have the little consultation for
which you ask, and I will give you full powers. The two gentlemen
will do as you require and act upon your inspiration; and see that
_everything_ goes well. You shall have a power of attorney from M. de
Marville as soon as you want it.”
“I shall want it on the day of the decease.”
“It shall be in readiness.”
“Mme. la Presidente, if I ask for a power of attorney, and would prefer
that your attorney’s name should not appear I wish it less in my own
interest than in yours.... When I give myself, it is without reserve.
And in return, madame, I ask the same fidelity; I ask my patrons (I do
not venture to call you my clients) to put the same confidence in
me. You may think that in acting thus I am trying to fasten upon this
affair--no, no, madame; there may be reprehensible things done; with an
inheritance in view one is dragged on... especially with nine hundred
thousand francs in the balance. Well, now, you could not disavow a man
like Maitre Godeschal, honesty itself, but you can throw all the blame
on the back of a miserable pettifogging lawyer--”
Mme. Camusot de Marville looked admiringly at Fraisier.
“You ought to go very high,” said she, “or sink very low. In your place,
instead of asking to hide myself away as a justice of the peace, I would
aim at the crown attorney’s appointment--at, say, Mantes!--and make a
great career for myself.”
“Let me have my way, madame. The post of justice of the peace is an
ambling pad for M. Vitel; for me it shall be a war-horse.”
And in this way the Presidente proceeded to a final confidence.
“You seem to be so completely devoted to our interests,” she began,
“that I will tell you about the difficulties of our position and our
hopes. The President’s great desire, ever since a match was projected
between his daughter and an adventurer who recently started a bank,--the
President’s wish, I say, has been to round out the Marville estate with
some grazing land, at that time in the market. We dispossessed ourselves
of fine property, as you know, to settle it upon our daughter; but I
wish very much, my daughter being an only child, to buy all that remains
of the grass land. Part has been sold already. The estate belongs to an
Englishman who is returning to England after a twenty years’ residence
in France. He built the most charming cottage in a delightful situation,
between Marville Park and the meadows which once were part of the
Marville lands; he bought up covers, copse, and gardens at fancy prices
to make the grounds about the cottage. The house and its surroundings
make a feature of the landscape, and it lies close to my daughter’s park
palings. The whole, land and house, should be bought for seven hundred
thousand francs, for the net revenue is about twenty thousand francs....
But if Mr. Wadman finds out that _we_ think of buying it, he is sure to
add another two or three hundred thousand francs to the price; for he
will lose money if the house counts for nothing, as it usually does when
you buy land in the country--”
“Why, madame,” Fraisier broke in, “in my opinion you can be so sure that
the inheritance is yours that I will offer to act the part of purchaser
for you. I will undertake that you shall have the land at the best
possible price, and have a written engagement made out under private
seal, like a contract to deliver goods.... I will go to the Englishman
in the character of buyer. I understand that sort of thing; it was my
specialty at Mantes. Vatinelle doubled the value of his practice, while
I worked in his name.”
“Hence your connection with little Madame Vatinelle. He must be very
well off--”
“But Mme. Vatinelle has expensive tastes.... So be easy, madame--I will
serve you up the Englishman done to a turn--”
“If you can manage that you will have eternal claims to my gratitude.
Good-day, my dear M. Fraisier. Till to-morrow--”
Fraisier went. His parting bow was a degree less cringing than on the
first occasion.
“I am to dine to-morrow with President de Marville!” he said to himself.
“Come now, I have these folk in my power. Only, to be absolute master,
I ought to be the German’s legal adviser in the person of Tabareau, the
justice’s clerk. Tabareau will not have me now for his daughter, his
only daughter, but he will give her to me when I am a justice of the
peace. I shall be eligible. Mlle. Tabareau, that tall, consumptive
girl with the red hair, has a house in the Place Royale in right of her
mother. At her father’s death she is sure to come in for six thousand
francs, you must not look too hard at the plank.”
As he went back to the Rue de Normandie by way of the boulevards, he
dreamed out his golden dream, he gave himself up to the happiness of the
thought that he should never know want again. He would marry his friend
Poulain to Mlle. Vitel, the daughter of the justice of the peace;
together, he and his friend the doctor would reign like kings in the
quarter; he would carry all the elections--municipal, military, or
political. The boulevards seem short if, while you pace afoot, you mount
your ambition on the steed of fancy in this way.
Schmucke meanwhile went back to his friend Pons with the news that Cibot
was dying, and Remonencq gone in search of M. Trognon, the notary. Pons
was struck by the name. It had come up again and again in La Cibot’s
interminable talk, and La Cibot always recommended him as honesty
incarnate. And with that a luminous idea occurred to Pons, in whom
mistrust had grown paramount since the morning, an idea which completed
his plan for outwitting La Cibot and unmasking her completely for the
too-credulous Schmucke.
So many unexpected things had happened that day that poor Schmucke was
quite bewildered. Pons took his friend’s hand.
“There must be a good deal of confusion in the house, Schmucke; if the
porter is at death’s door, we are almost free for a minute or two; that
is to say, there will be no spies--for we are watched, you may be sure
of that. Go out, take a cab, go to the theatre, and tell Mlle. Heloise
Brisetout that I should like to see her before I die. Ask her to come
here to-night when she leaves the theatre. Then go to your friends
Brunner and Schwab and beg them to come to-morrow morning at nine
o’clock to inquire after me; let them come up as if they were just
passing by and called in to see me.”
The old artist felt that he was dying, and this was the scheme that
he forged. He meant Schmucke to be his universal legatee. To protect
Schmucke from any possible legal quibbles, he proposed to dictate his
will to a notary in the presence of witnesses, lest his sanity should be
called in question and the Camusots should attempt upon that pretext
to dispute the will. At the name of Trognon he caught a glimpse of
machinations of some kind; perhaps a flaw purposely inserted, or
premeditated treachery on La Cibot’s part. He would prevent this.
Trognon should dictate a holograph will which should be signed and
deposited in a sealed envelope in a drawer. Then Schmucke, hidden in one
of the cabinets in his alcove, should see La Cibot search for the will,
find it, open the envelope, read it through, and seal it again. Next
morning, at nine o’clock, he would cancel the will and make a new one in
the presence of two notaries, everything in due form and order. La Cibot
had treated him as a madman and a visionary; he saw what this meant--he
saw the Presidente’s hate and greed, her revenge in La Cibot’s behavior.
In the sleepless hours and lonely days of the last two months, the poor
man had sifted the events of his past life.
It has been the wont of sculptors, ancient and modern, to set a tutelary
genius with a lighted torch upon either side of a tomb. Those torches
that light up the paths of death throw light for dying eyes upon the
spectacle of a life’s mistakes and sins; the carved stone figures
express great ideas, they are symbols of a fact in human experience. The
agony of death has its own wisdom. Not seldom a simple girl, scarcely
more than a child, will grow wise with the experience of a hundred
years, will gain prophetic vision, judge her family, and see clearly
through all pretences, at the near approach of Death. Herein lies
Death’s poetry. But, strange and worthy of remark it is, there are two
manners of death.
The poetry of prophecy, the gift of seeing clearly into the future or
the past, only belongs to those whose bodies are stricken, to those
who die by the destruction of the organs of physical life. Consumptive
patients, for instance, or those who die of gangrene like Louis XIV.,
of fever like Pons, of a stomach complaint like Mme. de Mortsauf, or
of wounds received in the full tide of life like soldiers on the
battlefield--all these may possess this supreme lucidity to the full;
their deaths fill us with surprise and wonder. But many, on the other
hand, die of _intelligential_ diseases, as they may be called; of
maladies seated in the brain or in that nervous system which acts as a
kind of purveyor of thought fuel--and these die wholly, body and spirit
are darkened together. The former are spirits deserted by the body,
realizing for us our ideas of the spirits of Scripture; the latter are
bodies untenanted by a spirit.
Too late the virgin nature, the epicure-Cato, the righteous man almost
without sin, was discovering the Presidente’s real character--the sac
of gall that did duty for her heart. He knew the world now that he was
about to leave it, and for the past few hours he had risen gaily to his
part, like a joyous artist finding a pretext for caricature and laughter
in everything. The last links that bound him to life, the chains
of admiration, the strong ties that bind the art lover to Art’s
masterpieces, had been snapped that morning. When Pons knew that La
Cibot had robbed him, he bade farewell, like a Christian, to the pomps
and vanities of Art, to his collection, to all his old friendships with
the makers of so many fair things. Our forefathers counted the day of
death as a Christian festival, and in something of the same spirit
Pons’ thoughts turned to the coming end. In his tender love he tried
to protect Schmucke when he should be low in the grave. It was this
father’s thought that led him to fix his choice upon the leading lady
of the ballet. Mlle. Brisetout should help him to baffle surrounding
treachery, and those who in all probability would never forgive his
innocent universal legatee.
Heloise Brisetout was one of the few natures that remain true in a
false position. She was an opera-girl of the school of Josepha and Jenny
Cadine, capable of playing any trick on a paying adorer; yet she was a
good comrade, dreading no power on earth, accustomed as she was to see
the weak side of the strong and to hold her own with the police at the
scarcely idyllic Bal de Mabille and the carnival.
“If she asked for my place for Garangeot, she will think that she owes
me a good turn by so much the more,” said Pons to himself.
Thanks to the prevailing confusion in the porter’s lodge, Schmucke
succeeded in getting out of the house. He returned with the utmost
speed, fearing to leave Pons too long alone. M. Trognon reached the
house just as Schmucke came in. Albeit Cibot was dying, his wife came
upstairs with the notary, brought him into the bedroom, and withdrew,
leaving Schmucke and Pons with M. Trognon; but she left the door ajar,
and went no further than the next room. Providing herself with a little
hand-glass of curious workmanship, she took up her station in the
doorway, so that she could not only hear but see all that passed at the
supreme moment.
“Sir,” said Pons, “I am in the full possession of my faculties,
unfortunately for me, for I feel that I am about to die; and doubtless,
by the will of God, I shall be spared nothing of the agony of death.
This is M. Schmucke”--(the notary bowed to M. Schmucke)--“my one friend
on earth,” continued Pons. “I wish to make him my universal legatee.
Now, tell me how to word the will, so that my friend, who is a German
and knows nothing of French law, may succeed to my possessions without
any dispute.”
“Anything is liable to be disputed, sir,” said the notary; “that is the
drawback of human justice. But in the matter of wills, there are wills
so drafted that they cannot be upset--”
“In what way?” queried Pons.
“If a will is made in the presence of a notary, and before witnesses who
can swear that the testator was in the full possession of his faculties;
and if the testator has neither wife nor children, nor father nor
mother--”
“I have none of these; all my affection is centred upon my dear friend
Schmucke here.”
The tears overflowed Schmucke’s eyes.
“Then, if you have none but distant relatives, the law leaves you free
to dispose of both personalty and real estate as you please, so long as
you bequeath them for no unlawful purpose; for you must have come across
cases of wills disputed on account of the testator’s eccentricities. A
will made in the presence of a notary is considered to be authentic;
for the person’s identity is established, the notary certifies that the
testator was sane at the time, and there can be no possible dispute over
the signature.--Still, a holograph will, properly and clearly worded, is
quite as safe.”
“I have decided, for reasons of my own, to make a holograph will at your
dictation, and to deposit it with my friend here. Is this possible?”
“Quite possible,” said the notary. “Will you write? I will begin to
dictate--”
“Schmucke, bring me my little Boule writing-desk.--Speak low, sir,” he
added; “we may be overheard.”
“Just tell me, first of all, what you intend,” demanded the notary.
Ten minutes later La Cibot saw the notary look over the will, while
Schmucke lighted a taper (Pons watching her reflection all the while in
a mirror). She saw the envelope sealed, saw Pons give it to Schmucke,
and heard him say that it must be put away in a secret drawer in his
bureau. Then the testator asked for the key, tied it to the corner of
his handkerchief, and slipped it under his pillow.
The notary himself, by courtesy, was appointed executor. To him Pons
left a picture of price, such a thing as the law permits a notary to
receive. Trognon went out and came upon Mme. Cibot in the salon.
“Well, sir, did M. Pons remember me?”
“You do not expect a notary to betray secrets confided to him, my dear,”
returned M. Trognon. “I can only tell you this--there will be many
disappointments, and some that are anxious after the money will be
foiled. M. Pons has made a good and very sensible will, a patriotic
will, which I highly approve.”
La Cibot’s curiosity, kindled by such words, reached an unimaginable
pitch. She went downstairs and spent the night at Cibot’s bedside,
inwardly resolving that Mlle. Remonencq should take her place towards
two or three in the morning, when she would go up and have a look at the
document.
Mlle. Brisetout’s visit towards half-past ten that night seemed natural
enough to La Cibot; but in her terror lest the ballet-girl should
mention Gaudissart’s gift of a thousand francs, she went upstairs with
her, lavishing polite speeches and flattery as if Mlle. Heloise had been
a queen.
“Ah! my dear, you are much nicer here on your own ground than at the
theatre,” Heloise remarked. “I advise you to keep to your employment.”