how easy it is, in one way or another, to do as I once explained to you.
Let us see, now; what have you done that this simple German should be
hiding in the room?”
“Nothing at all, unless it was that scene the other day when I stood M.
Pons out that his eyes dazzled. And ever since, the two gentlemen have
been as different as can be. So you have brought all my troubles upon
me; I might have lost my influence with M. Pons, but I was sure of the
German; just now he was talking of marrying me or of taking me with
him--it is all one.”
The excuse was so plausible that Fraisier was fain to be satisfied with
it. “You need fear nothing,” he resumed. “I gave you my word that you
shall have your money, and I shall keep my word. The whole matter, so
far, was up in the air, but now it is as good as bank-notes.... You
shall have at least twelve hundred francs per annum.... But, my good
lady, you must act intelligently under my orders.”
“Yes, my dear M. Fraisier,” said La Cibot with cringing servility. She
was completely subdued.
“Very good. Good-bye,” and Fraisier went, taking the dangerous document
with him. He reached home in great spirits. The will was a terrible
weapon.
“Now,” thought he, “I have a hold on Mme. la Presidente de Marville;
she must keep her word with me. If she did not, she would lose the
property.”
At daybreak, when Remonencq had taken down his shutters and left his
sister in charge of the shop, he came, after his wont of late, to
inquire for his good friend Cibot. The portress was contemplating the
Metzu, privately wondering how a little bit of painted wood could be
worth such a lot of money.
“Aha!” said he, looking over her shoulder, “that is the one picture
which M. Elie Magus regretted; with that little bit of a thing, he says,
his happiness would be complete.”
“What would he give for it?” asked La Cibot.
“Why, if you will promise to marry me within a year of widowhood, I
will undertake to get twenty thousand francs for it from Elie Magus;
and unless you marry me you will never get a thousand francs for the
picture.”
“Why not?”
“Because you would be obliged to give a receipt for the money, and then
you might have a lawsuit with the heirs-at-law. If you were my wife, I
myself should sell the thing to M. Magus, and in the way of business it
is enough to make an entry in the day-book, and I should note that M.
Schmucke sold it to me. There, leave the panel with me. ... If your
husband were to die you might have a lot of bother over it, but no one
would think it odd that I should have a picture in the shop.... You know
me quite well. Besides, I will give you a receipt if you like.”
The covetous portress felt that she had been caught; she agreed to
a proposal which was to bind her for the rest of her life to the
marine-store dealer.
“You are right,” said she, as she locked the picture away in a chest;
“bring me the bit of writing.”
Remonencq beckoned her to the door.
“I can see, neighbor, that we shall not save our poor dear Cibot,” he
said lowering his voice. “Dr. Poulain gave him up yesterday evening, and
said that he could not last out the day.... It is a great misfortune.
But after all, this was not the place for you.... You ought to be in a
fine curiosity shop on the Boulevard des Capucines. Do you know that I
have made nearly a hundred thousand francs in ten years? And if you will
have as much some day, I will undertake to make a handsome fortune for
you--as my wife. You would be the mistress--my sister should wait on you
and do the work of the house, and--”
A heartrending moan from the little tailor cut the tempter short; the
death agony had begun.
“Go away,” said La Cibot. “You are a monster to talk of such things and
my poor man dying like this--”
“Ah! it is because I love you,” said Remonencq; “I could let everything
else go to have you--”
“If you loved me, you would say nothing to me just now,” returned she.
And Remonencq departed to his shop, sure of marrying La Cibot.
Towards ten o’clock there was a sort of commotion in the street; M.
Cibot was taking the Sacrament. All the friends of the pair, all the
porters and porters’ wives in the Rue de Normandie and neighboring
streets, had crowded into the lodge, under the archway, and stood on the
pavement outside. Nobody so much as noticed the arrival of M. Leopold
Hannequin and a brother lawyer. Schwab and Brunner reached Pons’ rooms
unseen by Mme. Cibot. The notary, inquiring for Pons, was shown upstairs
by the portress of a neighboring house. Brunner remembered his previous
visit to the museum, and went straight in with his friend Schwab.
Pons formally revoked his previous will and constituted Schmucke his
universal legatee. This accomplished, he thanked Schwab and Brunner, and
earnestly begged M. Leopold Hannequin to protect Schmucke’s interests.
The demands made upon him by last night’s scene with La Cibot, and this
final settlement of his worldly affairs, left him so faint and exhausted
that Schmucke begged Schwab to go for the Abbe Duplanty; it was Pons’
great desire to take the Sacrament, and Schmucke could not bring himself
to leave his friend.
La Cibot, sitting at the foot of her husband’s bed, gave not so much as
a thought to Schmucke’s breakfast--for that matter had been forbidden to
return; but the morning’s events, the sight of Pons’ heroic resignation
in the death agony, so oppressed Schmucke’s heart that he was not
conscious of hunger. Towards two o’clock, however, as nothing had been
seen of the old German, La Cibot sent Remonencq’s sister to see whether
Schmucke wanted anything; prompted not so much by interest as by
curiosity. The Abbe Duplanty had just heard the old musician’s dying
confession, and the administration of the sacrament of extreme unction
was disturbed by repeated ringing of the door-bell. Pons, in his terror
of robbery, had made Schmucke promise solemnly to admit no one into the
house; so Schmucke did not stir. Again and again Mlle. Remonencq pulled
the cord, and finally went downstairs in alarm to tell La Cibot that
Schmucke would not open the door; Fraisier made a note of this.
Schmucke had never seen any one die in his life; before long he would be
perplexed by the many difficulties which beset those who are left with a
dead body in Paris, this more especially if they are lonely and helpless
and have no one to act for them. Fraisier knew, moreover, that in real
affliction people lose their heads, and therefore immediately after
breakfast he took up his position in the porter’s lodge, and sitting
there in perpetual committee with Dr. Poulain, conceived the idea of
directing all Schmucke’s actions himself.
To obtain the important result, the doctor and the lawyer took their
measures on this wise:--
The beadle of Saint-Francois, Cantinet by name, at one time a retail
dealer in glassware, lived in the Rue d’Orleans, next door to Dr.
Poulain and under the same roof. Mme. Cantinet, who saw to the letting
of the chairs at Saint-Francois, once had fallen ill and Dr. Poulain had
attended her gratuitously; she was, as might be expected, grateful, and
often confided her troubles to him. The “nutcrackers,” punctual in
their attendance at Saint-Francois on Sundays and saints’-days, were on
friendly terms with the beadle and the lowest ecclesiastical rank and
file, commonly called in Paris _le bas clerge_, to whom the devout
usually give little presents from time to time. Mme. Cantinet therefore
knew Schmucke almost as well as Schmucke knew her. And Mme. Cantinet was
afflicted with two sore troubles which enabled the lawyer to use her as
a blind and involuntary agent. Cantinet junior, a stage-struck youth,
had deserted the paths of the Church and turned his back on the
prospect of one day becoming a beadle, to make his _debut_ among the
supernumeraries of the Cirque-Olympique; he was leading a wild life,
breaking his mother’s heart and draining her purse by frequent forced
loans. Cantinet senior, much addicted to spirituous liquors and
idleness, had, in fact, been driven to retire from business by those
two failings. So far from reforming, the incorrigible offender had found
scope in his new occupation for the indulgence of both cravings; he
did nothing, and he drank with drivers of wedding-coaches, with the
undertaker’s men at funerals, with poor folk relieved by the vicar, till
his morning’s occupation was set forth in rubric on his countenance by
noon.
Mme. Cantinet saw no prospect but want in her old age, and yet she had
brought her husband twelve thousand francs, she said. The tale of her
woes related for the hundredth time suggested an idea to Dr. Poulain.
Once introduce her into the old bachelor’s quarters, and it would
be easy by her means to establish Mme. Sauvage there as working
housekeeper. It was quite impossible to present Mme. Sauvage herself,
for the “nutcrackers” had grown suspicious of every one. Schmucke’s
refusal to admit Mlle. Remonencq had sufficiently opened Fraisier’s
eyes. Still, it seemed evident that Pons and Schmucke, being pious
souls, would take any one recommended by the Abbe, with blind
confidence. Mme. Cantinet should bring Mme. Sauvage with her, and to
put in Fraisier’s servant was almost tantamount to installing Fraisier
himself.
The Abbe Duplanty, coming downstairs, found the gateway blocked by the
Cibots’ friends, all of them bent upon showing their interest in one of
the oldest and most respectable porters in the Marais.
Dr. Poulain raised his hat, and took the Abbe aside.
“I am just about to go to poor M. Pons,” he said. “There is still a
chance of recovery; but it is a question of inducing him to undergo an
operation. The calculi are perceptible to the touch, they are setting up
an inflammatory condition which will end fatally, but perhaps it is
not too late to remove them. You should really use your influence to
persuade the patient to submit to surgical treatment; I will answer
for his life, provided that no untoward circumstance occurs during the
operation.”
“I will return as soon as I have taken the sacred ciborium back to the
church,” said the Abbe Duplanty, “for M. Schmucke’s condition claims the
support of religion.”
“I have just heard that he is alone,” said Dr. Poulain. “The German,
good soul, had a little altercation this morning with Mme. Cibot, who
has acted as housekeeper to them both for the past ten years. They have
quarreled (for the moment only, no doubt), but under the circumstances
they must have some one in to help upstairs. It would be a charity to
look after him.--I say, Cantinet,” continued the doctor, beckoning to
the beadle, “just go and ask your wife if she will nurse M. Pons, and
look after M. Schmucke, and take Mme. Cibot’s place for a day or two....
Even without the quarrel, Mme. Cibot would still require a substitute.
Mme. Cantinet is honest,” added the doctor, turning to M. Duplanty.
“You could not make a better choice,” said the good priest; “she is
intrusted with the letting of chairs in the church.”
A few minutes later, Dr. Poulain stood by Pons’ pillow watching the
progress made by death, and Schmucke’s vain efforts to persuade his
friend to consent to the operation. To all the poor German’s despairing
entreaties Pons only replied by a shake of the head and occasional
impatient movements; till, after awhile, he summoned up all his
fast-failing strength to say, with a heartrending look:
“Do let me die in peace!”
Schmucke almost died of sorrow, but he took Pons’ hand and softly kissed
it, and held it between his own, as if trying a second time to give his
own vitality to his friend.
Just at this moment the bell rang, and Dr. Poulain, going to the door,
admitted the Abbe Duplanty.
“Our poor patient is struggling in the grasp of death,” he said. “All
will be over in a few hours. You will send a priest, no doubt, to watch
to-night. But it is time that Mme. Cantinet came, as well as a woman to
do the work, for M. Schmucke is quite unfit to think of anything: I am
afraid for his reason; and there are valuables here which ought to be in
the custody of honest persons.”
The Abbe Duplanty, a kindly, upright priest, guileless and unsuspicious,
was struck with the truth of Dr. Poulain’s remarks. He had, moreover, a
certain belief in the doctor of the quarter. So on the threshold of the
death-chamber he stopped and beckoned to Schmucke, but Schmucke could
not bring himself to loosen the grasp of the hand that grew tighter and
tighter. Pons seemed to think that he was slipping over the edge of
a precipice and must catch at something to save himself. But, as many
know, the dying are haunted by an hallucination that leads them to
snatch at things about them, like men eager to save their most precious
possessions from a fire. Presently Pons released Schmucke to clutch at
the bed-clothes, dragging them and huddling them about himself with a
hasty, covetous movement significant and painful to see.
“What will you do, left alone with your dead friend?” asked M. l’Abbe
Duplanty when Schmucke came to the door. “You have not Mme. Cibot now--”
“Ein monster dat haf killed Bons!”
“But you must have somebody with you,” began Dr. Poulain. “Some one must
sit up with the body to-night.”
“I shall sit up; I shall say die prayers to Gott,” the innocent German
answered.
“But you must eat--and who is to cook for you now?” asked the doctor.
“Grief haf taken afay mein abbetite,” Schmucke said, simply.
“And some one must give notice to the registrar,” said Poulain, “and lay
out the body, and order the funeral; and the person who sits up with the
body and the priest will want meals. Can you do all this by yourself? A
man cannot die like a dog in the capital of the civilized world.”
Schmucke opened wide eyes of dismay. A brief fit of madness seized him.
“But Bons shall not tie!...” he cried aloud. “I shall safe him!”
“You cannot go without sleep much longer, and who will take your place?
Some one must look after M. Pons, and give him drink, and nurse him--”
“Ah! dat is drue.”
“Very well,” said the Abbe, “I am thinking of sending your Mme.
Cantinet, a good and honest creature--”
The practical details of the care of the dead bewildered Schmucke, till
he was fain to die with his friend.
“He is a child,” said the doctor, turning to the Abbe Duplanty.
“Ein child,” Schmucke repeated mechanically.
“There, then,” said the curate; “I will speak to Mme. Cantinet, and send
her to you.”
“Do not trouble yourself,” said the doctor; “I am going home, and she
lives in the next house.”
The dying seem to struggle with Death as with an invisible assassin;
in the agony at the last, as the final thrust is made, the act of dying
seems to be a conflict, a hand-to-hand fight for life. Pons had reached
the supreme moment. At the sound of his groans and cries, the three
standing in the doorway hurried to the bedside. Then came the last blow,
smiting asunder the bonds between soul and body, striking down to life’s
sources; and suddenly Pons regained for a few brief moments the perfect
calm that follows the struggle. He came to himself, and with the
serenity of death in his face he looked round almost smilingly at them.
“Ah, doctor, I have had a hard time of it; but you were right, I am
doing better. Thank you, my good Abbe; I was wondering what had become
of Schmucke--”
“Schmucke has had nothing to eat since yesterday evening, and now it is
four o’clock! You have no one with you now and it would be wise to send
for Mme. Cibot.”
“She is capable of anything!” said Pons, without attempting to conceal
all his abhorrence at the sound of her name. “It is true, Schmucke ought
to have some trustworthy person.”
“M. Duplanty and I have been thinking about you both--”
“Ah! thank you, I had not thought of that.”
“--And M. Duplanty suggests that you should have Mme. Cantinet--”
“Oh! Mme. Cantinet who lets the chairs!” exclaimed Pons. “Yes, she is an
excellent creature.”
“She has no liking for Mme. Cibot,” continued the doctor, “and she would
take good care of M. Schmucke--”
“Send her to me, M. Duplanty... send her and her husband too. I shall be
easy. Nothing will be stolen here.”
Schmucke had taken Pons’ hand again, and held it joyously in his own.
Pons was almost well again, he thought.
“Let us go, Monsieur l’Abbe,” said the doctor. “I will send Mme.
Cantinet round at once. I see how it is. She perhaps may not find M.
Pons alive.”
While the Abbe Duplanty was persuading Pons to engage Mme. Cantinet as
his nurse, Fraisier had sent for her. He had plied the beadle’s wife
with sophistical reasoning and subtlety. It was difficult to resist his
corrupting influence. And as for Mme. Cantinet--a lean, sallow woman,
with large teeth and thin lips--her intelligence, as so often happens
with women of the people, had been blunted by a hard life, till she
had come to look upon the slenderest daily wage as prosperity. She soon
consented to take Mme. Sauvage with her as general servant.
Mme. Sauvage had had her instructions already. She had undertaken to
weave a web of iron wire about the two musicians, and to watch them as
a spider watches a fly caught in the toils; and her reward was to be a
tobacconist’s license. Fraisier had found a convenient opportunity of
getting rid of his so-called foster-mother, while he posted her as
a detective and policeman to supervise Mme. Cantinet. As there was a
servant’s bedroom and a little kitchen included in the apartment,
La Sauvage could sleep on a truckle-bed and cook for the German. Dr.
Poulain came with the two women just as Pons drew his last breath.
Schmucke was sitting beside his friend, all unconscious of the crisis,
holding the hand that slowly grew colder in his grasp. He signed to Mme.
Cantinet to be silent; but Mme. Sauvage’s soldierly figure surprised him
so much that he started in spite of himself, a kind of homage to which
the virago was quite accustomed.
“M. Duplanty answers for this lady,” whispered Mme. Cantinet by way of
introduction. “She once was cook to a bishop; she is honesty itself; she
will do the cooking.”
“Oh! you may talk out loud,” wheezed the stalwart dame. “The poor
gentleman is dead.... He has just gone.”
A shrill cry broke from Schmucke. He felt Pons’ cold hand stiffening in
his, and sat staring into his friend’s eyes; the look in them would have
driven him mad, if Mme. Sauvage, doubtless accustomed to scenes of this
sort, had not come to the bedside with a mirror which she held over the
lips of the dead. When she saw that there was no mist upon the surface,
she briskly snatched Schmucke’s hand away.
“Just take away your hand, sir; you may not be able to do it in a little
while. You do not know how the bones harden. A corpse grows cold very
quickly. If you do not lay out a body while it is warm, you have to
break the joints later on....”
And so it was this terrible woman who closed the poor dead musician’s
eyes.
With a business-like dexterity acquired in ten years of experience,
she stripped and straightened the body, laid the arms by the sides,
and covered the face with the bedclothes, exactly as a shopman wraps a
parcel.
“A sheet will be wanted to lay him out.--Where is there a sheet?” she
demanded, turning on the terror-stricken Schmucke.
He had watched the religious ritual with its deep reverence for the
creature made for such high destinies in heaven; and now he saw his dead
friend treated simply as a thing in this packing process--saw with the
sharp pain that dissolves the very elements of thought.
“Do as you vill----” he answered mechanically. The innocent creature for
the first time in his life had seen a man die, and that man was Pons,
his only friend, the one human being who understood him and loved him.
“I will go and ask Mme. Cibot where the sheets are kept,” said La
Sauvage.
“A truckle-bed will be wanted for the person to sleep upon,” Mme.
Cantinet came to tell Schmucke.
Schmucke nodded and broke out into weeping. Mme. Cantinet left the
unhappy man in peace; but an hour later she came back to say:
“Have you any money, sir, to pay for the things?”
The look that Schmucke gave Mme. Cantinet would have disarmed the
fiercest hate; it was the white, blank, peaked face of death that he
turned upon her, as an explanation that met everything.
“Dake it all and leaf me to mein prayers and tears,” he said, and knelt.
Mme. Sauvage went to Fraisier with the news of Pons’ death. Fraisier
took a cab and went to the Presidente. To-morrow she must give him the
power of attorney to enable him to act for the heirs.
Another hour went by, and Mme. Cantinet came again to Schmucke.
“I have been to Mme. Cibot, sir, who knows all about things here,” she
said. “I asked her to tell me where everything is kept. But she almost
jawed me to death with her abuse.... Sir, do listen to me....”
Schmucke looked up at the woman, and she went on, innocent of any
barbarous intention, for women of her class are accustomed to take the
worst of moral suffering passively, as a matter of course.
“We must have linen for the shroud, sir, we must have money to buy
a truckle-bed for the person to sleep upon, and some things for the
kitchen--plates, and dishes, and glasses, for a priest will be coming
to pass the night here, and the person says that there is absolutely
nothing in the kitchen.”
“And what is more, sir, I must have coal and firing if I am to get the
dinner ready,” echoed La Sauvage, “and not a thing can I find. Not that
there is anything so very surprising in that, as La Cibot used to do
everything for you--”
Schmucke lay at the feet of the dead; he heard nothing, knew nothing,
saw nothing. Mme. Cantinet pointed to him. “My dear woman, you would not
believe me,” she said. “Whatever you say, he does not answer.”
“Very well, child,” said La Sauvage; “now I will show you what to do in
a case of this kind.”
She looked round the room as a thief looks in search of possible
hiding-places for money; then she went straight to Pons’ chest, opened
the first drawer, saw the bag in which Schmucke had put the rest of
the money after the sale of the pictures, and held it up before him. He
nodded mechanically.
“Here is money, child,” said La Sauvage, turning to Mme. Cantinet. “I
will count it first and take enough to buy everything we want--wine,
provisions, wax-candles, all sorts of things, in fact, for there is
nothing in the house.... Just look in the drawers for a sheet to bury
him in. I certainly was told that the poor gentleman was simple, but
I don’t know what he is; he is worse. He is like a new-born child; we
shall have to feed him with a funnel.”
The women went about their work, and Schmucke looked on precisely as an
idiot might have done. Broken down with sorrow, wholly absorbed, in a
half-cataleptic state, he could not take his eyes from the face that
seemed to fascinate him, Pons’ face refined by the absolute repose of
Death. Schmucke hoped to die; everything was alike indifferent. If the
room had been on fire he would not have stirred.
“There are twelve hundred and fifty francs here,” La Sauvage told him.
Schmucke shrugged his shoulders.
But when La Sauvage came near to measure the body by laying the sheet
over it, before cutting out the shroud, a horrible struggle ensued
between her and the poor German. Schmucke was furious. He behaved like
a dog that watches by his dead master’s body, and shows his teeth at all
who try to touch it. La Sauvage grew impatient. She grasped him, set him
in the armchair, and held him down with herculean strength.
“Go on, child; sew him in his shroud,” she said, turning to Mme.
Cantinet.
As soon as this operation was completed, La Sauvage set Schmucke back in
his place at the foot of the bed.
“Do you understand?” said she. “The poor dead man lying there must be
done up, there is no help for it.”
Schmucke began to cry. The women left him and took possession of the
kitchen, whither they brought all the necessaries in a very short time.
La Sauvage made out a preliminary statement accounting for three hundred
and sixty francs, and then proceeded to prepare a dinner for four
persons. And what a dinner! A fat goose (the cobbler’s pheasant) by way
of a substantial roast, an omelette with preserves, a salad, and the
inevitable broth--the quantities of the ingredients for this last being
so excessive that the soup was more like a strong meat-jelly.