Cousin Pons

Remonencq’s eyes lighted up till they glowed like carbuncles, at the sight of the gold snuff-boxes. Fraisier, cool and calm as a serpent, or some snake-creature with the power of rising erect, stood with his viper head stretched out, in such an attitude as a painter would choose for Mephistopheles. The three covetous beings, thirsting for gold as devils thirst for the dew of heaven, looked simultaneously, as it chanced, at the owner of all this wealth. Some nightmare troubled Pons; he stirred, and suddenly, under the influence of those diabolical glances, he opened his eyes with a shrill cry.

“Thieves!.. There they are!.. Help! Murder! Help!”

The nightmare was evidently still upon him, for he sat up in bed, staring before him with blank, wide-open eyes, and had not the power to move.

Elie Magus and Remonencq made for the door, but a word glued them to the spot.

“Magus here!.. I am betrayed!”

Instinctively the sick man had known that his beloved pictures were in danger, a thought that touched him at least as closely as any dread for himself, and he awoke. Fraisier meanwhile did not stir.

“Mme. Cibot! who is that gentleman?” cried Pons, shivering at the sight.

“Goodness me! how could I put him out of the door?” she inquired, with a wink and gesture for Fraisier’s benefit. “This gentleman came just a minute ago, from your family.”

Fraisier could not conceal his admiration for La Cibot.

“Yes, sir,” he said, “I have come on behalf of Mme. la Presidente de Marville, her husband, and her daughter, to express their regret. They learned quite by accident that you are ill, and they would like to nurse you themselves. They want you to go to Marville and get well there. Mme. la Vicomtesse Popinot, the little Cecile that you love so much, will be your nurse. She took your part with her mother. She convinced Mme. de Marville that she had made a mistake.”

“So my next-of-kin have sent you to me, have they?” Pons exclaimed indignantly, “and sent the best judge and expert in all Paris with you to show you the way? Oh! a nice commission!” he cried, bursting into wild laughter. “You have come to value my pictures and curiosities, my snuff-boxes and miniatures!.. Make your valuation. You have a man there who understands everything, and more – he can buy everything, for he is a millionaire ten times over… My dear relatives will not have long to wait,” he added, with bitter irony, “they have choked the last breath out of me… Ah! Mme. Cibot, you said you were a mother to me, and you bring dealers into the house, and my competitor and the Camusots, while I am asleep!.. Get out, all of you! – ”

The unhappy man was beside himself with anger and fear; he rose from the bed and stood upright, a gaunt, wasted figure.

“Take my arm, sir,” said La Cibot, rushing to the rescue, lest Pons should fall. “Pray calm yourself, the gentlemen are gone.”

“I want to see the salon…” said the death-stricken man. La Cibot made a sign to the three ravens to take flight. Then she caught up Pons as if he had been a feather, and put him in bed again, in spite of his cries. When she saw that he was quite helpless and exhausted, she went to shut the door on the staircase. The three who had done Pons to death were still on the landing; La Cibot told them to wait. She heard Fraisier say to Magus:

“Let me have it in writing, and sign it, both of you. Undertake to pay nine hundred thousand francs in cash for M. Pons’ collection, and we will see about putting you in the way of making a handsome profit.”

With that he said something to La Cibot in a voice so low that the others could not catch it, and went down after the two dealers to the porter’s room.

“Have they gone, Mme. Cibot?” asked the unhappy Pons, when she came back again.

“Gone?.. who?” asked she.

“Those men.”

“What men? There, now, you have seen men,” said she. “You have just had a raving fit; if it hadn’t been for me you would have gone out the window, and now you are still talking of men in the room. Is it always to be like this?”

“What! was there not a gentleman here just now, saying that my relatives had sent him?”

“Will you still stand me out?” said she. “Upon my word, do you know where you ought to be sent? – To the asylum at Charenton. You see men – ”

“Elie Magus, Remonencq, and – ”

“Oh! as for Remonencq, you may have seen him, for he came up to tell me that my poor Cibot is so bad that I must clear out of this and come down. My Cibot comes first, you see. When my husband is ill, I can think of nobody else. Try to keep quiet and sleep for a couple of hours; I have sent for Dr. Poulain, and I will come up with him… Take a drink and be good – ”

“Then was there no one in the room just now, when I waked?..”

“No one,” said she. “You must have seen M. Remonencq in one of your looking-glasses.”

“You are right, Mme. Cibot,” said Pons, meek as a lamb.

“Well, now you are sensible again… Good-bye, my cherub; keep quiet, I shall be back again in a minute.”

When Pons heard the outer door close upon her, he summoned up all his remaining strength to rise.

“They are cheating me,” he muttered to himself, “they are robbing me! Schmucke is a child that would let them tie him up in a sack.”

The terrible scene had seemed so real, it could not be a dream, he thought; a desire to throw light upon the puzzle excited him; he managed to reach the door, opened it after many efforts, and stood on the threshold of his salon. There they were – his dear pictures, his statues, his Florentine bronzes, his porcelain; the sight of them revived him. The old collector walked in his dressing-gown along the narrow spaces between the credence-tables and the sideboards that lined the wall; his feet bare, his head on fire. His first glance of ownership told him that everything was there; he turned to go back to bed again, when he noticed that a Greuze portrait looked out of the frame that had held Sebastian del Piombo’s Templar. Suspicion flashed across his brain, making his dark thoughts apparent to him, as a flash of lightning marks the outlines of the cloud-bars on a stormy sky. He looked round for the eight capital pictures of the collection; each one of them was replaced by another. A dark film suddenly overspread his eyes; his strength failed him; he fell fainting upon the polished floor.

So heavy was the swoon, that for two hours he lay as he fell, till Schmucke awoke and went to see his friend, and found him lying unconscious in the salon. With endless pains Schmucke raised the half-dead body and laid it on the bed; but when he came to question the death-stricken man, and saw the look in the dull eyes and heard the vague, inarticulate words, the good German, so far from losing his head, rose to the very heroism of friendship. Man and child as he was, with the pressure of despair came the inspiration of a mother’s tenderness, a woman’s love. He warmed towels (he found towels!), he wrapped them about Pons’ hands, he laid them over the pit of the stomach; he took the cold, moist forehead in his hands, he summoned back life with a might of will worthy of Apollonius of Tyana, laying kisses on his friend’s eyelids like some Mary bending over the dead Christ, in a pieta carved in bas-relief by some great Italian sculptor. The divine effort, the outpouring of one life into another, the work of mother and of lover, was crowned with success. In half an hour the warmth revived Pons; he became himself again, the hues of life returned to his eyes, suspended faculties gradually resumed their play under the influence of artificial heat; Schmucke gave him balm-water with a little wine in it; the spirit of life spread through the body; intelligence lighted up the forehead so short a while ago insensible as a stone; and Pons knew that he had been brought back to life, by what sacred devotion, what might of friendship!

“But for you, I should die,” he said, and as he spoke he felt the good German’s tears falling on his face. Schmucke was laughing and crying at once.

Poor Schmucke! he had waited for those words with a frenzy of hope as costly as the frenzy of despair; and now his strength utterly failed him, he collapsed like a rent balloon. It was his turn to fall; he sank into the easy-chair, clasped his hands, and thanked God in fervent prayer. For him a miracle had just been wrought. He put no belief in the efficacy of the prayer of his deeds; the miracle had been wrought by God in direct answer to his cry. And yet that miracle was a natural effect, such as medical science often records.

A sick man, surrounded by those who love him, nursed by those who wish earnestly that he should live, will recover (other things being equal), when another patient tended by hirelings will die. Doctors decline to see unconscious magnetism in this phenomenon; for them it is the result of intelligent nursing, of exact obedience to their orders; but many a mother knows the virtue of such ardent projection of strong, unceasing prayer.

“My good Schmucke – ”

“Say nodings; I shall hear you mit mein heart… rest, rest!” said Schmucke, smiling at him.

“Poor friend, noble creature, child of God, living in God!.. The one being that has loved me…” The words came out with pauses between them; there was a new note, a something never heard before, in Pons’ voice. All the soul, so soon to take flight, found utterance in the words that filled Schmucke with happiness almost like a lover’s rapture.

“Yes, yes. I shall be shtrong as a lion. I shall vork for two!”

“Listen, my good, my faithful, adorable friend. Let me speak, I have not much time left. I am a dead man. I cannot recover from these repeated shocks.”

Schmucke was crying like a child.

“Just listen,” continued Pons, “and cry afterwards. As a Christian, you must submit. I have been robbed. It is La Cibot’s doing… I ought to open your eyes before I go; you know nothing of life… Somebody has taken away eight of the pictures, and they were worth a great deal of money.”

“Vorgif me – I sold dem.”

“You sold them?”

“Yes, I,” said poor Schmucke. “Dey summoned us to der court – ”

“Summoned?… Who summoned us?”

“Wait,” said Schmucke. He went for the bit of stamped-paper left by the bailiff, and gave it to Pons. Pons read the scrawl through with close attention, then he let the paper drop and lay quite silent for a while. A close observer of the work of men’s hands, unheedful so far of the workings of the brain, Pons finally counted out the threads of the plot woven about him by La Cibot. The artist’s fire, the intellect that won the Roman scholarship – all his youth came back to him for a little.

“My good Schmucke,” he said at last, “you must do as I tell you, and obey like a soldier. Listen! go downstairs into the lodge and tell that abominable woman that I should like to see the person sent to me by my cousin the President; and that unless he comes, I shall leave my collection to the Musee. Say that a will is in question.”

Schmucke went on his errand; but at the first word, La Cibot answered by a smile.

“My good M. Schmucke, our dear invalid has had a delirious fit; he thought that there were men in the room. On my word, as an honest woman, no one has come from the family.”

Schmucke went back with his answer, which he repeated word for word.

“She is cleverer, more astute and cunning and wily, than I thought,” said Pons with a smile. “She lies even in her room. Imagine it! This morning she brought a Jew here, Elie Magus by name, and Remonencq, and a third whom I do not know, more terrific than the other two put together. She meant to make a valuation while I was asleep; I happened to wake, and saw them all three, estimating the worth of my snuff-boxes. The stranger said, indeed, that the Camusots had sent him here; I spoke to him… That shameless woman stood me out that I was dreaming!.. My good Schmucke, it was not a dream. I heard the man perfectly plainly; he spoke to me… The two dealers took fright and made for the door… I thought that La Cibot would contradict herself – the experiment failed… I will lay another snare, and trap the wretched woman… Poor Schmucke, you think that La Cibot is an angel; and for this month past she has been killing me by inches to gain her covetous ends. I would not believe that a woman who served us faithfully for years could be so wicked. That doubt has been my ruin… How much did the eight pictures fetch?”

“Vife tausend vrancs.”

“Good heavens! they were worth twenty times as much!” cried Pons; “the gems of the collection! I have not time now to institute proceedings; and if I did, you would figure in court as the dupe of those rascals. … A lawsuit would be the death of you. You do not know what justice means – a court of justice is a sink of iniquity… At the sight of such horrors, a soul like yours would give way. And besides, you will have enough. The pictures cost me forty thousand francs. I have had them for thirty-six years… Oh, we have been robbed with surprising dexterity. I am on the brink of the grave, I care for nothing now but thee – for thee, the best soul under the sun…

“I will not have you plundered; all that I have is yours. So you must trust nobody, Schmucke, you that have never suspected any one in your life. I know God watches over you, but He may forget for one moment, and you will be seized like a vessel among pirates… La Cibot is a monster! She is killing me; and you think her an angel! You shall see what she is. Go and ask her to give you the name of a notary, and I will show you her with her hand in the bag.”

Schmucke listened as if Pons proclaimed an apocalypse. Could so depraved a creature as La Cibot exist? If Pons was right, it seemed to imply that there was no God in the world. He went right down again to Mme. Cibot.

“Mein boor vriend Bons feel so ill,” he said, “dat he vish to make his vill. Go und pring ein nodary.”

This was said in the hearing of several persons, for Cibot’s life was despaired of. Remonencq and his sister, two women from neighboring porters’ lodges, two or three servants, and the lodger from the first floor on the side next the street, were all standing outside in the gateway.

“Oh! you can just fetch a notary yourself, and have your will made as you please,” cried La Cibot, with tears in her eyes. “My poor Cibot is dying, and it is no time to leave him. I would give all the Ponses in the world to save Cibot, that has never given me an ounce of unhappiness in these thirty years since we were married.”

And in she went, leaving Schmucke in confusion.

“Is M. Pons really seriously ill, sir?” asked the first-floor lodger, one Jolivard, a clerk in the registrar’s office at the Palais de Justice.

“He nearly died chust now,” said Schmucke, with deep sorrow in his voice.

“M. Trognon lives near by in the Rue Saint-Louis,” said M. Jolivard, “he is the notary of the quarter.”

“Would you like me to go for him?” asked Remonencq.

“I should pe fery glad,” said Schmucke; “for gif Montame Zipod cannot pe mit mine vriend, I shall not vish to leaf him in der shtate he is in – ”

“Mme. Cibot told us that he was going out of his mind,” resumed Jolivard.

“Bons! out off his mind!” cried Schmucke, terror-stricken by the idea. “Nefer vas he so clear in der head… dat is chust der reason vy I am anxious for him.”

The little group of persons listened to the conversation with a very 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 – ”