Cousin Pons

by Honoré de Balzac

  These great works, housed as the children of royalty should be, filled the whole of the first floor in the mansion which Elias Magus had had most splendidly restored. At the windows hung curtains of the finest Venetian gold brocade. On the floors were laid the most superb carpets ever woven in the Savonnerie workshops. His pictures – numbering about a hundred – were enclosed in the most splendid frames, which had all been intelligently regilded by the only gilder in Paris whom Elias regarded as conscientious, namely Servais. The old Jew himself had taught Servais to use English gold-leaf, which is infinitely superior to that produced by the French gold-beaters. In the art of gilding, Servais is equal to Thouvenin in the art of bookbinding: both of them are in love with their craft. The windows of these apartments were protected by shutters lined with sheet-iron. Elias Magus occupied two attic rooms on the second floor; they were poorly furnished, with his own shoddy and tattered garments scattered about them, and they smelt of the ghetto, for he was finishing his days in conformity with the habits of a lifetime.

  The ground floor was entirely given over to such pictures as the Jew was still buying and selling, and the storage of crates from far and wide. It also contained an immense workshop in which Moret, the cleverest of our picture-restorers and one of those who ought to be employed at the Louvre, worked almost exclusively for him. In addition there were the rooms occupied by his daughter, the fruit of his old age; a beautiful girl, like all Jewesses who reincarnate the Asian type in all its purity and nobility. Noémi was guarded by two fanatically devoted Jewish serving-maids, but her chief guard was a Polish Jew named Abramko, a man who had been implicated in the Polish risings – a marvellous find for Elias Magus, who had come to his rescue as a mere matter of speculation. Abramko was the concierge of this silent, gloomy and deserted mansion, and the lodge he occupied was protected by three remarkably ferocious dogs: a Newfoundland, a Pyrenean mountain-dog and an English bulldog.

  Elias used to go off on his travels with no misgivings; he lived in complete tranquillity of mind, and had no fears for the safety either of his daughter, who was his paramount treasure, or of his pictures, or of his gold. This sense of security was based on the following carefully pondered precautions. Every year Abramko was paid two hundred francs more than the previous year; he was to receive nothing at his master’s death, but the latter was training him in the practice of usury throughout the district. Abramko never opened the main door to anyone before peering through a spy-hole fitted with stout iron bars. This doorkeeper was as strong as Hercules and worshipped Magus as Sancho Panza worshipped Don Quixote. The dogs were kept chained up all day long, and had not a morsel of food. But at night time Abramko let them loose, and the cunning old Jew had arranged that they should take up their stance, one in the garden, at the base of a post with a piece of meat fastened to the top, the second in the courtyard under a similar post, and the third in the great hall on the ground floor. You will understand that these dogs, already prompted by instinct to guard the house, were themselves kept under guard by the pangs of hunger. Not for the most alluring bitch would they have abandoned their vigil at the base of their greasy poles; they only moved away to go sniffing here and there. Should an intruder appear, all three dogs imagined that he was after their food – and this was only brought down to them in the morning when Abramko woke up. This infernal device had one tremendous advantage: the dogs never barked; Elias’s ingenious training had made them savage, and they had become as crafty as Mohicans. There had been an occasion when some malefactors, emboldened by the prevailing silence, were reckless enough to suppose that they could ‘clean out’ the Jew’s money chest. The man who was selected to lead the attempt scaled the garden wall and got ready to climb down inside, while the bulldog, who had heard him quite well, bided his time. As soon as the man’s foot was within reach of the dog’s jaws, he bit it clean off and ate it. The thief had enough stamina to get back over the wall and to hobble away on the stump of his leg before falling unconscious into his comrades’ arms; and they carried him away. The Police-Court Gazette did not fail to report this delightful ‘Paris-by-Night’ episode, but it was taken to be no more than a piece of journalism.

  Magus was then seventy-five, and quite capable of reaching his century. Though rich, he lived like the Rémonencqs. His total budget, including what he lavished on his daughter, amounted to three thousand francs a year.

  No mode of existence could be more methodical than his. He rose at daybreak and munched some bread rubbed with garlic, and that kept him going till dinner-time. Dinner, monastically frugal, was a family affair. Between getting up and midday this monomaniac spent his time walking to and fro among the masterpieces with which his apartments were adorned. He dusted everything, furniture and pictures alike, never flagging in admiration. Then he went down to his daughter’s rooms to enjoy the intoxication of paternal bliss, before setting off on his business in Paris – attending sales, visiting exhibitions, and so on. When a masterpiece was available within his terms, he came to life: here was a trap to set, a deal to bring off, a battle to win. He resorted to every conceivable trick in order to get his new Sultana cheaply! Magus had his own map of Europe with every masterpiece marked on it, and at every relevant spot he had co-religionists who kept their eyes open on his behalf in return for a commission – but the reward was meagre for the amount of vigilance entailed!

  Where are the two lost Raphael pictures so persistently searched for by Raphael enthusiasts? Magus has them! He owns the original of Giorgione’s Portrait of his Mistress – the woman who caused this painter’s death. Other supposed originals are merely copies of this famous canvas, worth half a million francs according to Magus himself. This same Jew owns Titian’s masterpiece, The Entombment of Christ, which was painted for Charles V of Spain and sent by the great artist to the great emperor with a letter in Titian’s own hand-writing pasted underneath the picture. He owns another original work by the same artist – the maquette which served as a model for all his portraits of Philip the Second. The ninety-seven remaining pictures are all of equal power and distinction. And so Magus scoffs at our Paris Museum, with which the sunlight plays havoc, gnawing away at the finest canvases as it streams through window-panes whose action is equivalent to that of burning-glasses. The only possible picture galleries are those with ceiling lighting. Magus himself used to open and close the shutters in his museum. He took as much care and pains with his pictures as he did with his daughter, the only other idol he worshipped! Certainly this fanatical lover of pictures was well versed in all that pertains to the pictorial art. He held that masterpieces had a life of their own: they changed from day to day: their beauty depended on the light which brought out their tints. He talked about them as the Dutch florists used to talk about their tulips. He would come and look at some particular picture at the time of day when the great work was resplendent in all its glory, when the atmosphere was clear and pure.

  He was himself like an animate picture in the midst of all these inanimate ones, this little old man in his shabby frock-coat, ten-year-old waistcoat and dirty trousers; with his bald head, his sunken cheeks, his white quivering porcupine beard, his aggressive pointed chin, his toothless mouth, the canine gleam in his eyes, his bony shrivelled hands, his obelisk nose, his cold rough skin – gloating over these lovely creations of genius! The sight of a Jew with a three-million treasure around him will always be one of the finest spectacles the human race can offer. Our great actor, Frédérick Lemaître, superb as he is, cannot rise to poetry like this. Of all the cities in the world, Paris is the one which harbours the greatest numbers of such strange figures, so devoted to their particular religion. The eccentrics in London always grow tired of their enthusiasms in the end, just as they grow tired of life itself, whereas your Parisian monomaniac goes on living with his fantasy in blissful spiritual concubinage. In Paris you will often come upon people like Pons or Elias Magus. They dress like tramps, and have their heads in the clouds like the permanent secretary of the Fren
ch Academy. They look as if they cared about nothing and were devoid of feeling. They never turn round to look at a woman or gaze in a shop-window. You would think their ambling progress haphazard, purposeless and brainless, and wonder to what strange tribe of Parisians they belonged. The answer is this: they are millionaires, collectors, the most impassioned men on the face of the earth: men quite capable of venturing into the miry regions of the police-courts in order to lay hands on a cup, a picture or a rare exhibit – Elias Magus himself had actually had this experience once in Germany.

  Such then was the expert to whose house Rémonencq furtively escorted La Cibot. Rémonencq was in the habit of consulting Magus every time he met him in the street; and on several occasions the Jew had induced Abramko to lend money to this erstwhile street-porter, for he knew he could depend upon him. Since the Chaussée des Minimes was only a stone’s throw from the rue de Normandie, the two conspirators took only ten minutes to get there.

  ‘You’re going to meet the richest of the retired antique dealers in Paris,’ said Rémonencq, ‘the greatest expert in town.’

  Madame Cibot was stupefied when she found herself in the presence of a little old man wearing a greatcoat which would scarcely have been worth taking to Cibot for repair. He was watching a painter who was busy restoring pictures in a cold room on the spacious ground floor. She trembled when the old man’s glance fell on her: his eyes were as coldly malevolent as those of a cat.

  ‘What do you want, Rémonencq?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d like to have some pictures valued, and you are the only person in Paris who can tell a poor old tinker like me how much he can pay for them when he’s not rolling in money like you!’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘This is the concierge who looks after the gentleman who owns them. I have arranged with her to…’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Monsieur Pons!’ said La Cibot.

  ‘Don’t know him,’ replied Magus with an ingenuous air as his foot softly pressed the foot of the picture-restorer.

  The latter was Moret, the painter: he was aware of the value of Pons’s collection, and his head had jerked up at the name. Only in the presence of Rémonencq and such a woman as La Cibot could the Jew have risked giving this cautionary hint. In one glance – a goldsmith’s scales would not have been more accurate than his appraisal – he had summed up the moral worth of the concierge. Neither of the visitors could know that the good Pons and Magus had often bared their fangs at one another. In fact, these two fanatical collectors were mutually envious, and that is why the old Jew’s heart had just missed a beat. He had never hoped for a chance of getting inside so well-guarded a harem! The Pons collection was the only one in Paris which could vie with the one Magus possessed. Twenty years earlier than Pons, the Jew had conceived the same idea, but Pons had always been an amateur buyer, and his museum remained closed to Magus as it was to Dusommerard. Pons and Magus were equally secretive in their heart of hearts. Neither of them relished the celebrity for which the owners of objets d’art are usually avid. So the prospect of inspecting the poor musician’s splendid collection afforded the same delight to Elias Magus as a connoisseur of women would feel if he managed to steal into the boudoir of a friend’s beautiful and jealously secluded mistress. The great respect shown by Rémonencq to this odd creature, and the spell which this undoubtedly forceful, even mysterious personality inevitably cast upon her, reduced the concierge to obedience and pliancy. La Cibot dropped the autocratic tone of voice which she used in her lodge for dealing with tenants and her ‘two gentlemen’; she accepted Magus’s stipulations and promised to take him to the Pons museum that very day. This was tantamount to introducing the enemy into the heart of the citadel and plunging a dagger into Pons’s heart. For the last ten years he had forbidden the woman to let anyone whatsoever set foot in his salon. He always carried the keys about with him, and La Cibot had obeyed him so long as she had shared Schmucke’s opinion on the value of bric-à-brac. Indeed, by regarding these treasures as ‘knick-knacks’ and deploring Pons’s mania, Schmucke had infused his contempt for such antiquated lumber into the concierge’s mind, and by so doing had safeguarded the Pons museum against all intrusion for a very long period.

  Now that Pons was bedridden, Schmucke was taking his friend’s place in the theatre and boarding-schools. The poor German could only see his friend in the mornings and at dinner, since he was trying to cope with everything and to keep all their joint clientele. But this task called on every ounce of his strength, so overwhelming was the sorrow he felt. Seeing the poor man so sad, his schoolgirl pupils and the theatre staff, all of whom he had informed of Pons’s sickness, were continually asking him for news, and the pianist’s affliction was so great that even those who were really unconcerned accorded him the same show of sympathy as people in Paris usually accord to the greatest catastrophes. The kindly German’s vital strength was as much undermined as that of Pons. He had a double burden of suffering – his own grief and his friend’s sickness. And so he went on talking of Pons during half of every lesson he gave. His teaching was subject to such naïve interruptions, as he paused to wonder how Pons was getting on, that his pupils found themselves merely listening to explanations of Pons’s malady. Between two successive lessons he would rush back to the rue de Normandie to spend a quarter of an hour with Pons. And yet, appalled as he was by the depletion of the resources they held in common, alarmed as he was by Madame Cibot’s now fortnight-old habit of swelling the sick-room expenses as much as she could, the piano-teacher’s anxiety was kept in control by such courage as he would never have thought he could muster. For the first time in his life his mind was set on earning money so that the household should not go short. Whenever a pupil, genuinely moved by the plight of the-two friends, asked Schmucke how he could bear to leave Pons quite alone, he replied, with the superior smile of a gullible man:

  ‘Matemoiselle, ve haf Matame Cipot! A treashure! A tchewel! She looks after Pons as if he vere a printce!’

  Now when Schmucke went trotting off to his work, La Cibot remained in command both of the flat and Pons. The latter had eaten nothing for a fortnight. He lay there inert. Madame Cibot herself had to lift him up and deposit him in an easy-chair while she made his bed. How could he have kept an eye on this self-styled guardian angel? Naturally, the visit she had paid to Elias Magus had occurred while Schmucke was at home for lunch.

  She had returned so as to be there just as the German was taking his leave of the patient, because, since the likely extent of Pons’s fortune had been revealed to her, she was reluctant to leave the old bachelor and she sat over him like a broody hen. She used to settle herself in a comfortable armchair at the foot of his bed, and regale him with all the gossip such women have on tap. She became wheedling, soft-spoken, attentive and fussy. And, as we shall see, she used Machiavellian tactics in order to gain ascendancy over the poor man’s mind.

  15. Tittle-tattle and tactics – elderly concierge style

  LA CIBOT had been frightened by the predictions of Madame Fontaine’s tarot pack, and had promised herself she would use gentle methods and resort merely to moral villainy in order to get her name in her master’s will. Having had no idea for ten years of the value of Pons’s collection, she credited herself with ten years of devoted, honest and disinterested service, and she proposed to convert this valuable asset into cash. Since the day when Rémonencq had with one word hinted at golden prospects and thereby hatched out in this woman’s heart a serpent – the lust for wealth – which had been contained in its shell for twenty-five years, this creature had been feeding it on all the noxious ferments which work deep down in the heart. We shall see how she carried out the advice which this serpent whispered in her ear.

  ‘Well, has our cherub had a good drink? Is he any better?’ she asked Schmucke.

  ‘He iss not veil, tear Matame Cipot, he iss not veil!’ And the German wiped away a tear.

  ‘Come on now, my dear gentleman! You�
��re getting too worried about it yourself. You have to take things as they come. Even if Cibot was on his deathbed, I shouldn’t take on the way you do. After all, our cherub’s as strong as a horse. And then, you see, it seems he’s lived clean. You just don’t know how long people who’ve lived clean last out. He’s in a bad way, sure enough, but I’ll look after him so well I’ll pull him through. Don’t fret. Go back to your work. I’ll keep him company, and see that he takes every pint of his barley-water.’