Cousin Pons

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘But she’s a vixen, a monster,’ cried the Présidente, adopting her gentle, fluting tone of voice. Fraisier was inwardly amused at the thought of sharing this particular affectation with the Présidente. He well knew what value to assign to these soft modulations of a naturally grating voice. Her hypocrisy reminded him of a judge who is the hero of a story by Louis XI – the latter’s authorship is indicated in the final sentence. This magistrate was blessed with a wife cut to the same pattern as Socrates’s wife. But he was less of a philosopher than Socrates, and so he had salt mixed with his horses’ oats and stopped their water ration. One day, when his wife was riding alongside the Seine to their country house, these thirsty beasts dragged her off with them into the river – and the magistrate gave thanks to Providence for relieving him of his spouse in so ‘natural’ a way. At this moment Madame de Marville was giving thanks to her Maker for putting Pons in the care of a woman ready to rid her of him in so ‘respectable’ a way.

  ‘I would not,’ she declared, ‘accept a million acquired by indelicate means… Your friend should enlighten Monsieur Pons and get the concierge dismissed.’

  ‘In the first place, Madame, Messieurs Schmucke and Pons regard this woman as an angel: it’s my friend they would dismiss. In the second place, this dreadful oyster-woman is the doctor’s benefactor – she recommended him to Monsieur Pillerault. He urges this woman to be extremely gentle with the sick man; but his injunctions only serve to show this creature how to aggravate his complaint.’

  ‘What does your friend think of my cousin’s condition?’

  ‘In six weeks his estate will be up for probate!’ So apt was Fraisier’s reply, and so lucid his assessment of her motives, no less greedy than those of La Cibot, that Madame de Marville gave a start. Her eyes dropped.

  ‘Poor man!’ she said, in a vain attempt to put on an expression of sadness.

  ‘Madame, you may have a message for Monsieur Lebœuf. I shall take the train to Mantes.’

  ‘Yes, wait here. I will write him an invitation to dine with us tomorrow. I must get in contact with him in order to repair the injustice from which you have suffered.’

  Once the Présidente had left him, Fraisier already saw himself as a justice of the peace. He was transformed. He looked twice his size. He was filling his lungs with deep draughts of happiness and the balmy breeze of success. From the springs of that mysterious force, will-power, from its divine essence, he was drawing fresh and heady gulps. Like Rémonencq he felt capable of committing any crime to achieve his ends – so long as nothing could be proved against him. He had gone ahead boldly with the Présidente, putting forward possibilities as facts, making unwarranted assertions with the sole aim of persuading her to let him salvage this inheritance and so earn her goodwill. Representing two persons who were immeasurably eager to escape from immeasurable indigence, he now spurned the idea of maintaining his revolting establishment in the rue de la Perle. He counted on getting a retainer of three thousand francs from La Cibot and five thousand from the Présidente. With this he could acquire a suitable flat. And finally, he would be able to fulfil his obligation to Dr Poulain. Some kinds of men are full of hatred and bitterness and inclined to malevolence through suffering and ill-health: yet they can go just as violently to the opposite extreme of benevolence. Richelieu, for example, was no less kind as a friend than he was cruel as an enemy. So grateful was Fraisier for the help Poulain had given him that he would willingly have let himself be cut in pieces for him.

  The Présidente came in again with a letter in her hand, and, before he was aware of her return, she scrutinized this man who was looking forward so much to a happy life and a comfortable income. She found him less ugly than when she had first inspected him. After all, he was going to be useful, and a convenient tool is always looked on with greater favour than one who is serving another’s interest.

  ‘Monsieur Fraisier,’ she said, ‘you have proved that you are a man of intelligence, and I believe you are capable of speaking your mind.’

  Fraisier’s answering gesture was more eloquent than words.

  ‘Well,’ the Présidente continued, ‘I want a candid answer to this question. Are Monsieur de Marville and myself likely to be compromised by the steps you are about to take?’

  ‘I should not have come to see you, Madame, if there were any likelihood of my one day bespattering you with mud, even so little as would stand on a pin-head. Even so tiny a speck would seem as big as the moon. You are forgetting, Madame, that if I am to become a justice of the peace in Paris, I have to satisfy you first. I have had one lesson in my life, too hard a one for me to risk qualifying for a similar drubbing. One word in conclusion, Madame: every step I take will be submitted to you beforehand for your consideration.’

  ‘Very good. Here is the letter for Monsieur Lebœuf. I shall now await information about the value of the inheritance.’

  ‘That’s the essential thing,’ said the subtle Fraisier as he bowed low to the Présidente with as much grace as his physiognomy would permit.

  ‘How providential!’ thought Madame Camusot de Marville. ‘I shall be rich! Camusot will be elected deputy, for if I give Fraisier a free hand in the Bolbec constituency, he will get a majority of votes for us. What a useful tool he will be!’

  ‘How providential!’ thought Fraisier, as he walked downstairs. ‘What a fine partner Madame Camusot will make! I could do with a wife like her! Now I must get to work!’

  And he set off for Mantes, where he had to gain the good graces of a man he scarcely knew. But he was counting on Madame Vatinelle who, alas, had been responsible for all his misfortunes. Troubles arising out of love are often as it were the protested bill of exchange drawn by an honest debtor: they bear interest!

  22. A warning to old bachelors

  THREE days later, while Schmucke was asleep – Madame Cibot and he had already shared out the burden of nursing and watching over the patient – she had had what she called a ‘set-to’ with poor Pons. It is worth while calling attention to a regrettable peculiarity about hepatitis. Sick people suffering from a more or less serious liver disease are inclined to impatience and bad temper, and these fits of anger give them temporary relief; just as, in a bout of fever, a man feels he has enormous strength at his command. The bout passes off, and prostration ensues – collapsus as the doctors call it – and then the enfeeblement which the organism has undergone is appreciated in all its gravity. Likewise, in liver diseases, particularly those brought on by great mental distress, after these passionate outbursts the patient sinks into a condition of debility the more dangerous because he is subjected to a strict diet. It is a sort of fever which disturbs the interaction of the humours, for its seat is neither in the blood nor the brain. This agitation, affecting the whole person, brings on a melancholy which induces self-hatred in the patient. In such a situation, anything can set up a dangerous irritation. In spite of the doctor’s recommendations, La Cibot, a working-class woman with neither experience nor education, had no belief in this theory of the excitation of the nervous system by the humoral system. In her view Dr Poulain’s explanations were just ‘doctor’s fads’. Like all the common people, she insisted on feeding Pons up, and, to stop her surreptitiously giving him ham, rich omelettes or vanilla chocolate, no less was needed than a stern admonition from the doctor:

  ‘Give a single mouthful of anything whatsoever to Monsieur Pons, and you will kill him as surely as if you put a pistol to his head.’

  The obstinacy of the lower orders in this respect is so great that the reluctance of sick people to go into hospital is due to the popular conviction that hospitals starve their patients to death. The mortality caused by wives smuggling in food for their husbands is so high that doctors have had to insist on relatives being subjected to a very rigorous search on visiting days.

  La Cibot, desirous of provoking a momentary quarrel with Pons – necessary for the realization of her more immediate project – told him about her visit to the theatre ma
nager; nor did she leave out her ‘squabble’ with the dancer, Mademoiselle Héloïse.

  ‘But why did you go there?’ asked the sick man for the third time, having been unable to stem La Cibot’s torrent of words.

  ‘Anyway, when I told her off, this Mademoiselle Héloïse, she saw what I was made of and drew her claws in, and after that we were the best friends in the world…. Now you asked me what I was doing there,’ she added, repeating Pons’s question. Some garrulous people who have a genius for garrulity, gather up interruptions, objections and observations as reserve provision for further discourse – as if the supply of this could ever dry up!

  ‘Well, I went there to get Monsieur Gaudissart out of a fix. He wants music for a ballet, and you’re hardly in a state, dearie, to scribble anything down on music-paper and do the job… I heard him say right out that he’d call in a Monsieur Garangeot to set The Mohicans to music…’

  ‘Garangeot!’ cried Pons in a fury. ‘Garangeot, who has no talent at all! Why, I refused to take him on as first violin! No doubt he’s a man of wit who can write good music reviews, but I defy him to compose a tune… And where on earth did you get the notion of going to the theatre?’

  ‘Aren’t you a pig-headed old thing!… Look, ducky, don’t boil over like a saucepan of milk… Now could you write music in the state you’re in? Have you taken a peep at yourself in the looking-glass? Shall I bring you one? You’re all skin and bone… You’re as weak as a kitten… And you think you’re able to write out the notes… when you can’t even sign one for me… That reminds me, I must go up to the third-floor tenant. He owes us seventeen francs – it’s worth picking up, seventeen francs: once the chemist is paid, we haven’t twenty francs left!… So Monsieur Gaudissart had to be told… He looks a decent sort, and he’s got a lovely name… He’s a real hail-fellow-well-met character who’d suit me fine… He’ll never have anything wrong with his liver… So I was bound to tell him how you were doing… What else could I do? You’re in a bad way, and he’s had to replace you for the time being…’

  ‘Replace me!’ cried Pons in a thunderous voice, sitting up in bed.

  As a rule sick people, especially those already within the sweep of Death’s scythe, cling to their posts with a frenzy as great as that of beginners trying to obtain them. And so, to the poor suffering man, the news of his being replaced sounded like a death-knell.

  ‘But the doctor told me I’m getting on very nicely, that I shall soon be back to normal. You have killed me, ruined me, murdered me!…’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense! Off you go again!’ La Cibot exclaimed. ‘That’s right, I’m putting the rope round your neck! You’re always saying nice things like that about me to Monsieur Schmucke, I’ll bet, once my back’s turned. I know very well what you mean, indeed I do!… You’re an ungrateful old monster.’

  ‘But you don’t realize that if I take more than another fortnight to get better I shall be told, when I do get back, that I’m an old fogey, an old fossil, a back-number, antiquated, an Empire relic!’ said the old man, so ill, and yet still so intent on living. ‘Garangeot must have been toadying throughout the whole theatre from the box-office to the flies. He’ll have been transposing the music for actresses who can’t reach the high notes, licking Gaudissart’s boots, persuading his cronies to cry up the whole cast in the newspapers. What’s more, Madame Cibot, in a thieves’ kitchen like that they’d think nothing of skinning a gnat for its hide. What demon took you there?’

  ‘Goodness me, Monsieur Schmucke talked it over with me for a week. What do you expect? You think of nobody but yourself. You’re so selfish you don’t mind wearing people out who are trying to get you better!… But Monsieur Schmucke has been at the end of his tether for a month; it’s as if he was walking over red-hot coals; he can’t go anywhere, he can’t give his lessons or do his work in the theatre. Have you no eyes in your head? He watches over you every night as I do in the day. As sure as I stand here, if I sat up all night as I tried to at first when I thought you’d soon be all right, I’d have to sleep the day through. And who’d look after the cleaning and everything else?… What’s the good of complaining? When you’re ill, you’re ill, and that’s all there is to it…’

  ‘Schmucke simply can’t have thought of doing that.’

  ‘So now you’re saying I took it upon myself? Do you think we’re made of iron? Look, if Monsieur Schmucke had gone on giving seven or eight lessons a day and then spending the evenings from half-past six to half-past eleven conducting, he’d have been dead in another fortnight. Do you want the dear man to die, and him ready to give his life’s blood for you? I’ll take my oath on it, nobody’s ever known a patient like you. Where’s your common sense? Have you taken it to the pawn-shop? Everybody here’s killing themselves for you, we’re doing the best we can, and all you can do is grumble… Do you want to drive us raving mad?… Me to begin with – I’m dead beat, and there’s worse to come!’

  La Cibot was free to go on ranting, since Pons was too angry to utter a word. He was rolling over and over in his bed, giving vent to half-inarticulate protests before sinking into a state of exhaustion. As always, once this stage was reached, the quarrel suddenly took an affectionate turn. La Cibot rushed over to the sick man, held his head, forced him to lie back and drew the blankets over him.

  ‘Fancy getting yourself into such a state! Never mind, ducky, after all it’s your liver to blame. That’s what good Monsieur Poulain says. Come on now, quieten down. Behave like a good lad. You’re the idol of everybody who comes near you, and even the doctor himself comes as often as twice a day. What would he say if he found you all worked up like this? You just get me wild… You ought to be ashamed of yourself… When you’ve Mamma Cibot to care for you, you ought to be kind to her… You go on talking and shouting, and you’ve been told not to! Talking puts you into a tantrum… And why lose your temper? It’s you that’s in the wrong. You always rub me up the wrong way. Look now, be sensible: Monsieur Schmucke and myself – you’re as dear to me as my own heart’s blood – we’re acting for the best… So there, my cherub, it’s all right, see?’

  ‘Schmucke would never have told you to go to the theatre without consulting me…’

  ‘Let’s wake him, shall we, the poor dear man, sleeping like the blessed angel he is, and see what he says about it?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ cried Pons. ‘If my good tender Schmucke took this decision, perhaps I’m more ill than I thought?’ And he cast a lamentably melancholy glance round the room at the objects of art it contained. ‘I shall have to say good-bye to my pictures and all the things I’ve doted on… and to my wonderful Schmucke as well… Oh, can it be true?’

  La Cibot, black-hearted actress that she was, dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief, and this wordless reply plunged the sick man into gloomy meditation. Prostrate under the blows delivered at his two tenderest spots – social life and good health, the loss of his livelihood and the prospect of death – he collapsed so completely that he no longer had the strength to fly into a rage. He lay there as dejected as a consumptive after a final spasm of coughing.

  ‘Look now, if you had any consideration for Monsieur Schmucke,’ said La Cibot, seeing that no fight was left in her victim, ‘you’d do well to send for the district notary, Monsieur Trognon, a very decent man.’

  ‘You’re always talking about this man Trognon,’ said the patient.

  ‘Oh well, him or anybody else, what’s it matter, for all I’m likely to get out of you!’

  And she shook her head in proof of her contempt for riches. Quiet reigned once more.

  *

  At this moment, awakened by hunger after sleeping for more than six hours, Schmucke got up, entered Pons’s room and contemplated him for a while in silence – for Madame Cibot had put a finger to her mouth and murmured: ‘Hush!’

  Then she stood up, drew near to the German, and said in a whisper:

  ‘Thank the Lord, he’s off to sleep. He’s as cross as two sticks… It can
’t be helped; it’s his disease he has to fight against.’

  ‘Not at all. On the contrary, I am very patient,’ the victim replied in a doleful tone which showed how utterly dejected he was. ‘My dear Schmucke, she actually went to the theatre to lose me my job.’

  He stopped short, and had not the strength to finish. La Cibot took advantage of this pause to make a sign to Schmucke indicating that Pons was going out of his mind, and said:

  ‘Don’t argue with him. It would kill him…’

  ‘What’s more,’ Pons continued, gazing at the honest Schmucke, ‘She makes out it was you who sent her.’

  ‘It vass me,’ replied Schmucke, heroically. ‘It hat to pe… Say nossink… let us safe you!… It iss matness to vear yourself out vorkink ven you haf a fortune… Get veil again, ve vill sell a pit off pric-a-prac unt ve will ent our dayss in some qviet corner, viz zis goot Matam Cipot…’

  ‘She’s talked you over!’ said Pons in rueful tones. The sick man could not see Madame Cibot, who had taken her stance behind the bed to conceal from Pons the signs she was making to Schmucke: he thought she had gone.

  ‘She’s murdering me!’ he added.

  ‘Murdering you, am I,’ she said with blazing eyes and arms akimbo. ‘So that’s the reward I get for fussing over you like a pet poodle. God in Heaven!’

  She burst into tears and sank into a chair. This piece of tragic mummery had a disastrous effect on Pons’s condition.