‘I’ve been saying so for a long time,’ declared one of them. ‘Monsieur Cibot wasn’t at all well.’
‘The man worked too hard,’ said another. ‘He wore himself out.’
‘He wouldn’t listen to me,’ yet another neighbour exclaimed. ‘I advised him to take a stroll on Sundays and not to work on Mondays. Two days a week’s not too much time to take for relaxation.’
In short, local gossip, that common informer to which the law lends such an attentive ear via the police superintendent, that tyrant of the lower classes, put forward quite a satisfactory explanation of the little tailor’s death. None the less, Poulain’s thoughtful air and anxious eyes caused much embarrassment to Rémonencq. That is why he had so eagerly offered to fetch Monsieur Trognon, Fraisier’s nominee, on Schmucke’s behalf.
‘I shall be back by the time the will is being drawn up,’ Fraisier whispered to La Cibot. ‘You must master your grief and keep a weather eye open.’
The little lawyer disappeared as lightly as a shadow. On the way he met his friend the doctor.
‘Ah! Poulain,’ he cried. ‘All goes well. Things look promising!… I’ll tell you about it this evening. Think out what post will suit you and you’ll get it! And I shall be justice of the peace. Tabareau will no longer refuse me his daughter… As for you, depend upon it, I’ll get you married to Mademoiselle Vitel, the grand-daughter of our present justice!’
Fraisier left Poulain to the stupefaction these heady words had aroused in him, darted into the boulevard and waved to an omnibus; ten minutes later this modern version of the stage-coach deposited him opposite the rue de Choiseul. It was nearly four. Fraisier was sure of finding the Présidente alone, because judges rarely leave the Palace before five.
Madame de Marville welcomed Fraisier with a courtesy which proved that, in accordance with the promise he had made to Madame Vatinelle, Monsieur Lebœuf had commended the former advocate of Mantes. Amélie showed almost feline friendliness to Fraisier – as the Duchesse de Montpensier must have done to Jacques Clément, the assassin of Henri III – for this little lawyer was a dagger in her hand. But when Fraisier showed her the joint letter in which Elias Magus and Rémonencq undertook to buy the whole of Pons’s collection for nine hundred thousand francs in cash, the Présidente answered her agent with a look from eyes agleam with the contemplation of such a sum. To the lawyer it was like a wave of covetousness sweeping towards him.
‘Monsieur le Président,’ she said, ‘has asked me to invite you to dinner for tomorrow. A family gathering. Our other guests will be Monsieur Godeschal, the successor of my solicitor Maître Desroches; also Berthier, my notary; also my son-in-law and my daughter… After dinner, you and I, the notary and the solicitor will have the little talk you asked for, and I will then give you your authorization. These two gentlemen will act on your suggestions as you have stipulated, and will see that the whole affair goes off satisfactorily. You will receive the power of attorney from Monsieur de Marville as soon as is necessary.’
‘I must have it on the day of the decease.’
‘It will be ready.’
‘Madame la Présidente, if I am asking for power of proxy, if I do not want your solicitor to appear in this matter, it is much less in my interests than in yours… Once I give my services, I do so without reserve… In my turn, therefore, Madame, I ask for the same loyalty, the same confidence from my protectors – I do not venture to call you my clients. You may possibly think that by acting thus I am trying to get a finger in the pie. Certainly not, Madame. If dubious measures have to be taken – when inheritances are involved one gets carried along… particularly by so weighty a consideration as nine hundred thousand francs… Well now, you would not be able to disavow a man like Maître Godeschal, who is probity itself; whereas you could put all the blame on the shoulders of a miserable little agent…’
The Présidente eyed Fraisier with admiration.
‘You could rise very high or sink very low,’ she said. ‘In your place, instead of aiming at virtual retirement as a justice of the peace, I should wish to become a public prosecutor – at Mantes… and make a great career.’
‘Leave me to my own devices, Madame. The office of justice of the peace is merely a comfortable nag for Monsieur Vitel. I will make it my battle charger!’
This brought the Présidente to the final confidential communication she wanted to make to Fraisier.
‘You appear to be so entirely devoted to our interests,’ she said, ‘that I am going to inform you about the difficulties of our position and our hopes. At the time when there was a marriage project between our daughter and an adventurer who is now a banker, the Président keenly desired to round off the Marville estate with various grasslands then on the market. As you know, we dispossessed ourselves of that fine residence in order to marry my daughter, but since she is an only child I am very anxious to acquire these remaining grasslands. These beautiful meadows have already been sold in part, and belong to an Englishman who is about to return to England after living there for twenty years. He built the most charming cottage in a delightful situation, between the Marville parklands and the pastures formerly belonging to the property; and in order to provide himself with a park, he bought back – at exorbitant prices – the stables, the plantations and the gardens. This residence, with its outbuildings, forms an independent unit in the countryside, and it borders on the walls of my daughter’s park. Both grasslands and house could be bought for seven hundred thousand francs, the net return for the pastures being twenty thousand francs… However, if Mr Wadman learns that we want to buy it, he will no doubt ask another two or three hundred thousand francs, for he will be down on his purchase price for that amount if, as is usual in rural transactions, the period of occupancy is left out of account.’
‘Well, Madame, in my opinion you can be so sure the inheritance will come to you that I offer my services as purchaser on your behalf, and will see to it that you get the estate at the cheapest possible price by private treaty, a procedure often followed by dealers in property… I will negotiate with the Englishman in that capacity. I am an expert in such matters. It was a speciality of mine in Mantes. I worked for Vatinelle, and so doubled the value of his practice.’
‘Hence your affaire with little Madame Vatinelle!… That notary must be quite rich by now.’
‘Madame Vatinelle is a spendthrift… And so, rest assured, Madame, I will serve up the Englishman to you in a lordly dish!’
‘If you brought this about, you would have an eternal claim on my gratitude… Good-bye, my dear Monsieur Fraisier, till tomorrow.’
As he went out, Fraisier saluted the Présidente with less servility than on the previous occasion.
‘Dinner tomorrow with the Président de Marville,’ he said to himself. ‘Well now, I have these people in my pocket. However, in order to have the affair in complete control, I ought to act as counsel for the German – using Tabareau, bailiff to the justice of the peace, as my catspaw. That fellow Tabareau has refused me his daughter – an only child – but he’ll give her to me if I am made justice of the peace. Mademoiselle Tabareau, a lanky girl with red hair and a weak chest, owns a house in the rue Royale which came from her mother. That property will make me eligible for the Chamber of Deputies! When her father dies, she’ll have another six thousand francs’ income. She’s no beauty, but ye gods, any stepping-stone is good enough to cross over from nothing to eighteen thousand francs a year!’
And so, hurrying along the boulevards to the rue de Normandie, he gave free rein to his golden dream: he looked forward to the happiness of never being needy again; he thought of the marriage between Mademoiselle Vitel and his friend Poulain. He could see himself, in league with the doctor, as king of the castle in the quarter, managing the elections – town council, municipal guard, Chamber of Deputies! Long streets seem short when one speeds along with ambition astride imagination!
*
On returning to Pons’s bedroom, Schmucke told him that
Cibot was dying and that Rémonencq had gone for the notary, Monsieur Trognon. This name made an impression on Pons, for La Cibot had so often thrown it out in the course of her interminable harangues, and had so often recommended this notary as being the soul of honesty. Thereupon, the sick man, whose suspicions had hardened since that morning, hit upon a luminous idea which completed the plan he had formed to dupe La Cibot and unmask her entirely in the eyes of the credulous Schmucke.
‘Schmucke,’ he said, taking the hand of the poor German, whose mind was in a daze through all he had learnt and seen. ‘The house must be in a state of great upheaval. If the porter is dying we can enjoy a few moments of freedom, that is to say free of spies, for you may be sure we are being spied upon. Leave the house, take a cab, go to the theatre and tell Mademoiselle Héloïse, our leading dancer, that I wish to see her before I die. Let her come at ten-thirty, after her act is over. Go from there to your two friends Schwab and Brunner, and beg them to come here tomorrow at nine asking for news of me and pretending to be coming to see me on their way elsewhere.’
This was the plan Pons had conceived, feeling that death was near. He intended to enrich Schmucke by leaving him everything, and in order to spare him any possible chicanery, he was proposing to dictate his testament to a notary in the presence of witnesses, so that no one could suppose he was non compos mentis, thus depriving the Camusots of any pretext for contesting his last dispositions. The name of Trognon had made him suspect some machination: he foresaw some deliberate flaw in drafting, some premeditated treachery on La Cibot’s part, and he decided to get Trognon to dictate to him a holograph will which he could seal and lock up in the drawer of his commode. He counted on hiding Schmucke in a closet behind his bed and letting him catch La Cibot in the act of removing this will, unsealing it, reading it and sealing it up again. Then, at nine o’clock the following morning, he intended to cancel this will by making another before a notary, in due form and hence unchangeable. When La Cibot had called him a madman subject to delusions he had detected behind it the Présidente’s hatred, vengefulness and avidity. In fact the poor man, during his two months in bed, his bouts of insomnia, his long hours of solitude, had been looking closely into all the events of his life.
Sculptors both ancient and modern have often set guardian spirits holding burning torches on each side of a funeral monument. The gleam from these torches enables the dying to read the scroll of their misdeeds and errors, and lights up the path of death. Such sculpture expresses significant ideas and is a register of human experience. The throes of death bring their own special insight. Often a simple-minded girl, dying at a very tender age, has shown the wisdom of a centenarian, foretold the future, passed judgement on her family and seen through all make-believe. This poetic gift of prophecy and clear vision, whether it looks backwards or forwards, is found only in those people whose malady is purely physical, whose death is due to the destruction of the organs sustaining the life of the flesh. Thus for instance, people attacked by gangrene like Louis XIV, or by consumption, or those who, like Pons, succumb to a liver disease or, like Madame de Mortsauf, to a stomach disease, or, like soldiers, to wounds inflicted in sound health – they alone enjoy that sublime enlightenment which arouses surprise and wonderment on their deathbeds; whereas those who die of what one may call diseases of the intelligence – the seat of which is in the brain and in the nervous apparatus which serves as intermediary between brain and body, supplying material for cerebral activity – die in their whole being: with them mind and body collapse together. The former are discarnate souls and recall the spectres in the Bible; the latter are mere corpses. Pons, this virgo intacta, this blend of Cato and Lucullus, this innocuous and almost blameless soul, succeeded – belatedly – in plumbing the depths of spite in the Présidente’s heart. He took the measure of the world he was about to leave. And so, a few hours before, he had cheerfully accepted his lot like a gay variety artist who finds all around him occasion for caricature and mockery. That morning the last bonds which had kept him tethered to life, the fetters of admiration, the stout thongs which still attached him as a connoisseur to masterpieces of art, had snapped. Knowing that La Cibot had robbed him, Pons had bidden farewell as a Christian to the pomps and vanities of art, to his collection itself, to his love for the creators of so many beautiful things. He wanted to bend his thoughts solely on death, like our forefathers, who counted death as a high-day in the Christian pilgrimage. But, so tender were his feelings for Schmucke, he wanted to watch over him even from his coffin. This fatherly concern had determined his choice of the leading dancer as a recourse against the perfidies of the people around Schmucke, who would certainly not forgive him for being Pons’s sole legatee.
Héloïse Brisetout was one of those who, by nature, however false their position, can never cease to be genuine, though they are capable of playing any sort of trick on the admirers who pay for their favours. She was a light woman of the Jenny Cadine and Josépha type, but a friendly soul who feared no power on earth, since she was used to gauging human weakness and well able to hold her own with interfering policemen at the Carnival and Mabille’s so-called rustic balls.
‘If it was she who had my post given to her protégé Garangeot,’ thought Pons, ‘she will feel all the more obliged to help me.’
Schmucke slipped out unnoticed thanks to the confusion which reigned in the lodge; he returned with the greatest celerity in order not to leave Pons too long by himself.
Monsieur Trognon arrived for the will-making at the same time as Schmucke. Even though Cibot was at the point of death, his wife went up with the notary, showed him into the bedroom and withdrew automatically, leaving Schmucke, Trognon and Pons together. But she equipped herself with a small hand-glass of ingenious design and posted herself behind the door, which she had left ajar. In this way she would be able to hear everything that was said and see everything that happened at a moment which was so supremely important for her.
‘Monsieur,’ said Pons, ‘I am of sound mind – unfortunately, for I feel that I am on the point of death, and it is no doubt the will of God that no preliminary sufferings should be spared me!… This is Monsieur Schmucke…’
The notary bowed to him.
‘He is my only friend on earth,’ said Pons, ‘and I want to make him my residuary legatee. Tell me what form the will should take so that my friend, a German, knowing nothing of our French law, may inherit my estate without the will being in any way contested.’
‘Contestation is always possible, Monsieur,’ said the notary. ‘That is one of the drawbacks of human justice. But, as regards wills, certain kinds cannot be challenged.’
‘What kinds?’
‘A will made before a notary in the presence of witnesses who can certify that the testator is of sound mind, and provided the testator has neither wife, children, father nor brother.’
‘I have nothing like that. All my affections are centred on my dear friend Schmucke, whom you see here.’
Schmucke was weeping.
‘If then you have only distant collaterals, since the law allows you to dispose freely of your real and personal estate, provided that you do not bequeath them on terms of which public morality disapproves – you must have seen cases of wills disputed because of their eccentricity – a will signed in a notary’s presence is unassailable. In fact, the person’s identity cannot be called in question, the notary has taken note of his state of mind, and the signing of it can give rise to no discussion… All the same, a holograph will, if it is clearly and properly drawn up, is also fairly unexceptionable!’
‘I have decided, for reasons of my own, to write a holograph will at your dictation, and to entrust it to the keeping of my friend here. Is that possible?’
‘It is,’ said the notary. ‘Do you wish to write it down? I will dictate-it.’
‘Schmucke, bring me my little Buhl escritoire… Do your dictating in a low voice, Monsieur,’ he added, ‘for we may be overheard.’
‘T
ell me then, first of all, what provisions you wish to make,’ said the notary.
Ten minutes later, La Cibot, whom Pons had glimpsed in a mirror, saw the will being sealed, the notary having looked it through while Schmucke was lighting a candle. Then Pons handed it to Schmucke and told him to lock it away in a concealed drawer in the secretaire. The testator asked for the key of the secretaire, tied it in a corner of his handkerchief, and put the latter under his pillow. The notary, who out of courtesy had been appointed executor, and to whom Pons bequeathed a valuable picture, one of those objects which the law allows a notary to accept, left the room and found Madame Cibot in the salon.
‘Well, sir, did Monsieur Pons think of me?’
‘My dear woman, you surely do not expect a notary to divulge the secrets confided to him?’ answered Monsieur Trognon. ‘All I can say is that many greedy people will be thwarted and many hopes disappointed. Monsieur Pons has made a fine will, full of good sense; a public-spirited testament of which I strongly approve.’
One can scarcely imagine to what pitch La Cibot’s curiosity was raised by these words. She went downstairs and spent the night at. Cibot’s bedside, intending to get Mademoiselle Rémonencq to take her place, and to go up and read the will between two and three in the morning.
25. The spurious will
MADEMOISELLE HÉLOÏSE BRISETOUT’S visit at ten-thirty in the evening seemed natural enough to La Cibot. But she was so concerned lest the dancer should mention the thousand francs which Gaudissart had given her that, while she was showing the dancer upstairs, she lavished compliments and flattery upon her as on a royal lady.
‘My dear,’ said Héloïse on the way up, ‘you’re so much more at home here than in the theatre that I advise you to stick to your job.’
Cousin Pons Page 28
