Cousin Pons

by Honoré de Balzac

  Rémonencq had to help Schmucke out of the cab and lead him by the arm to the registry office, where they stumbled upon a wedding. Schmucke was obliged to wait his turn, for, thanks to one of those coincidences frequent enough in Paris, the clerk had five or six death certificates to complete. Waiting thus in this office, the poor German must have felt like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

  ‘You are Monsieur Schmucke?’ a man dressed in black asked the German, who was bewildered at hearing his name pronounced. He looked at the man with the same stupefied air as when he had been replying to Rémonencq.

  ‘Here now,’ said the dealer to the stranger. ‘What do you want? Kindly leave this gentleman alone. You can see he’s grieving.’

  ‘This gentleman has just lost his friend, and without doubt, being his heir, he intends to show proper respect to his memory. He will certainly spare no expense. He will buy a burial plot in fee simple. Monsieur Pons was such a lover of the arts! It would be a great pity not to put three full-length weeping figures on his monument, representing Music, Painting and Sculpture…’

  In an effort to drive this man away, Rémonencq made a gesture typical of a native of Auvergne. But the man replied with another gesture – one of commercial significance, as if to say: ‘Don’t be a dog-in-the-manger!’ The dealer took the hint.

  ‘I represent the firm of Sonet and Company, contractors for funeral monuments,’ said the agent, whom Walter Scott might well have dubbed ‘Young Mortality’. ‘If this gentleman would care to entrust the order to us, we would save him the trouble of going to the Paris authorities to purchase the site needed for the interment of his friend, now, alas, lost to the arts.’

  Rémonencq gave a nod of agreement and a nudge to Schmucke.

  ‘Every day we take upon ourselves the burden of carrying out all the formalities on behalf of bereaved families,’ the salesman went on, encouraged by the Auvergnat’s latest gesture. ‘In the first moments of grief it is most difficult for an inheritor to take all this upon himself, and we are in the habit of performing these little services for our clients. Our monuments, sir, are priced at so much a metre, in freestone or marble. We dig the graves for family tombs… We take charge of everything at a most reasonable figure. Our firm built a magnificent monument for the beautiful Esther Gobseck and Lucien de Rubempré – one of the finest monuments in Père-Lachaise. We employ the best craftsmen, and I advise this gentleman to beware of small contractors. They only do shoddy work,’ he added as he saw another man approaching, also dressed in black and preparing to speak for another firm of stonemasons.

  Death, it is often said, is the end of a journey, but few people know how apt this simile is in Paris. A dead man, especially one of standing, is welcomed on the ‘sombre shores’ like a traveller reaching harbour, pestered with recommendations from all the hotel couriers. No one – except a few philosophers and some families sure of survival who build themselves tombs as readily as they buy themselves big houses – gives a thought to death or its sordid implications. Death always comes too soon. Besides, a very understandable scruple prevents prospective heirs from looking upon it as a likely contingency. And so almost all those who lose their fathers, mothers, wives or children are immediately pounced upon by funeral touts who batten upon their distress by bullying them into giving an order. In former times all the contractors for funeral monuments clustered around the famous cemetery of Père-Lachaise, where they occupied a whole street which would well merit the name of ‘Tombstone Street’ and rushed at inheritors as they were standing round the grave or leaving the churchyard. But little by little the spirit of competition and speculation has enabled them to gain ground, and today they have swarmed down into residential areas and even installed themselves next door to the registry offices. Moreover, their representatives often worm their way into the homes of the bereaved with a design for a monument in their hands.

  ‘I am engaged in business with this gentleman,’ said the agent of the Sonet firm to his intruding rival.

  ‘The Pons decease… Where are the witnesses?’ the registry clerk called out.

  ‘Come, Monsieur,’ said the agent, addressing Rémonencq.

  Rémonencq asked the agent’s help in lifting up Schmucke, who was sitting inert on his bench. They led him to the grille behind which the registrar of death screens himself from public sorrow. Rémonencq, momentarily Schmucke’s good angel, was supported by Dr Poulain, who furnished the necessary details about Pons’s age and birthplace. The German knew only one thing: Pons had been his friend. The signing over, Rémonencq and the doctor, followed by the salesman, put the German into a cab, into which the zealous agent slipped too, intent upon getting his order. La Sauvage, on sentry duty at the porte cochère, helped the almost fainting German upstairs with the aid of Rémonencq and the representative of Sonet and Company.

  ‘He’s going to be ill!…’ cried the latter, anxious to conclude the piece of business on which he had claimed to be embarked.

  ‘I should think so!’ replied Madame Sauvage. ‘He’s been in tears for twenty-four hours, and taken not a scrap of food. There’s nothing like grief for making you feel hollow inside.’

  ‘My dear client,’ said the salesman to Schmucke. ‘Do take a bowl of soup. You have so much to do. You have to go to the town hall to buy the plot for the monument you wish to erect as a memorial to this lover of the arts – one which must be an adequate token of the gratitude you owe him.’

  ‘There’s no sense in all this,’ said Madame Cantinet as she brought in some broth and some bread.

  ‘Just think, my dear sir,’ interpolated Rémonencq, ‘if you’re as ailing as all that, you must think of getting someone to act for you. You’ve so many things on your hands. You have to arrange for the funeral. You don’t want your friend to be buried like a pauper, do you?’

  ‘Come on, dear Monsieur Schmucke!’ said La Sauvage. Seizing an opportunity when Schmucke’s head was sunk against the back of his chair, she poured a spoonful of broth into his mouth and in spite of his resistance began to feed him like a baby.

  ‘Now if you had any sense, Monsieur Schmucke, as you only ask to be left alone to mourn for your friend, you’d get somebody to act for you…’

  ‘Since this gentleman,’ said the agent, ‘intends to raise a magnificent monument to his friend’s memory, he has only to leave all the arrangements to me. I will see to everything.’

  ‘Why now, if you please, what’s all this about?’ asked La Sauvage. ‘Has Monsieur Schmucke given you an order? Who might you be, anyway?’

  ‘A representative of Sonet and Company, my dear lady. The most important monumental masons in Paris,’ he said, pulling out a card and presenting it to the stalwart Sauvage.

  ‘All right, that’ll do, that’s enough… we’ll see about that at the proper time. But don’t you take advantage of the state the gentleman’s in. You can see he’s half out of his mind.’

  The representative of Sonet and Company drew Madame Sauvage out on to the landing and whispered in her ear:

  ‘If you can manage to get the order for us I am authorized to offer you forty francs.’

  ‘Very well, what’s your address?’ said Madame Sauvage, becoming more affable.

  Finding himself alone and feeling better after this intake of bread and broth, Schmucke promptly returned to Pons’s room and took to his prayers again. He was deep in his sorrow when he was aroused from his abyss of dejection by the voice of a young man in black crying ‘Monsieur!’ to him for the eleventh time. This was accompanied by such tugs at his coat-sleeve that the poor martyr could no longer turn a deaf ear.

  ‘Vat iss it now?’

  ‘Monsieur, we are indebted to Dr Gannal for a wonderful discovery. We do not dispute his title to fame: he has renewed the miracles performed in ancient Egypt. But improvements have been made and we have obtained astonishing results. And so, if you wish to see your friend once more as he was in life…’

  ‘See him vonce more!’ cried Schmucke. �
�Vill he speak to me?’

  ‘Not quite that!… the power of speech alone will be lacking,’ replied the individual, an agent for an embalming firm. ‘But he will remain for eternity as you see him after the embalming process. It only takes a few seconds. Merely an incision and an injection into the carotid artery… But we must waste no time. If you waited one quarter of an hour more, you could no longer enjoy the sweet consolation of having preserved the body…’

  ‘Go to ze Tefil! It iss Pons’s soul zet matters, unt hiss soul iss in Heafen.’

  ‘The man’s utterly ungrateful,’ said the agent for the famous Dr Gannal’s competitors, as he passed through the porte cochère. ‘He refuses to have his friend embalmed.’

  ‘What can you expect, Monsieur?’ said La Cibot, who had just had her dear departed embalmed. ‘He’s coming into money. He’s an heir. Once they’ve made their bit, death doesn’t mean a thing to him and his like.’

  28. Schmucke’s Via Dolorosa

  ONE hour later, Schmucke saw Madame Sauvage come into his room, followed by a man in black, apparently a workman.

  ‘Monsieur,’ she said. ‘Cantinet has been so kind as to send you this gentleman. He makes the coffins for people of the parish.’

  The maker of coffins gave a bow of commiseration and condolence – but as one sure of himself, knowing himself to be indispensable. He cast an appraising glance at the corpse.

  ‘How would you like it, Monsieur? Deal, oak, or oak with lead lining? Oak with lead lining is what most people think proper. He’s not outsize.’

  He felt at the feet in order to measure the corpse.

  ‘Five foot seven inches,’ he added. ‘I suppose you’ll have a requiem mass, Monsieur?’

  Schmucke gave the man the sort of look a madman gives before he launches an attack.

  ‘Monsieur Schmucke,’ said La Sauvage. ‘You ought to take somebody on to go into all these little things for you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the victim at long length.

  ‘Shall I go and fetch Monsieur Tabareau, since you’re going to have so much on your hands? Monsieur Tabareau, you know. The nicest gentleman in the quarter.’

  ‘Yess, Monsieur Tapareau. I haf heart off him,’ replied Schmucke, giving in at last.

  ‘Well, if you do that, you’ll have some peace and be alone with your grief, once you’ve had a talk with the man who’ll act for you.’

  About two o’clock, Monsieur Tabareau’s senior clerk, a young man who aimed at being a bailiff, modestly presented himself. Youth is privileged: it does not allow itself to be taken aback. This young man, one Villemot, sat down beside Schmucke and waited until he was ready to talk. Schmucke was touched by this forbearance.

  ‘Monsieur,’ he said. ‘I am Monsieur Tabareau’s senior clerk, and he has entrusted me with the task of looking after your interests and dealing with all the details of your friend’s burial… Will you consent to this?’

  ‘You vill not be aple to safe my life, pecause I haf not lonk to lif. Put vill you leaf me in peace?’

  ‘Oh, you’ll have no disturbance whatsoever.’

  ‘Fery veil. Vat muss I to zen?’

  ‘Sign this paper appointing Monsieur Tabareau your representative in all matters pertaining to the inheritance.’

  ‘Goot! Gif it me,’ said the German, ready to sign straight away.

  ‘Oh no, I must read out the terms to you.’

  ‘Reat zem!’

  Schmucke paid not the slightest attention to the reading of this general authorization; he merely signed it. The young man took Schmucke’s order for the funeral, for the purchase of the plot, where the German too wished to be buried, and the requiem mass. He was told that he would be worried no more and not be asked for money.

  ‘I voult gif all I haf to pe left alone,’ said the unhappy man; and he knelt down once more in front of his friend’s body.

  Fraisier had won. The legatee could not make one movement outside the circle in which La Sauvage and Villemot had him confined.

  There is no grief that slumber cannot conquer. And so, towards the end of the day, La Sauvage found Schmucke lying asleep at the foot of Pons’s bed. She picked him up, put him to bed and tucked him up like a baby. He slept on till the following morning. When he awoke – that is to say when the truce was over and he became conscious once more of his sorrow – Pons’s body was lying in state under the porte cochère, in the kind of improvised mortuary chapel to which third-class funerals are entitled. And so Schmucke looked in vain for his friend through the whole flat, and it seemed very large: he only found it full of heart-rending memories. La Sauvage, imposing on Schmucke the discipline a nurse imposes on a child in her charge, made him take breakfast before going to church. While the poor victim was forcing food down his throat, La Sauvage reminded him, with lamentations worthy of a Jeremiah, that he had no black clothes. Cibot had looked after his wardrobe, and, even before Pons fell ill, it had been reduced, like his diet, to the simplest needs: two pairs of trousers and two frock-coats!

  ‘You’re not going like that to Monsieur Pons’s funeral. It’s a crying disgrace. Everybody in the quarter will look down on us!’

  ‘How voult you vant me to go zere?’

  ‘Why, in mourning of course!’

  ‘In mournink?’

  ‘It’s only right and proper…’

  ‘Right unt proper! Vat to I care for such stupit sinks?’ said poor Schmucke. He had reached the highest pitch of exasperation to which grief can bring a man with the soul of a child.

  ‘Why, he’s ingratitude itself,’ said La Sauvage, turning to an individual who suddenly appeared in the flat; one who sent a shiver through Schmucke.

  This functionary, magnificently attired in black cloth, black breeches, black silk stockings and white cuffs, adorned with a silver chain to which a medallion was attached, wearing a cravat – such a correct cravat! – of white muslin and white gloves; this incarnation of officialdom, stamped with the very hallmark of public lamentation, was holding an ebony wand, his emblem of office, and, under his left arm, a three-cornered hat, with a tricolour cockade.

  ‘I am the master of ceremonies,’ said this important person in a soft voice.

  This man, whose daily function was to conduct funerals and move among a whole succession of families plunged into one and the same affliction, real or feigned, spoke in low and unctuous tones, like all members of his confraternity. It was his profession to be decorous, polite, seemly, like a statue representing the angel of death. His announcement sent a nervous tremor through Schmucke, as the sight of the hangman might do.

  ‘Monsieur, are you the son, the brother or the father of the deceased?’

  ‘I am all zat unt more, I am hiss frient,’ said Schmucke in a flood of tears.

  ‘Are you the heir?’ asked the master of ceremonies.

  ‘Ze heir?’ repeated Schmucke. ‘Nossink in ze vorlt matters for me,’ and he resumed his posture of gloom and sorrow.

  ‘Where are the relatives and friends?’ asked the master of ceremonies.

  ‘Zere zey are, all of zem!’ cried Schmucke, pointing to the pictures and objects of art. ‘Nefer haf zey prought sorrow to my goot Pons. Zey are all he lofet except me.’

  ‘He’s off his head, Monsieur,’ said La Sauvage to the master of ceremonies. ‘Let him be, there’s no sense in listening to him!’

  Schmucke had sat down again; vacancy of mind was once more written on his countenance; mechanically, he wiped away his tears. At this moment Villemot, Tabareau’s senior clerk, reappeared, and the master of ceremonies, recognizing the man who had come to him to order the funeral, addressed him thus:

  ‘Well, Monsieur, it is time to go. The hearse has arrived. But I have seldom seen such a funeral gathering. Are there no relations, no friends…?’

  ‘We have not had much time,’ replied Monsieur Villemot. ‘Monsieur Schmucke has been plunged in such grief that he has been able to think of nothing. In any case there is only one relative…’

&
nbsp; The master of ceremonies regarded Schmucke with genuine pity: as a connoisseur in grief he was well able to distinguish the true from the false. He approached Schmucke.

  ‘Come, my dear sir, keep your heart up!… Think of the respect you must pay to your friend’s memory.’

  ‘We forgot to send out invitations,’ continued Villemot, ‘but I took care to send an express letter to Monsieur le Président de Marville, the sole relative whom I mentioned to you… There are no friends… I don’t expect the people at the theatre at which the deceased was conductor of the orchestra will come… but this gentleman is, I believe, the sole legatee.’

  ‘Then he must be chief mourner,’ said the master of ceremonies.

  He cast a glance at Schmucke’s clothes, and asked him; ‘Have you no black suit?’

  ‘All my plack I vear insite!’ said the poor German in lamentable tones. ‘So plack it iss, I haf deass in my soul. Gott vill pe goot to me and tchoin me viz my frient in ze grafe. I vill gif Him sanks for zat!’ He folded his hands in prayer.

  The master of ceremonies turned to Villemot.

  ‘I have already told our management,’ he said, ‘which has already introduced so many improvements, that it ought to have a wardrobe department and hire mourning to next-of-kin. It is daily becoming more and more necessary. But since this gentleman is the heir, he must wear a mourner’s cloak; and the one I have brought with me will cover him from head to foot, so that no one will notice how unsuitably he is dressed.’

  ‘Will you be so good as to stand up?’ he said to Schmucke.

  Schmucke stood up, but he was unsteady on his feet.

  ‘Hold him up,’ said the master of ceremonies to the senior clerk. ‘After all, you are his agent.’

  Villemot supported Schmucke by putting his arm round him, and then the master of ceremonies grasped the horrible voluminous black mantle which next-of-kin wear as they walk behind the hearse from the house of death to the church, and fastened it on him by tying the cords of black silk under his chin.