Cousin Pons

by Honoré de Balzac

  So it was that Schmucke donned the accoutrements which an inheritor must wear.

  *

  ‘Now a great difficulty arises,’ said the master of ceremonies. ‘We have to allot the four tassels of the pall… With no relatives here, who will hold them?… It is now half-past ten,’ he said consulting his watch. ‘They are waiting at the church.’

  ‘Ah, there’s Fraisier!’ Villemot cried out very imprudently – but no one was there to take note of this avowal of complicity.

  ‘Who is this gentleman?’ asked the master of ceremonies.

  ‘He represents the family.’

  ‘What family?’

  ‘The disinherited family… He is acting for Monsieur le Président Camusot.’

  ‘Good,’ said the master of ceremonies, with a satisfied air. ‘That settles two tassels: one for him, one for you.’

  The master of ceremonies, glad to have two tassels allotted, went out and fetched two splendid pairs of white doeskin gloves and politely offered one to Fraisier and one to Villemot. ‘Will you two gentlemen be so good,’ he asked, ‘as to take each of you a corner of the pall?’

  The sight of Fraisier, all in black, pretentiously arrayed, with his white tie and official bearing, gave one the shudders: he looked like a prosecuting counsel with a hundred briefs in his case.

  ‘Willingly, Monsieur,’ he said.

  ‘If only two other persons were to come,’ said the master of ceremonies, ‘all four tassels would be allotted.’

  Just then there arrived the indefatigable salesman of the Sonet firm, followed by the only man who had remembered Pons and could bother to pay him his last respects. He was a hired assistant at the theatre, an underling whose task it was to lay out the parts on the orchestra music-stands. Pons, knowing that he had a family to keep, had given him a five francs’ tip every month.

  ‘Ah! It iss Topinard!’ exclaimed Schmucke, recognizing the odd-job man from the theatre. ‘You at any rate lof Pons.’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur. I came every morning to inquire about Monsieur Pons.’

  ‘Efery mornink! My tear Topinard!’ cried Schmucke, shaking him warmly by the hand.

  ‘But no doubt they took me for a relation. They gave me a cold welcome! It was no use my telling them I came from the theatre to ask after Monsieur Pons; they said they’d heard that tale before. I asked to see the poor dear sick man, but they wouldn’t even let me go up to him.’

  ‘Zat vicket Cipot!’ said Schmucke, pressing Topinard’s horny hand to his heart.

  ‘He was the best of men, dear Monsieur Pons. He gave me five francs every month. He knew I had a wife and three children… My wife is waiting at the church.’

  ‘I vill share my last crust viz you!’ cried Schmucke, joyful at having beside him a man who had loved Pons.

  ‘Will this gentleman please take one of the tassels?’ asked the master of ceremonies. ‘Then all four will be settled.’

  The master of ceremonies had had no difficulty in persuading the Sonet salesman to take one of the tassels, particularly as he showed him the fine pair of gloves which, according to custom, would be his to keep.

  ‘A quarter to eleven! We simply must go downstairs… The clergy are waiting,’ said the master of ceremonies.

  And the six persons began to descend the staircase.

  ‘Shut the flat up and stay in it,’ said the odious Fraisier to the two women standing on the landing. ‘Particularly you, Madame Cantinet, if you want to be caretaker. Ha! Ha! It’s two francs a day!’

  By a coincidence not at all unusual in Paris, there were two catafalques at the porte cochère, in fact two groups of mourners – one for Cibot, the defunct concierge, and one for Pons. No one had come to pay a tribute of affection to the impressive catafalque of the ‘friend of the arts’, but all the porters in the neighbourhood had come in a crowd to sprinkle holy water on the concierge’s mortal remains. The contrast between the throng gathered for Cibot’s procession and the sparse group around Pons’s bier was maintained not only at the street-door but also along the street itself. Pons’s coffin was followed by Schmucke alone – leaning on one of the mutes, for Pons’s heir faltered at every step he took. From the rue de Normandie to the rue d’Orléans, where the church was, the two processions passed between a double line of sightseers, for, as we have remarked before, everything happening in that quarter arouses curiosity. And so everyone commented on the splendour of the white hearse, to which was appended a shield embroidered with a large ‘P’, but which had only one mourner behind it, whereas the plain hearse, of the kind used only for the cheapest funerals, was followed by a large crowd. Fortunately, Schmucke, bewildered by the onlookers at the windows and the double row of gapers, heard nothing of all this and could only glimpse the concourse of people through a haze of tears.

  ‘Why, it’s the “Nutcracker”,’ said one. ‘You know, the band-leader.’

  ‘Who are the people holding the tassels?’

  ‘Pooh! They’re only actors!’

  ‘Look! Here comes poor old Cibot! That’s one real worker the less! You couldn’t keep him off the job!’

  ‘He never went out, that man!’

  ‘He never took Mondays off!’

  ‘And wasn’t he fond of his wife!’

  ‘The poor woman!’

  Rémonencq was walking behind his victim’s hearse, acknowledging the tributes of condolence paid to him upon the loss of his neighbour,

  *

  The two funeral cortèges arrived at the church, and there Cantinet, with the beadle’s assistance, took care that no mendicants should get near Schmucke. Villemot had promised Pons’s heir that he would not be pestered: he was paying all the expenses and keeping an eye on his client. Cibot’s modest hearse was accompanied to the cemetery by a crowd numbering between sixty and eighty persons. Pons’s cortège, when it left the church, consisted of four mourners’ carriages: one for the clergy, three for the relations. In actual fact only one of the three was needed, as the Sonet firm well knew, for its representative had left the church during the requiem mass in order to go and inform Monsieur Sonet that the procession was on its way, so that he might present the residuary legatee with the design and estimate for the monument as he came away from the cemetery. Fraisier, Villemot, Schmucke and Topinard were accommodated in a single carriage. The other two vehicles, instead of returning to the undertaker’s headquarters, went on to the cemetery quite empty. Such an unnecessary journey of empty carriages often occurs. When the departed are little known and attract no concourse of people, there are always too many carriages. In Paris, where everyone would be happy to add an extra hour to the twenty-four-hour day, a dead person has to have been much loved in his lifetime for relatives or friends to follow his hearse right to the graveyard. But the coachmen would lose their gratuity if they did not complete their task. And therefore, full or empty, carriages go to the church and thence to the cemetery, and return to the house of the bereaved, where the drivers hold out their hands for a tip. One can scarcely imagine how many people look upon death as a sort of drinking-fountain. The ‘lower clergy’ from the church, the beggars at the church-door, the mutes, the carriage-drivers and the grave-diggers are as absorbent as sponges and come from a funeral dripping with gratuities.

  In his transit from the church, where poor Schmucke was assailed by a swarm of beggars whom the beadle kept at bay, to Père-Lachaise, Schmucke looked like a condemned criminal on his way from the dock to the place of execution. He might well have been taken for chief mourner at his own funeral as he rode along, hand in hand with Topinard, the only other person in whose heart there was real regret for Pons’s death. Topinard was extremely moved by the honour of being entrusted with one of the tassels of the pall, he was glad to have a ride in a carriage and to be the owner of a pair of gloves; and he was already beginning to look upon Pons’s funeral as a great day in his life. Schmucke, submerged in sorrow, although he drew comfort from the contact of Topinard’s hand and the sympathy which wen
t with it, rolled along in his carriage just as passively as a cartload of terrified calves on the way to the slaughter-house. Fraisier and Villemot were sitting in front. Now those people who have had the misfortune to accompany many of their loved ones to their last resting-place are aware that all show of mourning is dropped as the carriage proceeds on its way – often quite a long way – from the church to the eastern cemetery of Paris, the one which is so rich in sumptuous monuments and in which all vanity and luxury hold rendezvous. Conversation is started by those who care least, and even the saddest mourners end up by listening, for mere distraction’s sake.

  ‘Monsieur le Président had already gone off to the courts,’ Fraisier was saying to Villemot. ‘I didn’t consider it necessary to go to the Palais de Justice to tear him away, from his work. In any case he would have arrived too late. He is the natural and legal heir, but since he has been disinherited in favour of Monsieur Schmucke, I thought it enough that I should be here as his proxy.’

  Topinard began to take notice.

  ‘Who’s the fellow who was given the fourth tassel to hold?’ Fraisier asked Villemot.

  ‘The representative of a firm of monumental masons who is hoping to extract an order for a tombstone on which he proposes to carve three figures in marble – Music, Painting and Sculpture shedding tears over the late lamented!’

  ‘That’s an idea!’ said Fraisier. ‘The old chap deserves that at any rate. But a monument like that will cost all of seven or eight thousand francs.’

  ‘It certainly will.’

  ‘If Monsieur Schmucke orders it, it can’t come out of the inheritance. Expenditure like that would soon soak up any inheritance.’

  ‘It would mean a law-suit, but we should win it.’

  ‘Well then,’ Fraisier continued, ‘that will be his concern! It would be quite a pretty little joke to play on these contractors,’ he whispered to Villemot. ‘If the will is declared null and void – and I will see that it is – or if by any chance there were no will, who would settle their account?’

  Villemot gave a toadying snigger. Then Tabareau’s senior clerk and the man of law began a low, whispered conversation; but, despite the clatter the carriage made as it rolled along, and despite all other impediments, the theatre employee was so used to catching the drift of remarks made in the pandemonium of the theatre wings that he guessed the two lawyers were hatching a plot against Schmucke, and in the end the significant name of the debtors’ prison – Clichy – came to his ears. Whereupon the good and worthy theatre assistant resolved to keep an eye on Schmucke’s interests.

  At the cemetery – where, through the agency of the Sonet firm’s representative, Villemot had bought a three-metre plot from the City of Paris with the announcement that a magnificent monument was to be erected on it – the master of ceremonies conducted Schmucke through a crowd of sightseers to the grave into which Pons’s body was to be lowered. But at the sight of this rectangular cavity over which four men were supporting the coffin with ropes, and while the priest was reciting a final prayer, the German had such a heart seizure that he fell down in a faint.

  29. When wills are opened all doors are sealed

  WITH the help of the Sonet salesman and Sonet himself, Topinard carried the poor German into the monumental mason’s establishment where the most zealous and generous attentions were lavished on Schmucke by Madame Sonet and Madame Vitelot, the wife of Monsieur Sonet’s partner. Topinard stayed on, for he had noticed Fraisier, whose face looked sinister to him, talking to the Sonet salesman.

  An hour elapsed, and at about two-thirty the simple-minded German recovered consciousness. The last two days had been like a nightmare from which he hoped to awaken and find Pons alive again. After the application of many wet towels to his forehead, smelling-salts and vinegar to his nostrils, his eyes opened at last. Madame Sonet made him drink a bowl of good rich broth, for the stock-pot had been put on in the stonemason’s house.

  ‘We don’t often have to give such treatment to customers, and they don’t usually take things as hard as he does; not more than once in two years, I should say.’

  Finally Schmucke proposed to return to the rue de Normandie. Thereupon Sonet spoke up: ‘Here, Monsieur, is the design Vitelot has drawn expressly for you – a real inspiration! It will be very beautiful.’

  ‘… The most beautiful in Père-Lachaise!’ said little Madame Sonet. ‘You must do honour to the memory of a friend who has left you all he has.’

  This design, allegedly made to order for Schmucke, had first been prepared for a Minister’s grave – that of the famous Marsay; but his widow had decided to commission Stidmann for the monument, and so the Sonet sketch was rejected, for the idea of such a vulgar memorial filled her with horror. Originally the three figures were to stand for the three ‘Glorious Days’ of the July Revolution in which that great statesman had come to the fore. After that, Sonet and Vitelot had made some alterations and transformed them into symbols of the Army, Finance and the Family as a memorial to Charles Keller the banker – again the commission was given to Stidmann. During the last eleven years the design had been modified to meet all sorts of family circumstances. And now, while doing the tracings, Vitelot had metamorphosed each figure into a genius of art – Music, Sculpture and Painting respectively.

  ‘There’s still a great deal to do if we consider the details and the installation of the monument,’ said Vitelot, ‘but we can finish it within six months. Here, Monsieur, is the estimate and the contract – seven thousand francs, not including the roughing-out.’

  ‘If, Monsieur, you would like to have it in marble,’ added Sonet, who specialized in marble, ‘it will be twelve thousand francs, and you and your friend will go down to posterity…’

  ‘I have just learnt that the will is going to be contested,’ whispered Topinard to Vitelot, ‘and that the natural heirs are likely to recover the inheritance. You had better try Monsieur le Président Camusot, for this poor innocent man won’t get a farthing.’

  ‘That’s the sort of customer you always spring on us!’ said Madame Vitelot to the salesman, warming up for an altercation.

  Topinard took Schmucke back to the rue de Normandie – on foot because the funeral carriages had already made their way there.

  ‘To not leaf me!’ implored Schmucke, for Topinard had wanted to take his departure after leaving the poor musician in La Sauvage’s care.

  ‘It’s four o’clock, my dear Monsieur Schmucke, and I must go home to dinner… My wife is a box-attendant, and she would wonder what had become of me. As you know, the theatre opens at a quarter to six.’

  ‘Yes, I know zat… but tchust sink, I am all alone in ze vorlt, vizout von frient. You haf vept for Pons: explain zese sinks to me. I am altogezzer in ze tark, and Pons sait I hat scountrelss all arount me.’

  ‘I saw that only too clearly. I have just saved you from spending the night in Clichy!’

  ‘Clichy?’ asked Schmucke. ‘I to not unterstant.’

  ‘Poor dear gentleman! Well, don’t worry. I’ll come and see you. Good-bye!’

  ‘Goot-pye for ze pressent,’ said Schmucke, sinking back into his chair, tired out.

  ‘Good-bye, my fine gentleman!’ said La Sauvage to Topinard with a look which the theatre hand thought peculiar.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, my good woman?’ he asked in a mocking tone of voice. ‘You’re standing there like a villain in a melodrama.’

  ‘Villain yourself! What’s your business here? I bet you think you’re going to take over Monsieur Schmucke’s affairs and get some pickings for yourself.’

  ‘Pickings!’ retorted Topinard in high disdain. ‘Stick to your pots and pans, woman. Look, I’m only a poor theatre hand, but I stand by our artistes, and let me tell you this : I’ve never asked anything of anybody! Am I asking you for anything? Do I owe you anything? Just tell me that, grandma.’

  ‘So you’re a theatre hand. What’s your name?’ asked the virago.

  ‘Topinard, t
o oblige you.’

  ‘That’s all I wanted to know,’ said La Sauvage. ‘My compliments to you and yours! Give my respects to milady, if milord has a wife.’

  ‘What’s wrong, love?’ asked Madame Cantinet as she came in.

  ‘What’s wrong? You just stay here and look after the dinner. I’m trotting along to see Monsieur Fraisier.’

  ‘He’s downstairs chatting with poor Madame Cibot, and she’s crying her eyes out,’ replied La Cantinet.

  La Sauvage rushed down the stairs in such haste that they shook under her feet.

  ‘Look, Monsieur!’ she said to Fraisier as she drew him away a few yards from Madame Cibot. And she pointed to Topinard just as he passed by them, proud of having paid his debt to his benefactor by using a stratagem inspired by life behind the stage, where everybody is more or less resourceful, and thus saving Pons’s friend from falling into a trap. Furthermore, he promised himself that he would protect the unsuspecting musician from any other traps which might be set for him.

  ‘You see that little beggar? He’s a sort of righteous busybody who proposes to poke his nose into Monsieur Schmucke’s affairs.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Oh, just a nobody.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as a nobody when it comes to legal matters.’

  ‘Well, he’s a handy man at the theatre and goes by the name of Topinard.’

  ‘Thank you, Madame Sauvage! Carry on with the good work and you’ll get your tobacconist’s shop.’

  There upon Fraisier resumed his conversation with Madame Cibot:

  ‘I maintain, my dear client, that you have not played fair with us, and we recognize no obligations to a partner who deceives us!’

  ‘How have I deceived you?’ asked Madame Cibot, with arms akimbo. ‘Do you think you’ll give me the shakes with your vinegary stares and your wintry airs?… You’re looking for excuses so as to break your promises, and you say you’re a decent man! I’ll tell you what you are: you’re a dirty swine! Go on, scratch your arms. But just put that in your pipe and smoke it!’