Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  The poetry of prophecy, the gift of seeing clearly into the future or the past, only belongs to those whose bodies are stricken, to those who die by the destruction of the organs of physical life. Consumptive patients, for instance, or those who die of gangrene like Louis XIV., of fever like Pons, of a stomach complaint like Mme. de Mortsauf, or of wounds received in the full tide of life like soldiers on the battlefield — all these may possess this supreme lucidity to the full; their deaths fill us with surprise and wonder. But many, on the other hand, die of intelligential diseases, as they may be called; of maladies seated in the brain or in that nervous system which acts as a kind of purveyor of thought fuel — and these die wholly, body and spirit are darkened together. The former are spirits deserted by the body, realizing for us our ideas of the spirits of Scripture; the latter are bodies untenanted by a spirit.

  Too late the virgin nature, the epicure-Cato, the righteous man almost without sin, was discovering the Presidente’s real character — the sac of gall that did duty for her heart. He knew the world now that he was about to leave it, and for the past few hours he had risen gaily to his part, like a joyous artist finding a pretext for caricature and laughter in everything. The last links that bound him to life, the chains of admiration, the strong ties that bind the art lover to Art’s masterpieces, had been snapped that morning. When Pons knew that La Cibot had robbed him, he bade farewell, like a Christian, to the pomps and vanities of Art, to his collection, to all his old friendships with the makers of so many fair things. Our forefathers counted the day of death as a Christian festival, and in something of the same spirit Pons’ thoughts turned to the coming end. In his tender love he tried to protect Schmucke when he should be low in the grave. It was this father’s thought that led him to fix his choice upon the leading lady of the ballet. Mlle. Brisetout should help him to baffle surrounding treachery, and those who in all probability would never forgive his innocent universal legatee.

  Heloise Brisetout was one of the few natures that remain true in a false position. She was an opera-girl of the school of Josepha and Jenny Cadine, capable of playing any trick on a paying adorer; yet she was a good comrade, dreading no power on earth, accustomed as she was to see the weak side of the strong and to hold her own with the police at the scarcely idyllic Bal de Mabille and the carnival.

  “If she asked for my place for Garangeot, she will think that she owes me a good turn by so much the more,” said Pons to himself.

  Thanks to the prevailing confusion in the porter’s lodge, Schmucke succeeded in getting out of the house. He returned with the utmost speed, fearing to leave Pons too long alone. M. Trognon reached the house just as Schmucke came in. Albeit Cibot was dying, his wife came upstairs with the notary, brought him into the bedroom, and withdrew, leaving Schmucke and Pons with M. Trognon; but she left the door ajar, and went no further than the next room. Providing herself with a little hand-glass of curious workmanship, she took up her station in the doorway, so that she could not only hear but see all that passed at the supreme moment.

  “Sir,” said Pons, “I am in the full possession of my faculties, unfortunately for me, for I feel that I am about to die; and doubtless, by the will of God, I shall be spared nothing of the agony of death. This is M. Schmucke” — (the notary bowed to M. Schmucke) — ”my one friend on earth,” continued Pons. “I wish to make him my universal legatee. Now, tell me how to word the will, so that my friend, who is a German and knows nothing of French law, may succeed to my possessions without any dispute.”

  “Anything is liable to be disputed, sir,” said the notary; “that is the drawback of human justice. But in the matter of wills, there are wills so drafted that they cannot be upset — ”

  “In what way?” queried Pons.

  “If a will is made in the presence of a notary, and before witnesses who can swear that the testator was in the full possession of his faculties; and if the testator has neither wife nor children, nor father nor mother — ”

  “I have none of these; all my affection is centred upon my dear friend Schmucke here.”

  The tears overflowed Schmucke’s eyes.

  “Then, if you have none but distant relatives, the law leaves you free to dispose of both personalty and real estate as you please, so long as you bequeath them for no unlawful purpose; for you must have come across cases of wills disputed on account of the testator’s eccentricities. A will made in the presence of a notary is considered to be authentic; for the person’s identity is established, the notary certifies that the testator was sane at the time, and there can be no possible dispute over the signature. — Still, a holograph will, properly and clearly worded, is quite as safe.”

  “I have decided, for reasons of my own, to make a holograph will at your dictation, and to deposit it with my friend here. Is this possible?”

  “Quite possible,” said the notary. “Will you write? I will begin to dictate — ”

  “Schmucke, bring me my little Boule writing-desk. — Speak low, sir,” he added; “we may be overheard.”

  “Just tell me, first of all, what you intend,” demanded the notary.

  Ten minutes later La Cibot saw the notary look over the will, while Schmucke lighted a taper (Pons watching her reflection all the while in a mirror). She saw the envelope sealed, saw Pons give it to Schmucke, and heard him say that it must be put away in a secret drawer in his bureau. Then the testator asked for the key, tied it to the corner of his handkerchief, and slipped it under his pillow.

  The notary himself, by courtesy, was appointed executor. To him Pons left a picture of price, such a thing as the law permits a notary to receive. Trognon went out and came upon Mme. Cibot in the salon.

  “Well, sir, did M. Pons remember me?”

  “You do not expect a notary to betray secrets confided to him, my dear,” returned M. Trognon. “I can only tell you this — there will be many disappointments, and some that are anxious after the money will be foiled. M. Pons has made a good and very sensible will, a patriotic will, which I highly approve.”

  La Cibot’s curiosity, kindled by such words, reached an unimaginable pitch. She went downstairs and spent the night at Cibot’s bedside, inwardly resolving that Mlle. Remonencq should take her place towards two or three in the morning, when she would go up and have a look at the document.

  Mlle. Brisetout’s visit towards half-past ten that night seemed natural enough to La Cibot; but in her terror lest the ballet-girl should mention Gaudissart’s gift of a thousand francs, she went upstairs with her, lavishing polite speeches and flattery as if Mlle. Heloise had been a queen.

  “Ah! my dear, you are much nicer here on your own ground than at the theatre,” Heloise remarked. “I advise you to keep to your employment.”

  Heloise was splendidly dressed. Bixiou, her lover, had brought her in his carriage on the way to an evening party at Mariette’s. It so fell out that the first-floor lodger, M. Chapoulot, a retired braid manufacturer from the Rue Saint-Denis, returning from the Ambigu-Comique with his wife and daughter, was dazzled by a vision of such a costume and such a charming woman upon their staircase.

  “Who is that, Mme. Cibot?” asked Mme. Chapoulot.

  “A no-better-than-she-should-be, a light-skirts that you may see half-naked any evening for a couple of francs,” La Cibot answered in an undertone for Mme. Chapoulot’s ear.

  “Victorine!” called the braid manufacturer’s wife, “let the lady pass, child.”

  The matron’s alarm signal was not lost upon Heloise.

  “Your daughter must be more inflammable than tinder, madame, if you are afraid that she will catch fire by touching me,” she said.

  M. Chapoulot waited on the landing. “She is uncommonly handsome off the stage,” he remarked. Whereupon Mme. Chapoulot pinched him sharply and drove him indoors.

  “Here is a second-floor lodger that has a mind to set up for being on the fourth floor,” said Heloise as she continued to climb.

  “But mademoiselle is acc
ustomed to going higher and higher.”

  “Well, old boy,” said Heloise, entering the bedroom and catching sight of the old musician’s white, wasted face. “Well, old boy, so we are not very well? Everybody at the theatre is asking after you; but though one’s heart may be in the right place, every one has his own affairs, you know, and cannot find time to go to see friends. Gaudissart talks of coming round every day, and every morning the tiresome management gets hold of him. Still, we are all of us fond of you — ”

  “Mme. Cibot,” said the patient, “be so kind as to leave us; we want to talk about the theatre and my post as conductor, with this lady. Schmucke, will you go to the door with Mme. Cibot?”

  At a sign from Pons, Schmucke saw Mme. Cibot out at the door, and drew the bolts.

  “Ah, that blackguard of a German! Is he spoiled, too?” La Cibot said to herself as she heard the significant sounds. “That is M. Pons’ doing; he taught him those disgusting tricks.... But you shall pay for this, my dears,” she thought as she went down stairs. “Pooh! if that tight-rope dancer tells him about the thousand francs, I shall say that it is a farce.”

  She seated herself by Cibot’s pillow. Cibot complained of a burning sensation in the stomach. Remonencq had called in and given him a draught while his wife was upstairs.

  As soon as Schmucke had dismissed La Cibot, Pons turned to the ballet-girl.

  “Dear child, I can trust no one else to find me a notary, an honest man, and send him here to make my will to-morrow morning at half-past nine precisely. I want to leave all that I have to Schmucke. If he is persecuted, poor German that he is, I shall reckon upon the notary; the notary must defend him. And for that reason I must have a wealthy notary, highly thought of, a man above the temptations to which pettifogging lawyers yield. He must succor my poor friend. I cannot trust Berthier, Cardot’s successor. And you know so many people — ”

  “Oh! I have the very man for you,” Heloise broke in; “there is the notary that acts for Florine and the Comtesse du Bruel, Leopold Hannequin, a virtuous man that does not know what a lorette is! He is a sort of chance-come father — a good soul that will not let you play ducks and drakes with your earnings; I call him Le Pere aux Rats, because he instils economical notions into the minds of all my friends. In the first place, my dear fellow, he has a private income of sixty thousand francs; and he is a notary of the real old sort, a notary while he walks or sleeps; his children must be little notaries and notaresses. He is a heavy, pedantic creature, and that’s the truth; but on his own ground, he is not the man to flinch before any power in creation.... No woman ever got money out of him; he is a fossil pater-familias, his wife worships him, and does not deceive him, although she is a notary’s wife. — What more do you want? as a notary he has not his match in Paris. He is in the patriarchal style; not queer and amusing, as Cardot used to be with Malaga; but he will never decamp like little What’s-his-name that lived with Antonia. So I will send round my man to-morrow morning at eight o’clock.... You may sleep in peace. And I hope, in the first place, that you will get better, and make charming music for us again; and yet, after all, you see, life is very dreary — managers chisel you, and kings mizzle and ministers fizzle and rich fold economizzle. — Artists have nothing left here” (tapping her breast) — ”it is a time to die in. Good-bye, old boy.”

  “Heloise, of all things, I ask you to keep my counsel.”

  “It is not a theatre affair,” she said; “it is sacred for an artist.”

  “Who is your gentleman, child?”

  “M. Baudoyer, the mayor of your arrondissement, a man as stupid as the late Crevel; Crevel once financed Gaudissart, you know, and a few days ago he died and left me nothing, not so much as a pot of pomatum. That made me say just now that this age of ours is something sickening.”

  “What did he die of?”

  “Of his wife. If he had stayed with me, he would be living now. Good-bye, dear old boy, I am talking of going off, because I can see that you will be walking about the boulevards in a week or two, hunting up pretty little curiosities again. You are not ill; I never saw your eyes look so bright.” And she went, fully convinced that her protege Garangeot would conduct the orchestra for good.

  Every door stood ajar as she went downstairs. Every lodger, on tip-toe, watched the lady of the ballet pass on her way out. It was quite an event in the house.

  Fraisier, like the bulldog that sets his teeth and never lets go, was on the spot. He stood beside La Cibot when Mlle. Brisetout passed under the gateway and asked for the door to be opened. Knowing that a will had been made, he had come to see how the land lay, for Maitre Trognon, notary, had refused to say a syllable — Fraisier’s questions were as fruitless as Mme. Cibot’s. Naturally the ballet-girl’s visit in extremis was not lost upon Fraisier; he vowed to himself that he would turn it to good account.

  “My dear Mme. Cibot,” he began, “now is the critical moment for you.”

  “Ah, yes... my poor Cibot!” said she. “When I think that he will not live to enjoy anything I may get — ”

  “It is a question of finding out whether M. Pons has left you anything at all; whether your name is mentioned or left out, in fact,” he interrupted. “I represent the next-of-kin, and to them you must look in any case. It is a holograph will, and consequently very easy to upset. — Do you know where our man has put it?”

  “In a secret drawer in his bureau, and he has the key of it. He tied it to a corner of his handkerchief, and put it under his pillow. I saw it all.”

  “Is the will sealed?”

  “Yes, alas!”

  “It is a criminal offence if you carry off a will and suppress it, but it is only a misdemeanor to look at it; and anyhow, what does it amount to? A peccadillo, and nobody will see you. Is your man a heavy sleeper?”

  “Yes. But when you tried to see all the things and value them, he ought to have slept like a top, and yet he woke up. Still, I will see about it. I will take M. Schmucke’s place about four o’clock this morning; and if you care to come, you shall have the will in your hands for ten minutes.”

  “Good. I will come up about four o’clock, and I will knock very softly — ”

  “Mlle Remonencq will take my place with Cibot. She will know, and open the door; but tap on the window, so as to rouse nobody in the house.”

  “Right,” said Fraisier. “You will have a light, will you not. A candle will do.”

  At midnight poor Schmucke sat in his easy-chair, watching with a breaking heart that shrinking of the features that comes with death; Pons looked so worn out with the day’s exertions, that death seemed very near.

  Presently Pons spoke. “I have just enough strength, I think, to last till to-morrow night,” he said philosophically. “To-morrow night the death agony will begin; poor Schmucke! As soon as the notary and your two friends are gone, go for our good Abbe Duplanty, the curate of Saint-Francois. Good man, he does not know that I am ill, and I wish to take the holy sacrament to-morrow at noon.”

  There was a long pause.

  “God so willed it that life has not been as I dreamed,” Pons resumed. “I should so have loved wife and children and home.... To be loved by a very few in some corner — that was my whole ambition! Life is hard for every one; I have seen people who had all that I wanted so much and could not have, and yet they were not happy.... Then at the end of my life, God put untold comfort in my way, when He gave me such a friend.... And one thing I have not to reproach myself with — that I have not known your worth nor appreciated you, my good Schmucke.... I have loved you with my whole heart, with all the strength of love that is in me.... Do not cry, Schmucke; I shall say no more if you cry and it is so sweet to me to talk of ourselves to you.... If I had listened to you, I should not be dying. I should have left the world and broken off my habits, and then I should not have been wounded to death. And now, I want to think of no one but you at the last — ”

  “You are missdaken — ”

  “Do not contradict
me — listen, dear friend.... You are as guileless and simple as a six-year-old child that has never left its mother; one honors you for it — it seems to me that God Himself must watch over such as you. But men are so wicked, that I ought to warn you beforehand... and then you will lose your generous trust, your saint-like belief in others, the bloom of a purity of soul that only belongs to genius or to hearts like yours.... In a little while you will see Mme. Cibot, who left the door ajar and watched us closely while M. Trognon was here — in a little while you will see her come for the will, as she believes it to be.... I expect the worthless creature will do her business this morning when she thinks you are asleep. Now, mind what I say, and carry out my instructions to the letter.... Are you listening?” asked the dying man.

  But Schmucke was overcome with grief, his heart was throbbing painfully, his head fell back on the chair, he seemed to have lost consciousness.

  “Yes,” he answered, “I can hear, but it is as if you vere doo huntert baces afay from me.... It seem to me dat I am going town into der grafe mit you,” said Schmucke, crushed with pain.

  He went over to the bed, took one of Pons’ hands in both his own, and within himself put up a fervent prayer.

  “What is that that you are mumbling in German?”

  “I asked Gott dat He vould take us poth togedders to Himself!” Schmucke answered simply when he had finished his prayer.

  Pons bent over — it was a great effort, for he was suffering intolerable pain; but he managed to reach Schmucke, and kissed him on the forehead, pouring out his soul, as it were, in benediction upon a nature that recalled the lamb that lies at the foot of the Throne of God.