Cousin Pons, Honoré de Balzac [popular books of all time TXT] 📗

dumb with amazement to be confronted with a little old man in a great-coat too shabby for Cibot to mend, standing watching a painter at work upon an old picture in the chilly room on the vast ground floor. The old man's eyes, full of cold feline malignance, were turned upon her, and La Cibot shivered.

"What do you want, Remonencq?" asked this person.

"It is a question of valuing some pictures; there is nobody but you in Paris who can tell a poor tinker-fellow like me how much he may give when he has not thousands to spend, like you."

"Where is it?"

"Here is the portress of the house where the gentleman lives; she does for him, and I have arranged with her--"

"Who is the owner?"

"M. Pons!" put in La Cibot.

"Don't know the name," said Magus, with an innocent air, bringing down his foot very gently upon his artist's toes.

Moret the painter, knowing the value of Pons' collection, had looked up suddenly at the name. It was a move too hazardous to try with any one but Remonencq and La Cibot, but the Jew had taken the woman's measure at sight, and his eye was as accurate as a jeweler's scales. It was impossible that either of the couple should know how often Magus and old Pons had matched their claws. And, in truth, both rabid amateurs were jealous of each other. The old Jew had never hoped for a sight of a seraglio so carefully guarded; it seemed to him that his head was swimming. Pons' collection was the one private collection in Paris which could vie with his own. Pons' idea had occurred to Magus twenty years later; but as a dealer-amateur the door of Pons' museum had been closed to him, as for Dusommerard. Pons and Magus had at heart the same jealousy. Neither of them cared about the kind of celebrity dear to the ordinary collector. And now for Elie Magus came his chance to see the poor musician's treasures! An amateur of beauty hiding in a boudoir or a stolen glance at a mistress concealed from him by his friend might feel as Elie Magus felt at that moment.

La Cibot was impressed by Remonencq's respect for this singular person; real power, moreover, even when it cannot be explained, is always felt; the portress was supple and obedient, she dropped the autocratic tone which she was wont to use in her lodge and with the tenants, accepted Magus' conditions, and agreed to admit him into Pons' museum that very day.

So the enemy was to be brought into the citadel, and a stab dealt to Pons' very heart. For ten years Pons had carried his keys about with him; he had forbidden La Cibot to allow any one, no matter whom, to cross his threshold; and La Cibot had so far shared Schmucke's opinions of _bric-a-brac_, that she had obeyed him. The good Schmucke, by speaking of the splendors as "chimcracks," and deploring his friend's mania, had taught La Cibot to despise the old rubbish, and so secured Pons' museum from invasion for many a long year.

When Pons took to his bed, Schmucke filled his place at the theatre and gave lessons for him at his boarding-schools. He did his utmost to do the work of two; but Pons' sorrows weighing heavily upon his mind, the task took all his strength. He only saw his friend in the morning, and again at dinnertime. His pupils and the people at the theatre, seeing the poor German look so unhappy, used to ask for news of Pons; and so great was his grief, that the indifferent would make the grimaces of sensibility which Parisians are wont to reserve for the greatest calamities. The very springs of life had been attacked, the good German was suffering from Pons' pain as well as from his own. When he gave a music lesson, he spent half the time in talking of Pons, interrupting himself to wonder whether his friend felt better to-day, and the little school-girls listening heard lengthy explanations of Pons' symptoms. He would rush over to the Rue de Normandie in the interval between two lessons for the sake of a quarter of an hour with Pons.

When at last he saw that their common stock was almost exhausted, when Mme. Cibot (who had done her best to swell the expenses of the illness) came to him and frightened him; then the old music-master felt that he had courage of which he never thought himself capable--courage that rose above his anguish. For the first time in his life he set himself to earn money; money was needed at home. One of the school-girl pupils, really touched by their troubles, asked Schmucke how he could leave his friend alone. "Montemoiselle," he answered, with the sublime smile of those who think no evil, "ve haf Montame Zipod, ein dreasure, montemoiselle, ein bearl! Bons is nursed like ein brince."

So while Schmucke trotted about the streets, La Cibot was mistress of the house and ruled the invalid. How should Pons superintend his self-appointed guardian angel, when he had taken no solid food for a fortnight, and lay there so weak and helpless that La Cibot was obliged to lift him up and carry him to the sofa while she made the bed?

La Cibot's visit to Elie Magus was paid (as might be expected) while Schmucke breakfasted. She came in again just as the German was bidding his friend good-bye; for since she learned that Pons possessed a fortune, she never left the old bachelor; she brooded over him and his treasures like a hen. From the depths of a comfortable easy-chair at the foot of the bed she poured forth for Pons' delectation the gossip in which women of her class excel. With Machiavelian skill, she had contrived to make Pons think that she was indispensable to him; she coaxed and she wheedled, always uneasy, always on the alert. Mme. Fontaine's prophecy had frightened La Cibot; she vowed to herself that she would gain her ends by kindness. She would sleep secure on M. Pons' legacy, but her rascality should keep within the limits of the law. For ten years she had not suspected the value of Pons' collection; she had a clear record behind her of ten years of devotion, honesty, and disinterestedness; it was a magnificent investment, and now she proposed to realize. In one day, Remonencq's hint of money had hatched the serpent's egg, the craving for riches that had lain dormant within her for twenty years. Since she had cherished that craving, it had grown in force with the ferment of all the evil that lurks in the corners of the heart. How she acted upon the counsels whispered by the serpent will presently be seen.

"Well?" she asked of Schmucke, "has this cherub of ours had plenty to drink? Is he better?"

"He is not doing fery vell, tear Montame Zipod, not fery vell," said poor Schmucke, brushing away the tears from his eyes.

"Pooh! you make too much of it, my dear M. Schmucke; we must take things as we find them; Cibot might be at death's door, and I should not take it to heart as you do. Come! the cherub has a good constitution. And he has been steady, it seems, you see; you have no idea what an age sober people live. He is very ill, it is true, but with all the care I take of him, I shall bring him round. Be easy, look after your affairs, I will keep him company and see that he drinks his pints of barley water."

"Gif you vere not here, I should die of anxiety--" said Schmucke, squeezing his kind housekeeper's hand in both his own to express his confidence in her.

La Cibot wiped her eyes as she went back to the invalid's room.

"What is the matter, Mme. Cibot?" asked Pons.

"It is M. Schmucke that has upset me; he is crying as if you were dead," said she. "If you are not well, you are not so bad yet that nobody need cry over you; but it has given me such a turn! Oh dear! oh dear! how silly it is of me to get so fond of people, and to think more of you than of Cibot! For, after all, you aren't nothing to me, you are only my brother by Adam's side; and yet, whenever you are in the question, it puts me in such a taking, upon my word it does! I would cut off my hand--my left hand, of course--to see you coming and going, eating your meals, and screwing bargains out of dealers as usual. If I had had a child of my own, I think I should have loved it as I love you, eh! There, take a drink, dearie; come now, empty the glass. Drink it off, monsieur, I tell you! The first thing Dr. Poulain said was, 'If M. Pons has no mind to go to Pere Lachaise, he ought to drink as many buckets full of water in a day as an Auvergnat will sell.' So, come now, drink--"

"But I do drink, Cibot, my good woman; I drink and drink till I am deluged--"

"That is right," said the portress, as she took away the empty glass. "That is the way to get better. Dr. Poulain had another patient ill of your complaint; but he had nobody to look after him, his children left him to himself, and he died because he didn't drink enough--so you must drink, honey, you see--he died and they buried him two months ago. And if you were to die, you know, you would drag down old M. Schmucke with you, sir. He is like a child. Ah! he loves you, he does, the dear lamb of a man; no woman never loved a man like that! He doesn't care for meat nor drink; he has grown as thin as you are in the last fortnight, and you are nothing but skin and bones.--It makes me jealous to see it, for I am very fond of you; but not to that degree; I haven't lost my appetite, quite the other way; always going up and down stairs, till my legs are so tired that I drop down of an evening like a lump of lead. Here am I neglecting my poor Cibot for you; Mlle. Remonencq cooks his victuals for him, and he goes on about it and says that nothing is right! At that I tell him that one ought to put up with something for the sake of other people, and that you are so ill that I cannot leave you. In the first place, you can't afford a nurse. And before I would have a nurse here!--I have done for you these ten years; they want wine and sugar, and foot-warmers, and all sorts of comforts. And they rob their patients unless the patients leave them something in their wills. Have a nurse in here to-day, and to-morrow we should find a picture or something or other gone--"

"Oh! Mme. Cibot!" cried Pons, quite beside himself, "do not leave me! No one must touch anything--"

"I am here," said La Cibot; "so long as I have the strength I shall be here.--Be easy. There was Dr. Poulain wanting to get a nurse for you; perhaps he has his eye on your treasures. I just snubbed him, I did. 'The gentleman won't have any one but me,' I told him. 'He is used to me, and I am used to him.' So he said no more. A nurse, indeed! They are all thieves; I hate that sort of woman, I