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

mount up in der hefn--dat is mein lot! I shall not lif after Bons--"

"Gracious! I am sure you won't, you are killing yourself.--Listen, pet!"

"Bet?"

"Very well, my sonny--"

"Zonny?"

"My lamb, then, if you like it better."

"It is not more clear."

"Oh, well, let _me_ take care of you and tell you what to do; for if you go on like this, I shall have both of you laid up on my hands, you see. To my little way of thinking, we must do the work between us. You cannot go about Paris to give lessons for it tires you, and then you are not fit to do anything afterwards, and somebody must sit up of a night with M. Pons, now that he is getting worse and worse. I will run round to-day to all your pupils and tell them that you are ill; is it not so? And then you can spend the nights with our lamb, and sleep of a morning from five o'clock till, let us say, two in the afternoon. I myself will take the day, the most tiring part, for there is your breakfast and dinner to get ready, and the bed to make, and the things to change, and the doses of medicine to give. I could not hold out for another ten days at this rate. What would become of you if I were to fall ill? And you yourself, it makes one shudder to see you; just look at yourself, after sitting up with him last night!"

She drew Schmucke to the glass, and Schmucke thought that there was a great change.

"So, if you are of my mind, I'll have your breakfast ready in a jiffy. Then you will look after our poor dear again till two o'clock. Let me have a list of your people, and I will soon arrange it. You will be free for a fortnight. You can go to bed when I come in, and sleep till night."

So prudent did the proposition seem, that Schmucke then and there agreed to it.

"Not a word to M. Pons; he would think it was all over with him, you know, if we were to tell him in this way that his engagement at the theatre and his lessons are put off. He would be thinking that he should not find his pupils again, poor gentleman--stuff and nonsense! M. Poulain says that we shall save our Benjamin if we keep him as quiet as possible."

"Ach! fery goot! Pring up der preakfast; I shall make der bett, and gif you die attresses!--You are right; it vould pe too much for me."

An hour later La Cibot, in her Sunday clothes, departed in great state, to the no small astonishment of the Remonencqs; she promised herself that she would support the character of confidential servant of the pair of nutcrackers, in the boarding-schools and private families in which they gave music-lessons.

It is needless to repeat all the gossip in which La Cibot indulged on her round. The members of every family, the head-mistress of every boarding-school, were treated to a variation upon the theme of Pons' illness. A single scene, which took place in the Illustrious Gaudissart's private room, will give a sufficient idea of the rest. La Cibot met with unheard-of difficulties, but she succeeded in penetrating at last to the presence. Kings and cabinet ministers are less difficult of access than the manager of a theatre in Paris; nor is it hard to understand why such prodigious barriers are raised between them and ordinary mortals: a king has only to defend himself from ambition; the manager of a theatre has reason to dread the wounded vanity of actors and authors.

La Cibot, however, struck up an acquaintance with the portress, and traversed all distances in a brief space. There is a sort of freemasonry among the porter tribe, and, indeed, among the members of every profession; for each calling has its shibboleth, as well as its insulting epithet and the mark with which it brands its followers.

"Ah! madame, you are the portress here," began La Cibot. "I myself am a portress, in a small way, in a house in the Rue de Normandie. M. Pons, your conductor, lodges with us. Oh, how glad I should be to have your place, and see the actors and dancers and authors go past. It is the marshal's baton in our profession, as the old actor said."

"And how is M. Pons going on, good man?" inquired the portress.

"He is not going on at all; he has not left his bed these two months. He will only leave the house feet foremost, that is certain."

"He will be missed."

"Yes. I have come with a message to the manager from him. Just try to get me a word with him, dear."

"A lady from M. Pons to see you, sir!" After this fashion did the youth attached to the service of the manager's office announce La Cibot, whom the portress below had particularly recommended to his care.

Gaudissart had just come in for a rehearsal. Chance so ordered it that no one wished to speak with him; actors and authors were alike late. Delighted to have news of his conductor, he made a Napoleonic gesture, and La Cibot was admitted.

The sometime commercial traveler, now the head of a popular theatre, regarded his sleeping partners in the light of a legitimate wife; they were not informed of all his doings. The flourishing state of his finances had reacted upon his person. Grown big and stout and high-colored with good cheer and prosperity, Gaudissart made no disguise of his transformation into a Mondor.

"We are turning into a city-father," he once said, trying to be the first to laugh.

"You are only in the Turcaret stage yet, though," retorted Bixiou, who often replaced Gaudissart in the company of the leading lady of the ballet, the celebrated Heloise Brisetout.

The former Illustrious Gaudissart, in fact, was exploiting the theatre simply and solely for his own particular benefit, and with brutal disregard of other interests. He first insinuated himself as a collaborator in various ballets, plays, and vaudevilles; then he waited till the author wanted money and bought up the other half of the copyright. These after-pieces and vaudevilles, always added to successful plays, brought him in a daily harvest of gold coins. He trafficked by proxy in tickets, allotting a certain number to himself, as the manager's share, till he took in this way a tithe of the receipts. And Gaudissart had other methods of making money besides these official contributions. He sold boxes, he took presents from indifferent actresses burning to go upon the stage to fill small speaking parts, or simply to appear as queens, or pages, and the like; he swelled his nominal third share of the profits to such purpose that the sleeping partners scarcely received one-tenth instead of the remaining two-thirds of the net receipts. Even so, however, the tenth paid them a dividend of fifteen per cent on their capital. On the strength of that fifteen per cent Gaudissart talked of his intelligence, honesty, and zeal, and the good fortune of his partners. When Count Popinot, showing an interest in the concern, asked Matifat, or General Gouraud (Matifat's son-in-law), or Crevel, whether they were satisfied with Gaudissart, Gouraud, now a peer of France, answered, "They say he robs us; but he is such a clever, good-natured fellow, that we are quite satisfied."

"This is like La Fontaine's fable," smiled the ex-cabinet minister.

Gaudissart found investments for his capital in other ventures. He thought well of Schwab, Brunner, and the Graffs; that firm was promoting railways, he became a shareholder in the lines. His shrewdness was carefully hidden beneath the frank carelessness of a man of pleasure; he seemed to be interested in nothing but amusements and dress, yet he thought everything over, and his wide experience of business gained as a commercial traveler stood him in good stead.

A self-made man, he did not take himself seriously. He gave suppers and banquets to celebrities in rooms sumptuously furnished by the house decorator. Showy by nature, with a taste for doing things handsomely, he affected an easy-going air, and seemed so much the less formidable because he had kept the slang of "the road" (to use his own expression), with a few green-room phrases superadded. Now, artists in the theatrical profession are wont to express themselves with some vigor; Gaudissart borrowed sufficient racy green-room talk to blend with his commercial traveler's lively jocularity, and passed for a wit. He was thinking at that moment of selling his license and "going into another line," as he said. He thought of being chairman of a railway company, of becoming a responsible person and an administrator, and finally of marrying Mlle. Minard, daughter of the richest mayor in Paris. He might hope to get into the Chamber through "his line," and, with Popinot's influence, to take office under the Government.

"Whom have I the honor of addressing?" inquired Gaudissart, looking magisterially at La Cibot.

"I am M. Pons' confidential servant, sir."

"Well, and how is the dear fellow?"

"Ill, sir--very ill."

"The devil he is! I am sorry to hear it--I must come and see him; he is such a man as you don't often find."

"Ah yes! sir, he is a cherub, he is. I have always wondered how he came to be in a theatre."

"Why, madame, the theatre is a house of correction for morals," said Gaudissart. "Poor Pons!--Upon my word, one ought to cultivate the species to keep up the stock. 'Tis a pattern man, and has talent too. When will he be able to take his orchestra again, do you think? A theatre, unfortunately, is like a stage coach: empty or full, it starts at the same time. Here at six o'clock every evening, up goes the curtain; and if we are never sorry for ourselves, it won't make good music. Let us see now--how is he?"

La Cibot pulled out her pocket-handkerchief and held it to her eyes.

"It is a terrible thing to say, my dear sir," said she; "but I am afraid we shall lose him, though we are as careful of him as of the apple of our eyes. And, at the same time, I came to say that you must not count on M. Schmucke, worthy man, for he is going to sit up with him at night. One cannot help doing as if there was hope still left, and trying one's best to snatch the dear, good soul from death. But the doctor has given him up----"

"What is the matter with him?"

"He is dying of grief, jaundice, and liver complaint, with a lot of family affairs to complicate matters."

"And a doctor as well," said Gaudissart. "He ought to have had Lebrun, our doctor; it would have cost him nothing."

"M. Pons' doctor is a Providence on earth. But what can a doctor do, no matter how clever he is, with such complications?"

"I wanted the good pair of nutcrackers badly for the accompaniment of my new fairy piece."

"Is there anything that I can do for them?" asked La Cibot, and her expression would have done credit to a Jocrisse.

Gaudissart burst out laughing.

"I am their housekeeper, sir, and do many things for my gentlemen--" She did not finish her speech, for in the middle of Gaudissart's roar of laughter a woman's voice exclaimed, "If you are laughing, old man, one may come in," and the leading lady of the ballet rushed into the