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

German is almost nothing to me, and the President and Count Popinot are a great deal, I recommend you to leave the worthy German to get out of his difficulties by himself. There is a special Providence that watches over Germans, and the part of deputy guardian-angel would not suit you at all. Do you see? Stay as you are--you cannot do better."

"Very good, monsieur le directeur," said Topinard, much distressed. And in this way Schmucke lost the protector sent to him by fate, the one creature that shed a tear for Pons, the poor super for whose return he looked on the morrow.

Next morning poor Schmucke awoke to a sense of his great and heavy loss. He looked round the empty rooms. Yesterday and the day before yesterday the preparations for the funeral had made a stir and bustle which distracted his eyes; but the silence which follows the day, when the friend, father, son, or loved wife has been laid in the grave--the dull, cold silence of the morrow is terrible, is glacial. Some irresistible force drew him to Pons' chamber, but the sight of it was more than the poor man could bear; he shrank away and sat down in the dining-room, where Mme. Sauvage was busy making breakfast ready.

Schmucke drew his chair to the table, but he could eat nothing. A sudden, somewhat sharp ringing of the door-bell rang through the house, and Mme. Cantinet and Mme. Sauvage allowed three black-coated personages to pass. First came Vitel, the justice of the peace, with his highly respectable clerk; third was Fraisier, neither sweeter nor milder for the disappointing discovery of a valid will canceling the formidable instrument so audaciously stolen by him.

"We have come to affix seals on the property," the justice of the peace said gently, addressing Schmucke. But the remark was Greek to Schmucke; he gazed in dismay at his three visitors.

"We have come at the request of M. Fraisier, legal representative of M. Camusot de Marville, heir of the late Pons--" added the clerk.

"The collection is here in this great room, and in the bedroom of the deceased," remarked Fraisier.

"Very well, let us go into the next room.--Pardon us, sir; do not let us interrupt with your breakfast."

The invasion struck an icy chill of terror into poor Schmucke. Fraisier's venomous glances seemed to possess some magnetic influence over his victims, like the power of a spider over a fly.

"M. Schmucke understood how to turn a will, made in the presence of a notary, to his own advantage," he said, "and he surely must have expected some opposition from the family. A family does not allow itself to be plundered by a stranger without some protest; and we shall see, sir, which carries the day--fraud and corruption or the rightful heirs.... We have a right as next of kin to affix seals, and seals shall be affixed. I mean to see that the precaution is taken with the utmost strictness."

"Ach, mein Gott! how haf I offended against Hefn?" cried the innocent Schmucke.

"There is a good deal of talk about you in the house," said La Sauvage. "While you were asleep, a little whipper-snapper in a black suit came here, a puppy that said he was M. Hannequin's head-clerk, and must see you at all costs; but as you were asleep and tired out with the funeral yesterday, I told him that M. Villemot, Tabareau's head-clerk, was acting for you, and if it was a matter of business, I said, he might speak to M. Villemot. 'Ah, so much the better!' the youngster said. 'I shall come to an understanding with him. We will deposit the will at the Tribunal, after showing it to the President.' So at that, I told him to ask M. Villemot to come here as soon as he could.--Be easy, my dear sir, there are those that will take care of you. They shall not shear the fleece off your back. You will have some one that has beak and claws. M. Villemot will give them a piece of his mind. I have put myself in a passion once already with that abominable hussy, La Cibot, a porter's wife that sets up to judge her lodgers, forsooth, and insists that you have filched the money from the heirs; you locked M. Pons up, she says, and worked upon him till he was stark, staring mad. She got as good as she gave, though, the wretched woman. 'You are a thief and a bad lot,' I told her; 'you will get into the police-courts for all the things that you have stolen from the gentlemen,' and she shut up."

The clerk came out to speak to Schmucke.

"Would you wish to be present, sir, when the seals are affixed in the next room?"

"Go on, go on," said Schmucke; "I shall pe allowed to die in beace, I bresume?"

"Oh, under any circumstances a man has a right to die," the clerk answered, laughing; "most of our business relates to wills. But, in my experience, the universal legatee very seldom follows the testator to the tomb."

"I am going," said Schmucke. Blow after blow had given him an intolerable pain at the heart.

"Oh! here comes M. Villemot!" exclaimed La Sauvage.

"Mennesir Fillemod," said poor Schmucke, "rebresent me."

"I hurried here at once," said Villemot. "I have come to tell you that the will is completely in order; it will certainly be confirmed by the court, and you will be put in possession. You will have a fine fortune."

"_I?_ Ein fein vordune?" cried Schmucke, despairingly. That he of all men should be suspected of caring for the money!

"And meantime what is the justice of the peace doing here with his wax candles and his bits of tape?" asked La Sauvage.

"Oh, he is affixing seals.... Come, M. Schmucke, you have a right to be present."

"No--go in yourself."

"But where is the use of the seals if M. Schmucke is in his own house and everything belongs to him?" asked La Sauvage, doing justice in feminine fashion, and interpreting the Code according to their fancy, like one and all of her sex.

"M. Schmucke is not in possession, madame; he is in M. Pons' house. Everything will be his, no doubt; but the legatee cannot take possession without an authorization--an order from the Tribunal. And if the next-of-kin set aside by the testator should dispute the order, a lawsuit is the result. And as nobody knows what may happen, everything is sealed up, and the notaries representing either side proceed to draw up an inventory during the delay prescribed by the law.... And there you are!"

Schmucke, hearing such talk for the first time in his life, was completely bewildered by it; his head sank down upon the back of his chair--he could not support it, it had grown so heavy.

Villemot meanwhile went off to chat with the justice of the peace and his clerk, assisting with professional coolness to affix the seals--a ceremony which always involves some buffoonery and plentiful comments on the objects thus secured, unless, indeed, one of the family happens to be present. At length the party sealed up the chamber and returned to the dining-room, whither the clerk betook himself. Schmucke watched the mechanical operation which consists in setting the justice's seal at either end of a bit of tape stretched across the opening of a folding-door; or, in the case of a cupboard or ordinary door, from edge to edge above the door-handle.

"Now for this room," said Fraisier, pointing to Schmucke's bedroom, which opened into the dining-room.

"But that is M. Schmucke's own room," remonstrated La Sauvage, springing in front of the door.

"We found the lease among the papers," Fraisier said ruthlessly; "there was no mention of M. Schmucke in it; it is taken out in M. Pons' name only. The whole place, and every room in it, is a part of the estate. And besides"--flinging open the door--"look here, monsieur le juge de la paix, it is full of pictures."

"So it is," answered the justice of the peace, and Fraisier thereupon gained his point.

"Wait a bit, gentlemen," said Villemot. "Do you know that you are turning the universal legatee out of doors, and as yet his right has not been called in question?"

"Yes, it has," said Fraisier; "we are opposing the transfer of the property."

"And upon what grounds?"

"You shall know that by and by, my boy," Fraisier replied, banteringly. "At this moment, if the legatee withdraws everything that he declares to be his, we shall raise no objections, but the room itself will be sealed. And M. Schmucke may lodge where he pleases."

"No," said Villemot; "M. Schmucke is going to stay in his room."

"And how?"

"I shall demand an immediate special inquiry," continued Villemot, "and prove that we pay half the rent. You shall not turn us out. Take away the pictures, decide on the ownership of the various articles, but here my client stops--'my boy.'"

"I shall go out!" the old musician suddenly said. He had recovered energy during the odious dispute.

"You had better," said Fraisier. "Your course will save expense to you, for your contention would not be made good. The lease is evidence--"

"The lease! the lease!" cried Villemot, "it is a question of good faith--"

"That could only be proved in a criminal case, by calling witnesses.--Do you mean to plunge into experts' fees and verifications, and orders to show cause why judgment should not be given, and law proceedings generally?"

"No, no!" cried Schmucke in dismay. "I shall turn out; I am used to it--"

In practice Schmucke was a philosopher, an unconscious cynic, so greatly had he simplified his life. Two pairs of shoes, a pair of boots, a couple of suits of clothes, a dozen shirts, a dozen bandana handkerchiefs, four waistcoats, a superb pipe given to him by Pons, with an embroidered tobacco-pouch--these were all his belongings. Overwrought by a fever of indignation, he went into his room and piled his clothes upon a chair.

"All dese are mine," he said, with simplicity worthy of Cincinnatus. "Der biano is also mine."

Fraisier turned to La Sauvage. "Madame, get help," he said; "take that piano out and put it on the landing."

"You are too rough into the bargain," said Villemot, addressing Fraisier. "The justice of the peace gives orders here; he is supreme."

"There are valuables in the room," put in the clerk.

"And besides," added the justice of the peace, "M. Schmucke is going out of his own free will."

"Did any one ever see such a client!" Villemot cried indignantly, turning upon Schmucke. "You are as limp as a rag--"

"Vat dos it matter vere von dies?" Schmucke said as he went out. "Dese men haf tiger faces.... I shall send somebody to vetch mein bits of dings."

"Where are you going, sir?"

"Vere it shall blease Gott," returned Pons' universal legatee with supreme indifference.

"Send me word," said Villemot.

Fraisier turned to the head-clerk. "Go after him," he whispered.

Mme. Cantinet was left in charge, with a provision of fifty francs paid out of the money that they found. The justice of the peace looked out; there Schmucke stood in the courtyard looking up at the windows for the last time.

"You have found a man of butter," remarked the justice.

"Yes," said Fraisier, "yes. The thing is as good as done. You need not hesitate to marry your granddaughter to Poulain;