LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Mr. H. H. KM ian i
 
 L1BKAKX
 
 "THE PAIR OF NUTCRACKERS."
 
 H. DE BALZAC 
 
 THE POOR PARENTS 
 
 PART II. 
 COUSIN BETTY 
 
 (CONCLUDED) and 
 
 COUSIN PONS 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 ELLEN MARRIAGE 
 
 WITH A PREFACE BY 
 
 GEORGE SAINTSBURY 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE GEBBIE PUBLISHING Co., Ltd. 
 
 1898
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 COUSIN BETTY 
 
 PART II I 
 
 COUSIN PONS 91
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 "THE PAIR OK NUTCRACKERS" (p. in) . . . Frontispiece. 
 
 PAGE 
 THE RUE DE NORMANDIE 135 
 
 A COLD THRILL RAN THROUGH MME. CIBOT .... 221 
 
 "MADAME CIBOT, I BELIEVE?" 273 
 
 FRAISIER READ THE CURIOUS DOCUMENT .... 357 
 
 Drawn by W. Boucher.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 ONE of the last and largest of Balzac's great works the 
 very last of them, if we except "La Cousine Bette," to 
 which it is pendant and contrast "La Cousin Pons" has 
 always united suffrages from very different classes of admirers. 
 In the first place, it is not "disagreeable," as the common 
 euphemism has it, and as "La Cousine Bette" certainly is. 
 In the second, it cannot be accused of being a berquinade, 
 as those who like Balzac best when he is doing moral rag- 
 picking are apt to describe books like "Le Medecin de 
 Campagne" and " Le Lys dans la Vallee," if not even like 
 "Eugenie Grandet." It has a considerable variety of in- 
 terest ; its central figure is curiously pathetic and attractive, 
 even though the curse of something like folly, which so often 
 attends Balzac's good characters, may a little weigh on him. 
 It would be a book of exceptional charm even if it were 
 anonymous, or if we knew no more about the author than we 
 know about Shakespeare. 
 
 As it happens, however, "Le Cousin Pons" has other 
 attractions than this. In the first place, Balzac is always 
 great perhaps he is at his greatest in depicting a mania, 
 a passion, whether the subject be pleasure or gold-hunger or 
 parental affection. Pons has two manias, and the one does 
 not interfere with, but rather helps, the other. But this would 
 be nothing if it were not that his chief mania, his ruling 
 passion, is one of Balzac's own. For, as we have often had 
 occasion to notice, Balzac is not by any means one of the 
 great impersonal artists. He can do many things ; but he is 
 never at his best in doing any unless his own personal in- 
 terests, his likings and hatreds, his sufferings and enjoyments, 
 are concerned. He was a kind of actor-manager in his 
 Comedie Humaine ; and perhaps, like other actor-managers, 
 
 (ix)
 
 x PREFACE. 
 
 he took rather disproportionate care of the parts which he 
 played himself. 
 
 Now, he was even more desperate as a collector and fancier 
 of bibelots than he was as a speculator; and while the one 
 mania was nearly as responsible for his pecuniary troubles and 
 his need to overwork himself as the other, it certainly gave 
 him more constant and more comparatively harmless satisfac- 
 tions. His connoisseurship has, of course, been questioned 
 one connoisseur would be nothing if he did not question the 
 competence of another, if not of all others. It seems certain 
 that Balzac frequently bought things for what they were not ; 
 and probable that his own acquisitions went, in his own eyes, 
 through that succession of stages which Charles Lamb (a sort 
 of Cousin Pons in his way too) described inimitably. His 
 pictures, like John Lamb's, were apt to begin as Raphaels, 
 and end as Carlo Marattis. Balzac too, like Pons, was even 
 more addicted to bric-a-brac than to art proper; and after 
 many vicissitudes, he and Madame Hanska seem to have suc- 
 ceeded in getting together a very considerable, if also a very 
 miscellaneous and unequal, collection in the house in the Rue 
 du Paradis, the contents of which were dispersed in part 
 (though, I believe, the Rothschild who bought it, bought 
 most of them too) not many years ago. Pons, indeed, was 
 too poor, and probably too queer, to indulge in one fancy 
 which Balzac had, and which, I think, all collectors of the 
 nobler and more poetic class have, though this number may 
 not be large. Balzac liked to have new beautiful things as 
 well as old to have beautiful things made for him. He was 
 an unwearied customer, though not an uncomplaining one, of 
 the great jeweler Froment Meurice, whose tardiness in carry- 
 ing out his behests he pathetically upbraids in more than one 
 extant letter. 
 
 Therefore, Balzac "did more than sympathize, he felt" 
 as it has been well put with Pons in the bric-a-brac matter ; 
 and it would appear that he did so likewise in that of music,
 
 PREFACE. xi 
 
 though we have rather less direct evidence. This other 
 sympathy has resulted in the addition to Pons himself of the 
 figure of Schmucke, a minor and more parochial figure, but 
 good in itself, and very much appreciated, I believe, by fellow 
 melomancs. 
 
 It is with even more than his usual art that Balzac has sur- 
 rounded these two originals these "humorists," as our own 
 ancestors would have called them with figures much, very 
 much, more of the ordinary world than themselves. The 
 grasping worldliness of the parvenu family of Camusot in one 
 degree, and the greed of the portress, Madame Cibot, on the 
 other, are admirably represented; the latter, in particular, 
 must always hold a very high place among Balzac's greatest 
 successes. She is, indeed, a sort of companion sketch to 
 Cousine Bette herself in a still lower rank of life, representing 
 the diabolical in woman ; and perhaps we should not wrong 
 the author's intentions if we suspected that Diane de Mau- 
 frigneuse has some claims to make up the trio in a sphere 
 even more above Lisbeth's than Lisbeth's is above Madame 
 Cibot's own. 
 
 Different opinions have been held of the actual "bric-a- 
 bracery" of this piece that is to say, not of Balzac's com- 
 petence in the matter, but of the artistic value of his intro- 
 duction of it. Perhaps his enthusiasm does a little run away 
 with him; perhaps he gives us a little too much of it, and avails 
 himself too freely of the license, at least of the temptation, 
 to digress which the introduction of such persons as Elie 
 Magus affords. And it is also open to any one to say that 
 the climax, or what is in effect the climax, is introduced some- 
 what too soon ; that the struggle, first over the body and 
 then over the property of Patroclus-Pons, is inordinately spun 
 out; and that, even granting the author's mania, he might 
 have utilized it better by giving us more of the harmless and 
 ill-treated cousin's happy hunts, and less of the disputes over 
 his accumulated quarry. This, however, means simply the
 
 xii PREFACE. 
 
 old, and generally rather impertinent, suggestion to the artist 
 that he shall do with his art something different from that 
 which he has himsef chosen to do. It is, or should be, suffi- 
 cient that " Le Cousin Pons " is a very agreeable book, more 
 pathetic, if less "grimy," than its companion, full of its 
 author's idiosyncrasy, and characteristic of his genius. It 
 may not be uninteresting to add that " Le Cousin Pons " was 
 originally called " Les Deux Musiciens," or "Le Parasite," 
 and that the change, which is a great improvement, was 
 due to the instances of Madame Hanska. 
 
 (For bibliography, see the Preface to " La Cousine Bette.") 
 
 G. S.
 
 THE POOR PARENTS 
 
 (Les Parents Pauvres}. 
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 THE words spoken by Lisbeth : " He begs of his former mis- 
 tresses," haunted the baroness all night. Like sick men given 
 over by the physicians, who have recourse to quacks, like men 
 who have fallen into the lowest Dantesque circle of despair, or 
 drowning creatures who mistake a floating stick for a hawser, 
 she ended by believing in the baseness of which the mere idea 
 had horrified her; and it occurred to her that she might apply 
 for help to one of those odious women. 
 
 Next morning, without consulting her children or saying a 
 word to anybody, she went to see Mademoiselle Josepha 
 Mirah, prima donna of the Royal Academy of Music, to find 
 or to lose the hope that had gleamed before her like a will-o'- 
 the-wisp. At midday the great singer's waiting-maid brought 
 her in the card of the Baronne Hulot, saying that this person 
 was waiting 'at the door, having asked whether mademoiselle 
 could receive her. 
 
 "Are the rooms done? " 
 
 "Yes, mademoiselle." 
 
 "And the flowers fresh? " 
 
 "Yes, mademoiselle." 
 
 " Just tell Jean to look around and see that everything is as 
 it should be before showing the lady in, and treat her with the 
 greatest respect. Go, and come back to dress me I must 
 look my very best." 
 
 She went to study herself in the long glass. 
 
 " Now, to put our best foot forward ! " said she to herself. 
 
 (1)
 
 2 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "Vice under arms to meet virtue! Poor woman, what can 
 she want of me? I cannot bear to see 
 
 " ' The noble victim of outrageous fortune! ' " 
 
 And she sang through the famous aria as the maid came in 
 again. 
 
 " Madame," said the girl, "the lady has a nervous trem- 
 bling " 
 
 " Offer her some orange-flower water, some rum, some 
 soup " 
 
 " I did, mademoiselle ; but she declines everything, and 
 says it is an infirmity, a nervous complaint " 
 
 "Where is she?" 
 
 " In the big drawing-room." 
 
 "Well, make haste, child. Give me my smartest slippers, 
 the dressing-gown embroidered by Bijou, and no end of lace 
 frills. Do my hair in a way to astonish a woman. This 
 woman plays a part against mine ; and tell the lady for she is 
 a real, great lady, my girl ; nay, more, she is what you will 
 never be, a woman whose prayers can rescue souls from your 
 purgatory tell her I was in bed, as I was playing last night, 
 but that I am getting up." 
 
 The baroness, shown into Josepha's handsome drawing- 
 room, did not note how long she was kept waiting there, 
 though it was a long half-hour. This room, entirely redeco- 
 rated even since Josepha had had the house, was hung with 
 silk in purple and gold color. The luxury which fine gentle- 
 men were wont to lavish on their petiles maisons (little houses), 
 the scenes of their profligacy, of which the remains still bear 
 witness to the follies from which they were so aptly named, 
 was displayed to perfection, thanks to modern inventiveness, 
 in the four rooms opening into each other, where the warm 
 temperature was maintained by a system of hot-air pipes with 
 invisible openings. 
 
 The baroness, quite bewildered,, examined each work of art
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 3 
 
 with the greatest amazement. Here she found the fortunes 
 accounted for that melt in the crucible under which pleasure 
 and vanity feed the devouring flames. This woman, who for 
 twenty-six years had lived among the dead relics of imperial 
 magnificence, whose eyes were accustomed to carpets pat- 
 terned with faded flowers, rubbed gilding, silks as forlorn as 
 her heart, half understood the powerful fascinations of vice as 
 she studied its results. It was impossible not to wish to pos- 
 sess these beautiful things, these admirable works of art, the 
 creation of the unknown talent which abounds in Paris in our 
 day and produces treasures for all Europe. Each thing had 
 the novel charm of unique perfection. The models having 
 been destroyed, every vase, every figure, every piece of sculp- 
 ture was the original. This is the crowning grace of modern 
 luxury. To own the thing which is not vulgarized by the two 
 thousand wealthy citizens whose notion of luxury is the lavish 
 display of the splendors that stores can supply is the stamp of 
 true luxury the luxury of the fine gentlemen of the day, the 
 shooting stars of the Paris firmament. 
 
 As she examined the flower-stands, filled with the choicest 
 exotic plants, mounted in chased brass and inlaid in the style 
 of Boulle, the baroness was scared by the idea of the wealth 
 in this apartment. And this impression naturally shed a 
 glamour over the person round whom all this profusion was 
 heaped. Adeline imagined that Josepha Mirah whose por- 
 trait by Joseph Bridau was the glory of the adjoining boudoir 
 must be a singer of genius, a Malibran, and she expected to 
 see a real star, a true " lionne." She was sorry she had come. 
 But she had been prompted by so strong and so natural a feel- 
 ing, by such purely disinterested devotion, that she collected 
 all her courage for the interview. Beside, she was about to 
 satisfy her urgent curiosity, to see for herself what the charm 
 was of this kind of women, that they could extract so much 
 gold from the miserly ore of Paris mud. 
 
 The baroness looked at herself to see if she were not a blot
 
 4 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 on all this splendor ; but she was well dressed in her velvet 
 gown, with a little cape trimmed with beautiful lace, and her 
 velvet bonnet of the same shade was becoming. Seeing her- 
 self still as imposing as any queen, always a queen even in her 
 fall, she reflected that the dignity of sorrow was a match for 
 the dignity of talent. 
 
 At last, after much opening and shutting of doors, she saw 
 Josepha. The singer bore a strong resemblance to Allori's 
 "Judith," which dwells in the memory of all who have ever 
 seen it in the Pitti palace, near the door of the grand salon. 
 She had the same haughty mien, the same fine features, black 
 hair simply knotted, and a yellow wrapper with little embroid- 
 ered flowers, exactly like the brocade worn by the immortal 
 homicide conceived of by Bronzino's nephew. 
 
 "Madame la Baronne, I am quite overwhelmed by the 
 honor you do me in coming here," said the singer, resolved 
 to play her part as a great lady with a grace. 
 
 She pushed forward an easy-chair for the baroness and seated 
 herself on a stool. She discerned the faded beauty of the 
 woman before her, and was filled with pity as she saw her 
 shaken by the nervous palsy that, on the least excitement, 
 became convulsive. She could read at a glance the saintly 
 life described to her of old by Hulot and Crevel ; and she not 
 only ceased to think of a contest with her, she humiliated 
 herself before a superiority she appreciated. The great artist 
 could admire what the courtesan laughed to scorn. 
 
 " Mademoiselle, despair brought me here. It reduces us to 
 any means " 
 
 A look in Josepha's face made the baroness feel that she 
 had wounded the woman from whom she hoped for so much, 
 and she looked at her. Her beseeching eyes extinguished the 
 flash in Josepha's ; the singer smiled. It was a wordless dia- 
 logue of pathetic eloquence. 
 
 "It is now two years and a half since Monsieur Hulot left 
 his family, and I do not know where to find him, though I
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 5 
 
 know that he lives in Paris," said the baroness with emotion. 
 "A dream suggested to me the idea an absurd one perhaps 
 that you may have interested yourself in Monsieur Hulot. 
 If you could enable me to see him oh ! mademoiselle, I 
 would pray heaven for you every day as long as I live in this 
 world " 
 
 Two large tears in the singer's eyes told what her reply 
 would be. 
 
 " Madame," said she, " I have done you an injury without 
 knowing you ; but, now that I have the happiness of seeing 
 in you the most perfect image of virtue on earth, believe me 
 I am sensible of the extent of my fault ; I repent sincerely, 
 and believe me, I will do all in my power to remedy it ! " 
 
 She took Madame Hulot's hand, and before the lady could 
 do anything to hinder her, she kissed it respectfully, even 
 humbling herself to bend one knee. Then she rose, as proud 
 as when she stood on the stage in the part of Mathilde, and 
 rang the bell. 
 
 " Go on horseback," said she to the manservant, " and kill 
 the horse if you must, to find little Bijou, Rue Saint-Maur-du- 
 Temple, and bring her here. Put her into a coach and pay 
 the coachman to come at a gallop. Do not lose a moment 
 or you lose your place. 
 
 " Madame," she went on, coming back to the baroness, 
 and speaking to her in respectful tones, " you must forgive 
 me. As soon as the Due d'Herouville became my protector, 
 I dismissed the baron, having heard that he was ruining his 
 family for me. What more could I do? In an actress' career 
 a protector is indispensable from the first day of her appear- 
 ance on the boards. Our salaries do not pay half our ex- 
 penses ; we must have a temporary husband. I did not value 
 Monsieur Hulot, who took me away from a rich man, a con- 
 ceited idiot. Old Crevel would undoubtedly have married 
 me " 
 
 "So he told me," said the baroness, interrupting her.
 
 6 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 " Well, then, you see, madame, I might at this day have 
 been an honest woman, with only one legitimate husband ! " 
 
 "You have many excuses, mademoiselle," said Adeline, 
 " and God will take them into account. But, for my part, 
 far from reproaching you, I came, on the contrary, to make 
 myself your debtor in gratitude 
 
 " Madame, for nearly three years I have provided for Mon- 
 sieur le Baron's necessities " 
 
 "You?" interrupted the baroness, with tears in her eyes. 
 " Oh, what can I do for you ? I can only pray 
 
 "I and Monsieur le Due d'Herouville," the singer said, 
 
 "a noble soul, a true gentleman " and Josepha related 
 
 the settling and " marriage " of Monsieur Thoul. 
 
 " And so, thanks to you, the baron has wanted nothing ? " 
 
 "We have done our best to that end, madame." 
 
 " And where is he now? " 
 
 " About six months ago, Monsieur le Due told me that the 
 baron, known to the notary by the name of Thoul, had drawn 
 all the eight thousand francs that were to have been paid to 
 him in fixed sums once a quarter," replied Josepha. "We 
 have heard no more of the baron, neither I nor Monsieur 
 d'Herouville. Our lives are so full, we artists are so busy, 
 that I really have no time to run after old Thoul. As it hap- 
 pens, for the last six months, Bijou, who works for me his 
 what shall I say ?" 
 
 " His mistress," said Madame Hulot. 
 
 " His mistress," repeated Josepha, " has not been here. 
 Mademoiselle Olympe Bijou is perhaps divorced. Divorce is 
 common in the thirteenth arrondissement." 
 
 Josepha rose, and foraging among the rare plants in her 
 stands, made a charming bouquet for Madame Hulot, whose 
 expectations, it may be said, were by no means fulfilled. Like 
 those worthy people who take men of genius to be a sort of 
 monsters, eating, drinking, walking, and speaking unlike other 
 people, the baroness had hoped to see Josepha the opera singer,
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 7 
 
 the witch, the amorous and amusing courtesan ; she saw a calm 
 and well-mannered woman, with the dignity of talent, the 
 simplicity of an actress who knows herself to be at night a 
 queen, and also, better than all, a woman of the town whose 
 eyes, attitude, and demeanor paid full and ungrudging homage 
 to the virtuous wife, the Mother of Sorrows of the sacred 
 hymn, and who was crowning her sorrows with flowers, as the 
 madonna is crowned in Italy. 
 
 "Madame," said the footman, reappearing at the end of 
 half an hour, " Madame Bijou is on her way, but you are not 
 to expect little Olympe. Your needlewoman, madame, is 
 settled in life; she is married " 
 
 " More or less ? " said Josepha. 
 
 " No, madame, really married. She is at the head of a very 
 fine business ; she has married the owner of a large and fash- 
 ionable store, on which they have spent millions of francs, on 
 the Boulevard des Italiens ; and she has left the embroidery 
 business to her sister and mother. She is Madame Grenou- 
 ville. The fat tradesman " 
 
 "A Crevel?" 
 
 "Yes, madame," said the man. "Well, he has settled 
 thirty thousand francs a year on Mademoiselle Bijou by the 
 marriage articles. And her elder sister, they say, is going to 
 be married to a rich butcher." 
 
 " Your business looks rather hopeless, I am afraid," said 
 Josepha to the baroness. " Monsieur le Baron is no longer 
 where I lodged him." 
 
 Ten minutes later Madame Bijou was announced. Josepha 
 very prudently placed the baroness in the boudoir, and drew 
 the portiere over the door. 
 
 " You would scare her," said she to Madame Hulot. " She 
 would let nothing out if she suspected that you were interested 
 in the information. Leave me to catechise her. Hide there, 
 and you will hear everything. It is a scene that is played 
 quite as often in real life as on the stage "
 
 8 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "Well, Mother Bijou," she said to an old woman dressed 
 in tartan stuff, and who looked like a charwoman in her Sunday 
 best, " so you are all very happy? Your daughter is in luck." 
 
 "Oh, happy? As for that ! My daughter gives us a hun- 
 dred francs a month, while she rides in a carriage and feeds 
 off silver plate she is a millionary, is my daughter ! Olympe 
 might have lifted me above labor. To have to work at my 
 age ? Is that being good to me ? " 
 
 " She ought not to be ungrateful, for she owes her beauty 
 to you," replied Jos6pha; "but why did she not come to see 
 me? It was I who placed her in ease by settling her with my 
 uncle." 
 
 "Yes, madame, with old Monsieur Thoul, but he is so very 
 old and broken " 
 
 "But what have you done with him? Is he with you? 
 She was very foolish to leave him ; he is worth millions now." 
 
 "Heaven above us!" cried the mother. "What did I 
 tell her when she behaved so badly to him, and he as mild as 
 milk, poor old fellow ? Oh ! didn't she just give it him hot? 
 Olympe was perverted, madame ! " 
 
 "But how?" 
 
 " She got to know a claqueur, madame, saving your presence, 
 a man paid to clap, you know, the grand-nephew of an old 
 mattress-picker of the Faubourg Saint-Marceau. This good- 
 for-nought, as all your good-looking fellows are, paid to make 
 a piece go, is the cock-of-the-walk out on the Boulevard du 
 Temple, where he works up the new plays, and takes care that 
 the actresses get a reception, as he calls it. First, he has a 
 good breakfast in the morning ; then, before the play, he dines, 
 to be ' up to the mark,' as he says ; in short, he is a born lover 
 of billiards and drams. ' But that is not following a trade,' 
 as I said to Olympe." 
 
 "It is a trade men follow, unfortunately," said Josepha. 
 
 "Well, the rascal turned Olympe's head, and he, madame, 
 did not keep good company when I tell you he was very
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 9 
 
 near being nabbed by the police in a tavern where thieves 
 meet. 'Wever, Monsieur Braulard, the leader of the claque, 
 got him out of that. He wears gold earrings, and he lives by 
 doing nothing, hanging on to women, who are fools about 
 these good-looking scamps. He spent all the money Monsieur 
 Thoul used to give the child. 
 
 "Then the business was going to grief; what embroidery 
 brought in went out across the billiard table. 'Wever, the 
 young fellow, had a pretty sister, madame, who, like her 
 brother, lived by hook and by crook, and no better than she 
 should be neither, over in the students' quarter." 
 
 "One of the lorettes at the Chaumiere," said Josepha. 
 
 "So, madame," said the old woman. "So Idamore his 
 name is Idamore, leastways that is what he calls himself, for 
 his real name is Chardin Idamore fancied that your uncle 
 had a deal more money than he owned to, and he managed 
 to send his sister Elodie and that was a stage name he gave 
 her to send her to be a workwoman at our place, without 
 my daughter's knowing who she was ; and, gracious good- 
 ness ! but that girl turned the whole place topsy-turvy ; she 
 got all them poor girls corrupted, brutalized impossible to 
 whitewash 'em, saving your presence 
 
 " And she was so sharp, she won over poor old Thoul, and 
 took him away, and we don't know where, and left us in a 
 pretty fix, with a lot of bills coming in. To this day as ever 
 is we have not been able to settle up ; but my daughter, who 
 knows all about such things, keeps an eye on them as they 
 fall due. Then, when Idamore saw he had got hold of the 
 old man, through his sister, you understand, he threw over 
 my daughter, and now he has got hold of a little actress at 
 the Funambules. And that was how my daughter came to get 
 married, as you will see 
 
 "But you know where the mattress-picker lives?" said 
 Josepha. 
 
 "What! old Chardin? As if he lived anywhere at all!
 
 10 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 He is drunk by six in the morning ; he makes a mattress once 
 a month ; he hangs about the low wineshops all day ; he plays 
 at pools ' 
 
 " He plays at pools? " said Josepha. 
 
 "You do not understand, madame; pools of billiards, I 
 mean, and he wins three or four a day, and then he drinks." 
 
 " Water out of the pools, I suppose ? " said Josepha. " But 
 if Idamore haunts the boulevard, by inquiring through my 
 friend Braulard, we could find him." 
 
 "I don't know, madame ; all this was six months ago. 
 Idamore was one of the sort who are bound to find their way 
 into the police court, and from that to Melun and then 
 who knows ? ' ' 
 
 " To the galleys ! " said Josepha. 
 
 "Well, madame, you know everything," said the old 
 woman, smiling. " Well, if my girl had never known that 
 
 scamp, she would now be Still, she was in luck, all the 
 
 same, you will say, for Monsieur Grenouville fell so much in 
 love with her that he married her " 
 
 "And what brought that about?" 
 
 " Olympe was desperate, madame. When she found hei- 
 self left in the lurch for that little actress and she took a rod 
 out of pickle for her, I can tell you ; my word, but she gave 
 her a dressing ! and when she had lost poor old Thoul, who 
 worshiped her, she would have nothing more to say to the 
 men. "Wever, Monsieur Grenouville, who had been dealing 
 largely with us to the tune of two hundred embroidered 
 China-crepe shawls every quarter he wanted to console her ; 
 but whether or no, she would not listen to anything without 
 the mayor and the priest. 'I mean to be respectable,' said 
 she, ' or perish ! ' and she stuck to it. Monsieur Grenouville 
 consented to marry her, on condition of her giving us all up, 
 and we agreed " 
 
 "For a handsome consideration?" said Josepha, with her 
 usual perspicacity.
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 11 
 
 "Yes, madame, ten thousand francs, and an allowance to 
 my father, who is past work." 
 
 " I begged your daughter to make old Thoul happy, and 
 she has thrown me over. That is not fair. I will take no 
 interest in any one for the future ! That is what comes of 
 trying to do good ! Benevolence certainly does not answer as 
 a speculation ! Olympe ought, at least, to have given me 
 notice of this jobbing. Now, if you find the old man Thoul 
 within a fortnight, I will give you a thousand francs." 
 
 "That'll be a hard task, my dear lady; still, there are a good 
 many five-franc pieces in a thousand francs, and I will try to 
 earn your money." 
 
 "Good-morning, then, Madame Bijou." 
 
 On going into the boudoir, the singer found that Madame 
 Hulot had fainted ; but in spite of having lost consciousness, 
 her nervous trembling kept her still perpetually shaking, as 
 the pieces of a snake that has been cut up still wriggle and 
 move. Strong salts, cold water, and all the ordinary remedies 
 were applied to recall the baroness to her senses, or rather, to 
 the apprehension of her sorrows. 
 
 "Ah! mademoiselle, how far has he fallen !" cried she, 
 recognizing Josepha, and finding that she was alone with her. 
 
 " Take heart, madame," replied the actress, who had seated 
 herself on a cushion at Adeline's feet, and was kissing her 
 hands. "We shall find him; and if he is in the mire, well, 
 he must wash himself. Believe me, with people of good 
 breeding it is all a matter of clothes. Allow me to make up 
 for the harm I have done you, for I see how much you are at- 
 tached to your husband, in spite of his misconduct or you 
 would not have come here. Well, you see, the poor man is 
 so fond of the women. If you had had a little of our chic, you 
 would have kept him from running about the world ; for you 
 would have been what we can never be all the women in 
 one that a man wants. 
 
 " The State ought to subsidize a school of manners for honest
 
 12 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 women ! But governments are so prudish ! Still, they are 
 guided by the men, whom we privately guide. My word, I 
 pity nations ! 
 
 " But the matter in question is how you can be helped, and 
 not to laugh at the world. Well, madame, be easy, go home 
 again, and do not worry. I will bring your Hector back to 
 you as he was as a man of thirty." 
 
 " Ah, mademoiselle, let us go to see that Madame Grenou- 
 ville," said the baroness. "She surely knows something! 
 Perhaps I may see the baron this very day, and be able to 
 snatch him at once from poverty and disgrace." 
 
 " Madame, I will show you the deep gratitude I feel toward 
 you by not displaying the stage-singer Josepha, the Due 
 d'Herouville's mistress, in the company of the noblest, saint- 
 liest image of virtue. I respect you too much to be seen by 
 your side. This is not acted humility ; it is sincere homage. 
 You make me sorry, madame, that I cannot tread in your 
 footsteps, in spite of the thorns that tear your feet and hands. 
 But it cannot be helped ! I am one with art, as you are one 
 with virtue." 
 
 "Poor child!" said the baroness, moved amid her own 
 sorrows by a strange sense of compassionate sympathy; "I 
 will pray God for you ; for you are the victim of society, 
 which must have theatres. When you are old, repent you 
 will be heard if God vouchsafes to hear the prayers of a 
 
 "Of a martyr, madame," Josepha put in, and she respect- 
 fully kissed the baroness' skirt. 
 
 But Adeline took the actress' hand, and, drawing her toward 
 her, kissed her on the forehead. Coloring with pleasure, 
 Josepha saw the baroness into the hackney-coach with the 
 humblest politeness. 
 
 " It must be some visiting lady of charity," said the man- 
 servant to the maid, " for she does not do so much for any 
 one, not even for her dear friend Madame Jenny Cadine." 
 
 "Wait a few days," said she, "and you will see him,
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 13 
 
 madame, or I renounce the God of my fathers and that from 
 a Jewess, you know, is a promise of success." 
 
 At the very time when Madame Hulot was calling on 
 Josepha, Victorin, in his study, was receiving an old woman 
 of about seventy-five, who, to gain admission to the lawyer, 
 had used the terrible name of the head of the detective force. 
 The man in waiting announced 
 
 " Madame de Saint-Esteve." 
 
 " I have assumed one of my business names," said she, 
 taking a seat. 
 
 Victorin felt a sort of internal chill at the sight of this 
 dreadful old woman. Though handsomely dressed, she was 
 terrible to look upon, for her flat, colorless, strongly-marked 
 face, furrowed with wrinkles, expressed a sort of cold malignity. 
 Marat, as a woman of that age, might have been like this 
 creature, a living embodiment of the Reign of Terror. 
 
 This sinister old woman's small pale eyes twinkled with a 
 tiger's blood-thirsty greed. Her broad, flat nose, with nostrils 
 expanded into oval cavities, breathed the fires of hell, and 
 resembled the beak of some evil bird of prey. The spirit 
 of intrigue lurked behind her low cruel brow. Long hairs 
 had grown from her wrinkled chin, betraying the masculine 
 character of her schemes. Any one seeing that woman's face 
 would have said that artists had failed in their conceptions of 
 Mephistopheles. 
 
 " My dear sir," she began, with a patronizing air, " I have 
 long since given up active business of any kind. What I have 
 come to you to do, I have undertaken, for the sake of my dear 
 nephew, whom I love more than I could love a son of my 
 own. Now, the head of the police to whom the president 
 of the Council said two words in his ear as regards yourself, 
 in talking to Monsieur Chapuzot thinks as the police ought 
 not to appear in a matter of this description, you understand. 
 They gave my nephew a free hand, but my nephew will have
 
 14 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 nothing to say to it, except as before the Council ; he will 
 not be seen in it." 
 
 " Then your nephew is " 
 
 " You have hit it, and I am rather proud of him ; I am the 
 aunt of Vautrin," said she, interrupting the lawyer, " for he 
 is my pupil, and he soon taught his teacher. We have con- 
 sidered this case, and have come to our own conclusions. 
 Will you hand over thirty thousand francs to have the whole 
 thing taken off your hands ? I will make a clean sweep of it 
 all, and you need not pay till the job is done." 
 
 " Do you know the persons concerned ? " 
 
 " No, my dear sir ; I look for information from you. What 
 we are told is, that a certain old idiot has fallen into the 
 clutches of a widow. This widow, of nine-and-twenty, has 
 played her cards so well that she has forty thousand francs a 
 year, of which she has robbed two fathers of families. She is 
 now about to swallow down eighty thousand francs a year by 
 marrying an old boy of sixty-one. She will thus ruin a respect- 
 able family, and hand over this vast fortune to the child of 
 some lover by getting rid at once of the old husband. That 
 is the case as stated." 
 
 " Quite correct," said Victorin. " My father-in-law, Mon- 
 sieur Crevel ' ' 
 
 " Formerly a perfumer ; a mayor yes, I live in his district 
 under the name of Ma'ame Nourrisson," said the woman. 
 
 " The other person is Madame Marneffe." 
 
 "I do not know her," said Madame de Saint-Esteve. 
 "But within three days I will be in a position to count her 
 chemises." 
 
 " Can you hinder the marriage? " asked Victorin. 
 
 " How far have they gone ? " 
 
 "To the second time of asking." 
 
 " We must carry off the woman. To-day is Sunday there 
 are but three days, for they will be married on Wednesday, no 
 doubt ; it is impossible. But she may be killed '
 
 COUSTN BETTY. 15 
 
 Victorin Huiot started with an honest man's horror at hear- 
 ing these five words uttered in cold blood. 
 
 " Murder? " said he. "And how could you do it? " 
 
 " For forty years now, monsieur, we have played the part of 
 fate," replied she, with terrible pride, "and do just what we will 
 in Paris. More than one family even in the Faubourg Saint- 
 Germain has told me all its secrets, I can tell you ! I have 
 made and spoiled many a match, I have destroyed many a will, 
 and saved many a man's honor. I hold penned in there," and 
 she tapped her forehead, " a flock of secrets which are worth 
 thirty-six thousand francs a year to me ; and you you will be 
 one of my lambs, hoh ! Could such a woman as I am be what 
 I am if she revealed her ways and means ? I act. 
 
 " Whatever I may do, sir, will be the result of an accident ; 
 you need feel no remorse. You will be like a man cured by 
 a clairvoyant, by the end of a month j it seems all the work of 
 Nature." 
 
 Victorin broke out in a cold sweat. The sight of an execu- 
 tioner would have shocked him less than this prolix and pre- 
 tentious Sister of the Hulks. As he looked at her purple-red 
 gown, she seemed to him dyed in blood. 
 
 " Madame, I do not accept the help of your experience and 
 skill if success is to cost anybody's life, or the least criminal act 
 is to come of it." 
 
 "You are a great baby, monsieur," replied the woman; 
 " you wish to remain blameless in your own eyes, while you 
 want your enemy to be overthrown." 
 
 Victorin shook his head in denial. 
 
 " Yes," she went on, " you want this Madame Marneffe to 
 drop the prey she has between her teeth. But how do you 
 expect to make a tiger drop his piece of beef? Can you do it 
 by patting his back and saying : ' pussy ! pussy ? ' You are 
 illogical. You want a battle fought, but you object to blows. 
 Well, I grant you the innocence you are so careful over. I 
 have always found that there was material for hypocrisy in
 
 16 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 honesty ! One day, three months hence, a poor priest will 
 come to beg of you forty thousand francs for a pious work a 
 convent to be rebuilt in the Levant in the desert. If you 
 are satisfied with your lot, give the good man the money. 
 You will pay more than that into the treasury. It will be a 
 mere trifle in comparison with what you will get, I can tell 
 you." 
 
 She rose, standing on the broad feet that seemed to overflow 
 her satin shoes ; she smiled, bowed, and vanished. 
 
 " The devil has a sister," said Victorin, rising. 
 
 He saw the hideous stranger to the door, a creature called 
 up from the dens of the police, as on the stage a monster 
 comes up from the third cellar at the touch of a fairy's wand 
 in a ballet-extravaganza. 
 
 After finishing what he had to do at the Courts, Victorin 
 went to call on Monsieur Chapuzot, the head of one of the 
 most important branches of the central police, to make some 
 inquiries about the stranger. Finding Monsieur Chapuzot 
 alone in his office, Victorin thanked him for his help. 
 
 " You sent me an old woman who might stand for the in- 
 carnation of the criminal side of Paris." 
 
 Monsieur Chapuzot laid his spectacles on his papers and 
 looked at the lawyer with astonishment. 
 
 " I should not have taken the liberty of sending anybody 
 to see you without giving you notice beforehand, or a line of 
 introduction," said he. 
 
 "Then it was Monsieur le Prefet ?" 
 
 "I think not," said Chapuzot. "The last time that the 
 Prince de VVissembourg dined with the minister of the interior, 
 he spoke to the preTet of the position in which you find your- 
 self a deplorable position and asked him if you could be 
 helped in any friendly way. The prefet, who was interested 
 by the regrets his excellency expressed as to this family affair, 
 did me the honor to consult me about it. 
 
 " Ever since the present prefet has held the reins of this
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 17 
 
 department so useful and so vilified he has made it a rule 
 that family matters are never to be interfered in. He is right 
 in principle and in morality ; but in practice he is wrong. In 
 the forty-five years that I have served in the police, it did, 
 from 1799 till 1815, great service in family concerns. Since 
 1820 a constitutional government and the press have com- 
 pletely altered the conditions of existence. So my advice, 
 'indeed, was not to intervene in such a case, and the prefet 
 did me the honor to agree with my remarks. The head of 
 the detective branch had orders, in my presence, to take no 
 steps ; so if you have had any one sent to you by him, he 
 will be reprimanded. It might cost him his place. 'The 
 police will do this or that,' is easily said; the police, the 
 police ! But, my dear sir, the marshal and the Ministerial 
 Council do not know what the police is. The police alone 
 knows the police. The old Kings, Napoleon and Louis 
 XVIII., knew their police; but as for ours, only Fouch6, 
 Monsieur Lenoir, and Monsieur de Sartines have had any 
 notion of it. Everything is changed now; we are reduced 
 and disarmed ! I have seen many private disasters develop, 
 which I could have checked with five grains of despotic 
 power. We shall be regretted by the very men who have 
 crippled us when they, like you, stand face to face with some 
 moral monstrosities, which ought to be swept away as we 
 sweep away mud ! In public affairs the police is expected to 
 foresee everything, or when the safety of the public is involved 
 but the family ? It is sacred ! I would do my utmost to 
 discover and hinder a plot against the King's life, I would 
 see through the walls of a house ; but as to laying a finger on 
 a household, or peeping into private interests never, so long 
 as I sit in this office. I should be afraid." 
 
 "Of what?" 
 
 " Of the press, Monsieur the Deputy, of the Left Centre." 
 
 " What, then, can I do ? " said Hulot, after a pause. 
 
 "Well, you are the Family," said the official. "That 
 2
 
 18 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 settles it ; you can do what you please. But as to helping 
 you, as to using the police as an instrument of private feelings 
 and interests, how is it possible? There lies, you see, the 
 secret of the persecution, necessary, but pronounced illegal 
 by the bench, which was brought to bear against the pred- 
 ecessor of our present chief detective. Bibi-Lupin undertook 
 investigations for the benefit of private persons. This might 
 have led to great social dangers. With the means at his com- ' 
 mand, the man would have been formidable, an underlying 
 fate " 
 
 "But in my place? " said Hulot. 
 
 "What, you ask my advice? You who sell it!" replied 
 Monsieur Chapuzot. " Come, come, my dear sir, you are 
 making fun of me." 
 
 Hulot bowed to the functionary, and went away without 
 seeing that gentleman's almost imperceptible shrug as he rose 
 to open the door. 
 
 "And he expects to be a statesman ! " said Chapuzot to 
 himself as he returned to his reports. 
 
 Victorin went home, still full of perplexities which he could 
 confide to no one. 
 
 At dinner the baroness joyfully announced to her children 
 that within a month their father might be sharing their com- 
 forts, and end his days in peace among his family. 
 
 "Oh, I would gladly give my three thousand six hundred 
 francs a year to see the baron here ! " cried Lisbeth. " But, 
 my dear Adeline, do not dream beforehand of such happiness, 
 I entreat you ! " 
 
 " Betty is right," said Celestine. " My dear mother, wait 
 till the end." 
 
 The baroness, all feeling and all hope, related her visit to 
 Josepha, expressed her sense of the misery of such women in 
 the midst of good fortune, and mentioned Chardin the mat- 
 tress-picker, the father of the Oran storekeeper, thus showing 
 that her hopes were not groundless.
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 19 
 
 By seven next morning Lisbeth had driven in a hackney- 
 coach to the Quai de la Tournelle, and stopped the vehicle at 
 the corner of the Rue de Poissy. 
 
 "Go to the Rue des Bernardins," said she to the driver, 
 " No. 7, a house with an entry and no porter. Go up to the 
 fifth floor, ring at the door to the left, on which you will see 
 \ Mademoiselle Chardin Lace and Shawls Mended.' She will 
 answer the door. Ask for the chevalier. She will say he is 
 out. Say in reply, ' Yes, I know, but find him, for his maid 
 is out on the quay in a coach, and wants to see him.' ' 
 
 Twenty minutes later, an old man, who looked about eighty, 
 with perfectly white hair, and a nose reddened by the cold, 
 and a pale, wrinkled face like an old woman's, came shuffling 
 slowly along in list slippers, a shiny alpaca overcoat hang- 
 ing on his stooping shoulders, no ribbon at his button-hole, 
 the sleeves of an under-vest showing below his coat-cuffs, and 
 his shiit-front unpleasantly dingy. He approached timidly, 
 looked at the coach, recognized Lisbeth, and came to the 
 window. 
 
 " Why, my dear cousin, what a state you are in ! " 
 
 "Elodie keeps everything for herself," said Baron Hulot. 
 " Those Chardins are a blackguard crew." 
 
 "Will you come home to us?" 
 
 "Oh, no, no ! " cried the old man. " I would rather go 
 to America." 
 
 " Adeline is on the scent." 
 
 "Oh, if only some on would pay my debts! " said the 
 baron, with a suspicious look, " for Samanon is after me." 
 
 " We have not paid up the arrears yet ; your son still owes 
 a hundred thousand francs. ' ' 
 
 "Poor boy! " 
 
 "And your pension will not be free before seven or eight 
 months. If you will wait a minute, I have two thousand 
 francs here." 
 
 The baron held out his hand with fearful avidity.
 
 20 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 11 Give it me, Lisbeth, and may God reward you ! Give 
 it me ; I know where to go." 
 
 " But you will tell me where, old wretch ? " 
 
 "Yes, yes. Then I can wait eight months, for I have dis- 
 covered a little angel, a good child, an innocent thing not 
 old enough to be depraved." 
 
 " Do not forget the police court," said Lisbeth, who flat- 
 tered herself that she would some day see Hulot there. 
 
 " No. It is in the Rue de Charonne," said the baron, "a 
 part of the town where no fuss is made about anything. No 
 one will ever find me there. I am called Pere Thorec, Betty, 
 and I shall be taken for a retired cabinetmaker ; the girl is 
 fond of me, and I will not allow my back to be shorn any 
 more." 
 
 "No, that has been done," said Lisbeth, looking at his 
 coat. " Supposing I take you there." 
 
 Baron Hulot got into the coach, deserting Mademoiselle 
 E^lodie without taking leave of her, as he might have tossed 
 aside a novel he had finished. 
 
 In half an hour, during which Baron Hulot talked to Lis- 
 beth of nothing but little Atala Judici for he had fallen by 
 degrees to those base passions that ruin old men she set him 
 down, with two thousand francs in his pocket, in the Rue de 
 Charonne, Faubourg Saint-Antoine, at the door of a doubtful 
 and sinister-looking house. 
 
 " Good-day, cousin ; so now you are to be called Thorec, 
 I suppose ? Send none but commissionaires if you need me, 
 and always take them from different parts." 
 
 " Trust me ! Oh, I am really very lucky ! " said the baron, 
 his face beaming with the prospect of new and future happiness. 
 
 "No one can find him there," said Lisbeth ; and she paid 
 the coach at the Boulevard Beaumarchais, and returned to the 
 Rue Louis-le-Grand in the omnibus. 
 
 On the following day Crevel was announced at the hour 
 when all the family were together in the drawing-room, just
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 21 
 
 after breakfast. Celestine flew to throw her arms round her 
 father's neck, and behaved as if she had seen him only the 
 day before, though in fact he had not called there for more 
 than two years. 
 
 "Good-morning, father," said Victorin, offering him his 
 hand. 
 
 "Good-morning, children," said the pompous Crevel. 
 " Madame la Baronne, I throw myself at your feet ! Good 
 heavens, how the children grow ! they are pushing us off the 
 perch ' Grand-pa,' they say, ' we want our turn in the sun- 
 shine.' Madame la Comtesse, you are as lovely as ever," he 
 went on, addressing Hortense. "Ah, ha! and here is the 
 best of good money : Cousin Betty, the wise virgin. 
 
 "Why, you are really very comfortable here," said he, after 
 scattering these greetings with a cackle of loud laughter that 
 hardly moved the rubicund muscles of his broad face. 
 
 He looked at his daughter with some contempt. 
 
 " My dear Celestine, I will make you a present of all my 
 furniture out of the Rue des Saussayes ; it will just do here. 
 Your drawing-room wants furbishing up. Ha ! there is that 
 little monkey Wenceslas. Well, and are we very good chil- 
 dren, I wonder? You must have pretty manners, you know." 
 
 " To make up for those who have none," said Lisbeth. 
 
 " That sarcasm, my dear Lisbeth, has lost its sting. I am 
 going, my dear children, to put an end to the false position 
 in which I have so long been placed ; I have come, like a 
 good father, to announce my approaching marriage without 
 any circumlocution." 
 
 " You have a perfect right to marry," said 'Victorin. " And 
 for my part, I give you back the promise you made me when 
 you gave me the hand of my dear Celestine " 
 
 "What promise?" said Crevel. 
 
 "Not to marry," replied the lawyer. "You will do me 
 the justice to allow that I did not ask you to pledge yourself, 
 that you gave your word quite voluntarily and in spite of my
 
 22 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 desire, for I pointed out to you at the time that you were un- 
 wise to bind yourself." 
 
 " Yes, I do remember, my dear fellow," said Crevel, 
 ashamed of himself. " But, on my honor, if you will but live 
 with Madame Crevel, my children, you will find no reason to 
 repent. Your good feeling touches me, Victorin, and you 
 will find that generosity to me is not unrewarded. Come, 
 by the poker ! welcome your stepmother and come to the 
 wedding." 
 
 "But you have not told us the lady's name, papa," said 
 Celestine. 
 
 " Why, it is an open secret," replied Crevel. " Do not let 
 us play at guess who can ! Betty must have told you." 
 
 "My dear Monsieur Crevel," replied Lisbeth, "there are 
 certain names we never utter here " 
 
 "Well, then, it is Madame Marneffe." 
 
 " Monsieur Crevel," said the lawyer very sternly, " neither 
 my wife nor I can be present at that marriage ; not out of 
 interest, for I spoke in all sincerity just now. Yes, I am most 
 happy to think that you may find happiness in this union ; but 
 I act on considerations of honor and good feeling which you 
 must understand, and which I cannot speak of here, as they 
 reopen wounds still ready to bleed " 
 
 The baroness telegraphed a signal to Hortense, who tucked 
 her little one under her arm, saying, " Come, Wenceslas, and 
 have your bath ! Good-by, Monsieur Crevel." 
 
 The baroness also bowed to Crevel without a word ; and 
 Crevel could not help smiling at the child's astonishment 
 when threatened with this impromptu tubbing. 
 
 "You, monsieur," said Victorin, when he found himself 
 alone with Lisbeth, his wife, and his father-in-law, "are about 
 to marry a woman loaded with the spoils of my father ; it was 
 she who, in cold blood, brought him down to such depths ; a 
 woman who is the son-in-law's mistress after ruining the father- 
 in-law ; who is the cause of constant grief to my sister ! And
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 23 
 
 you fancy that I shall be seen to sanction your madness by my 
 presence ? I deeply pity you, dear Monsieur Crevel ; you 
 have no family feeling ; you do not understand the unity of 
 the honor which binds the members of it together. There is 
 no arguing with passion as I have too much reason to know. 
 The slaves of their passions are as deaf as they are blind. 
 Your daughter Celestine has too strong a sense of her duty to 
 proffer a word of reproach." 
 
 " That would, indeed, be a pretty state of things ! " cried 
 Crevel, trying to cut short this harangue. 
 
 " Celestine would not be my wife if she made the slightest 
 remonstrance," the lawyer went on. "But I, at least, may 
 try to stop you before you step over the precipice, especially 
 after giving you ample proof of my disinterestedness. It is 
 not your fortune, it is you that I care about. Nay, to make 
 it quite plain to you, I may add, if it were only to set your 
 mind at ease with regard to your marriage-contract, that I am 
 now in a position which leaves me with nothing to wish for 
 that " 
 
 " Thanks to me ! " exclaimed Crevel, whose face had turned 
 purple. 
 
 "Thanks to Celestine's fortune," replied Victorin. "And 
 if you regret having given to your daughter, as a present from 
 yourself, a sum which is not half what her mother left her, I 
 can only say that we are prepared to give it back." 
 
 "And do you not know, my respected son-in-law," said 
 Crevel, striking an attitude, " that under the shelter of my 
 name Madame Marneffe is not called upon to answer for her 
 conduct excepting as my wife as Madame Crevel?" 
 
 "That is, no doubt, quite the correct thing," said the 
 lawyer ; " very generous so far as the affections are concerned 
 and the vagaries of passion ; but I know of no name, nor law, 
 nor title that can shelter the theft of three hundred thousand 
 francs so meanly wrung from my father ! I tell you plainly, 
 my dear father-in-law, your future wife is unworthy of you ;
 
 24 THE POOR PARENTS 
 
 she is false to you, and is madly in love with my brother-in- 
 law, Steinbock, whose debts she has paid." 
 
 " It was I who paid them ! " 
 
 "Very good," said Hulot; "I am glad for Count Stein- 
 bock's sake; he may some day repay the money. But he is 
 loved, much loved, and often ' 
 
 "Loved! " cried Crevel, whose face showed his utter be- 
 wilderment. " It is cowardly, and dirty, and mean, and cheap, 
 to calumniate a woman ! When a man says such things, mon- 
 sieur, he must bring proof." 
 
 " I will bring proof." 
 
 "I shall expect it." 
 
 " By the day after to-morrow, my dear Monsieur Crevel, I 
 shall be able to tell you the day, the hour, the very minute 
 when I can expose the horrible depravity of your future wife." 
 
 "Very well; I shall be delighted," said Crevel, who had 
 recovered himself. 
 
 "Good-by, my children, for the present ; good-by, Betty." 
 
 "See him out, Lisbeth," said Celestine in an undertone. 
 
 "And is this the way you take yourself off?" cried Lisbeth 
 to Crevel. 
 
 "Ah, ha!" said Crevel, " my son-in-law is too clever by 
 half; he is getting on. The Courts and the Chamber, judicial 
 trickery and political dodges, are making a man of him with 
 a vengeance ! So he knows I am to be married on Wednes- 
 day, and on a Sunday my gentleman proposes to fix the hour, 
 within three days, when he can prove that my wife is unworthy 
 of me. That is a good story ! Well, I am going back to sign 
 the contract. Come with me, Betty yes, come. They will 
 never know. I meant to have left Celestine forty thousand 
 francs a year ; but Hulot has just behaved in a way to alienate 
 my affection for ever. ' ' 
 
 " Give me ten minutes, Father Crevel ; wait for me in your 
 carriage at the gate. I will make some excuse for going 
 out."
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 25 
 
 "Very well all right." 
 
 " My dears," said Lisbeth, who found all the family reas- 
 sembled in the drawing-room, " I am going with Crevel : the 
 marriage-contract is to be signed this afternoon, and I shall 
 hear what he has settled. It will probably be my last visit 
 to that woman. Your father is furious; he will disinherit 
 you." 
 
 " His vanity will prevent that," said the son-in-law. " He 
 was bent on owning the estate of Presles, and he will keep it; 
 I know him. Even if he were to have children, Celestine 
 would still have half of what he might leave. The law forbids 
 his giving away all his fortune. Still, these questions are 
 nothing to me ; I am thinking only of our honor. Go, then, 
 cousin," and he pressed Lisbeth's hand, "and listen carefully 
 to the contract." 
 
 Twenty minutes after, Lisbeth and Crevel reached the house 
 in the Rue Barbet, where Madame Marneffe was awaiting, in 
 mild impatience, the result of a step taken by her commands. 
 Valerie had in the end fallen a prey to the absorbing love 
 which, once in her life, masters a woman's heart. Wenceslas 
 was its object, and, a failure as an artist, he became in Madame 
 Marneffe's hands a lover so perfect that he was to her what 
 she had been to Baron Hulot. 
 
 Valerie was holding a slipper in one hand, and Steinbock 
 clasped the other, while her head rested on his shoulder. The 
 rambling conversation in which they had been engaged ever 
 since Crevel went out may be ticketed, like certain lengthy 
 literary efforts of our day, "All rights reserved" for it cannot 
 be reproduced. This masterpiece of personal poetry naturally 
 brought a regret to the artist's lips, and he said, not without 
 some bitterness 
 
 " What a pity it is that I married ; for if I had but waited 
 as Lisbeth told me, I might now have married you." 
 
 " Who but a Pole would wish to make a wife of a devoted
 
 26 THE POOR PARENTS, 
 
 mistress?" cried Valerie. "To change love into duty, and 
 pleasure into a bore." 
 
 "I know you to be so fickle," replied Steinbock. "Did 
 I not hear you talking to Lisbeth of that Brazilian, Baron 
 Montez?" 
 
 " Do you want to rid me of him ?-" 
 
 " It would be the only way to hinder his seeing you," said 
 the ex-sculptor. 
 
 " Let me tell you, my darling for I tell you everything," 
 said Valerie " I was saving him up for a husband. The 
 promises I have made to that man ! Oh, long before I knew 
 you," said she, in reply to a movement from Wenceslas. 
 " And those promises, of which he avails himself to plague 
 me, oblige me to get married almost secretly ; for if he should 
 hear that I am marrying Crevel, he is the sort of man that 
 that would kill me." 
 
 "Oh, as to that ! " said Sieinbock, with a scornful expres- 
 sion, which conveyed that such a danger was small indeed for 
 a woman beloved by a Pole. 
 
 And in the matter of valor there is no brag or bravado in 
 a Pole, so thoroughly and seriously brave are they all. 
 
 "And that idiot Crevel," she went on, "who wants to 
 make a great display and indulge his taste for cheap splendor 
 in honor of the wedding, places me in difficulties from which 
 I see no escape." 
 
 Could Valerie confess to this man, whom she adored, that, 
 since the discomfiture of Baron Hulot, this Baron Henri 
 Montez had inherited the privilege of calling on her at all 
 hours of the day or night ; and that, notwithstanding her 
 cleverness, she was still puzzled to find a cause of quarrel in 
 which the Brazilian might seem to be solely in the wrong ? 
 She knew the baron's almost savage temper not unlike Lis- 
 beth's too well not to quake as she thought of this Othello 
 of Rio de Janeiro. 
 
 As the carriage drove up, Steinbock released Valerie, for his
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 27 
 
 arm was round her waist, and took up a newspaper, in which 
 he was found absorbed. Valerie was embroidering with elabo- 
 rate care at the slippers she was working for Crevel. 
 
 "How they slander her!" whispered Lisbeth to Crevel, 
 pointing to this picture as they opened the door. "Look at 
 her hair not in the least tumbled. To hear Victorin you 
 might have expected to find two turtle-doves in a nest." 
 
 " My dear Lisbeth," replied Crevel, in his favorite position, 
 " you see that to turn Lucretia into Aspasia, you have only to 
 inspire a passion ! " 
 
 "And have I not always told you," said Lisbeth, "that 
 women like a burly profligate like you? " 
 
 " And she would be most ungrateful not to," said Crevel ; 
 " for as to the money I have spent here, Grindot and I alone 
 can tell ! " 
 
 And he waved a hand at the staircase. 
 
 In decorating this house, which Crevel regarded as his own, 
 Grindot had tried to compete with Cleretti, in whose hands 
 the Due d'Herouville had placed Josepha's villa. But Crevel, 
 incapable of understanding art, had, like all sordid souls, 
 wanted to spend a certaim sum fixed beforehand. Grindot, 
 fettered by a contract, had found it impossible to embody his 
 architectural dream. 
 
 The difference between Josepha's house and that in the Rue 
 Barbet was just that between the individual stamp on things 
 and commonness. The objects you admired at Josepha's 
 were to be seen nowhere else ; those that glittered at Crevel's 
 were to be bought in any store. These two types of luxury 
 are divided by the river Million. A mirror, if unique, is 
 worth six thousand francs ; a mirror designed by a manufac- 
 turer who turns them out by the dozen costs five hundred. A 
 genuine chandelier by Boulle will sell at public auction for 
 three thousand francs ; the same thing reproduced by casting 
 may be made for a thousand or twelve hundred ; one is arch- 
 aeologically what a picture by Raphael is in painting, the
 
 28 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 other is a copy. At what would you value a copy of a Ra- 
 phael? Thus Crevel's mansion was a splendid example of the 
 luxury of idiots, while Josepha's was a perfect model of an 
 artist's home. 
 
 "War is declared," said Crevel, going up to Madame 
 Marneffe. 
 
 She rang the bell. 
 
 "Go and find Monsieur Berthier," said she to the man- 
 servant, "and do not return without him. If you had suc- 
 ceeded," said she, embracing Crevel, "we would have post- 
 poned our happiness, my dear daddy, and have given a really 
 splendid entertainment ; but when a whole family is set against 
 a match, my dear, decency requires that the wedding shall be 
 a quiet one, especially when the lady is a widow." 
 
 " On the contrary, I intend to make a display of magnifi- 
 cence a la Louis XIV.," said Crevel, who of late had held the 
 eighteenth century rather cheap. " I have ordered new car- 
 riages ; there is one for monsieur and one for madame, two 
 neat coupes ; and a chaise, a handsome traveling carriage with 
 a splendid hammercloth, on springs that tremble like Madame 
 Hulot." 
 
 "Oh, ho! You intend? Then you have ceased to be my 
 lamb? No, no, my friend, you will do what /intend. We 
 will sign the contract quietly just ourselves this afternoon. 
 Then, on Wednesday, we will be regularly married, really 
 married, in mufti, as my poor mother would have said. We 
 will walk to church, plainly dressed, and have only a low 
 mass. Our witnesses are Stidmann, Steinbock, Vignon, and 
 Massol, all wide-awake men, who will be at the mayor's office 
 by chance, and who will so far sacrifice themselves as to at- 
 tend mass. 
 
 " Your colleague will perform the civil marriage, for once 
 in a way, as early as half-past nine. Mass is at ten ; we shall 
 be at home to breakfast by half-past eleven. 
 
 " I have promised our guests that we will sit at table till
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 29 
 
 the evening. There will be Bixiou, your old official chum 
 du Tillet, Lousteau, Vernisset, Leon de Lora, Vernou, all the 
 wittiest men in Paris, who will not know that we are married. 
 We will play them a little trick, we will get just a little tipsy, 
 and Lisbeth must join us. I want her to study matrimony ; 
 Bixiou shall make proposals to her, and and enlighten her 
 darkness." 
 
 For two hours Madame Marneffe went on talking nonsense, 
 and Crevel made this judicious reflection 
 
 " How can so light-hearted a creature be utterly depraved? 
 Feather-brained, yes ! but wicked ? Nonsense ! " 
 
 "Well, and what did the young people say about me?" 
 said Valerie to Crevel at a moment when he sat down by her 
 on the sofa. " All sorts of horrors ? " 
 
 " They will have it that you have a criminal passion for 
 Wenceslas you, who are virtue itself." 
 
 " I love him ! I should think so, my little Wenceslas ! " 
 cried Valerie, calling the artist to her, taking his face in her 
 hands, and kissing his forehead. "A poor boy with no for- 
 tune, and no one to depend on ! Cast off by a carrotty giraffe ! 
 What do you expect, Crevel ? Wenceslas is my poet, and I 
 love him as if he were my own child, and make no secret of 
 it. Bah ! your virtuous women see evil everywhere and in 
 everything. Bless me, could they not sit by a man without 
 doing wrong ? I am a spoilt child who has had all it ever 
 wanted, and bonbons no longer excite me. Poor things ! I 
 am sorry for them ! 
 
 " And who slandered me so ? " 
 
 "Victorin," said Crevel. 
 
 "Then why did you not stop his mouth, the odious legal 
 parrot ! with the story of the two hundred thousand francs 
 and his mamma?" 
 
 " Oh, the baroness had fled," said Lisbeth. 
 
 "They had better take care, Lisbeth," said Madame Mar- 
 neffe, with a frown. " Either they will receive me and do
 
 30 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 it handsomely, and come to their stepmother's house all the 
 party ! or I will see them in lower depths than the baron has 
 reached, and you may tell them I said so ! At last I shall 
 turn nasty. On my honor, I believe that evil is the scythe 
 with which to cut down the good." 
 
 At three o'clock Monsieur Berthier, Cardot's successor, 
 read the marriage-contract, after a short conference with 
 Crevel, for some of the articles were made conditional on the 
 action taken by Monsieur and Madame Victorin Hulot. 
 
 Crevel settled on his wife a fortune consisting, in the first 
 place, of forty thousand francs in dividends on specified se- 
 curities ; secondly, of the house and all its contents ; and 
 thirdly, of three million francs not invested. He also as- 
 signed to his wife every benefit allowed by law ; he left all 
 the property free of duty ; and in the event of their dying 
 without issue, each devised to the survivor the whole of their 
 property and real estate. 
 
 By this arrangement the fortune left to Celestine and her 
 husband was reduced to two millions of francs in capital. If 
 Crevel and his second wife should have children, Celestine's 
 share was limited to five hundred thousand francs, as the life- 
 interest in the rest was to accrue to Valerie. This would be 
 about the ninth part of his whole real and personal estate. 
 
 Lisbeth returned to dine in the Rue Louis-le-Grand, despair 
 written on her face. She explained and bewailed the terms 
 of the marriage-contract, but found Celestine and her husband 
 insensible to the disastrous news. 
 
 "You have provoked your father, my children. Madame 
 MarnefFe swears that you shall receive Monsieur Crevel's wife 
 and go to her house," said she. 
 
 " Never ! " said Victorin. 
 
 " Never ! " said Celestine. 
 
 "Never! " said Hortense. 
 
 Lisbeth was possessed by the wish to crush the haughty 
 attitude assumed by all the Hulots.
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 31 
 
 "She seems to have arms that she can turn against you," 
 she replied. "I do not know all about it, but I shall find 
 out. She spoke vaguely of some history of two hundred 
 thousand francs in which Adeline is implicated." 
 
 The baroness fell gently backward on the sofa she was sit- 
 ting on in a fit of hysterical sobbing. 
 
 " Go there, go, my children ! " she cried. "Receive the 
 woman ! Monsieur Crevel is an infamous wretch. He de- 
 serves the worst punishment imaginable. Do as the woman 
 desires you ! She is a monster she knows all ! " 
 
 After gasping out these words with tears and sobs, Madame 
 Hulot collected her strength to go to her room, leaning on 
 her daughter and Celestine. 
 
 "What is the meaning of all this?" cried Lisbeth, left 
 alone with Victorin. 
 
 The lawyer stood rigid, in very natural dismay, and did 
 not hear her. 
 
 "What is the matter, my dear Victorin?" 
 
 "I am horrified ! " said he, and his face scowled darkly. 
 " Woe to anybody who hurts my mother ! I have no scruples 
 then. I would crush that woman like a viper if I could ! 
 What, does she attack my mother's life, my mother's honor? " 
 
 " She said, but do not repeat it, my dear Victorin she said 
 you should all fall lower even than your father. And she 
 scolded Crevel roundly for not having shut your mouths 
 with this secret that seems to be such a terror to my dear 
 Adeline." 
 
 A doctor was sent for, for the baroness was evidently worse. 
 He gave her a draught containing a large dose of opium, and 
 Adeline, having swallowed it, fell into a deep sleep; but the 
 whole family was greatly alarmed. 
 
 Early next morning Victorin went out, and on his way to 
 the courts called at the prefecture of the police, where he 
 begged Vautrin, the head of the detective department, to send 
 him Madame de Saint-Esteve.
 
 32 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "We are forbidden, monsieur, to meddle in your affairs; 
 but Madame de Saint-Esteve is in business, and will attend to 
 your orders," replied this famous police-officer. 
 
 On his return home, the unhappy lawyer was told that his 
 mother's reason was in danger. Doctor Bianchon, Doctor 
 Larabit, and Professor Angard had met in consultation, and 
 were prepared to apply heroic remedies to hinder the rush of 
 blood to the head. At the moment when Victorin was listen- 
 ing to Doctor Bianchon, who was giving him, at some length, 
 his reasons for hoping that the crisis might be got over, the 
 manservant announced that a client, Madame de Saint-Esteve, 
 was waiting to see him. Victorin left Bianchon in the middle 
 of a sentence and flew downstairs like a madman. 
 
 "Is there any hereditary lunacy in the family?" said 
 Bianchon, addressing Larabit. 
 
 The doctors departed, leaving a hospital attendant, in- 
 structed by them, to watch Madame Hulot. 
 
 "A whole life of virtue ! " was the only sentence the 
 
 sufferer had spoken since the attack. 
 
 Lisbeth never left Adeline's bedside ; she sat up all night, 
 and was much admired by the two younger women. 
 
 "Well, my dear Madame de Saint-Esteve," said Victorin, 
 showing the dreadful old woman into his study and carefully 
 shutting the doors, "how are we getting on ! " 
 
 "Ah, ha! my dear friend," said she, looking at Victorin 
 with cold irony. " So you have thought things over ? " 
 
 " Have you done anything? " 
 
 "Will you pay fifty thousand francs?". 
 
 "Yes," replied Victorin, "for we must get on. Do you 
 know that by one single phrase that woman has endangered 
 my mother's life and reason? So, I say, get on." 
 
 " We have got on ! " replied the old woman. 
 
 "Well?" cried Victorin, with a gulp. 
 
 " Well, you do not cry off the expenses ? " 
 
 "On the contrary."
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 33 
 
 " They run up to twenty-three thousand francs already." 
 
 Victorin looked helplessly at the woman. 
 
 "Well, could we hoodwink you, you, one of the shining 
 lights of the law? " said she. " For that sum we have secured 
 a maid's conscience and a picture by Raphael. It is not 
 dear." 
 
 Hulot, still bewildered, sat with wide-open eyes. 
 
 "Well, then," his visitor went on, "we have purchased 
 the honesty of Mademoiselle Reine Tousard, a damsel from 
 whom Madame MarnefFe has no secrets " 
 
 " I understand ! " 
 
 " But if you shy, say so." 
 
 " I will pay blindfold," he replied. " My mother has told 
 me that that couple deserve the worst torments " 
 
 "The rack is out of date," said the old woman. 
 
 "You answer for the result?" 
 
 " Leave it all to me," said the woman ; " your vengeance 
 is simmering." 
 
 She looked at the clock ; it was six. 
 
 "Your avenger is dressing; the fires are lighted at the 
 Rocher de Cancale ; the horses are pawing the ground ; my 
 irons are getting hot. Oh, I know your Madame Marneffe by 
 heart ! Everything is ready. And there are some boluses in 
 the rat-trap; I will tell you to-morrow morning if the mouse 
 is poisoned. I believe she will be; good-evening, my son." 
 
 "Good-by, madame." 
 
 " Do you know English ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Have you ever seen * Macbeth ' in English ? " 
 
 "Yes."' 
 
 " Well, my son : 'All hail ! Thou shalt be King hereafter.' 
 That is to say, you shall come into your inheritance," said the 
 dreadful old witch, foreseen by Shakespeare, and who seemed 
 to know her author. 
 
 She left Hulot amazed at the door of his study. 
 3
 
 34 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "The consultation is for to-morrow! " said she, with the 
 gracious air of a regular client. 
 
 She saw two persons coming, and wished to pass in their 
 eyes as a pinchbeck countess. 
 
 " What impudence ! " thought Hulot, bowing to his pre- 
 tended client. 
 
 Baron Montez de Montejanos was a lion, but a lion not ac- 
 counted for. Fashionable Paris, Paris of the turf and of the 
 town, admired the ineffable vests of this foreign gentleman, 
 his spotless patent-leather shoes, his incomparable canes, his 
 much-coveted horses, and the negro servants who rode the 
 horses and who were entirely slaves and most consumedly 
 thrashed. 
 
 His fortune was well known ; he had a credit account up to 
 seven hundred thousand francs in the great banking house of 
 du Tillet ; but he was always seen alone. When he went to 
 " first nights," he was in a stall. He frequented no drawing- 
 rooms. He had never given his arm to a girl on the streets. 
 His name could not be coupled with that of any pretty woman 
 of the world. To pass his time he played whist at the Jockey- 
 Club. The world was reduced to calumny, or, which it thought 
 funnier, to laughing at his peculiarities ; he went by the name 
 of Combabus. 
 
 Bixiou, Leon de Lora, Lousteau, Florine, Mademoiselle 
 Heloi'se Brisetout, and Nathan, supping one evening with the 
 notorious Carabine, with a large party of lions and lionesses, 
 had invented this name with an excessively burlesque ex- 
 planation. Massol, as being in the Council of State, and 
 Claud Vignon, erewhile professor of Greek, had related to the 
 ignorant damsels the famous anecdote, preserved in Rollin's 
 "Ancient History," concerning Combabus, that voluntary 
 Abelard who was placed in charge of the wife of a King of 
 Assyria, Persia, Bactria, Mesopotamia, and other geographical 
 divisions peculiar to old Professor du Bocage, who continued
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 35 
 
 the work of d'Anville, the creator of the East of antiquity. 
 This nickname, which gave Carabine's guests laughter for a 
 quarter of an hour, gave rise to a series of over-free jests, to 
 which the Academy could not award the Montyon prize ; but 
 among which the name was taken up, to rest thenceforth on 
 the curly mane of the handsome baron, called by Josepha the 
 splendid Brazilian as one might say a splendid Catoxantha. 
 
 Carabine, the loveliest of her tribe, whose delicate beauty 
 and amusing wit had snatched the sceptre of the thirteenth 
 arrondissement from the hands of Mademoiselle Turquet, bet- 
 ter known by the name of Malaga Mademoiselle Seraphine 
 Sinet (this was her real name) was to du Tillet the banker 
 what Josepha Mirah was to the Due d'Herouville. 
 
 Now, on the morning of the very day when Madame de 
 Saint-Esteve had prophesied success to"Victorin, Carabine had 
 said to du Tillet at about seven o'clock 
 
 " If you want to be very nice, you will give me a dinner at 
 the Rocher de Cancale and bring Combabus. We want to 
 know, once for all, whether he has a mistress. I bet that he 
 has, and I should like to win." 
 
 "He is still at the Hotel des Princes; I will call," replied 
 du Tillet. "We will have some fun. Ask all the youngsters 
 the youngster Bixiou, the youngster Lora, in short, all the 
 clan." 
 
 At half-past seven that evening, in the handsomest room of 
 the restaurant where all Europe has dined, a splendid silver 
 service was spread, made on purpose for entertainments where 
 vanity pays the bill in bank-notes. A flood of light fell in 
 ripples on the chased rims ; waiters, whom a provincial might 
 have taken for diplomatists but for their age, stood solemnly, 
 as knowing themselves to be overpaid. 
 
 Five guests had arrived, and were waiting for nine more. 
 There were first and foremost Bixiou, still flourishing in 1843, 
 the salt of every intellectual dish, always supplied with fresh 
 wit a phenomenon as rare in Paris as virtue is : Lon de
 
 36 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Lora, the greatest living painter of landscape and the sea, who 
 has this great advantage over all his rivals, that he has never 
 fallen below his first successes. The courtesans could never 
 dispense with these two kings of ready wit. No supper, no 
 dinner, was possible without them. 
 
 Seraphine Sinet, called Carabine, as the mistress en titre 
 (notoriously) of the amphitryon, was one of the first to arrive; 
 and the brilliant lighting showed off her shoulders, unrivaled 
 in Paris, her throat, as round as if turned in a lathe, without 
 a crease, her saucy face, and dress of satin brocade in two 
 shades of blue, trimmed with English lace, costing enough to 
 have fed a whole village for a month. 
 
 Pretty Jenny Cadine, not acting that evening, came in a 
 dress of incredible splendor ; her portrait is too well known 
 to need any description. A party is always a Longchamps 
 of evening dress for these ladies, each anxious to win the prize 
 for her millionaire by thus announcing to her rivals 
 
 " This is the price I am worth ! " 
 
 A third woman, evidently at the initial stage of her career, 
 gazed, almost shamefaced, at the luxury of her two established 
 and wealthy companions. Simply dressed in white cashmere 
 trimmed with blue, her head had been dressed with real 
 flowers by a coiffeur of the old-fashioned school, whose awk- 
 ward hands had unconsciously given the charm of ineptitude 
 to her fair hair. Still unaccustomed to any finery, she showed 
 the timidity to use a hackneyed phrase inseparable from a 
 first appearance. She had come from Valognes to find in 
 Paris some use for her distracting youthfulness, her innocence, 
 that might have stirred the senses of a dying man, and her 
 beauty, worthy to hold its own with any that Normandy has 
 ever supplied to the theatres of the capital. The lines of that 
 unblemished face were the ideal of angelic purity. Her milk- 
 white skin reflected the light like a mirror. The delicate pink 
 in her cheeks might have been laid on with a brush. She was 
 called Cydalise, and, as will be seen, she was an important
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 37 
 
 pawn in the game played by Ma'ame Nourrisson to defeat 
 Madame Marneffe. 
 
 " Your arm is not a match for your name, my child," said 
 Jenny Cadine, to whom Carabine had introduced this master- 
 piece of sixteen, having brought her with her. 
 
 And, in fact, Cydalise displayed to public admiration a fine 
 pair of arms, smooth and satiny, but red with healthy young 
 blood. 
 
 "What do you want for her?" said Jenny Cadine, in an 
 undertone to Carabine. 
 
 "A fortune." 
 
 " What are you going to do with her ? " 
 
 " Well Madame Combabus ! " 
 
 "And what are you to get for such a job? " 
 
 "Guess." 
 
 " A service of plate? " 
 
 "I have three." 
 
 "Diamonds?" 
 
 " I am selling them." 
 
 " A green monkey? " 
 
 " No. A picture by Raphael." 
 
 " What maggot is that in your brain? " 
 
 "Josepha makes me sick with her pictures," said Cara- 
 bine. " I want some better than hers." 
 
 Du Tillet came with the Brazilian, the hero of the feast ; 
 the Due de Herouville followed with Josepha. The singer 
 wore a plain velvet gown, but she had on a necklace worth a 
 hundred and twenty thousand francs, pearls hardly distin- 
 guishable from her skin like white camellia petals. She had 
 stuck one scarlet camellia in her black hair a patch the 
 effect was dazzling, and she had amused herself by putting 
 eleven rows of pearls on each arm. As she shook hands with 
 Jenny Cadine, the actress said : " Lend me your mittens ! " 
 
 Josepha unclasped them one by one and handed them to 
 her friend on a plate.
 
 38 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "There's style!" said Carabine. "Quite the duchess! 
 You have robbed the ocean to dress the nymph, Monsieur le 
 Due," she added, turning to the little Due d'Herouville. 
 
 The actress took two of the bracelets ; she clasped the other 
 twenty on the singer's beautiful arms, which she kissed. 
 
 Lousteau, the literary cadger, la Palferine and Malaga, 
 Massol, Vauvinet, and Theodore Gaillard, a proprietor of one 
 of the most important political newspapers, completed the 
 party. The Due d'Herouville, polite to everybody, as a great 
 gentleman knows how to be, greeted the Comte de la Pal- 
 ferine with the particular nod which, while it does not imply 
 either esteem or intimacy, conveys to all the world : " We are 
 of the same race, the same blood equals ! " And this greet- 
 ing, the shibboleth of the aristocracy, was invented to be the 
 despair of the upper citizen class. 
 
 Carabine placed Combabus on her left and the Due d'He- 
 rouville on her right. Cydalise was next to the Brazilian, and 
 beyond her was Bixiou. Malaga sat by the duke. 
 
 Oysters appeared at seven o'clock ; at eight they were drink- 
 ing iced punch. Every one is familiar with the bill of fare of 
 such a banquet. By nine o'clock they were talking as people 
 talk after forty-two bottles of various wines, drunk by fourteen 
 persons. Dessert was on the table, the odious dessert of the 
 month of April. Of all the party, the only one affected by 
 the heady atmosphere was Cydalise, who was humming a tune. 
 None of the other guests, with the exception of the poor 
 country girl, had lost their reason ; the drinkers and the women 
 were the experienced elite of the society that sups. Their wits 
 were bright, their eyes glistened, but with no loss of intelli- 
 gence, though the talk drifted into satire, anecdote, and 
 gossip. Conversation, hitherto confined to the inevitable 
 circle of racing, horses, hammerings on the Bourse, the dif- 
 ferent occupations of the lions themselves, and the scandals of 
 the town, showed a tendency to break up into intimate tttes-a- 
 ttte, the dialogues of two hearts.
 
 COUSIN BETTY, 39 
 
 And at this stare, at a signal from Carabine to Leon de 
 Lora, Bixiou, la Palferine, '-* and du Tillet, love came under 
 discussion. 
 
 "A doctor ir good society never talks of medicine, true 
 nobles never speak of their ancestors, men of genius do not 
 discuss their works," said Josepha ; " *.vhy should we talk busi- 
 ness ? If I got the opera put off ir order to dine here, it was 
 assuredly not to work. So let us change the subject, dear 
 children." 
 
 "But we are speaking of real Icve, my beauty," said Ma- 
 laga, " of the love that makes a man fling all to the dogs 
 father, mother, wife, children and retire to Clichy." 
 
 " Talk away, then, 'don't know yer,' " said the singer. 
 
 The slang words, borrowed from the street Arab, and spoken 
 by these women, may be a poem on their lips, helped by the 
 expression of the eyes and lace. 
 
 "What, do not I love you, Jospha?" said the duke in a 
 low voice. 
 
 " You, perhaps, may love me truly," said she in his ear, 
 and she smiled. " But I do not love you in the way they de- 
 scribe, with such love as makes the world dark in the absence 
 of the man beloved. You are delightful to me, useful but 
 not indispensable ; and if you were to throw me over to-mor- 
 row, I could have three dukes for one." 
 
 " Is true love to be found in Paris ? " asked Leon de Lora. 
 " Men have not even time to make a fortune ; how can they 
 give themselves over to true love, which swamps a man as 
 water melts sugar r> A man must be enormously rich to in- 
 dulge in it, for love annihilates him for instance, like our 
 Brazilian friend over there. As I said long ago, ' Extremes 
 defeat themselves. ' A true lever is like a eunuch ; women 
 have ceased to exist for him. He is mystical ; he is like the 
 true Christian, an anchorite of the desert ! See our noble 
 Brazilian. ' ' 
 
 * See " A Prince of Bohemia."
 
 40 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Every one at table looked at Henri Montez de Montejanos, 
 who was shy at finding every eye centred on him. 
 
 " He has been feeding there for an hour without discover- 
 ing, any more than an ox at pasture, that he is sitting, next to 
 I will not say, in such company, the loveliest but the 
 freshest woman in all Paris." 
 
 " Everything is fresh here, even the fish ; it is what the 
 house is famous for," said Carabine. 
 
 Baron Montez looked good-naturedly at the painter, and 
 said 
 
 "Very good! I drink to your very good health," and 
 bowing to Leon de Lora, he lifted his glass of port wine and 
 drank it with much dignity. 
 
 " Are you then truly in love ? " asked Malaga of her neigh- 
 bor, thus interpreting his toast. 
 
 The Brazilian refilled his glass, bowed to Carabine, and 
 drank again. 
 
 " To the lady's health then ! " said the courtesan, in such 
 a droll tone that Lora, du Tillet, and Bixiou burst out laugh- 
 ing. 
 
 The Brazilian sat like a bronze statue. This impassibility 
 provoked Carabine. She knew perfectly well that Montez 
 was devoted to Madame MarnefFe, but she had not expected 
 this dogged fidelity, this obstinate silence of conviction. 
 
 A woman is as often gauged by the attitude of her lover as 
 a man is judged from the tone of his mistress. The baron was 
 proud of his attachment to Valerie, and of hers to him ; his 
 smile had, to these experienced connoisseurs, a touch of irony; 
 he was really grand to look upon ; wine had not flushed him ; 
 and his eyes, with their peculiar lustre as of tarnished gold, 
 kept the secrets of his soul. Even the knowing Carabine said 
 to herself 
 
 " What a woman she must be ! How she has sealed up 
 that heart ! " 
 
 " He is a rock ! " said Bixiou in an undertone, imagining
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 41 
 
 that the whole thing was a practical joke, and never suspecting 
 the importance to Carabine of reducing this so obdurate a 
 fortress. 
 
 While this conversation, apparently so frivolous, was going 
 on at Carabine's right, the discussion of love was continued 
 on her left between the Due d'Herouville, Lousteau, Josepha, 
 Jenny Cadine, and Massol. They were wondering whether 
 such rare phenomena were the result of passion, obstinacy, or 
 affection. Josepha, bored to death by it all, tried to change 
 the subject. 
 
 "You are talking of what you know nothing about. Is 
 there a man among you who ever loved a woman a woman 
 beneath him enough to squander his fortune and his chil- 
 dren's, to sacrifice his future and blight his past, to risk going 
 to the hulks for robbing the Government, to kill an uncle and 
 a brother, to let his eyes be so effectually blinded that he did 
 not even perceive that it was done to hinder his seeing the 
 abyss into which, as a crowning jest, he was being driven ? 
 Du Tillet has a cash-box under the left breast ; Leon de Lora 
 has his wit ; Bixiou would laugh at himself for a fool if he 
 loved any one but himself; Massol has a minister's portfolio 
 in the place of a heart ; Lousteau can have nothing but viscera, 
 since he could endure to be thrown over by Madame de Bau- 
 draye ; Monsieur le Due is too rich to prove his love by his 
 ruin ; Vauvinei- is not in it I do not regard a bill-broker as 
 one of the human race ; and you have never loved, nor I, nor 
 Jenny Cadine, nor Malaga. For my part, I never but once 
 even saw the phenomenon I have described. It was," and 
 she turned to Jenny Cadine, " that poor Baron Hulot, whom 
 I am going to advertise for like a lost dog, for I want to find 
 him." 
 
 "Oh, ho!" said Carabine to herself, and looking keenly 
 at Josepha, " then Madame Nourrisson has two pictures by 
 Raphael, since Josepha is playing my hand ! " 
 
 "Poor fellow," said Vauvinet, "he was a great man J
 
 42 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Magnificent ! And what a figure, what a style, the air of 
 Francis I. ! What a volcano ! and how full of ingenious 
 ways of getting money ! He must be looking for it now, 
 wherever he is, and I make no doubt he extracts it even from 
 the walls built of bones that you may see in the suburbs of 
 Paris near the city gates " 
 
 "And all that," said Bixiou, " for that little Madame Mar- 
 neffe ! There is a precious wanton for you ! " 
 
 "She is just going to marry my friend Crevel," said du 
 Tillet. 
 
 "And she is madly in love with my friend Steinbock," 
 Leon de Lora put in. 
 
 These three phrases were like so many pistol-shots fired 
 point-blank at Montez. He turned white, and the shock was 
 so painful that he rose with difficulty. 
 
 "You are a set of blackguards! " cried he. "You have 
 no right to speak the name of an honest woman in the same 
 breath with those of fallen creatures above all, not to make 
 it a mark for your slander ! " 
 
 He was interrupted by unanimous bravos and applause. 
 Bixiou, Leon de Lora, Vauvinet, du Tillet, and Massol set 
 the example, and there was a chorus. 
 
 " Hurrah for the Emperor ! " said Bixiou. 
 
 "Crown him ! crown him ! " cried Vauvinet. 
 
 " Three groans for such a good dog ! Hurrah for Brazil ! " 
 cried Lousteau. 
 
 "So my copper-colored baron, it is our Valerie that you 
 love; and you are not yet disgusted?" said Leon de Lora. 
 
 "His remark is not parliamentary, but it is grand ! " ob- 
 served Massol. 
 
 "But my most delightful customer," said du Tillet, "you 
 were recommended to me ; I am your banker ; your inno- 
 cence reflects on my credit." 
 
 "Yes, tell me, you who are a reasonable creature " 
 
 said the Brazilian to the banker.
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 43 
 
 "Thanks on behalf of the company," said Bixiou with a 
 bow. 
 
 "Tell me the real facts," Montez went on, heedless of 
 Bixiou's interjection. 
 
 " Well, then," replied du Tillet, " I have the honor to tell 
 you that I am asked to the Crevel wedding." 
 
 " Ah, ha! Combabus holds a brief for Madame Marneffe! " 
 said Josepha, rising solemnly. 
 
 She went round to Montez with a tragic look, patted him 
 kindly on the head, looked at him for a moment with comical 
 admiration, and nodded sagely. 
 
 " Hulot was the first instance of love through fire and 
 water," said she; "this is the second. But it ought not to 
 count, as it comes from the tropics." 
 
 Montez had dropped into his chair again, when Josepha 
 gently touched his forehead and looked at du Tillet as he 
 said 
 
 " If I am the victim of a Paris jest, if you only wanted to 
 get at my secret " and he sent a flashing look round the 
 table, embracing all the guests in a flaming glance that blazed 
 with the sun of Brazil " I beg of you as a favor to tell me so," 
 he went on, in a tone of almost childlike entreaty; "but do 
 not vilify the woman I love." 
 
 " Nay, indeed," said Carabine in a low voice ; " but if, on 
 the contrary, you are shamefully betrayed, cheated, tricked 
 by Valerie, if I should give you the proof in an hour, in my 
 own house, what then ? ' ' 
 
 "I cannot tell you before all these lagos," said the 
 Brazilian. 
 
 Carabine understood him to say magots (baboons). 
 
 "Well, well, say no more!" she replied, smiling. "Do 
 not make yourself a laughing-stock for all the wittiest men in 
 Paris; come to my house, we will talk it over." 
 
 Montez was crushed. "Proofs," he stammered; "con- 
 sider "
 
 44 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "Only too many," replied Carabine; "and if the mere 
 suspicion hits you so hard, I fear for your reason." 
 
 " Is this creature obstinate, I ask you,? He is worse than 
 the late lamented King of Holland ! I say, Lousteau, Bixiou, 
 Massol, all the crew of you, are you not invited to breakfast 
 with Madame Marneffe the day after to-morrow?" said Leon 
 de Lora. 
 
 "Ja," said du Tillet; " I have the honor of assuring you, 
 baron, that if you had by any chance thought of marrying 
 Madame Marneffe, you are thrown out like a bill in Parlia- 
 ment, beaten by a blackball called Crevel. My friend, my 
 old comrade Crevel, has eighty thousand francs a year ; and 
 you, I suppose, did not show such a good hand, for if you 
 had, you, I imagine, would have been preferred." 
 
 Montez listened with a half-absent, half-smiling expression, 
 which struck them all with terror. 
 
 At this moment the head-waiter came to whisper to Cara- 
 bine that a lady, a relation of hers, was in the drawing-room 
 and wished to speak to her. 
 
 Carabine rose and went out to find Madame Nourrisson, 
 decently veiled with black lace. 
 
 "Well, child, am I to go to your house? Has he taken 
 the hook?" 
 
 "Yes, mother; and the pistol is so fully loaded that my 
 only fear is that it will burst," said Carabine. 
 
 About an hour later, Montez, Cydalise, and Carabine, re- 
 turning from the Rocher de Cancale, entered Carabine's little 
 sitting-room in the Rue-Saint-Georges. Madame Nourrisson 
 was sitting in an armchair by the fire. 
 
 " Here is my worthy old aunt," said Carabine. 
 
 " Yes, child, I came in person to fetch my little allowance. 
 You would have forgotten me, though you are kind-hearted, 
 and I have some bills to pay to-morrow. Buying and selling 
 clothes, I am always short of cash. Who is this at your
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 45 
 
 heels ? The gentleman looks very much put out about some- 
 thing." 
 
 The dreadful Madame Nourrisson, at this moment so com- 
 pletely disguised as to look like a respectable old body, rose 
 to embrace Carabine, one of the hundred and odd courtesans 
 she had launched on their horrible career of vice. 
 
 " He is an Othello who is not to be taken in, whom I have 
 the honor of introducing to you Monsieur le Baron Montez 
 de Montejanos." 
 
 " Oh ! I have heard him talked about, and know his name. 
 You are nicknamed Combabus, because you love but one 
 woman ; and, in Paris, that is the same as loving no one at 
 all. And is it by chance the object of your affections who is 
 fretting you? Madame Marneffe, Crevel's woman? I tell 
 you what, my dear sir, you may bless your stars instead of curs- 
 ing them. She is a good-for-nothing baggage, is that little 
 woman. I know her tricks ! " 
 
 " Get along," said Carabine, into whose hand Madame 
 Nourrisson had slipped a note while embracing her, " you do 
 not know your Brazilians. They are wrong-headed creatures 
 that insist on being impaled through the heart. The more 
 jealous they are, the more jealous they want to be. Mosieur 
 talks of dealing death all round, but he will kill nobody be- 
 cause he is in love. However, I have brought him here to 
 give him the proofs of his discomfiture, which I have got 
 from that little Steinbock." 
 
 Montez was drunk ; he listened as if the women were talking 
 about somebody else. 
 
 Carabine went to take off her velvet wrap, and read a. fac- 
 simile of a note, as follows : 
 
 " DEAR Puss : He dines with Popinot this evening, and 
 will come to fetch me from the opera at eleven. I shall go 
 out at about half-past five and count on finding you at our 
 paradise. Order dinner to be sent in from the Maison d'Or.
 
 46 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Dress, so as to be able to take me to the opera. We shall 
 have four hours to ourselves. Return this note to me ; not 
 that your Valerie doubts you I would give you my life, my 
 fortune, and my honor, but I am afraid of the tricks of 
 chance." 
 
 " Here, baron, this is the note sent to Count Steinbock 
 this morning; read the address. The original document is 
 burnt." 
 
 Montez turned the note over and over, recognized the 
 writing, and was struck by a rational idea, which is sufficient 
 evidence of the disorder of his brain. 
 
 "And, pray," said he, looking at Carabine, "what object 
 have you in torturing my heart, for you must have paid very 
 dear for the privilege of having the note in your possession 
 long enough to get it lithographed?" 
 
 "Foolish man! " said Carabine, at a nod from Madame 
 Nourrisson, " don't you see that poor child Cydalise a girl 
 of sixteen, who has been pining for you these three months, 
 till she has lost her appetite for food or drink, and who is 
 heartbroken because you have never even so much as glanced 
 at her?" 
 
 Cydalise put her handkerchief to her eyes with an ap- 
 pearance of emotion "She is furious," Carabine went on, 
 " though she looks as if butter would not melt in her mouth, 
 furious to see the man she adores duped by a villainous hussy ; 
 she would kill Valerie " 
 
 "Oh, as for that," said the Brazilian, "that is my busi- 
 ness!" 
 
 "What, killing?" said old Nourrisson. "No, my son, 
 we don't do that here nowadays." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Montez, " I am not a native of this country. 
 I live in a parish where I can laugh at your laws ; and if you 
 give me proof " 
 
 " Well, that note. Is that nothing ? "
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 47 
 
 "No," said the Brazilian. "I do not believe in the writ- 
 ing. I must see for myself. " 
 
 "See?" cried Carabine, taking the hint at once from a 
 gesture of her supposed aunt. " You shall see, my dear tiger, 
 all you can wish to see on one condition." 
 
 "And that is?" 
 
 "Look at Cydalise." 
 
 At a wink from Madame Nourrisson, Cydalise cast a tender 
 look at the baron. 
 
 " Will you be good to her ? Will you make her a home ? " 
 asked Carabine. "A girl of such beauty is well worth a 
 house and a carriage ! It would be a monstrous shame to 
 leave her to walk the streets. And beside she is in debt. 
 How much do you owe ? " asked Carabine, nipping Cydalise's 
 arm. 
 
 "She is worth all she can get," said the old woman. 
 "The point is that she can't find a buyer." 
 
 "Listen ! " cried Montez, fully aware at last of this master- 
 piece of womankind, "you will show me Valerie " 
 
 "And Count Steinbock. Certainly ! " said Madame Nour- 
 risson. 
 
 For the past ten minutes the old woman had been watching 
 the Brazilian ; she saw that he was an instrument tuned up to 
 the murderous pitch she needed : and, above all, so effectually 
 blinded that he would never heed who had led him on to it, 
 and she spoke : 
 
 " Cydalise, my Brazilian jewel, is my niece, so her concerns 
 are partly mine. All this catastrophe will be the work of a 
 few minutes, for a friend of mine lets the furnished room to 
 Count Steinbock where Valerie is at this moment taking coffee 
 a queer sort of coffee, but she calls it her coffee. So let us 
 understand each other, Brazil ! I like Brazil, it is a hot 
 country. 
 
 " What is to become of my niece ? " 
 
 " You old ostrich," said Montez, the plumes in the woman's
 
 48 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 bonnet catching his eye, " you interrupted me. 11 you show 
 me if I see Valerie and that artist together ' ' 
 
 "As you would wish to be " said Carabine; "that is 
 
 understood." 
 
 " Then I will take this girl and carry her away 
 
 " Where ! " asked Carabine. 
 
 " To Brazil," replied the baron. " I will make her my 
 wife. My uncle left me ten leagues square of entailed estate ; 
 that is how I still have that house and home. I have a hun- 
 dred negroes nothing but negroes and negresses and negro 
 brats, all bought by my uncle " 
 
 "Nephew to a nigger-driver," said Carabine, with a grim- 
 ace. "That needs some consideration. Cydalise, child, are 
 you fond of the blacks ? " 
 
 "Pooh! Carabine, no nonsense," said the old woman. 
 " The deuce is in it ! Monsieur and I are doing business." 
 
 " If I take up another Frenchwoman, I mean to have her to 
 myself," the Brazilian went on. " I warn you, mademoiselle, 
 I am king there, and not a constitutional king. I am czar; 
 my subjects are mine by purchase, and no one can escape from 
 my kingdom, which is a hundred leagues from any human set- 
 tlement, hemmed in by savages on the interior, and divided 
 from the sea by a wilderness as wide as France." 
 
 " I should prefer a garret here." 
 
 "So thought I," said Morrtez, "since I sold all my land 
 and possessions at Rio de Janeiro to come back to Madame 
 Marneffe." 
 
 "A man does not make such a voyage for nothing," re- 
 marked Madame Nounisson. " You have a right to look for 
 love for your own sake, particularly being so good-looking. 
 Qh, he is very handsome ! " said she to Carabine. 
 
 " Very handsome, handsomer than the Postilion de Long- 
 jumeau," replied the courtesan. 
 
 Cydalise took the Brazilian's hand, but he released it as 
 politely as he could.
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 49 
 
 "I came back for Madame Marneffe," the man went on 
 where he had left off, " but you do not know why I was three 
 years thinking about it." 
 
 "No, savage," said Carabine. 
 
 "Well, she had so repeatedly told me that she longed to 
 live with me alone in a desert " 
 
 "Oh, ho! he is not a savage after all," cried Carabine, 
 with a shout of laughter. " He is of the highly civilized tribe 
 of Flats! " 
 
 "She had told me this so often," Montez went on, regard- 
 less of the courtesan's mockery, "that I had a lovely house 
 fitted up in the heart of that vast estate. I came back to 
 France to fetch Valerie, and the very first evening I beheld 
 her " 
 
 " ' Beheld her ' is very proper ! " said Carabine. " I will 
 remember it." 
 
 " She told me to wait till that wretched Marneffe was dead ; 
 and I agreed, and forgave her for having admitted the atten- 
 tions of Hulot. Whether the devil had her in hand I don't 
 know, but from that instant that woman has humored my every 
 whim, complied with all my demands never for one moment 
 has she given me cause to suspect her ! " 
 
 "That is supremely clever!" said Carabine to Madame 
 Nourrisson, who nodded in sign of assent. 
 
 "My faith in that woman," said Montez, and he shed a 
 tear, " was a match for my love. Just now, I was ready to 
 fight everybody at table " 
 
 " So I saw," said Carabine. 
 
 "And if I am cheated, if she is going to be married, if she 
 is at this moment in Steinbeck's arms, she deserves a thousand 
 deaths ! I will kill her as I would smash a fly " 
 
 "And how about the gendarmes, my son?" said Madame 
 Nourrisson, with a smile that made your flesh creep. 
 
 "And the police agents, and the judges, and the galleys; 
 and all the set-out ? ' ' added Carabine. 
 4
 
 50 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 " You are bragging, my dear fellow," said the old woman, 
 who wanted to know all the Brazilian's schemes of vengeance. 
 
 "I will kill her," he calmly repeated. "You called me a 
 savage. Do you imagine that I am fool enough to go, like a 
 Frenchman, and buy poison at the chemist's store ? During 
 the time while we were driving here, I thought out my means 
 of revenge, if you should prove to be right as concerns Valerie. 
 One of my negroes has the most deadly of animal poisons, that 
 gives a disease more fatal than any vegetable poison, and 
 incurable anywhere but in Brazil. I will administer it to Cyd- 
 alise, who will give it to me ; then by the time when death is a 
 certainty to Crevel and his wife, I shall be beyond the Azores 
 with your cousin, who will be cured, and I will marry her. 
 We have our own little tricks, we savages! Cydalise," said 
 he, looking at the country girl, " is the animal I need. How 
 much does she owe ? ' ' 
 
 "A hundred thousand francs," said Cydalise. 
 
 "She says little but to the purpose," said Carabine, in a 
 low tone to Madame Nourrisson. 
 
 " I am going mad ! " cried the Brazilian, in a husky voice, 
 dropping on to a sofa. " I shall die of this ! But I must see, 
 for it is impossible ! A lithographed note ! What is to assure 
 me that it is not a forgery ? Baron Hulot was in love with 
 Valerie ? " said he, recalling Josepha's harangue. " Nay ; the 
 proof that he did not love is that she is still alive I will not 
 leave her living for anybody else, if she is not wholly mine." 
 
 Montez was terrible to behold. He bellowed, he stormed ; 
 he broke everything he touched ; rosewood was as brittle as 
 glass. 
 
 "How he destroys things ! " said Carabine, looking at the 
 old woman. " My good boy," said she, giving the Brazilian 
 a little slap, " Roland the Furious is very fine in a poem ; but 
 in a drawing-room he is prosaic and expensive." 
 
 "My son," said old Nourrisson, rising to stand in front of 
 the crestfallen baron, " I am of your way of thinking. When
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 51 
 
 you love in that way, and are joined ' till death does you part,' 
 life must answer for love. The one who first goes, carries 
 everything away ; it is a general wreck. You command my 
 esteem, my admiration, my consent, especially for your inocu- 
 lation, which will make me a friend of the negro. But you 
 love her ! You will hark back? " 
 
 " I ? If she is so infamous, I " 
 
 " Well, come now, you are talking too much, it strikes me. 
 A man who means to be avenged, and who says he has the 
 ways and means of a savage, doesn't do that. If you want to 
 see your ' object ' in her paradise, you must take Cydalise and 
 walk straight in with her on your arm, as if the servant had 
 made a mistake. But no scandal ! If you mean to be re- 
 venged, you must eat the leek, seem to be in despair, and 
 allow her to bully you. Do you see?" said Madame Nour- 
 risson, finding the Brazilian quite amazed by so subtle a 
 scheme. 
 
 "All right, old ostrich," he replied. "Come along: I 
 understand." 
 
 " Good-by, little one ! " said the old woman to Carabine. 
 
 She signed to Cydalise to go on with Montez, and remained 
 a minute with Carabine. 
 
 " Now, child, I have but one fear, and that is that he will 
 strangle her ! I should be in a very tight place ; we must do 
 everything gently. I believe you have won your picture by 
 Raphael ; but they tell me it is only a Mignard. Never mind, 
 it is much prettier ; all the Raphaels are gone black, I am told, 
 whereas this one is as bright as a Girodet." 
 
 "All I want is to crow over Josepha; and it is all the same 
 to me whether I have a Mignard or a Raphael ! That little 
 thief had on such pearls this evening ! you would sell your 
 soul for them." 
 
 Cydalise, Montez, and Madame Nourrisson got into a 
 hackney-coach that was waiting at the door. Madame Nour- 
 risson whispered to the driver the address of a house in the
 
 52 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 same block as the Italian Opera-House, which they could have 
 reached in five or six minutes from the Rue Saint-Georges ; 
 but Madame Nourrisson desired the man to drive along the 
 Rue le Peletier, and to go very slowly, so as to be able to ex- 
 amine the carriages in waiting. 
 
 "Brazilian," said the old woman, "look out for your 
 angel's carriage and servants." 
 
 The baron pointed out Valerie's carriage as they passed it. 
 
 " She has told them to come for her at ten o'clock, and 
 she is gone in a hack to the house where she visits Count 
 Steinbock. She has dined there, and will come to the opera 
 in half an hour. It is well contrived ! " said Madame Nour- 
 risson. " Thus you see how she has kept you so long in the 
 dark." 
 
 The Brazilian made no reply. He had become the tiger, 
 and had recovered the imperturbable cool ferocity that had 
 been so striking at dinner. He was as calm as a bankrupt the 
 day after he has stopped payment. 
 
 At the door of the house stood a hackney-coach with two 
 horses, of the kind known as a Compagnie-Generale, from 
 the company that runs them. 
 
 "Stay here in the box," said the old woman to Montez. 
 "This is not an open house like a tavern. I will send for 
 you." 
 
 The paradise of Madame Marneffe and Wenceslas was not 
 at all like that of Crevel who, finding it useless now, had 
 just sold his to the Comte Maxime de Trailles. This paradise, 
 the paradise of all comers, consisted of a room on the fifth 
 floor opening to the landing, in a house close to the Italian 
 Opera. On each floor of this house there was a room which 
 had originally served as the kitchen to the apartments on that 
 floor. But the house having become a sort of inn, let out for 
 clandestine love affairs at an exorbitant price, the owner, the 
 real Madame Nourrisson, an old-clothes buyer in the Rue 
 Neuve Saint-Marc, had wisely appreciated the great value of
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 53 
 
 these kitchens, and had turned them into a sort of dining- 
 rooms. Each of these rooms, built between thick party-walls 
 and with windows to the street, was entirely shut in by very 
 thick double doors on the landing. Thus the most important 
 secrets could be discussed over a dinner, with no risk of being 
 overheard. For greater security, the windows had shutters 
 inside and out. These rooms, in consequence of this peculi- 
 arity, were let for twelve hundred francs a month. The whole 
 house, full of such paradises and mysteries, was rented by 
 Madame Nourrisson the First for twenty-eight thousand francs 
 a year, and one year with another she made twenty thousand 
 francs of clear profit, after paying her housekeeper, Madame 
 Nourrisson the Second, for she did not manage it herself. 
 
 The paradise let to Count Steinbock had been hung with 
 chintz ; the cold, hard floor, of common tiles reddened with 
 encaustic, was not felt through a soft, thick carpet. The fur- 
 niture consisted of two pretty chairs and a bed in an alcove, 
 just now half hidden by a table loaded with the remains of an 
 elegant dinner, while two bottles with long necks and an 
 empty champagne-bottle in ice strewed the field of Bacchus 
 cultivated by Venus. 
 
 There were also the property, no doubt, of Valerie a low 
 easy-chair and a man's smoking-chair, and a pretty toilet chest 
 of drawers in rosewood, the mirror handsomely framed a la 
 Pompadour. A lamp hanging from the ceiling gave a sub- 
 dued light, increased by wax-candles on the table and on the 
 mantel. 
 
 This sketch will suffice to give an idea, urbi et orbi, of 
 clandestine passion in the squalid style stamped on it in Paris 
 in 1840. How far, alas ! from the adulterous love, symbol- 
 ized by Vulcan's nets, three thousand years ago. 
 
 When Montez and Cydalise came upstairs, Valerie, standing 
 before the fire, where a log was blazing, was teaching Wen- 
 ceslas to lace her corset. 
 
 This is a moment when a woman who is neither too fat nor
 
 54 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 too thin, but, like Valerie, elegant and slender, displays divine 
 beauty. The rosy skin, moistly soft, invites the sleepiest eye. 
 The lines of her figure, so little hidden, are so charmingly 
 outlined by the white pleats of the chemise and the support of 
 the corset, that she is irresistible like everything that must 
 be parted from. 
 
 With a happy face smiling at the glass, a foot impatienly 
 marking time, a hand put up to restore order among the 
 tumbled curls, and eyes expressive of gratitude; with the 
 glow of satisfaction which, like a sunset, warms the least de- 
 tails of the countenance everything makes such a moment a 
 mine of memories. 
 
 Any man who dares look back on the early errors of his 
 life may, perhaps, recall some such reminiscences, and under- 
 stand, though not excuse, the follies of Hulot and Crevel. 
 Women are so well aware of their power at such a moment, 
 that they find in it what may be called the aftermath of the 
 meeting. 
 
 "Come, come; after two years' practice, you do not yet 
 know how to lace a woman's stays ! You are too much a 
 Pole ! There, it is ten o'clock, my Wenceslas ! " said Valerie, 
 laughing at him. 
 
 At this very moment, a mischievous waiting- woman, by in- 
 serting a knife, pushed up the hook of the double doors that 
 formed the whole security of Adam and Eve. She hastily 
 pulled the door open for the servants of these dens have 
 little time to waste and discovered one of the bewitching 
 tableaux de genre which Gavarni has so often shown at the 
 Salon. 
 
 "In here, madame," said the girl; and Cydalise went in, 
 followed by Montez. 
 
 "But there is some one here. Excuse me, madame," said 
 the country girl, in alarm. 
 
 "What? Why! it is Valerie!" cried Montez, violently 
 slamming the door.
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 55 
 
 Madame Marneffe, too genuinely agitated to dissemble her 
 feelings, dropped on to the chair by the fireplace. Two tears 
 rose to her eyes, and at once dried away. She looked at 
 Montez, saw the girl, and burst into a cackle of forced laugh- 
 ter. The dignity of the insulted woman redeemed the scanti- 
 ness of her attire ; she walked close up to the Brazilian, 
 and looked at him so defiantly that her eyes glittered like 
 knives. 
 
 " So that," said she, standing face to face with the baron, 
 and pointing to Cydalise " that is the other side of your 
 fidelity? You, who have made me promises that might con- 
 vert a disbeliever in love ! You, for whom I have done so 
 much have even committed crimes ! You are right, mon- 
 sieur, I am not to compare with a child of her age and of 
 such beauty ! 
 
 " I know what you are going to say," she went on, looking 
 at Wenceslas, whose undress was proof too clear to be denied. 
 " This is my concern. If I could love you after such gross 
 treachery for you have spied upon me, you have paid for 
 every step up these stairs, paid the mistress of the house, and 
 the servant, perhaps even Reine a noble deed ! If I had 
 any remnant of affection for such a mean wretch, I could give 
 him reasons that would renew his passion ! But I leave you, 
 monsieur, to your doubts, which will become remorse Wen- 
 ceslas, my gown !" 
 
 She took her dress and put it on, looked at herself in the 
 glass, and finished dressing without heeding the baron, as 
 calmly as if she had been alone in the room. 
 
 " Wenceslas, are you ready? Go first." 
 
 She had been watching Montez in the glass and out of the 
 corner of her eye, and fancied she could see in his pallor an 
 indication of the weakness which delivers a strong man over 
 to a woman's fascinations ; she now took his hand, going so 
 close to him that he could not help inhaling the terrible per- 
 fumes which men love, and by which they intoxicate them-
 
 56 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 selves ; then, feeling his pulses beat high, she looked at him 
 reproachfully. 
 
 "You have my full permission to go and tell your history to 
 Monsieur Crevel ; he will never believe you. I have a perfect 
 right to marry him, and he becomes my husband the day after 
 to-morrow. I shall make him very happy. Good-by ; try to 
 forget me." 
 
 "Oh! Valerie," cried Henri Montez, clasping her in his 
 arms, "that is impossible ! Come to Brazil ! " 
 
 Valerie looked in his face, and saw him her slave. 
 
 "Well, if you still love me, Henri, two years hence I will 
 be your wife ; but your expression at this moment strikes me 
 as very suspicious." 
 
 " I swear to you that they made me drink, that false friends 
 threw this girl on my hands, and that the whole thing is the 
 outcome of chance ! " said Montez. 
 
 " Then I am to forgive you ? " she asked, with a very fetch- 
 ing smile. 
 
 " But you will marry, all the same ? " asked the baron, in an 
 agony of jealousy. 
 
 " Eighty thousand francs a year!" said she, with almost 
 comical enthusiasm. "And Crevel loves me so much that he 
 will soon die of it ! " 
 
 "Ah ! I understand," said Montez. 
 
 " Well, then, in a few days we will come to an understand- 
 ing," said she. 
 
 And she departed triumphant. 
 
 "I have no scruples," thought the baron, standing trans- 
 fixed for a few minutes. " What ! That woman believes she 
 can make use of his passion to be quit of that dolt, as she 
 counted on Marneffe's decease ! I shall be the instrument of 
 divine wrath." 
 
 Two days later those of duTillet's guests who had demolished 
 Madame Marneffe tooth and nail were seated round her table 
 an hour after she had shed her skin and changed her name for
 
 COUSI.V BETTY. 57 
 
 the illustrious name of a Paris mayor. This verbal treason is 
 one of the commonest forms of Parisian levity. 
 
 Valerie had had the satisfaction of seeing the Brazilian in 
 the church ; for Crevel, now so entirely the husband, had in- 
 vited him out of bravado. And the baron's presence at the 
 breakfast astonished no one. All these men of wit and of the 
 world were familiar with the meanness of passion, the com- 
 promises of pleasure. 
 
 Steinbeck's deep melancholy for he was beginning to 
 despise the woman whom he had adored as an angel was 
 considered to be in excellent taste. The Pole thus seemed to 
 convey that all was at an end between Valerie and himself. 
 Lisbeth came to embrace her dear Madame Crevel, and to 
 excuse herself for not staying to the breakfast on the score of 
 Adeline's sad state of health. 
 
 "Be quite easy," said she to Valerie, "they will call on 
 you, and you will call on them. Simply hearing the words 
 ' two hundred thousand francs ' has brought the baroness to 
 death's door. Oh, you have them all hard and fast by that 
 tale ! But you must tell it to me." 
 
 Within a month of her marriage, Valerie was at her tenth 
 quarrel with Steinbock ; he insisted on explanations as to 
 Henri Montez, reminding her of the words spoken in their 
 paradise ; and, not content with speaking to her in terms of 
 scorn, he watched her so closely that she never had a moment 
 of liberty, so much was she fettered by his jealousy on one 
 side and Crevel's devotion on the other. 
 
 Bereft now of Lisbeth, whose advice had always been so 
 valuable, she flew into such a rage as to reproach Wenceslas 
 for the money she had lent him. This so effectually roused 
 Steinbeck's pride, that he came no more to the Crevels' house. 
 So Valerie had gained her point, which was to be rid of him 
 for a time, and enjoy some freedom. She waited till Crevel 
 should make a little journey into the country to see Comte 
 Popinot, with a view to arranging for her introduction to the
 
 58 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 countess, and was then able to make an appointment to meet 
 the baron, whom she wanted to have at her command for a 
 whole day to give him those " reasons" which were to make 
 him love her more than ever. 
 
 On the morning of that day, Reine, who estimated the 
 magnitude of her crime by that of the bribe she received, 
 tried to warn her mistress, in whom she naturally took more 
 interest than in strangers. Still, as she had been threatened 
 with madness, and ending her days in the Salpetriere in case 
 of indiscretion, she was cautious. 
 
 ''Madame, you are so well off now," said she. "Why 
 take on again with that Brazilian ? I do not trust him at all." 
 
 "You are very right, Reine, and I mean to be rid of him." 
 
 " Oh, madame, I am glad to hear it ; he frightens me, does 
 that big Moor ! I believe him to be capable of anything." 
 
 " Silly child ! you have more reason to be afraid for him 
 when he is with me." 
 
 At this moment Lisbeth came in. 
 
 " My dear little pet Nanny, what an age since we met ! " 
 cried Valerie. "I am so unhappy ! Crevel bores me to 
 death ; and Wenceslas is gone we quarreled." 
 
 " I know," said Lisbeth, " and that is what brings me here. 
 Victorin met him at about five in the afternoon going into 
 an eating-house at five-and-twenty sous, and he brought him 
 home, hungry, by working on his feelings, to the Rue Louis- 
 le-Grand. Hortense, seeing Wenceslas lean and ill and badly 
 dressed, held out her hand. This is how you throw me over 
 and " 
 
 " Monsieur Henri, madame," the manservant announced 
 in a low voice to Valerie. 
 
 " Leave me now, Betty; I will explain it all to-morrow." 
 But, as will be seen, Valerie was ere long not in a state to 
 explain anything to anybody. 
 
 Toward the end of May, Baron Hulot's pension was re-
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 59 
 
 leased by Victorin's regular payments to Baron Nticingen. 
 As everybody knows, pensions are paid half-yearly, and only 
 on the presentation of a certificate that the recipient is alive ; 
 and as Hulot's residence was unknown, the arrears unpaid on 
 Vauvinet's demand remained to his credit in the Treasury. 
 Vauvinet now signed his renunciation of any further claims, 
 but it was still indispensable to find the pensioner before the 
 arrears could be drawn. 
 
 Thanks to Bianchon's care, the baroness had recovered her 
 health ; and to this Josepha's good heart had contributed by 
 a letter, of which the orthography betrayed the collaboration 
 of the Due d'Herouville. This was what the singer wrote to 
 the baroness, after twenty days of anxious search 
 
 " MADAME LA BARONNE : Monsieur Hulot was living, two 
 months since, in the Rue des Bernardins, with Elodie Char- 
 din, a lace-mender, for whom he had left Mademoiselle Bijou; 
 but he went away without a word, leaving everything behind 
 him, and no one knows where he went. I am not without 
 hope, however, and I have put a man on his track who be- 
 lieves he has already seen him in the Boulevard Bourdon. 
 
 " The poor Jewess means to keep the promise she made to 
 the Christian. Will the angel pray for the devil ? That must 
 sometimes happen in heaven. I remain, with the deepest re- 
 spect, always your humble servant, JOSEPHA MIRAH." 
 
 The lawyer, Maitre Hulot d'Ervy, hearing no more of the 
 dreadful Madame Nourrisson, seeing his father-in-law married, 
 having brought back his brother-in-law to the family fold, 
 suffering from no importunity on the part of his new step- 
 mother, and seeing his mother's health improve daily, gave 
 himself up to his political and judicial duties, swept along by 
 the tide of Paris life, in which the hours count for days. 
 
 One night, toward the end of the session, having occasion 
 to write up a report to the Chamber of Deputies, he was
 
 60 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 obliged to sit at work till late at night. He had gone into 
 his study at nine o'clock, and, while waiting till the man- 
 servant should bring in the candles with green shades, his 
 thoughts turned to his father. He was blaming himself for 
 leaving the inquiry so much to the singer, and had resolved 
 to see Monsieur Chapuzot himself on the morrow, when he 
 saw in the twilight, outside the window, a handsome old head, 
 bald and yellow, with a fringe of white hair. 
 
 " Would you please to give orders, sir, that a poor hermit 
 is to be admitted, just come from the desert, and who is 
 instructed to beg for contributions toward rebuilding a holy 
 house." 
 
 This apparition, which suddenly reminded the lawyer of a 
 prophecy uttered by the terrible Nourrisson, gave him a shock. 
 
 "Let in that old man," said he to the servant. 
 
 " He will poison the place, sir," replied the man. "He 
 has on a brown gown which he has never changed since he 
 left Syria, and he has no shirt 
 
 " Show him in," repeated the master. 
 
 The old man came in. Victorin's keen eye examined this 
 so-called pilgrim hermit, and he saw a fine specimen of the 
 Neapolitan friars, whose frocks are akin to the rags of the 
 lazzaroni (beggars), whose sandals are tatters of leather, as 
 the friars are tatters of humanity. The get-up was so perfect 
 that the lawyer, though still on his guard, was vexed with him- 
 self for having believed it to be one of Madame Nourrisson's 
 tricks. 
 
 " How much do you want of me? " 
 
 "Whatever you feel that you ought to give." 
 
 Victoria took a five-franc piece from a little pile on his 
 table, and handed it to the stranger. 
 
 "That is not much on account of fifty thousand francs," 
 said the pilgrim of the desert. 
 
 This speech removed all Victorin's doubts. 
 
 "And has heaven kept its word?" he said, with a frown.
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 61 
 
 "The question is an offense, my son," said the hermit. 
 " If you do not choose to pay till after the funeral, you are in 
 your rights. I will return in a week's time." 
 
 " The funeral ! " cried the lawyer, starting up. 
 
 "The world moves on," said the old man, as he withdrew, 
 " and the dead move quickly in Paris ! " 
 
 When Hulot, who stood looking down, was about to reply, 
 the stalwart old man had vanished. 
 
 " 1 don't understand one word of all this," said Victorin to 
 himself. "But at the end of the week I will ask him again 
 about my father, if we have not yet found him. Where does 
 Madame Nourrisson yes, that is her real name pick up such 
 actors? '' 
 
 On the following day, Dr. Bianchon allowed the baroness 
 to go down into the garden, after examining Lisbeth, who had 
 been obliged to keep to her room for a month by a slight 
 bronchial attack. The learned doctor, who dared not pro- 
 nounce a definite opinion on Lisbeth's case till he had seen 
 some decisive symptoms, went into the garden with Adeline 
 to observe the effect of the fresh air on her nervous trembling 
 after two months of seclusion. He was interested and allured 
 by the hope of curing this nervous complaint. On seeing the 
 great physician sitting with them and sparing them a few 
 minutes, the baroness and her family conversed with him on 
 general subjects. 
 
 " Your life is a very full and a very sad one," said Madame 
 Hulot. "I know what it is to spend one's days in seeing 
 poverty and physical suffering." 
 
 " I know, madame," replied the doctor, "all the scenes of 
 which charity compels you to be a spectator ; but you will get 
 used to it in time, as we all do. It is the law of existence. 
 The confessor, the magistrate, the lawyer would find life un- 
 endurable if the spirit of the State did not assert itself above 
 the feelings of the individual. Could we live at all but for 
 that ? Is not the soldier in time of war brought face to face
 
 62 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 with spectacles even more dreadful than those we see ? And 
 every soldier that has been under fire is kind-hearted. We 
 medical men have the pleasure now and again of a successful 
 cure, as you have that of saving a family from the horrors of 
 hunger, depravity, or misery, and of restoring it to social re- 
 spectability. But what comfort can the magistrate find, the 
 police agent, or the attorney, who spend their lives in investi- 
 gating the basest schemes of self-interest, the social monster 
 whose only regret is when it fails, but on whom repentance 
 never dawns ? 
 
 " One-half of society spends its life in watching the other 
 half. A very old friend of mine is an attorney, now retired, 
 who told me that for fifteen years past notaries and lawyers 
 have distrusted their clients quite as much as their adversaries. 
 Your son is a pleader; has he never found himself compromised 
 by the client for whom he held a brief? " 
 
 " Very often," said Victorin, with a smile. 
 
 "And what is the cause of this deep-seated evil?" asked 
 the baroness. 
 
 "The decay of religion," said Bianchon, "and the pre- 
 eminence of finance, which is simply solidified selfishness. 
 Money used not to be everything ; there were some kinds of 
 superiority that ranked above it nobility, genius, service done 
 to the State. But nowadays the law takes wealth as the uni- 
 versal standard, and regards it as the measure of public capac- 
 ity. Certain magistrates are ineligible to the Chamber ; Jean- 
 Jacques Rousseau would be ineligible ! The perpetual sub- 
 division of estates compels every man to take care of himself 
 from the age of twenty. 
 
 " Well, then, between the necessity for making a fortune 
 and the depravity of speculation there is no check or hin- 
 drance; for the religious sense is wholly lacking in France, in 
 spite of the laudable endeavors of those who are working for 
 a Catholic revival. And this is the opinion of every man who, 
 like me, studies society at the core."
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 63 
 
 "And you have few pleasures?" said Hortense. 
 
 " The true physician, madame, is in love with his science," 
 replied the doctor. " He is sustained by that passion as much 
 as by the sense of his usefulness to society. 
 
 "At this very time you see me in a sort of scientific rap- 
 ture, and many superficial judges would regard me as a man 
 devoid of feeling. I have to announce a discovery to-morrow 
 to the College of Medicine, for I am studying a disease that 
 had disappeared a mortal disease for which no cure is known 
 in temperate climates, though it is curable in the West Indies 
 a malady known here in the Middle Ages. A noble fight 
 is that of the physician against such a disease. For the last ten 
 days I have thought of nothing but these cases for there are 
 two, a husband and wife. Are they not connections of yours? 
 For you, madame, are surely Monsieur Crevel's daughter?" 
 said he, addressing Celestine. 
 
 "What, is my father your patient?" asked Celestine. 
 "Living in the Rue Barbet-de-Jouy ? " 
 
 " Precisely so," said Bianchon. 
 
 "And the disease is inevitably fatal?" said Victorin in 
 dismay. 
 
 "I will go to see him," said Celestine, rising. 
 
 " I positively forbid it, madame," Bianchon quietly said. 
 " The disease is contagious." 
 
 "But you go there, monsieur," replied the young woman. 
 " Do you think that a daughter's duty is less' binding than a 
 doctor's?" 
 
 " Madame, a physician knows how to protect himself 
 against infection, and the rashness of your devotion proves 
 to me that you would probably be less prudent than I." 
 
 Celestine, however, got up and went to her room, where 
 she dressed to go out. 
 
 "Monsieur," said Victorin to Bianchon, "have you any 
 hope of saving Monsieur and Madame Crevel ? " 
 
 "I hope, but I do not believe that I can," said Bianchon.
 
 64 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 " The case is to me quite inexplicable. The disease is pecu- 
 liar to negroes and the American tribes, whose skin is differ- 
 ently constituted to that of the white races. Now I can 
 trace no connection with the copper-colored tribes, with 
 negroes or half-castes, in Monsieur or Madame Crevel. 
 
 "And though it is a very interesting disease to us, it is a 
 terrible thing for the sufferers. The poor woman, who is 
 said to have been very pretty, is punished for her sins, for 
 she is now squalidly hideous if she is still anything at all. 
 She is losing her hair and teeth, her skin is like a leper's, she 
 is a horror to herself; her hands are horrible, covered with 
 greenish pustules, her nails are loose, and the flesh is eaten 
 away by the poisoned humors." 
 
 "And the cause of such a disease?" asked the lawyer. 
 
 " Oh ! " said the doctor, " the cause lies in a form of rapid 
 blood-poisoning ; it generates with most terrific rapidity. I 
 hope to act on the blood ; I am having it analyzed ; and I 
 am now going home to ascertain the result of the labors of 
 my friend Professor Duval, the famous chemist, with a view 
 to trying one of those desperate measures by which we some- 
 times attempt to defeat death." 
 
 "The hand of God is there! " said Adeline, in a voice 
 husky with emotion. "Though that woman has brought 
 sorrows on me which have led me in moments of madness 
 to invoke the vengeance of heaven, I hope God knows I 
 hope you may succeed, doctor." 
 
 Victorin felt dizzy. He looked at his mother, his sister, 
 and the physician by turns, quaking lest they should read his 
 thoughts. He felt himself a murderer. 
 
 Hortense, for her part, thought God was just. 
 
 Celestine came back to beg her husband to accompany her. 
 
 " If you insist on going, madame, and you too, monsieur, 
 keep at least a foot between you and the bed of the sufferer, 
 that is the chief precaution. Neither you nor your wife must 
 dream of kissing the dying man. And, indeed, you ought
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 65 
 
 to go with your wife, Monsieur Hulot, to hinder her from 
 disobeying my injunctions." 
 
 Adeline and Hortense, when they were left alone, went to 
 sit with Lisbeth. Hortense had such a virulent hatred of 
 Valerie that she could not contain the expression of it. 
 
 "Cousin Betty," she exclaimed, "my mother and I are 
 avenged ! That venomous snake is herself bitten she is 
 rotting in her bed ! " 
 
 "Hortense, at this moment you are not a Christian. You 
 ought to pray God to vouchsafe repentance to this wretched 
 woman," said Madame Hulot. 
 
 "What are you talking about?" said Betty, rising from 
 her couch. "Are you speaking of Valerie?" 
 
 "Yes," replied Adeline; "she is past hope dying of 
 some horrible disease of which the mere description makes 
 one shudder " 
 
 Lisbeth's teeth chattered, a cold sweat broke out all over 
 her ; the violence of the shock showed how passionate her 
 attachment to Valerie had been. 
 
 " I must go there," said she. 
 
 "But the doctor forbids your going out." 
 
 " I do not care I must go ! Poor Crevel ! what a state he 
 must be in ; for he loves that woman." 
 
 "He is dying, too," replied Countess Steinbock. "Ah! 
 all our enemies are in the devil's clutches " 
 
 "In God's hands, my child " 
 
 Lisbeth dressed in the famous yellow Indian shawl and her 
 black velvet bonnet, and put on her shoes ; in spite of her 
 relations' remonstrances, she set out as if driven by some irre- 
 sistible power. 
 
 She arrived in the Rue Barbet a few minutes after Monsieur 
 and Madame Hulot, and found seven physicians there, brought 
 by Bianchon to study this unique case; he had just joined 
 them. The physicians, assembled in the drawing-room, were 
 discussing the disease ; now one and now another went into 
 5
 
 66 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Valerie's room or C revel's to take a note, and returned with 
 an opinion based on this rapid examination. 
 
 These princes of science were divided in their opinions. 
 One, who stood alone in his views, considered it a case of 
 poisoning, of private revenge, and denied its identity with 
 the disease known in the Middle Ages. Three others re- 
 garded it as a specific deterioration of the blood and the 
 humors. The rest, agreeing with Bianchon, maintained that 
 the blood was poisoned by some hitherto unknown morbid 
 infection. Bianchon produced Professor Duval's analysis of 
 the blood. The remedies to be applied, though absolutely 
 empirical and without hope, depended on the verdict in this 
 medical dilemma. 
 
 Lisbeth stood as if petrified three yards away from the bed 
 where Valerie lay dying, as she saw a priest from Saint-Thomas 
 d'Aquin standing by her friend's pillow, and a sister of charity 
 in attendance. Religion could find a soul to save in a mass 
 of rottenness which, of the five senses of man, had now only 
 that of sight. The sister of charity who alone had been found 
 to nurse Valerie stood apart. Thus the Catholic religion, that 
 divine institution, always actuated by the spirit of self-sacrifice, 
 under its twofold aspect of the Spirit and the flesh, was tend- 
 ing this horrible and atrocious creature, soothing her death- 
 bed by its infinite benevolence and inexhaustible stores of 
 mercy. 
 
 The servants, in horror, refused to go into the room of 
 either their master or mistress ; they thought only of them- 
 selves, and judged their betters as righteously stricken. The 
 smell was so foul that in spite of open windows and strong 
 perfumes, no one could remain long in Valerie's room. Re- 
 ligion alone kept guard there. 
 
 How could a woman so clever as Valerie fail to ask herself 
 to what end these two representatives of the church remained 
 with her ? The dying woman had listened to the words of 
 the priest. Repentance had risen on her darkened soul as the
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 67 
 
 devouring malady had consumed her beauty. The fragile 
 Valerie had been less able to resist the inroads of the disease 
 than Crevel ; she would be the first to succumb, and, indeed, 
 had been the first attacked. 
 
 " If I had not been ill myself, I would have come to nurse 
 you," said Lisbeth at last, after a glance at her friend's 
 sunken eyes. " I have kept my room this fortnight or three 
 weeks ; but when I heard of your state from the doctor, I 
 came at once." 
 
 "Poor Lisbeth, you at least love me still, I see!" said 
 Valerie. "Listen. I have only a day or two left to think, 
 for I cannot say to live. You see, there is nothing left of me 
 I am a heap of filth ! They will not let me see myself in a 
 glass. Well, it is no more than I deserve. Oh, if I might 
 only win mercy, I would gladly undo all the mischief I have 
 done." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Lisbeth, " if you can talk like that, you are 
 indeed a dead woman." 
 
 " Do not hinder this woman's repentance, leave her in her 
 Christian mind," said the priest. 
 
 "There is nothing left ! " said Lisbeth in consternation. 
 " I cannot recognize her eyes or her mouth ! Not a feature 
 of her is there ! And her wit has deserted her \ Oh, it is 
 awful!" 
 
 "You don't know," said Valerie, "what death is; what 
 it is to be obliged to think of the morrow of your last day on 
 earth, and of what is to be found in the grave. Worms for 
 the body and for the soul, what ? Lisbeth, I know there is 
 another life ! And I am given over to terrors which prevent 
 my feeling the pangs of my decomposing body. I, who could 
 laugh at a saint, and say to Crevel that the vengeance of God 
 took every form of disaster. Well, I was a true prophet. Do 
 not trifle with sacred things, Lisbeth ; if you love me, repent 
 as I do." 
 
 "I ! " said Lisbeth. " I see vengeance wherever I turn in
 
 68 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 nature; insects even die to satisfy the craving for revenge 
 when they are attacked. And do not these gentlemen tell 
 us " and she looked at the priest " that God is revenged, 
 and that His vengeance lasts through all eternity? '* 
 
 The priest looked mildly at Lisbeth and said 
 
 "You, madame, are an atheist ! " 
 
 "Nothing left of her. Her mind gone too," muttered Lisbeth. 
 
 " Yes, look what I have come to," said Valerie. 
 
 "And where did you get this gangrene?" asked the old 
 maid, unmoved from her peasant incredulity. 
 
 "I had a letter from Henri which leaves me in no doubt as 
 to my fate. He has murdered me. And just when I meant 
 to live honestly to die an object of disgust ! 
 
 "Lisbeth, give up all notions of revenge. Be kind to that 
 family to whom I have left by my will everything I can dis- 
 pose of. Go, child, though you are the only creature who, 
 at this hour, does not avoid me with horror go, I beseech 
 you, and leave me. I have only time to make my peace with 
 God!" 
 
 " She is wandering in her wits," said Lisbeth to herself, as 
 she left the room. 
 
 The strongest affection ever known, that of a woman for a 
 woman, had not such heroic constancy as the church. Lis- 
 beth, stifled by the miasma, went away. She found the 
 physicians still in consultation. But Bianchon's opinion 
 carried the day, and the only question now was how to try the 
 remedies. 
 
 "At any rate, we shall have a splendid post-mortem" said 
 one of his opponents, " and there will be two cases to enable 
 us to make comparisons." 
 
 Lisbeth came in again with Bianchon, who went up to the 
 sick woman without seeming aware of the maladorous atmos- 
 phere. 
 
 " Madame," said he, " we intend to try a powerful remedy 
 which may save you "
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 69 
 
 " And if you save my life," said she, "shall I be as good- 
 looking as ever?" 
 
 " Possibly," said the judicious physician. 
 
 "I know your 'possibly,'" said Valerie. "I shall look 
 like a woman who has fallen into the fire ! No, leave me to 
 the church. I can please no one now but God. I will try to 
 be reconciled to Him, and that will be my last flirtation ; yes, 
 I must try to come round God ! " 
 
 "That is my poor Valerie's last jest; that is all herself! " 
 said Lisbeth in tears. 
 
 Lisbeth thought it her duty to go into Crevel's room, where 
 she found Victorin and his wife sitting about a yard away 
 from the stricken man's bed. 
 
 "Betty," said he, "they will not tell me what state my 
 wife is in ; you have just seen her how is she ?" 
 
 "She is better; she says she is saved," replied Lisbeth, 
 allowing herself this play on the word to soothe Crevel's mind. 
 
 "That is well," said the mayor. "I feared lest I had 
 been the cause of her illness. A man is not a traveler in 
 perfumery for nothing ; I had blamed myself. If I should 
 lose her, what would become of me ? On my honor, my chil- 
 dren, I worship that woman." 
 
 He sat up in bed and tried to assume his favorite position. 
 
 " Oh, papa ! " cried Celestine, " if only you could be well 
 again, I would make friends with my stepmother I make a 
 vow!" 
 
 "Poor little Celestine!" said Crevel, "come and kiss 
 me." 
 
 Victorin held back his wife, who was rushing forward. 
 
 "You do not know, perhaps," said the lawyer gently, 
 " that your disease is contagious, monsieur? " 
 
 " To be sure," replied Crevel. "And the doctors are quite 
 proud of having rediscovered in me some long-lost plague of 
 the Middle Ages, which the Faculty has had cried like lost 
 property it is very funny ! "
 
 70 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "Papa," said Celestine, "be brave, and you will get the 
 better of this disease." 
 
 " Be quite easy, my children ; Death thinks twice of it be- 
 fore carrying off a mayor of Paris," said he, with monstrous 
 composure. "And if, after all, my district is so unfortunate 
 as to lose a man it has twice honored with its suffrages you 
 see what a flow of words I have ! Well, I shall know how to 
 pack up and go. I have been a commercial traveler ; I am 
 experienced in such matters. Ah ! my children, I am a man 
 of strong mind." 
 
 " Papa, promise me to admit the church 
 
 " Never," replied Crevel. " What is to be said ? I drank 
 the milk of Revolution j I have not Baron Holbach's wit, but 
 I have his strength of mind. I am more Regency than ever, 
 more musketeer, Abbe Dubois, and Marechal de Richelieu ! 
 By the Holy Poker ! My wife, who is wandering in her head, 
 has just sent a man in a cassock to me to me! the admirer of 
 Beranger, the friend of Lisette, the son of Voltaire and Jean- 
 Jacques. The doctor, to feel my pulse, as it were, and see if 
 sickness had subdued me 'You saw Monsieur 1'Abbe,' said 
 he. Well, I imitated the great Montesquieu. Yes, I looked at 
 the doctor see, like this ' ' and he turned to show three- 
 quarters face, like his portrait, and extended his hand authori- 
 tatively "and I said 
 
 " ' The slave he came, 
 And showed his order, but he left with shame.' 
 
 " ' His Order ' is a pretty jest, showing that even in death 
 Monsieur le President de Montesquieu preserved his elegant 
 wit, for they had sent him a Jesuit. I admire that passage I 
 cannot say of his life, but of his death the passage another 
 joke ! The passage from life to death the Passage-Montes- 
 quieu ! " 
 
 Victorin gazed sadly at his father-in-law, wondering whether
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 71 
 
 folly and vanity were not forces on a par with true greatness 
 of soul. The causes that act on the springs of the soul seem 
 to be quite independent of the results. Can it be that the 
 fortitude which upholds a great criminal is the same as that 
 with which a Champcenetz so proudly walks to the scaffold ? 
 
 By the end of the week Madame Crevel was buried, after 
 dreadful sufferings ; and Crevel followed her within two days. 
 Thus the marriage-contract was annulled. Crevel was heir to 
 Valerie. 
 
 On the very day after the funeral, the friar called again on 
 the lawyer, who received him in perfect silence. The monk 
 held out his hand without a word, and without a word Victorin 
 Hulot gave him eighty thousand-franc notes, taken from a sum 
 of money found in Crevel's desk. 
 
 Young Madame Hulot inherited the estate of Presles and 
 thirty thousand francs a year. 
 
 Madame Crevel had bequeathed a sum of three hundred 
 thousand francs to Baron Hulot. Her scrofulous boy Stan- 
 islas was to inherit, at his majority, the Hotel Crevel and eighty 
 thousand francs a year. 
 
 Among the many noble associations founded in Paris by 
 Catholic charity, there is one, originated by Madame de la 
 Chanterie, for promoting civil and religious marriages be- 
 tween persons who have formed a voluntary but illicit union. 
 Legislators, who draw large revenues from the registration 
 fees, and the Bourgeois dynasty, which benefits by the notary's 
 profits, affect to overlook the fact that three-fourths of the 
 poorer class cannot afford fifteen francs for the marriage-con- 
 tract. In this the corporation of notaries is inferior to that 
 of the pleaders in Paris. The pleaders, a sufficiently vilified 
 body, gratuitously defend the cases of the indigent, while the 
 notaries have not as yet agreed to charge nothing for the mar- 
 riage-contract of the poor. As to the revenue collectors, the 
 whole machinery of Government would have to be dislocated
 
 72 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 to induce the authorities to relax their demands. The regis- 
 trar's office is deaf and dumb. 
 
 Then the church, too, receives a duty on marriages. In 
 France the church depends largely on such revenues ; even in 
 the House of God it traffics in chairs and kneeling stools in a 
 way that offends foreigners ; though it cannot have forgotten 
 the anger of the Saviour who drove the money-changers out 
 of the Temple. If the church is so loth to relinquish its dues, 
 it must be supposed that these dues, known as vestry dues, are 
 one of its sources of maintenance, and then the fault of the 
 church is the fault of the State. 
 
 The cooperation of these conditions, at a time when charity 
 is too greatly concerned with the woes of the negro and the 
 petty offenders discharged from prison to trouble itself about 
 honest people in difficulties, results in the existence of a num- 
 ber of decent couples who have never been legally married 
 for lack of thirty francs, the lowest figure for which the notary, 
 the registrar, the mayor, and the church will unite two citizens 
 of Paris. Madame de la Chanterie's fund, founded to restore 
 poor households to their religious and legal status, hunts up 
 such couples, and with all the more success because it helps 
 them in their poverty before attacking their unlawful union. 
 
 As soon as Madame Hulot had recovered, she returned to 
 her occupations. And then it was that the admirable Madame 
 de la Chanterie came to beg that Adeline would add the legali- 
 zation of these voluntary unions to the other good works of 
 which she was the instrument. 
 
 One of the baroness' first efforts in this cause was made in 
 the ominous-looking district, formerly known as la Petite 
 Pologne Little Poland bounded by the Rue du Rocher, 
 Rue de la Pepiniere, and Rue de Miromenil. There exists 
 there a sort of offshoot of the Faubourg Saint-Marceau. To 
 give an idea of this part of the town, it is enough to say that 
 the landlords of some of the houses tenanted by workingmen 
 without work, by dangerous characters, and by the very poor
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 73 
 
 employed in unhealthy toil, dare not demand their rents, and 
 can find no bailiffs bold enough to evict insolvent lodgers. 
 At the present time speculating builders, who are fast chang- 
 ing the aspect of this corner of Paris, and covering the waste 
 ground lying between the Rue d' Amsterdam and the Rue 
 Faubourg-du-Roule, will no doubt alter the character of the 
 inhabitants ; for the trowel is a more civilizing agent than is 
 generally supposed. By erecting substantial and handsome 
 houses, with janitors at the doors, by bordering the streets 
 with footwalks and stores, speculation, while raising the rents, 
 disperses the squalid class, families bereft of furniture, and 
 lodgers that cannot pay. And so these districts are cleared of 
 such objectionable residents, and the dens vanish into which 
 the police never venture unless in the pursuit of criminals. 
 
 In June, 1844, the purlieus of the Place de Laborde were 
 still far from inviting. The genteel pedestrian, who, by 
 chance, should turn out of the Rue de la Pepiniere into one 
 of these dreadful side-streets, would have been dismayed to 
 see how vile a bohemia dwelt cheek by jowl with the aristoc- 
 racy. In such places as these, haunted by ignorant poverty 
 and misery driven to bay, flourish the last public letter-writers 
 who are to be found in Paris. Wherever you see the two 
 words " Ecrivain Public" written in a fine copy hand on a 
 sheet of letter-paper stuck to the window-pane of some low 
 entresol or mud-splashed first-floor noom, you may safely cpn- 
 clude that the neighborhood is the lurking place of many un- 
 lettered folk, and of much vice and crime, the outcome of 
 misery ; for ignorance is the mother of all sorts of crime. A 
 crime is, in the first instance, a defect of reasoning power. 
 
 While the baroness had been ill, this quarter, to which she 
 was a minor Providence, had seen the advent of a public 
 writer who settled in the Passage du Soleil Sun Alley a spot 
 'of which the name is one of the antitheses dear to the Parisian, 
 for the passage is especially dark. This writer, supposed to 
 be a German, was named Vyder, and he lived on matrimonial
 
 74 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 terms with a young creature of whom he was so jealous that he 
 never allowed her to go anywhere except to some honest stove 
 and flue-fitters, in the Rue Saint-Lazare, Italians, as such 
 fitters always are, but long since established in Paris. These 
 people had been saved from a bankruptcy, which would have 
 reduced them to misery, by the baroness, acting in behalf of 
 Madame de la Chanterie. In a few months comfort had 
 taken the place of poverty, and Religion had found a home in 
 hearts which once had cursed heaven with the energy peculiar 
 to Italian stove-fitters. 
 
 So one of Madame Hulot's first visits was to this family. 
 She was pleased at the scene that presented itself to her eyes 
 at the back of the house where this worthy family lived in the 
 Rue Saint-Lazare, not far from the Rue du Rocher. High 
 above the stores and workshops, now well filled, where toiled 
 a swarm of apprentices and workmen all Italians from the 
 valley of Domo d'Ossola the master's family occupied a set 
 of rooms, which hard work had blessed with abundance. 
 The baroness was hailed like the Virgin Mary in person. 
 
 After a quarter of an hour's questioning, Adeline, having 
 to wait for the father to inquire how his business was prosper- 
 ing, pursued her saintly calling as a spy by asking whether they 
 knew of any families living out of the pale of wedlock. 
 
 "Ah! dear lady, you who could save the damned from 
 hell ! " said the Italian wife, "there is a girl quite near here 
 to be saved from perdition." 
 
 "A girl well known to you?" asked the baroness. 
 
 " She is the granddaughter of a master my husband formerly 
 worked for, who came to France in 1798, after the Revolution, 
 by name Judici. Old Judici, in Napoleon's time, was one of 
 the principal stove-fitters in Paris ; he died in 1819, leaving 
 his son a fine fortune. But the younger Judici wasted all his 
 money on bad women ; till, at last, he married one who was 
 sharper than the rest, and she had this poor little girl, who is 
 iust turned fifteen."
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 75 
 
 "And what is wrong with her?" asked Adeline, struck by 
 the resemblance between this Judici and her husband. 
 
 " Well, madame, this child, named Atala, ran away from 
 her father, and came to live close by here with an old German 
 of eighty at least, named Vyder, who does odd jobs for people 
 who cannot read and write. Now, if this old sinner, who 
 bought the child of her mother, they say, for fifteen hundred 
 francs, would but marry her, as he certainly has not long to 
 live, and as he is said to have some few thousands of francs a 
 year well, the poor thing, who is a sweet little angel, would 
 be out of mischief, and above want, which must be the ruin 
 of her." 
 
 "Thank you very much for the information. I may do 
 some good, but I must act with caution. Who is the old 
 man?" 
 
 "Oh! madame, he is a good old fellow; he makes the 
 child very happy, and he has some sense too, for he left the 
 part of town where the Judicis live, as I believe, to snatch the 
 child from her mother's clutches. The mother was jealous of 
 her, and I dare say she thought she could make money out of 
 her beauty and make a ' Mademoiselle ' of the girl. 
 
 "Atala remembered us, and advised her gentleman to settle 
 near us ; and as the goodman sees how decent we are, he 
 allows her to come here. But get them married, madame, 
 and you will do an action worthy of you. Once married, the 
 child will be independent and free from her mother, who 
 keeps an eye on her, and who, if she could make money by 
 her, would like to see her on the stage, or successful in the 
 wicked life she meant her to lead." 
 
 " Why doesn't the old man marry her? " 
 
 "There was no necessity for it, you see," said the Italian. 
 "And though old Vyder is not a bad old fellow, I fancy he is 
 sharp enough to wish to remain the master, while if he once 
 got married why, the poor man is afraid of the stone that 
 hangs round every old husband's neck."
 
 76 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "Could you send for the girl to come here?" said Ma- 
 dame Hulot. " I should see her quietly, and find out what 
 could be done' " 
 
 The stove-fitter's wife signed to her eldest girl, who ran off. 
 Ten minutes later she returned, leading by the hand a child 
 of fifteen and a-half, a beauty of the Italian type. Made- 
 moiselle Judici inherited from her father that ivory skin which, 
 rather yellow by day, is by artificial light of lily-whiteness; 
 eyes of Oriental beauty, form, and brilliancy, close curling 
 lashes like black feathers, hair of ebony hue, and that native 
 dignity of the Lombard race which makes the foreigner, as he 
 walks through Milan on a Sunday, fancy that every porter's 
 daughter is a princess. 
 
 Atala, told by the stove-fitter's daughter that she was to 
 meet the great lady of whom she had heard so much, had 
 hastily dressed in a black silk gown, a smart little cape, and 
 neat shoes. A cap with a cherry-colored bow added to the 
 brilliant effect of her coloring. The child stood in an atti- 
 tude of artless curiosity, studying the baroness out of the 
 corner of her eye, for her palsied trembling puzzled her 
 greatly. 
 
 Adeline sighed deeply as she saw this jewel of womanhood 
 in the mire of prostitution, and determined to rescue her to 
 virtue. 
 
 " What is your name, my dear ? " 
 
 "Atala, madame." 
 
 "And can you read and write?" 
 
 "No, madame; but that does not matter, as monsieur 
 can." 
 
 "Did your parents ever take you to church? Have you 
 been to your first communion ? Do you know your cate- 
 chism?" 
 
 " Madame," said Atala Judici, "papa wanted to make me 
 do something of the kind you speak of, but mamma would 
 not have it "
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 77 
 
 "Your mother?" exclaimed the baroness. "Is she bad 
 to you, then ? ' ' 
 
 " She was always beating me. I don't know why, but I was 
 always being quarreled over by my father and mother " 
 
 " Did you never hear of God ? " cried the baroness. 
 
 The girl looked up wide-eyed. 
 
 " Oh yes, papa and mamma often said ' Good God,' and 
 ' In God's name,' and 'God's thunder,' " said she, with per- 
 fect simplicity. 
 
 " Then you never saw a church ? Did you never think of 
 going into one? " 
 
 "A church? Notre-Dame, the Pantheon? I have seen 
 them from a distance, when papa took me into town ; but 
 that was not very often. There are no churches like those in 
 the Faubourg." 
 
 " Which Faubourg did you live in ? " 
 
 "In the Faubourg." 
 
 "Yes, but which?" 
 
 " In the Rue de Charonne, madame." 
 
 The inhabitants of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine never call 
 that notorious district other than the Faubourg. To them it 
 is the one and only Faubourg ; and manufacturers generally 
 understand the words as meaning the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. 
 
 " Did no one ever tell you what was right or wrong? " 
 
 " Mamma used to beat me when I did not do what pleased 
 her." 
 
 "But did you not know that it was very wicked to run away 
 from your father and mother to go to live with an old man ? ' ' 
 asked Madame Hulot. 
 
 Atala Judici gazed at the baroness with a haughty stare, but 
 made no reply. 
 
 "She is a perfect little savage," murmured Adeline. 
 
 "There are a great many like her in the Faubourg, 
 madame," said the stove-fitter's wife. 
 
 " But she knows nothing not even what is wrong. Good,
 
 78 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 heavens! Why do you not "answer me?" said Madame 
 Hulot, putting out her hand to take Atala's. 
 
 Atala indignantly withdrew a step. 
 
 " You are an old fool ! " said she. " Why, my father and 
 mother had had nothing to eat for a week. My mother 
 wanted to make something bad of me, I think, for my father 
 thrashed her and called her a thief! However, Monsieur 
 Vyder paid all their debts, and gave them some money oh, 
 a bagful 1 And he brought me away, and poor papa was 
 crying. But we had to part ! Was it wicked?" she asked. 
 
 "And are you very fond of Monsieur Vyder? " 
 
 "Fond of him?" said she. "I should think so! He 
 tells me beautiful stories, madame, every evening ; and he has 
 given me nice gowns, and linen, and a shawl. Why, I am 
 figged out like a princess, and I never wear sabots now. And, 
 then, I have not known what it is to be hungry these two 
 months past. And I don't live on potatoes now. He brings 
 me bonbons and burnt almonds, and chocolate almonds. 
 Aren't they good? I do anything he pleases for a bag of 
 chocolate. Then my old daddy is very kind ; he takes such 
 care of me, and is so nice ; I know now what my mother 
 ought to have been. He is going to get an old woman to 
 help me, for he doesn't like me to dirty my hands with cook- 
 ing. For the last month, too, he has been making a little 
 money, and he gives me three francs every evening that I put 
 into a money-box. Only he will never let me go out except 
 to come here and he calls me his little kitten ! Mamma 
 never called me anything but bad names and thief, and 
 vermin ! " 
 
 "Well, then, my child, why should not Daddy Vyder be 
 your husband?" 
 
 "But he is, madame," said the girl, looking at Adeline 
 with calm pride, without a blush, her brow smooth, her eyes 
 steady. " He told me I was his little wife ; but it is a horrid 
 bore to be a man's wife if it were not for the burnt almonds !"
 
 COUSIN BETTY, 79 
 
 "Good heavens!" said the baroness to herself, "what 
 monster can have had the heart to betray such perfect, such 
 holy innocence ? To restore this child to the ways of virtue 
 would surely atone for many sins. I knew what I was doing," 
 thought she, remembering the scene with Crevel. "But she 
 she knows nothing." 
 
 "Do you know Monsieur Samanon?" asked Atala, with 
 an insinuating look. 
 
 " No, my child ; but why do you ask? " 
 
 " Really and truly?" said the artless girl. 
 
 "You have nothing to fear from this lady," said the Italian 
 woman. "She is an angel." 
 
 " It is because my good old boy is afraid of being caught 
 by Samanon. He is hiding, and I wish he could be altogether 
 free " 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Oh ! then he would take me to Bobino, perhaps to the 
 Ambigu." 
 
 "What a delightful creature! " said the baroness, kissing 
 the girl. 
 
 "Are you rich?" asked Atala, who was fingering the 
 baroness' lace ruffles. 
 
 "Yes, and No," replied Madame Hulot. " I am rich for 
 dear little girls like you when they are willing to be taught 
 their duties as Christians by a priest, and to walk in the right 
 way." 
 
 "What way is that?" said Atala; "I walk on my two 
 feet." 
 
 "The way of virtue." 
 
 Atala looked at the baroness with a crafty smile. 
 
 "Look at madame," said the baroness, pointing to the 
 stove-fitter's wife, " she has been quite happy because she was 
 received into the bosom of the church. You married like the 
 beasts that perish." 
 
 " I ? " said Atala. " Why, if you will give me as much as
 
 80 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Daddy Vyder gives me, I shall be quite happy unmarried 
 again. It is a grind. Do you know what it is to ? " 
 
 "But when once you are united to a man as you are," the 
 baroness put in, "virtue requires you to remain faithful to 
 him." 
 
 "Till he dies," said Atala, with a knowing flash. "I 
 shall not have to wait long. If you only knew how Daddy 
 Vyder coughs and blows. Poof, poof," and she imitated the 
 old man. 
 
 " Virtue and morality require that the church, representing 
 God, and the mayor, representing the law, should consecrate 
 your marriage," Madame Hulot went on. " Look at madame; 
 she is legally married " 
 
 " Will it make it more amusing ? " asked the girl. 
 
 "You will be happier," said the baroness, "for no one 
 then could blame you. You would satisfy God ! Ask her if 
 she was married without the sacrament of marriage ! " 
 
 Atala looked at the Italian. 
 
 "How is she any better than I am?" she asked. "I am 
 prettier than she is." 
 
 "Yes, but I am an honest woman," said the wife, "and 
 you may be called by a bad name." 
 
 "How can you expect God to protect you if you trample 
 every law, human and divine, under foot ? " said the baroness. 
 "Don't you know that God has paradise in store for those 
 who obey the injunctions of His church?" 
 
 "What is there in paradise? Are there playhouses? " 
 
 " Paradise ! " said Adeline, " is every joy you can conceive 
 of. It is full of angels with white wings. You see God in all 
 His glory, you share His power, you are happy for every 
 minute of eternity ! " 
 
 Atala listened to the lady as she might have listened to 
 music ; but Adeline, seeing that she was incapable of under- 
 standing her, thought she had better take another line of action 
 and speak to the old man.
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 81 
 
 " Go home, then, my child, and I will go to see Monsieur 
 Vyder. Is he a Frenchman ? " 
 
 "He is an Alsatian, madame. But he will be quite rich 
 soon. If you would pay what he owes to that vile Samanon, 
 he would give you back your money, for in a few months he 
 will be getting six thousand francs a year, he says, and we 
 are to go to live in the country a long way off, in the 
 Vosges. ' ' 
 
 At the word Vosges the baroness sat lost in reverie. It 
 called up the vision of her native village. She was roused 
 from her melancholy meditation by the entrance of the stove- 
 fitter, who came to assure her of his prosperity. 
 
 " In a year's time, madame, I can repay the money you lent 
 us, for it is God's money, the money of the poor and wretched. 
 If ever I make a fortune, come to me for what you want, and 
 I will render through you the help to others which you first 
 brought us." 
 
 "Just now," said Madame Hulot, "I do not need your 
 money, but I ask your assistance in a good work. I have just 
 seen that little Judici, who is living with an old man, and I 
 mean to see them regularly and legally married." 
 
 "Ah! old Vyder; he is a very worthy old fellow, with 
 plenty of good sense. The poor old man has already made 
 friends in the neighborhood, though he has been here but two 
 months. He keeps my accounts for me. He is, I believe, a 
 brave colonel who served the Emperor well. And how he 
 adores Napoleon ! He has some orders, but he never wears 
 them. He is waiting till he is straight again, for he is in 
 debt, poor old boy ! In fact, I believe he is hiding, threat- 
 ened by the law " 
 
 " Tell him that I will pay his debts if he will marry the 
 child." 
 
 "Oh, that will soon be settled. Suppose you were to see 
 him, madame ; it is not two steps awa^y, in the Passage du 
 Soleil." 
 6
 
 82 THE PCOR PARENTS. 
 
 So the lady and the stove-fitter went out. 
 
 " This way, madame," said the man, turning down the Rue 
 de la Pepiniere. 
 
 The alley runs, in fact, from the bottom of this street 
 through to the Rue du Rocher. Half-way down this passage, 
 recently opened through, where the stores let at a very low 
 rent, the baroness saw on the window, screened up to a height 
 with a green gauze curtain, which excluded the prying eyes of 
 the passer-by, the words 
 
 " ECRIVAIN PUBLIC; " and on the door the announcement 
 
 BUSINESS TRANSACTED. 
 
 Petitions Drawn Up, Accounts Audited, Etc. 
 With Secrecy and Dispatch. 
 
 The store was like one of the little offices where travelers by 
 omnibus await the vehicles to take them on to their destination. 
 A private staircase led up, no doubt, to the living rooms on 
 the entresol which were let with the store. Madame Hulot 
 saw a dirty writing-table of some light wood, some letter- 
 boxes, and a wretched second-hand chair. A cap with a peak 
 and a greasy green shade for the eyes suggested either precau- 
 tions for disguise or weak eyes, which was not unlikely in an 
 old man. 
 
 " He is upstairs," said the stove-fitter. " I will go up and 
 tell him to come down." 
 
 Adeline lowered her veil and took a seat. A heavy step 
 made the narrow stairs creak, and Adeline could not restrain 
 a piercing cry when she saw her husband, Baron Hulot, in a 
 gray knitted jersey, old gray flannel trousers, and slippers. 
 
 "What is your business, madame?" said Hulot, with a 
 flourish. 
 
 She rose, seized Hulot by the arm, and said in a voice 
 hoarse with emotion
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 83 
 
 "At last I have found you ! " 
 
 "Adeline! " exclaimed the baron in bewilderment, and he 
 locked the store-door. "Joseph, go out the back way," he 
 added to the stove-fitter. 
 
 " My dear ! " she said, forgetting everything in her excess- 
 ive joy, "you can come home to us all; we are rich. Your 
 son draws a hundred and sixty thousand francs a year ! Your 
 pension is released ; there are fifteen thousand francs of arrears 
 you can get on showing that you are alive. Valerie is dead, 
 and left you three hundred thousand francs. 
 
 "Your name is quite 'forgotten by this time; you may re- 
 appear in the world, and you will find a fortune awaiting you 
 at your son's house. Come ; our happiness will be complete. 
 For nearly three years have I been seeking you, and I felt so 
 sure of finding you that a room is ready waiting for you. Oh ! 
 come away from this, come away from the dreadful state I 
 see you in ! " 
 
 "I am very willing," said the bewildered baron, "but can 
 I take the girl?" 
 
 " Hector, give her up ! Do that much for your Adeline, 
 who has never before asked you to make the smallest sacrifice. 
 I promise you I will give the child a marriage portion ; I will 
 see that she marries well, and has some education. Let it be 
 said of one of the women who have given you happiness that 
 she, too, is happy; and did not relapse into vice, into the 
 mire." 
 
 "So it was you," said the baron, with a smile, "who 
 wanted to see me married? Wait a few minutes," he added, 
 " I will go upstairs and dress ; I have some decent clothes in a 
 trunk." 
 
 Adeline, left alone, and looking round the squalid den, 
 melted into tears. 
 
 " He has been living here, and we rolling in wealth ! " said 
 she to herself. " Poor man, he has indeed been punished 
 he who was elegance itself."
 
 84 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 The stove-fitter returned to make his bow to his benefac- 
 tress, and she desired him to fetch a coach. When he came 
 back, she begged him to give little Atala Judici a home, and 
 to take her away at once. 
 
 "And tell her that if she will place herself under the guid- 
 ance of Monsieur the Cure of the Madeleine, on the day when 
 she attends her first communion I will give her thirty thou- 
 sand francs and find her a good husband, some worthy young 
 man." 
 
 " My eldest son, then, madame ! He is two-and-twenty, 
 and he worships the child." 
 
 The baron now came down ; there were tears in his eyes. 
 
 " You are forcing me to desert the only creature who has 
 ever begun to love me at all as you do ! " said he in a whisper 
 to his wife. " She is crying bitterly, and I cannot abandon 
 her so " 
 
 " Be quite easy, Hector. She will find a home with honest 
 people, and I will answer for her conduct." 
 
 "Well, then, I can go with you," said the baron, escorting 
 his wife to the cab. 
 
 Hector, the Baron d'Ervy once more, had put on a blue 
 coat and trousers, a white vest, a black stock, and gloves. 
 When the baroness had taken lier seat in the vehicle, Atala 
 slipped in like an eel. 
 
 " Oh, madame," she said, " let me go with you. I will be 
 so good, so obedient; I will do whatever you wish; but do 
 not part me from my Daddy Vyder, my kind daddy, who gives 
 me such nice things. I shall be beaten " 
 
 " Come, come, Atala," said the baron, " this lady is my 
 wife we must part " 
 
 " She? As old as that ! and shaking like a leaf! " said the 
 child. "Look at her head ! " and she laughingly mimicked 
 the baroness' palsy. 
 
 The stove-fitter, who had run after the girl, came to the 
 carriage-door.
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 85 
 
 "Take her away ! " said Adeline. The man put his arms 
 round Atala and fairly carried her off. 
 
 "Thanks for such a sacrifice, my dearest," said Adeline, 
 taking the baron's hand and clutching it with delirious joy. 
 "How much you are altered ! you must have suffered so 
 much ! What a surprise for Hortense and for your son ! " 
 
 Adeline talked as lovers talk who meet after a long absence, 
 of a hundred things at once. 
 
 In ten minutes the baron and his wife reached the Rue 
 Louis-le-Grand, and there Adeline found this note awaiting 
 her: 
 
 " MADAME LA BARONNE : Monsieur le Baron Hulot d'Ervy 
 lived for one month in the Rue de Charonne under the name 
 of Thorec, an anagram of Hector. He now is in the Passage 
 de Soleil by the name of Vyder. He says he is an Alsatian, 
 and does writing, and he lives with a girl named Atala Judici. 
 Be very cautious, madame, for search is on foot ; the baron is 
 wanted, on what score I know not. 
 
 " The actress has kept her word, and remains as ever, 
 " Madame le Baronne, your humble servant, 
 
 "J. M." 
 
 The baron's return was hailed with such joy as reconciled 
 him to domestic life. He forgot little Atala Judici, for ex- 
 cesses of profligacy had reduced him to the volatility of feeling 
 that is characteristic of childhood. But the happiness of the 
 family was dashed by the change that had come over him. 
 He had been still hale when he had gone away from his home ; 
 he had come back almost a hundred, broken, bent, and his 
 expression even debased. 
 
 A splendid dinner, improvised by Celestine, reminded the 
 old man of the singer's banquets ; he was dazzled by the 
 splendor of his home. 
 
 "A feast in honor of the return of the prodigal father?" 
 said he in a murmur to Adeline.
 
 86 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 " Hush ! " said she, " all is forgotten." 
 
 "And Betty?" he asked, not seeing the old maid. 
 
 " I am sorry to say she is in bed," replied Hortense. " She 
 can never get up, and we shall have the grief of losing her ere 
 long. 
 
 "She hopes to see you after dinner." 
 
 At daybreak next morning Victorin Hulot was informed by 
 the porter's wife that soldiers of the municipal guard were 
 posted all around the premises ; the police demanded Baron 
 Hulot. The bailiff, who had followed the woman, laid a 
 summons in due form before the lawyer, and asked him 
 whether he meant to pay his father's debts. The claim was 
 for ten thousand francs at the suit of a usurer named Samanon, 
 who had probably lent the baron two or three thousand at 
 most. Victorin desired the bailiff to dismiss his men, and 
 paid. 
 
 " But is it the last? " he anxiously wondered. 
 
 Lisbeth, miserable already at seeing the family so pros- 
 perous, could not survive this happy event. She grew so 
 rapidly worse that Bianchon gave her but a week to live, con- 
 quered at last in the long struggle in which she had scored so 
 many victories. 
 
 She kept the secret of her hatred even through a painful 
 death from pulmonary consumption. And, indeed, she had 
 the supreme satisfaction of seeing Adeline, Hortense, Hulot, 
 Victorin, Steinbock, Celestine, and their children standing 
 in tears around her bed and mourning for her as the angel of 
 the family. 
 
 Baron Hulot, enjoying a course of solid food such as he had 
 not known for nearly three years, recovered flesh and strength, 
 and was almost himself again. This improvement was such 
 a joy to Adeline that her nervous trembling perceptibly 
 diminished. 
 
 "She will be happy after all," said Lisbeth to herself on 
 the day before she died, as she saw the veneration with which
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 87 
 
 the baron regarded his wife, of whose sufferings he had heard 
 from Hortense and Victorin. 
 
 And vindictiveness hastened Cousin Betty's end. The 
 family followed her, weeping, to the grave. 
 
 The baron and baroness, having reached the age which 
 looks for perfect rest, gave up the handsome rooms on the 
 second floor to the Count and Countess Steinbock, and took 
 those above. The baron by his son's exertions found an 
 official position in the management of a railroad, in 1845, 
 with a salary of six thousand francs, which, added to the six 
 thousand of his pension and the money left to him by Madame 
 Crevel, secured him an income of twenty-four thousand francs. 
 Hortense having enjoyed her independent income during the 
 three years of separation from Wenceslas, Victorin now in- 
 vested the two hundred thousand francs he had in trust, in 
 his sister's name, and he allowed her twelve thousand francs 
 annually. 
 
 Wenceslas, as the husband of a rich woman, was not un- 
 faithful, but he was an idler ; he could not make up his mind 
 to begin any work, however trifling. Once more he became 
 the artist in partibus; he was popular in society, and consulted 
 by amateurs ; in short, he became a critic, like all the feeble 
 folk who fall below their promise. 
 
 Thus each household, though living as one family, had its 
 own fortune. The baroness, taught by bitter experience, left 
 the management of matters to her son, and the baron was 
 thus reduced to his salary, in the hope that the smallness of 
 his income would prevent his relapsing into mischief. And 
 by some singular good fortune, on which neither the mother 
 nor the son had reckoned, Hulot seemed to have forsworn the 
 fair sex. His subdued behavior, ascribed to the course of 
 nature, so completely reassured the family, that they enjoyed 
 to the full his recovered amiability and delightful qualities. 
 He was unfailingly attentive to his wife and children, escorted 
 them to the play, reappeared in society, and did the honors
 
 88 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 of his son's house with exquisite grace. In short, this re- 
 claimed prodigal was the joy of his family. 
 
 He was a most agreeable old man, a ruin, but fuli of wit, 
 having retained no more of his vice than made it an added 
 social grace. 
 
 Of course, everybody was quite satisfied and easy. The 
 young people and the baroness lauded the model father to the 
 skies, forgetting the death of the two uncles. Life cannot go 
 on without much forgetting ! 
 
 Madame Victorin, who managed this enormous household 
 with great skill, due, no doubt, to Lisbeth's training, had 
 found it necessary to have a man-cook. This again necessi- 
 tated a kitchen-maid. Kitchen-maids are in these days ambi- 
 tious creatures, eager to detect the chefs secrets,- and to be- 
 come cooks as soon as they have learnt to stir a sauce. Con- 
 sequently, the kitchen-maid is liable to frequent change. 
 
 At the beginning of 1845 Celestine engaged as kitchen-maid 
 a sturdy Normandy peasant come from Isigny short-waisted, 
 with strong red arms, a common face, as dull as an " oc- 
 casional piece " at the play, and hardly to be persuaded out 
 of wearing the classical linen cap peculiar to the women of 
 Lower Normandy. This girl, as buxom as a wet-nurse, looked 
 as if she would burst the blue cotton check in which she clothed 
 her person. Her florid face might have been hewn out of 
 stone, so hard were its tawny outlines. 
 
 Of course no attention was paid to the advent in the house 
 of this girl, whose name was Agathe an ordinary, wide-awake 
 specimen, such as is daily imported from the provinces. 
 Agathe had no attractions for the cook, her tongue was too 
 rough, for she had served in a suburban inn, waiting on carters; 
 and instead of making a conquest of her chief and winning 
 from him the secrets of the high art of the kitchen, she was 
 the object of his great contempt. The chefs attentions were, 
 in fact, devoted to Louise, the Countess Steinbock's maid. 
 The country girl, thinking herself ill-used, complained bit-
 
 COUSIN BETTY. 89 
 
 terly that she was always sent out of the way on some pretext 
 when the chef was finishing a dish or putting the crowning 
 touch to a sauce. 
 
 " I am out of luck," said she, "and I shall go to another 
 place." 
 
 And yet she stayed, though she had twice given notice to 
 quit. 
 
 One night, Adeline, roused by some unusual noise, did not 
 see Hector in the bed he occupied near hers ; for they slept 
 side by side in two beds, as beseemed an old couple. She lay 
 awake an hour, but he did not return. Seized with a panic, 
 fancying some tragic end had overtaken him an apoplectic 
 attack, perhaps she went upstairs to the floor occupied by 
 the servants, and there was attracted to the room where 
 Agathe slept, partly by seeing a light below the door, and 
 partly by the murmur of voices. She stood still in dismay on 
 recognizing the voice of her husband, who, a victim to 
 Agathe's charms, to vanquish this strapping wench's not dis- 
 interested resistance, went to the length of saying 
 
 " My wife has not long to live, and if you like you may be 
 a baroness." 
 
 Adeline gave a cry, dropped her candlestick, and fled. 
 
 Three days later the baroness, who had received the last 
 sacraments, was dying, surrounded by her weeping family. 
 
 Just before she died, she took her husband's hand and 
 pressed it, murmuring in his ear 
 
 " My dear, I had nothing left to give up to you but my life. 
 In a minute or two you will be free, and can make another 
 Baroness Hulot." 
 
 And, rare sight, tears oozed from her dead eyes. 
 
 This desperateness of vice had vanquished the patience of 
 the angel, who, on the brink of eternity, gave utterance to 
 the only reproach she had ever spoken in her life. 
 
 The baron left Paris three days after his wife's funeral.
 
 90 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Eleven months later Victorin heard indirectly of his father's 
 marriage to Mademoiselle Agathe Piquetard, solemnized at 
 Isigny, on the ist February, 1846. 
 
 "Parents may hinder their children's marriage, but chil- 
 dren cannot interfere with the insane acts of their parents in 
 their second childhood," said Maitre Hulot to Maitre Popi- 
 not, the second son of the minister of commerce, who was 
 discussing this marriage.
 
 THE POOR PARENTS 
 
 (Les Parents Pauvres). 
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 TOWARD three o'clock in the afternoon of one October day 
 in the year 1844, a man of sixty or thereabout, whom any- 
 body might have credited with more than his actual age, was 
 walking along the Boulevard des Italiens with his head bent 
 down, as if he were tracking some one. There was a smug 
 expression about the mouth he looked like a merchant who 
 has just done a good stroke of business, or a bachelor emerging 
 from a boudoir in the best of humors with himself; and in 
 Paris this is the highest degree of self-satisfaction ever regis- 
 tered by a human countenance. 
 
 As soon as the elderly person appeared in the distance, a 
 smile broke out over the faces of the frequenters of the boule- 
 vard, who daily, from their chairs, watch the passers-by, and 
 indulge in the agreeable pastime of analyzing them. That 
 smile is peculiar to Parisians ; it says so many things ironi- 
 cal, quizzical, pitying ; but nothing save the rarest of human 
 curiosities can summon that look of interest to the faces of 
 Parisians, sated as they are with every possible sight. 
 
 A saying recorded of Hyacinthe, an actor celebrated for his 
 repartees, will explain the archaeological value of the old gen- 
 tleman, and the smile repeated like an echo by all eyes. 
 Somebody once asked Hyacinthe where the hats were made 
 that set the house in a roar as soon as he appeared. " I don't 
 have them made," he said ; " I keep them ! " So also among 
 the million actors who make up the great troupe of Paris, 
 there are unconscious Hyacinthes who " keep " all the absurd 
 freaks of vanished fashions upon their backs ; and the appari- 
 
 (91)
 
 92 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 tion of some bygone decade will startle you into laughter as 
 you walk the streets in bitterness of soul over the treason of 
 one who was your friend in the past. 
 
 In some respects the passer-by adhered so faithfully to the 
 fashions of the year 1806 that he was not so much a burlesque 
 caricature as a reproduction of the Empire period. To an 
 observer, accuracy of detail in a revival of this sort is ex- 
 tremely valuable, but accuracy of detail, to be properly appre- 
 ciated, demands the critical attention of an expert flaneur, or 
 rambler ; while the man in the street who raises a laugh as 
 soon as he comes in sight is bound to be one of those out- 
 rageous exhibitions which stare you in the face, as the saying 
 goes, and produce the kind of effect which an actor tries to 
 secure for the success of his entry. The elderly person, a 
 thin, spare man, wore a nut-brown spencer over a coat of 
 uncertain green, with white metal buttons. A man in a 
 spencer in the year eighteen hundred and forty-four ! it was 
 as if Napoleon himself had vouchsafed to come to life again 
 for a couple of hours. 
 
 The spencer, as its name indicates, was the invention of an 
 English lord, vain, doubtless, of his handsome shape. Some 
 time before the Peace of Amiens, this nobleman solved the 
 problem of covering the bust without destroying the outlines 
 of the figure and encumbering the person with the hideous 
 boxcoat, now finishing its career on the backs of aged hackney- 
 coach drivers ; but, elegant figures being in the minority, the 
 success of the spencer was short-lived in France, English 
 though it was. 
 
 At sight of the spencer, men of forty or fifty mentally in- 
 vested the wearer with top-boots, pistachio-colored kerseymere 
 small clothes adorned with a knot of ribbon ; and beheld 
 themselves in the costumes of their youth. Elderly ladies 
 thought of former conquests ; but the younger men were ask- 
 ing each other why the aged Alcibiades had cut off the skirts 
 of his overcoat. The rest of the costume was so much in
 
 COUSIN PONS. 93 
 
 keeping with the spencer, that you would not have hesitated 
 to call the wearer " an Empire man," just as you call a certain 
 kind of furniture "Empire furniture;" yet the new-comer 
 only symbolized the Empire for those who had known, that 
 great and magnificent epoch at any rate by seeing, for a cer- 
 tain accuracy of memory was needed for the full appreciation 
 of the costume, and even now the Empire is so far away that 
 not every one of us can picture it to himself in its Gallo-Gre- 
 cian reality. 
 
 The stranger's hat, for instance, tipped to the back of his 
 head so as to leave almost the whole forehead bare, recalled 
 a certain jaunty air, with which civilians and officials attempted 
 to swagger it with military men ; but the hat itself was a shock- 
 ing specimen of the fifteen-franc variety. Constant friction 
 with a pair of enormous ears had left marks which no brush 
 could efface from the underside of the brim ; the silk tissue 
 (as usual) fitted badly over the cardboard foundation, and 
 hung in wrinkles here and there ; and some skin-disease (ap- 
 parently) had attacked the nap in spite of the hand which 
 rubbed it down of a morning. 
 
 Beneath the hat, which seemed ready to drop off at any 
 moment, lay an expanse of countenance grotesque and droll, 
 as the faces which the Chinese alone of all people can imagine 
 for their quaint curiosities. The broad visage was as full of 
 holes as a colander, honey-combed with the shadows of the 
 dents, hollowed out like a Roman mask. It set all the laws 
 of anatomy at defiance. Close inspection failed to detect the 
 substructure. Where you expected to find a bone, you dis- 
 covered a layer of cartilaginous tissue, and the hollows of an 
 ordinary human face were here filled out with flabby bosses. 
 A pair of gray eyes, red-rimmed and lashiess, looked forlornly 
 out of a countenance which was flattened something after the 
 fashion of a pumpkin, and surmounted by a Don Quixote nose 
 that rose out of it like a monolith above a plain. It was the 
 kind of nose, as Cervantes must surely have explained some-
 
 94 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 where, which denotes an inborn enthusiasm for all things 
 great, a tendency which is apt to degenerate into credulity. 
 
 And yet, though the man's ugliness was something almost 
 ludicrous, it aroused not the slightest inclination to laugh. 
 The exceeding melancholy which found an outlet in the poor 
 man's faded eyes reached the mocker himself and froze the 
 gibes on his lips ; for all at once the thought arose that this 
 was a human creature to whom Nature had forbidden any ex- 
 pression of love or tenderness, since such expression could 
 only be painful or ridiculous to the woman he loved. In the 
 presence of such misfortune a Frenchman is silent ; to him 
 it seems the most cruel of all afflictions to be unable to 
 please ! 
 
 The man so ill-favored was dressed after the fashion of 
 shabby gentility, a fashion which the rich not seldom try to 
 copy. He wore low shoes beneath gaiters of the pattern worn 
 by the Imperial Guard, doubtless for the sake of economy, 
 because they kept the socks clean. The rusty tinge of his 
 black breeches, like the cut and the white or shiny line of the 
 creases, assigned the date of the purchase some three years 
 back. The roomy garments failed to disguise the lean pro- 
 portions of the wearer, due apparently rather to constitution 
 than to a Pythagorean regimen, for the worthy man was en- 
 dowed with thick lips and a sensual mouth ; and, when he 
 smiled, displayed a set of white teeth which would have done 
 credit to a shark. 
 
 A shawl-vest, likewise of black cloth, was supplemented by 
 a white under-vest, and yet again beneath this gleamed the 
 edge of a red knitted under-jacket, to put you in mind of 
 Garat's five vests. A huge white lawn stock with a conspicu* 
 ous bow, invented by some exquisite to charm " the charming 
 sex " in 1809, projected so far above its wearer's chin that the 
 lower part of his face was lost, as it were, in a lawn abyss. A 
 silk watch-guard, plaited to resemble the keepsakes made of 
 hair, meandered down his shirt-front and secured his watch
 
 CO US IN PONS. 95 
 
 from improbable theft. The greenish coat, though older by 
 some three years than the breeches, was remarkably neat ; the 
 black velvet collar and shining metal buttons, recently re- 
 newed, told of carefulness which descended even to trifles. 
 
 The particular manner of fixing the hat on the occiput, the 
 triple vest, the vast cravat engulfing the chin, the gaiters, the 
 metal buttons on the greenish coat all these reminiscences of 
 Imperial fashions were blended with a sort of afterwaft and 
 lingering perfume of the coquetry of the Incroyable* with an 
 indescribable finical something in the folds of the garments, a 
 certain air of stiffness and correctness in the demeanor that 
 smacked of the school of David, that recalled Jacob's spindle- 
 legged furniture. 
 
 At first sight, moreover, you set him down either for the 
 gentleman by birth fallen a victim to some degrading habit, 
 or for the man of small independent means whose expenses are 
 calculated to such a nicety that the breakage of a window- 
 pane, a rent in a coat, or a visit from the philanthropic pest 
 who asks you for subscriptions to a charity, absorbs the whole 
 of a month's little surplus of pocket-money. If you had seen 
 him that afternoon, you would have wondered how that gro- 
 tesque face came to be lighted up with a smile ; usually, surely, 
 it must have worn the dispirited, passive look of the obscure 
 toiler condemned to labor without ceasing for the barest neces- 
 saries of life. Yet when you noticed that the odd-looking old 
 man was carrying some object (evidently precious) in his right 
 hand with a mother's care, concealing it under the skirts of 
 his coat to keep it from collisions in the crowd ; and still more, 
 when you remarked that important air always assumed by an 
 idler when intrusted with a commission, you would have sus- 
 pected him of recovering some piece of lost property, some 
 modern equivalent of the marquise's poodle ; you would have 
 recognized the assiduous gallantry of the " man of the Em- 
 pire" returning in triumph from his mission to some charm- 
 * A non-such.
 
 96 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 ing woman of sixty, reluctant as yet to dispense with the daily 
 visit of her elderly atlcntif. 
 
 In Paris only among great cities will you see such spectacles 
 as this ; for of her boulevards Paris makes a stage where a 
 never-ending drama is played gratuitously by the French nation 
 in the interests of art. 
 
 In spite of the rashly assumed spencer, you would scarcely 
 have thought, after a glance at the contours of the man's bony 
 frame, that this was an artist that conventional type which is 
 privileged, in something the same way as a Paris gamin, to 
 represent riotous living to the bourgeois and philistine mind, 
 the most mirific joviality, in short (to use the old Rabelaisian 
 word newly taken into use). Yet, this elderly person had 
 once taken the medal and the traveling scholarship ; he had 
 composed the first cantata crowned by the Institute at the 
 time of the reestablishment of the Academic de Rome ; he was 
 M. Sylvain Pons, in fact M. Sylvain Pons, whose name ap- 
 pears on the covers of well-known sentimental songs trilled by 
 our mothers, to say nothing of a couple of operas, played in 
 1815 and 1816, and divers unpublished scores. The worthy 
 soul was now ending his days as the conductor of an orchestra 
 in a boulevard theatre, and a music master in several young 
 ladies' boarding-schools, a post for which his face particularly 
 recommended him. He was entirely dependent upon his 
 earnings. Running about to give private lessons at his age ! 
 Think of it. How many a mystery lies in that unromantic 
 situation ! 
 
 But the last man to wear the spencer carried something else 
 about him beside his Empire associations ; a warning and a 
 lesson was written large over that triple vest. Wherever he 
 went, he exhibited, without fee or charge, one of the many 
 victims of the fatal system of competition which still prevails 
 in France in spite of a century of trial without result ; for Po- 
 isson de Marigny, brother of the Pompadour and Director of 
 Fine Arts, somewhere about 1 746, invented this method of
 
 COUSIN PONS. 97 
 
 applying pressure to the brain. That was a hundred years 
 ago. Try if you can count upon your fingers the men of 
 genius among the prizemen of those hundred years. 
 
 In the first place, no deliberate effort of schoolmaster 
 or administrator can replace the miracles of chance which 
 produce great men : of all the mysteries of generation, this 
 most defies the ambitious modern scientific investigator. In 
 the second the ancient Egyptians (we are told) invented 
 incubator-stoves for hatching eggs ; what would be thought of 
 Egyptians who should neglect to fill the beaks of the callow 
 fledglings ? Yet this is precisely what France is doing. She 
 does her utmost to produce artists by the artificial heat of 
 competitive examination ; but, the sculptor, painter, engraver, 
 or musician once turned out by this mechanical process, she 
 no more troubles herself about them and their fate than the 
 dude cares for yesterday's flower in his button-hole. And so 
 it happens that the really great man is a Greuze, a Watteau, a 
 Felicien David, a Pagnesi, a Gericault, a Decamps, an Auber, 
 a David d'Angers, a Eugene Delacroix, or a Meissonier 
 artists who take but little heed of great prizes, and spring up 
 in the open field under the rays of that invisible sun called 
 Vocation. 
 
 To resume : The Government sent Sylvain Pons to Rome 
 to make a great musician of himself; and in Rome Sylvain 
 Pons acquired a taste for the antique and works of art. He 
 became an admirable judge of those masterpieces of the brain 
 and hand which are summed up by the useful neologism 
 "bric-a-brac;" and when the child of Euterpe returned to 
 Paris somewhere about the year 1810, it was in the character 
 of a rabid collector, loaded with pictures, statuettes, frames, 
 wood-carving, ivories, enamels, porcelains, and the like. He 
 had sunk the greater part of his patrimony, not so much in the 
 purchases themselves as on the expenses of transit ; and every 
 sou inherited from his mother had been spent in the course of 
 a three years' travel in Italy after the residence in Rome came 
 7
 
 98 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 to an end. He had seen Venice, Milan, Florence, Bologna, 
 and Naples leisurely, as he wished to see them, as a dreamer 
 of dreams, and a philosopher ; careless of the future, for an 
 artist looks to his talent for support as the^//(? de joie (daugh- 
 ter of pleasure or lorette) counts upon her beauty. 
 
 All through those splendid years of travel Pons was as happy 
 as was possible to a man with a great soul, a sensitive nature, 
 and a face so ugly that any " success with the fair" (to use 
 the stereotyped formula of 1809) was out of the question ; the 
 realities of life always fell short of the ideals which Pons cre- 
 ated for himself; the world without was not in tune with the 
 soul within, but Pons had made up his mind to the dissonance. 
 Doubtless the sense of beauty that he had kept pure and living 
 in his inmost soul was the spring from which the delicate, 
 graceful, and ingenious music flowed and won him reputation 
 between 1810 and 1814. 
 
 Every reputation founded upon the fashion or the fancy of 
 the hour, or upon the short-lived follies of Paris, produces its 
 Pons. No place in the world is so inexorable in great things; 
 no city of the globe so disdainfully indulgent in small. Pons' 
 notes were drowned before long in floods of German harmony 
 and the music of Rossini; and if in 1824 he was known as an 
 agreeable musician, a composer of various drawing-room melo- 
 dies, judge if he was likely to be famous in 1831 ! In 1844, 
 the year in which the single drama of his obscure life began, 
 Sylvain Pons was of no more value than an antediluvian semi- 
 quaver ; dealers in music had never heard of his name though 
 he was still composing, on scanty pay, for his own orchestra 
 or for neighboring theatres. 
 
 And yet, the worthy man did justice to the great masters of 
 our day; a masterpiece finely rendered brought tears to his 
 eyes ; but his religion never bordered on mania, as in the 
 case of Hoffmann's Kreislers ; he kept his enthusiasm to him- 
 self; his delight, like the paradise reached by opium or has- 
 hish, lay within his own soul.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 99 
 
 The gift of admiration, of comprehension, the single 
 faculty by v/hich the ordinary man becomes the brother of 
 the poet, is rare in this city of Paris, that inn whither all 
 ideas, like travelers, come to stay for a while ; so rare is it, 
 that Pons surely deserves our respectful esteem. His personal 
 failure may seem anomalous, but he frankly admitted that he 
 was weak in harmony. He had neglected the study of 
 counterpoint ; there was a time when he might have begun 
 his studies afresh and held his own among modern composers, 
 when he might have been, not certainly a Rossini but a 
 Herold. But he was alarmed by the intricacies of modern 
 orchestration ; and at length, in the pleasures of collecting, 
 he found such ever-renewed compensation for his failure, that 
 if he had been made to choose between his curiosities and 
 the fame of Rossini will it be believed ? Pons would have 
 pronounced for his beloved collection. 
 
 Pons was of the opinion of Chenavard, the print-collector, 
 who laid it down as an axiom that you only fully enjoy the 
 pleasure of looking at your Ruysdael, Hobbema, Holbein, 
 Raphael, Murillo, Greuze, Sebastian del Piombo, Giorgione, 
 Albrecht Diirer, or what not, when you have paid less than 
 sixty francs for your picture. Pons never gave more than a 
 hundred francs for any purchase. If he laid out as much as 
 fifty francs, he was careful to assure himself beforehand that 
 the object was worth three thousand. The most beautiful 
 thing in the world, if it cost three hundred francs, did not 
 exist for Pons. Rare had been his bargains ; but he possessed 
 the three qualifications for success a stag's legs, an idler's 
 disregard of time, and the patience of a Jew. 
 
 This system, carried out for forty years, in Rome or Paris 
 alike, had borne its fruits. Since Pons returned from Italy, 
 he had regularly spent about two thousand francs a year upon 
 a collection of masterpieces of every sort and description, a 
 collection hidden away from all eyes but his own ; and now 
 his catalogue had reached the incredible number 1907.
 
 100 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Wandering about Paris between 1811 and 1816, he had 
 picked up many a treasure for ten francs, which would fetch a 
 thousand or twelve hundred to-day. Some forty-five thousand 
 paintings change hands annually in Paris picture sales, and 
 these Pons had sifted through year by year. Pons had Sevres 
 porcelain, pate tendre, bought of Auvergnats, those satellites 
 of the Black Band who sacked castles and carried off the 
 marvels of Pompadour France in their tumbrils ; he had, in 
 fact, collected the drifted wreck of the seventeenth and eigh- 
 teenth centuries; he recognized the genius of the French 
 school, and discerned the merit of the Lepautres and Lavallee- 
 Poussins and the rest of the great obscure creators of the 
 Genre Louis Quinze and the Genre Louis Seize. Our modern 
 craftsmen now draw without acknowledgment from them, 
 pore incessantly over the treasures of the Cabinet des Estampes, 
 borrow adroitly, and give out their pastiches* for new inven- 
 tions. Pons had obtained many a piece by exchange, and 
 therein lies the ineffable joy of the collector. The joy of 
 buying bric-a-brac is a secondary delight ; in the give-and- 
 take of barter lies the joy of joys. Pons had begun by col- 
 lecting snuff-boxes and miniatures ; his name was unknown in 
 bric-a-bracology, for he seldom showed himself in salesrooms 
 or in the stores of well-known dealers ; Pons was not aware 
 that his treasures had any commercial value. 
 
 The late lamented Dusommerard tried his best to gain 
 Pons' confidence, but the prince of bric-a-brac died before he 
 could gain an entrance to the Pons museum, the one private 
 collection which could compare with the famous Sauvageot 
 museum. Pons and M. Sauvageot indeed resembled each 
 other in more ways than one. M. Sauvageot, like Pons, was 
 a musician ; he was likewise a comparatively poor man, and 
 he had collected his bric-a-brac in much the same way, with 
 the same love of art, the same hatred of rich capitalists with 
 well-known names who collect for the sake of running up 
 
 * Copies.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 101 
 
 prices as cleverly as possible. There was yet another point 
 of resemblance between the pair : Pons, like his rival com- 
 petitor and antagonist, felt in his heart an insatiable craving 
 after specimens of the craftsman's skill and miracles of work- 
 manship ; he loved them as a man might love a fair mistress ; 
 an auction in the salesrooms in the Rue des Jeuneurs, with its 
 accompaniments of hammer-strokes and brokers' men, was a 
 crime of " lese-bric-a-brac " in Pens' eyes. Pons' museum 
 was for his own delight at every hour ; for the soul created to 
 know and feel all the beauty of a masterpiece has this in com- 
 mon with the lover to-day's joy is as great as the joy of 
 yesterday ; possession never palls ; and a masterpiece, happily, 
 never grows old. So the object that he held in his hand with 
 such fatherly care could only be a "find," carried off with 
 what affection amateurs alone know ! 
 
 After the first outlines of this biographical sketch, every 
 one will cry at once, "Why! this is the happiest man on 
 earth, in spite of his ugliness! " And, in truth, no spleen, 
 no dullness can resist the counter-irritant supplied by a 
 "craze," the intellectual moxa of a hobby. You who can 
 no longer drink of " the cup of pleasure," as it has been 
 called through all ages, try to collect something, no matter 
 what (people have been known to collect placards), so shall 
 you receive the small change for the gold ingot of happiness. 
 Have you a hobby? You have transferred pleasure to the 
 plane of ideas. And yet, you need not envy the worthy Pons ; 
 such envy, like all kindred sentiments, would be founded 
 upon a misapprehension. 
 
 With a nature so sensitive, with a soul that lived by tireless 
 admiration of the magnificent achievements of art, of the high 
 rivalry between human toil and the work of Nature Pons was 
 a slave to that one of the Seven Deadly Sins with which God 
 surely will deal least hardly ; Pons was a glutton. A narrow 
 income, combined with a passion for bric-a-brac, condemned 
 him to a regimen so abhorrent to a discriminating palate,
 
 102 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 that, bachelor as he was, he had cut the knot of the problem 
 by dining out every day. 
 
 Now, in the time of the Empire, celebrities were more 
 sought after than at present, perhaps because there were so 
 few of them, perhaps because they made little or no political 
 pretension. In those days, beside, you could set up for a 
 poet, a musician, or a painter, with so little expense. Pons, 
 being regarded as the probable rival of Nicolo, Paer, and 
 Berton, used to receive so many invitations, that he was forced 
 to keep a list of engagements, much as barristers note down 
 the cases for which they are retained. And Pons behaved 
 like an artist. He presented his amphitryons with copies of 
 his songs, he " obliged " at the pianoforte, he brought them 
 orders for boxes at the Feydeau, his own theatre, he organized 
 concerts, he was not above taking the fiddle himself sometimes 
 in a friend's house, and getting up a little impromptu dance. 
 In those days, all the handsome men in France were away at 
 the wars exchanging sabre-cuts with the handsome men of the 
 Coalition. Pons was said to be, not ugly, but " peculiar- 
 looking," after the grand rule laid down by Moliere in 
 Eliante's famous couplets; but if he sometimes heard himself 
 described as a " charming man " (after he had done some fair 
 lady a service), his good fortune went no further than words. 
 
 It was between the years 1810 and 1816 that Pons contracted 
 the unlucky habit of dining out ; he grew accustomed to see 
 his hosts taking pains over the dinner, procuring the first and 
 best of everything, bringing out their choicest vintages, seeing 
 carefully to the dessert, the coffee, and liqueurs, giving him I 
 of their best, in short ; the best, moreover, of those times of 
 the Empire when Paris was glutted with kings and queens 
 and princes, and many a private house emulated royal splen- 
 dors. 
 
 People used to play at Royalty then as they play nowadays 
 at parliament, creating a whole host of societies with presi- 
 dents, vice-presidents, secretaries and what not agricultural
 
 COUSIN PONS. 103 
 
 societies, industrial societies, societies for the promotion of 
 sericulture, viticulture, the growth of flax, and so forth. 
 Some have even gone so far as to look about them for social 
 evils in order to start a society to cure them. 
 
 But to return to Pons. A stomach thus educated is sure to 
 react upon the owner's moral fibre; the demoralization of the 
 man varies directly with his progress in the wisdom of cookery. 
 Voluptuousness, lurking in every secret recess of the heart, 
 lays down the law therein. Honor and resolution are battered 
 in breach. The tyranny of the palate has never been de- 
 scribed ; as a necessity of life it escapes the criticism of litera- 
 ture ; yet no one imagines how many have been ruined by the 
 table. The luxury of the table is indeed, in this sense, the 
 courtesan's one competitor in Paris, beside representing in a 
 manner the credit side in another account, where she figures 
 as the expenditure. 
 
 With Pons' decline and fall as an artist came his simul- 
 taneous transformation from invited guest to parasite and 
 hanger-on ; he could not bring himself to quit dinners so 
 excellently served for the Spartan soup of a two-franc dinner. 
 Alas ! alas ! a shudder ran through him at the mere thought 
 of the great sacrifices which independence required him to 
 make. He felt that he was capable of sinking to even lower 
 depths for the sake of good living, if there was no other way 
 of enjoying the first and best of everything, of gobbling 
 (vulgar but expressive word) nice little dishes carefully pre- 
 pared. Pons lived like a bird, pilfering his meal, flying away 
 when he had taken his fill, singing a few notes by way of 
 return ; he took a certain pleasure in the thought that he lived 
 at the expense of society, which asked of him what but the 
 trifling toll of grimaces ? Like all confirmed bachelors, who 
 hold their lodgings in horror, and live as much as possible in 
 other people's houses, Pons was accustomed to the formulas 
 and facial contortions which do duty for feeling in the world ; 
 he used compliments as small change ; and as far as others
 
 104 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 were concerned, he was satisfied with the labels they bore, and 
 never plunged a too curious hand into the sack. 
 
 This not intolerable phase lasted for another ten years. 
 Such years ! Pens' life was closing with a rainy autumn. 
 All through those years he contrived to dine without expense 
 by making himself necessary in the houses which he frequented. 
 He took the first step in the downward path by undertaking a 
 host of small commissions ; many and many a time Pons ran 
 on errands instead of the porter or the servant ; many a pur- 
 chase he made for his entertainers. He became a kind of 
 harmless, well-meaning spy, sent by one family into another; 
 but he gained no credit with those for whom he trudged about, 
 and so often sacrificed self-respect. 
 
 " Pons is a bachelor," said they; " he is at a loss to know 
 what to do with his time ; he is only too glad to trot about 
 for us. What else would he do ? " 
 
 Very soon the cold which old age spreads about itself began 
 to set in ; the communicable chill which sensibly lowers the 
 social temperature, especially if the old man is ugly and poor. 
 Old and ugly and poor is not this to be thrice old ? Pons' 
 winter had begun, the winter which brings the reddened nose, 
 and frost-nipped cheeks, and the numbed fingers, numb in 
 how many ways ! 
 
 Invitations very seldom came for Pons now. So far from 
 seeking the society of the parasite, every family accepted him 
 much as they accepted the taxes ; they valued nothing that 
 Pons could do for them ; real services from Pons counted for 
 naught. The family circles in which the worthy artist re- 
 volved had no respect for art or letters ; they went down on 
 their knees to practical results ; they valued nothing but the 
 fortune or social position acquired since the year 1830. The 
 bourgeoisie is afraid of intellect and genius, but Pons' spirit 
 and manner were not haughty enough to overawe his relations, 
 and naturally he had come at last to be accounted less than 
 nothing with them, though he was not altogether despised.
 
 COUSIN PONS, 105 
 
 He had suffered acutely among them, but, like all timid 
 creatures, he kept silence as to his pain ; and so by degrees 
 schooled himself to hide his feelings, and learned to take 
 sanctuary in his inmost self. Many superficial persons inter- 
 pret this conduct by the short word " selfishness ; " and, in- 
 deed, the resemblance between the egoist and the solitary 
 human creature is strong enough to seem to justify the harsher 
 verdict ; and this is especially true in Paris, where nobody 
 observes others closely, where all things pass swift as waves, 
 and last as little as a ministry. 
 
 So Cousin Pons was accused of selfishness (behind his back) ; 
 and, if the world accuses any one, it usually finds him guilty 
 and condemns him into the bargain. Pons bowed to the de- 
 cision. Do any of us know how such a timid nature is cast 
 down by an unjust judgment ? Who will ever paint all that 
 the timid suffer? This state of things, now growing daily 
 worse, explains the sad expression on the poor old musician's 
 face ; he lived by capitulations of which he was ashamed. 
 Every time we sin against self-respect at the bidding of the 
 ruling passion, we rivet its hold upon us ; the more that pas- 
 sion requires of us, the stronger it grows, every sacrifice in- 
 creasing, as it were, the value of a satisfaction for which so 
 much has been given up, till the negative sum-total of re- 
 nouncements looms very large in a man's imagination. Pons, 
 for instance, after enduring the insolently patronizing looks of 
 some bourgeois, incased in the buckram of stupidity, sipped 
 his glass of port or finished his quail with bread-crumbs, and 
 relished something of the savor of revenge beside. "It is 
 not too dear at the price ! " he said to himself. 
 
 After all, in the eyes of the moralist, there were extenuating 
 circumstances in Pons' case. Man only lives, in fact, by 
 some personal satisfaction. The passionless, perfectly right- 
 eous man is not human ; he is a monster, an angel wanting 
 wings. The angel of Christian mythology has nothing but a 
 head. On earth, the righteous person is the sufficiently tire-
 
 106 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 some Grandison, for whom the very palpable Venus of the 
 Cross-roads is sexless. 
 
 Setting aside one or two commonplace adventures in Italy, 
 in which probably the climate accounted for his success, no 
 woman had ever smiled upon Pons. Plenty of men are 
 doomed to this fate. Pons was an abnormal birth ; the child 
 of parents well stricken in years, he bore the stigma of his 
 untimely genesis; his cadaverous complexion might have been 
 contracted in the flask of spirit-of-wine in which science pre- 
 serves some extraordinary foetus. Artist though he was, with 
 his tender, dreamy, sensitive soul, he was forced to accept the 
 character which belonged to his face ; it was hopeless to think 
 of love, and he remained a bachelor, not so much of choice 
 as of necessity. Then Gluttony, the sin of the continent 
 monk, beckoned to Pons ; he rushed upon temptation, as he 
 had thrown his whole soul into the adoration of art and the 
 cult of music. Good cheer and bric-a-brac gave him the small 
 change for the love which could spend itself in no other way. 
 As for music, it was his profession, and where will you find the 
 man who is in love with his means of earning a livelihood ? 
 For it is with a profession as with marriage : in the great 
 length you are sensible of nothing but the drawbacks. 
 
 Brillat-Savarin has deliberately set himself to justify the 
 gastronome, but perhaps even he has not dwelt sufficiently on 
 the reality of the pleasures of the table. The demands of di- 
 gestion upon the human economy produce an internal wrest- 
 ling-bout of human forces which rivals the highest degree of 
 amorous pleasure. The gastronome is conscious of an expen- 
 diture of vital power, an expenditure so vast that the brain is 
 atrophied (as it were), that a second brain, located in the 
 diaphragm, may come into play, and the suspension of all the 
 faculties is in itself a kind of intoxication. A boa-constrictor 
 gorged with an ox is so stupid with excess that the creature is 
 easily killed. What man, on the wrong side of forty, is rash 
 enough to work after dinner? And remark in the same con-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 107 
 
 nection, that all great men have been moderate eaters. The 
 exhilarating effect of the wing of a chicken upon invalids re- 
 covering from serious illness, and long confined to a stinted 
 and carefully chosen diet, has been frequently remarked. The 
 sober Pons, whose whole enjoyment was concentrated in the 
 exercise of his digestive organs, was in the position of chronic 
 convalescence ; he looked to his dinner to give him the utmost 
 degree of pleasurable sensation, and hitherto he had procured 
 such sensations daily. Who dares to bid farewell to old habit ? 
 Many a man on the brink of suicide has been plucked back 
 on the threshold of death by the thought of the cafe where he 
 plays his nightly game of dominoes. 
 
 In the year 1835, chance avenged Pons for the indifference 
 of womankind by finding him a prop for his declining years, 
 as the saying goes ; and he, who had been old from his cradle, 
 found a support in friendship. Pons took to himself the only 
 life-partner permitted to him among his kind an old man and 
 a fellow-musician. 
 
 But for La Fontaine's fable, " Les Deux Amis," this sketch 
 would have borne the title of The Two Friends ; but to take 
 the name of his divine story would surely be a deed of 
 violence, a profanation from which every true man of letters 
 would shrink. The title ought to be borne alone and 
 for ever by the fabulist's masterpiece, the revelation of his 
 soul and the record of his dreams ; those three words were set 
 once and for ever by the poet at the head of a page which is 
 his by a sacred right of ownership ; for it is a shrine before 
 which all generations, all over the world, will kneel so long as 
 the art of printing shall endure. 
 
 Pons' friend gave lessons on the pianoforte. They met and 
 struck up an acquaintance in 1834, one prize-day at a board- 
 ing-school ; and so congenial were their ways of thinking and 
 living, that Pons used to say that he had found his friend too 
 late for his happiness. Never, perhaps, did two souls, so much 
 alike, find each other in the great ocean of humanity which
 
 108 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 flowed forth, in disobedience to the will of God, from its 
 source in the Garden of Eden. Before very long the two 
 musicians could not live without each other. Confidences 
 were exchanged, and in a week's time they were like brothers. 
 Schmucke (for that was his name) had not believed that such 
 a man as Pons existed, nor had Pons imagined that a Schmucke 
 was possible. Here already you have a sufficient description 
 of the good couple ; but it is not every mind that takes kindly 
 to the concise synthetic method, and a certain amount of 
 demonstration is necessary if the credulous are to accept the 
 conclusion. 
 
 This pianist, like all other pianists, was a German. A 
 German, like the eminent Liszt and the great Mendelssohn, 
 and Steibelt, and Dussek, and Meyer, and Mozart, and 
 Dcelher, and Thalberg, and Dreschok, and Hiller, and Leo- 
 pold Mayer, and Cramer, and Zimmerman, and Kalkbrenner, 
 and Hertz, Woertz, Karr, Wolff, Pixis, and Clara Wieck and 
 all Germans, generally speaking. Schmucke was a great 
 musical composer doomed to remain a music-master, so utterly 
 did his character lack the audacity which a musical genius 
 needs if he is to push his way to the front. A German's 
 naivete does not invariably last him through his life ; in some 
 cases it fails after a certain age ; and even as a cultivator of 
 the soil brings water from afar by means of irrigation channels, 
 so, from the springs of his youth, does the Teuton draw the 
 simplicity which disarms suspicion the perennial supplies 
 with which he fertilizes his labors in every field of science, 
 art, or commerce. A crafty Frenchman here and there will 
 turn a Parisian tradesman's stupidity to good account in the 
 same way. But Schmucke had kept his child's simplicity 
 much as Pons continued to wear his relics of the Empire all 
 unsuspectingly. The true and noble-hearted German was at 
 once the theatre and the audience, making music within him- 
 self for himself alone. In this city of Paris he lived as a 
 nightingale lives among the thickets ; and for twenty years he
 
 COUSIN PONS. 109 
 
 sang on, mateless, till he met with a second self in the sym- 
 pathetic Pons.* 
 
 Both Pons and Schmucke were abundantly given, both by 
 heart and disposition, to the peculiarly puky German senti- 
 mentality which shows itself in childlike ways in a passion for 
 flowers, in that form of nature-worship which prompts a German 
 to plant his garden beds with big glass globes for the sake 
 of seeing miniature pictures of a view which he can behold 
 about him of a natural size ; in the inquiring turn of mind that 
 sets a learned Teuton trudging three hundred miles in his 
 gaiters in search of a fact which smiles up in his face from a 
 wayside spring, or lurks laughing under the jessamine leaves 
 in the backyard ; or (to take a final instance) in the German 
 craving to endow every least detail in creation with a spiritual 
 significance, a craving which produces sometimes the inex- 
 plicable work of a Jean Paul Richter, sometimes Hoffmann's 
 tipsiness in type, sometimes the folios with which Germany 
 hedges the simplest questions round about, lest haply any fool 
 should fall into her intellectual excavations ; and, indeed, if 
 you fathom these abysses, you find nothing but a German at 
 the bottom. 
 
 Both friends were Catholics. They went to mass and per- 
 formed the duties of religion together; and, like children, 
 found nothing to tell their confessors. It was their firm belief 
 that music is to feeling and thought as thought and feeling are 
 to speech ; and of their converse on this system there was no 
 end. Each made response to the other in orgies of sound, 
 demonstrating their convictions, each for each, like lovers. 
 
 Schmucke was as absent-minded as Pons was wide-awake. 
 Pons was a collector, Schmucke a dreamer of dreams; 
 Schmucke was a student of beauty seen by the soul, Pons a 
 preserver of material beauty. Pons would catch sight of a 
 china cup and buy it in the time that Schmucke took to blow 
 his nose, wondering the while within himself whether the 
 * See " A Daughter of Eve."
 
 110 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 musical phrase that was ringing in his brain the motif from 
 Rossini or Bellini or Beethoven or Mozart had its origin or 
 its counterpart in the world of human thought and emotion. 
 Schmucke's economies were controlled by an absent mind, 
 Pons was a spendthrift through passion, and for both the 
 result was the same they had not a penny on Saint Sylvester's 
 day. 
 
 Perhaps Pons would have given way under his troubles if it 
 had not been for this friendship; but life became bearable 
 when he found some one to whom he could pour out his 
 heart. The first time that he breathed a word of his diffi- 
 culties, the good German had advised him to live as he him- 
 self did, and eat bread and cheese at home sooner than dine 
 abroad at such a cost. Alas ! Pons did not dare to confess 
 that heart and stomach were at war within him, that he could 
 digest affronts which pained his heart, and, cost what it might, 
 a good dinner that satisfied his palate was a necessity to him, 
 even as your gay Lothario must have a mistress to tease. 
 
 In time Schmucke understood ; not just at once, for he was 
 too much of a Teuton to possess that gift of swift perception 
 in which the French rejoice; Schmucke understood and 
 loved poor Pons the better. Nothing so fortifies a friendship 
 as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the 
 other. An angel could not have found a word to say to 
 Schmucke rubbing his hand over the discovery of the hold 
 that gluttony had gained over Pons. Indeed, the good Ger- 
 man adorned their breakfast-table next morning with delica- 
 cies of which he went in search himself; and every day he 
 was careful to provide something new for his friend, for they 
 always breakfasted together at home. 
 
 If any one imagines that the pair could escape ridicule in 
 Paris, where nothing is respected, he cannot know that city. 
 When Schmucke and Pons united their riches and poverty, 
 they hit upon the economical expedient of lodging together, 
 each paying half the rent of the very unequally divided
 
 COUSIN PONS. Ill 
 
 second-floor of a house in the Rue de Normandie in the 
 Marais. And as it often happened that they left home to- 
 gether and walked side by side along their beat of boulevard, 
 the idlers of the quarter dubbed them " the pair of nutcrack- 
 ers," a nickname which makes any portrait of Schmucke 
 quite superfluous, for he was to Pons as the famous statue of 
 the Nurse of Niobe in the Vatican is to the Tribune Venus. 
 
 Mme. Cibot, portress of the house in the Rue de Nor- 
 mandie, was the pivot on which the domestic life of the nut- 
 crackers turned ; but Mme. Cibot plays so large a part in the 
 drama which grew out of their double existence, that it will 
 be more appropriate to give her portrait on her first appear- 
 ance in this Scene of Parisian Life. 
 
 One thing remains to be said of the characters of the pair 
 of friends ; but this one thing is precisely the hardest to make 
 clear to ninety-nine readers out of a hundred in this forty- 
 seventh year of the nineteenth century, perhaps by reason of 
 the prodigious financial development brought about by the 
 railway system. It is a little thing, and yet it is much. It is 
 a question, in fact, of giving an idea of the extreme sensitive- 
 ness of their natures. Let us borrow an illustration from the 
 railways, if only by way of retaliation, as it were, for the 
 loans which they levy upon us. The railway train of to-day, 
 tearing over the metals, grinds away fine particles of dust, 
 grains so minute that a traveler cannot detect them with the 
 eye ; but let a single one of those invisible motes find its way 
 into the kidneys, it will bring about that most excruciating, 
 and sometimes fatal, disease known as gravel. And our so- 
 ciety, rushing like a locomotive along its metaled track, is 
 heedless of the all but imperceptible dust made by the grinding 
 of the wheels ; but it was otherwise with the two musicians : 
 the invisible grains of sand sank perpetually into the very 
 fibres of their being, causing them intolerable anguish of 
 heart. Tender exceedingly to the pain of others, they wept 
 for their own powerlessness to help ; and their own suscepti-
 
 112 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 bilities were almost morbidly acute. Neither age nor the 
 continual spectacle of the drama of Paris life had hardened 
 two souls still young and childlike and pure ; the longer they 
 lived indeed, the more keenly they felt their inward suffering; 
 for so it is, alas ! with natures unsullied by the world, with 
 the quiet thinker, and with such poets among poets as have 
 never fallen into any excess. 
 
 Since the old men began housekeeping together, the day's 
 routine was very nearly the same for them both. They 
 worked together in harness in the fraternal fashion of the Paris 
 cab-horse ; rising every morning, summer and winter, at seven 
 o'clock, and setting out after breakfast to give music lessons 
 in the boarding-schools, in which, upon occasion, they would 
 take lessons for each other. Toward noon Pons repaired to 
 his theatre, if there was a rehearsal on hand ; but all his spare 
 moments were spent in sauntering on the boulevards. Night 
 found both of them in the orchestra at the theatre, for Pons 
 had found a place for Schmucke, and upon this wise : 
 
 At the time of their first meeting, Pons had just received 
 that marshal's baton of the unknown musical composer an 
 appointment as conductor of an orchestra. It had come to 
 him unasked, by favor of Count Popinot, a bourgeois hero of 
 July, at that time a member of the Government. Count 
 Popinot had the license of a theatre in his gift, and Count 
 Popinot had also an old acquaintance of the kind that the suc- 
 cessful man blushes to meet. As he rolls through the streets 
 of Paris in his carriage, it is not pleasant to see his boyhood's 
 chum down at heel, with a coat of many improbable colors 
 and trousers innocent of straps, and a head full of soaring 
 speculations on too grand a scale to tempt shy, easily scared 
 capital. Moreover, this friend of his youth, Gaudissart by 
 name, had done not a little in the past toward founding the 
 fortunes of the great house of Popinot. Popinot, now a count 
 and a peer of France, after twice holding a portfolio, had no 
 wish to shake off " the Illustrious Gaudissart." Quite other-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 113 
 
 wise. The pomps and vanities of the Court of the Citizen- 
 King had not spoiled the sometime perfumer's kind heart; 
 he wished to put his ex-commercial traveler in the way of 
 renewing his wardrobe and replenishing his purse. So when 
 Gaudissart, always an enthusiastic admirer of the fair sex, ap- 
 plied for the license of a bankrupt theatre, Popinot granted it 
 on condition that Pons (a parasite of the Hotel Popinot) 
 should be engaged as conductor of the orchestra; and, at 
 the same time, the count was careful to send certain elderly 
 amateurs of beauty to the theatre, so that the new manager 
 might be strongly supported financially by wealthy admirers 
 of feminine charms revealed by the costume of the ballet. 
 
 Gaudissart & Company, who, be it said, made their fortune, 
 hit upon the grand idea of operas for the people, and carried 
 it out in a boulevard theatre in 1834. A tolerable conductor, 
 who could adapt or even compose a little music upon occasion, 
 was a necessity for ballets and pantomimes; but the last 
 management had so long been bankrupt that they could not 
 afford to keep a transposer and copyist. Pons therefore intro- 
 duced Schmucke to the company as copier of music, a humble 
 calling which requires considerable of musical knowledge ; 
 and Schmucke, acting on Pons' advice, came to an under- 
 standing with the chef-de-service at the opera-comique, so sav- 
 ing himself the clerical drudgery. 
 
 The partnership between Pons and Schmucke produced one 
 brilliant result. Schmucke being a German, harmony was his 
 strong point ; he looked over the instrumentation of Pons' 
 compositions, and Pons provided the airs. Here and there 
 an amateur among the audience admired the new pieces of 
 music which served as accompaniment to two or three great 
 successes, but they attributed the improvement vaguely to 
 "progress." No one cared to know the composer's name ; 
 like occupants of the baignoires,* lost to view of the house, 
 
 * Bathing machine: a box on wheels, used at watering-places for the 
 undressing of the bather, and then drawn into the sea. 
 8
 
 114 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 to gain a view of the stage, Pons and Schraucke eclipsed them- 
 selves by their success. In Paris (especially since the Revo- 
 lution of July) no one can hope to succeed unless he will 
 push his way quibuscumquc viis and with all his might through 
 a formidable host of competitors; but for this feat a man 
 needs thews and sinews, and our two friends, be it remem- 
 bered, had that affection of the heart which cripples all ambi- 
 tious effort. 
 
 Pons, as a rule, only went to his theatre toward eight 
 o'clock, when the piece in favor came on, and overtures and 
 accompaniments needed the strict ruling of the baton ; most 
 minor theatres are lax in such matters, and Pons felt the more 
 at ease because he himself had been by no means grasping in 
 all his dealings with the management ; and Schmucke, if need 
 be, could take his place. Time went by, and Schmucke be- 
 came an institution in the orchestra ; the Illustrious Gaudis- 
 sart said nothing, but he was well aware of the value of Pon's 
 collaborator. He was obliged to include a pianoforte in the 
 orchestra (following the example of the leading theatres) ; the 
 instrument was placed beside the conductor's chair, and 
 Schmucke played without increase of salary a volunteer su- 
 pernumerary. As Schmucke' s character, his utter lack of 
 ambition or pretense, became known, the orchestra recognized 
 him as one of themselves ; and, as time went on, he was in- 
 trusted with the often-needed miscellaneous musical instru- 
 ments which form no part of the regular band of a boulevard 
 theatre. For a very small addition to his stipend, Schmucke 
 played the viola d'amore, hautboy, violoncello, and harp, as 
 well as the piano, the castanets for the cachucha, the bells, 
 saxehorn, and the like. If the Germans cannot draw harmony 
 from the mighty instruments of Liberty, yet to play all instru- 
 ments of music comes to them by nature. 
 
 The two old artists were exceedingly popular at the theatre, 
 and took its ways philosophically. They had put, as it were, 
 scales over their eyes, lest they should see the offenses that
 
 COUSIN PONS. 115 
 
 needs must come when a corps de ballet is blended with actors 
 and actresses, one of the most trying combinations ever 
 created by the laws of supply and demand for the torment of 
 managers, authors, and composers alike. 
 
 Every one esteemed Pons with his kindness and his modesty, 
 his great self-respect and respect for others; for a pure and 
 limpid life wins something like admiration from the worst 
 nature in every social sphere, and in Paris a fair virtue meets 
 with something of the success of a large diamond, so great 
 a rarity it is. No actor, no dancer however brazen, would 
 have indulged in the mildest practical joke at the expense of 
 either Pons or Schmucke. 
 
 Pons very occasionally put in an appearance in the green- 
 room; but all that Schmucke knew of the theatre was the 
 underground passage from the street-door to the orchestra. 
 Sometimes, however, during an interval, the good German 
 would venture to make a survey of the house and ask a few 
 questions of the first flute, a young fellow from Strasbourg, 
 who came of a German family at Kehl. Gradually under the 
 flute's tuition Schmucke's childlike imagination acquired a 
 certain amount of knowledge of the world : he could believe 
 in the existence of that fabulous creature the lorettc, the pos- 
 sibility of "marriages at the thirteenth arrondissement," the 
 vagaries of the leading lady, and the contraband traffic carried 
 on by box-openers. In his eyes the more harmless forms of 
 vice were the lowest depths of Babylonish iniquity ; he did 
 not believe the stories, he smiled at them for grotesque inven- 
 tions. The ingenious reader can see that Pons and Schmucke 
 were exploited, to use a word much in fashion; but what they 
 lost in money they gained in consideration and kindly treat- 
 ment. 
 
 It was after the success of the ballet with which a run of 
 success began for the Gaudissart Company that the manage- 
 ment presented Pons with a piece of plate a group of figures 
 attributed to Benvenuto Cellini. The alarming costliness of
 
 116 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 the gift caused talk in the green-room. It was a matter of 
 twelve hundred francs ! Pons, poor honest soul, was for re- 
 turning the present, and Gaudissart had a world of trouble to 
 persuade him to keep it. 
 
 "Ah ! " said the manager afterward, when he told his part- 
 ner of the interview, " if we could only find actors up to that 
 sample ! " 
 
 In their joint life, outwardly so quiet, there was the one 
 disturbing element the weakness to which Pons sacrificed, 
 the insatiable craving to dine out. Whenever Schmucke hap- 
 pened to be at home while Pons was dressing for the evening, 
 the good German would bewail this deplorable habit. 
 
 " Gif only he vas ony fatter vor it ! " he many a time cried. 
 
 And Schmucke would dream of curing his friend of his de- 
 grading vice, for a true friend's instinct in all that belongs to 
 the inner life is unerring as a dog's sense of smell ; a friend 
 knows by intuition the trouble in his friend's soul, and guesses 
 at the cause and ponders it in his heart. 
 
 Pons, who always wore a diamond ring on the little finger 
 of his right hand, an ornament permitted in the time of the 
 Empire, but ridiculous to-day Pons, who belonged to the 
 "troubadour time," the sentimental period of the First Em- 
 pire, was too much a child of his age, too much of a French- 
 man to wear the expression of divine serenity which softened 
 Schmucke's hideous ugliness. From Pons' melancholy looks, 
 Schmucke knew that the profession of parasite was growing 
 daily more difficult and painful. And, in fact, in that month 
 of October, 1844, the number of houses at which Pons dined 
 was naturally much restricted ; reduced to move round and 
 round the family circle, he had used the word family in far 
 too wide a sense, as will shortly be seen. 
 
 M. Camusot, the rich silk mercer of the Rue des Bourdon- 
 nais, had married Pons' first cousin, Mile. Pons, only child 
 and heiress of one of the well-known firm of Pons Brothers, 
 court embroiderers. Pons' own father and mother retired
 
 COUSIN PONS. 117 
 
 from a firm founded before the Revolution of 1789, leaving 
 their capital in the business until Mile. Pens' father sold it in 
 1815 to a M. Rivet. M. Camusot had since lost his wife and 
 married again, and retired from business some ten years, and 
 now in 1844 he was a member of the Board of Trade, a deputy, 
 and what not. But the Camusot clan were friendly; and 
 Pons, good man, still considered that he was some kind of 
 cousin to the children of the second marriage, who were not 
 relations, or even connected with him in any way. 
 
 The second Mme. Camusot being a Mile. Cardot, Pons in- 
 troduced himself as a relative into the tolerably numerous 
 Cardot family, a second bourgeois tribe which, taken with its 
 connections, formed quite as strong a clan as the Camusots; 
 for Cardot the notary (brother of the second Mme. Camusot) 
 had married a Mile. Chiffreville ; and the well-known family 
 of Chiffreville, the leading firm of manufacturing chemists, 
 was closely connected with the wholesale drug trade, of which 
 M. Anselme Popinot was for many years the undisputed head, 
 until the Revolution of July plunged him into the very centre 
 of the dynastic movement, as everybody knows. So Pons, 
 in the wake of the Camusots and Cardots, reached the Chif- 
 frevilles, and thence the Popinots, always in the character of 
 a cousin's cousin. 
 
 The above concise statement of Pons' relations with his 
 entertainers explains how it came to pass that an old musician 
 was received in 1844 as one of tne family in the houses of 
 four distinguished persons to wit, M. le Comte Popinot, 
 peer of France, and twice in office ; M. Cardot, retired no- 
 tary, mayor and deputy of an arrondissement in Paris; M. 
 Camusot senior, a member of the Board of Trade and the 
 Municipal Council of Paris, and a deputy on the high way 
 to the Upper Chamber and a peerage ; and, lastly, M. Cam- 
 usot de Marville, Camusot's son by his first marriage, and 
 Pons' one genuine relation, albeit even he was a first cousin 
 once removed.
 
 118 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 This Camusot, president of a chamber of the Court of Ap- 
 peals in Paris, had taken the name of his estate at Marville 
 to distinguish himself from his father and a younger half- 
 brother. 
 
 Cardot the retired notary had married his daughter to his 
 successor, whose name was Berthier; and Pons, transferred as 
 part of the connection, acquired a right to dine with the Ber- 
 thiers " in the presence of a notary," as he put it. 
 
 This was the bourgeois empyrean which Pons called his 
 " family," that upper world in which he so painfully reserved 
 his right to a knife and fork. 
 
 Of all these houses, some ten in all, the one in which Pons 
 ought to have met with the kindest reception should by rights 
 have been his own cousin's ; and, indeed, he paid most atten- 
 tion to President Camusot's family. But, alas ! Mme. Cam- 
 usot de Marville, daughter of the Sicur Thirion, usher of the 
 cabinet to Louis XVIII. and Charles X., had never taken very 
 kindly to her husband's first cousin, once removed. Pons had 
 tried to soften this formidable relative ; he wasted his time ; for, 
 in spite of the pianoforte lessons which he gave gratuitously to 
 Mile. Camusot, a young woman with hair somewhat inclined 
 to red, it was impossible to make a musician of her. 
 
 And now, at this very moment, as he walked with that 
 previous object in his hand, Pons was bound for the president's 
 house, where he always felt as if he were at the Tuileries itself, 
 so heavily did the solemn green curtains, the carmelite-brown 
 hangings, thick piled carpets, heavy furniture, and general 
 atmosphere of magisterial severity oppress his soul. Strange 
 as it may seem, he felt more at home in the Hotel Popinot, 
 Rue Basse-du-Rempart, probably because it was full of works 
 of art ; for the master of the house, since he entered public 
 life, had acquired a mania for collecting beautiful things, by 
 way of contrast, no doubt, for a politician is obliged to pay 
 for secret services of the ugliest kind. 
 
 President de Marville lived in the Rue de Hanovre, in a
 
 COUSIN PONS. 119 
 
 house which his wife had bought ten years previously, on the 
 death of her parents, for the Sieur and Dame Thirion left their 
 daughter about a hundred and fifty thousand francs, the sav- 
 ings of a lifetime. With its northern aspect, the house looks 
 gloomy enough seen from the street, but the back looks toward 
 the south over the courtyard, with a rather pretty garden be- 
 yond it. As the president occupied the whole of the second 
 floor, once the abode of a great financier of the time of Louis 
 XIV., and the third was let to a wealthy old lady, the house 
 wore a look of dignified repose befitting a magistrate's resi- 
 dence. President Camusot had invested all that he inherited 
 from his mother, together with the savings of twenty years, in 
 the purchase of the splendid Marville estate ; a castle (as fine 
 a relic of the past as you will find to-day in Normandy) stand- 
 ing in a hundred acres of park-land, and a fine dependent 
 farm, nominally bringing in twelve thousand francs per annum, 
 though, as it cost the president at least a thousand crowns to 
 keep up a state almost princely in our days, his yearly revenue, 
 " all told," as the saying is, was a bare nine thousand francs. 
 With this and his salary, the president's income amounted to 
 about twenty thousand francs ; but though to all appearance a 
 wealthy man, especially as one-half of his father's property 
 would one day revert to him as the only child of the first mar- 
 riage, he was obliged to live in Paris as befitted his official 
 position, and M. and Mme. de Marville spent almost the whole 
 of their incomes. Indeed, before the year 1834, they felt 
 pinched. 
 
 This family schedule sufficiently explains why Mile, de Mar- 
 ville, aged three-and-twenty, was still unwed, in spite of a 
 hundred thousand francs of dowry and tempting prospects, 
 frequently, skillfully, but so far vainly, held out. For the past 
 five years Pons had listened to Mme. la Presidente's lamenta- 
 tions as she beheld one young lawyer after another led to the 
 altc.r, while all the newly appointed judges at the Tribunal were 
 fathers of families already ; and she, all this time, had dis-
 
 120 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 played Mile, de Marville's brilliant expectations before the 
 undazzled eyes of young Vicomte Popinot, eldest son of the 
 great man of the drug trade, he of whom it was said by the 
 envious tongues of the neighborhood of the Rue des Lom- 
 bards that the Revolution of July had been brought about at 
 least as much for his particular benefit as for the sake of the 
 Orleans branch. 
 
 Arrived at the corner of the Rue de Choiseul and the Rue 
 de Hanovre, Pons suffered from the inexplicable emotions 
 which torment clear consciences ; from a panic-terror such as 
 the worst of scoundrels might feel at sight of a policeman, an 
 agony caused solely by a doubt as to Mme. de Marville's prob- 
 able reception of him. That grain of sand, grating continually 
 on the fibres of his heart, so far from losing its angles, grew 
 more and more jagged, and the family in the Rue de Hanovre 
 always sharpened the edges. Indeed, their unceremonious 
 treatment and Pons' depreciation in value among them had 
 affected the servants; and, while they did not exactly fail in 
 respect, they looked on the poor relation as a kind of beggar. 
 
 Pons' arch-enemy in the house was the ladies'-maid, a thin 
 and weazened spinster, Madeleine Vivet by name. This 
 Madeleine, in spite of, nay, perhaps on the strength of, a 
 pimpled complexion and a viper-like length of spine, had 
 made up her mind that some day she would be Mme. Pons. 
 But in vain she dangled twenty-thousand francs of savings 
 before the old bachelor's eyes ; Pons had declined happiness 
 accompanied by so many pimples. From that time forth the 
 Dido of the antechamber, who fain would have called her 
 master and mistress "cousin," wreaked her spite in petty ways 
 upon the poor musician. She heard him on the stairs, and 
 cried audibly, " Oh ! here comes the sponger ! " She stinted 
 him of wine when she waited at dinner in the footman's 
 absence ; she filled the water-glass to the brim, to give him 
 the difficult task of lifting it without spilling a drop ; or she 
 would pass the old man over altogether, till the mistress of the
 
 COUSIN PONS. 12? 
 
 house would remind her (and in what a tone ! it Drought the 
 color to the poor cousin's face) ; cr she would spill the gravy 
 over his clothes. In short, she waged petty war after the 
 manner of a small mind, knowing that she could annoy an 
 unfortunate superior with impunity. 
 
 Madeleine Vivet was Mme. de Marville's maid and house- 
 keeper. She had lived with M. and Mme. Camusot de Mar- 
 ville since their marriage ; she had shared the early struggles 
 in the provinces when M. Camusot was a judge at Alencon ; 
 she had helped them to exist when M. Camusot, president of 
 the Tribunal of Mantes, came to Paris, in 1828, to be an ex- 
 amining magistrate. She was, therefore, too much one of the 
 family not to wish, for reasons of her own, to revenge herself 
 upon them. Beneath her desire to play a trick upon her 
 haughty and ambitious mistress, and to call her master her 
 cousin, there surely lurked a long-stifled hatred, built up like 
 an avalanche, upon the pebble of some past grievance. 
 
 " Here comes your Monsieur Pons, madame, still wearing 
 that spencer of his ! " Madeleine came to tell Mme. the Presi- 
 dente. " He really might tell me how he manages to make it 
 look the same for five-and-twenty years together." 
 
 Mme. Camusot de Marville, hearing a man's footstep in the 
 little drawing-room between the large drawing-room and her 
 bedroom, looked meaningly at her daughter and shrugged her 
 shoulders. 
 
 " You always make these announcements so cleverly that 
 you leave me no time to think, Madeleine." 
 
 "Jean is out, madame; I was all alone; Monsieur Pons 
 rang the bell, I opened the door; and, as he is almost one of 
 the family, I could not prevent him from coming after me. 
 There he is, taking off his spencer." 
 
 "Poor little puss!" said the presidente, addressing her 
 daughter, " we are caught. We shall have to dine at home 
 now. Let us see," she added, seeing that the "dear puss" 
 wore a piteous face ; " must we get rid of him for good?"
 
 122 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "Oh! poor man!" cried Mile. Camusot, "deprive him 
 of one of his dinners ? " 
 
 Somebody coughed significantly in the next room by way 
 of warning that he could hear. 
 
 " Very well, let him come in ! " said Mme. Camusot, look- 
 ing at Madeleine with another shrug. 
 
 " You are here so early, cousin, that you have come in upon 
 us just as mother was about to dress," said Cecile Camusot in 
 a coaxing tone. But Cousin Pons had caught sight of the 
 presidente's shrug, and felt so cruelly hurt that he could not 
 find a compliment, and contented himself with the profound 
 remark, "You are always charming, my little cousin." 
 
 Then, turning to the mother, he continued, with a bow 
 
 " You will not take it amiss, I think, if I have come a little 
 earlier than usual, dear cousin ; I have brought something for 
 you ; you once did me the pleasure of asking me for it." 
 
 Poor Pons ! Every time he addressed the president, the 
 president's wife, or Cecile as " cousin," he gave them excru- 
 ciating annoyance. As he spoke, he drew a long, narrow 
 cherry-wood box, marvelously carved, from his coat-pocket. 
 
 "Oh, did I? I had forgotten," the lady answered drily. 
 
 It was a heartless speech, was it not ? Did not those few 
 words deny all merit to the pains taken for her by the cousin 
 whose one offense lay in the fact that he was a poor relation ? 
 
 "But it is very kind of you, cousin," she added. " How 
 much do I owe you for this little trifle?" 
 
 Pons quivered inwardly at the question. He had meant 
 the trinket as a return for his dinners. 
 
 " I thought that you would permit me to offer it you 
 
 " What ? " said Mme. Camusot. " Oh ! but there need be 
 no ceremony between us ; we know each other well enough 
 to wash our linen among ourselves. I know very well that 
 you are not rich enough to give more than you get. And to 
 go no further, it is quite enough that you should have spent a 
 good deal of time in running about among the dealers
 
 COUSIN PONS. 123 
 
 " If you were asked to pay the full price of the fan, my 
 dear cousin, you would not care to have it," answered poor 
 Pons, hurt and insulted ; " it is one of Watteau's masterpieces, 
 painted on both sides ; but you may be quite easy, cousin, I 
 did not give one-hundredth part of its value as a work of 
 art." 
 
 To tell a rich man that he is poor ! you might as well tell 
 the Archbishop of Granada that his homilies show signs of 
 senility. Mme. la Presidente, proud of her husband's posi- 
 tion, of the estate of Marville, and her invitations to court 
 balls, was keenly susceptible on this point ; and, what was 
 worse, the remark came from a poverty-stricken musician to 
 whom she had been charitable. 
 
 " Then the people of whom you buy things of this kind are 
 very stupid, are they? " she asked quickly. 
 
 "Stupid dealers are unknown in Paris," Pons answered 
 almost drily. 
 
 " Then you must be very clever," put in Cecile by way of 
 calming the dispute. 
 
 " Clever enough to know a Lancret, a Watteau, a Pater, or 
 Greuze when I see it, little cousin ; but anxious, most of all, 
 to please your dear mamma." 
 
 Mme. de Marville, ignorant and vain, was unwilling to 
 appear to receive the slightest trifle from the parasite; and 
 here her ignorance served her admirably, she did not even 
 know the name of Watteau. And, on the other hand, if any- 
 thing can measure the extent of the collector's passion, which, 
 in truth, is one of the most deeply seated of all passions, 
 rivaling the very vanity of the author if anything can give 
 an idea of the lengths to which a collector will go, it is the 
 audacity which Pons displayed on this occasion, as he held 
 his own against his lady cousin for the first time in twenty 
 years. He was amazed at his own boldness. He made Cecile 
 see the beauties of the delicate carving on the sticks of this 
 wonder, and as he talked to her his face grew serene and
 
 124 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 gentle again. But without some sketch of the presidente, it is 
 impossible fully to understand the perturbation of heart from 
 which Pons suffered. 
 
 Mme. de Marville had been short and fair, plump and 
 fresh ; at forty-six she was as short as ever, but she looked 
 dried up. An arched forehead and thin lips, that had been 
 softly colored once, lent a soured look to a face naturally dis- 
 dainful, and now grown hard and unpleasant with a long 
 course of absolute domestic rule. Time had deepened her 
 fair hair to a harsh chestnut hue ; the pride of office, intensi- 
 fied by suppressed envy, looked out of eyes that had lost none 
 of their brightness nor their satirical expression. As a matter 
 of fact, Mme. Camusot de Marville felt almost poor in the 
 society of self-made wealthy bourgeois with whom Pons dined. 
 She could not forgive the rich retail druggist, ex-president of 
 the Commercial Court, for his successive elevations as deputy, 
 member of the Government, count and peer of France. She 
 could not forgive her father-in-law for putting himself forward 
 instead of his eldest son as deputy of his arrondissement after 
 Popinot's promotion to the peerage. After eighteen years of 
 services in Paris, she was still waiting for the post of Coun- 
 cilor of the Court of Cassation for her husband. It was Camu- 
 sot's own incompetence, well known at the Law Courts, which 
 excluded him from the Council. The Home Secretary of 1844 
 even regretted Camusot's nomination to the presidency of the 
 Court of Indictments in 1834, though, thanks to his past ex- 
 perience as an examining magistrate, he made himself useful 
 in drafting decrees. 
 
 These disappointments had told upon Mme. de Marville, 
 who, moreover, had formed a tolerably correct estimate of her 
 husband. A temper naturally shrewish was soured till she 
 grew positively terrible. She was not old, but she had aged ; 
 she deliberately set herself to extort by fear all that the world 
 was inclined to refuse her, and was harsh and rasping as a file. 
 Caustic to excess, she had few friends among women ; she sur-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 125 
 
 rounded herself with prim, elderly matrons of her own stamp, 
 who lent each other mutual support, and people stood in awe 
 of her. As for poor Pons, his relations with this fiend in petti- 
 coats were very much those of a schoolboy with the master 
 whose one means of communication is the ferule. 
 
 The presidente had no idea of the value of the gift. She 
 was puzzled by her cousin's sudden access of audacity. 
 
 "Then, where did you find this?" inquired Cecile, as she 
 looked closely at the trinket. 
 
 " In the Rue de Lappe. A dealer in second-hand furniture 
 there had just brought it back with him from a castle that is 
 being pulled down near Dreux, Aulnay. Madame de Pompa- 
 dour used to spend part of her time there before she built 
 Menars. Some of the most splendid wood-carving ever 
 known has been saved from destruction ; Lienard (our most 
 famous living wood-carver) has kept a couple of oval frames 
 for models, as the ne plus ultra of the art, so fine it is. There 
 were treasures in that place. My man found the fan in the 
 drawer of an inlaid whatnot, which I should certainly have 
 bought if I were collecting things of the kind, but it is quite 
 out of the question a single piece of Riesener's furniture is 
 worth three or four thousand francs ! People here in Paris are 
 just beginning to find out that the famous French and Ger- 
 man marquetry workers of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and 
 eighteenth centuries composed perfect pictures in wood. It 
 is a collector's business to be ahead of the fashion. Why, 
 in five years' time, the Frankenthal ware, which I have been 
 collecting these twenty years, will fetch twice the price of 
 Sevres pate tendrc" 
 
 " What is Frankenthal ware ? " asked Cecile. 
 
 " That is the name for the porcelain made by the Elector of 
 the Palatinate ; it dates further back than our manufactory at 
 Sevres ; just as the famous gardens at Heidelberg, laid waste 
 by Turenne, had the bad luck to exist before the gardens of 
 Versailles. Sevres copied Frankenthal to a large extent. In
 
 126 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 justice to the Germans, it must be said that they have done 
 admirable work in Saxony and in the Palatinate." 
 
 Mother and daughter looked at one another as if Pons were 
 speaking Chinese. No one can imagine how ignorant and 
 exclusive Parisians are ; they only learn what they are taught, 
 and that only when they choose. 
 
 "And how do you know the Franken thai ware when you 
 see it?" 
 
 " Eh ! by the mark ! " cried Pons with enthusiasm. " There 
 is a mark on every one of those exquisite masterpieces. 
 Frankenthal ware is marked with a C and T (for Charles 
 Theodore) interlaced and crowned. On old Dresden china 
 there are two crossed swords and the number of the order in 
 gilt figures. Vincennes bears a hunting-horn ; Vienna, a V 
 closed and barred. You can tell Berlin by the two bars, 
 Mayence by the wheel, and Sevres by the two crossed L's. 
 The queen's porcelain is marked A for Antoinette, with a 
 royal crown above it. In the eighteenth century all the 
 crowned heads of Europe had rival porcelain factories, and 
 workmen were kidnapped. Watteau designed services for 
 the Dresden factory ; they fetch frantic prices at the present 
 day. One has to know what one is about with them too, for 
 they are turning out imitations now at Dresden. Wonderful 
 things they used to make ; they will never make the like again 
 and " 
 
 "Oh! pshaw!" 
 
 " No, cousin. Some inlaid work and some kinds of por- 
 celain will never be made again, just as there will never be 
 another Raphael, nor Titian, nor Rembrandt, nor Van Eyck, 
 nor Cranach. Well, now ! there are the Chinese ; they are 
 very ingenious, very clever ; they make modern copies of their 
 ' grand mandarin ' porcelain, as it is called. But a pair of 
 genuine old ' grand mandarin ' vases of the largest size are 
 worth six, eight, and ten thousand francs, while you can buy 
 the modern replicas for a couple of hundred ! "
 
 COUSIN PONS. 127 
 
 "You are joking." 
 
 "You are astonished at the prices, but that is nothing, 
 cousin. A dinner service of Sevres pate tendre (and pate 
 tendre is not porcelain) a complete dinner-service of Sevres 
 pate tendre for twelve persons is not merely worth a hundred 
 thousand francs, but that is the price charged on the invoice. 
 Such a dinner-service cost fifty thousand francs at Sevres in 
 1750; I have seen the original invoices." 
 
 "But let us go back to this fan," said Cecile. Evidently 
 in her opinion the trinket was an old-fashioned thing. 
 
 " You can understand that as soon as your dear mamma did 
 me the honor of asking for a fan, I went the round of all the 
 curiosity stores in Paris, but I found nothing fine enough. I 
 wanted nothing less than a masterpiece for th*e dear presidente, 
 and thought of giving her one that once belonged to Marie 
 Antoinette, the most beautiful of all celebrated fans. But 
 yesterday I was dazzled by this divine ckff-d* euevre, which 
 certainly must have been ordered by Louis XV. himself. Do 
 you ask how I came to look for fans in the Rue de Lappe, 
 among an Auvergnat's stock of brass and iron and ormolu 
 furniture? Well, I myself believe that there is an intelligence 
 in works of art ; they know art-lovers, they call to them 
 <Cht-tt!"' 
 
 Mme. de Marville shrugged her shoulders and looked at 
 her daughter; Pons did not notice the rapid pantomime. 
 
 " I know all those sharpers," continued Pons, "so I asked 
 him, ' Anything fresh to-day, Daddy Monistrol ? ' (for he 
 always lets me look over his lots before the big buyers come) 
 and at that he began to tell me how Lienard, that did such 
 beautiful work for the Government in the Chapelle de Dreux, 
 had been at the Aulnay sale and rescued the carved panels 
 out of the clutches of the Paris dealers, while their heads were 
 running on china and inlaid furniture. ' I did not do much 
 myself,' he went on, 'but I may make my traveling ex- 
 penses out of this,' and he showed me a whatnot; a marvel !
 
 128 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Boucher's designs executed in marquetry, and with such art ! 
 One could have gone down on one's knees before it. ' Look, 
 sir,' he said, ' I have just found this fan in a little drawer ; it 
 was locked, I had to force it open. You might tell me where 
 I can sell it ' and with that he brings me out this little carved 
 cherry-wood box. ' See,' says he, ' it is the kind of Pompa- 
 dour that looks like decorated Gothic.' 'Yes,' I told him, 
 ' the box is pretty ; the box might suit me ; but as for the fan, 
 Monistrol, I have no Mme. Pons to give the old trinket to, 
 and they make very pretty new ones nowadays ; you can buy 
 miracles of painting on vellum cheaply enough. There are 
 two thousand painters in Paris, you know.' And I opened 
 out the fan carelessly, keeping down my admiration, looking 
 indifferently at those two exquisite little pictures, touched off 
 with an ease fit to send you into raptures. I held Madame 
 de Pompadour's fan in my hand ! Watteau had done his 
 utmost for this. ' What do you want for the whatnot ? ' ' Oh ! 
 a thousand francs ; I have had a bid already.' I offered him 
 a price for the fan corresponding with the probable expenses 
 of the journey. We looked each other in the eyes, and I saw 
 that I had my man. I put the fan back into the box lest my 
 Auvergnat should begin to look at it, and went into ecstasies 
 over the box; indeed, it is a jewel. ' If I take it,' said I, 'it 
 is for the sake of the box ; the box tempts me. As for the 
 whatnot, you will get more than a thousand francs for that. 
 Just see how the brass is wrought ; it is a model. There is 
 business in it. It has never been copied ; it is a unique speci- 
 men, made solely for Madame de Pompadour' and so on, 
 till my man, all on fire for his whatnot, forgets the fan, and 
 lets me have it for a mere trifle, because I have pointed out 
 the beauties of this piece of Riesener's furniture. So here it 
 is ! but it needs a great deal of experience to make such a 
 bargain as that. It is a duel, eye to eye ; and who has such 
 eyes as a Jew or an Auvergnat ? " 
 
 The old artist's wonderful pantomime, his vivid, eager way
 
 COUSIN PONS. 129 
 
 of telling the story of the triumph of his shrewdness over the 
 dealer's ignorance, would have made a subject for a Dutch 
 painter; but it was all thrown away upon the audience. 
 Mother and daughter exchanged cold, contemptuous glances. 
 " What an oddity ! " they seemed to say. 
 
 "So it amuses you?" remarked Mme. de Marville. The 
 question sent a cold chill through Pons ; he felt a strong de- 
 sire to slap the presidente. 
 
 "Why, my dear cousin, that is the way to hunt down a 
 work of art. You are face to face with antagonists that dis- 
 pute the game with you. It is craft against craft ! A work 
 of art in the hands of a Norman, an Auvergnat, or a Jew is 
 like a princess guarded by magicians in a fairy tale." 
 
 " And how can you tell that this is by Wat what do 
 
 you call him?" 
 
 " Watteau, cousin. One of the greatest eighteenth-century 
 painters in France. Look ! do you not see that it is his 
 work?" (pointing to a pastoral scene, court-shepherd swains 
 and shepherdesses dancing in a ring). " The movement ! the 
 life in it ! the coloring ! There it is see ! painted with a 
 stroke of the brush, as a writing-master makes a flourish with 
 a pen. Not a trace of effort here ! And, turn it over, look ! 
 a ball in the drawing-room. Summer and Winter ! And 
 what ornaments ! and how well preserved it is ! The hinge- 
 pin is gold, you see, and, on cleaning it, I found a tiny ruby 
 at either end." 
 
 "If it is so, cousin, I could not think of accepting such a 
 valuable present from you. It would be better to lay up the 
 money for yourself," said Mme. de Marville; but, all the 
 same, she asked no better than to keep the article of virtu, 
 that splendid fan. 
 
 " It is time that it should pass from the service of Vice into 
 the hands of Virtue," said the good soul, recovering his as- 
 surance. " It has taken a century to work the miracle. No 
 princess at Court, you may be sure, will have anything to 
 9
 
 130 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 compare with it ; for, unfortunately, men will do more for a 
 Pompadour than for a virtuous queen, such is human nature." 
 
 "Very well," Mme. de Marville said, laughing, "I will 
 accept your present. Cecile, my angel, go to Madeleine and 
 see that dinner is worthy of your cousin." 
 
 Mme. de Marville wished to make matters even. Her re- 
 quest, made aloud, in defiance of all rules of good taste, 
 sounded so much like an attempt to repay at once the balance 
 due to the poor cousin, that Pons flushed red, like a girl found 
 out in fault. The grain of sand was a little too large ; for 
 some moments he could only let it work in his heart. Cecile, 
 a red-haired young woman, with a touch of pedantic affecta- 
 tion, combined her father's ponderous manner with a trace 
 of her mother's hardness. She went and left poor Pons face 
 to face with the terrible presidente. 
 
 " How nice she is, my little Lili ! " said the mother. She 
 still called her Cecile by this baby name. 
 
 " Charming ! " said Pons, twirling his thumbs. 
 
 " I cannot understand these times in which we live," broke 
 out the presidente. " What is the good of having a president 
 of the Court of Appeal in Paris and a commander of the Le- 
 gion of Honor for your father, and for a grandfather the 
 richest wholesale silk merchant in Paris, a deputy, and a mil- 
 lionaire that will be a peer of France some of these days? " 
 
 The president's zeal for the new Government had, in fact, 
 recently been rewarded with a commander's ribbon thanks 
 to his friendship with Popinot, said the envious. Popinot 
 himself, modest though he was, had, as has been seen, accepted 
 the title of count, "for his son's sake," he told his numerous 
 friends. 
 
 " Men look for nothing but money nowadays," said Cousin 
 Pons. " No one thinks anything of you unless you are rich, 
 and " 
 
 " What would it have been if heaven had spared my poor 
 jlittle Charles ! " cried the lady.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 131 
 
 "Oh, with two children you would be poor," returned the 
 cousin. " It practically means the division of the property. 
 But you need not trouble yourself, cousin ; Cecile is sure to 
 marry sooner or later. She is the most accomplished girl I 
 know." 
 
 To such depths had Pons fallen by adapting himself to the 
 company of his entertainers ! In their houses he echoed their 
 ideas, and said the obvious thing, after the manner of a chorus 
 in a Greek play. He did not dare to give free play to the 
 artist's originality, which had overflowed in bright repartee 
 when he was young ; he had effaced himself, till he had almost 
 lost his individuality ; and if the real Pons appeared, as he had 
 done a moment ago, he was immediately repressed. 
 
 " But I myself was married with only twenty thousand francs 
 for my portion " 
 
 " In 1819, cousin. And it was you, a woman with a head 
 on your shoulders, and the royal protection of Louis XVIII." 
 
 " But still, my child is a perfect angel. She is clever, she 
 has a warm heart, she will have a hundred thousand francs on 
 her wedding-day, to say nothing of the most brilliant expecta- 
 tions; and yet she stays on our hands," and so on and so on. 
 For twenty minutes, Mme. de Marville talked on about her- 
 self and her Cecile, pitying herself after the manner of mothers 
 in bondage to marriageable daughters. 
 
 Pons had dined at the house every week for twenty years, 
 and Camusot de Marville was the only cousin he had in the 
 world ; but he had yet to hear the first word spoken as to his 
 own affairs nobody cared to know how he lived. Here and 
 elsewhere the poor cousin was a kind of sink down which his 
 relatives poured domestic confidences. His discretion was 
 well known ; indeed, was he not bound over to silence when 
 a single imprudent word would have shut the doors of ten 
 houses upon him ? And he must combine his role of listener 
 with a second part : he must applaud continually, smile on 
 every one, accuse nobody, defend nobody; from his point of
 
 132 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 view, every one must be in the right. And so, in the house 
 of his kinsmen, Pons no longer counted as a man ; he was a 
 digestive apparatus. 
 
 In the course of a long tirade, Mme. Camusot de Marville 
 avowed with due circumspection that she was prepared to take 
 almost any son-in-law with her eyes shut. She was even dis- 
 posed to think that at eight-and-forty or so a man with twenty 
 thousand francs a year was a good match. 
 
 " Cecile is in her twenty-third year. If it should fall out 
 so unfortunately that she is not married before she is five or 
 six-and-twenty, it will be extremely hard to marry her at all. 
 When a girl reaches that age, people want to know why she 
 has been so long on hand. We are a good deal talked about 
 in our set. We have come to an end of all the ordinary 
 excuses ' She is so young. She is so fond of her father and 
 mother that she doesn't like to leave them. She is so happy 
 at home. She is hard to please, she would like a good 
 name ' We are beginning to look silly ; I feel that dis- 
 tinctly. And, beside, Cecile is tired of waiting, poor child, 
 she suffers " 
 
 "In what way?" Pons was noodle enough to ask. 
 
 " Why, because it is humiliating to her to see all her girl 
 friends married before her," replied the mother, with a 
 duenna's air. 
 
 "But, cousin, has anything happened since the last time 
 that I had the pleasure of dining here? Why do you think 
 of men of eight-and-forty?" Pons inquired humbly. 
 
 "This has happened," returned the presidente. "We 
 were to have had an interview with a court councilor ; his son 
 is'thirty years old and very well-to-do, and Monsieur de Mar- 
 ville would have obtained a post in the Audit Office for him 
 and paid the money. The young man is a supernumerary 
 there at present. And now they tell us that he has taken it 
 into his head to rush off to Italy in the train of a duchess from 
 the Bal Mabille It is nothing but a refusal in disguise.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 133 
 
 The fact is, the young man's mother is dead ; he has an in- 
 come of thirty thousand francs, and more to come at his 
 father's death, and they don't care about the match for him. 
 You have just come in in the middle of all this, dear cousin, 
 so you must excuse our bad temper." 
 
 While Pons was casting about for the complimentary answer 
 which invariably occurred to him too late when he was afraid 
 of his host, Madeleine came in, handed a folded note to the 
 presidente, and waited for an answer. The note ran as follows : 
 
 " DEAR MAMMA : If we pretend that this note comes to 
 you from papa at the Palais, and that he wants us both to dine 
 with his friend because proposals have been renewed then 
 the cousin will go, and we can carry out our own plan of 
 going to the Popinots." 
 
 "Who brought the master's note?" the presidente asked 
 quickly. 
 
 "A lad from the Salle du Palais,"* the withered waiting- 
 woman unblushingly answered, and her mistress knew at once 
 that Madeleine had woven the plot with Cecile, now at the 
 end of her patience. 
 
 "Tell him that we will both be there at half-past five." 
 
 Madeleine had no sooner left the room than the presidente 
 turned to Cousin Pons with that insincere friendliness which is 
 about as grateful to a sensitive soul as a mixture of milk and 
 vinegar to the palate of an epicure. 
 
 "Dinner is ordered, dear cousin ; you must dine without 
 us ; my husband has just sent word from the Court that the 
 question of the marriage has been reopened, and we are to 
 dine with the councilor. We need not stand on ceremony at all. 
 Do just as if you were at home. I have no secrets from you ; 
 I am perfectly open with you, as you see. I am sure you would 
 not wish to break off the little darling's marriage." 
 * Palace Hall High Court.
 
 134 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "I, cousin? On the contrary, I should like to find some 
 one for her; but in my circle " 
 
 " Oh, that is not at all likely," said the presidente, cutting 
 him short insolently. " Then you will stay, will you not ? 
 Cecile will keep you company while I dress." 
 
 " Oh ! I can dine somewhere else, cousin." 
 
 Cruelly hurt though he was by her way of casting up his 
 poverty to him, the prospect of being left alone with the ser- 
 vants was even more alarming. 
 
 " But why should you? Dinner is ready ; you may just as 
 well have it ; if you do not, the servants will eat it." 
 
 At that atrocious speech Pons started up as if he had re- 
 ceived a shock from a galvanic battery, bowed stiffly to the 
 lady, and went to find his spencer. Now, it so happened that 
 the door of Cecile's bedroom, beyond the little drawing-room, 
 stood open, and, looking into the mirror, he caught sight of 
 the girl shaking with laughter as she gesticulated and made 
 signs to her mother. The old artist understood beyond a 
 doubt that he had been the victim of some cowardly hoax. Pons 
 went slowly down the stairs ; he could not keep back the tears. 
 He understood that he had been turned out of the house, but 
 why and wherefore he did not know. 
 
 "I am growing too old," he told himself. " The world 
 has a horror of old age and poverty two ugly things. After 
 this I will not go anywhere unless I am asked." 
 
 Heroic resolve ! 
 
 Downstairs the great gate was shut, as it usually is in houses 
 occupied by the proprietor ; the kitchen stood exactly opposite 
 the perter's lodge, and the door was open. Pons was obliged 
 to listen while Madeleine told the servants the whole story 
 amid the laughter of the servants. She had not expected him 
 to leave so soon. The footman loudly applauded a joke at 
 the expense of a visitor who was always coming to the house 
 and never gave you more than three francs at the year's end. 
 
 " Yes," put in the cook ; " but if he cuts up rough and does

 
 THE RUE DE NORMANDi,
 
 COUSIN PONS. 135 
 
 not come back, there will be three francs the less for some of 
 us on New Year's day." 
 
 " Eh ! How is he to know ? " retorted the footman. 
 
 " Pooh ! " said Madeleine, "a little sooner or a little later 
 what difference does it make ? The people at the other houses 
 where he dines are so tired of him that they are going to turn 
 him out." 
 
 " The gate if you please." 
 
 Madeleine had scarcely uttered the words when they heard 
 the old musician's call to the porter. It sounded like a cry of 
 pain. There was a sudden silence in the kitchen. 
 
 " He heard ! " the footman said. 
 
 "Well, and if he did, so much the worser, or rather so 
 much the better," retorted Madeleine. " He is an arrant 
 skinflint." 
 
 Poor Pons had lost none of the talk in the kitchen ; he 
 heard it all, even to the last word. He made his way home 
 along the boulevards, in the same state, physical and mental, 
 as an old woman after a desperate struggle with burglars. As 
 he went he talked to himself in quick spasmodic jerks ; his 
 honor had been wounded, and the pain of it drove him on 
 as a gust of wind whirls away a straw. He found himself at 
 last in the Boulevard du Temple ; how he had come thither 
 he could not tell. It was five o'clock, and, strange to say, 
 he had completely lost his appetite. 
 
 But if the reader is to understand the revolution which 
 Pons' unexpected return at that hour was to work in the Rue 
 de Normandie, the promised biography of Mme. Cibot must 
 be given in this place. 
 
 Any one passing along the Rue de Normandie might be 
 pardoned for thinking that he was in some small provincial 
 town. Grass runs to seed in the street, everybody knows 
 everybody else, and the sight of a stranger is an event. The 
 houses date back to the reign of Henry IV., when there was
 
 136 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 a scheme afoot for a quarter in which every street was to be 
 named after a French province, and all should converge in a 
 handsome square to which La France should stand godmother. 
 The Quartier de 1' Europe was a revival of the same idea ; 
 history repeats itself everywhere in the world, and even in the 
 world of speculation. 
 
 The house in which the two musicians used to live is an old 
 mansion with a courtyard in front and a garden at the back ; 
 but the front part of the house which gives upon the street is 
 comparatively modern, built during the eighteenth century 
 when the Marais was a fashionable quarter. The friends lived 
 at the back, on the third floor of the old part of the house. 
 The whole building belonged to M. Pillerault, an old man of 
 eighty, who left matters very much in the hands of M. and 
 Mme. Cibot, his janitors for the past twenty-six years. 
 
 Now, as a janitor cannot live by his lodge alone, the afore- 
 said Cibot had other means of gaining a livelihood ; and sup- 
 plemented his five per cent, on the rental and his faggot from 
 every cartload of wood by his own earnings as a tailor. In 
 time Cibot ceased to work for the master tailors ; he made a 
 connection among the little tradespeople of the quarter, and 
 enjoyed a monopoly of the repairs, renovations, and fine- 
 drawing of all the coats and trousers in three adjacent streets. 
 The lodge was spacious and wholesome, and boasted a second 
 room ; wherefore the Cibot couple were looked upon as among 
 the luckiest porters in the arrondissement. 
 
 Cibot, small and stunted, with a complexion almost olive- 
 colored by reason of sitting day in day out Turk-fashion on a 
 table level with the barred window, made about twelve or 
 fourteen francs a week. He worked still, though he was fifty- 
 eight years old, but fifty-eight is the porter's golden age ; he 
 is used to his lodge, he and his room fit each other like the 
 shell and the oyster, and "he is known in the neighborhood." 
 
 Mme. Cibot, sometime opener of oysters at the Cadran 
 Bleu, after all the adventures which come unsought to the
 
 COUSIN PONS. 137 
 
 belle of an oyster-bar, left her post for love of Cibot at the 
 age of twenty-eight. The beauty of a woman of the people is 
 short-lived, especially if she is planted espalier fashion at a 
 restaurant door. Her features are hardened by puffs of hot 
 air from the kitchen ; the color of the heeltaps of customers' 
 bottles, finished in the company of the waiters, gradually fil- 
 ters into her complexion no beauty is full blown as soon as 
 the beauty of an oyster-opener. Luckily for Mme. Cibot, 
 lawful wedlock and a portress' life were offered to her just in 
 time ; while she still preserved a comeliness of a masculine 
 order slandered by rivals of the Rue de Normandie, who 
 called her "a great blowsy thing," Mme. Cibot might have 
 sat as a model to Rubens. Those flesh tints reminded you of 
 the appetizing sheen on a pat of Isigny butter ; but plump as 
 she was, no woman went about her work with more agility. 
 Mme. Cibot had attained the time of life when women of her 
 stamp are obliged to shave which is as much as to say that 
 she had reached the age of forty-eight. A porter's wife with 
 a mustache is one of the best possible guarantees of respecta- 
 bility and security that a landlord can have. If Delacroix 
 could have seen Mme. Cibot leaning proudly on her broom 
 handle, he would assuredly have painted her as Bellona. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, the circumstances of the Cibots, 
 man and wife (in the style of an indictment), were one day to 
 affect the lives of the two friends ; wherefore the chronicler, 
 as in duty bound, must give some particulars as to the Cibots' 
 lodge. 
 
 The house brought in about eight thousand francs, for there 
 were three complete sets of apartments back and front, on 
 the side nearest the Rue de Normandie, as well as the three 
 floors in the older mansion between the courtyard and the 
 garden, and a store kept by a rag, bottle, bone, and old iron 
 dealer named Remonencq, which fronted on the street. 
 During the past few months this Remonencq had begun to 
 deal in old curiosities, and knew the value of Pons' collection
 
 138 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 so well that he took off his hat whenever the musician came 
 in or went out. 
 
 A sou in the livre on eight thousand francs therefore brought 
 in about four hundred francs to the Cibots. They had no 
 rent to pay and no expenses for firing ; Cibot's earnings 
 amounted on an average to seven or eight hundred francs, 
 add tips at the New Year, and the pair had altogether an 
 income of sixteen hundred francs, every penny of which they 
 spent, for the Cibots lived and fared better than working 
 people usually do. " One can only live once," La Cibot used 
 to say. She was born during the Revolution, you see, and 
 had never learned her Catechism. 
 
 The husband of this portress with the unblenching tawny 
 eyes was an object of envy to the whole fraternity, for La 
 Cibot had not forgotten the knowledge of cookery picked up at 
 the Cadran Bleu. So it had come to pass that the Cibots had 
 passed the prime of life, and saw themselves on the threshold 
 of old age without a hundred francs put by for the future. 
 Well clad and well fed, they enjoyed among the neighbors, it 
 is true, the respect due to twenty-six years of strict honesty; 
 for if they had nothing of their own, they "hadn't nothing 
 belonging to nobody else," according to La Cibot, who was 
 prodigal of negatives. " There wasn't never such a love of a 
 man," she would say to her husband. Do you ask why? 
 You might as well ask the reason of her indifference in mat- 
 ters of religion. 
 
 Both of them were proud of a life lived in open day, of the 
 esteem in which they were held for six or seven streets round 
 about, and of the autocratic rule permitted to them by the 
 proprietor (" perprietor," they called him); but in private 
 they groaned because they had no money lying at interest. 
 Cibot complained of pains in his hands and legs, and his wife 
 would lament that her poor, dear Cibot should be forced to 
 work at his age ; and, indeed, the day is not far distant when 
 a porter after thirty years of such a life will cry shame upon
 
 COUSIN PONS. 139 
 
 the injustice of the Government and clamor for the ribbon of 
 the Legion of Honor. Every time that the gossip of the 
 quarter brought news of such and such a servant-maid, left an 
 annuity of three or four hundred francs after eight or ten 
 years of service, the porters' lodges would resound with com- 
 plaints, which may give some idea of the consuming jealousies 
 in the lowest walks of life in Paris. 
 
 "Oh, indeed! It will never happen to the like of us to 
 have our names mentioned in a will ! We have no luck, but 
 we do more than servants, for all that. We fill a place of 
 trust ; we give receipts, we are on the lookout for squalls, and 
 yet we are treated like dogs, neither more nor less, and that's 
 the truth!" 
 
 "Some find fortune and some miss fortune," said Cibot, 
 coming in with a coat he had just finished. 
 
 "If I had left Cibot here in this lodge and taken a place as 
 cook, we should have had our thirty thousand francs out at 
 interest," cried Mme. Cibot, standing chatting with a neigh- 
 bor, her hands on her prominent hips. " But I didn't under- 
 stand how to get on in life ; housed inside of a snug lodge 
 and firing found and want for nothing, but that is all." 
 
 In 1836 when the friends took up their abode on the third 
 floor, they brought about a sort of revolution in the Cibot 
 household. It befell on this wise. Schmucke, like his friend 
 Pons, usually arranged that the porter or the porter's wife 
 should undertake the cares of housekeeping ; and being both 
 of one mind on this point when they came to live in the Rue 
 de Normandie, Mme. Cibot became their housekeeper at the 
 rate of twenty-five francs per month twelve francs fifty cen- 
 times for each of them. Before the year was out, the emeritus 
 portress reigned in the establishment of the two old bachelors, 
 as she reigned everywhere in the house belonging to M. 
 Pillerault, great-uncle of Mme. la Comtesse Popinot. Their 
 business was her business ; she called them " my gentlemen." 
 And at last, finding the pair of nutcrackers mild as lambs,
 
 140 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 easy to live with, and by no means suspicious perfect chil- 
 dren, in fact her heart, the heart of a. woman of the people, 
 prompted her to protect, adore, and serve them with such 
 thorough devotion, that she read them a lecture now and 
 again, and saved them from the impositions which swell the 
 cost of living in Paris. For twenty-five francs a month, the 
 two old bachelors inadvertently acquired a mother. 
 
 As they became aware of Mme. Cibot's full value, they 
 gave her outspoken praises, and thanks, and little presents, 
 which strengthened the bonds of the domestic alliance. Mme. 
 Cibot a thousand times preferred appreciation to money pay- 
 ments ; it is a well-known fact that the sense that one is ap- 
 preciated makes up for a deficiency in wages. And Cibot did 
 all that he could for his wife's two gentlemen, and ran errands 
 and did repairs at half-price for them. 
 
 The second year brought a new element into the friendship 
 between the lodge and the third floor, and Schmucke con- 
 cluded a bargain which satisfied his indolence and desire for 
 a life without cares. For thirty sous per day, or forty-five 
 francs per month, Mme. Cibot undertook to provide Schmucke 
 with breakfast and dinner; and Pons, finding his friend's 
 breakfast very much to his mind, concluded a separate treaty 
 for that meal only at the rate of eighteen francs. This arrange- 
 ment, which added nearly ninety francs every month to the 
 takings of the porter and his wife, made two inviolable beings 
 of the lodgers ; they became angels, cherubs, divinities. It is 
 very doubtful whether the King of the French, who is sup- 
 posed to understand economy, is as well served as the pair of 
 nutcrackers used to be in those days. 
 
 For them the milk issued pure from the can ; they enjoyed 
 a free perusal of all the morning papers taken by other lodgers, 
 later risers, who were told, if need be, that the newspaper had 
 not come yet. Mme. Cibot, moreover, kept their clothes, 
 their rooms, and the landing as clean as a Flemish interior. 
 As for Schmucke, he enjoyed unhoped-for happiness ; Mme.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 141 
 
 Cibot had made life easy for him ; he paid her about six 
 francs a month, and she took charge of his linen, washing, 
 and mending. Altogether his expenses amounted to sixty-six 
 francs per month (for he spent fifteen francs on tobacco), and 
 sixty-six francs multiplied by twelve produces the sum-total of 
 seven hundred and ninety-two francs. Add two hundred and 
 twenty francs for rent, rates, and taxes, and you have a thou- 
 sand and twelve francs. Cibot was Schmucke's tailor; his 
 clothes cost him on an average a hundred and fifty francs, 
 which further swells the total to the sum of twelve hundred. 
 On twelve hundred francs per annum this profound philosopher 
 lived. How many people in Europe, whose one thought it is 
 to come to Paris and live there, will be agreeably surprised to 
 learn that you may exist in comfort upon an income of twelve 
 hundred francs in the Rue de Normandie in the Marais, under 
 the wing of a Mme. Cibot. 
 
 Mme. Cibot, to resume the story, was amazed beyond ex- 
 pression to see Pons, good man, return at five o'clock in the 
 evening. Such a thing had never happened before ; and not 
 only so, but "her gentleman" had given her no greeting 
 had not so much as seen her ! 
 
 "Well, well, Cibot," said she to her spouse, "Monsieur 
 Pons has come in for a million, or gone out of his mind ! " 
 
 "That is how it looks to me," said Cibot, dropping the 
 coat-sleeve in which he was making a "dart," in tailor's 
 language. 
 
 The savory odor of a stew pervaded the whole courtyard, as 
 Pons returned mechanically home. Mme. Cibot was dishing 
 up Schmucke's dinner, which consisted of scraps of boiled 
 beef from a little cook-shop not above doing a little trade of 
 this kind. These morsels were fricasseed in brown butter, 
 with thin slices of onion, until the meat and vegetables had 
 absorbed the gravy, and this true porter's dish was browned 
 to the right degree. With that fricassee, prepared with loving 
 care for Cibot and Schmucke, and accompanied by a bottle of
 
 142 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 beer and a piece of cheese, the old German music-master was 
 quite content. Not King Solomon in all his glory, be sure, 
 could dine better than Schmucke. A dish of boiled beef 
 fricasseed with onions, scraps of saute chicken, or beef and 
 parsley, or venison, or fish served with a sauce of La Cibot's 
 own invention (a sauce with which a mother might unsus- 
 pectingly eat her child) such was Schmucke's ordinary, 
 varying with the quantity and quality of the remnants of food 
 supplied by boulevard restaurants to the cook-shop in the Rue 
 Boucherat. Schmucke took everything that " goot Montame 
 Zipod " gave him, and was content, and so from day to day 
 "goot Montame Zipod" cut down the cost of his dinner, 
 until it could be served for twenty sous. 
 
 "It won't be long afore I find out what is the matter with 
 him, poor dear," said Mme. Cibot to her husband, "for here 
 is Monsieur Schmucke's dinner all ready for him." 
 
 As she spoke, she covered the deep earthenware dish with a 
 plate ; and, notwithstanding her age, she climbed the stair and 
 reached the door before Schmucke opened it to Pons. 
 
 " Vat is de matter mit you, mein goot friend?" asked the 
 German, scared by the expression on Pons' face. 
 
 " I will tell you all about it ; but I have come home to have 
 dinner with you " 
 
 "Tinner! tinner!" cried Schmucke in ecstasy; "but it 
 is imbossible ! " the old German added, as he thought of his 
 friend's gastronomical tastes ; and at that very moment he 
 caught sight of Mme. Cibot listening to the conversation, as 
 she had a right to do as his lawful housewife. Struck with 
 one of those happy inspirations which only enlighten a friend's 
 heart, he marched up to the portress and drew her out to the 
 stairhead. 
 
 "Montame Zipod," he said, "der goot Bons is fond of 
 goot dings ; shoost go rount to der Catran Pleu und order a 
 dainty liddle tinner, mit anjovies und maggaroni. Ein tinner 
 for Lugullus, in vact,"
 
 COUSIN PONS. 143 
 
 " What is that? " inquired La Cibot. 
 
 "Oh! ah!" returned Schmucke, "it is veal a la pour- 
 cheoise" (bourgeoisc, he meant), "a nice fisch, ein pottle off 
 Porteaux, und nice dings, der fery best dey haf, like groquettes 
 of rice und shmoked paeon ! 
 
 " Bay for it, und say nodings; I vill gif you back de monny 
 to-morrow morning." 
 
 Back went Schmucke, radiant and rubbing his hands ; but 
 his expression slowly changed to a look of bewildered aston- 
 ishment as he heard Pons' story of the troubles that had but 
 just now overwhelmed him in a moment. He tried to com- 
 fort Pons by giving him a sketch of the world from his own 
 point of view. Paris, in his opinion, was a perpetual hurly- 
 burly, the men and women in it were whirled away by a 
 tempestuous waltz; it was no use expecting anything of the 
 world, which only looked at the outside of things, "und not 
 at der inderior." For the hundredth time he related how 
 that the only three pupils for whom he had really cared, for 
 whom he was ready to die, the three who had been fond of 
 him, and even allowed him a little pension of nine hundred 
 francs, each contributing three hundred to the amount his 
 favorite pupils had quite forgotten to come to see him ; and so 
 swift was the current of Parisian life which swept them away, 
 that if he called at their houses he had not succeeded in seeing 
 them once in three years (it is a fact, however, that Schmucke 
 had always thought fit to call on these .great ladies at ten 
 o'clock in the morning !) still, his pension was paid quar- 
 terly through the medium of attorneys. 
 
 "Und yet, dey are hearts of gold," he concluded. " Dey 
 are my liddle Saint Cecilias, sharming vimmen, Montame de 
 Bordentuere, Montame te Fantanesse, und Montame tu Dilet. 
 Gif I see dem at all, it is at die Jambs Elusees, und dey 
 
 do not see me yet dey are ver' fond of me, und I might 
 
 go to dine mit dem, und dey vould be ver' bleased to 
 see me ; und I might go to deir country-houses, but I would
 
 144 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 much rader be mit mein friend Bons, because I kan see him 
 venefer I like, und efery tay." 
 
 Pons took Schmucke's hand and grasped it between his own. 
 All that was passing in his inmost soul was communicated in 
 that tight pressure. And so for a while the friends sat like 
 two lovers, meeting at last after a long absence. 
 
 "Tine here, efery tay!" broke out Schmucke, inwardly 
 blessing Mme. de Marville for her hardness of heart. " Look 
 here ! Ve shall go a prick-a-pracking togeders, und der teufel 
 shall nefer show his tail here." 
 
 "Ve shall go prick-a-pracking togeders!" for the full 
 comprehension of those truly heroic words, it must be con- 
 fessed that Schmucke's ignorance of bric-a-brac was something 
 of the densest. It required all the strength of his friendship 
 to keep him from doing heedless damage in the sitting-room 
 and study which did duty as a museum for Pons. Schmucke, 
 wholly absorbed in music, a composer for love of his art, took 
 about as much interest in his friend's little trifles as a fish might 
 take in a flower-show at the Luxembourg, supposing that it 
 had received a ticket of admission. A certain awe which he 
 certainly felt for the marvels was simply a reflection of the 
 respect which Pons showed his treasures when he dusted them. 
 To Pons' exclamations of admiration, he was wont to reply 
 with a "Yes, it is ver' bretty," as a mother answers baby- 
 gestures with meaningless baby-talk. Seven times since the 
 friends had lived together, Pons had exchanged a good clock 
 for a better one, till at last he possessed a timepiece in Boule's 
 first and best manner, for Boule had two manners, as Raphael 
 had three. In the first he combined ebony and copper ; in 
 the second contrary to his convictions rie sacrificed to tor- 
 toise-shell, working miracles to outstrip his rivals, the inventors 
 of tortoise-shell inlaid work. In spite of Pons' learned disser- 
 tations, Schmucke never could see the slightest difference 
 between the magnificent clock in Boule's first manner and its 
 six predecessors; but, for Pons' sake, Schmucke was even more
 
 COUSIN PONS. 145 
 
 careful among the "chimcracks" than Pons himself. So it 
 should not be surprising that Schmucke's sublime words com- 
 forted Pons in his despair; for " Ve shall go prick-a-pracking 
 togeders " meant, being interpreted, "I will put money into 
 bric-a-brac, if you will only dine here." 
 
 " Dinner is ready," Mme. Cibot announced, with astonish- 
 ing self-possession. 
 
 It is not difficult to imagine Pons' surprise when he saw 
 and relished the dinner due to Schmucke's friendship. Sen- 
 sations of this kind, that come so rarely in a lifetime, are 
 never the outcome of the constant, close relationship by which 
 friend daily says to friend, "You are a second self to me; " 
 for this, too, becomes a matter of use and wont. It is only 
 by contact with the barbarism of the world without that the 
 happiness of that intimate life is revealed to us as a sudden 
 glad surprise. It is the outer world which renews the bond 
 between friend and friend, lover and lover, all their lives long, 
 wherever two great souls are knit together by friendship or by 
 love. 
 
 Pons brushed away two big tears, Schmucke himself wiped 
 his eyes ; and, though nothing was said, the two were closer 
 friends than before. Little friendly nods and glances ex- 
 changed across the table were like balm to Pons, soothing the 
 pain caused by the sand dropped in his heart by the presi- 
 dent's wife. As for Schmucke, he rubbed his hands until 
 they were sore ; for a new idea had occurred to him, one of 
 those great discoveries which cause a German no surprise, 
 unless they sprout up suddenly in a Teuton brain frost-bound 
 by the awe and reverence due to sovereign princes. 
 
 " Mine goot Bons? " began Schmucke. 
 
 "I can guess what you mean; you would like us both to 
 dine together here, every day " 
 
 "Gif only I vas rich enof to lif like dis efery tay 
 
 began the good German in a melancholy voice. But here 
 Mme. Cibot appeared upon the scene. Pons had given her 
 10
 
 146 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 an order for the theatre from time to time, and stood in con- 
 sequence almost as high in her esteem and affection as her 
 boarder Schmucke. 
 
 "Lord love you," said she, "for three francs and wine 
 extra I can give you both such a dinner every day that you 
 will be ready to lick the plates as clean as if they were washed." 
 
 "It is a fact," Schmucke remarked, "dat die tinners dat 
 Montame Zipod cooks for me are better as de messes dey eat 
 at der royal dable ! " In his eagerness, Schmucke, usually so 
 full of respect for the powers that be, so far forgot himself as 
 to imitate the irreverent newspapers which scoffed at the 
 " fixed-price " dinners of royalty. 
 
 "Really?" said Pons. " Very well, I will try to-morrow." 
 
 And at that promise Schmucke sprang from one end of the 
 table to the other, sweeping off tablecloth, bottles, and dishes 
 as he went and hugged Pons to his heart. So might gas rush 
 to combine with gas. 
 
 " Vat happiness ! " cried he. 
 
 Mme. Cibot was quite touched. " Monsieur is going to 
 dine here every day ! " she cried proudly. 
 
 That excellent woman departed downstairs again in igno- 
 rance of the event which had brought about this result, 
 entered her room like Josepha in " William Tell," set down 
 the plates and dishes on the table with a bang, and called 
 aloud to her husband 
 
 "Cibot ! run to the Cafe Turc for two small cups of coffee, 
 and tell the man at the stove that it is for me." 
 
 Then she sat down and rested her hands on her massive 
 knees, and gazed out of the window at the opposite wall. 
 
 "I will go to-night and see what Ma'am Fontaine says," 
 she thought. (Madame Fontaine told fortunes on the cards for 
 all the servants in the quarter of the Marais.) " Since these 
 two gentlemen came here, we have put two thousand francs 
 in the savings bank. Two thousand francs in eight years ! 
 What luck! Would it be better to make no profit out of
 
 COUSIN PONS. 147 
 
 Monsieur Pens' dinner and keep him here at home? Ma'am 
 Fontaine's hen will tell me that." 
 
 Three years ago Mme. Cibot had begun to cherish a hope 
 that her name might be mentioned in "her gentlemen's" 
 wills ; she had redoubled her zeal since that covetous thought 
 tardily sprouted up in the midst of that so honest mustache. 
 Pons hitherto had dined abroad, eluding her desire to have 
 both of "her gentlemen" entirely under her management; 
 his "troubadour" collector's life had scared away certain 
 vague ideas which hovered in La Cibot's brain ; but now her 
 shadowy projects assumed the formidable shape of a definite 
 plan, dating from that memorable dinner. Fifteen minutes 
 later she reappeared in the dining-room with two cups of 
 excellent coffee, flanked by a couple of tiny glasses of kirsch- 
 wasser.* 
 
 "Long lif Montame Zipod ! " cried Schmucke; "she haf 
 guessed right ! " 
 
 The diner-out bemoaned himself a little, while Schmucke 
 met his lamentations with coaxing fondness, like a home 
 pigeon welcoming back a wandering bird. Then the pair set 
 out for the theatre. 
 
 Schmucke could not leave his friend in the condition to 
 which he had been brought by the Camusots mistresses and 
 servants. He knew Pons so well ; he feared lest some cruel, 
 sad thought should seize on him at his conductor's desk, and 
 undo all the good done by his welcome home to the nest. 
 
 And Schmucke brought his friend back on his arm through 
 the streets at midnight. A lover could not be more careful of 
 his lady. He pointed out the edges of the curbstones, he was 
 on the lookout whenever they stepped on or off the pavement, 
 ready with a warning if there was a gutter to cross. Schmucke 
 could have wished that the streets were paved with cotton- 
 down ; he would have had a blue sky overhead, and Pons 
 should hear the music which all the angels in heaven were 
 * A Swiss liqueur distilled from the black cherry.
 
 148 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 making for him. He had won the lost province in his friend's 
 heart ! 
 
 For nearly three months Pons and Schmucke dined together 
 every day. Pons was obliged to retrench at once ; for dinner 
 at forty-five francs a month and wine at thirty-five meant pre- 
 cisely eighty francs less to spend on bric-a-brac. And very 
 soon, in spite of all that Schmucke could do, in spite of his 
 little German jokes, Pons fell to regretting the delicate dishes, 
 the liqueurs, the good coffee, the table-talk, the insincere po- 
 liteness, the guests, and the gossip, and the houses where he 
 used to dine. On the wrong side of sixty a man cannot break 
 himself of a habit of thirty-six years' growth. Wine at a hun- 
 dred and thirty francs per hogshead is scarcely a generous 
 liquid in a gourmand's glass ; every time that Pons raised it 
 to his lips he thought, with infinite poignant regret, of the 
 exquisite wines in his entertainers' cellars. 
 
 In short, at the end of three months, the cruel pangs which 
 had gone near to break Pons' sensitive heart had died away; 
 he forgot everything but the charms of society ; and languished 
 for them like some elderly slave of a petticoat compelled to 
 leave the mistress who too repeatedly deceives him. In vain 
 he tried to hide his profound and consuming melancholy ; it 
 was too plain that he was suffering from one of the mysterious 
 complaints which the mind brings upon the body. 
 
 A single sympton will throw light upon this case of nostalgia 
 (as it were) produced by breaking away from an old habit ; in 
 itself it is trifling, one of the myriad nothings which are as 
 rings in a coat of chain-mail enveloping the soul in a network 
 of iron. One of the keenest pleasures of Pons' old life, one of the 
 joys of the dinner-table parasite at all times, was the "surprise," 
 the thrill produced by the extra dainty dish added triumphantly 
 to the bill of fare by the mistress of a bourgeois house, to give 
 a festal air to the dinner. Pons' stomach hankered after that 
 gastronomical satisfaction. Mme. Cibot, in the pride of her 
 heart, enumerated every dish beforehand ; a salt and savor
 
 COUSIN PONS. 149 
 
 once periodically recurrent, had vanished utterly from daily 
 life. Dinner proceeded without le plat couvert, as our grand- 
 sires called it. This lay beyond the bounds of Schmucke's 
 powers of comprehension. 
 
 Pons had too much delicacy to grumble; but if the case of 
 unappreciated genius is hard, it goes harder still with the 
 stomach whose claims are ignored. Slighted affection, a sub- 
 ject of which too much has been made, is founded upon an 
 illusory longing ; for, if the creature fails, love can turn to the 
 Creator who has treasures to bestow. But the stomach ! 
 Nothing can be compared to its sufferings ; for, in the first 
 place, one must live. 
 
 Pons thought wistfully of certain creams surely the poetry 
 of cookery ! of certain white sauces, masterpieces of the art ; 
 of truffled chickens, fit to melt your heart ; and above these, 
 and more than all these, of the famous Rhine carp, only known 
 at Paris, served with what condiments ! There were days 
 when Pons, thinking upon Count Popinot's cook, would sigh 
 aloud, "Ah, Sophie ! " Any passer-by hearing the exclama- 
 tion might have thought that the old man referred to a lost 
 mistress ; but his fancy dwelt upon something rarer, on a fat 
 Rhine carp with a sauce, thin in the sauce-boat, creamy upon 
 the palate, a sauce that deserved the Montyon prize ! The 
 conductor of the orchestra, living on memories of past din- 
 ners, grew visibly leaner ; he was pining away, a victim to 
 gastric nostalgia. 
 
 By the beginning of the fourth month (toward the end of 
 January, 1845) Pons' condition attracted attention at the 
 theatre. The flute, a young man named Wilhelm, like almost 
 all Germans ; and Schwab, to distinguish him from all other 
 Wilhelms, if not from all other Schwabs, judged it expedient 
 to open Schmucke's eyes to his friend's state of health. It 
 was a first performance of a piece in which Schmucke's instru- 
 ments were all required. 
 
 "The old gentleman is failing," said the flute; "there is
 
 150 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 something wrong somewhere ; his eyes are heavy, and he 
 doesn't beat time as he used to do," added Wilhelm Schwab, 
 indicating Pons as he gloomily took his place. 
 
 "Dat is alvays de vay, gif a man is sixty years old," an- 
 swered Schmucke. 
 
 The Highland widow, in "The Chronicles of the Canon- 
 gate," sent her son to his death to have him beside her for 
 twenty-four hours ; and Schmucke could have sacrificed 
 Pons for the sake of leeing his face every day across the din- 
 ner-table. 
 
 " Everybody in the theatre is anxious about him," continued 
 the flute; "and, as the premiere danseuse, Mile. Brisetout, 
 says, ' he makes hardly any noise now when he blows his 
 nose.'" 
 
 And, indeed, a peal like the blast of a horn used to resound 
 through the old musician's bandana handkerchief whenever 
 he raised it to that lengthy and cavernous feature. The presi- 
 dent's wife had more frequently found fault with him on that 
 score than on any other. 
 
 "I vould gif a goot teal to amuse him," said Schmucke, 
 "he gets so dull." 
 
 " Monsieur Pons always seems so much above the like of us 
 poor devils, that, upon my word, I didnt't dare to ask him to 
 my wedding," said Wilhelm Schwab. " I .am going to be 
 married " 
 
 " How? " demanded Schmucke. 
 
 "Oh! quite properly," returned Wilhelm Schwab, taking 
 Schmucke's quaint inquiry for a gibe, of which that perfect 
 Christian was quite incapable. 
 
 " Come, gentlemen, take your places ! " called Pons, look- 
 ing round at his little army, as the stage-manager's bell rang 
 for the overture. 
 
 The piece was a dramatized fairy tale, a pantomime called 
 "The Devil's Betrothed," which ran for two hundred nights. 
 In the interval, after the first act, Wilhelm Schwab and
 
 COUSIN PONS. 151 
 
 Schmucke were left alone in the orchestra, with a house at a 
 temperature of thirty-two degrees Reaumur. 
 
 "Tell me your hishdory," said Schmucke. 
 
 "Look there! Do you see that young man in the box 
 yonder ? Do you recognize him ? ' ' 
 
 "Nefer a pit " 
 
 "Ah! That is because he is wearing yellow gloves and 
 shines with all the radiance of riches, but that is my friend 
 Fritz Brunner out of Frankfort-on-the-Main." 
 
 " Dat used to komm to see du blay und sit peside you in 
 der orghestra ? ' ' 
 
 "The same. You would not believe he could look so 
 different, would you?" 
 
 The hero of the promised story was a German of that par- 
 ticular type in which the sombre irony of Goethe's Mephis- 
 topheles is blended with a homely cheerfulness found in the 
 romances of Auguste La Fontaine of pacific memory; but the 
 predominating element in the compound of artlessness and 
 guile, of storekeeper's shrewdness, and the studied careless- 
 ness of a member of the Jockey Club, was that form of disgust 
 which set a pistol in the hands of a young Werther, bored to 
 death less by Charlotte than by German princes. It was a 
 thoroughly German face, full of cunning, full of simplicity, 
 stupidity, and courage ; the knowledge which brings weari- 
 ness, the worldly wisdom which the veriest child's trick leaves 
 at fault, the abuse of beer and tobacco all these were there 
 to be seen in it, and, to heighten the contrast of opposed quali- 
 ties, there was a wild diabolical gleam in the fine blue eyes 
 with the jaded expression. 
 
 Dressed with all the elegance of a city man, Fritz Brunner 
 sat in full view of the house, displaying a bald crown of the 
 tint beloved by Titian, and a few stray, fiery red hairs on 
 either side of it ; a remnant spared by debauchery and want, 
 that the prodigal might have a right to spend money with the 
 hairdresser when he should come into his fortune. A face,
 
 152 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 once fair and fresh as the traditional portrait of Jesus Christ, 
 had grown harder since the advent of a red mustache ; a 
 tawny beard lent it an almost sinister look. The bright blue 
 eyes had lost something of their clearness in the struggle with 
 distress. The countless courses by which a man sells himself 
 and his honor in Paris had left their traces upon his eyelids 
 and carved lines about the eyes, into which a mother once 
 looked with a mother's rapture to find a copy of her own 
 fashioned by God's hand. 
 
 This precocious philosopher, this weazened youth, was the 
 work of a stepmother. 
 
 Herewith begins the curious history of a prodigal son of 
 Frankfort-on-the-Main the most extraordinary and astound- 
 ing portent ever beheld by that well-conducted, if central, city. 
 
 Gideon Brunner, father of the aforesaid Fritz, was one of 
 the famous innkeepers of Frankfort, a tribe who make law- 
 authorized incisions in travelers' purses with the connivance 
 of the local bankers. An innkeeper and an honest Calvinist 
 to boot, he had married a converted Jewess and laid the foun- 
 dations of his prosperity with the money she brought him. 
 
 When the Jewess died, leaving a son, Fritz, twelve years of 
 age, under the joint guardianship of his father and maternal 
 uncle, a furrier at Leipsic, head of the firm of Virlaz & Com- 
 pany, Brunner senior was compelled by his brother-in-law (who 
 was by no means as soft as his peltry) to invest little Fritz's 
 money, a goodly quantity of current coin of the realm, with the 
 house of Al-Sartchild. Not a penny of it was he allowed to 
 touch. So, by way of revenge for the Israelite's pertinacity, 
 Brunner senior married again. It was impossible, he said, to 
 keep his huge hotel single-handed ; it needed a woman's eye 
 and hand. Gideon Brunner's second wife was an innkeeper's 
 daughter, a very pearl, as he thought ; but he had had no ex- 
 perience of only daughters spoiled by father and mother. 
 
 The second Mme. Brunner behaved as German girls may 
 be expected to behave when they are frivolous and wayward.
 
 cousr.v PONS. 153 
 
 She squandered her fortune, she avenged the first Mme. 
 Brunner by making her husband as miserable a man as you 
 could find in the compass of the free city of Frankfort -on-the- 
 Main, where the millionaires, it is said, are about to pass a 
 law compelling womenkind to cherish and obey them alone. 
 She was partial to all the varieties of vinegar commonly called 
 Rhine wine in Germany; she was fond of articles Paris, of 
 horses and dress ; indeed, the one expensive taste which she 
 had not was a liking for women. She took a dislike to little 
 Fritz, and would perhaps have driven him mad if that young 
 offspring of Calvinism and Judaism had not had Frankfort for 
 his cradle and the firm of Virlaz at Leipsic for his guardian. 
 Uncle Virlaz, however, deep in his furs, confined his guardian- 
 ship to the safe-keeping of Fritz's silver marks, and left the 
 boy to the tender mercies of this stepmother. 
 
 That hyena in woman's form was the more exasperated 
 against the pretty child, the lovely Jewess' son, because she 
 herself could have no children in spite of efforts worthy of a 
 locomotive engine. A diabolical impulse prompted her to 
 plunge her young stepson, at twenty-one years of age, into 
 dissipations contrary to all German habits. The wicked 
 German hoped that English horses, Rhine vinegar, and 
 Goethe's Marguerites would ruin the Jewess' child and shorten 
 his days; for when Fritz came of age, Uncle Virlaz had 
 handed over a very pretty fortune to his nephew. But while 
 roulette at Baden and elsewhere, and boon companions (Wil- 
 helm Schwab among them) devoured the substance accumu- 
 lated by Uncle Virlaz, the prodigal son himself remained by 
 the will of Providence to point a moral to younger brothers 
 in the free city of Frankfort ; parents held him up as a warn- 
 ing and an awful example to their offspring to scare them into 
 steady attendance in their cast-iron counting-rooms, lined 
 with silver marks. 
 
 But so far from perishing in the flower of his age, Fritz 
 Brunner had the pleasure of laying his stepmother in one of
 
 154 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 those charming little German cemeteries, in which the Teuton 
 indulges his unbridled passion for horticulture under the 
 specious pretext of honoring his dead. And as the second 
 Mme. Brunner expired while the authors of her being were 
 yet alive, Brunner senior was obliged to bear the loss of the 
 sums of which his wife had drained his coffers, to say nothing 
 of other ills which had told upon a Herculean constitution, 
 till at the age of sixty-seven the innkeeper had weazened and 
 dried up shrunk as if the famous Borgia's poison had under- 
 mined his system. For ten whole years he had supported his 
 wife, and now he inherited nothing ! The innkeeper was a 
 second ruin of Heidelberg, repaired continually, it is true, by 
 travelers' hotel bills, much as the remains of the castle of 
 Heidelberg itself are repaired to sustain the enthusiasm of the 
 tourists who flock to see so fine and well-preserved a relic of 
 antiquity. 
 
 At Frankfort the disappointment caused as much talk as a 
 failure. People pointed out Brunner, saying : " See what a 
 man may come to with a bad wife that leaves him nothing and 
 a son brought up in the French fashion." 
 
 In Italy and Germany the French nation is the root of all 
 evil, the target for all bullets. " But the god pursuing his 
 way (For the rest, see Lefranc de Pompignan's Ode.) 
 
 The wrath of the proprietor of the Grand Hotel de Hol- 
 lande fell on others beside the travelers, whose bills were 
 swelled with his resentment. When his son was utterly ruined, 
 Gideon, regarding him as the indirect cause of all his mis- 
 fortunes, refused him bread and salt, fire, lodging, and tobacco 
 the force of the paternal malediction in a German and an 
 innkeeper could no further go. Whereupon the local authori- 
 ties, making no allowance for the father's misdeeds, regarded 
 him as one of the most ill-used persons in Frankfort-on-the- 
 Main, came to his assistance, fastened a quarrel on Fritz (une 
 querelle d' Allemand}, * and expelled him from the territory 
 * Lit. : A German quarrel meaning a groundless one.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 155 
 
 of the free city. Justice in Frankfort is no whit wiser nor 
 more humane than elsewhere, albeit the city is the seat of the 
 German Diet. It is not often that a magistrate traces back 
 the stream of wrongdoing and misfortune to the holder of the 
 urn from which the first beginnings trickled forth. If Brunner 
 forgot his son, his son's friends speedily followed the old inn- 
 keeper's example. 
 
 Ah ! if the journalists, the dandies, and some few fair Pari- 
 sians among the audience wondered how that German with 
 the tragical countenance had cropped up on a first night to 
 occupy a side-box all to himself when fashionable Paris filled 
 the house if these could have seen the history played out 
 upon the stage before the prompter's box, they would have 
 found it far more interesting than the transformation scenes of 
 "The Devil's Betrothed," though indeed it was the two hun- 
 dred thousandth representation of a sublime allegory performed 
 aforetime in Mesopotamia three thousand years before Christ 
 was born. 
 
 Fritz betook himself on foot to Strasbourg, and there found 
 what the prodigal son of the Bible failed to find to wit, a 
 friend. And herein is revealed the superiority of Alsace, 
 where so many generous hearts beat to show Germany the 
 beauty of a combination of Gallic wit and Teutonic solidity. 
 Wilhelm Schwab, but lately left in possession of a hundred 
 thousand francs by the death of both parents, opened his arms, 
 his heart, his house, his purse to Fritz. As for describing 
 Fritz's feelings, when dusty, down on his luck, and almost 
 like a leper, he crossed the Rhine and found a real twenty- 
 franc piece held out by the hand of a real friend that 
 moment transcends the powers of the prose-writer ; Pindar 
 alone could give it forth to humanity in Greek that should 
 rekindle the dying warmth of friendship in the world. 
 
 Put the names of Fritz and Wilhelm beside those of Damon 
 and Pythias, Castor and Pollux, Orestes and Pylades, Dubreuil 
 and Pmejah, Schmucke and Pons, and all the names that we
 
 156 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 imagine for the two friends of Monomotapa, for La Fontaine 
 (man of genius though he was) has made of them two dis- 
 embodied spirits they lack reality. The two new names may 
 join the illustrious company, and with so much the more 
 reason, since that Wilhelm who had helped to drink Fritz's 
 inheritance now proceeded, with Fritz's assistance, to devour 
 his own substance ; smoking, needless to say, every known 
 variety of tobacco. 
 
 The pair, strange to relate, squandered the property in the 
 dullest, stupidest, most commonplace fashion, in Strasbourg 
 brasseries (brew-houses), in the company of ballet-girls of the 
 Strasbourg theatres, and little Alsaciennes who had not a rag 
 of a tattered reputation left. 
 
 Every morning they would say : " We must really stop this, 
 and make up our minds and do something or other with the 
 money that is left." 
 
 " Pooh ! " Fritz would retort, "just one more day, and to- 
 morrow" ah! to-morrow. 
 
 In the lives of Prodigal Sons, TO-DAY is a prodigious cox- 
 comb, but TO-MORROW is a very poltroon, taking fright at the 
 big words of his predecessor. TO-DAY is the truculent captain 
 of old-world comedy. TO-MORROW the clown of modern 
 pantomime. 
 
 When the two friends had reached their last thousand-franc 
 note, they took places in the mail-coach, styled Royal, and 
 departed for Paris, where they installed themselves in the 
 attics of the Hotel du Rhin, in the Rue du Mail, the property 
 of one Graff, formerly Gideon Brunner's head-waiter. Fritz 
 found a situation as clerk in the Kellers' bank (on Graffs 
 recommendation), with a salary of six hundred francs. And 
 a place as book-keeper was likewise found for Wilhelm, in the 
 business of Graff the fashionable tailor, brother of Graff of 
 the Hotel du Rhin, who found the scantily paid employment 
 for the pair of prodigals for the sake of old times and his 
 apprenticeship at the Hotel de Hollande. These two inci-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 157 
 
 dents the recognition of a ruined man by a well-to-do friend, 
 and a German innkeeper interesting himself in two penniless 
 fellow-countrymen give, no doubt, an air of improbability to 
 the story, but truth is so much the more like fiction, since 
 modern writers of fiction have been at such untold pains to 
 imitate truth. 
 
 It was not long before Fritz, a clerk with six hundred 
 francs, and Wilhelm, a book-keeper with precisely the same 
 salary, discovered the difficulties of existence in a city so full 
 of temptations. In 1837, the second year of their abode, 
 Wilhelm, who possessed a pretty talent for the flute, entered 
 Pons' orchestra, to earn a little occasional butter to put on his 
 dry bread. As to Fritz, his only way to an increase of income 
 lay through the display of the capacity for business inherited 
 by a descendant of the Virlaz family. Yet, in spite of his 
 assiduity, in spite of abilities which possibly may have stood 
 in his way, his salary only reached the sum of two thousand 
 francs in 1843. Penury, that divine stepmother, did for the 
 two young men all that their mothers had not been able to do 
 for them ; Poverty taught them thrift and worldly wisdom ; 
 Poverty gave them her grand rough education, the lessons 
 which she drives with hard knocks into the heads of great 
 men, who seldom know a happy childhood. Fritz and 
 Wilhelm, being but ordinary men, learned as little as they 
 possibly could in her school ; they dodged the blows, shrank 
 from her hard breast and bony arms, and never discovered the 
 good fairy lurking within, ready to yield to the caresses of 
 genius. One thing, however, they learned thoroughly they 
 discovered the value of money, and vowed to clip the wings 
 of riches if ever a second fortune should come to their door. 
 
 This was the history which Wilhelm Schwab related in 
 German, at much greater length, to his friend the pianist, 
 ending with 
 
 "Well, Papa Schmucke, the rest is soon explained. Old 
 Brunner is dead. He left four millions ! He made an im-
 
 158 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 mense amount of money out of Baden railways, though neither 
 his son nor Graff, with whom we lodge, had any idea that the 
 old man was one of the original shareholders. I am playing 
 the flute here for the last time this evening ; I would have left 
 some days ago, but this was a first performance, and I did not 
 want to spoil my part." 
 
 "Goot, mein frient," said Schmucke. "But who is die 
 prite?" 
 
 "She is Mademoiselle Graff, the daughter of our host, the 
 landlord of the Hotel du Rhin. I have loved Mile. 
 Emilie these seven years; she has read so many immoral 
 novels, that she refused all offers for me, without knowing 
 what might come of it. She will be a very wealthy young 
 lady ; her uncles, the tailors in the Rue de Richelieu, will 
 leave her all their money. Fritz is giving me the money we 
 squandered at Strasbourg five times over ! He is putting a 
 million francs in a banking house, Monsieur Graff the tailor is 
 adding another five hundred thousand francs, and Mademoi- 
 selle Emilie's father not only allows me to incorporate her 
 portion two hundred and fifty thousand francs with the 
 capital, but he himself will be a shareholder with as much 
 again. So the firm of Brunner, Schwab & Company will 
 start with two million five hundred thousand francs. Fritz 
 has just bought fifteen hundred thousand francs' worth of 
 shares in the Bank of France to guarantee our account with 
 them. That is not all Fritz's fortune. He has his father's 
 house property, supposed to be worth another million, and he 
 has let the Grand Hotel de Hollande already to a cousin of 
 the Graffs." 
 
 "You look sad ven you look at your frient," remarked 
 Schmucke, who had listened with great interest. " Kan you 
 pe chealous of him ? " 
 
 "I am jealous for Fritz's happiness," said Wilhelm. 
 " Does that face look as if it belonged to a happy man ? I 
 am afraid of Paris ; I should like to see him do as I am doing.
 
 COUSIN PONS, 159 
 
 The old tempter may awake again. Of our two heads, his 
 carries the less ballast. His dress, and the opera-glass, and 
 the rest of it make me anxious. He keeps looking at the 
 lorettes in the house. Oh ! if you only knew how hard it is 
 to marry Fritz. He has a horror of 'going a-courting,' as 
 you say ; you would have to give him a drop into a family, 
 just as in England they give a man a drop into the next world 
 when he is hung." 
 
 During the uproar that usually marks the end of a first 
 night, the flute delivered his invitation to the conductor. 
 Pons accepted gleefully; and, for the first time in three 
 months, Schmucke saw a smile on his friend's face. They 
 went back to the Rue de Normandie in perfect silence ; that 
 sudden flash of joy had thrown a light on the extent of the 
 disease which was consuming Pons. Oh, that a man so truly 
 noble, so disinterested, so great in feeling, should have such 
 a weakness ! This was the thought which struck the stoic 
 Schmucke dumb with amazement. He grew wofully sad, for 
 he began to see that there was no help for it ; he must even 
 renounce the pleasure of seeing "his goot Bons " opposite 
 him at the dinner-table, for the sake of Pons' welfare; and he 
 did not know whether he could give him up; the mere 
 thought of it drove him distracted. 
 
 Meantime, Pons' proud silence and withdrawal to the Mons 
 Aventinus of the Rue de Normandie had, as might be ex- 
 pected, impressed the presidente, not that she troubled herself 
 much about her parasite, now that she was freed from him. 
 She thought, with her charming daughter, that Cousin Pons 
 had seen through her little "Lili's" joke. But it was other- 
 wise with her husband the president. 
 
 Camusot de Marville, a short and stout man, grown solemn 
 since his promotion at the Court, admired Cicero, preferred 
 the Opera-Comique to the Italiens, compared the actors one 
 with another, and followed the multitude step by step. He 
 used to recite all the articles in the Ministerialist journals, as
 
 160 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 if he were saying something original, and in giving his opin- 
 ion at the Council Board he paraphrased the remarks of the 
 previous speaker. His leading characteristics were sufficiently 
 well known ; his position compelled him to take everything 
 seriously ; and he was particularly tenacious of family ties. 
 
 Like most men who are ruled by their wives, the president 
 asserted his independence in trifles, in which his wife was very 
 careful not to thwart him. For a month he was satisfied with 
 the presidente's commonplace explanations of Pons' disap- 
 pearance ; but at last it struck him as singular that the old 
 musician, a friend of forty years' standing, should first make 
 them so valuable a present as a fan that belonged to Mme. de 
 Pompadour, and then immediately discontinue his visits. 
 Count Popinot had pronounced the trinket a masterpiece ; 
 when its owner went to Court, the fan had been passed from 
 hand to hand, and her vanity was not a little gratified by the 
 compliments it received ; others had dwelt on the beauties of 
 the ten ivory sticks, each one covered with delicate carving, 
 the like of which had never been seen. A Russian lady (Rus- 
 sian ladies are apt to forget that they are not in Russia) had 
 offered her six thousand francs for the marvel one day at 
 Count Popinot's house, and smiled to see it in such hands. 
 Truth to tell, it was a fan for a duchess. 
 
 "It cannot be denied that poor Cousin Pons understands 
 rubbish of that sort " said Cecile, the day after the bid. 
 
 "Rubbish!" cried the parent. "Why, Government is 
 just about to buy the late Monsieur le Conseiller Dusom- 
 merard's collection for three hundred thousand francs ; and 
 the State and the Municipality of Paris between them are 
 spending nearly a million francs over the purchase and repair 
 of the Hotel de Cluny to house the 'rubbish,' as you call it. 
 Such 'rubbish,' dear child," he resumed, "is frequently all 
 that remains of vanished civilizations. An Etruscan jar, and 
 a necklace, which sometimes fetch forty or fifty thousand 
 francs, is ' rubbish ' which reveals the perfection of art at the
 
 COUSIN PONS. 161 
 
 time of the siege of Troy, proving that the Etruscans were 
 Trojan refugees in Italy." 
 
 This was the president's cumbrous way of joking ; the short, 
 fat man was heavily ironical with his wife and daughter. 
 
 " The combination of various kinds of knowledge required 
 to understand such 'rubbish,' Cecile," he resumed, "is a 
 science in itself, called archaeology. Archaeology compre- 
 hends architecture, sculpture, painting, goldsmiths' work, 
 ceramics, cabinetmaking (a purely modern art), lace, tapestry 
 in short, human handiwork of every sort and description." 
 
 "Then Cousin Pons is learned?" said Cecile. 
 
 " Ah ! by-the-by, why is he never to be seen nowadays?" 
 asked the president. He spoke with the air of a man in whom 
 thousands of forgotten and dormant impressions have suddenly 
 begun to stir, and shaping themselves into one idea, reach 
 consciousness with a ricochet, as sportmen say. 
 
 "He must have taken offense at nothing at all," answered 
 his wife. " I dare say I was not as fully sensible as I might 
 have been of the value of the fan that he gave me. I am 
 ignorant enough, as you know, of " 
 
 " You! One of Servin's best pupils, and you don't know 
 Watteau?" cried the president. 
 
 "I know Gerard and David and Gros and Girodet, and 
 Monsieur de Forbin and Monsieur Turpin de Crisse " 
 
 "You ought " 
 
 "Ought what, sir?" demanded the lady, gazing at her 
 husband with the air of a Queen of Sheba. 
 
 " To know a Watteau when you see it, my dear. Watteau 
 is very much in fashion," answered the president with meek- 
 ness, that told plainly how much he owed to his wife. 
 
 This conversation took place a few days before that night 
 of first performance of "The Devil's Betrothed," when the 
 whole orchestra noticed how ill Pons was looking. But by 
 that time all the circle of dinner-givers who were used to see 
 Pons' face at their tables, and to send him on errands, had 
 11
 
 162 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 begun to ask each other for news of him, and uneasiness 
 increased when it was reported by some who had seen him 
 that he was always in his place at the theatre. Pons had been 
 very careful to avoid his old acquaintances whenever he met 
 them in the streets ; but one day it so fell out that he met 
 Count Popinot, the ex-cabinet minister, face to face in a bric- 
 a-brac dealer's store in the new Boulevard Beaumarchais. 
 The dealer was none other than that Monistrol of whom Pons 
 had spoken to the presidente, one of the famous and auda- 
 cious vendors whose cunning enthusiasm leads them to set more 
 and more value daily on their wares ; for curiosities, they tell 
 you, are growing so scarce that they are hardly to be found at 
 all nowadays. 
 
 " Ah, my dear Pons, how comes it that we never see you 
 now ? We miss you very much, and Madame Popinot does 
 not know what to think of your desertion." 
 
 "Monsieur le Comte," said the good man, "I was made 
 to feel in the house of a relative that at my age one is not 
 wanted in the world. I have never had much consideration 
 shown me, but at any rate I had not been insulted. I have 
 never asked anything of any man," he broke out with an 
 artist's pride. " I have often made myself useful in return 
 for hospitality. But I have made a mistake, it seems ; I am 
 infinitely beholden to those who honor me by allowing me 
 to sit at table with them ; my friends, my relatives Well 
 and good ; I have sent in my resignation as Smellfeast. At 
 home I find daily something which no other house has offered 
 me a real friend." 
 
 The old artist's power had not failed him ; with tone and 
 gesture he put such bitterness into the words, that the peer of 
 France was struck by them. He drew Pons aside. 
 
 "Come, now, my old friend, what is it? What has hurt 
 you? Could you not tell me in confidence? You will per- 
 mit me to say that at my house, surely, you have always met 
 with consideration "
 
 COUSIN PONS. 163 
 
 "You are the one exception," said the artist. "And, be- 
 side, you are a great lord and a statesman, you have so many 
 things to think about. That would excuse anything, if there 
 were need for it." 
 
 The diplomatic skill that Popinot had acquired in the man- 
 agement of men and affairs was brought to bear upon Pons, 
 till at length the story of his misfortunes in the president's 
 house was drawn from him. 
 
 Popinot took up the victim's cause so warmly that he told 
 the story to Mme. Popinot as soon as he went home, and that 
 excellent and noble-natured woman spoke to the presidente 
 on the subject at the first opportunity. As Popinot himself 
 likewise said a word or two to the president, there was a 
 general explanation in the family of Camusot de Marville. 
 
 Camusot was not exactly master in his own house ; but this 
 time his remonstrance was so well founded in law and in fact, 
 that his wife and. daughter were forced to acknowledge the 
 truth. They both humbled themselves and threw the blame 
 on the servants. The servants, first bidden and then chidden, 
 only obtained pardon by a full confession, which made it 
 clear to the president's mind that Pons had done rightly to 
 stop away. The president displayed himself before the ser- 
 vants in all his masculine and magisterial dignity, after the 
 manner of men who are ruled by their wives. He informed 
 his household that they should be dismissed forthwith, and 
 forfeit any advantages which their long term of service in his 
 house might have brought them, unless from that time forward 
 his cousin and all those who did him the honor of coming to 
 his house were treated as he himself was. At which speech 
 Madeleine was moved to smile. 
 
 " You have only one chance of salvation as it is," con- 
 tinued the president. " Go to my cousin, make your excuses 
 to him, and tell him that you will lose your situations unless 
 he forgives you, for I shall turn you all away if he does not." 
 
 Next morning the president went out fairly early to pay a
 
 164 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 call on his cousin before going down to the court. The ap- 
 parition of M. le President de Marville, announced by Mme. 
 Cibot, was an event in the house. Pons, thus honored for 
 the first time in his life, saw reparation ahead. 
 
 "At last, my dear cousin," said the president after the 
 ordinary greetings; "at last I have discovered the cause of 
 your retreat. Your behavior increases, if that were possible, 
 my esteem for you. I have but one word to say in that con- 
 nection. My servants have all been dismissed. My wife and 
 daughter are in despair ; they want to see you to have an ex- 
 planation. In all this, my cousin, there is one innocent per- 
 son, and he is an old judge ; you will not punish me, will you, 
 for the escapade of a thoughtless child who wished to dine 
 with the Popinots ? especially when I come to beg for peace, 
 admitting that all the wrong has been on our side ? An old 
 friendship of thirty-six years, even supposing that there had 
 been a misunderstanding, has still some claims. Come, sign 
 a treaty of peace by dining with us to-night " 
 
 Pons involved himself in a diffuse reply, and ended by in- 
 forming his cousin that he was to sign a marriage-contract that 
 evening ; how that one of the orchestra was not only going to 
 be married, but also about to fling his flute to the winds to 
 become a banker. 
 
 "Very well. To-morrow." 
 
 "Madame la Comtesse Popinot has done me the honor of 
 asking me, cousin. She was so kind as to write " 
 
 "The day after to-morrow then." 
 
 " Monsieur Brunner, a German, my first flute's future part- 
 ner, returns the compliment paid him to-day by the young 
 couple ' ' 
 
 " You are such pleasant company that it is not surprising 
 that people dispute for the honor of seeing you. Very well, 
 next Sunday? Within a week, as we say at the courts? " 
 
 " On Sunday we are to dine with Monsieur Graff, the flute's 
 father-in-law."
 
 COUSIN PONS. 165 
 
 " Very well, on Saturday ! Between now and then you 
 will have time to reassure a little girl who has shed tears al- 
 ready over her fault. God asks no more than repentance ; 
 you will not be more severe than the Eternal Father with poor 
 little Cecile ? " 
 
 Pons, thus reached on his weak side, again plunged into 
 formulas more than polite, and went as far as the stairhead 
 with the president. 
 
 An hour later the president's servants arrived in a troop on 
 poor Pons' third floor. They behaved after the manner of 
 their kind ; they cringed and fawned ; they wept. Madeleine 
 took M. Pons aside and flung herself resolutely at his feet. 
 
 " It is all my fault ; and monsieur knows quite well that I 
 love him," here she burst into tears. "It was vengeance 
 boiling in my veins ; monsieur ought to throw all the blame 
 of the unhappy affair on that. We are all to lose our pen- 
 sions monsieur, I was mad, and I would not have the rest 
 
 suffer for my fault. I can see now well enough that fate did 
 not make me for monsieur. I have come to my senses, I 
 aimed too high, but I love you still, monsieur. These ten 
 years I have thought of nothing but the happiness of making 
 you happy and looking after things here. What a lot ! Oh ! 
 if monsieur but knew how much I love him ! But monsieur 
 must have seen it through all my mischief-making. If I were 
 to die to-morrow, what would they find? A will in your 
 favor, monsieur. Yes, monsieur, in my trunk under my best 
 things." 
 
 Madeleine had set a responsive chord vibrating ; the pas- 
 sion inspired in another may be unwelcome, but it will always 
 be gratifying to self-love ; this was the case with the old 
 bachelor. After generously pardoning Madeleine, he ex- 
 tended his forgiveness to the other servants, promising to use 
 his influence with his cousin the presidente on their behalf. 
 
 It was unspeakably pleasant to Pons to find all his old en- 
 joyments restored to him without any loss of self-respect. The
 
 166 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 world had come to Pons, he had risen in the esteem of his 
 circle ; but Schmucke looked so downcast and dubious when 
 he heard the story of the triumph, that Pons felt hurt. 
 When, however, the kind-hearted German saw the sudden 
 change wrought in Pons' face, he ended by rejoicing with his 
 friend, and made a sacrifice of the happiness that he had 
 known during those four months that he had had Pons all to 
 himself. Mental suffering has this immense advantage over 
 physical ills when the cause is removed it ceases at once. 
 Pons was not like the same man that morning. The old man, 
 depressed and visibly failing, had given place to the serenely 
 contented Pons, who entered the presidente's house that 
 October afternoon with the Marquise de Pompadour's fan in 
 his pocket. Schmucke, on the other hand, pondered deeply 
 over this phenomenon, and could not understand it ; your 
 true stoic never can understand the courtier that dwells in a 
 Frenchman. Pons was a born Frenchman of the Empire ; a 
 mixture of eighteenth-century gallantry and that devotion to 
 womankind so often celebrated in songs of the type of " Par- 
 tant pour la Syrie." 
 
 So Schmucke was fain to bury his chagrin beneath the 
 flowers of his German philosophy ; but a week later he grew 
 so yellow that Mme. Cibot exerted her ingenuity to call in 
 the parish doctor. The leech had fears of icterus, and left 
 Mme. Cibot frightened half out of her wits by the Latin 
 word for an attack of the jaundice. 
 
 Meantime the two friends went out to dinner together, per- 
 haps for the first time in their lives. For Schmucke it was a 
 return to the Fatherland ; for Johann Graff of the Hotel du 
 Rhin and his daughter Emilie, Wolfgang Graff the tailor and 
 his wife, Fritz Brunner and Wilhelm Schwab were Germans, 
 and Pons and the notary were the only Frenchmen present at 
 the banquet. The Graffs of the tailor's business owned a 
 splendid house in the Rue de Richelieu, between the Rue 
 Neuve-des-Petits-Champs and the Rue Villedo; they had
 
 COUSIN PONS. 167 
 
 brought up their niece, for Emilie's father, not without 
 reason, had feared contact with the very mixed society of an 
 inn for his daughter. The good tailor Graffs, who loved 
 Emilie as if she had been their own daughter, were giving up 
 the first floor of their great house to the young couple, and 
 here the bank of Brunner, Schwab & Company was to be 
 established. The arrangements for the marriage had been 
 made about a month ago ; some time must elapse before Fritz 
 Brunner, author of all this felicity, could settle his deceased 
 father's affairs, and the famous firm of tailors had taken ad- 
 vantage of the delay to redecorate the second floor and to 
 furnish it very handsomely for the bride and bridegroom. 
 The offices of the bank had been fitted into the wing which 
 united a handsome business house with the old hotel at the 
 back, between courtyard and garden. 
 
 On the way from the Rue de Normandie to the Rue de 
 Richelieu, Pons drew from the abstracted Schmucke the de- 
 tails of the story of the modern prodigal son, for whom Death 
 had killed the fatted innkeeper. Pons, but newly reconciled 
 with his nearest relatives, was immediately smitten with a de- 
 sire to make a match between Fritz Brunner and Ccile de 
 Marville. Chance ordained that the notary was none other 
 than Berthier, old Cardot's son-in-law and successor, the 
 sometime second clerk with whom Pons had been wont to 
 dine. 
 
 "Ah ! Monsieur Berthier, you here?" he said, holding out 
 a hand to his host of former days. 
 
 " We have not had the pleasure of seeing you at dinner 
 lately; how is it?" returned the notary. "My wife has 
 been anxious about you. We saw you at the first performance 
 of 'The Devil's Betrothed,' and our anxiety became cur- 
 iosity?" 
 
 "Old people are very sensitive," replied the worthy musi- 
 cian ; " they make the mistake of being a century behind the 
 times, but see, now, how can it be helped ? It is quite enough
 
 168 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 to represent one century they cannot entirely belong to the 
 century which sees them die." 
 
 " Ah ! " said the notary, with a shrewd look, " one cannot 
 run two centuries at once." 
 
 "By-the-by," continued Pons, drawing the young lawyei 
 into a corner, " why do you not find some one for my cousin 
 Cecile de Marville " 
 
 "Ah! why ?" answered Berthier. "In this century, 
 
 when luxury has filtered down to our very porters' lodges, a 
 young fellow hesitates before uniting his lot with the daughter 
 of a president of the Court of Appeals in Paris if she brings 
 him only a hundred thousand francs. In the rank of life in 
 which Mademoiselle de Marville's husband would take, the 
 wife was never yet known that did not cost her husband three 
 thousand francs a year ; the interest on a hundred thousand 
 francs would scarcely find her in pin-money. A bachelor 
 with an income of fifteen or twenty thousand francs can live 
 on an entresol ; he is not expected to cut any figure ; he need 
 not keep more than one servant, and all his surplus income he 
 can spend on his amusements; he puts himself in the hands of 
 a good tailor, and need not trouble any further about keeping 
 up appearances. Far-sighted mothers make much of him ; he 
 is one of the kings of fashion in Paris. 
 
 "But a wife changes everything. A wife means a properly 
 furnished house," continued the lawyer; "she wants the car- 
 riage for herself; if she goes to the play, she wants a box, 
 while the bachelor has only a stall to pay for ; in short, a wife 
 represents the whole of the income which the bachelor used to 
 spend on himself. Suppose that husband and wife have thirty 
 thousand francs a year between them practically, the some- 
 time bachelor is a poor devil who thinks twice before he drives 
 out to Chantilly. Bring children on the scene he is pinched 
 for money at once. 
 
 " Now, as Monsieur and Madame de Marville are scarcely 
 turned fifty, Cecile's expectations are bills that will not fall
 
 COUSIN PONS. 169 
 
 due for fifteen or twenty years to come ; and no young fellow 
 cares to keep them so long in his portfolio. The young feather- 
 heads who are dancing the polka with lorettes at the 
 Mabille Garden are so cankered with self-interest that they 
 don't stand in need of us to explain both sides of the problem 
 to them. Between ourselves, I may say that Mademoiselle de 
 Marville scarcely sets hearts throbbing so fast but that their 
 owners can perfectly keep their heads, and they are full of these 
 antimatrimonial reflections. If any eligible young man, in 
 full possession of his senses and an income of twenty thousand 
 francs, happens to be sketching out a programme of a marriage 
 that will satisfy his ambitions, Mademoiselle de Marville does 
 not altogether answer the description " 
 
 "And why not?" asked the bewildered musician. 
 
 "Oh! " said the notary, "well a young man 
 
 nowadays may be as ugly as you and I, my dear Pons, but he 
 is almost sure to have the impertinence to want six hundred 
 thousand francs, a girl of good family, with wit and good 
 looks and good breeding flawless perfection, in short." 
 
 "Then it will not be easy to marry her?" 
 
 " She will not be married so long as Monsieur and Madame 
 de Marville cannot make up their minds to settle Marville on 
 her when she marries ; if they had chosen, she might have been 
 the Vicomtesse Popinot by now. But here comes Monsieur 
 Brunner. We are about to read the deeds of partnership and 
 the marriage-contract." 
 
 Greetings and introductions over, the relations made Pons 
 promise to sign the contract. He listened to the reading of 
 the documents, and toward half-past five the party went into 
 the dining-room. The dinner was magnificent, as a city 
 merchant's dinner can be, when he allows himself a respite 
 from money-making. Graff of the Hotel du Rhin was ac- 
 quainted with the first provision dealers in Paris ; never had 
 Pons nor Schmucke fared so sumptuously. The dishes were a 
 rapture to think of! Italian paste, delicate of flavor, unknown
 
 170 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 to the public ; smelts fried as never smelts were fried before ; 
 fish from Lake Leman, with a real Genevese sauce ; and a 
 cream for plum-pudding which would have astonished the 
 London doctor who is said to have invented it. It was nearly 
 ten o'clock before they rose from table. The amount of wine, 
 German and French, consumed at that dinner would amaze 
 the contemporary dandy ; nobody knows the amount of liquor 
 that a German can imbibe and yet keep calm and quiet ; to 
 have even an idea of the quantity, you must dine in Germany 
 and watch bottle succeed to bottle, like wave rippling after 
 wave along the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, and dis- 
 appear as if the Teuton possessed the absorbing power of 
 sponges or sea-sand. Perfect harmony prevails meanwhile ; 
 there is none of the racket that there would be over the liquor 
 in France ; the talk is as sober as a money-lender's extempore 
 speech; countenances flush, like the faces of the brides in 
 frescoes by Cornelius or Schnorr (imperceptibly, that is to 
 say), and reminiscences are poured out slowly while the smoke 
 puffs from the pipes. 
 
 About half-past ten that evening Pons and Schmucke found 
 themselves sitting on a bench out in the garden, with the ex- 
 flute between them; they were explaining their characters, 
 opinions, and misfortunes, with no very clear idea as to why 
 or how they had come to this point. In the thick of a pot- 
 pourri of confidences, Wilhelm spoke of his strong desire to 
 see Fritz married, expressing himself with vehement and 
 vinous eloquence. 
 
 " What do you say to this programme for your friend 
 Brunner?" cried Pons in confidential tones. "A charming 
 and sensible young lady of twenty-four, belonging to a family 
 of the highest distinction. The father holds a very high posi- 
 tion as a judge ; there will be a hundred thousand francs paid 
 down and a million to come." 
 
 "Wait!" answered Schwab; "I will speak to Fritz this 
 instant."
 
 COUSIN PONS. 171 
 
 The pair watched Brunner and his friend as they walked 
 round and round the garden ; again and again they passed the 
 bench, sometimes one spoke, sometimes the other. 
 
 Pons was not exactly intoxicated ; his head was a little 
 heavy, but his thoughts, on the contrary, seemed all the 
 lighter ; he watched Fritz Brunner's face through the rainbow 
 mist made of fumes of wine, and tried to read auguries favor- 
 able to his family. Before very long Schwab introduced his 
 friend and partner to M. Pons ; Fritz Brunner expressed his 
 thanks for the trouble which Pons had been so good as to 
 take. 
 
 In the conversation which followed, the two old bachelors, 
 Schmucke and Pons, extolled the estate of matrimony, going 
 so far as to say, without any malicious intent, " that marriage 
 was the end of man." Tea and ices, punch and cakes, were 
 served in the future home of the betrothed couple. The wine 
 had begun to tell upon the honest merchants, and the general 
 hilarity reached its height when it was announced that Schwab's 
 partner thought of following his example. 
 
 At two o'clock that morning, Schmucke and Pons walked 
 home along the boulevards, philosophizing a perte de raison* 
 as they went on the harmony pervading the arrangements of 
 this our world below. 
 
 On the morrow of the banquet, Cousin Pons betook himself 
 to his fair cousin the presidente, overjoyed poor dear noble 
 soul ! to return good for evil. Surely he had attained to a 
 sublime height, as every one will allow, for we live in an age 
 when the Montyon prize is given to those who do their duty 
 by carrying out the precepts of the Gospel. 
 
 "Ah ! " said Pons to himself, as he turned the corner of the 
 Rue de Choiseul, " they will lie under immense obligations to 
 their parasite." 
 
 Any man less absorbed in his contentment, any man of the 
 world, any distrustful nature, would have watched the presi- 
 * In rambling talk.
 
 172 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 dent's wife and daughter very narrowly on this first return to 
 the house. But the poor musician was a child, he had all the 
 simplicity of an artist, believing in goodness as he believed in 
 beauty; .so he was delighted when Cecile and her mother 
 made much of him. After all the vaudevilles, tragedies, and 
 comedies which had been played under the worthy man's eyes 
 for twelve long years, he could not detect the insincerity and 
 grimaces of social comedy, no doubt because he had seen too 
 much of it. Any one who goes into society in Paris, and 
 knows the type of woman, dried up, body and soul, by a 
 burning thirst for social position, and a fierce desire to be 
 thought cunningly virtuous, any one familiar with the sham 
 piety and the domineering character of a woman whose word 
 is law in her own house, may imagine the lurking hatred she 
 bore this husband's cousin whom she had wronged. 
 
 All the demonstrative friendliness of mother and daughter 
 was lined with a formidable longing for revenge, that must 
 evidently be postponed. For the first time in Amelie de 
 Marville's life she had been put in the wrong, and that in the 
 sight of the husband over whom she tyrannized ; and not only 
 so she was obliged to be amiable to the author of her defeat ! 
 You can scarcely find a match for this position save in the 
 hypocritical dramas which are sometimes kept up for years in 
 the sacred college of cardinals, or in chapters of certain relig- 
 ious orders. 
 
 At three o'clock, when the president came back from the 
 law-courts, Pons had scarcely made an end of the marvelous 
 history of his acquaintance, M. Frederic Brunner. Cecile 
 had gone straight to the point. She wanted to know how 
 Frederic Brunner was dressed, how he looked, his height and 
 figure, the color of his hair and eyes ; and when she had con- 
 jectured a distinguished air for Frederic, she admired his 
 generosity of character. 
 
 "Think of his giving five hundred thousand francs to his 
 companion in misfortune ! Oh ! mamma, I shall have a car-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 173 
 
 riage and a box at the Italians " Cecile grew almost 
 
 pretty as she thought that all her mother's ambitions for her 
 were about to be realized, that the hopes which had almost 
 left her were to come to something after all. 
 
 As for the presidente, all that she said was : " My dear little 
 girl, you may perhaps be married within the fortnight." 
 
 All mothers with daughters of three-and-twenty address them 
 as "little girl." 
 
 "Still," added the president, "in any case, we must have 
 time to make inquiries; never will I give my daughter to just 
 anybody " 
 
 "As to inquiries," said Pons, " Berthier is drawing up the 
 deeds. As to the young man himself, my dear cousin, 
 you remember what you told me ? Well, he is quite forty 
 years old; he is bald. He wishes to find in family life a 
 haven after storm ; I did not dissuade him ; every man has 
 his taste " 
 
 "One reason the more for a personal interview," returned 
 the president. "I am not going to give my daughter to a 
 valetudinarian." 
 
 "Very good, cousin, you shall see my suitor in five days if 
 you like ; for, with your views, a single interview would be 
 enough" (Cecile and her mother signified their rapture) 
 "Frederic is decidedly a distinguished amateur; he begged 
 me to allow him to see my little collection at his leisure. 
 You have never seen my pictures and curiosities ; come and 
 see them," he continued, looking at his relatives. " You can 
 come simply as two ladies, brought by my friend Schmucke, 
 and make Monsieur Brunner's acquaintance without betraying 
 yourselves. Frederic need not in the least know who you are." 
 
 " Admirable ! " cried the president. 
 
 The attention they paid to the once scorned parasite may 
 be left to the imagination ! Poor Pons that day became 
 the presidente's cousin. The happy mother drowned her dis- 
 like in floods of joy ; her looks, her smiles, her words sent
 
 174 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 the old man into ecstasies over the good that he had done, 
 over the future that he saw by glimpses. Was he not sure to 
 find dinners such as yesterday's banquet over the signing of 
 the contract, multiplied indefinitely by three, in the houses 
 of Brunner, Schwab, and Graff? He saw before him a land 
 of plenty a vie de cocagne* a miraculous succession of plats 
 converts, or delicate surprise dishes, and of exquisite wines. 
 
 "If Cousin Pons brings this through," said the president, 
 addressing his wife after Pons had departed, " we ought to 
 settle an income upon him equal to his salary at the theatre." 
 
 " Certainly," said the lady; and Cecile was informed that, 
 if the proposed suitor found favor in her eyes, she must under- 
 take to induce the old musician to accept a munificence in 
 such bad taste. 
 
 Next day the president went to Berthier. He was anxious 
 to make sure of M. Frederic Brunner's financial position. 
 Berthier, forewarned by Mme. de Marville, had asked his new 
 client Schwab to come. Schwab the banker was dazzled by 
 the prospect of such a match for his friend (everybody knows 
 how deeply a German venerates social distinctions, so much 
 so, that in Germany a wife takes her husband's (official) title, 
 and is the Frau General, the Frau Rath, and so forth) Schwab 
 therefore was as accommodating as a collector who imagines 
 that he is cheating a dealer. 
 
 "In the first place," said Cecile's father, "as I shall make 
 over my estate of Marville to my daughter, I should wish the 
 contract to be drawn up on the dotal system. In that case, 
 Monsieur Brunner would invest a million francs in land to 
 increase the estate, and by settling the land on his wife he 
 would secure her and his children from any share in the lia- 
 bilities of the bank." 
 
 Berthier stroked his chin. " He is coming on well, is 
 Monsieur le President," thought he. 
 
 When the dotal system had been explained to Schwab, he 
 * A life of plenty.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 175 
 
 seemed much inclined that way for his friend. He had heard 
 Fritz say that he wished to find some way of insuring himself 
 against another lapse into poverty. 
 
 "There is a farm and pasture-land worth twelve hundred 
 thousand francs in the market at this moment," remarked the 
 president. 
 
 " If we take up shares in the Bank of France to the amount 
 of a million francs, that will be quite enough to guarantee our 
 account," said Schwab. "Fritz does not want to invest more 
 than two million francs in business ; he will do as you wish, 
 I am sure, Monsieur le President." 
 
 The president's wife and daughter were almost wild with 
 joy when he brought home this news. Never, surely, did so 
 rich a capture swim so complacently into the nets of mat- 
 rimony. 
 
 "You will be Madame Brunner de Marville," said the 
 parent, addressing his child; "I will obtain permission for 
 your husband to add the name to his, and afterward he can 
 take out letters of naturalization. If I should be a peer of 
 France some day, he will succeed me ! " 
 
 The five days were spent by Mme. de Marville in prepara- 
 tions. On the great day she dressed Cecile herself, taking as 
 much pains as the admiral of the British fleet takes over the 
 dressing of .the pleasure yacht for Her Majesty of England 
 when she takes a trip to Germany. 
 
 Pons and Schwab, on their side, cleaned, swept, and dusted 
 Pens' museum rooms and furniture with the agility of sailors 
 cleaning down a man-of-war. There was not a speck of dust 
 on the carved wood ; not an inch of brass but it glistened. 
 The glasses over the pastels obscured nothing of the work of 
 Latour, Greuze, and Liotard (illustrious painter of The Choc- 
 olate Girl), miracles of an art, alas ! so fugitive. The inimi- 
 table lustre of Florentine bronze took all the varying hues of 
 the light ; the painted glass glowed with color. Every line 
 shone out brilliantly, every object threw in its phrase in a
 
 176 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 harmony 01 masterpieces arranged by two musicians both of 
 whom alike had attained to be poets. 
 
 With a tact which avoided the difficulties of a late appear- 
 ance on the scene of action, the women were the first to 
 arrive ; they wished to be upon their own ground. Pons in- 
 troduced his friend Schmucke, who seemed to his fair visitors 
 to be an idiot ; their heads were so full of the eligible gentle- 
 man with the four millions of francs, that they paid but little 
 attention to the worthy Pens' dissertations upon matters of 
 which they were completely ignorant. 
 
 They looked with indifferent eyes at Petitot's enamels, 
 spaced over crimson velvet, set in three frames of marvelous 
 workmanship. Flowers by Van Huysum, David, and Heim ; 
 butterflies painted by Abraham Mignon ; Van Eycks, un- 
 doubted Cranachs and Albrecht Durers ; the Giorgione, the 
 Sebastian del Piombo ; Backhuijzen, Hobbema, Gericault, the 
 rarities of painting none of these things so much as aroused 
 their curiosity; they were waiting for the sun to arise and 
 shine upon these treasures. Still, they were surprised by the 
 beauty of some of the Etruscan trinkets and the solid value of 
 the snuff-boxes, and out of politeness they went into ecstasies 
 over some Florentine bronzes which they held in their hands 
 when Mme. Cibot announced M. Brunner ! They did not 
 turn ; they took advantage of a superb Venetian mirror framed 
 in huge masses of carved ebony to scan this phoenix of eligible 
 young men. 
 
 Frederic, forewarned by Wilhelm, had made the most of 
 the little hair that remained to him. He wore a neat pair of 
 trousers, a soft shade of some dark color ; a silk vest of super- 
 lative elegance and the very newest cut ; a shirt with open- 
 work, its linen hand-woven by a Friesland woman ; and a blue- 
 and-white cravat. His watch-chain, like the head of his cane, 
 came from Messrs. Florent and Chanor ; and the coat, cut by 
 old Graff himself, was of the very finest cloth. The Suede 
 gloves proclaimed the man who had run through his mother's
 
 COUSIN PONS. 177 
 
 fortune. You could have seen the banker's neat little brougham 
 and pair of horses mirrored in the surface of his speckless var- 
 nished boots, even if two pairs of sharp ears had not already 
 caught the sound of the wheels outside in the Rue de Nor- 
 mandie. 
 
 When the prodigal of twenty years is a kind of chrysalis 
 from which a banker emerges at the age of forty, the said 
 banker is usually an observer of human nature ; and so much 
 the more shrewd if, as in Brunner's case, he understands how 
 to turn his German simplicity to good account. He had 
 assumed for the occasion the abstracted air of a man who is 
 hesitating between family life and the dissipations of bachelor- 
 hood. This expression in a Frenchified German seemed to 
 Cecile to be in the highest degree romantic; the descendant 
 of the Virlaz was a second Werther in her eyes where is the 
 girl who will not allow herself to weave a little novel about 
 her marriage ? Cecile thought herself the happiest of women 
 when Brunner, looking round at the magnificent works of art 
 so patiently collected during forty years, waxed enthusiastic, 
 and Pons, to his no small satisfaction, found an appreciative 
 admirer of his treasures for the first time in his life. 
 
 " He is poetical," the young lady said to herself; " he sees 
 millions in the things. A poet is a man that cannot count 
 and leaves his wife to look after his money an easy man to 
 manage and amuse with trifles." 
 
 Every pane in the two windows was a square of Swiss 
 painted glass ; the least of them was worth a thousand francs ; 
 and I*ons possessed sixteen of these unrivaled works of art 
 for which amateurs seek so eagerly nowadays. In 1815 the 
 panes could be bought for six or ten francs apiece. The value 
 of the glorious collection of pictures, flawless great works, 
 authentic, untouched since they left the master's hands, could 
 only be proved in the fiery furnace of a salesroom. Not a 
 picture but was set in a costly frame ; there were frames of 
 every kind Venetians, carved with heavy ornaments, like 
 12
 
 178 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 English plate of the present day; Romans, distinguishable 
 among the others for a certain dash that artists call flafla ; 
 Spanish wreaths in bold relief; Flemings and Germans with 
 quaint figures, tortoise-shell frames inlaid with copper and 
 brass and mother-of-pearl and ivory; frames of ebony and 
 boxwood in the styles of Louis Treize, Louis Quatorze, Louis 
 Quinze, and Louis Seize in short, it was a unique collection 
 of the finest models. Pons, luckier than the art museums of 
 Dresden and Vienna, possessed a frame by the famous Brus- 
 toloni the Michael Angelo of wood-carvers. 
 
 Mile, de Marville naturally asked for explanations of each 
 new curiosity, and was initiated into the mysteries of art by 
 Brunner. Her exclamations were so childish, she seemed so 
 pleased to have the value and beauty of the paintings, carv- 
 ings, or bronzes pointed out to her, that the German grad- 
 ually thawed and looked quite young again, and both were 
 led on further than they intended at this (purely accidental) 
 first meeting. 
 
 The private view lasted for three hours. Brunner offered 
 his arm when Cecile went downstairs. As they descended 
 slowly and discreetly, Cecile, still talking fine art, wondered 
 that M. Brunner should admire her cousin's gimcracks so 
 much. 
 
 "Do you really think that these things that we have just 
 seen are worth a great deal of money ? " 
 
 " Mademoiselle, if your cousin would sell his collection, I 
 would give eight hundred thousand francs for it this evening, 
 and I should not make a bad bargain. The pictures alone 
 would fetch more than that at a public sale." 
 
 " Since you say so, I believe it," returned she ; " the things 
 took up so much of your attention that it must be so." 
 
 " Oh ! mademoiselle ! " protested Brunner. " For all an- 
 swer to your reproach, I will ask your mother's permission to 
 call, so that I may have the pleasure of seeing you again." 
 
 "How clever she is, that 'little girl ' of mine ! " thought
 
 COUSIN PONS. 179 
 
 the presidente, following closely upon her daughter's heels. 
 Aloud she said, " With the greatest pleasure, monsieur. I 
 hope that you will come at dinner-time with our Cousin Pons. 
 The president will be delighted to make your acquaintance. 
 Thank you, cousin." 
 
 The lady squeezed Pons' arm with deep meaning; she 
 could not have said more if she had used the consecrated 
 formula: "Let us swear an eternal friendship." The glance 
 which accompanied that " Thank you, cousin," was a caress. 
 
 When the young lady had been put into the carriage, and 
 the hired carriage had disappeared down the Rue Chariot, 
 Brunner talked bric-a-brac to Pons, and Pons talked marriage. 
 
 " Then you see no obstacle ? " said Pons. 
 
 "Oh ! " said Brunner, "she is an insignificant little thing, 
 and the mother is a trifle prim. We shall see." 
 
 "A handsome fortune one of these days. More than a 
 million " > 
 
 " Good-by till Monday ! " interrupted the millionaire. " If 
 you should care to sell your collection of pictures, I would 
 give you five or six hundred thousand francs " 
 
 "Ah ! " said Pons; he had no idea that he was so rich. 
 " But they are my great pleasure in life, and I could not 
 bring myself to part with them. I could only sell my col- 
 lection to be delivered after my death." 
 
 " Very well. We shall see." 
 
 "Here we have two affairs afoot," said Pons; he was 
 thinking only of the marriage. 
 
 Brunner shook hands and drove away in his splendid car- 
 riage. Pons watched it out of sight. He did not notice that 
 Remonencq was smoking his pipe in the doorway. 
 
 That evening Mme. de Marville went to ask advice of her 
 father-in-law, and found the whole Popinot family at the 
 Camusots' house. It was only natural that a mother who had 
 failed to capture an eldest son should be tempted to take her 
 little revenge ; so Mme. de Marville threw out hints of the
 
 180 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 splendid marriage that her Cecile was about to make. " Whom 
 can Cecile be going to marry?" was the question upon all 
 lips. And Cecile's mother, without suspecting that she was 
 betraying the secret, let fall words and whispered confidences, 
 afterward supplemented by Madame Berthier, till gossip cir- 
 culating in the bourgeois empyrean where Pons accomplished 
 his gastronomical evolutions took something like the following 
 form : 
 
 " Cecile de Marville is engaged to be married to a young 
 German, a banker from philanthropic motives, for he has four 
 millions ; he is like a hero of a novel, a perfect Werther, 
 charming and kind-hearted. He has sown his wild oats, and 
 he is distractedly in love with Cecile ; it is a case of love at 
 first sight ; and so much the more certain, since Cecile had 
 all Pons' paintings of Madonnas for rivals," and so forth and 
 so forth. 
 
 Two or three of the set came to call on the presidente, os- 
 tensibly to congratulate, but really to find out whether or not 
 the marvelous tale were true. For their benefit Mme. de 
 Marville executed the following admirable variations on the 
 theme of son-in-law which mothers may consult, as people 
 used to refer to the " Complete Letter Writer." 
 
 "A marriage is not an accomplished fact," she told Mme. 
 Chiffreville, "until you have been to the mayor's office and 
 the church. We have only come as far as a personal inter- 
 view ; so I count upon your friendship to say nothing of our 
 hopes." 
 
 "You are very fortunate, madame ; marriages are so diffi- 
 cult to arrange in these days." 
 
 " What can one do ? It was chance ; but marriages are 
 often made in that way." 
 
 "Ah! well. So you are going to marry Cecile?" said 
 Mme. Cardot. 
 
 "Yes," said Chile's mother, fully understanding the mean- 
 ing of the "so." " We were very particular, or Cecile would
 
 COUSIN PONS. 181 
 
 have been established before this. But now we have found 
 everything that we wish : money, good temper, gocd char- 
 acter, and good looks ; and my sweet little girl certainly de- 
 serves nothing less. Monsieur Brunner is a charming young 
 man, most distinguished ; he is fond of luxury, he knows life ; 
 he is wild about Cecile, he loves her sincerely ; and, in spite 
 of his three or four millions, Cecile is going to accept him. 
 We had not looked so high for her ; still, as the saying goes, 
 'store is no sore.' " 
 
 "It was not so much the fortune as the affection inspired 
 by my daughter which decided us," the presidente told Mme. 
 Lebas. " Monsieur Brunner is in such a hurry that he wants 
 the marriage to take place with the least possible delay." 
 
 " Is he a foreigner? " 
 
 "Yes, madame ; but I am very fortunate, I confess. No, 
 I shall not have a son-in-law in him, but a son. Monsieur 
 Brunner's delicacy has quite won our hearts. No one would 
 imagine how anxious he was to marry under the dotal system. 
 It is a great security for families. He is going to invest twelve 
 hundred thousand francs in grazing land, which will be added 
 to Marville some day." 
 
 More variations followed on the morrow. For instance 
 M. Brunner was a great lord, doing everything in lordly 
 fashion ; he did not haggle. If M. de Marville could obtain 
 letters of naturalization, qualifying M. Brunner for an office 
 under Government (and the home secretary surely could strain 
 a point for M. de Marville), his son-in-law would be a peer 
 of France. Nobody knew how much money M. Brunner pos- 
 sessed : " he had the finest horses and the smartest carriages 
 in Paris ! " and so on and so forth. 
 
 From the pleasure with which the Camusots published their 
 hopes, it was pretty clear that this triumph was unexpected. 
 
 Immediately after the interview in Pens' museum, M. de 
 Marville, at his wife's instance, begged the home secretary, 
 his chief, and the attorney for the crown to dine with him on
 
 182 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 the occasion of the introduction of this phoenix of a son-in- 
 law. 
 
 The three great personages accepted the invitation, albeit 
 it was given on short notice ; they all saw the part that they 
 were to play in the family politics, and readily came to the 
 father's support. In France we are usually pretty ready to 
 assist the mother of marriageable daughters to hook an eligible 
 son-in-law. The Count and Countess Popinot likewise lent 
 their presence to complete the splendor of the occasion, al- 
 though they thought the invitation in questionable taste. 
 
 There were eleven in all. Cecile's grandfather, old Camu- 
 sot, came, of course, with his wife to a family reunion pur- 
 posely arranged to elicit a proposal from M. Brunner. 
 
 The Camusot de Marvilles had given out that the guest of 
 the evening was one of the richest capitalists in Germany, a 
 man of taste (he was in love with " the little girl "), a future 
 rival of the Nucingens, Kellers, du Tillets, and their like. 
 
 "It is our day," said the presidente with elaborate sim- 
 plicity, when she had named her guests one by one for the 
 German whom she already regarded as her son-in-law. "We 
 have only a few intimate friends first, my husband's father, 
 who, as you know, is sure to be raised to the peerage ; Mon- 
 sieur le Comte and Madame la Comtesse Popinot, whose son 
 was not thought rich enough for Cecile ; the home secretary ; 
 our first president ; our attorney for the crown ; our personal 
 friends, in short. We shall be obliged to dine rather late to- 
 night, because the Chamber is sitting, and people cannot get 
 away before six." 
 
 Brunner looked significantly at Pons, and Cousin Pons 
 rubbed his hands as who should say: " Our friends, you see ! 
 My friends ! ' ' 
 
 Mme. de Marville, as a clever tactician, had something very 
 particular to say to her cousin, that Cecile and her Werther 
 might be left together for a moment. Cecile chattered away 
 volubly, and contrived that Freddric should catch sight of a
 
 COUSIN PONS, 183 
 
 German dictionary, a German grammar, and a volume of 
 Goethe hidden away in a place where he was likely to find 
 them. 
 
 "Ah! are you learning German?" asked Brunner, flush- 
 ing red. 
 
 (For laying traps of this kind the Frenchwoman has not her 
 match !) 
 
 " Oh ! how naughty you are ! " she cried \ " it is too bad 
 of you, monsieur, to explore my hiding-places like this. I 
 want to read Goethe in the original," she added; "I have 
 been learning German for two years." 
 
 " Then the grammar must be very difficult to learn, for 
 
 scarcely ten pages have been cut " Brunner remarked with 
 
 much candor. 
 
 Cecile, abashed, turned away to hide her blushes. A Ger- 
 man cannot resist a display of this kind ; Brunner caught 
 Cecile's hand, made her turn, and watched her confusion 
 under his gaze, after the manner of the heroes of the novels 
 of Auguste La Fontaine of chaste memory. 
 
 "You are adorable," said he. 
 
 Cecile's petulant gestures replied : " So are you who could 
 help liking you ?" 
 
 "It is all right, mamma," she whispered to her parent, who 
 came up at that moment with Pons. 
 
 The sight of a family party on these occasions is not to be 
 described. Everybody was well satisfied to see a mother put 
 her hand on an eligible son-in-law. Compliments, double- 
 barreled and double-charged, were paid to Brunner (who pre- 
 tended to understand nothing) ; to Cecile, on whom nothing 
 was lost ; and to the president, who fished for them. Pons 
 heard the blood singing in his ears, the light of all the blazing 
 gas-jets of the theatre footlights seemed to be dazzling his 
 eyes, when Cecile, in a low voice and with the most ingenious 
 circumspection, spoke of her father's plan of the annuity of 
 twelve hundred francs. The old artist positively declined
 
 184 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 the offer, bringing forward the value of his fortune in furni- 
 ture, only now made known to him by Brunner. 
 
 The home secretary, the first president, the attorney for the 
 crown, the Popinots, and those who had other engagements, 
 all went ; and before long no one was left except M. Camusot 
 senior, and Cardot the old notary, and his assistant and son- 
 in-law Berthier. Pons, worthy soul, looking around and see- 
 ing no one but the family, blundered out a speech of thanks 
 to the president and his wife for the proposal which Cecile 
 had just made to him. So is it with those who are guided by 
 their feelings ; they act upon impulse. Brunner, hearing of 
 an annuity offered in this way, thought that it had very much 
 the look of commission paid to Pons ; he made an Israelite's 
 return upon himself, his attitude told of more than cool calcu- 
 lation. 
 
 Meanwhile Pons was saying to his astonished relations, 
 "My collection or its value will, in any case, go to your 
 family, whether I come to terms with our friend Brunner or 
 keep it." The Camusots were amazed to hear that Pons was 
 so rich. 
 
 Brunner, watching, saw how all these ignorant people 
 looked favorably upon a man once believed to be poor so soon 
 as they knew that he had great possessions. He had seen, 
 too, already, that Cecile was spoiled by her father and mother ; 
 he amused himself, therefore, by astonishing the good bour- 
 geois. 
 
 "I was telling mademoiselle," said he, "that Monsieur 
 Pons' pictures were worth that sum to me ; but the prices of 
 works of art have risen so much of late, that no one can tell 
 how much the collection might sell for at a public auction. 
 The sixty pictures might fetch a million francs ; several that 
 I saw the other day were worth fifty thousand apiece." 
 
 "It is a fine thing to be your heir ! " remarked old Cardot, 
 looking at Pons. 
 
 " My heir is my Cousin Cecile here," answered Pons, insist-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 185 
 
 ing on the relationship. There was a flutter of admiration at 
 this. 
 
 " She will be a very rich heiress," laughed old Cardot as he 
 took his departure. 
 
 Camusot senior, the president and his wife, Cecile, Brun- 
 ner, Berthier, and Pons were now left together; for it was 
 assumed that the formal demand for Cecile's hand was about 
 to be made. No sooner was Cardot gone, indeed, than Brun- 
 ner began with an inquiry which augured well. 
 
 "I think I understood," he said, turning to Mme. de Mar- 
 ville, "that mademoiselle is your only daughter." 
 
 " Certainly," the lady said proudly. 
 
 "Nobody will make any difficulties," Pons, good soul, put 
 in by way of encouraging the backward Brunner to bring out 
 his proposal. 
 
 But Brunner grew thoughtful, and an ominous silence 
 brought on a coolness of the strangest kind. The presidente 
 might have admitted that her " little girl " was subject to 
 epileptic fits. The president, thinking that Cecile ought not 
 to be present, signed to her to go. She went. Still Brun- 
 ner said nothing. They all began to look at one another. 
 The situation was growing awkward. 
 
 Camusot senior, a man of experience, took the German to 
 Mme. de Marville's room, ostensibly to show him Pons' fan. 
 He saw that some difficulty had arisen, and signed to the rest 
 to leave him alone with Cecile's suitor-designate. 
 
 "Here is the masterpiece," said Camusot, opening out 
 the ran. 
 
 Brunner took it in his hand and looked at it. "It is worth 
 five thousand francs," he said after a moment. 
 
 "Did you not come here, sir, to ask for my granddaughter?" 
 inquired the future peer of France. 
 
 "Yes, sir," said Brunner; "and I beg you to believe that 
 no possible marriage could be more flattering to my vanity. 
 I shall never find any one more charming nor more amiable
 
 186 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 nor a young lady who answers to my ideas like Mademoiselle 
 Cecile; but " 
 
 "Oh, no huts /" old Camusot broke in; "or let us have 
 the translation of your ' buts ' at once, my dear sir. It is 
 due us." 
 
 " I am very glad, sir, that the matter has gone no further 
 on either side," Brunner answered gravely. "I had no idea 
 that Mademoiselle Cecile was an only daughter. Anybody 
 else would consider this an advantage ; but to me, believe me, 
 it is an insurmountable obstacle to " 
 
 "What, sir!" cried Camusot, amazed beyond measure. 
 " Do you find a positive drawback in an immense advantage? 
 Your conduct is really extraordinary; I should very much like 
 to hear the explanation of it." 
 
 " I came here this evening, sir," returned the German 
 phlegmatically, " intending to ask Monsieur le President for 
 his daughter's hand. It was my desire to give Mademoiselle 
 Cecile a brilliant future by offering her so much of my fortune 
 as she would consent to accept. But an only daughter is a 
 child whose will is law to indulgent parents, who has never 
 been contradicted. I have had the opportunity of observing 
 this in many families, where parents worship divinities of this 
 kind. And your granddaughter is not only the idol of the 
 
 house, but Madame la Presidente you know what I mean. 
 
 I have seen my own father's house turned into a hell, sir, from 
 this very cause. My stepmother, the source of all my misfor- 
 tunes, an only daughter, idolized by her parents, the most 
 charming betrothed imaginable, after marriage became a fiend 
 incarnate. I do not doubt that Mademoiselle Cecile is an 
 exception to the rule ; but I am not a young man, I am forty 
 years old, and the difference between our ages entails diffi- 
 culties which would put it out of my power to make the young 
 lady happy, when Madame la Presidente has always carried 
 out her daughter's every wish and listened to her as if made- 
 moiselle was an oracle. What right have I to expect Made-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 187 
 
 moiselle Cecile to change her habits and ideas ? Instead of 
 a father and mother who indulge her every whim, she would 
 find an egoistic man of forty ; if she should resist, the man of 
 forty would have the worst of it. So, as an honest man I 
 withdraw. If there should be any need to explain my visit 
 here, I desire to be entirely sacrificed " 
 
 "If these are your motives, sir," said the future peer of 
 France, " however singular they may be, they are plausible, 
 they " 
 
 " Do not call my sincerity in question, sir," Brunner inter- 
 rupted quickly. "If you know of a penniless girl, one of a 
 large family, well brought up but without fortune, as happens 
 very often in France ; and if her character offers me security, 
 I will marry her." 
 
 A pause followed ; Frederic Brunner left Cecile's grand- 
 father and politely took leave of his host and hostess. When 
 he was gone, Cecile appeared, a living commentary upon her 
 Werther's leave-taking ; she was ghastly pale. She had hidden 
 herself in her mother's wardrobe and overheard the whole 
 conversation. 
 
 "Refused ! " she said in a low voice for her mother's 
 
 ear. 
 
 "And why?" asked the presidente, fixing her eyes upon 
 her embarrassed father-in-law. 
 
 "Upon the fine pretext that an only daughter is a spoilt 
 child," replied that gentleman. "And he is not altogether 
 wromj there," he added, seizing an opportunity of putting the 
 blame on the daughter-in-law, who had worried him not a 
 little for twenty years. 
 
 " It will kill my child ! " cried the presidente, "and it is 
 your doing!" she exclaimed, addressing Pons, as she sup- 
 ported her fainting daughter, for Cecile thought well to make 
 good her mother's words by sinking into her arms. The 
 president and his wife carried Cecile to an easy-chair, where 
 she swooned outright. The grandfather rang for the servants.
 
 188 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "It is a plot of his weaving; I see it all now," said the 
 infuriated mother. 
 
 Pons sprang up as if the trump of doom were sounding in 
 his ears. 
 
 " Yes ! " said the lady, her eyes like two springs of green 
 bile, " this gentleman wished to repay a harmless joke by an 
 insult. Who will believe that that German was right in his 
 mind? He is either an accomplice in a. wicked scheme of 
 revenge, or he is crazy. I hope, Monsieur Pons, that in future 
 you will spare us the annoyance of seeing you in the house 
 where you have tried to bring shame and dishonor." 
 
 Pons stood like a statue, with his eyes fixed on the pattern 
 of the carpet. 
 
 " Well ! Are you still here, monster of ingratitude ? " cried 
 she, turning round on Pons, who was twirling his thumbs. 
 "Your master and I are never at home, remember, if this 
 gentleman calls," she continued, turning to the servants. 
 "Jean, go for the doctor; and bring hartshorn, Madeleine." 
 
 In the presidente's eyes, the reason given by Brunner was 
 simply an excuse, there was something else behind; but, at 
 the same time, the fact that the marriage was broken off was 
 only the more certain. A woman's mind works swiftly in 
 great crises, and Mme. de Marville had hit at once upon the 
 one method of repairing the check. She chose to look upon 
 it as a scheme of revenge. This notion of ascribing a fiendish 
 scheme to Pons satisfied family honor. Faithful to her dis- 
 like of the cousin, she treated a feminine suspicion as a fact. 
 Women, generally speaking, hold a creed peculiar to them- 
 selves, a code of their own ; to them anything which serves 
 their interests or their passions is true. So also their vain 
 imaginings of implied insult to themselves by others, although 
 quite unfounded, becomes to them a truth. The presidente 
 went a good deal further. In the course of the evening she 
 talked the president into her belief, and next morning found 
 the magistrate convinced of his cousin's culpability.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 189 
 
 Every one, no doubt, will condemn the lady's horrible con- 
 duct ; but what mother in Mme. Camusot's position will not 
 do the same? Put the choice between her own daughter and 
 an alien, she will prefer to sacrifice the honor of the latter. 
 There are many ways of doing this, but the end in view is the 
 same. 
 
 The old musician fled down the staircase in haste ; but he 
 went slowly along the boulevards to his theatre, he turned in 
 mechanically at the door, and mechanically he took his place 
 and conducted the orchestra. In the interval he gave such 
 random answers to Schmucke's questions, that his old friend 
 dissembled his fear that Pens' mind had given way. To so 
 childlike a nature, the recent scene took the proportions of a 
 catastrophe. He had meant to make every one happy, and 
 he had aroused a terrible slumbering feeling of hate ; every- 
 thing had been turned topsy-turvy. He had at last seen mortal 
 hate in the presidente's eyes, tones, and gestures. 
 
 On the morrow, Mme. Camusot de Marville made a great 
 resolution ; the president likewise sanctioned the step now 
 forced upon them by circumstances. It was determined that 
 the estate of Marville should be settled upon Cecile at the 
 time of her marriage, as well as the house in the Rue de 
 Hanovre and a hundred thousand francs. In the course of 
 the morning, the presidente went to call upon the Comtesse 
 Popinot ; for she saw plainly that nothing but a settled mar- 
 riage could enable them to recover after such a check. To 
 the Comtesse Popinot she told the shocking story of Pens' 
 revenge, Pens' hideous hoax. It all seemed probable enough 
 irhen it came out that the marriage had been broken off simply 
 an the pretext that Cecile was an only daughter. The presi- 
 dente next dwelt artfully upon the advantage of adding " de 
 Marville " to the name of Popinot ; and the immense dowry. 
 At the present price fetched by land in Normandy, at two per 
 cent., the property represented nine hundred thousand francs, 
 and the house in the Rue de Hanovre about two hundred and, 
 
 I
 
 190 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 fifty thousand. No reasonable family could refuse such an 
 alliance. The Comte and Comtesse Popinot accepted ; and 
 as they were now touched by the honor of the family which 
 they were about to enter, they promised to help explain 
 away the yesterday evening's mishap. 
 
 And now in the house of the elder Camusot, before the very 
 persons who had heard Mme. de Marville singing Frederic 
 Brunner's praises but a few days ago, that lady, to whom 
 nobody ventured to speak on the topic, plunged courageously 
 into explanations. 
 
 "Really, nowadays" (she said), "one could not be too 
 careful if a marriage was in question, especially if one had to 
 do with foreigners." 
 
 " And why, madame ? " 
 
 " What has happened to you? " asked Mme. Chiffreville. 
 
 " Do you not know about our adventure with that Brunner, 
 who had the audacity to aspire to marry Cecile ? His father 
 was a German that kept a wine-tavern, and his uncle is a 
 dealer in and dryer of rabbit-skins ! " 
 
 " Is it possible ? So clear-sighted as you are ! " murmured 
 a lady. 
 
 "These adventurers are so cunning. But we found out 
 everything through Berthier. His friend is a beggar that 
 plays the flute. He is friendly with a person who lets furnished 
 lodgings in the Rue du Mail and some tailor or other We 
 found out that he had led a most disreputable life, and no 
 amount of fortune would be enough for a scamp that has run 
 through his mother's property." 
 
 "Why, Mademoiselle de Marville would have been 
 wretched ! " said Mme. Berthier. 
 
 "How did he come to your house?" asked old Mme. 
 Lebas. 
 
 " It was Monsieur Pons. Out of revenge, he introduced 
 this fine gentleman to us, to make us ridiculous. This Brun- 
 per (it is the same name as Fontaine in French) this Brunner,
 
 COUSIN PONS. 191 
 
 that was made out to be such a grandee, has poor enough 
 health, he is bald, and his teeth are bad. The first sight of 
 him was enough for me; I distrusted him from the first." 
 
 "But how about the great fortune that you spoke of?" a 
 young married woman asked shyly. 
 
 " The fortune was not nearly so large as they said. These 
 tailors and the landlord and he all scraped the money together 
 among them, and put all their savings into this bank that they 
 are starting. What is a bank for those that begin in these 
 days ? Simply a license to ruin themselves. A banker's wife 
 may lie down at night a millionaire and wake up in the morn- 
 ing with nothing but her settlement. At the first word, at 
 the very first sight of him, we made up our minds about this 
 gentleman he is not one of us. You can tell by his gloves, 
 by his vest, that he is a workingman, the son of a man that 
 kept a pot-house somewhere in Germany ; he has not the in- 
 stincts of a gentleman ; he drinks beer, and he smokes 
 
 smokes ? ah ! madame, twenty-five pipes a day ! What 
 
 would have become of poor Lili? It positively makes me 
 shudder even now to think of it. God has indeed preserved 
 us ! And, beside, Cecile never liked him. Who would have 
 expected such a trick from a relative, an old friend of the 
 house that had dined with us twice a week for twenty years ? 
 We have loaded him with benefits, and he played his game so 
 well that he said Cecile was his heir before the keeper of the 
 
 seals and the attorney-general and the home secretary ! 
 
 That Brunner and Monsieur Pons had their story ready, and 
 
 each of them said that the other was worth millions ! 
 
 No, I do assure you, all of you would have been taken in by 
 an artist's hoax like that." 
 
 In a few weeks' time, the united forces of the Camusot and 
 Popinot families gained an easy victory in the world, for no- 
 body undertook to defend the unfortunate Pons, that parasite, 
 that curmudgeon, that skinflint, that smooth-faced humbug, 
 on whom everybody heaped scorn ; he was a viper qherished
 
 192 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 in the bosom of the family, he had not his match for spite, 
 he was a dangerous mountebank whom nobody ought to 
 mention. 
 
 About a month after the perfidious Werther's withdrawal, 
 poor Pons left his bed for the first time after an attack of ner- 
 vous fever, and walked along the sunny side of the street lean- 
 ing on Schmucke's arm. Nobody in the Boulevard du Temple 
 laughed at the " pair of nutcrackers," for one of the old men 
 looked so shattered, and the other so touchingly careful of his 
 invalid friend. By the time that they reached the Boulevard 
 Poissonniere, a little color came back to Pons' face ; he was 
 breathing the air of the boulevards, he felt the vitalizing power 
 of the atmosphere of the crowded street, the life-giving prop- 
 erty of the air that is noticeable in quarters where human life 
 abounds ; in the filthy Roman Ghetto, for instance, with its 
 swarming Jewish population, where malaria is unknown. 
 Perhaps, too, the sight of the streets, the great spectacle of 
 Paris, the daily pleasure of his life, did the invalid good. 
 They walked on side by side, though Pons now and again left 
 his friend to look in the store windows. Opposite the Theatre 
 des Varieties he saw Count Popinot, and went up to him very 
 respectfully, for of all men Pons esteemed and venerated the 
 ex-minister. 
 
 The peer of France answered him severely 
 
 " I am at a loss to understand, sir, how you can have GO 
 little tact as to speak to a near connection of a family whom 
 you tried to brand with shame and ridicule by a trick which 
 no one but an artist could devise. Understand this, sir, that 
 from to-day we must be complete strangers to each other. 
 Madame la Comtesse Popinot, like every one else, feels indig- 
 nant at your behavior to the Marvilles." 
 
 And Count Popinot passed on, leaving Pons thunderstruck. 
 Passion, justice, policy, and great social forces never take into 
 account the condition of the human creature whom they strike
 
 COUSIN PONS. 193 
 
 down. The statesman, driven by family considerations to 
 crush Pons, did not so much as see the physical weakness of 
 his redoubtable enemy. 
 
 " Vat is it, mine boor friend ? " exclaimed Schmucke, seeing 
 how white Pons had grown. 
 
 "It is a fresh stab in the heart," Pons replied, leaning 
 heavily on Schmucke's arm. "I think that no one, save 
 God in heaven, can have any right to do good, and that 
 is why all those who meddle in His work are so cruelly pun- 
 ished." 
 
 The old artist's sarcasm was uttered with a supreme effort ; 
 he was trying, excellent creature, to quiet the dismay visible 
 in Schmucke's face. 
 
 " So I dink," Schmucke replied simply. 
 
 Pons could not understand it. Neither the Camusots nor 
 the Popinots had sent him notice of Cecile's wedding. 
 
 On the Boulevard des Italiens Pons saw M. Cardot coming 
 toward them. Warned by Count Popinot's allocution, Pons 
 was very careful not to accost the old acquaintance with whom 
 he had dined once a fortnight for the last year ; he lifted his 
 hat, but the other, mayor and deputy of Paris, threw him an 
 indignant glance and went by. Pons turned to Schmucke. 
 
 "Do go and ask him what it is that they all have against 
 me," he said to the friend who knew all the details of the 
 catastrophe that Pons could tell him. 
 
 " Mennesir," Schmucke began diplomatically, "mine 
 friend Bons is chust recofering from an illness ; you haf no 
 doubt fail to rekognise him? " 
 
 "Not in the least." 
 
 " But mit vat kan you rebroach him? " 
 
 " You have a monster of ingratitude for a friend, sir ; if he 
 is still alive, it is because nothing kills ill-weeds, which ever 
 flourish apace. People do well to mistrust artists ; they are as 
 mischievous and spiteful as monkeys. This friend of yours 
 tried to dishonor his own family, and to blight g young girl's 
 13
 
 194 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 character, in revenge for a harmless joke. I wish to have 
 nothing to do with him ; I shall do my best to forget that I 
 have ever known him, or that such a man exists. All the 
 members of his family and my own share the wish, sir, so do 
 all the persons who once did the said Pons the great honor of 
 receiving him." 
 
 " Boot, mennesir, you are a reasonaple mann ; gif you vill 
 bermit me, I shall exblain die affair " 
 
 "You are quite at liberty to remain his friend, sir, if you 
 are minded that way," returned Cardot, " but you need go no 
 further ; for I must give you warning that in my opinion those 
 who try to excuse or defend his conduct are just as much to 
 blame." 
 
 "Tochustify it?" 
 
 " Yes, for his conduct can neither be justified nor qualified." 
 And with that word, the deputy for the Seine went his way ; 
 he would not hear another syllable. 
 
 " I have two powers in the State against me," smiled poor 
 Pons, when Schmucke had repeated these savage speeches. 
 
 *' Eferypody is against us," Schmucke answered dolorously. 
 " Let us go avay pefore we shall meet oder fools." 
 
 Never before in the course of a truly simple life had 
 Schmucke uttered such words as these. Never before had his 
 almost divine meekness been ruffled. He had smiled child- 
 like on all the mischances that befell him, but he could not 
 look and see his sublime Pons maltreated ; his Pons, his 
 unknown Aristides, the genius resigned to his lot, the nature 
 that knew no bitterness, the treasury of kindness, the heart of 
 gold ! Alceste's indignation filled Schmucke's soul he was 
 moved to call Pons' amphitryons "fools." For his pacific 
 nature that impulse equaled the wrath of Roland. 
 
 With wise foresight, Schmucke turned to go home by the 
 way of the Boulevard du Temple, Pons passively submitting like 
 a fallen fighter, heedless of blows ; but chance ordered that 
 he should know that all his world was against him. The
 
 COUSIN PONS. 195 
 
 House of Peers, the Chamber of Deputies, strangers, and the 
 family, the strong, the weak, and the innocent, all combined 
 to send down the avalanche. 
 
 In the Boulevard Poissonniere, Pons caught sight of that 
 very M. Cardot's daughter, who, young as she was, had learned 
 to be charitable to others through trouble of her own. Her 
 husband knew a secret by which he kept her in bondage.* 
 She was the only one among Pons' hostesses whom he called by 
 her Christain name ; he addressed Mme- Berthier as 
 "Felicie," and he thought that she understood him. The 
 gentle creature seemed to be distressed by the sight of Cousin 
 Pons, as he was called (though he was in no way related to 
 the family of the second wife of a cousin by marriage). There 
 was no help for it, however ; Felicie Berthier stopped to speak 
 to the invalid. 
 
 " I did not think you were cruel cousin," she said ; li but 
 if even a quarter of all that I hear of you is true, you are 
 very false. Oh ! do not justify yourself," she added quickly, 
 seeing Pons' significant gesture, " it is useless, for two reasons. 
 In the first place, I have no right to accuse or judge or con- 
 demn anybody, for I myself know so well how much may be 
 said for those who seem to be most guilty ; secondly, your 
 explanation would do no good. Monsieur Berthier drew up 
 the marriage-contract for Mademoiselle de Marville and the 
 Vicomte Popinot ; he is so exasperated, that if he knew that 
 I had so much as spoken one word to you, one word for the 
 last tiiae, he would scold me. Everybody is against you." 
 
 " So it seems indeed, madame," Pons said, his voice shaking, 
 as he lifted his hat respectfully. 
 
 Painfully he made his way back to the Rue de Normandie. 
 The old German knew from the heavy weight on his arm that 
 his friend was struggling bravely against failing physical 
 strength. That third encounter was like the ^ verdict of the 
 .Lamb at the foot of the throne of God ; and the anger of the 
 * See " The Unconscious Mummers."
 
 1% THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Angel of the Poor, the symbol of the Peoples, is the last word 
 of Heaven. They reached home without the utterance of 
 another word. 
 
 There are moments in our lives when the sense that our 
 friend is near is all that we can bear. Our wounds smart under 
 the consoling words that only reveal the depths of pain. The 
 old pianist, you see, possessed a genius for friendship, the tact 
 of those who, having suffered much, know the customs of suf- 
 fering. 
 
 Pons was never to take a walk again. From one illness he 
 fell into another. He was of a sanguine-bilious temperament, 
 the bile passed into the blood, and a violent liver attack was 
 the result. He had never known a day's illness in his life till 
 a month ago ; he had never consulted a doctor ; so La Cibot, 
 with almost motherly care and intentions at first of the very 
 best, called in "the doctor of the quarter." 
 
 In every quarter of Paris there is a doctor whose name and 
 address are only known to the working-classes, to the little 
 tradespeople and the porters, and in consequence he is called 
 "the doctor of the quarter." He undertakes confinement 
 cases, he lets blood, he is in the medical profession pretty 
 much what the "general servant" of the advertising column 
 is in the scale of domestic service. He must perforce be kind 
 to the poor, and tolerably expert by reason of much practice, 
 and he is generally popular. Dr. Poulain, called in by Mme. 
 Cibot, gave an inattentive ear to the old musician's complain- 
 ings. Pons groaned out that his skin itched ; he had scratched 
 himself all night long, till he could scarcely feel. The look 
 of his eyes, with the yellow circles about them, corroborated 
 the symptoms. 
 
 " Had you some violent shock a couple of days ago ? " the 
 doctor asked the patient. 
 
 "Yes, alas!" 
 
 "You have the same complaint that this gentleman was 
 threatened with," said Dr. Poulain, looking at Schrnucke as
 
 COUSIN PONS. 197 
 
 he spoke; " it is an attack of jaundice, but you will soon get 
 over it," he added, as he wrote a prescription. 
 
 But in spite of that comfortable phrase, the doctor's eye had 
 told another tale as he looked professionally at the patient ; 
 and the death-sentence, though hidden under stereotyped 
 compassion, can always be read by those who wish to know 
 the truth. Mme. Cibot gave a spy's glance at the doctor, 
 and read his thought ; his bedside manner did not deceive 
 her ; she followed him out of the room. 
 
 "Do you think he will get over it?" asked Mme. Cibot, 
 at the stairhead. 
 
 " My dear Madame Cibot, your lodger is a dead man; not 
 because of the bile in the system, but because his vitality is 
 low. Still, with great care, your patient may pull through. 
 Somebody ought to take him away for a change " 
 
 "How is he to go?" asked Mme. Cibot. "He has 
 nothing to live upon but his salary ; his friend has just a little 
 money from some great ladies, very charitable ladies, in re- 
 turn for his services, it seems. They are two children. I 
 have looked after them for nine years." 
 
 " I spend my life in watching people die, not of their 
 disease, but of another bad and incurable complaint the 
 want of money," said the doctor. " How often it happens 
 that so far from taking a fee, I am obliged to leave a five-franc 
 piece on the mantel-shelf when I go " 
 
 " Poor, dear Monsieur Poulain ! " cried Mme. Cibot. "Ah, 
 if ycu hadn't only the hundred thousand livres a year, what 
 some stingy people has in the quarter (regular devils from hell 
 they are), you would be like providence on earth," she added, 
 curtsying. 
 
 Dr. Poulain had made the little practice, by which he made 
 a bare subsistence, chiefly by winning the esteem of the 
 porters' lodges> in his district. So he raised his eyes to 
 heaven and thanked Mme. Cibot with a solemn face worthy 
 of Tartuffe.
 
 198 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "Then you think that with careful nursing our dear patient 
 will get better, my dear Monsieur Poulain ? " 
 
 " Yes, if this shock has not been too much for him." 
 
 "Poor man! who can have vexed him? There isn't no- 
 body like him on earth, except his friend Monsieur Schmucke. 
 I will find out what is the matter, and I will undertake to 
 give them that upset my gentleman a hauling over the 
 coals ' ' 
 
 "Look here, my dear Madame Cibot," said the doctor as 
 they stood in the gateway, "one of the principal symptoms 
 of his complaint is great irritability ; and as it is hardly to be 
 supposed that he can afford a nurse, the task of nursing him 
 will fall to you. So " . 
 
 "Are you talking of Mouchieu Ponsh?" asked the marine- 
 store-dealer. He was sitting smoking on the curb-post in the 
 gateway, and now he rose to join in the conversation. 
 
 "Yes, Daddy Remonencq." 
 
 "All right," said Remonencq, "ash to moneysh, he ish 
 better off than Mouchieur Monishtrol and the big men in the 
 curioshity line. I know enough in the art line to tell you 
 thish the dear man hash treasursh ! " he spoke with a broad 
 Auvergne dialect. 
 
 "Look here, I thought you were laughing at me the other 
 day when my gentlemen were out and I showed you the old 
 rubbish upstairs," said Mme. Cibot. 
 
 In Paris where walls have ears, where doors have tongues, 
 and window-bars have eyes, there are few things more danger- 
 ous than the practice of standing to chat in a gateway. Part- 
 ings are like postscripts to a letter indiscreet utterances that 
 do as much mischief to the speaker as to those who overhear 
 them. A single instance will be sufficient as a parallel to an 
 event in this history. 
 
 In the time of the Empire when men paid considerable 
 attention to their hair, one of the first coiffeurs of the day 
 came out of a house where he had just been dressing a pretty
 
 COUSIN PONS. 199 
 
 woman's head. This artist in question enjoyed the custom 
 of all the lower floor inmates of the house ; and, among these, 
 there flourished an elderly bachelor guarded by a housekeeper 
 who detested her master's next-of-kin. The ci-devant young 
 man, falling seriously ill, the most famous doctors of the day 
 (they were not as yet styled the "princes of science") had 
 been called in to consult upon his case ; and it so chanced 
 that the learned gentlemen were taking leave of one another 
 in the gateway just as the hairdresser came out. They were 
 talking as doctors usually talk among themselves when the 
 farce of a consultation is over. " He is a dead man," quoth 
 Dr. Haudry. " He has not a month to live," added Des- 
 plein, "unless a miracle takes place." These were the words 
 overheard by the hairdresser. 
 
 Like all hairdressers, he kept up a good understanding with 
 his customers' servants. Prodigious greed sent the man up- 
 stairs again ; he mounted to the ci-devant young man's apart- 
 ment, and promised the servant-mistress a tolerably handsome 
 commission to persuade her master to sink a large proportion 
 of his money in an annuity. The dying bachelor, fifty-six 
 by count of years, and twice as old as his age by reason of 
 amorous campaigns, owned, among other property, a splendid 
 house in the Rue de Richelieu, worth at that time about two 
 hundred and fifty thousand francs. It was this house that the 
 hairdresser coveted ; and on agreement to pay an annuity of 
 thirty thousand francs so long as the bachelor lived, it passed 
 into his hands. This happened in 1806. And in this present 
 year 1846 the hairdresser is still paying that annuity. He has 
 retired from business, he is seventy years old ; the ci-devant 
 young man is in his dotage ; and as he has married his Mme. 
 Evrard, he may last for a long while yet. As the hairdresser 
 gave the woman thirty thousand francs, his bit of real estate 
 has cost him, first and last, more than a million, and the 
 house at this day is worth eight or nine hundred thousand 
 francs.
 
 200 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Like the hairdresser, Remonencq the Auvergnat had over- 
 heard Brunner's parting remark in the gateway on the day of 
 Chile's first interview with that phoenix of eligible men. 
 Remonencq at once longed to gain a sight of Pons' museum ; 
 and as he lived on good terms with his neighbors the Cibots, 
 it was not very long before the opportunity came, one day 
 when the friends were out. The sight of such treasures daz- 
 zled him; he saw a "good haul," in dealers' phrase, which 
 being interpreted means a chance to steal a fortune. He had 
 been meditating this for five or six days. 
 
 "I am sho far from joking," he said, in reply to Mme. 
 Cibot's remark, "that we will talk the thing over; and if 
 the good shentleman will take an annuity of fifty thoushand 
 francsh, I will shtand a hamper of wine, if " 
 
 " Fifty thousand francs!" interrupted the doctor ; "what 
 are you thinking about? Why, if the good man is so well off 
 as that, with me in attendance, and La Cibot to nurse him, he 
 may get better for liver complaint is a disease that attacks 
 strong constitutions." 
 
 "Fifty, did I shay? Why, a shentleman here, on your 
 very doorshtep, offered him sheven hundred thoushand francsh, 
 shimply for the pictmsh,f0uc/itra. f " 
 
 While Remonencq made this announcement, Mme. Cibot 
 was looking at Dr. Poulain. There was a strange expression 
 in her eyes; the devil might have kindled that sinister glitter 
 in their tawny depths. 
 
 " Oh, come ! we must not pay any attention to such idle 
 tales," said the doctor, well pleased, however, to find that his 
 patient could afford to pay for his visits. 
 
 " If my dear Madame Chibot, here, would let me come and 
 bring an ekshpert (shinsh the shentleman upshtairs ish in 
 bed), I will shertainly find the money in a couple of hoursh, 
 even if sheven hundred thoushand francsh ishinqueshtion 
 
 "All right, my friend," said the doctor. " Now, Madame 
 Cibot, be careful never to contradict the invalid. You
 
 COUSIN PONS. 201 
 
 be prepared to be very patient with him, for he will find 
 everything irritating and wearisome, even your services ; 
 nothing will please him; you must expect grumbling " 
 
 " He will be uncommonly hard to please," said La Cibot. 
 
 "Look here, mind what I tell you," the doctor said in a 
 tone of authority, " Monsieur Pens' life is in the hands of 
 those that nurse him ; I shall come perhaps twice a day. I 
 shall take him first on my round." 
 
 The doctor's profound indifference to the fate of a poor 
 patient had suddenly given place to a most tender solicitude 
 when he saw that the speculator was serious, and that there 
 was a possible fortune in question. 
 
 " He will be nursed like a king," said Madame Cibot, 
 forcing up enthusiasm. She waited till the doctor turned the 
 corner into the Rue Chariot ; then she fell to talking again 
 with the dealer in old iron. Remonencq had finished smok- 
 ing his pipe, and stood in the doorway of his store, leaning 
 against the frame ; he had purposely taken this position ; he 
 meant the portress to come to him. 
 
 The store had once been a cafe. Nothing had been changed 
 there since the Auvergnat discovered it and took over the 
 lease; you could still read "Cafe de Normandie" on the 
 strip left above the windows in all modern stores. Remonencq 
 had found somebody, probably a house-painter's apprentice, 
 who did the work for nothing, to paint another inscription in 
 the remaining space below it ran : " REMONENCQ, DEALER 
 IN AJ^RINE STORES, FURNITURE BOUGHT" painted in small 
 black letters. All the mirrors, tables, seats, shelves, and fit- 
 tings of the Cafe de Normandie had been sold, as might have 
 been expected, before Remonencq took possession of the store 
 as it stood, paying a yearly rent of six hundred francs for the 
 place, with a back store, a kitchen, and a single room above, 
 where the head-waiter used to sleep, for the house belonging 
 to the Cafe de Normandie was let separately. Of the former 
 ^plendor of the cafe, nothing now remained save the plain
 
 202 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 light green paper on the walls, and the strong iron bolts and 
 bars of the store-front. 
 
 When Remonencq came hither in 1831, after the Revolu- 
 tion of July, he began by displaying a selection of broken 
 door-bells, cracked plates, old iron,, and the obsolete scales 
 and weights abolished by a Government which alone fails to 
 carry out its own regulations, for deux-sous and sous of the 
 time of Louis XVI. are still in circulation. After a time this 
 Auvergnat, a match for five ordinary Auvergnats, bought up 
 old saucepans and kettles, old picture-frames, old copper, and 
 chipped china. Gradually, as the store was emptied and filled, 
 the quality of the stock-in-trade improved, like Nicolet's 
 farces. Remonencq persisted in an unfailing and prodigiously 
 profitable martingale,* a "system" which any philosophical 
 idler may study as he watches the increasing value of the stock 
 kept by this intelligent class of trader. Picture-frames and cop- 
 per succeed to tinware, argand lamps, and damaged crockery ; 
 china marks the next transition ; and after no long tarrying 
 in the " omnium gatherum " stage, the store becomes a 
 museum. Some day or other the dusty windows are cleaned, 
 the interior is restored, the Auvergnat relinquishes velveteen 
 and jackets for a greatcoat, and there he sits like a dragon 
 guarding his treasure, surrounded by masterpieces ! He is a 
 cunning connoisseur by this time ; he has increased his capital 
 tenfold ; he is not to be cheated ; he knows the tricks of the 
 trade. The monster among his treasures looks like some old 
 hag among a score of young girls that she offers to the public. 
 Beauty and miracles of art are alike indifferent to him ; subtle 
 and dense as he is, he has a keen eye to profits, he talks 
 roughly to those who know less than he does ; he has learned 
 to act a part, he pretends to love his pictures and his mar- 
 quetry, or he tells you that he is short of money, or again he 
 lets you know the price he himself gave for the things, he 
 offers to let you see the memoranda of the sale. He is a 
 * Jouer a la martingale playing for double or quits.
 
 COUSIN PONS, 203 
 
 Proteus ; in one hour he can be Jocrisse, Janot, Queue-rouge, 
 Mondor, Harpagon, or Nicodeme. 
 
 The third year found armor, and old pictures, and some 
 tolerably fine clocks in Remonencq's store. He sent for his 
 sister, and La Remonencq came on foot all the way from 
 Auvergne to take charge of the store while her brother was 
 away. A big and very ugly woman, dressed like a Japanese 
 idol, a half-idiotic creature with a vague, staring gaze, she 
 would not bate a centime of the prices fixed by her brother. 
 In the intervals of business she did the work of the house, and 
 solved the apparently insoluble problem how to live on "the 
 mists of the Seine." The Remonencqs' diet consisted of bread 
 and herrings, with the outside leaves of lettuce or vegetable 
 refuse selected from the heaps deposited in the kennel before 
 the doors of eating-houses. The two between them did not 
 spend more than ten sous a day on food (bread included), and 
 La Remonencq earned the whole money by sewing or spin- 
 ning. 
 
 Remonencq came to Paris in the first instance to work as 
 an errand-boy. Between the years 1825 and 1831 he ran 
 errands for dealers in curiosities in the Boulevard Beaumar- 
 chais or coppersmiths in the Rue de Lappe. It is the usual 
 start in life in his line of business. Jews, Normans, Auverg- 
 nats, and Savoyards, those four different races of men all have 
 the same instincts, and make their fortunes in the same way ; 
 they spend nothing, make small profits, and let them accumu- 
 late at compound interest. Such is their trading charter, and 
 that charter is no delusion. 
 
 Remonencq at this moment had made it up with his old 
 master Monistrol ; he did business with wholesale dealers, he 
 was a chineur (the technical word), plying his trade in the 
 district, which, as everybody knows, extend for some forty 
 leagues round Paris. 
 
 After fourteen years of business, he had sixty thousand 
 francs in hand and a well-stocked store. He lived in the
 
 204 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Rue de Normandie because the rent was low, but casual cus- 
 tomers were scarce, most of his goods were sold to other 
 dealers, and he was content with moderate gains. All his 
 business transactions were carried on in the Auvergne dialect 
 or charabia, as people call it. 
 
 Remonencq cherished a dream ! He wished to establish 
 himself on a boulevard, to be a rich dealer in curiosities, 
 and do a direct trade with amateurs some day. And, in- 
 deed, within him there was a formidable man of business. 
 His countenance was the more inscrutable because it was 
 glazed over by a deposit of dust and particles of metal glued 
 together by the sweat of his brow; for he did everything 
 himself, and the use and wont of bodily labor had given 
 him something of the stoical impassability of the old sol- 
 diers of 1799. 
 
 In personal appearance Remonencq was short and thin ; 
 his little eyes were set in his head in porcine fashion ; a 
 Jew's slyness and concentrated greed looked out of those dull 
 blue circles, though in his case the false humility that masks 
 the Israelite's unfathomed contempt for the Gentile was 
 lacking. 
 
 The relations between the Cibots and the Remonencqs 
 were those of benefactors and recipients. Mme. Cibot, con- 
 vinced that the Auvergnats were wretchedly poor, used to let 
 them have the remainder of "her gentlemen's" dinners at 
 ridiculous prices. The Remonencqs would buy a pound of 
 broken bread, crusts and crumbs, for a centime, a porringer 
 full of cold potatoes for something less, and other scraps in 
 proportion. Remonencq shrewdly allowed them to believe 
 that he was not in business on his own account, he worked 
 for Monistrol, the rich storekeepers preyed upon him, he 
 said, and the Cibots felt sincerely sorry for Remonencq. 
 The velveteen jacket, vest, and trousers, particularly affected 
 by Auvergnats, were covered with patches of Cibot's making, 
 and not a penny had the little tailor charged for repairs
 
 COUSIN PONS, 205 
 
 which kept the three garments together after eleven years 
 of wear. 
 
 Thus we see that all Jews are not in Israel. 
 
 "You are not laughing at me, Remonencq, are you?" 
 asked the portress. "Is it possible that Monsieur Pons has 
 such a fortune, living as he does? There is not a hundred 
 francs in the place " 
 
 " Amateursh are all like that," Remonencq remarked sen- 
 tentiously. 
 
 " Then do you think that my gentleman has the worth of 
 seven hundred thousand francs, eh? " 
 
 "In pictures alone," continued Remonencq (it is needless, 
 for the sake of clearness in the story, to give any further speci- 
 mens of his frightful dialect). " If he would take fifty thou- 
 sand francs for one up there that I know of, I would find the 
 money if I had to hang myself. Do you remember those little 
 frames full of enameled copper on crimson velvet, hanging 
 
 among the portraits ? Well, those are Petitot's enamels ; 
 
 and there is a cabinet minister as used to be a druggist that 
 will give three thousand francs apiece for them." 
 
 La Cibot's eyes opened wide. " There are thirty of them 
 in the pair of frames ! " she said. 
 
 " Very well, you can judge for yourself how much he is 
 worth." 
 
 Mme. Cibot's head was swimming ; she wheeled round. In 
 a moment came the thought that she would have a legacy, she 
 would sleep sound on old Pons' will, like the other servant- 
 mistresses whose annuities had aroused such envy in the Ma- 
 rais. Her thoughts flew to some commune in the neighbor- 
 hood of Paris ; she saw herself strutting proudly about her 
 house in the country, looking after her garden and poultry- 
 yard, ending her days, served like a queen, along with her 
 poor dear Cibot, who deserved such good fortune, like all 
 angelic creatures whom nobody but one's self knows nor ap- 
 preciates.
 
 206 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Her abrupt, unthinking movement told Remonencq that 
 success was sure. In the chineur 's way of business the 
 chineur, be it explained, goes about the coumry picking up 
 bargains at the expense of the ignorant in the chineur' s way 
 of business, the one real difficulty is the problem of gaining an 
 entrance to a house. No one can imagine the Scapin's 
 roguery, the tricks of a Sganarelle, the wiles of a Dorine by 
 which the chineur contrives to make a footing for himself. 
 These comedies are as good as a play, and founded indeed on 
 the old stock theme of the dishonesty of servants. For thirty 
 francs in money or goods, servants, and especially country ser- 
 vants, will sometimes conclude a bargain on which the chineur 
 makes a profit of a thousand or two thousand francs. If we 
 could but know the history of such and such a service of Sevres 
 porcelain, pate tendre, we should find that all the intellect, 
 all the diplomatic subtlety displayed at Minister, Nimeguen, 
 Utrecht, Ryswick, and Vienna was surpassed by the chineur. 
 His is the more frank comedy ; his methods of action fathom 
 depths of personal interest quite as profound as any that pleni- 
 potentiaries can explore in their difficult search for any means 
 of breaking up the best cemented alliances. 
 
 " I have set La Cibot nicely on fire," Remonencq told his 
 sister when she came to take up her position again on the ram- 
 shackle chair. "And now," he continued, "I shall go to 
 consult the only man that knows, our Jew, a good sort of Jew 
 that did not ask more than fifteen per cent, of us for his 
 money." 
 
 Rdmonencq had read La Cibot's heart. To will is to act 
 with women of her stamp. Let them see the end in view ; 
 they will stick at nothing to gain it, and pass from scrupulous 
 honesty to the last degree of scoundrelism in the twinkling of 
 an eye. Honesty, like most dispositions of mind, is divided 
 into two classes negative and positive. La Cibot's honesty 
 was of the negative order; she and her like are honest until 
 they see their way clear to gain money belonging to somebody
 
 COUSIN PONS. 207 
 
 else. Positive honesty, the honesty of the bank collector, can 
 wade knee-deep through temptations. 
 
 A torrent of evil thoughts invaded La Cibot's heart and 
 brain so soon as Remonencq's diabolical suggestion opened 
 the floodgates of self-interest. La Cibot climbed, or, to be 
 more accurate, flew up the stairs, opened the door on the land- 
 ing, and showed a face disguised in false solicitude in the 
 doorway of the room where Pons and Schmucke were bemoan- 
 ing themselves. As soon as she came in, Schmucke made her 
 a warning sign ; for, true friend and sublime German that he 
 was, he, too, had read the doctor's eyes, and he was afraid 
 that Mme. Cibot might repeat the verdict. Mme. Cibot an- 
 swered by a shake of the head, indicative of deep woe. 
 
 " Well, my dear monsieur," asked she, " how are you feel- 
 ing ? " She sat down on the foot of the bed, hands on hips, 
 and fixed her eyes lovingly upon the patient; but what a 
 glitter of metal there was in them, a terrible, tiger-like gleam 
 if any one had watched her. 
 
 "I feel very ill," answered poor Pons. "I have not the 
 slightest appetite left. Oh ! the world, the world ! " he 
 groaned, squeezing Schmucke's hand. Schmucke was sitting 
 by his bedside, and doubtless the sick man was talking of the 
 causes of his illness. " I should have done far better to follow 
 your advice, my good Schmucke, and dined here every day, 
 and given up going into this society, that has fallen on me 
 with all its weight, like a tumbril crushing an egg ! And 
 why?" 
 
 "Come, come, don't complain, Monsieur Pons," said La 
 Cibot ; " the doctor told me just how it is " 
 
 Schmucke tugged at her gown. "And you will pull 
 through," she continued, "only we must take great care of 
 you. Be easy, you have a good friend beside you, and, with- 
 out boasting, a woman as will nurse you like a mother nurses 
 her first child. I nursed Cibot round once when Dr. Poulain 
 had given him over ; he had the shroud up to his eyes, as the
 
 208 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 saying is, and they gave him up for dead. Well, well, you 
 have not come to that yet, God be thanked, ill though you 
 may be. Count on me ; I would pull you through all by my- 
 self, I would ! Keep still, don't you fidget like that." 
 
 She pulled the coverlet over the patient's hands as she 
 spoke. 
 
 "There, sonny! Monsieur Schmucke and I will sit up 
 with you of nights. A prince won't be no better nursed 
 and, beside, you needn't refuse yourself nothing that's neces- 
 sary, you can afford it. I have just been talking things over 
 with Cibot, for what would he do without me, poor dear? 
 Well, and I talked him round ; we are both so fond of you, 
 that he will let me stop up with you of a night. And that is 
 a good deal to ask of a man like him, for he is as fond of me 
 as ever he was the day we was married. I don't know how it 
 is. It is the lodge, you see ; we are always there together ! 
 Don't you throw off the things like that ! " she cried, making 
 a dash for the bedhead to draw the coverlet over Pons 1 chest. 
 "If you are not good, and don't do just as Dr. Poulain says 
 and Dr. Poulain is the image of Providence on earth I 
 will have no more to do with you. You must do as I tell 
 you " 
 
 "Yes, Montame Zipod, he vill do vat you tell him," put 
 in Schmucke ; " he vants to lif for his boor friend Schmucke's 
 sake, I'll pe pound." 
 
 "And of all things, don't fidget yourself," continued La 
 Cibot, "for your illness makes you quite bad enough without 
 your making it worse for want of patience. God sends us our 
 troubles, my dear good gentleman; He punishes us for our 
 sins. Haven't you nothing to reproach yourself with? some 
 poor little bit of a fault or other ? " 
 
 The invalid shook his head. 
 
 " Oh ! go on ! You were young once, you had your fling, 
 there is some love-child of yours somewhere cold, and starv- 
 ing, and homeless. What monsters men are ! Their love
 
 COUSIN PONS. 209 
 
 doesn't last only for a day, and then in a jiffy they forget, 
 they don't so much as think of the child at the breast for 
 months. Poor women ! " 
 
 "But no one has ever loved me except Schmucke and my 
 mother," poor Pons broke in sadly. 
 
 " Oh ! come, you ain't no saint ! You were young in 
 your time, and a fine-looking young fellow you must have 
 been at twentv. I should have fallen in love with you myself, 
 
 so nice as you are 
 
 " I always was as ugly as a toad," Pons put in desper- 
 ately. 
 
 " You say that because you are modest; nobody can't say 
 that you ain't modest." 
 
 " My dear Madame Cibot, NO, I tell you. I always was 
 ugly, and I never was loved in my life." 
 
 "You, indeed ! " cried the portress. "You want to make 
 me believe at this time of day that you are as innocent as a 
 young maid at your time of life. Tell that to your granny ! 
 A musician at a theatre too ! Why, if a woman told me that, 
 I wouldn't believe her." 
 
 " Montame Zipod, you irritate him!" cried Schmucke, 
 seeing that Pons was writhing under the bedclothes. 
 
 "You hold your tongue too ! You are a pair of old liber- 
 tines. If you were ugly, it don't make no difference; there 
 was never so ugly a saucepan-lid but it found a pot to match, 
 as the saying is. There is Cibot, he got one of the hand- 
 somest oyster-women in Paris to fall in love with him, and you 
 are sdmewhat better looking than him ! You are a nice pair, 
 you are ! Come, now, you have sown your wild oats, and 
 God will punish you for deserting your children, like Abraham 
 and " 
 
 Exhausted though he was, the invalid gathered up all his 
 strength to make a vehement gesture of denial. 
 
 " Do lie quiet ; if you have, it won't prevent you from liv- 
 ing as long as Methuselah." 
 14
 
 210 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "Then, pray let me be quiet! " groaned Pons. "I have 
 never known what it is to be loved. I have had no child ; I 
 am alone on the earth." 
 
 " Really, eh? " returned the portress. " You are so kind, 
 and that is what women like, you see it draws them and it 
 looked to me impossible that when you were in your prime 
 that " 
 
 "Take her away," Pons whispered to Schmucke j "she 
 sets my nerves on edge." 
 
 " Then there's Daddy Schmucke, he has children. You 
 old bachelors are not all like that " 
 
 "//" cried Schmucke, springing to his feet, " vy ! 
 
 " Come, then, you have none to come after you either, eh ? 
 You both sprung up out of the earth like mushrooms 
 
 " Look here, komm mit me," said Schmucke. The good 
 German manfully took Mme. Cibot by the waist and carried 
 her off into the next room, in spite of her exclamations. 
 
 "At your age, you would not take advantage of a defense- 
 less woman ! " cried La Cibot, struggling in his arms. 
 
 " Don't make a noise ! " 
 
 " You too, the better one of the two ! " returned La Cibot. 
 "Ah! it is my fault for talking about love to two old men 
 who have never had nothing to do with women. I have 
 roused your passions," cried she, as Schmucke's eyes glittered 
 with wrath. " Help ! help ! police ! " 
 
 "You are a stoopid ! " said the German. "Look here, 
 vat tid de toctor say? " 
 
 "You are a ruffian to treat me so," wept La Cibot, now 
 released, " me, that would go through fire and water for you 
 both ! Ah ! well, well, they say that is the way with men 
 and true it is ! There is my poor Cibot, he would not be 
 rough with me like this And I treated you like my chil- 
 dren, for I have none of my own ; and yesterday, yes, only 
 yesterday I said to Cibot, ' God knew well what He was 
 doing, dear,' I said, 'when He refused us children, for I
 
 COUSIN PONS. 211 
 
 have two children there upstairs.' By the holy crucifix and 
 the soul of my mother, that was what I said to him " 
 
 " Eh ! but vat did der doctor say? " Schmucke demanded 
 furiously, stamping on the floor for the first time in his life. 
 
 "Well," said Mme. Cibot, drawing Schmucke into the 
 dining-room, " he just said this that our dear, darling love 
 lying ill there would die if he wasn't carefully nursed; but I 
 am here in spite of all your brutality, for brutal you were, you 
 that I thought so gentle. And you are one of that sort ! Ah, 
 now, you would not abuse a woman at your age, great black- 
 guard " 
 
 "Placard? I? Vill you not oonderstand that I lof 
 nopody but Bons?" 
 
 " Well and good, you will let me alone then, won't you? " 
 said she, smiling at Schmucke. "You had better; for if 
 Cibot knew that anybody had attempted his honor, he would 
 break every bone in his skin." 
 
 "Take crate care of him, dear Montame Zipod," answered 
 Schmucke, and he tried to take the portress' hand. 
 
 ' ' Oh ! look here now, again. ' ' 
 
 "Chust listen to me. You shall haf all dot I haf, gif ve 
 safe him." 
 
 " Very well ; I will go round to the chemist's to get the 
 things that are wanted ; this illness is going to cost a lot, you 
 see, sir, and what will you do?" 
 
 " I shall vork; Bons shall be nursed like ein brince." 
 
 "So he shall, Monsieur Schmucke; and look here, don't 
 you trouble about nothing. Cibot and I, between us, have 
 saved a couple of thousand francs ; they are yours ; I have been 
 spending money on you this long time, I have." 
 
 "Goot voman ! " cried Schmucke, brushing the tears from 
 his eyes. " Vat ein heart ! " 
 
 "Wipe your tears; they do me honor; this is my reward," 
 said La Cibot melodramatically. "There isn't no more dis- 
 interested creature on earth than me ; but don't you go into
 
 212 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 the room with tears in your eyes, or Monsieur Pons will be 
 thinking himself worse than he is." 
 
 Schmucke was touched by this delicate feeling. He took 
 La Cibot's hand and gave it a final squeeze. 
 
 " Spare me ! " cried the ex-oysterseller, leering at Schmucke. 
 
 "Bons," the good German said when he returned, " Mon- 
 tame Zipod is an anchel ; 'tis an anchel dat brattles, but an 
 anchel all der same." 
 
 "Do you think so! I have grown suspicious in the past 
 month," said the invalid, shaking his head. "After all I 
 have been through, one comes to believe in nothing but God 
 and my friend " 
 
 " Get bedder, and ve vill lif like kings, all tree of us," ex- 
 claimed Schmucke. 
 
 " Cibot ! " panted the portress as she entered the lodge. 
 " Oh, my dear, our fortune is made. My two gentlemen 
 haven't nobody to come after them, no natural children, no 
 nothing, in short ! Oh, I shall go round to Dame Fontaine's 
 to get her to tell me my fortune on the cards, then we shall 
 know how much we are going to have " 
 
 "Wife," said the little tailor, "it's ill counting on dead 
 men's shoes." 
 
 " Oh, I say, axe you going to worry me ? " asked she, giving 
 her spouse a playful tap, " I know what I know ! Dr. Poulain 
 has given up Monsieur Pons. And we are going to be rich ! 
 My name will be down in the will. I'll see to that. Draw 
 your needle in and out, and look after the lodge ; you will not 
 do it for long now. We will retire, and go into the country, 
 out at Batignolles. A nice house and a fine garden ; you will 
 amuse yourself with gardening, and I shall keep a servant ! " 
 
 " Well, neighbor, and how are things going on upstairs?" 
 The words were spoken with the thick Auvergnat accent, and 
 Remonencq put his head in at the door. "Do you know 
 what the collection is worth? "
 
 COUSIN PONS. 213 
 
 "No, no, not yet. One can't go at that rate, my good 
 man. I have begun, myself, by finding out more important 
 things " 
 
 " More important ! " exclaimed Remonencq; " why, what 
 things can be more important ? " 
 
 " Come, let me do the steering, ragamuffin," said La Cibot 
 authoritatively. 
 
 "But thirty per cent, on seven hundred thousand francs," 
 persisted the dealer in old iron ; " you could be your own 
 mistress for the rest of your days on that." 
 
 " Be easy, Daddy Remonencq ; when we want to know the 
 value of the things that the old man has got together, then 
 we will see." 
 
 La Cibot went for the medicine ordered by Dr. Poulain, 
 and put off her consultation with Mme. Fontaine until the 
 morrow ; the oracle's faculties would be fresher and clearer in 
 the morning, she thought ; and she would go early, before 
 anybody else came, for there was often a crowd at Mme. 
 Fontaine's. 
 
 Mme. Fontaine was at this time the oracle of the Marais ; 
 she had survived the rival of forty years, the celebrated Mile. 
 Lenormand. No one imagines the part that fortune-tellers 
 play among Parisians of the lower classes, nor the immense 
 influence which they exert over the uneducated ; general ser- 
 vants, portresses, kept women, workmen, all the many in 
 Paris who live on hope, consult the privileged beings who 
 posses:, the mysterious power of reading the future. 
 
 The belief in occult science is far more widely spread than 
 scholars, lawyers, doctors, magistrates, and philosophers 
 imagine. The instincts of the people are ineradicable. One 
 among those instincts, so foolishly styled " superstition," runs 
 in the blood of the populace, and tinges no less the intellects 
 of better educated people. More than one French statesman 
 has been known to consult the fortune-teller's cards. For 
 skeptical minds, astrology, in French, so oddly termed astrol-
 
 214 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 ogic judidaire, is nothing more than a cunning device for 
 making a profit out of one of the strongest of all the instincts 
 of human nature to wit, curiosity. The skeptical mind con- 
 sequently denies that there is any connection between human 
 destiny and the prognostications obtained by the seven or 
 eight principal methods known to astrology ; and the occult 
 sciences, like many natural phenomena, are passed over by the 
 freethinker or the materialist philosopher, id est, by those who 
 believe in nothing but visible and tangible facts, in the results 
 given by the chemist's retort and the scales of modern physi- 
 cal science. The occult sciences still exist ; they are at work, 
 but they make no progress, for the greatest intellects of two 
 centuries have abandoned the field. 
 
 If you only look at the practical side of divination, it seems 
 absurd to imagine that events in a man's past life and secrets 
 known only to himself can be represented on the spur of the 
 moment by a pack of cards which he shuffles and cuts for the 
 fortune-teller to lay out in piles according to certain mysteri- 
 ous rules; but then the steam-engine was condemned as 
 absurd, aerial navigation is still said to be absurd, so in their 
 time were the inventions of gunpowder, printing, spectacles, 
 engraving, and that latest great discovery of all the daguer- 
 reotype. If any man had come to Napoleon to tell him that 
 a building or a figure is at all times and in all places repre- 
 sented by an image in the atmosphere, that every existing 
 object has a spectral intangible double which may become 
 visible, the Emperor would have sent his informant to 
 Charenton for a lunatic, just as Richelieu before his day sent 
 that Norman martyr, Salomon de Caux, to the Bic&tre for 
 announcing his immense triumph, the idea of navigation by 
 steam. Yet Daguerre's discovery amounts to nothing more 
 nor less than this. 
 
 And if for some clairvoyant eyes God has written each 
 man's destiny over his whole outward and visible form, if a 
 man's body is the record of his fate, why should not the hand
 
 COUSIN PONS. 215 
 
 in a manner epitomize the body ? Since the hand represents 
 the deed of man, and by his deeds he is known. 
 
 Herein lies the theory of palmistry. Does not Society 
 imitate God ? At the sight of a soldier we can predict that 
 he will fight ; of a lawyer, that he will talk ; of a shoemaker, 
 that he shall make shoes or boots ; of a worker of the soil, 
 that he shall dig the ground and dung it ; and is it a more 
 wonderful thing that such a one with the "seer's" gift 
 should foretell the events of a man's life from his hand ? 
 
 To take a striking example. Genius is so visible in a man 
 that a great artist cannot walk along the streets of Paris but 
 the most ignorant people are conscious of his passing. He is 
 a sun, as it were, in the mental world, shedding light that 
 colors everything in his path. And who does not know an 
 idiot at once by an impression the exact opposite of the sensa- 
 tion of the presence of genius. Most observers of human 
 nature in general, and Parisian nature in particular, can guess 
 the profession or calling of the man in the street. 
 
 The mysteries of the witches' Sabbath, so wonderfully 
 painted in the sixteenth century, are no mysteries for us. The 
 Egyptian ancestors of that mysterious people of Indian origin, 
 the gypsies of the present day, simply used to drug their clients 
 with hashish, a practice that fully accounts for broomstick 
 rides and flights up the chimney, the real-seeming visions, so 
 to speak, of old crones transformed into young damsels, the 
 frantic dances, the exquisite music, and all the fantastic tales 
 of devil-worship. 
 
 So many proven facts have been first discovered by occult 
 science, that some day we shall have professors of occult 
 science, as we already have professors of chemistry and as- 
 tronomy. It is even singular that here in Paris, where we are 
 founding chairs of Mantchu and Slav and literatures so little 
 professable (to coin a word) as the literatures of the North 
 (which so far from providing lessons stand very badly in need 
 of them) ; when the curriculum is full of the everlasting lee-
 
 216 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 tures on Shakespeare and the sixteenth century it is strange 
 that some one has not restored the teaching of the occult 
 philosophies, once the glory of the University of Paris, under 
 the title of anthropology. Germany, so child-like and so 
 great, has outstripped France in this particular ; in Germany 
 they have professors of a science of far more use than a knowl- 
 edge of the heterogeneous philosophies, which all come to the 
 same thing at bottom. 
 
 Once admit that certain beings have the power of discerning 
 the future in its germ-form of the Cause, as the great inventor 
 sees a glimpse of the industry latent in his invention, or a 
 science in something that happens every day unnoticed by 
 ordinary eyes once allow this, and there is nothing to cause 
 an outcry in such phenomena, no violent exception to nature's 
 laws, but the operation of a recognized faculty ; possibly a 
 kind of mental somnambulism, as it were. If, therefore, the 
 hypothesis upon which the various ways of divining the future 
 are based seems absurd, the facts remain. Remark that it is 
 not really more wonderful that the seer should foretell the 
 chief events of the future than that he should read the past. 
 Past and future, on the skeptic's system, equally lie beyond 
 the limits of knowledge. If the past has left traces behind it, 
 it is not improbable that future events have, as it were, their 
 roots in the present. 
 
 If a fortune-teller gives you minute details of past facts 
 known only to yourself, why should he not foresee the events 
 to be produced by existing causes ? The world of ideas is cut 
 out, so to speak, on the pattern of the physical world ; the 
 same phenomena should be discernible in both, allowing for 
 the difference of the medium. As, for instance, a corporeal 
 thing actually projects an image upon the atmosphere a 
 spectral double detected and recorded by the daguerreotype ; 
 so also ideas, having a real and effective existence, leave an 
 impression, as it were, upon the atmosphere of the spiritual 
 world ; they likewise produce effects, and exist spectrally (to
 
 COUSIN PONS. 217 
 
 coin a word to express phenomena for which no words exist), 
 and certain human beings are endowed with the faculty of 
 discerning these " forms" or traces of ideas. 
 
 As for the material means employed to assist the seer the 
 objects arranged by the hands of the consultant that the acci- 
 dents of his life may be revealed to him this is the least in- 
 explicable part of the process. Everything in the material 
 world is part of a series of causes and effects. Nothing hap- 
 pens without a cause, every cause is a part of a whole, and, 
 consequently, the whole leaves its impression on the slightest 
 accident. Rabelais, the greatest mind among moderns, being 
 a resumption of Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Aristophanes, and 
 Dante, pronounced, three centuries ago, that " man is a mi- 
 crocosm " a little world. Three hundred years later, the 
 great seer Svvedenborg declared that " the world was a man." 
 The prophet and the precursor of incredulity meet thus in the 
 greatest of all formulas. 
 
 Everything in human life is predestined, so is it also with 
 the existence of the planet. The least event, the most futile 
 phenomena, are all subordinate parts of a scheme. Great 
 things, therefore, great designs, and great thoughts are of 
 necessity reflected in the smallest actions, and that so faith- 
 fully, that should a conspirator shuffle and cut a pack of play- 
 ing-cards, he will write the history of his plot for the eyes of 
 the seer-styled gypsy, fortune-teller, charlatan, or what not. 
 If you once admit fate, which is to say, the chain of links of 
 cause and effect, astrology has a locus standi, and becomes what 
 it was of yore, a boundless science, requiring the same faculty 
 of deduction by which Cuvier became so great, a faculty to be 
 exercised spontaneously, however, and not merely in nights of 
 study in the closet. 
 
 For seven centuries astrology and divination have exercised 
 an influence not only (as at present) over the uneducated, but 
 over the greatest minds, over kings and queens and wealthy 
 people. Animal magnetism, one of the great sciences of an-
 
 218 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 tiquity, had its origin in occult philosophy ; chemistry is the 
 outcome of alchemy ; phrenology and neurology are no less 
 the fruit of similar studies. The first illustrious workers in 
 these, to all appearance, untouched fields, made one mistake, 
 the mistake of all inventors ; that is to say, they erected an 
 absolute system on a basis of isolated facts for which modern 
 analysis as yet cannot account. The Catholic Church, the 
 law of the land, and modern philosophy, in agreement for 
 once, combined to proscribe, persecute, and ridicule the mys- 
 teries of the Cabala as well as the adepts; the result is a lament- 
 able interregnum of a century in occult philosophy. But the 
 uneducated classes, and not a few cultivated people (women 
 especially), continue to pay a tribute to the mysterious power 
 of those who can raise the veil of the future ; they go to buy 
 hope, strength, and courage of the fortune-teller; in other 
 words, to ask of him all that religion alone can give. So the 
 art is still practiced in spite of a certain amount of risk. The 
 eighteenth-century encyclopaedists procured tolerance for the 
 sorcerer, he is no longer amenable to a court of law, unless, 
 indeed, he lends himself to fraudulent practices, and frightens 
 his "clients" to extort money from them, in which case he 
 maybe prosecuted on a charge of obtaining money under false 
 pretenses. Unluckily, the exercise of the sublime art is only 
 too often used as a method of obtaining money under false 
 pretenses, and for the following reasons : 
 
 The seer's wonderful gifts are usually bestowed upon those 
 who are described by the epithets rough and uneducated. 
 The rough and uneducated are the chosen vessels into which 
 God pours the elixirs at which we marvel. From among the 
 rough and uneducated, prophets arise an Apostle Peter, or 
 St. Peter the Hermit. Wherever mental power is imprisoned, 
 and remains intact and entire for want of an outlet in conver- 
 sation, in politics, in literature, in the imaginings of the. 
 scholar, in the efforts of the statesman, in the conceptions of 
 the inventor, or the soldier's toils of war; the fire within is
 
 COUSIN PONS. 219 
 
 apt to flash out in gleams of marvelously vivid light, like the 
 sparks hidden in an unpolished diamond. Let the occasion 
 come, and the spirit within kindles and glows, finds wings to 
 traverse space, and the god-like power of beholding all things. 
 The coal of yesterday, under the play of some mysterious in- 
 fluence, becomes a radiant diamond. Better educated people, 
 many-sided and highly polished, continually giving out all 
 that is in them, can never exhibit this supreme power, save by 
 one of the miracles which God sometimes vouchsafes to work. 
 For this reason the soothsayer is almost always a beggar, whose 
 mind is virgin soil, a creature coarse to all appearance, a pebble 
 borne along the torrent of misery and left in the ruts of life, 
 where it spends nothing of itself save in mere physical suf- 
 fering. 
 
 The prophet, the seer, in short, is some "Martin le 
 Laboureur" making a Louis XVIII. tremble by telling him a 
 secret known only to the King himself; or it is a Mile. Le- 
 normand, or a domestic servant like Mme. Fontaine, or, 
 again, perhaps it is some half-idiotic negress, some herdsman 
 living among his cattle, who receives the gift of vision; some 
 Hindoo fakir, seated by a pagoda, mortifying the flesh till the 
 spirit gains the mysterious power of the somnambulist. 
 
 Asia, indeed, through all time, has been the home of the 
 heroes of occult science. Persons of this kind, recovering 
 their normal state, are usually just as they were before. They 
 fulfill, in some sort, the chemical and physical functions of 
 bodies which conduct electricity; at times inert metal, at 
 other times a channel filled with a mysterious current. In 
 their normal condition they are given to practices which 
 bring them before the magistrate, yea, verily, like the no- 
 torious Balthazar, even unto the criminal court, and so to 
 the hulks. You could hardly find a better proof of the im- 
 mense influence of fortune-telling upon the working-classes 
 than the fact that poor Pons' life and death hung upon the 
 prediction that Mme. Fontaine was to make from the cards.
 
 220 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Although a certain amount of repetition is inevitable in a 
 canvas so considerable and so full of detail as a complete 
 picture of French society in the nineteenth century, it is 
 needless to repeat the description of Mme. Fontaine's den, 
 already given in "Les Comediens sans le savoir;" suffice 
 it to say 'that Mme. Cibot used to go to Mme. Fontaine's 
 house in the Rue Vieille-du- Temple as regularly as fre- 
 quenters of the Cafe Anglais drop in at that restaurant for 
 lunch. Mme. Cibot, being a very old customer, often intro- 
 duced young persons and old gossips consumed with curiosity 
 to the wise-woman. 
 
 The old servant who acted as provost-marshal flung open 
 the door of the sanctuary with no further ceremony than 
 the remark: "It's Madame Cibot. Come in, there's nobody 
 here." 
 
 " Well, child, what can bring you here so early of a morn- 
 ing?" asked the sorceress, as Mme. Fontaine might well be 
 called, for she was seventy-eight years old, and looked like 
 one of the Parcae. 
 
 "Something has given me a turn," said La Cibot; "I 
 want the grand ' jeu /* it is a question of my fortune." There- 
 with she explained her position, and wished to know if her 
 sordid hopes were likely to be realized. 
 
 "Do you know what the grand jeu means?" asked Mme. 
 Fontaine, with much solemnity. 
 
 " No. I haven't never seen the trick, I am not rich enough. 
 A hundred francs ! It's not as if it cost so much ! Where 
 was the money to come from ? But now I can't help my- 
 self, I must have it." 
 
 " I don't do it often, child," returned Mme. Fontaine ; " I 
 only do it for rich people on great occasions, and they pay 
 me twenty-five louis for doing it ; it tires me, you see, it 
 wears me out. The ' Spirit ' rives my inside, here. It is 
 like going to the ' Sabbath,' as they used to say." 
 * The Great Play; i. i., all that can be known.
 
 A COLD THRILL RAN THROUGH M M E. CIBOT.
 
 COUSIN PONS. .221 
 
 " But when I tell you that it means my whole future, my 
 dear good Ma'am Fontaine " 
 
 " Well, as it is you that have come to consult me so often, 
 I will submit myself to the Spirit ! " replied Mme. Fontaine, 
 with a look of genuine terror on her face. 
 
 She rose from her filthy old chair by the fireside, and went 
 to a table covered with a green cloth so worn that you could 
 count the threads. A huge toad sat dozing there beside a 
 cage inhabited by a black disheveled-looking fowl. 
 
 " Astaroth ! here, my son ! " she said, and the creature 
 looked up intelligently at her as she rapped him on the back 
 with a long knitting-needle. " And you, Mademoiselle Cleo- 
 pStre ! attention ! " she continued, tapping the ancient fowl 
 on the beak. 
 
 Then Mme. Fontaine began to think ; for several seconds 
 she did not move ; she looked like a corpse, her eyes rolled 
 in their sockets and grew white ; then she rose stiff and erect, 
 and a cavernous voice cried 
 
 " Here I am ! " 
 
 Automatically she scattered millet for Cleopatra, took up 
 the pack of cards, shuffled them convulsively, and held them 
 out to Mme. Cibot to cut, sighing heavily all the time. At 
 the sight of that image of DEATH in the filthy turban and un- 
 canny looking bed-jacket, watching the black-fowl as it pecked 
 at the millet-grains, calling to the toad Astaroth to walk over 
 the cards that lay out on the table, a cold thrill ran through 
 Mme. Cibot ; she shuddered. Nothing but strong belief can 
 give strong emotions. An assured income, to be or not to 
 be, that was the question. 
 
 The sorceress opened a magical work and muttered some 
 unintelligible words in a sepulchral voice, looked at the re- 
 maining millet-seeds, and watched the way in which the toad 
 retired. Then after seven or eight minutes, she turned her 
 white eyes on the cards and expounded them. 
 
 "You will succeed, although nothing in the affair will fall
 
 222 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 out as you expect. You will have many steps to take, but 
 you will reap the fruits of your labors. You will behave very 
 badly ; it will be with you as it is with all those who sit by a 
 sick-bed and covet part of the inheritance. Great people will 
 help you in this work of wrongdoing. Afterward in the death- 
 agony you will repent. Two escaped convicts, a short man 
 with red hair and an old man with a bald head, will murder 
 you for the sake of the money you will be supposed to have in 
 the village whither you will retire with your second husband. 
 Now, my daughter, it is still open to you to choose your 
 course. ' ' 
 
 The excitement which seemed to glow within, lighting up 
 the bony hollows about the eyes, was suddenly extinguished. 
 As soon as the horoscope was pronounced, Mme. Fontaine's 
 face wore a dazed expression ; she looked exactly like a sleep- 
 walker aroused from sleep, gazed about her with an astonished 
 air, recognized Mme. Cibot, and seemed surprised by her 
 terrified face. 
 
 "Well, child," she said, in a totally different voice, "are 
 you satisfied?" 
 
 Mme. Cibot stared stupidly at the sorceress, and could not 
 answer. 
 
 "Ah! you would have the grand jeu; I have treated you 
 as an old acquaintance. I only want a hundred francs instead 
 of " 
 
 " Cibot going to die ? " gasped the portress. 
 
 " So I have been telling you very dreadful things, have I ? " 
 asked Mme. Fontaine, with an extremely ingenuous air. 
 
 " Why, yes ! " said La Cibot, taking a hundred francs from 
 her pocket and laying them down on the edge of the table. 
 " Going to be murdered, think of it " 
 
 "Ah! there it is! You would have the grand jeu; but 
 don't take on so, all the people that are murdered on the 
 cards don't die." 
 
 "But is it possible, Ma'am Fontaine?"
 
 COUSIN PONS. 223 
 
 "Oh, /know nothing about it, my pretty dear! You 
 would rap at the door of the future ; I pull the cord, and IT 
 came." 
 
 "//, what?" asked Mme. Cibot. 
 
 " Well, then, the Spirit ! " cried the sorceress impatiently. 
 
 "Good-by, Ma'am Fontaine," exclaimed the portress. "I 
 did not know what the grand jeu was like. You have given 
 me a good fright, that you have." 
 
 " The mistress will not put herself in that state twice in a 
 month," said the servant, as she went with La Cibot to the 
 landing. "She would do herself to death if she did, it tires 
 her so. She will eat cutlets now and sleep for three hours 
 afterward." 
 
 Out in the street, La Cibot took counsel of herself as she 
 went along, and, after the manner of all who ask for advice of 
 any sort or description, she took the favorable part of the pre- 
 diction and rejected the rest. The next day found her con- 
 firmed in her resolutions she would set all in train to become 
 rich by securing a part of Pons" collection. Nor for some 
 time had she any other thought than the combination of 
 various plans to this end. The faculty of self-concentration 
 seen in rough uneducated persons, explained on a previous 
 page, the reserve power accumulated in those whose mental 
 energies are unworn by the daily wear and tear of social life, 
 and brought into action so soon as that terrible weapon the 
 "fixed idea" is brought into play all this was preeminently 
 manifested in La Cibot. Even as the "fixed idea" works 
 miracles of evasion, and brings forth prodigies of sentiment, 
 so greed transformed the portress till she became as formidable 
 as a Nucingen at bay, as subtle beneath her seeming stupidity 
 as the irresistible La Palferine. 
 
 About seven o'clock one morning, a few days afterward, 
 she saw Remonencq taking down his shutters. She went 
 across to him. 
 
 " How could one find out how much the things yonder in
 
 224 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 my gentlemen's rooms are worth?" she asked in a wheedling 
 tone. 
 
 "Oh! that is quite easy," replied the owner of the old 
 curiosity shop. " If you will play fair and above-board with 
 me, I will tell you of somebody, a very honest man, who will 
 know the value of the pictures to a centime " 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 " Monsieur Magus, a Jew. He only does business to amuse 
 himself now." 
 
 Elie Magus has appeared so often in the Comedie Humaine 
 that it is needless to say more of him here. Suffice it to add 
 that he had retired from business, and as a dealer was follow- 
 ing the example set by Pons the amateur. Well-known valuers 
 like Henry, Messrs. Pigeot and Moret, Theret, Georges, and 
 Roehn, the experts of the Musee in fact, were but children 
 compared with Elie Magus. He could see a masterpiece 
 beneath the accumulated grime of a century; he knew all 
 schools and the handwriting of all painters. 
 
 He had come to Paris from Bordeaux, and so long ago as 
 1835 he had retired from business without making any change 
 for the better in his dress, so faithful is the race to old tradi- 
 tion. The persecutions of the Middle Ages compelled them 
 to wear rags, to snuffle and whine and groan over their poverty 
 in self-defense, till the habits induced by the necessities of 
 other times have come to be, as usual, instinctive, a racial 
 defect. 
 
 Elie Magus had amassed a vast fortune by buying and sell- 
 ing the diamonds, pictures, lace, enamels, delicate carvings, 
 old jewelry, and rarities of all kinds, a kind of commerce 
 which has developed enormously of late, so much so indeed 
 that the number of dealers has increased tenfold during the last 
 twenty years in this city of Paris, whither all the curiosities 
 in the world come to rub against one another. And for pic- 
 tures- there are but three marts in the world Rome, London, 
 and Paris.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 225 
 
 Elie Magus lived in the Chaussee des Minimes, a short, 
 broad street leading to the Place Royale. He had bought 
 the house, an old-fashioned mansion, for a song, as the saying 
 is, in 1831. Yet there were sumptuous apartments within 
 it, decorated in the time of Louis XV.; for it had once been 
 the Hotel Maulaincourt, built by the great president of the 
 Cour des Aides, and its remote position had saved it at the 
 time of the Revolution. 
 
 You may be quite sure that the old Jew had sound reasons 
 for buying house property, contrary to the Hebrew law and 
 custom. He had ended, as most of us end, with a hobby that 
 bordered on a craze. He was as miserly as his friend the late 
 lamented Gobseck ; but he had been caught by the snare of 
 the eyes, by the beauty of the pictures in which he dealt. As 
 his taste grew more and more fastidious, it became one of the 
 passions which princes alone can indulge when they are 
 wealthy and art-lovers. As the second King of Prussia found 
 nothing that so kindled enthusiasm as the spectacle of a 
 grenadier over six feet high, and gave extravagant sums for a 
 new specimen to add to his living museum of a regiment, so 
 the retired picture-dealer was roused to passion-pitch only by 
 some canvas in perfect preservation, untouched since the 
 master laid down the brush ; and what was more, it must be 
 a picture of the painter's best time. No great sales, there- 
 fore, took place but Elie Magus was there ; every mart knew 
 him, he traveled all over Europe. The ice-cold, money- 
 worshiping soul in him kindled at the sight of a perfect work 
 of art, precisely as a libertine, weary of fair women, is roused 
 from apathy by the sight of a beautiful girl, and sets out 
 afresh upon the quest of flawless loveliness. A Don Juan 
 among fair works of art, a worshiper of the Ideal, Elie 
 Magus had discovered joys that transcend the pleasure of the 
 miser gloating over his gold he lived in a seraglio of great 
 paintings. 
 
 His masterpieces were housed as became the children of 
 15
 
 226 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 princes; the whole second floor of the great old mansion was 
 given up to them. 
 
 The rooms had been restored under Elie Maguus' orders, 
 and with what magnificence ! 
 
 The windows were hung with the richest Venetian brocade ; 
 the most splendid carpets from the Savonnerie covered the 
 parquetry flooring. The frames of the pictures, nearly a hun- 
 dred in number, were magnificent specimens, regilded cun- 
 ningly by Servais, the one gilder in Paris whom Elie Magus 
 thought sufficiently painstaking ; the old Jew himself had 
 taught him to use the English leaf, which is infinitely superior 
 to that produced by French gold-beaters. Servais is among 
 gilders as Thouvenin among bookbinders an artist among 
 craftsmen, making his work a labor of love. Every window 
 in that gallery was protected by iron-barred shutters. E'lie 
 Magus himself lived in a couple of attics on the floor above ; 
 the furniture was wretched, the rooms were full of rags, and 
 the whole place smacked of the Ghetto ; Elie Magus was 
 finishing his days without any change in his life. 
 
 The whole of the first floor was given up to the picture 
 trade (for the Jew still dealt in works of art). Here he stored 
 his paintings, here also packing-cases were stowed on their 
 arrival from other countries ; and still there was room for a 
 vast studio, where Moret, most skillful of restorers of pictures, 
 a craftsman whom the Musee ought to employ, was almost 
 always at work for Magus. The rest of the rooms on the first 
 floor were given up to Magus' daughter, the child of his old 
 age, a Jewess beautiful as a Jewess can be when the Semitic 
 type reappears in its purity and nobility in a daughter of Israel. 
 Noemi was guarded by two servants, fanatical Jewesses, to say 
 nothing of an advanced-guard, a Polish Jew, Abramko by 
 name, once involved in a fabulous manner in political troubles, 
 from which Elie Magus saved him as a business speculation. 
 Abramko, janitor of the silent, grim, deserted mansion, 
 divided hjs office and his lodge with three remarkably fero-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 227 
 
 cious animals an English bull-dog, a Newfoundland dog, and 
 another of the Pyrenean breed. 
 
 Behold the profound observations of human nature upon 
 which Elie Magus based his feeling of security, for secure he 
 felt ; he left home without misgivings, slept with both ears 
 shut, and feared no attempt upon his daughter (his chief trea- 
 sure), his pictures, nor his money. In the first place, Ab- 
 ramko's salary was increased every year by two hundred 
 francs so long as his master should live ; and Magus, more- 
 over, was training Abramko as a money-lender in a small way. 
 Abramko never admitted anybody until he had surveyed them 
 through a formidable grated opening. He was a Hercules for 
 strength, he worshiped Elie Magus, as Sancho Panza wor- 
 shiped Don Quixote. All day long the dogs were shut up with- 
 out food 5 at nightfall Abramko let them loose; and by a cun- 
 ning device the old Jew kept each animal at his post in the 
 courtyard or the garden by hanging a piece of meat just out 
 of reach on the top of a pole. The animals guarded the house, 
 and sheer hunger guarded the dogs. No odor that reached 
 their nostrils could tempt them from the neighborhood of 
 that piece of meat ; they would not have left their places at 
 the foot of the poles for the most engaging female of the canine 
 species. If a stranger by any chance intruded, the dogs sus- 
 pected him of ulterior designs upon their rations, which were 
 only taken down in the morning by Abramko himself when 
 he awoke. The advantages of this fiendish scheme are patent. 
 
 The animals never barked, Magus' ingenuity had made 
 savages of them ; they were treacherous as Mohicans. And 
 now for the result. 
 
 One night burglars, emboldened by the silence, decided too 
 hastily that it would be easy enough to " clean out " the old 
 Jew's strong box. One of their number told off to advance 
 to the assault scrambled up the garden-wall and prepared to 
 descend. This the bull-dog allowed him to do. The animal, 
 knowing perfectly well what was coming, waited for the
 
 228 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 burglar to reach the ground ; but when that gentleman directed 
 a kick at him, the bull-dog flew at the visitor's shins, and, 
 making but one bite of it, snapped the ankle-bone clean in two. 
 The thief had the courage to tear himself away, and returned, 
 walking upon the bare bone of the mutilated stump till he 
 reached the rest of the gang, when he fell fainting, and they 
 carried him off. The "Police News," of course, did not fail 
 to report this delightful night incident, but no one believed 
 in it. 
 
 Magus at this time was seventy-five years old, and there was 
 no reason why he should not live to a hundred. Rich man 
 though he was, he lived like the Remonencqs. His necessary 
 expenses, including the money he lavished on his daughter, 
 did not exceed three thousand francs. No life could be more 
 regular ; the old man rose as soon as it was light, breakfasted 
 on bread rubbed with a clove of garlic, and ate no more food 
 until dinner-time. Dinner, a meal frugal enough for a con- 
 vent, he took at home. All the forenoon he spent among his 
 treasures, walking up and down the gallery where they hung 
 in their glory. He would dust everything himself, furniture 
 and pictures ; he never wearied of admiring. Then he would 
 go downstairs to his daughter, drink deep of a father's happi- 
 ness, and start out upon his walk through Paris, to attend sales 
 or visit exhibitions and the like. 
 
 If Elie Magus found a great work of art under the right 
 conditions, the discovery put new life into the man ; here was 
 a bit of sharp practice, a bargain to make, a battle of Marengo 
 to win. He would pile ruse on ruse to buy the new sultana 
 as cheaply as possible. Magus had a map of Europe on which 
 all great pictures were marked ; his co-religionists in every 
 city spied out business for him, and received a commission on 
 the purchase. And then what rewards for all his pains ! 
 The two lost Raphaels so earnestly sought after by Raphael- 
 lovers are both in his collection. Elie Magus owns the origi- 
 nal portrait of Giorgione's Mistress, the woman for whom the
 
 COUSIN PONS. 229 
 
 painter died ; the so-called originals are merely copies of the 
 famous picture, which is worth five hundred thousand francs, 
 according to its owner's estimation. This Jew possesses 
 Titian's masterpiece, an Entombment painted for Charles V., 
 sent by the great man to the great Emperor with a holograph 
 letter, now fastened down upon the lower part of the canvas. 
 And Magus has yet another Titian, the original sketch from 
 which all the portraits of Philip II. were painted. His re- 
 maining ninety-seven pictures are all of the same rank and 
 distinction. Wherefore Magus laughs at our national collec- 
 tion, raked by the sunlight which destroys the fairest paintings, 
 pouring in through panes of glass that act as lenses. Picture 
 galleries can only be lighted from above ;* Magus opens and 
 closes his shutters himself; he is as careful of his pictures as of 
 his daughter, his second idol. And well the old picture- 
 fancier knows the laws of the lives of pictures. To hear him 
 talk, a great picture has a life of its own ; it is changeable, it 
 takes its beauty from the color of the light. Magus talks of 
 his paintings as Dutch fanciers used to talk of their tulips; he 
 will come home on purpose to see some one picture in the 
 hour of its glory, when the light is bright and clean. 
 
 And Magus himself was a living picture among the motion- 
 less figures on the wall a little old man, dressed in a shabby 
 overcoat, a silk vest, renewed twice in a score of years, and a 
 very dirty pair of trousers ; with a bald head, a face full of 
 deep hollows, a wrinkled callous skin, a beard that had a trick 
 of twitching its long white bristles, a menacing pointed chin, 
 a toothless mouth, eyes bright as the eyes of his dogs in the 
 yard, a nose like an obelisk there he stood in his gallery 
 smiling at the beauty called into being by genius. A Jew 
 surrounded by his millions will always be one of the finest 
 spectacles which humanity can give. Robert Medal, our 
 great actor, cannot rise to this height of poetry, sublime 
 though he is. 
 
 * All Parisian Fine Art Museums, etc., are so lighted now.
 
 230 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Paris of all the cities of the world holds most of such men 
 as Magus, strange beings with a strange religion in their heart 
 of hearts. The London "eccentric" always finds that wor- 
 ship, like life, brings weariness and satiety in the end ; the 
 Parisian monomaniac lives cheerfully in concubinage with his 
 crotchet to the last. 
 
 Often shall you meet in Paris some Pons, some Elie Magus, 
 dressed badly enough, with his face turned from the rising sun 
 (like the countenance of the perpetual secretary of the Acad- 
 emy), apparently heeding nothing, conscious of nothing, pay- 
 ing no attention to store-windows, nor to fair passers-by, 
 walking at random, so to speak, with nothing in his pockets, 
 and to all appearance an equally empty head. Do you ask to 
 what Parisian tribe this manner of man belongs? He is a 
 collector, a millionaire, one of the most impassioned souls on 
 earth ; he and his like are capable of treading the miry ways 
 that lead to the police court if so they may gain possession of 
 a cup, a picture, or some such rare unpublished piece as Elie 
 Magus once picked up one memorable day in Germany. 
 
 This was the expert to whom Remonencq with much mys- 
 tery conducted La Cibot. Remonencq always asked advice 
 of Elie Magus when he met him in the streets ; and more than 
 once Magus had lent him money through Abramko, knowing 
 Remonencq's honesty. The Chaussee des Minimes is close 
 to the Rue de Normandie, and the two fellow-conspirators 
 reached the house in ten minutes. 
 
 " You will see the richest dealer in curiosities, the greatest 
 connoisseur in Paris," Remonencq had said. And Mme. 
 Cibot, therefore, was struck dumb with amazement to be con- 
 fronted with a little old man in a greatcoat too shabby for 
 Cibot to mend, standing watching a painter at work upon an 
 old picture in the chilly room on the vast first 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.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 231 
 
 " 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 ? " 
 
 " Monsieur 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 Fons' 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 for 
 him, as for Dusommerard. Pons and Magus had at heart the 
 same jealousy. Neither of them cared about the kind of ce- 
 lebrity dear to the ordinary collector. And now for Elie 
 Magiis came his chance to see the poor musician's treasures ! 
 An amateur of beauty hiding in a boudoir for 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 obe- 
 dient, she dropped the autocratic tone which she was wont to
 
 232 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 use in her lodge and with the tenants, accepted Magus' con- 
 ditions, and agreed to admit him into Pens' museum that very 
 day. 
 
 So the enemy was to be brought into the citadel, and a stab 
 dealt to Pens' 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 with Pons' sor- 
 rows weighing heavily upon his mind, the task took all his 
 strength. He only saw his friend in the morning, and again 
 at dinner-time. 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 we'll 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' symp- 
 toms. 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
 
 COUSIN PONS. 233 
 
 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 ex- 
 pected) while Schmucke breakfasted. She came in again just 
 as the German was bidding his friend good-by ; 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 Machiavellian skill, 
 she had contrived to make Pons think that she was indispens- 
 able to him ; she coaxed and she wheedled, always uneasy, al- 
 ways 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' collec- 
 tion ; she had a clear record behind her of ten years of devo- 
 tion, 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
 
 234 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 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 veil, tear Montame Zipod, not fery 
 veil," said poor Schmucke, brushing away the tears from his 
 eyes. 
 
 " Pooh ! you make too much of it, my dear Monsieur 
 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 to 
 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, Madame Cibot ? " asked Pons, seeing 
 the tears. 
 
 " It is Monsieur 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 ain'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
 
 COUSIN PONS. 235 
 
 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 
 \yas, ' If Monsieur 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. 1 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 Monsieur 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 ; Mademoiselle 
 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 that have done for you these ten years. And those 
 nurses are such eaters, they eat enough for ten ; 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
 
 236 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 to-morrow we should find a picture or something or other 
 gone " 
 
 "Oh ! Madame 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 nobody but me,' I told him. ' He is used to me, 
 and I am used to him.' So he said no more. A nurse, in- 
 deed ! They are all thieves ; I hate that sort of woman, I do. 
 Here is a tale that will show you how sly they are. There 
 was once an old gentleman it was Dr. Poulain himself, mind 
 you, who told me this well, a Madame Sabatier, a woman of 
 thirty-six that used to sell slippers at the Palais Royal you 
 remember the Galerie at the Palais that they pulled down?" 
 
 Pons nodded. 
 
 " Well, at that time she had not done very well ; her hus- 
 band used to drink, and died of spontaneous imbustion ; but 
 she had been a fine woman in her time, truth to tell, not that 
 it did her any good, though she had friends among the lawyer- 
 folks. So, being hard up, she became a monthly nurse, and 
 lived in the Rue Barre-du-Bec. Well, she went out to nurse an 
 old gentleman that had a disease of the lurinary guts (saving 
 your presence) ; they used to tap him like an artesian well, and 
 he needed such care that she used to sleep on a truckle-bed in 
 the same room with him. You would hardly believe such a 
 thing ! ' Men respect nothing,' you'll tell me, ' so selfish as 
 they are.' Well, she used to talk with him, you understand ; 
 she never left him, she amused him, she told him stories, she 
 drew him on to talk (just as we are chatting away together 
 now, you and I, eh ?), and she found out that his nephews 
 the old gentleman had nephews that his nephews were 
 wretches ; they had worried him, and, final end of it, they had 
 brought on this illness. Well, my dear sir, she saved his life,
 
 COUSIN PONS. 237 
 
 he married her, and they have a fine child ; Ma'am Bordevin, 
 the butcher's wife in the Rue Chariot, a relative of hers, stood 
 godmother. There is luck for you ! 
 
 "As for me, I am married ; and if I have no children, I 
 don't mind saying that it is Cibot's fault ; he is too fond of 
 me, but if I cared never mind. What would have become 
 of me and my Cibot if we had had a family, when we have 
 not a sou to bless ourselves with after thirty years of faithful 
 service ? I have not a centime belonging to nobody else, 
 that is what comforts me. I have never wronged nobody. 
 Look here, suppose now (there is no harm in supposing when 
 you will be out and about again in six weeks' time, and saun- 
 tering along the boulevard) ; well, suppose that you had put 
 me down in your will ; very good, I shouldn't never rest till 
 I had found your heirs and given the money back. Such is 
 my horror of anything that is not earned by the sweat of my 
 brow. 
 
 " You will say to me, ' Why, Madame Cibot, why should 
 you worry yourself like that ? You have fairly earned the 
 money ; you looked after your two gentlemen as if they had 
 been your children ; you saved them a thousand francs a 
 year ' (for there are plenty, sir, you know, that would have 
 had their ten thousand francs put out to interest by now if 
 they had been in my place) 'so if the worthy gentleman 
 leaves you a trifle of an annuity, it is only right.' Suppose 
 they told me that. Well, no ; I am not thinking of myself. 
 I cannot think how some women can do a kindness thinking 
 of themselves all the time. It ain't doing good, sir, is it? I 
 do not go to church myself, I haven't the time ; but my con- 
 science tells me what is right Don't you fidget like that, 
 
 my lamb! Don't scratch yourself! Dear me, how yellow 
 you have growed ! So yellow you are quite brown. How 
 funny it is that one can come to look like a lemon in three 
 
 weeks ! Honesty is all that poor people has, and one 
 
 must surely have something ! Suppose that you were just at
 
 238 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 death's door, I should be the first to tell you that you ought 
 to leave all that you have to Monsieur Schmucke. It is your 
 duty, for he is all the family you have. He loves you, he 
 does, as a dog loves his master." 
 
 "Ah! yes," said Pons ; " nobody else has ever loved me 
 all my life long " 
 
 "Ah! that is not kind of you, sir," said Mme. Cibot; 
 " then I do not love you, I suppose ? " 
 
 " I do not say so, my dear Madame Cibot." 
 
 " Good. You take me for a servant, do you, a common 
 servant, as if I hadn't got no heart ! Goodness me ! for 
 eleven years you do for two old bachelors, you think of noth- 
 ing but their comfort. I have turned half a score of green- 
 grocers' stalls upside down for you, I have talked people 
 round to get you good Brie cheese ; I have gone down as far 
 as the market for fresh butter for you ; I have taken such 
 care of things that nothing of yours hasn't been chipped nor 
 broken in all these ten years; I have just treated you like my 
 own children ; and then to hear a ' My dear Madame Cibot,' 
 that shows that there is not a bit of feeling for you in the 
 heart of an old gentleman that you have cared for like a 
 king's son ! for the little King of Rome was not so well cared 
 for as you have been. You may bet that he was not as well 
 looked after. He died in his prime ; there is proof for you. 
 Come, sir, you are unjust ! You are ungrateful ! It is be- 
 cause I am only a poor portress. Goodness me ! are you one 
 of those that think we are dogs? " 
 
 " But, my dear Madame Cibot 
 
 "Indeed, you that know so much, tell me why we porters 
 are treated like this, and ain't supposed to have no feelings; 
 people look down on us in these days when they talks of 
 Equality ! As for me, am I not as good as another woman, I 
 that was one of the finest women in Paris, and was called 
 La belle Ecailierej*- and received declarations seven or eight 
 * The handsome oyster-opener.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 239 
 
 times a day? And even now if I liked Look here, sir, 
 you know that little scrubby marine-store-dealer downstairs? 
 Very well, he would marry me any day, if I were a widow, 
 that is, with his eyes shut ; he has had them looking wide 
 open in my direction so often ; he is always saying, ' Oh ! 
 what fine arms you have, Ma'am Cibot ! I dreamed last night 
 that it was bread and I was butter, and I was spread on the 
 top of you.' Look, sir, there is an arm ! " 
 
 She rolled up her sleeve and displayed the shapeliest arm 
 imaginable, as white and fresh as her hand was red and rough ; 
 a plump, round, dimpled arm, drawn from its merino sheath 
 like a blade from the scabbard to dazzle Pons, who looked 
 away. 
 
 " For every oyster the knife opened, that arm has opened 
 a heart ! Well, it belongs to Cibot, and I did wrong when I 
 neglected him, poor dear ; HE would throw himself over a 
 precipice at a word from me ; while you, sir, that call me 
 'My dear Madame Cibot,' when I do impossible things for 
 you " 
 
 "Do just listen to me," broke in the patient; "I cannot 
 call you my mother, nor my wife " 
 
 " No, never in all my born days will I take again to any- 
 body " 
 
 " Do let me speak ! " continued Pons. " Let us see ; I put 
 Monsieur Schmucke first " 
 
 " Monsieur Schmucke ! there is a heart for you ! " cried La 
 Cibot. "Ah ! he loves me, but then he is poor. It is money 
 that deadens the heart ; and you are rich ! Oh, well take a 
 nurse, you will see what a life she will lead you ; she will tor- 
 ment you, you will be like a cockchafer on a string. The 
 doctor will say that you must have plenty to drink, and she 
 will do nothing but feed you. She will bring you to your 
 grave and rob you. You do not deserve to have a Madame 
 Cibot ! there ! When Dr. Poulain comes, ask him for a 
 nurse."
 
 240 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 " Oh fiddlestick, stop ! " the patient cried angrily. " Will 
 you listen to me ? When I spoke of my friend Schmucke, I 
 was not thinking of women. I know quite well that no one 
 cares for me so sincerely as you do, you and Schmucke 
 
 " Have the goodness not to irritate yourself in this way ! " 
 exclaimed La Cibet, plunging down upon Pons and covering 
 him by force with the bedclothes. 
 
 " How should I not love you ? " said poor Pons. 
 
 "You love me, really? There, there, forgive me, sir!" 
 she said, crying and wiping her eyes. "Ah, yes, of course, 
 you love me, as you love a servant, that is the way ! a servant 
 to whom you throw an annuity of six hundred francs like a 
 crust you fling into a dog's kennel " 
 
 " Oh ! Madame Cibot," cried Pons, " for what do you take 
 me? You do not know me." 
 
 "Ah ! you will care even more than that for me," she said, 
 meeting Pons' eyes. " You will love your kind old Cibot like 
 a mother, will you not ? A mother, that is it ! I am your 
 
 mother ; you are both of you my children Ah, if I only 
 
 knew them that caused you this sorrow, I would do that which 
 would bring me into the police courts, and even to prison ; I 
 would scratch their eyes out ! Such people deserve to die at 
 the Barriere Saint-Jacques, and that is too good for such 
 scoundrels. So kind, so good as you are (for you have a heart 
 of gold), you were sent into the world to make some woman 
 happy ! Yes, you would have her happy, as anybody can see ; 
 you were cut out for that. In the very beginning, when I 
 saw how you were with Monsieur Schmucke, I said to myself, 
 ' Monsieur Pons has missed the life he was meant for ; he was 
 made to be a good husband.' Come, now, you like women." 
 
 "Ah, yes," said Pons, "and no woman has been mine." 
 
 "Really? " exclaimed La Cibot, with a provocative air as 
 she came nearer and took Pons' hand in hers. " Do you not 
 know what it is to love a woman that will do anything for her 
 lover ? Is it possible ? If I were in your place, I should not
 
 COUSIN PONS. 241 
 
 wish to leave this world for another until I had known the 
 greatest happiness on earth ! Poor dear ! If I was now what I 
 was once, I would leave Cibot for you ! upon my word, I would ! 
 Why, with a nose shaped like that for you have a fine nose 
 how did you manage it, poor cherub? You will tell me 
 that ' not every woman knows a man when she sees him ; ' and 
 a pity it is that they marry so at random as they do, it makes 
 you sorry to see it. Now, for my own part, I should have 
 thought that you had had mistresses by the dozen dancers, 
 actresses, and duchesses, for you went out so much. When 
 you went out, I used to say to Cibot, ' Look ! there is Mon- 
 sieur Pons going a-gallivanting ; ' on my word, I did, I was so 
 sure that women ran after you. Heaven made you for love. 
 Why, my dear sir, I found that out the first day that you 
 dined at home, and you were so touched with Monsieur 
 Schmucke's pleasure. And next day Monsieur Schmucke 
 kept saying to me, ' Montame Zipod, he haf lined hier,' with 
 the tears in his eyes, till I cried along with him like a fool, as I 
 am. And how sad he looked when you took to gadding abroad 
 again and dining out ! Poor man, you never saw any one 
 so disconsolate ! Ah ! you are quite right to leave everything 
 to him. Dear, worthy man, why, he is as good as a family to 
 you, he is ! Do not forget him ; for if you do, God will not 
 receive you into His paradise, for those that have been un- 
 grateful to their friends and left them no rentes will not go to 
 heaven." 
 
 In vaiii Pons tried to put in a word ; La Cibot talked as the 
 wind blows. Means of arresting steam-engines have been 
 invented, but it would tax a mechanician's genius to discover 
 any plan for stopping a portress' tongue. 
 
 "I know what you mean," continued she. "But it does 
 not kill you, my dear gentleman, to make a will when you are 
 out of health ; and in your place I would not leave that poor 
 dear alone, for fear that something might happen ; he is like 
 God Almightv's lamb, he knows nothing about nothing, and I 
 16
 
 242 TttR POOR PARENTS. 
 
 should not like him to be at the mercy of those sharks of 
 lawyers and a wretched pack of relations. Let us see now, 
 has one of them come here to see you in twenty years? And 
 would you leave your property to them ? Do you know, they 
 say that all these things here are worth something." 
 
 "Why, yes," said Pons. 
 
 " Remonencq, who deals in pictures, and knows that you 
 are an amateur, says that he would be quite ready to pay you 
 an annuity of thirty thousand francs so long as you live, to 
 have the pictures afterward. There is a chance ! If I were 
 you, I should take it. Why, I thought he said it for a joke 
 when he told me that. You ought to let Monsieur Schmucke 
 know the value of all those things, for he is a man that could 
 be cheated like a child. He has not the slightest idea of the 
 value of these fine things that you have ! He so little suspects 
 it, that he would give them away for a morsel of bread if he 
 did not keep them all his life for love of you ; always supposing 
 that he lives after you, for he will die of your death. But 7 
 am here ; I will take his part against anybody and everybody ! 
 I and Cibot will defend him." 
 
 "Dear Madame Cibot!" said Pons, "what would have 
 become of me if it had not beert for you and Schmucke?" 
 He felt touched by this horrible prattle ; the feeling in it 
 seemed to be ingenuous, as it usually is in the speech of the 
 people. 
 
 "Ah ! we really are your only friends on earth, that is very 
 true, that is. But two good hearts are worth all the families 
 in the world. Don't talk of families to me ! A family, as 
 the old actor said of the tongue, is the best and the worst of 
 all things. Where are those relations of yours now ? Have 
 you any? I have never seen them " 
 
 "They have brought me to lie here," said Pons, with in- 
 tense bitterness. 
 
 " So you have relations ! " cried La Cibot, springing 
 
 up as if her easy-chair had been heated red-hot. " Oh, well,
 
 COUSIN PONS. 243 
 
 they are a nice lot, are your relations ! What ! these three 
 weeks for this is the twentieth day, to-day, that you have 
 been ill and like to die in these three weeks they have not 
 come once to ask for news of you? That's a trifle too strong, 
 that is ! Why, in your place, I would leave all I had to the 
 Foundling Hospital sooner than give them one centime ! " 
 
 "Well, my dear Madame Cibot, I meant to leave all that 
 I had to a first cousin once removed, the daughter of my first 
 cousin, President Camusot, you know, who came here one 
 morning nearly two months ago." 
 
 "Oh ! a little stout man who sent his servants to beg your 
 pardon for his wife's blunder ? The housemaid came asking 
 me questions about you, an affected old creature she is, my 
 fingers itched to give her velvet tippet a dusting with my 
 broom handle ! A servant wearing a velvet tippet ! did any- 
 body ever see the like? No, upon my word, the world is 
 turned upside down ; what is the use of making a Revolution ? 
 Dine twice a day if you can afford it, you scamps of rich folk ! 
 But laws are no good, I tell you, and nothing will be safe if 
 Louis-Philippe does not keep people in their places; for, after 
 all, if we are all equal, eh, sir? a housemaid didn't ought to 
 have a velvet tippet, while I, Madame Cibot, haven't one, 
 after thirty years of honest work. There is a pretty thing for 
 you ! People ought to be able to tell who you are. A house- 
 maid is a housemaid, just as I myself am a portress. Why do 
 they have silk epaulettes in the army ? Let everybody keep 
 their place. Look here, do you want me to tell you what all 
 this c<5mes to? Very well, France is going to the dogs. If 
 the Emperor had been here, things would have been very 
 different, wouldn't they, sir? So I said to Cibot, I said, 
 ' See here, Cibot, a house where the servants wear velvet tip- 
 pets belongs to people that have no heart in them ' " 
 
 "No heart in them, that is just it," repeated Pons. And 
 with that he began to tell Mme. Cibot about his troubles and 
 mortifications, she pouring out abuse of the relations the while
 
 244 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 and showing exceeding tenderness on every fresh sentence in 
 the sad history. 
 
 She fairly wept at last. 
 
 To understand the sudden intimacy between the old musi- 
 cian and Mme. Cibot, you have only to imagine the position 
 of an old bachelor lying on his bed of pain, seriously ill for 
 the first time in his life. Pons felt that he was alone in the 
 world ; the days that he spent by himself were all the longer 
 because he was struggling with the indefinable nausea of a 
 liver complaint which blackens the brightest life. Cut off 
 from all his many interests, the sufferer falls a victim to a 
 kind of nostalgia; he regrets the sparkling boulevards, the 
 many sights to be seen for nothing in Paris. The isolation, 
 the darkened days, the suffering that affects the mind and 
 spirits even more than the body, the emptiness of the life all 
 these things tend to induce him to cling to the human being 
 who waits on him as a drowned man clings to a plank ; and 
 this especially if the bachelor patient's character is as weak as 
 his nature is sensitive and credulous. 
 
 Pons was charmed to hear La Cibot's tittle-tattle. Schmucke, 
 Mme. Cibot, and Dr. Poulain meant all humanity to him now, 
 when his sickroom became the universe. If invalids' thoughts, 
 as a rule, never travel beyond in the little space over which 
 their eyes can wander; if their selfishness, in its narrow 
 sphere, subordinates all creatures and all things to itself, you 
 can imagine the lengths to which an old bachelor may go. 
 Before three weeks were out he had even gone so far as to 
 regret, once and again, that he had not married Madeleine 
 Vivet ! Mme. Cibot, too, had made immense progress in his 
 esteem in those three weeks ; without her he felt that he 
 should have been utterly lost ; for as for Schmucke, the poor 
 invalid looked upon him as a second Pons. La Cibot's pro- 
 digious art consisted in expressing Pons' own ideas, and this 
 she did quite unconsciously. 
 
 " Ah ! here comes the doctor ! " she exclaimed, as the bell
 
 COUSIN PONS. 245 
 
 rang, and away she went, knowing very well that Remonencq 
 had come with the Jew. 
 
 " Make no noise, gentlemen," said she, " he must not 
 know anything. He is all on the fidget when his precious 
 treasures are concerned." 
 
 "A walk round will be enough," said the Hebrew, armed 
 with a magnifying-glass and a lorgnette. 
 
 The greater part of Pons' collection was installed in a great 
 old-fashioned salon such as French architects used to build for 
 the old noblesse; a room twenty-five feet broad, some thirty 
 feet in length, and thirteen in height. Pons' pictures to the 
 number of sixty-seven hung upon the white-and-gold paneled 
 walls ; time, however, had reddened the gold and softened 
 the white to an ivory tint, so that the whole was toned down, 
 and the general effect subordinated to the effect of the pic- 
 tures. Fourteen statues stood on pedestals set in the corners 
 of the room, or among the pictures, or on brackets inlaid by 
 Boule ; sideboards of carved ebony, royally rich, surrounded 
 the walls to elbow height, all the shelves filled with curiosi- 
 ties ; in the middle of the room stood a row of carved cre- 
 dence-tables, covered with rare miracles of handicraft with 
 ivories and bronzes, wood-carvings and enamels, jewelry and 
 porcelain. 
 
 As soon as Elie Magus entered the sanctuary, he went 
 straight to the four masterpices ; he saw at a glance that these 
 were the gems of Pons' collection, and masters lacking in his 
 own. For Elie Magus these were the naturalist's desiderata 
 for which men undertake long voyages from east to west, 
 through deserts and tropical countries, across southern savan- 
 nas, through virgin forests. 
 
 The first was a painting by Sebastian del Piombo, the sec- 
 ond a Fra Bartolommeo della Porta, the third a Hobbema 
 landscape, and the fourth and last a Durer a portrait of a 
 woman. Four diamonds indeed ! In the history of art, 
 Sebastian del Piombo is like a shining point in which three
 
 246 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 schools meet, each bringing its preeminent qualities. A 
 Venetian painter, he went to Rome to learn the manner of 
 Raphael under the direction of Michael Angelo, who would 
 fain oppose Raphael on his own ground by pitting one of his 
 own lieutenants againt the reigning king of art. And so it 
 came to pass that in del Piombo's indolent genius Venetian 
 color was blended with Florentine composition and a some- 
 thing of Raphael's manner in the few pictures which he 
 deigned to paint, and the sketches were made for him, it is 
 said, by Michael Angelo himself. 
 
 If you would see the perfection to which the painter at- 
 tained (armed as he was with triple power), go to the Louvre 
 and look at the Baccio Bandinelli portrait ; you might place 
 it beside Titian's Man with a Glove, or by that other Portrait 
 of an Old Man in which Raphael's consummate skill blends 
 with Coreggio's art ; or, again, compare it with Lionardo da 
 Vinci's Charles VIII., and the picture would scarcely lose. 
 The four pearls are equal ; there i r j the same lustre and sheen, 
 the same rounded completeness, the same brilliancy. Art can 
 go no further than this. Art has risen above Nature, since 
 Nature only gives her creatures a few brief years of life. 
 
 Pons possessed one example of this immortal, great genius 
 and incurably indolent painter ; it was a Knight of Malta, a 
 Templar kneeling in prayer. The picture was painted on 
 slate, and in its unfaded color and its finish was immeasurably 
 finer than the Baccio Bandinelli. 
 
 Fra Bartolommeo was represented by a Holy Family, which 
 many connoisseurs might have taken for a Raphael. The 
 Hobbema would have fetched sixty thousand francs at a 
 public sale ; and as for the Diirer, it was equal to the famous 
 Holzschuer portrait at Nuremberg for which the Kings of 
 Bavaria, Holland, and Prussia have vainly offered two hun- 
 dred thousand francs again and again. Was it the portrait of 
 the wife or the daughter of Holzschuer, Albrecht Diirer's per- 
 sonal friend? The hypothesis seems to be a certainty, for
 
 COUSIN PONS. 247 
 
 the attitude of the figure in Pons' picture suggests that it is 
 meant for a pendant, the position of the coat-of-arms is the 
 same as in the Nuremberg portrait; and, finally, the atatis 
 su& XLI. accords perfectly with the age inscribed on the 
 picture religiously kept by the Holzschuers of Nuremberg, 
 and but recently engraved. 
 
 The tears stood in Elie Magus' eyes as he looked from one 
 masterpiece to another. He turned round to La Cibot : "I 
 will give you a commission of two thousand francs on each of 
 the pictures if you can arrange that I shall have them for forty 
 thousand francs," he said. La Cibot was amazed at this good 
 fortune dropped from the sky. Admiration, or, to be more 
 accurate, delirious joy, had wrought such havoc in the Jew's 
 brain, that it had actually unsettled his habitual greed, and 
 he fell headlong into enthusiasm, as you see. 
 
 "And I? " put in Remonencq, who knew nothing 
 
 about pictures. 
 
 " Everything here is equally good," the Jew said cunningly, 
 lowering his voice for Remonencq's ear; " take ten pictures 
 just as they come and on the same conditions. Your fortune 
 will be made." 
 
 Again the three thieves looked each other in the face, each 
 one of them overcome with the keenest of all joys sated 
 greed. All of a sudden the sick man's voice rang through 
 the room ; the tones vibrated like the strokes of a bell 
 
 "Who is there?" called Pons. 
 
 "Monsieur! just go back to bed ! " exclaimed La Cibot, 
 springing upon Pons and dragging him by main force. 
 "What next! Have you a mind to kill yourself? Very 
 well, then, it is not Dr. Poulain, it is Remonencq, good soul, 
 so anxious that he has come to ask after you ! Everybody is 
 so fond of you that the whole house is in a flutter. So what 
 is there to fear?" 
 
 " It seems to me that there are several of you," said Pons. 
 
 " Several ? that is good ! What next ! Are you dreaming ?
 
 248 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 You will go off your head before you have done, upon my 
 word! Here, look!" and La Cibot flung open the door, 
 signed to Magus to go, and beckoned to Remonencq. 
 
 "Well, my dear sir," said the Auvergnat, now supplied 
 with something to say, " I just came to ask after you, for the 
 whole house is alarmed about you. Nobody likes death to 
 set foot in a house ! And lastly, Daddy Monistrol, whom 
 you know very well, told me to tell you that if you wanted 
 money he was at your service " 
 
 "He sent you here to take a look round at my knick- 
 knacks! " returned the old collector from his bed; and the 
 sour tones of his voice were full of suspicion. 
 
 A sufferer from liver complaint nearly always takes momen- 
 tary and special dislikes to some person or thing, and concen- 
 trates all his ill-humor upon the object. Pons imagined that 
 some one had designs upon his precious collection ; the 
 thought of guarding it became a fixed idea with him ; 
 Schmucke was continually sent to see if any one had stolen 
 into the sanctuary. 
 
 "Your collection is fine enough to attract the attention of 
 chincurs" Remonencq answered astutely. "I am not much 
 in the art line myself; but you are supposed to be such a great 
 connoisseur, sir, that, little as I know, I would willingly buy 
 your collection, sir, with my eyes shut supposing, for instance, 
 that you should need money some time or other, for nothing 
 costs so much as these confounded illnesses; there was my 
 sister now, when she had a bad turn, she spent thirty sous on 
 medicine in ten days, when she would have got better again 
 just as well without. Doctors are rascals that take advantage 
 of your condition to " 
 
 "Thank you, good-day, good-day," broke in Pons, eying 
 the marine-store-dealer uneasily. 
 
 "I will go to the door with him, for fear he should touch 
 something," La Cibot whispered to her patient. 
 
 " Yes, yes," answered the invalid, thanking her by a glance,
 
 COUSIN PONS. 249 
 
 La Cibot shut the bedroom door behind her, and Pons* 
 suspicions awoke again at once. 
 
 She found Magus standing motionless before the four pictures. 
 His immobility, his admiration, can only be understood by 
 other souls open to ideal beauty, to the ineffable joy of be- 
 holding art made perfect : such as these can stand for whole 
 hours before the Antiope Correggio's masterpieces before 
 Leonardo's Gioconda, Titian's Mistress, Andrea del Sarto's 
 Holy Family, Domenichino's Children among the Flowers, 
 Raphael's little cameo, or his Portrait of an Old Man Art's 
 greatest masterpieces. 
 
 " Be quick and go, and make no noise," said La Cibot. 
 
 The Jew walked slowly backward, giving the pictures such 
 a farewell gaze as a lover gives his love. Outside, on the 
 landing, La Cibot tapped his bony arm. His rapt contem- 
 plation had put an idea into her head. 
 
 " Make it four thousand francs for each picture," said she, 
 "or I do nothing " 
 
 " I am so poor ! " began Magus. " I want the pictures 
 
 simply for their own sake, simply and solely for the love of 
 art, my dear lady." 
 
 " I can understand that love, sonny, you are so dried up. 
 But if you do not promise me sixteen thousand francs now, 
 before Remonencq here, I shall want twenty to-morrow." 
 
 " Sixteen ; I promise," returned the Jew, frightened by the 
 woman's rapacity. 
 
 La Cibot turned to Remonencq. 
 
 " What oath can a Jew swear? " she inquired. 
 
 ''You may trust him," replied the marine-store-dealer. 
 " He is as honest as I am." 
 
 " Very well ; and you ? " asked she, " if I get him to sell 
 them to you, what will you give me? " 
 
 " Half-share of profits," Remonencq answered briskly. 
 
 "I would rather have a lump sum," returned La Cibot; 
 " I am not in business myself."
 
 250 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "You understand business uncommonly well!" put in 
 Elie Magus, smiling; "a famous saleswoman you would 
 make!" 
 
 "I want her to take me into partnership, me and my 
 goods," said the Auvergnat, as he took La Cibot's plump arm 
 and gave it playful taps like hammer-strokes. " I don't ask 
 her to bring anything into the firm but her good looks ! You 
 are making a mistake when you stick to your Turk of a Cibot 
 and his needle. Is a little bit of a porter the man to make a 
 woman rich a fine woman like you ? Ah, what a figure you 
 would make in a store on the boulevard, all among the 
 curiosities, gossiping with amateurs and twisting them round 
 your fingers ! Just you leave your lodge as soon as you have 
 lined your purse here, and you shall see what will become of 
 us both." 
 
 " Lined my purse ! " cried the Cibot. " I am incapable of 
 taking the worth of a single pin ; mind you that now, Remon- 
 encq ! I am known in the neighborhood for an honest woman, 
 I am." 
 
 La Cibot's eyes flashed fire. 
 
 "There, never mind," said Elie Magus; " this Auvergnat 
 seems to be too fond of you to mean to insult you." 
 
 "How she would draw on the customers!" cried the 
 Auvergnat. 
 
 Mme. Cibot softened at this. 
 
 "Be fair, sonnies," quoth she, "and judge for yourselves 
 how I am placed. These ten years past I have been wearing 
 my life out for those two old bachelors, yonder, and neither 
 of them has given me anything but words. Remonencq will 
 tell you that I feed them by contract, and lose twenty or 
 thirty sous a day ; all my savings have gone that way, by the 
 soul of my mother (the only author of my days that I ever 
 knew), this is as true as that I live, and that this is the light 
 of day, and may my coffee poison me if I lie about a centime. 
 Well, there is one up there that will die soon, eh ? and he the
 
 COUSIN PONS. 251 
 
 richer of the two that I have treated like my own children. 
 Would you believe it, my dear sir, I have told him over and 
 over again for days past that he is at death's door (for Dr. 
 Poulain has given him up), and yet, if the old hunks had 
 never heard of me, he could not say less about putting my 
 name down in his will. We shall only get our due by taking 
 it, upon my word, as an honest woman, for as for trusting to 
 the next-of-kin ! No fear ! There ! look you here, words 
 don't stink ; it is a bad world ! " 
 
 "That is true," Elie Magus answered cunningly, "that is 
 true; and it is just the like of us that are among the best," he 
 added, looking at Remonencq. 
 
 "Just let me be," returned La Cibot ; " I am not speaking 
 of you. 'Pressing company is always accepted,' as the old 
 actor said. I swear to you that the two gentlemen already 
 owe me nearly three thousand francs ; the little I have is gone 
 by now in medicine and things on their account ; and now 
 suppose they refuse to recognize my advances? I am so 
 stupidly honest that I did not dare to say nothing to them 
 about it. Now, you that are in business, my dear sir, do you 
 advise me to go to a lawyer? " 
 
 "A lawyer?" cried Remonencq; " you know more about 
 it than all the lawyers put together " 
 
 Just at that moment a sound echoed in the great staircase, a 
 thumping sound as if some heavy body had fallen in the din- 
 ing-room. 
 
 "Oh, goodness me!" exclaimed La Cibot; "it seems to 
 me that monsieur has just taken a ticket for the ground floor." 
 
 She pushed her fellow-conspirators out at the door, and 
 while the pair descended the stairs with remarkable agility, 
 she ran to the dining-room, and there beheld Pons, in his 
 shirt, stretched out upon the tiles. He had fainted. She 
 lifted him as if he had been a feather, carried him back to his 
 room, laid him in bed, burned feathers under his nose, bathed 
 his temples with eau-de-Cologne, and at last brought him to
 
 252 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 consciousness. .When she saw his eyes unclose and life return, 
 she stood over him, hands on hips. 
 
 " No slippers ! In your shirt ! That is the way to kill 
 yourself! Why do you suspect me? If this is to be the way 
 of it, I wish you good-day, sir. Here have I served you these 
 ten years, I have spent money on you till my savings are all 
 gone, to spare trouble to that poor Monsieur Schmucke, crying 
 like a child on the stairs and this is my reward ! You have 
 been spying on me. God has punished you ! It serves you 
 right ! Here I am straining myself to carry you, running the 
 risk of doing myself a mischief that I shall feel all my days. 
 Oh dear, oh dear ! and the door left open too " 
 
 " You were talking with some one. Who was it ? " 
 
 " Here are notions !" cried La Cibot. " What next ! Am 
 I your bond-slave ? Am I to give account of myself to you ? 
 Do you know that if you bother me like this, I shall clear 
 out ! You shall take a nurse." 
 
 Frightened by this threat, Pons unwittingly allowed La 
 Cibot to see the extent of the power of her sword of Damo- 
 cles. 
 
 "It is my illness ! " he pleaded piteously. 
 
 "It is as you please," La Cibot answered roughly. 
 
 She went. Pons, confused, remorseful, admiring his nurse's 
 scolding devotion, reproached himself for his behavior. The 
 fall on the paved floor of the dining-room had shaken and 
 bruised him, and aggravated his illness, but Pons was scarcely 
 conscious of his physical sufferings. 
 
 La Cibot met Schmucke on the staircase. 
 
 "Come here, sir," she said. "There is bad news, there 
 is. Monsieur Pons is going off his head ! Just think of it ! 
 he got up with nothing on, he came after me and down he 
 came full-length. Ask him why he knows nothing about it. 
 He is in a bad way. I did nothing to provoke such violence, 
 unless, perhaps, I waked up ideas by talking to him of his 
 early loves. Who knows men ? Old libertines that they all
 
 COUSIN PONS. 253 
 
 are. I ought not to have shown him my arms when his eyes 
 were glittering like carbuckles" 
 
 Schmucke listened. Mme. Cibot might have been talking 
 Hebrew for anything that he understood. 
 
 " I have given myself a wrench that I shall feel all my 
 days," added she, making as though she were in great pain. 
 (Her arms did, as a matter of fact, ache a little, and the 
 muscular fatigue suggested an idea, which she proceeded to 
 turn to profit.) " So stupid I am. When I saw him lying 
 there on the floor, I just took him up in my arms as if he had 
 been a child, and carried him back to bed, I did. And I 
 strained myself, I can feel it now. Ah! how it hurts! I 
 am going downstairs. Look after our patient. I will send 
 Cibot for Dr. Poulain. I had rather die outright than be 
 crippled." 
 
 La Cibot crawled downstairs, clinging to the bannisters, 
 and writhing and groaning so piteously that the tenants, in 
 alarm, came out upon their landings. Schmucke supported 
 the suffering creature, and told the story of La Cibot' s de- 
 votion, the tears running down his cheeks as he spoke. Before 
 very long the whole house, the whole neighborhood indeed, 
 had heard of Mme. Cibot's heroism ; she had given herself a 
 dangerous strain, it was said, with lifting one of the "nut- 
 crackers." 
 
 Schmucke meanwhile went to Pons' bedside with the tale. 
 Their factotum was in a frightful state. " What shall we do 
 without her?" they said, as they looked at each other; but 
 Pons was so plainly the worse for his escapade that Schmucke 
 did not dare to scold him. 
 
 " Confounded pric-a-prac ! I would sooner purn dem dan 
 loose mein friend ! " he cried, when Pons told him of the 
 cause of the accident. " To susbect Montame Zipod, dot lend 
 us her safings ! It is not goot ; it is fery bad ; but it is der 
 illness " 
 
 "Ah ! what an illness ! I am not the same man, I can feel
 
 254 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 it," said Pons. "My dear Schmucke, if only you did not 
 suffer through me." 
 
 "Scold me," Schmucke answered, " und leaf Montame 
 Zipod in beace." 
 
 As for Mme. Cibot, she soon recovered in Dr. Poulain's 
 hands; and her restoration, bordering on the miraculous, 
 shed additional lustre on her name and fame in the Marais. 
 Pons attributed the success to the excellent constitution of 
 the patient, who resumed her ministrations seven days later, 
 to the great satisfaction of her two gentlemen. Her influence 
 in their household and her tyranny were increased a hundred- 
 fold by the accident. In the course of a week, the two nut- 
 crackers ran into debt; Mme. Cibot paid the outstanding 
 amounts, and took the opportunity to obtain from Schmucke 
 (how easily !) a receipt for two thousand francs, which she 
 had lent, she said, to the friends. 
 
 " Oh, what a doctor Monsieur Poulain is ! " cried La Cibot, 
 for Pons' benefit. " He will bring you through, my dear sir, 
 for he pulled me out of my coffin ! Cibot, poor man, thought 
 I was dead. Well, Dr. Poulain will have told you that while 
 I was in bed I thought of nothing but you. ' God above,' said 
 I, ' take me, and let my dear Monsieur Pons live ' ' 
 
 "Poor dear Madame Cibot, you all but crippled yourself 
 for me." 
 
 "Ah ! but for Dr. Poulain I should have been put to bed 
 with a shovel by now, as we shall all be one day. Well, what 
 must be must, as the old actor said. One must take things 
 philosophically. How did you get on without me? " 
 
 "Schmucke nursed me," said the invalid, "but our poor 
 money-box and our lessons have suffered. I do not know 
 how he managed." 
 
 "Calm yourself, Bons," exclaimed Schmucke ; " ve haf in 
 Zipod ein panker " 
 
 " Do not speak of it, my lamb. You are our children, both 
 of you," cried La Cibot. " Our savings will be well invested ;
 
 COUSIN PONS. 255 
 
 you are safer than the bank. So long as we ve a morsel of 
 bread, half of it is yours. It is not worth mentioning " 
 
 "Boor Montame Zipod ! " said Schmucke, and he went. 
 
 Pons said nothing. 
 
 "Would you believe it, my cherub?" said La Cibot, 
 as the sick man tossed uneasily, " in my agony for it was a 
 near squeak for me the thing that worried me most was the 
 thought that I must leave you alone, with no one to look after 
 you, and my poor Cibot without a single sou. My savings are 
 such a trifle that I only mention them in connection with my 
 death and Cibot, an angel that he is ! No. He nursed me 
 as if I had been a queen, he. did, and cried like a calf over 
 me ! But I counted on you, upon my word. I said to him : 
 'There, Cibot ! my gentlemen will not let you starve ' " 
 
 Pons made no reply to this thrust ad testament um ; but as 
 the portress waited for him to say something " I shall recom- 
 mend you to Monsieur Schmucke," he said at last. 
 
 "Ah! " cried La Cibot, "whatever you do will be right; 
 I trust in you and your heart. Let us never talk of this 
 again. You make me feel ashamed, my cherub. Think of 
 getting better ; you will outlive us all yet." 
 
 Profound uneasiness filled Mme. Cibot's mind. She cast 
 about for some way of making the sick man understand that 
 she expected a legacy. That evening, when Schmucke was 
 eating his dinner as usual by Pons' bedside, she went out, 
 hoping to find Dr. Poulain at home. 
 
 Dr. Poulain lived in the Rue d' Orleans in a small first-floor 
 establishment, consisting of a lobby, a sitting-room, and two 
 bedrooms. A closet, opening into the lobby and the bed- 
 room, had been turned into a study for the doctor. The 
 kitchen, the servant's bedroom, and a small cellar were situ- 
 ated in a wing of the house, a huge pile built in the time of 
 the Empire on the site of an old mansion of which the garden 
 still remained, though it had been divided among the three 
 first-floor tenants.
 
 256 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Nothing had been changed in the doctor's house since it 
 was built. Paint and paper and ceilings were all redolent of 
 the Empire. The grimy deposits of forty years lay thick on 
 walls and ceilings, on paper and paint and mirrors and gilding. 
 And yet, this little establishment, in the depths of the Marais, 
 paid a rent of a thousand francs. 
 
 Mme. Poulain, the doctor's mother, aged sixty-seven, was 
 ending her days in the second bedroom. She worked for a 
 breeches-maker, stitching men's leggings, breeches, belts, and 
 suspenders, anything, in fact, that is made in a way of busi- 
 ness which has somewhat fallen off of late years. Her whole 
 time was spent in keeping her son's house and superintending 
 the one servant ; she never went abroad, and took the air in 
 the little garden entered through the glass door of the sitting- 
 room. Twenty years previously, when her husband died, she 
 had sold his business to his best workman, who gave his 
 master's widow work enough to earn a daily wage of thirty 
 sous. She had made every sacrifice to educate her only son. 
 At all costs, he should occupy a higher station than his father 
 before him ; and now she was proud of her ^sculapius, she 
 believed in him, and sacrificed everything to him as before. 
 She was happy to take care of him, to work and put by a little 
 money, and dream of nothing but his welfare, and love him 
 with an intelligent love of which every mother is not capable. 
 For instance, Mme. Poulain remembered that she had been a 
 working-girl. She would not injure her son's prospects; he 
 should not be shamed by his mother (for the good woman's 
 grammar was something of the same kind as Mme. Cibot's); 
 and for this reason she kept in the background, and went to 
 her room of her own accord if any distinguished patient came 
 to consult the doctor, or if some old schoolfellow or fellow- 
 student chanced to call. Dr. Poulain had never had occasion 
 to blush for the mother whom he revered ; and this sublime 
 love of hers more than atoned for a defective education. 
 
 The breeches-maker's business sold for about twenty thou-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 257 
 
 sand francs, and the widow invested the money in the Funds 
 in 1820. The income of eleven hundred francs per annum 
 derived from this source was, at one time, her whole fortune. 
 For many a year the neighbors used to see the doctor's linen 
 hanging out to dry upon a clothes-line in the garden, and the 
 servant and Mme. Poulain thriftily washed everything at 
 home ; a piece of domestic economy which did not a little to 
 injure the doctor's practice, for it was thought that if he was 
 so poor, it must be through his own fault. Her eleven hun- 
 dred francs scarcely did more than pay the rent. During 
 those early days, Mme. Poulain, good, stout, little old woman, 
 was the breadwinner, and the poor household lived upon her 
 earnings. After twelve years of perseverance upon a rough 
 and stony road, Dr. Poulain at last was making an income of 
 three thousand francs, and Mme. Poulain had an income of 
 about five thousand francs at her disposal. Five thousand 
 francs for those who know Paris means a bare subsistence. 
 
 The sitting-room, where patients waited for an interview, 
 was shabbily furnished. There was the inevitable mahogany 
 sofa covered with yellow-flowered Utrecht velvet, four easy- 
 chairs, a tea-table, a console, and half-a-dozen chairs, all the 
 property of the deceased breeches-maker, and chosen by him. 
 A lyre-shaped clock between two Egyptian candlesticks still 
 preserved its glass shade intact. You asked yourself how the 
 yellow chintz window-curtains, covered with red flowers, had 
 contrived to hang together for so long ; for evidently they 
 had come from the Jouy factory, and Oberkampf received the 
 Emperor's congratulations upon similar hideous productions 
 of the cotton industry in 1809. 
 
 The doctor's consulting-room was fitted up in the same 
 style, with household stuff from the paternal chamber. It 
 looked stiff, poverty-stricken, and bare. What patient could 
 put faith in the skill of an unknown doctor who could not 
 even furnish his house ? And this in a time when advertising 
 is all powerful ; when we gild the gas lamps in the Place de 
 17
 
 258 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 la Concorde to console the poor man for his poverty by re- 
 minding him that he is rich as a citizen. 
 
 The antechamber did duty as a dining-room. The servant 
 sat at her sewing there whenever she was not busy in the 
 kitchen or keeping the doctor's mother company. From the 
 dingy, short curtains in the windows you could have guessed 
 at the shabby thrift behind them without setting foot in the 
 dreary place. What could those wall-cupboards contain but 
 stale scraps of food, chipped earthenware, corks used over and 
 over again indefinitely, soiled table-linen, odds and ends that 
 could descend but one step lower into the dust-heap, and all 
 the squalid necessities of a pinched household in Paris ? 
 
 In these days, when the five-franc piece is always lurking 
 in our thoughts and intruding itself into our speech, Dr. Pou- 
 lain, aged thirty-three, was still a bachelor. Heaven had be- 
 stowed on him a mother with no connections. In ten years 
 he had not met with the faintest pretext for a romance in his 
 professional career ; his practice lay among clerks and small 
 manufacturers, people in his own sphere of life, with homes 
 very much like his own. His richer patients were butchers, 
 bakers, and the more substantial tradespeople of the neighbor- 
 hood. These, for the most part, attributed their recovery to 
 Nature, as an excuse for paying for the services of a medical 
 man, who came on foot at the rate of two francs per visit. 
 In his profession, a carriage is more necessary than medical 
 skill. 
 
 A humdrum monotonous life tells in the end upon the most 
 adventurous spirit. A man fashions himself to his lot, he 
 accepts a commonplace existence ; and Dr. Poulain, after ten 
 years of his practice, continued his labors of Sisyphus without 
 the despair that made early days so bitter. And yet like 
 every soul in Paris he cherished a dream. Remonencq was 
 happy in his dream ; La Cibot had a dream of her own ; and 
 Dr. Poulain too dreamed. Some day he would be called in 
 to attend a rich and influential patient, would effect a positive
 
 COUSIN PONS. 259 
 
 cure, and the patient would procure a post for him ; he would 
 be head-surgeon to a hospital, medical officer of a prison or 
 police court, or doctor to the boulevard theatres. He had 
 come by his present appointment as doctor to the mairie in 
 this very way. La Cibot had called him in when the landlord 
 of the house in the Rue de Normandie fell ill ; he had treated 
 the case with complete success; M. Pillerault, the patient, 
 took an interest in the young doctor, called to thank him, 
 and saw his carefully hidden poverty. Count Popinot, the 
 cabinet minister, had married M. Pillerault's grand-niece, 
 and greatly respected her uncle ; of him, therefore, M. Pille- 
 rault had asked for the post, which Poulain had now held for 
 two years. That appointment and its meagre salary came just 
 in time to prevent a desperate step ; Poulain was thinking of 
 emigration \ and for a Frenchman, it is a kind of death to 
 leave France. 
 
 Dr. Poulain went, you may be sure, to thank Count Popi- 
 not ; but as Count Popinot's family physician was the cele- 
 brated Horace Bianchon, it was pretty clear that his chances 
 of gaining a footing in that house were something of the 
 slenderest. The poor doctor had fondly hoped for the pat- 
 ronage of a powerful cabinet minister, one of the twelve or 
 fifteen cards which a cunning hand has been shuffling for six- 
 teen years on the green baize of the council table, and now 
 he dropped back again into his Marais, his old groping life 
 among the poor and the small tradespeople, with the privilege 
 o? issuing certificates of death for a yearly stipend of twelve 
 hundred francs. 
 
 Dr. Poulain had distinguished himself to some extent as a 
 house-student ; he was a prudent practitioner, and not without 
 experience. His deaths caused no scandal ; he had plenty of 
 opportunities of studying all kinds of complaints in anima vili. 
 Judge, therefore, of the spleen that he nourished ! The ex- 
 pression of his countenance, lengthy and not too cheerful to 
 begin with, at times was positively appalling. Set a Tartuffe's
 
 260 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 all-devouring eyes and the sour humor of an Alceste in a 
 sallow parchment visage, and try to imagine for yourself the 
 gait, bearing, and expression of a man who thought himself as 
 good a doctor as the illustrious Bianchon, and felt that he was 
 held down in his narrow lot by an iron hand. He could not 
 help comparing his receipts (ten francs a day if he was fortu- 
 nate) with Bianchon's five or six hundred. 
 
 Are the hatreds and jealousies of democracy incomprehen- 
 sible after this? Ambitious and continually thwarted, he 
 could not reproach himself. He had once already tried his 
 fortune by inventing a purgative pill, something like Morri- 
 son's, and intrusted the business operations to an old hospital 
 chum, a house-student who afterward took a retail drug busi- 
 ness ; but, unluckily, the druggist, smitten with the charms of a 
 ballet-dancer of the Ambigu-Comique, found himself at length 
 in the bankruptcy court ; and as the patent had been taken 
 out in his name, his partner was literally without a remedy, 
 and the important discovery enriched the purchaser of the 
 business. The sometime house-student set sail for Mexico, 
 that land of gold, taking poor Poulain's little savings with 
 him ; and, to add insult to injury, the opera-dancer treated 
 him as an extortioner when he applied to her for his stolen 
 money. 
 
 Not a single rich patient had come to him since he had the 
 luck to cure old M. Pillerault. Poulain made his rounds on 
 foot, scouring the Marais like a lean cat, and obtained from 
 two to forty sous out of a score of visits. The paying patient 
 was a phenomenon about as rare as that anomalous fowl known 
 as a "white blackbird " in all sublunary regions. 
 
 The briefless barrister, the doctor without a patient, are 
 preeminently the two types of a decorous despair peculiar to 
 this city of Paris; it is mute, dull despair in human form, 
 dressed in a black coat and trousers with shining seams that 
 recall the zinc on an attic roof, a glistening satin vest, a hat 
 preserved like a relic, a pair of old gloves, and a cotton shirt.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 261 
 
 The man is the incarnation of a melancholy poem, sombre as 
 the secrets of the Conciergerie. Other kinds of poverty, the 
 poverty of the artist actor, painter, musician, or poet are 
 relieved and lightened by the artist's joviality, the reckless 
 gayety of the Bohemian border country the first stage of the 
 journey to the Thebaid of genius. But these two black-coated 
 professions that go afoot through the street are brought con- 
 tinually in contact with disease and dishonor ; they see noth- 
 ing of human nature but its sores ; in the forlorn first stages 
 and beginnings of their career they eye competitors suspi- 
 ciously and defiantly; concentrated dislike and ambition 
 flashes out in glances like the breaking forth of hidden flames. 
 Let two schoolfellows meet after twenty years, the rich man 
 will avoid the poor ; he does not recognize him, he is afraid 
 even to glance into the gulf which Fate has set between him 
 and the friend of other years. The one has been borne 
 through life on the mettlesome steed called Fortune, or wafted 
 on the golden clouds of success ; the other has been making 
 his way in underground Paris through the sewers, and bears 
 the marks of his career upon him. How many a chum of old 
 days turned aside at the sight of the doctor's greatcoat and 
 vest ! 
 
 With this explanation, it should be easy to understand how 
 Dr. Poulain came to lend himself so readily to the farce of 
 La Cibot's illness and recovery. Greed of every kind, ambi- 
 tion of every nature, is not easy to hide. The doctor ex- 
 amined his patient, found that every organ was sound and 
 healthy, admired the regularity of her pulse and the perfect 
 ease of her movements ; and as she continued to moan aloud, 
 he saw that for some reason she found it convenient to lie at 
 death's door. The speedy cure of a serious imaginary disease 
 was sure to cause a sensation in the neighborhood ; the doctor 
 would be talked about. He made up his mind at once. He 
 talked of rupture and of taking it in time, and thought even 
 worse of the case than La Cibot herself. The portress was
 
 262 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 plied with various remedies, and finally underwent a sham 
 operation, crowned with complete success. Poulain repaired 
 to the Arsenal Library, looked out a grotesque case in some 
 of Desplein's records of extraordinary cures, and fitted the 
 details to Mme. Cibot, modestly attributing the success of the 
 treatment to the great surgeon, in whose steps (he said) he 
 walked. Such is the impudence of beginners in Paris. Every- 
 thing is made to serve as a ladder by which to climb upon the 
 scene ; and as everything, even the rungs of a ladder, will 
 wear out in time, the new members of every profession are at 
 a loss to find the right sort of wood of which to make steps 
 for themselves. 
 
 There are moments when the Parisian is not propitious. 
 He grows tired of raising pedestals, pouts like a spoiled child, 
 and will have no more idols ; or, to state it more accurately : 
 Paris cannot always find a proper object for infatuation. Now 
 and then the vein of genius gives out, and at such times the 
 Parisian may turn supercilious ; he is not always willing to bow 
 down and gild mediocrity. 
 
 Mme. Cibot, entering in her usual unceremonious fashion, 
 found the doctor and his mother at table, before a bowl of 
 lamb's lettuce, the cheapest of all salad-stuffs. The dessert 
 consisted of a thin wedge of Brie cheese flanked by a plate of 
 specked apples and a dish of foreign mixed dried fruits, known 
 as quatre-mcndianis, in which the raisin-stalks were abundantly 
 conspicuous. 
 
 "You may stay, mother," said the doctor, laying a hand 
 on Mme. Poulain's arm ; " this is Madame Cibot, of whom I 
 have told you." 
 
 " My respects to you, madame, and my duty to you, sir," 
 said La Cibot, taking the chair which the doctor offered. 
 " Ah ! is this your mother, sir? She is very happy to have a 
 son who has such talent ; he saved my life, madame, brought 
 me back from the depths."
 
 COUSIN PONS. 263 
 
 The widow, hearing Mme. Cibot praise her son in this way, 
 thought her a delightful woman. 
 
 " I have just come to tell you that, between ourselves, poor 
 Monsieur Pons is doing very badly, sir, and I have some- 
 thing to say to you about him " 
 
 "Let us go into the sitting-room," interrupted the doctor, 
 and with a significant gesture he indicated the servant. 
 
 In the sitting-room La Cibot explained her position with 
 regard to the pair of nutcrackers at very considerable length. 
 She repeated the history of her loan with added embellish- 
 ments, and gave a full account of the immense services ren- 
 dered during the past ten years to Messrs. Pons and Schmucke. 
 The two old men, to all appearance, could not exist without 
 her motherly care. She posed as an angel ; she told so many 
 lies, one after another, watering them with her tears, that old 
 Mme. Poulain was quite touched. 
 
 "You understand, my dear sir," she concluded, "that I 
 really ought to know how far I can depend on Monsieur Pons' 
 intentions, supposing that he should die ; not that I want 
 him to die, for looking after those two innocents is my life, 
 madame, you see ; still, when one of them is gone I shall look 
 after the other. For my own part, I was built by Nature to 
 rival mothers. Without nobody to care for, nobody to take 
 for a child, I don't know what I should do. So if Monsieur 
 Poulain only would, he might do me a service for which 
 I should be very grateful ; and that is, to say a word to 
 Monsieur Pons for me. Goodness me ! an annuity of a thou- 
 sand 'francs, is that too much, I ask you ? To M. Schmucke 
 it will be so much gained. Our dear patient said that he 
 should recommend me to the German, poor man ; it is his 
 idea, no doubt, that Monsieur Schmucke should be his heir. 
 But what is a man that cannot put two ideas together in 
 French? And, beside, he would be quite capable of going 
 back to Germany, he will be in such despair over his friend's 
 death "
 
 264 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 The doctor grew grave. " My dear Madame Cibot," he 
 said, " this sort of thing does not in the least concern a 
 doctor. I should not be allowed to exercise my profession if 
 it was known that I interfered in the matter of my patients' 
 testamentary dispositions. The law forbids a doctor to receive 
 a legacy from a patient " 
 
 " A stupid law ! What is to hinder me from dividing my 
 legacy with you ? " La Cibot said immediately. 
 
 "I will go further," said the doctor; "my professional 
 conscience will not permit me to speak to Monsieur Pons of 
 his death. In the first place, he is not so dangerously ill that 
 there is any need to speak of it ; and, in the second, such talk 
 coming from me might give a shock to the system that would 
 do him real harm, and then his illness might terminate fatally 
 and " 
 
 "/ don't put on gloves to tell him to get his affairs in 
 order," cried Mme. Cibot, " and he is none the worse for that. 
 He is used to it. There is nothing to fear." 
 
 "Not a word about it, my dear Madame Cibot! These 
 things are not within a doctor's province ; it is a notary's 
 business ' ' 
 
 " But, my dear Monsieur Poulain, suppose that Monsieur 
 Pons of his own accord should ask you how he is, and whether 
 he had better make his arrangements ; then, would you refuse 
 to tell him that if you want to get better it is an excellent plan 
 to set everything in order ? Then you might just slip in a 
 little word for me " 
 
 "Oh, if he talks of making his will, I certainly shall not 
 dissuade him," said the doctor. 
 
 " Very well, that is settled. I came to thank you for your 
 care of me," she added, as she slipped a folded paper con- 
 taining three gold-coins into the doctor's hands. " It is all I 
 can do at the moment. Ah ! my dear Monsieur Poulain, if 
 I were rich, you should be rich, you that are the image of 
 Providence on earth. Madame, you have an angel for a son."
 
 COUSIN PONS. 265 
 
 La Cibot rose to her feet, Mme. Poulain bowed amiably, 
 and the doctor went to the door with the visitor. Just then a 
 sudden, lurid gleam of light flashed across the mind of this 
 Lady Macbeth of the streets. She saw clearly that the doctor 
 was surely her accomplice he had taken the fee for a sham 
 illness. 
 
 " Monsieur Poulain," she began, " how can you refuse to 
 say a word or two to save me from want, when you helped me 
 in the affair of my accident ? ' ' 
 
 The doctor felt that the devil had him by the hair, as the 
 saying is; he felt, too, that the hair was being twisted round 
 the pitiless red claw. Startled and afraid lest he should sell 
 his honesty for such a trifle, he answered the diabolical sugges- 
 tion by another no less diabolical. 
 
 " Listen, my dear Madame Cibot," he said, as he drew her 
 into his consulting-room. " I will now pay a debt of grati- 
 tude that I owe you for my appointment to the mairie " 
 
 " We go shares? " she asked briskly. 
 
 "In what?" 
 
 "In the legacy." 
 
 "You do not know me," replied Dr. Poulain, drawing 
 himself up like Valerius Publicola. " Let us have no more of 
 that. I have a friend, an old schoolfellow of mine, a very in- 
 telligent young fellow ; and we are so much the more intimate 
 because our lives have fallen out very much in the same way. 
 He was studing law while I was studying medicine ; and when 
 I wa? a house-student, he was engrossing deeds in Maifre 
 Couture's office. His father was a shoemaker, and mine was 
 a breeches-maker ; he has not found any one to take much 
 interest in his career, nor has he any capital ; for, after all, 
 capital is only to be had from sympathizers. He could only 
 afford to buy a provincial connection at Mantes and so 
 little do provincials understand the Parisian intellect that 
 they set all sorts of intrigues on foot against him." 
 
 "The wretches ! " cried La Cibot.
 
 266 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 " Yes," said the doctor. " They combined against him to 
 such purpose that they forced him to sell his connection by 
 misrepresenting something that he had done ; the attorney for 
 the crown interfered, he belonged to the place, and sided with 
 his fellow-townsmen. My friend's name is Fraisier. He is 
 lodged as I am, and he is even leaner and more threadbare. 
 He took refuge in our arrondissement, and is reduced to ap- 
 pear for clients in the police court or before the magistrate. 
 He lives in the Rue de la Perle close by. Go to number 9, 
 third floor, and you will see his name on the door on the 
 landing, painted in gilt letters on a small square of red leather. 
 Fraisier makes a special point of disputes among the porters, 
 workmen, and poor folk in the arrondissement, and his charges 
 are low. He is an honest man ; for I need not tell you that 
 if he had been a scamp, he would be keeping his carriage by 
 now. I will call and see my friend Fraisier this evening. Go 
 to him early to-morrow; he knows Monsieur Louchard, the 
 bailiff : Monsieur Tabareau, the clerk of the court ; and the 
 justice of the peace, Monsieur Vitel; and Monsieur Trognon, 
 the notary. He is even now looked upon as one of the best 
 men of business in the Quarter. If he takes charge of your 
 interests, if you can secure him as Monsieur Pons' adviser, 
 you will have a second self in him, you see. But do not make 
 dishonorable proposals to him, as you did just now to me ; he 
 has a head on his shoulders, you will understand each other. 
 And as for acknowledging his services, I will be your interme- 
 diary " 
 
 Mme. Cibot looked askance at the doctor. 
 
 "Is that the lawyer who helped Madame Florimond the 
 haberdasher in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple out of a fix in that 
 matter of her friend's legacy? " 
 
 "The very same." 
 
 " Wasn't it a shame that she did not marry him after he 
 had gained two thousand francs a year for her? " exclaimed 
 La Cibot. "And she thought to clear off scores by making
 
 COUSIN PONS. 267 
 
 him a present of a dozen shirts and a couple of dozen pocket- 
 handkerchiefs ; an outfit, in short." 
 
 " My dear Madame Cibot, that outfit cost a thousand francs, 
 and Fraisier was just setting up for himself in the Quarter, and 
 wanted the things very badly. And what was more, she paid 
 the bill without asking any questions. That affair brought 
 him clients, and now he is very busy ; but in my line a prac- 
 tice brings " 
 
 "It is only the righteous that suffer here below," said 
 La Cibot. " Well, Monsieur Poulain, good -day and thank 
 you." 
 
 And herewith begins the tragedy, or, if you like to have it 
 so, a terrible comedy the death of an old bachelor delivered 
 over by circumstances too strong for him to the rapacity and 
 greed that gathered about his bed. And other forces came 
 to the support of rapacity and greed ; there was the picture- 
 collector's mania, that most intense of all passions ; there was 
 the cupidity of the Sieur Fraisier, whom you shall presently 
 behold in his den, a sight to make you shudder ; and, lastly, 
 there was the Auvergnat thirsting for money, ready for any- 
 thing even for a crime that should bring him the capital he 
 wanted. The first part of the story serves in some sort as a 
 prelude to this comedy in which all the actors who have hith- 
 erto occupied the stage will reappear. 
 
 The degradation of a word is one of those curious freaks of 
 manners upon which whole volumes of explanation might be 
 written. Write to an attorney and Address him as " Lawyer 
 So-and-so," and you insult him as surely as you would insult 
 a wholesale colonial produce merchant by addressing your 
 letter to " Mr. So-and-so, Grocer." There are plenty of men 
 of the world who ought to be aware, since the knowledge of 
 such subtle distinctions is their province, that you cannot in- 
 sult a French writer more cruelly than by caling him un homme 
 dt leitres a literary man. The word monsieur is a capital 
 example of the life and death of words. Abbreviated from
 
 268 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 monseigneur, once so considerable a title, and even now, in 
 the form of sire, reserved for emperors and kings, it is be- 
 stowed indifferently upon all and sundry ; while the twin word 
 messirc, which is nothing but its double and equivalent, if by 
 any chance it slips into a certificate of burial, produces an 
 outcry in the Republican papers. 
 
 Magistrates, councilors, jurisconsults, judges, barristers, 
 officers for the crown, bailiffs, attorneys, clerks of the court, 
 procurators, solicitors, and agents of various kinds represent 
 or misrepresent Justice. The "lawyer" and the bailiff's 
 men (commonly called "the brokers ")* are the two lowest 
 rungs of the ladder. Now, the bailiff's man is an outsider, 
 an adventitious minister of justice, appearing to see that judg- 
 ment is executed ; he is, in fact, a kind of inferior executioner 
 employed by the county court. But the word "lawyer" 
 (hommt de loi, man of law) is a depreciatory term applied to 
 the legal profession. Consuming professional jealousy finds 
 similar disparaging epithets for fellow-travelers in every walk 
 of life, and every calling has its special insult. The scorn 
 flung into the words homme de loi, homme de lettres, is wanting 
 in the plural form, which may be used without offense ; but 
 in Paris every profession, learned or unlearned, has its omega, 
 the individual who brings it down to the level of the lowest 
 class ; and the written law has its connecting link with the 
 custom right of the streets. There are districts where the 
 pettifogging man of business, known as Lawyer So-and-so, is 
 still to be found. M. Fraisier was to the member of the 
 Incorporated Law Society as the money-lender of the Halles, 
 offering small loans for a short period at an exorbitant interest, 
 is to the great capitalist. 
 
 Working people, strange to say, are as shy of officials as of 
 
 fashionable restaurants, they take advice from irregular sources 
 
 as they turn into a little wineshop to drink. Each rank in 
 
 life finds its own level, and there abides. None but a chosen 
 
 * Constables.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 269 
 
 few care to climb the heights, few can feel at ease in the 
 presence of their betters, or take their place among them, like 
 a Beaumarchais letting fall the watch of the great lord who 
 tried to humiliate him. And if there are few who can even 
 rise to a higher social level, those among them who can throw 
 off their swaddling-clothes are rare and great exceptions. 
 
 At six o'clock the next morning Mme. Cibot stood in the 
 Rue de la Perle ; she was making a survey of the abode of her 
 future adviser, Lawyer Fraisier. The house was one of the 
 old-fashioned kind formerly inhabited by small tradespeople 
 and citizens with small means. A cabinetmaker's store occu- 
 pied almost the whole of the first floor, as well as the little 
 yard behind, which was covered with his workshops and ware- 
 houses ; the small remaining space being taken up by the 
 porter's lodge and the passage entry in the middle. The 
 staircase walls were half rotten with damp and covered with 
 nitre to such a degree that the house seemed to be stricken 
 with leprosy. 
 
 Mme. Cibot went straight to the porter's lodge, and there 
 encountered one of her own fraternity, a shoemaker, his wife, 
 and two small children, all housed in a room ten feet square, 
 lighted from the yard at the back. La Cibot mentioned her 
 profession, named herself, and spoke of her house in the Rue 
 de Normandie, and the two women were on cordial terms at 
 once. After a quarter of an hour spent in gossip while the 
 shoemaker's wife made breakfast ready for her husband and 
 the children, Mme. Cibot turned the conversation to the sub- 
 ject of the lodgers, and spoke of the lawyer. 
 
 "I have come to see him on business," she said. "One 
 of his friends, Dr. Poulain, recommended me to him. Do 
 you know Dr. Poulain ? " 
 
 "I should think I do," said the lady of the Rue de la 
 Perle. " He saved my little girl's life when she had the 
 croup."
 
 270 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 " He saved my life too, madame. What sort of man is this 
 Monsieur Fraisier?" 
 
 "He is the sort of man, my dear lady, out of whom it 
 is very difficult to get the postage-money at the end of the 
 month." 
 
 To a person of La Cibot's intelligence this was enough. 
 
 " One may be poor and honest," observed she. 
 
 " I am sure I hope so," returned Fraisier's portress. " We 
 are not rolling in coppers, let alone gold or silver ; but we 
 have not a centime belonging to anybody else." 
 
 This sort of talk sounded familiar to La Cibot. 
 
 "In short, one can trust him, child, eh?" 
 
 " Lord ! when Monsieur Fraisier means well by any one, 
 there is not his like, so I have heard Madame Florimond 
 say." 
 
 "And why didn't she marry him when she owed her for- 
 tune to him?" La Cibot asked quickly. " It is something 
 for a little haberdasher, kept by an old man, to be a barrister's 
 wife " 
 
 "Why? " asked the portress, bringing Mme. Cibot out 
 
 into the passage. " Why? You are going up to see him, 
 
 are you not, madame ? Very well, when you are in his office 
 you will know why." 
 
 From the state of the staircase, lighted by sash-windows on 
 the side of the yard, it was pretty evident that the inmates of 
 the house, with the exception of the landlord and M. Fraisier 
 himself, were all workmen. There were traces of various 
 crafts in the deposit of mud upon the steps brass-filings, 
 broken buttons, scraps of gauze, and esparto grass lay scat- 
 tered about. The walls of the upper stories were covered 
 with apprentices' ribald scrawls and caricatures. The por- 
 tress' last remark had roused La Cibot's curiosity; she de- 
 cided, not unnaturally, that she would consult Dr. Poulain's 
 friend ; but as for employing him, that must depend upon her 
 impressions.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 271 
 
 " I sometimes wonder how Madame Sauvage can stop in 
 his service," said the portress, by way of comment; she was 
 following in Mme. Cibot's wake. " I will come up with you, 
 madame," she added; " I am taking the milk and the news- 
 paper up to my landlord." 
 
 Arrived on the third floor, above the entresol, La Cibot 
 beheld a door of the most villainous description. The doubt- 
 ful red paint was coated for seven or eight inches round the 
 keyhole with a filthy glaze, a grimy deposit from which the 
 modern house-decorator endeavors to protect the doors of 
 more elegant apartments by glass "finger-plates." A grat- 
 ing, almost stopped up with some compound similar to the 
 deposit with which a restaurant-keeper gives an air of cellar- 
 bound antiquity to a merely middle-aged bottle, only served 
 to heighten the general resemblance to a prison door ; a re- 
 semblance further heightened by the trefoil-shaped iron-work, 
 the formidable hinges, the clumsy nail-heads. A miser, or a 
 pamphleteer at strife with the world at large, must surely have 
 invented these fortifications. A leaden sink, which received 
 the waste water of the household, contributed its quota to the 
 fetid atmosphere of the staircase, and the ceiling was covered 
 with fantastic arabesques traced by candle-smoke such ara- 
 besques ! On pulling a greasy acorn tassel attached to the 
 bell-rope, a little bell jangled feebly somewhere within, com- 
 plaining of the fissure in its metal sides. 
 
 Every detail was in keeping with the general dismal effect. 
 La Cibot heard a heavy footstep, and the asthmatic wheezing 
 of a virago within, and Mme. Sauvage presently showecl 
 herself. Adrien Brauwer might have painted just such a hag 
 for his picture of Witches starting for the Sabbath ; a stout, 
 unwholesome slattern, five feet six inches in height, with a 
 grenadier countenance and a beard which far surpassed La 
 Cibot's own ; she wore a cheap, hideous, ugly cotton gown, 
 a red bandana handkerchief knotted over hair which she still 
 continued to put in curl-papers (using for that purpose the
 
 272 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 printed circulars which her master received), and a huge pair 
 of gold earrings like cart-wheels in her ears. This female 
 Cerberus carried a battered skillet in one hand, and, opening 
 the door, set free an imprisoned odor of scorched milk a 
 nauseous and penetrating smell, that lost itself at once, how- 
 ever, among the fumes outside. 
 
 "What can I do for you, missus?" demanded Mme. 
 Sauvage, and with a truculent air she looked La Cibot over j 
 evidently she was of the opinion that the visitor was too well 
 dressed, and her eyes looked the more murderous because 
 they were naturally bloodshot. 
 
 "I have come to see Monsieur Fraisier; his friend, Dr. 
 Poulain, sent me." 
 
 "Oh! come in, missus," said La Sauvage, grown very 
 amiable all of a sudden, which proves that she was prepared 
 for this morning visit. 
 
 With a sweeping curtsey, the stalwart woman flung open the 
 door of a private office, which looked upon the street, and 
 discovered the ex-attorney of Mantes. 
 
 The room was a complete picture of a third-rate attorney's 
 office ; with the stained wooden cases, the letter-files so old 
 that they had grown beards (in ecclesiastical language), th 
 red tape dangling limp and dejected, the pasteboard box( 
 covered with traces of the gambols of mice, the dirty floo 
 the ceiling tawny with smoke. A frugal allowance of woo< 
 was smouldering on a couple of fire-dogs on the hearth. And 
 on the chimney-piece above stood a foggy mirror and a. 
 modern clock with an inlaid wooden case: Fraisier had 
 picked it up at an execution sale, together with the tawdry 
 imitation rococo candlesticks* with the zinc beneath showing 
 through the lacquer in several places. 
 
 M. Fraisier was small, thin, and unwholesome looking ; his 
 red face, covered with an eruption, told of tainted blood; 
 and he had, moreover, a trick of continually scratching his 
 right arm. A wig pushed to the back of his head displayed

 
 "MADAME CIBOT, i BELIEVE?"
 
 COUSIN PONS. 273 
 
 a brick-colored cranium of ominous conformation. This 
 person rose from a cane-seated armchair, in which he sat on a 
 green leather cushion, assumed an agreeble expression, and 
 brought forward a chair. 
 
 " Madame Cibot, I believe? " queried he, in dulcet tones. 
 
 "Yes, sir," answered the portress. She had lost her ha- 
 bitual assurance. 
 
 Something in the tones of a voice which strongly resembled 
 the sounds of the little door-bell, something in a glance even 
 sharper than the green eyes of her future legal adviser, scared 
 Mme. Cibot. Fraisier's presence so pervaded the room that 
 any one might have thought there was pestilence in the air; 
 and in a flash Mme. Cibot understood why Mme. Florimond 
 had not become Mme. Fraisier. 
 
 "Poulain told me about you, my dear madame," said the 
 lawyer, in the unnatural fashion commonly described by the 
 words "mincing tones;" tones sharp, thin, and grating as 
 verjuice, in spite of all his efforts. 
 
 Arrived at this point, he tried to draw the skirts of his 
 dressing-gown over a pair of angular knees encased in thread- 
 bare felt. The robe was an ancient painted cotton garment, 
 lined with wadding which took the liberty of protruding 
 itself through various slits in it here and there ; the weight 
 of this lining had pulled the skirts aside, disclosing a dingy 
 hued flannel vest beneath. With something of a coxcomb's 
 manner, Fraisier fastened this refractory article of dress, 
 tightening the girdle to define his reedy figure ; then with a 
 blow of 'the tongs he effected a reconciliation between two 
 burning brands that had long avoided one another, like 
 brothers after a family quarrel. A sudden bright idea struck 
 him, and he rose from his chair. 
 
 ' ' Madame Sauvage ! ' ' called he. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I am not at home to anybody ! " 
 
 " Eh ! bless your life, there's no need to say that ! " 
 18
 
 274 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "She is my old nurse," the lawyer made remark, in some 
 confusion. 
 
 "And she has not recovered her figure yet," remarked the 
 heroine of the Halles. 
 
 Fraisier laughed, and drew the bolt lest his housekeeper 
 should interrupt Mme. Cibot's confidences. 
 
 "Well, madame, explain your business," said he, making 
 another effort to drape himself in the dressing-gown. "Any 
 one recommended to me by the only friend I have in the 
 world may count upon me I may say absolutely." 
 
 For half an hour Mme. Cibot talked, and the man of law 
 made no interruption of any sort ; his face wore the expression 
 of curious interest with which a young soldier listens to a pen- 
 sioner of the Old Guard. Fraisier's silence and acquies- 
 cence, the rapt attention with which he appeared to listen to 
 a torrent of gossip similar to the samples previously given, 
 dispelled some of the prejudices inspired in La Cibot's mind 
 by his squalid surroundings. The little lawyer with the black- 
 speckled green eyes was in reality making a study of his client. 
 When at length she came to a stand and looked to him to 
 speak, he was seized with a fit of the complaint known as a 
 "churchyard cough," and had recourse to an earthenware 
 basin half full of herb tea, which he drained. 
 
 " But for Poulain, my dear madame, I should have been 
 dead before this," said Fraisier, by way of answer to the por- 
 tress' looks of motherly compassion ; " but he will bring me 
 round, he says " 
 
 As all the client's confidences appeared to have slipped 
 from the memory of her legal adviser, she began to cast about 
 for a way of taking leave of a man so apparently near death. 
 
 "In an affair of this kind, madame," continued the at- 
 torney from Mantes, suddenly returning to business, " there 
 are two things which it is most important to know. In the 
 first place, whether the property is sufficient to be worth 
 troubling about; and, in the second, whom the next-of-kin
 
 COL SIN PONS. 275 
 
 may be ; for if the property is the booty, the next-of-kin is 
 the enemy." 
 
 La Cibot immediately began to talk of Remonencq and 
 Elie Magus, and said that the shrewd couple valued the pic- 
 tures at six hundred thousand francs. 
 
 "Would they take them themselves at that price?" in- 
 quired the lawyer. "You see, madame, that men of business 
 are shy of pictures. A picture may mean a piece of canvas 
 worth a couple of francs or a painting worth two hundred 
 thousand. Now paintings worth two hundred thousand francs 
 are usually well known ; and what errors in judgment people 
 make in estimating even the most famous pictures of all ! 
 There was once a great captalist whose collection was admired, 
 visited, and engraved actually engraved ! He was supposed 
 to have spent millions of francs on it. He died, as men must ; 
 and well, his genuine pictures did not fetch more than two 
 hundred thousand francs ! You must let me see these gentle- 
 men. Now, for the next-of-kin," and Fraisier again relapsed 
 into his attitude of listener. 
 
 When President Camusot's name came up, he nodded with 
 a grimace which riveted Mrne. Cibot's attention. She tried 
 to read the forehead and the villainous face, and found what 
 is called in business a "wooden head." 
 
 " Yes, my dear sir," repeated La Cibot. "Yes, my Mon- 
 sieur Pons is own cousin to President Camusot de Marville ; 
 he tells me that ten times a day. Monsieur Camusot the silk 
 mercer "vas married twice " 
 
 "He that has just been nominated for a peer of France? 
 who " 
 
 " And his first wife was a Mademoiselle Pons, Monsieur 
 Pons' first cousin." 
 
 " Then they are first cousins once removed " 
 
 "They are not 'cousins.' They have quarreled." 
 
 It may be remembered that before M. Camusot de Marville 
 came to Paris, he was president of the Tribunal of Mantes for
 
 276 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 five years ; and not only was his name still remembered there, 
 but he had kept up a correspondence with Mantes. Camusot's 
 immediate successor, the judge with whom he had been most 
 intimate during his term of office, was still president of the 
 Tribunal, and consequently knew all about Fraisier. 
 
 "Do you know, madame," Fraisier said, when at last the 
 red sluices of La Cibot's torrent tongue were closed, " do you 
 know that your principal enemy will be a man who can send 
 you to the scaffold ? ' ' 
 
 The portress started on her chair, making a sudden spring 
 like a jack-in-the-box. 
 
 " Calm yourself, dear madame," continued Fraisier. " You 
 may not have known the name of the president of the Chamber 
 of Indictments at the Court of Appeal in Paris ; but you ought 
 to have known that Monsieur Pons must have an heir-at-law. 
 Monsieur le President de Marville is your invalid's sole heir ; 
 but as he is a collateral in the third degree, Monsieur Pons is 
 entitled by law to leave his fortune as he pleases. You are 
 not aware either that, six weeks ago at least, Monsieur le 
 President's daughter married the eldest son of the Comte 
 Popinot, peer of France, once minister of agriculture, and 
 president of the Board of Trade, one of the most influential 
 politicians of the day. President de Marville is even more 
 formidable through this marriage than in his own quality of 
 head of the Court of Assize." 
 
 At that word La Cibot shuddered. 
 
 " Yes, and it is he who sends you there," continued Fraisier. 
 "Ah! my dear madame, you little know what a red robe 
 means ! It is bad enough to have a plain black gown against 
 you ! You see me here, ruined, bald, broken in health all 
 because, unwittingly, I crossed a mere attorney for the crown 
 in the provinces. I was forced to sell my connection at a 
 loss, and very lucky I was to come off with the loss of my 
 money. If I had tried to stand out, my professional position 
 would have gone as well.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 277 
 
 "One thing more you do not know," he continued, "and 
 this it is : If you had only to do with President Camusot him- 
 self, it would be nothing; but he has a wife, mind you ! and 
 if you ever find yourself face to face with that wife, you will 
 shake in your shoes as if you were on the first step of the scaf- 
 fold, your hair will stand on end. The presidente is so vin- 
 dictive that she would spend ten years over setting a trap to 
 kill you. She sets that husband of hers spinning like a top. 
 Through her a charming young fellow committed suicide at 
 the Conciergerie. A count was accused of forgery she made 
 his character as white as snow. She all but drove a person of 
 the highest quality from the Court of Charles X. Finally, 
 she displaced the Attorney-General, Monsieur de Granville 
 from ' ' 
 
 " That lived in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, at the corner of 
 the Rue Saint-Francois ! " 
 
 "The very same. They say that she means to make her 
 husband home secretary, and I do not know that she will not 
 gain her end. If she were to take it into her head to send us 
 both to the Criminal Court first and the hulks afterward I 
 should apply for a passport and set sail for America, though I 
 am as innocent as a new-born babe. So well do I know what 
 justice means. Now, see here, my dear Madame Cibot; to 
 marry her only daughter to young Vicomte Popinot (heir to 
 Monsieur Pillerault your landlord, it is said) to make that 
 match, she stripped herself of her whole fortune, so much so 
 that the president and his wife have nothing at this moment 
 except his official salary. Can you suppose, my dear madame, 
 that under the circumstances Madame la Presidente will let 
 Monsieur Pons' property go out of the family without a word ! 
 Why, I would sooner face guns loaded with grape-shot than 
 have such a woman for my enemy " 
 
 "But they have quarreled," put in La Cibot. 
 
 "What has that to do with it?" asked Fraisier. "It is 
 one reason the more for fearing her. To kill a relative of
 
 278 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 whom you are tired is something ; but to inherit his property 
 afterward that is a real pleasure ! ' ' 
 
 "But the old gentleman has a horror of his relatives. He 
 says over and over again that these people Messrs. Cardot, 
 Berthier, and the rest of them (I can't remember their names) 
 have crushed him as a tumbril cart crushes an egg " 
 
 " Have you a mind to be crushed too ? " 
 
 "Oh, dear! oh, dear!" cried La Cibot. "Ah! Ma'am 
 Fontaine was right when she said that I should meet with 
 difficulties : still, she said that I should succeed 
 
 " Listen, my dear Madame Cibot. As for making some 
 thirty thousand francs out of this business that is possible ; 
 but for the whole of the property, it is useless to think of 
 it. We talked over your case yesterday evening, Dr. Poulain 
 and I " 
 
 La Cibot started again. 
 
 " Well, what is the matter ? " 
 
 "But if you knew about the affair, why did you let me 
 chatter away like a magpie ? " 
 
 " Madame Cibot, I knew all about your business, but I 
 knew nothing of Madame Cibot. So many clients, so many 
 characters " 
 
 Mme. Cibot gave her legal adviser a queer look at this ; all 
 her suspicions gleamed in her eyes. Fraisier saw this. 
 
 "I resume," he continued. "So, our friend Poulain was 
 once called in by you to attend old Monsieur Pillerault, the 
 Countess Popinot's great-uncle ; that is one of your claims to 
 my devotion. Poulain goes to see your landlord (mark this!) 
 once a fortnight ; he learned all these particulars from him. 
 Monsieur Pillerault was present at his grand-nephew's wed- 
 ding for he is an uncle with money to leave ; he has an 
 income of fifteen thousand francs, though he has lived like a 
 hermit for the last five-and-twenty years, and scarcely spends 
 a thousand crowns well, he told Poulain all about this mar- 
 riage. It seems that your old musician was precisely the
 
 COUSIN PONS. 279 
 
 cause of the row ; he tried to disgrace his own family by way 
 of revenge. If you only hear one bell, you only hear one 
 sound. Your invalid says that he meant no harm, but every- 
 body thinks him a monster of " 
 
 "And it would not astonish me if he was! " cried La 
 Cibot. " Just imagine it ! For these ten years past I have 
 been money out of pocket for him, spending my savings on 
 him, and he knows it, and yet he will not let me lie down to 
 sleep on a legacy ! No, sir ! he will not. He is obstinate, a 
 regular mule he is. I have talked to him these ten days, and 
 the cross-grained cur won't stir no more than a sign-post. 
 
 He shuts his teeth and looks at me like The most that 
 
 he would say was that he would recommend me to Monsieur 
 Schmucke." 
 
 "Then he means to make his will in favor of this 
 Schmucke?" 
 
 " Everything will go to him " 
 
 " Listen, my dear Madame Cibot, if I am to arrive at any 
 definite conclusions and think of a plan, I must know Mon- 
 sieur Schmucke. I must see the property and have some talk 
 with this Jew of whom you speak ; and then let me direct 
 you ' ' 
 
 "We shall see, Monsieur Fraisier." 
 
 "What is this? 'We shall see?'" repeated Fraisier, 
 speaking in the voice natural to him, as he gave La Cibot a 
 viperous glance. "Am I your legal adviser or am I not, I 
 ask? Let us know exactly where we stand." 
 
 La Cibot felt that he read her thoughts. A cold chill ran 
 down her back. 
 
 "I have told you all I know," she said. She saw that she 
 was at the tiger's mercy. 
 
 "We attorneys are accustomed to treachery. Just think 
 carefully over your position ; it is superb. If you follow my 
 advice point by point, you will have thirty or forty thousand 
 francs. But there is a reverse side to this beautiful medal.
 
 280 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 How if the presidente comes to hear that Monsieur Pons' 
 property is worth a million of francs, and that you mean to 
 have a bite out of it ? for there is always somebody ready to 
 take that kind of errand " he added parenthetically. 
 
 This remark, and the little pause that came before and 
 after it, sent another shudder through La Cibot. She thought 
 at once that Fraisier himself would probably undertake that 
 office. 
 
 "And then, my dear client, in ten minutes old Pillerault 
 is asked to dismiss you, and then on a couple of hours' 
 notice " 
 
 "What does that matter to me?" said La Cibot, rising to 
 her feet like a Bellona; "I shall stay with the gentlemen as 
 their housekeeper." 
 
 " And then a trap will be set for you, and some fine morn- 
 ing you and your husband will wake up in a prison cell, to be 
 tried for your lives " 
 
 "/; " cried La Cibot ; " I that have not a sou that doesn't 
 belong to me // //" 
 
 For five minutes she held forth, and Fraisier watched the 
 great artist before him as she executed a concerto of self- 
 praise. He was quite untouched, and even amused by the per- 
 formance. His keen glances pricked La Cibot like stilettos ; 
 he chuckled inwardly, till his shrunken wig was shaking with 
 laughter. He was a Robespierre at an age when the Sylla of 
 France was still making couplets. 
 
 "And how? And why? And on what pretext?" de- 
 manded she, when she came to an end. 
 
 "You wish to know how you may come to the guillo- 
 tine ? " 
 
 La Cibot turned pale as death at the words ; the words 
 fell like the knife upon her neck. She stared wildly at 
 Fraisier. 
 
 " Listen to me, my dear child," began Fraisier, suppressing 
 his inward satisfaction at his client's discomfiture.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 281 
 
 "I would sooner leave things as they are " murmured 
 
 La Cibot, and she rose to go. 
 
 "Stay," Fraisier said imperiously. "You ought to know 
 the risks that you are running ; I am bound to give you the 
 benefit of my lights. You are dismissed by Monsieur Pille- 
 rault, we will say; there is no doubt about that, is there? 
 You enter the service of these two gentlemen. Very good ! 
 That is a declaration of war against the presidente. You 
 mean to do everything you can to gain possession of the 
 property, and to get a slice out of it at any rate 
 
 "Oh, I am not blaming you," Fraisier continued, in 
 answer to a gesture from his client. " It is not my place 
 to do so. This is a battle, and you will be led on further 
 than you think for. One grows full of one's idea, one hits 
 hard " 
 
 Another gesture of denial. This time La Cibot tossed her 
 head. 
 
 "There, there, old lady," said Fraisier, with odious famil- 
 iarity, " you will go a very long way ! " 
 
 " You take me for a thief, I suppose ? " 
 
 "Come, now, mamma, you hold a receipt in Monsieur 
 Schmucke's hand which did not cost you much. Ah ! you 
 are in the confessional, my lady. Don't deceive your con- 
 fessor, especially when the confessor has the power of reading 
 your thoughts." 
 
 La Cibot was dismayed by the man's perspicacity ; now she 
 knew why he had listened to her so intently. 
 
 "Very good," continued he, " you can admit at once that 
 the presidente will not allow you to pass her in the race for 
 the property. You will be watched and spied upon. You 
 get your name into Monsieur Pons* will ; nothing could be 
 better. But some fine day the law steps in, arsenic is found 
 in a glass, and you and your husband are arrested, tried, and 
 condemned for attempting the life of the Sieur Pons, so as to 
 come by your legacy. I once defended a poor woman at Ver-
 
 282 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 sailles ; she was in reality as innocent as you would be in such 
 a case. Things were as I have told you, and all that I could 
 do was to save her life. The unhappy creature was sentenced 
 to twenty years' penal servitude. She is working out her time 
 now at St. Lazare." 
 
 Mme. Cibot's terror grew to the highest pitch. She grew 
 paler and paler, staring at the little, thin man with the green 
 eyes, as some wretched Moor, accused of adhering to her own 
 religion, might gaze at the inquisitor who doomed her to the 
 stake. 
 
 "Then do you tell me that, if I leave you to act and put 
 my interests in your hands, I shall get something without 
 fear?" 
 
 "I guarantee you thirty thousand francs," said Fraisier, 
 speaking like a man sure of the fact. 
 
 "After all, you know how fond I am of dear Dr. Poulain," 
 she began again in her most coaxing tones ; "he told me to 
 come to you, worthy man, and he did not send me here to be 
 told that I shall be guillotined for poisoning some one." 
 
 The thought of the guillotine so moved her that she burst 
 into tears, her nerves were shaken, terror clutched at her 
 heart, she lost her head. Fraisier gloated over his triumph. 
 When he saw his client hesitate, he thought that he had lost his 
 chance ; he had set himself to frighten and quell La Cibot 
 till she was completely in his power, bound hand and foot. 
 She had walked into his study as a fly walks into a spider's 
 web; there she was doomed to remain, entangled in the toils 
 of the little lawyer who meant to feed upon her. Out of this 
 bit of business, indeed, Fraisier meant to gain the living of old 
 days : comfort, competence, and consideration. He and his 
 friend, Dr. Poulain, had spent the whole previous evening in 
 a microscopic examination of the case ; they had made mature 
 deliberations. The doctor described Schmucke for his friend's 
 benefit, and the alert pair had plumbed all hypotheses and 
 scrutinized all risks and resources, till Fraisier, exultant, cried
 
 COUSIN PONS. 283 
 
 aloud : " Both our fortunes lie in this ! " He had gone so far 
 as to promise Poulain a hospital, and, as for himself, he meant 
 to be justice of the peace of an arrondissement. 
 
 To be a justice of the peace ! For this man with his abun- 
 dant capacity, for this doctor of law without a pair of socks to 
 his name, the dream was a hippogriff so restive, that he thought 
 of it as a deputy-advocate thinks of the silk gown, as an Italian 
 priest thinks of the tiara. It was, indeed, a wild dream ! 
 
 M. Vitel, the justice of the peace before whom Fraisier 
 pleaded, was a man of sixty-nine, in failing health ; he talked 
 of retiring on a pension ; and Fraisier used to talk with Poulain 
 of succeeding him, much as Poulain talked of saving the life of 
 some rich heiress and marrying her afterward. No one knows 
 how greedily every post in the gift of authority is sought 
 after in Paris. Every one wants to live in Paris. If a 
 stamp or tobacco license falls in, a hundred women rise up 
 as one and stir all their friends to obtain it. Any vacancy 
 in the ranks of the twenty-four collectors of taxes sends 
 a flood of ambitious folk surging in upon the Chamber 
 of Deputies. Decisions are made in committee, all appoint- 
 ments are made by the Government. Now the salary of a 
 justice of the peace, the lowest stipendiary magistrate in Paris, 
 is about six thousand francs. The post of registrar to the 
 court is worth a hundred thousand francs. Few places are 
 more coveted in the administration. Fraisier, as a justice of 
 the peace, with the head-physician of a hospital for his friend, 
 would make a rich marriage himself and a good match for Dr. 
 Poulain. Each would lend a hand to each. 
 
 Night set its leaden seal upon the plans made by the some- 
 time attorney of Mantes, and a formidable scheme sprouted 
 up, a flourishing scheme, fertile in harvests of gain and in- 
 trigue. La Cibot was the hinge upon which the whole matter 
 turned ; and for this reason, any rebellion on the part of the 
 instrument must be at once put down ; such action on her 
 part was quite unexpected ; but Fraisier had put forth all the
 
 284 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 strength of his rancorous nature, and the audacious portress 
 lay trampled under his feet. 
 
 "Come, reassure yourself, my dear madame," he remarked, 
 holding out his hand. The touch of the cold, serpent-like skin 
 made a terrible impression upon the portress. It brought about 
 something like a physical reaction, which checked her emo- 
 tion ; Mme. Fontaine's toad, Astaroth, seemed to her to be 
 less deadly than this poison-sac that wore a sandy wig and 
 spoke in tones like the creaking of a hinge. 
 
 " Do not imagine that I am frightening you to no purpose," 
 Fraisier continued. (La Cibot's feeling of repulsion had not 
 escaped him.) "The affairs which made Madame la Presi- 
 dente's dreadful reputation are so well known at the law- 
 courts, that you can make inquiries there if you like. The 
 great person who was all but sent into a lunatic asylum was 
 the Marquis d'Espard. The Marquis d'Escrignon was saved 
 from the hulks. The handsome young man with wealth and 
 a great future before him, who was to have married a daughter 
 of one of the first families of France, and hanged himself in a 
 cell of the Conciergerie, was the celebrated Lucien de Ru- 
 bempre ;* the affair made a great deal of noise in Paris at the 
 time. That was the question of a will. His mistress, the 
 notorious Esther, died and left him several millions, and they 
 accused the young fellow of poisoning her. He was not even 
 in Paris at the time of her death, nor did he so much as know 
 that the woman had left the money to him ! One cannot 
 well be more innocent than that ! Well, after Monsieur 
 Camusot examined him, he hanged himself in his cell. Law, 
 like medicine, has its victims. In the first case, one man 
 suffers for the many, and, in the second, he dies for science," 
 he added, and an ugly smile stole over his lips. "Well, I 
 know the risks myself, you see ; poor and obscure little at- 
 torney as I am, the law has been the ruin of me. My ex- 
 perience was dearly bought it is all at your service." 
 * See " The Harlot's Progress."
 
 COUSIN PONS. 285 
 
 " Thank you, no," said La Cibot; " I won't have nothing 
 to do with it, upon my word ! I shall have nourished ingrati- 
 tude, that is all ! I don't want nothing but my due ; I have 
 thirty years of honesty behind me, sir. Monsieur Pons says 
 that he will recommend me to his friend Schmucke ; well and 
 good, I shall end my days in peace with the German, good 
 man." 
 
 Fraisier had overshot his mark. He had discouraged La 
 Cibot. Now he was obliged to remove these unpleasant im- 
 pressions. 
 
 " Do not let us give up," he said; "just go away quietly 
 home. Come, now, we will steer the affair to a good end." 
 
 " But what about my rentes, what am I to do to get them, 
 and " 
 
 "And feel no remorse?" he interrupted quickly. " Eh ! 
 it is precisely for that that men of business were invented ; 
 unless you keep within the law, you get nothing. You know 
 nothing of law ; I know a good deal. I will see that you keep 
 on the right side of it, and you can hold your own in all men's 
 sight. As for your conscience, that is your own affair." 
 
 "Very well, tell me how to do it," returned La Cibot, 
 curious and delighted. 
 
 " I do not know how yet. I have not looked at the strong 
 points of the case yet ; I have been busy with the obstacles. 
 But the first thing to be done is to urge him to make a will ; 
 you cannot go wrong over that ; and find out, first of all, how 
 Pons Tieans to leave his fortune ; for if you were his heir " 
 
 "~No, no ; he does not like me. Ah ! if I had but known 
 the value of his gimcracks, and if I had known what I know 
 now about his amours, I should be easy in my mind this day 
 and " 
 
 " Keep on, in fact," broke in Fraisier. " Dying folk have 
 queer fancies, my dear madame ; they disappoint hopes many a 
 time. Let him make his will and then we shall see. And 
 of all things, the property must be valued. So I must see
 
 286 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 this Remonencq and the Jew ; they will be very useful to us. 
 Put entire confidence in me, I am at your disposal. When a 
 client is a friend to me, I am his friend through thick and 
 thin. Friend or enemy, that is my character." 
 
 "Very well," said La Cibot, " I am yours entirely; and as 
 for fees, Monsieur Poulain " 
 
 "Let us say nothing about that," said Fraisier. "Think 
 how you can keep Poulain at the bedside ; he is one of the 
 most upright and conscientious men I know ; and, you see, we 
 want some one there whom we can trust. Poulain would do 
 better than I; I have lost my character." 
 
 "You look as if you had," said La Cibot; "but, for my 
 own part, I should trust you." 
 
 "And you would do well. Come to see me whenever any- 
 thing happens and there ! you are an intelligent woman ; 
 all will go well." 
 
 " Good-day, Monsieur Fraisier. I hope you will recover 
 your health. Your servant, sir." 
 
 Fraisier went to the door with his client. But this time it 
 was he, and not La Cibot, who was struck with an idea on the 
 threshold. 
 
 "If you could persuade Monsieur Pons to call me in, it 
 would be a great step." 
 
 "I will try," said La Cibot. 
 
 Fraisier drew her back into his sanctum. " Look here, old 
 lady, I know Monsieur Trognon, the notary of the quarter, 
 very well. If Monsieur Pons has not a notary, mention Mon- 
 sieur Trognon to him. Make him take this Monsieur Tro- 
 gnon " 
 
 "Right," returned La Cibot. 
 
 And as she came out again she heard the rustle of a dress 
 and the sound of a stealthy, heavy footstep. 
 
 Out in the street and by herself, Mme. Cibot to some ex- 
 tent recovered her liberty of mind as she walked. Though 
 the influence of the conversation was still upon her, and she
 
 COUSIN PONS. 287 
 
 had always stood in dread of scaffolds, justice, and judges, she 
 took a very natural resolution which was to bring about a con- 
 flict of strategy between her and her formidable legal adviser. 
 "What do I want with other people?" said she to herself. 
 " Let us make a round sum, and afterward I will take all 
 that they offer me to push their interests; " and this thought, 
 as will shortly be seen, hastened the poor old musician's end. 
 
 "Well, dear Monsieur Schmucke, and how is our dear, 
 adored patient ? " asked La Cibot, as she came into the room. 
 
 "Fery bad; Bons haf been vandering all der night." 
 
 " Then, what did he say ? " 
 
 " Chust nonsense. He vould dot I haf all his fortune, on 
 kondition dot I sell nodings. Den he cried ! Boor man ! 
 It made me ver' sad." 
 
 "Never mind, honey," returned the portress. "I have 
 kept you waiting for your breakfast ; it is nine o'clock and 
 past; but don't scold me. I have business on hand, you see, 
 business of yours. Here are we, without any money, and I 
 have been out to get some." 
 
 " Vere ? " asked Schmucke. 
 
 "Of my uncle." 
 
 "Onkel?" 
 
 "Up the spout." 
 
 "Shpout?" 
 
 "Oh, the dear man ! how simple he is! No, you are a 
 saint, i love, an archbishop of innocence, a man that ought 
 to be stuffed, as the old actor said. What ! you have lived in 
 Paris for twenty-nine years ; you saw the Revolution of July, 
 you did, and you haven't never so much as heard tell of a pawn- 
 broker a man that lends you money on your things ? I have 
 been pawning our silver spoons and forks, eight of them, 
 thread pattern. Pooh, Cibot can eat his victuals with horrid 
 German silver ; it is quite the fashion now, they say. It is 
 not worth while to say anything to our angel there ; it; would
 
 288 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 upset him and make him yellower than before, and he is quite 
 cross enough as it is. Let us get round him again first, and 
 afterward we shall see. What must be must ; and we must 
 take things as we find them, eh ? " 
 
 " Goot voman ! nople heart ! " cried poor Schmucke, with 
 a great tenderness in his face. He took La Cibot's hand and 
 clasped it to his breast. When he looked up, there were tears 
 in his eyes. 
 
 "There, that will do, Papa Schmucke; how funny you are! 
 This is too bad. I'm an old daughter of the people rny heart 
 is in my hand. I have something here, you see, like you 
 have, hearts of gold that you are," she added, slapping her 
 chest. 
 
 " Baba Schmucke ! " continued the musician. " No. To 
 know de tepths of sorrow, to cry mit tears of blood, to 
 mount up in der hefn dat is mein lot ! I shall not lif after 
 Pons " 
 
 " 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 afterward, and somebody must sit up of a night with 
 Monsieur 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
 
 COUSIN PONS. 289 
 
 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. It is a month and more already since 
 I have been like this. 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 Monsieur 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 ! Monsieur 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 varj- 
 19
 
 290 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 ation upon the theme of Pens' 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 him- 
 self 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 janitor 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 janitor, in a small way, in a house 
 in the Rue de Normandie. Monsieur 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 Monsieur Pons going on, the 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 Monsieur Pons to see you, sir ! " After this 
 fashion did the youth attached to the service of the manager's 
 office announce Mme. Cibot, whom the portress below had 
 particularly recommended to his care.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 291 
 
 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 con- 
 ductor, he made a Napoleonic gesture, and La Cibot was ad- 
 mitted. 
 
 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 per- 
 son. Grown big and stout and high-colored with good cheer 
 and prosperity, Gaudissart made no disguise of his transforma- 
 tion 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," repeated 
 Bixiou, who often replaced Gaudissart in the company of the 
 leading lady of the ballet, the celebrated Heloi'se 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 insin- 
 uated himself as 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 beside 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
 
 292 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 them a dividend of fifteen per cent, on their capital. On the 
 strength of that fifteen per cent. Gaudissart talked of his in- 
 telligence, 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 Gaudis- 
 sart, 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 ven- 
 tures. 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 in- 
 terested 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 president of a railroad company, of be- 
 coming a responsible person and an administrator, and finally 
 of marrying Mile. Minard, daughter of the richest mayor in 
 Paris. He might hope to get into the Chamber through " his
 
 COUSIN PONS. 293 
 
 line," and, with Popinot's influence, to take office under the 
 Government. 
 
 ''Whom have I the honor of addressing?" inquired Gau- 
 dissart, looking magisterially at La Cibot. 
 
 "I am Monsieur Pons' confidential servant, sir," answered 
 Mme. Cibot. 
 
 " Well, and how is the dear fellow? " 
 
 "111, 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 won- 
 dered 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, unfor- 
 tunately, 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 so 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 *hat you must not count on Monsieur 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
 
 294 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 have had Lebrun, our doctor ; it would have cost him 
 nothing." 
 
 " Monsieur 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 accom- 
 paniment of my new fairy piece." 
 
 " Is it 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 my gentle- 
 men " 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 room and flung her- 
 self upon the only sofa. The new-comer was Heloise Brise- 
 tout, with a splendid algericnne, as such scarfs used to be 
 called, about her shoulders. 
 
 " Who is amusing you? Is it this lady? What post does 
 she want?" asked this nymph, giving the manager such a 
 glance as artist gives artist, a glance that would make a sub- 
 ject for a picture. 
 
 Helo'ise, a young woman of exceedingly literary tastes, was 
 on intimate terms with great and famous artists in bohemia. 
 Elegant, accomplished, and graceful, she was more intelligent 
 than dancers usually are. As she put her question, she sniffed 
 at a scent-bottle full of some aromatic perfume. 
 
 " One fine woman is as good as another, madame ; and if I 
 don't sniff the pestilence out of a scent-bottle, nor daub 
 brick-dust on my cheeks " 
 
 " That would be a sinful waste, child, when Nature put it on 
 for you to begin with," said Heloise, with a side-glance at her 
 manager. 
 
 " I am an honest woman " 
 
 " So much the worse for you. It is not every one by a
 
 COUSIN PONS. 295 
 
 long chalk that can find some one to keep them, and kept I 
 am, and in slap-up style, madame." 
 
 " So much the worse ! What do you mean ? Oh, you may 
 toss your head and go about in scarfs, you will never have 
 as many declarations as / have had, missus. You will never 
 match the Belle Ecaillere of the Cadran Bleu." 
 
 Helo'fse Brisetout rose at once to her feet, stood at attention, 
 and made a military salute, like a soldier who meets his 
 general. 
 
 "What?" asked Gaudissart, "are you really La Belle 
 Ecaillere of whom my father used to talk?" 
 
 " In that case the cachucha and the polka were after your 
 time; and madame has passed her fiftieth year," remarked 
 HeloVse, and, striking an attitude, she declaimed, " ' Cinna, 
 let us be friends.' " 
 
 " Come, HeloTse, come, the lady is not up to this; let her 
 alone." 
 
 " Madame is perhaps the New Helolse," suggested LaCibot, 
 with sly innocence. 
 
 "Not bad, old lady ! " cried Gaudissart. 
 
 "It is a venerable joke," said the dancer, " a grizzled pun ; 
 find us another old lady or take a cigarette." 
 
 " I beg your pardon, madame, I feel too unhappy to answer 
 you ; my two gentlemen are very ill ; and, to buy nourishment 
 for them and to spare them trouble, I have pawned everything 
 down to my husband's clothes that I pledged this morning. 
 Here i? the ticket! " 
 
 "Oh ! here, the affair is becoming tragic," cried the fair 
 Heloise. " What is it all about ? " 
 
 " Madame drops down upon us like " 
 
 "Like a dancer," said Heloise; "let me prompt you, 
 missus ! ' ' 
 
 "Come, I am busy," said Gaudissart. "The joke has 
 gone far enough. HeloVse, this is Monsieur Pons' confidential 
 servant ; she has come to tell me that I must not count upon
 
 296 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 him; our poor conductor is not expected to live. I don't 
 know what to do." 
 
 "Oh ! poor man ; why, he must have a benefit." 
 
 "It would ruin him," said Gaudissart. "He might find 
 next day that he owed five hundred francs to charitable insti- 
 tutions, and they refuse to admit that there are any sufferers 
 in Paris except their own. No, look here, my good woman, 
 since you are going in for the Montyon prize " 
 
 He broke off, rang the bell, and the youth before mentioned 
 suddenly appeared. 
 
 "Tell the cashier to send me up a thousand-franc bill. 
 Sit down, madame." 
 
 "Ah! poor woman, look, she is crying!" exclaimed 
 Heloise. " How stupid ! There, there, mother, we will go 
 to see him; don't cry. I say, now," she continued, taking 
 the manager into a corner, "you want to make me take the 
 leading part in the ballet in 'Ariane,' you Turk. You are 
 going to be married, and you know how I can make you 
 miserable " 
 
 " HdloTse, my heart is copper-bottomed like a man-of-war." 
 
 "I shall bring your children on the scene ! I will borrow 
 some somewhere." 
 
 "I have owned up about the attachment." 
 
 " Do be nice, and give Pons' post to Garangeot ; he has 
 talent, poor fellow, and he has not a penny ; and I promise 
 peace." 
 
 "But wait till Pons is dead, in case the good man may 
 come back again." 
 
 "Oh, as to that, no, sir," said La Cibot. "He began to 
 wander in his mind last night, and now he is delirious. It 
 will soon be over, unfortunately." 
 
 "At any rate, take Garangeot as a stop-gap!" pleaded 
 Hdloise. " He has the whole press on his side " 
 
 Just at that moment the cashier came in with a bill for a 
 thousand francs in his hand.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 297 
 
 "Give it to madame here," said Gaudissart. " Good-day, 
 my good woman ; take good care of the dear man, and tell 
 him that I am coming to see him to-morrow, or some time 
 as soon as I can, in short." 
 
 "A drowning man," said HeloTse.* 
 
 "Ah, sir, hearts like yours are only found in a theatre. 
 May God bless you ! " 
 
 " To what account shall I post this item ? " asked the 
 cashier. 
 
 "I will countersign the order. Post it to the bonus ac- 
 count." 
 
 Before La Cibot went out, she made Mile. Brisetout a fine 
 curtsey, and heard Gaudissart remark to his mistress 
 
 "Can Garangeot do the dance-music for the 'Mohicans' 
 in twelve days? If he helps me out of my predicament he 
 shall have Pons' place." 
 
 La Cibot had cut off the incomes of the two friends, she 
 had left them without means of subsistence if Pons should 
 chance to recover, and was better rewarded for all this mis- 
 chief than for any good that she had done. In a few days' 
 time her treacherous trick would bring about the desired result 
 Elie Magus would have his coveted pictures. But if this first 
 spoliation was to be effected, La Cibot must throw dust in 
 Fraisier's eyes, and lull the suspicions of that terrible fellow- 
 conspirator of her own seeking ; and Elie Magus and Remon- 
 encq must be bound over to secrecy. 
 
 As for Remonencq, he had gradually come to feel such a 
 passion as uneducated people can conceive when they come 
 to Paris from the depths of the country, bringing with them 
 all the fixed ideas bred of the solitary country life ; all the 
 ignorance of a primitive nature, all the brute appetites that 
 become so many fixed ideas. Mme. Cibot's masculine beauty, 
 her vivacity, her market-woman's wit, had all been remarked 
 by the marine-store-dealer. He thought at first of taking La 
 * A former mistress of Celestin Crevel. See " Cousin Betty."
 
 298 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Cibot from her husband, bigamy among the lower classes in 
 Paris being much more common than is generally supposed ; 
 but greed was like a slip-knot drawn more and more tightly 
 about his heart, till reason at length was stifled. When 
 Remonencq computed that the commission paid by himself 
 and Elie Magus amounted to about forty thousand francs, he 
 determined to have La Cibot for his legitimate spouse, and 
 his thoughts turned from a misdemeanor to a crime. A ro- 
 mantic purely speculative dream, persistently followed through 
 a tobacco-smoker's long musings as he lounged in the door- 
 way, had brought him to the point of wishing that the little 
 tailor were dead. At a stroke he beheld his capital trebled ; 
 and then he thought of La Cibot. What a good saleswoman 
 she would be ! What a handsome figure she would make in a 
 magnificent store on the boulevards ! The twofold covetous- 
 ness turned Remonencq's head. In fancy he took a store 
 that he knew of on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, he stocked 
 it with Pens' treasures, and then after dreaming his dream 
 in sheets of gold, after seeing millions in the blue spiral 
 wreaths that rose from his pipe, he awoke to find himself face 
 to face with the little tailor. Cibot was sweeping the yard, 
 the doorstep, and the pavement just as his neighbor was taking 
 down the shutters and displaying his wares ; for since Pons 
 fell ill, La Cibot's work had fallen to her husband. 
 
 The Auvergnat began to look upon the little, swarthy, 
 stunted, copper-colored tailor as the one obstacle in his way, 
 and pondered how to be rid of him. Meanwhile, this growing 
 passion made La Cibot very proud, for she had reached an 
 age when a woman begins to understand that she may grow 
 old. 
 
 So early one morning, she meditatively watched Rdmonencq 
 as he arranged his odds and ends for sale. She wondered how 
 far his love could go. He came across to her. 
 
 " Well," he said, " are things going as you wish ? " 
 
 " It is you who make me uneasy," said La Cibot. " I
 
 COUSIN PONS. 299 
 
 shall be talked about ; the neighbors will see you making 
 sheep's eyes at me." 
 
 She left the doorway and dived into the Auvergnat's back 
 store. 
 
 "What a notion ! " said Remonencq. 
 
 "Come here, I have something to say to you," said La 
 Cibot. " Monsieur Pons' heirs are about to make a stir ; 
 they are capable of giving us a lot of trouble. God knows 
 what might come of it if they send the lawyers here to poke 
 their noses into the affair like hunting-dogs. I cannot get 
 Monsieur Schmucke to sell a few pictures unless you like me 
 well enough to keep the secret such a secret ! With your 
 head on the block, you must not say where the pictures come 
 from, nor who it was that sold them. When Monsieur Pons 
 is once dead and buried, you understand, nobody will know 
 how many pictures there ought to be ; if there are fifty-three 
 pictures instead of sixty-seven, nobody will be any the wiser. 
 Beside, if Monsieur Pons sold them himself while he was 
 alive, nobody can find fault." 
 
 "No," agreed Remonencq, "it is all one to me, but Mon- 
 sieur Elie Magus will want receipts in due form." 
 
 " And you shall have your receipt too, bless your life ! Do 
 you suppose that I should write them? No, Monsieur 
 Schmucke will do that. 
 
 " But tell your Jew that he must keep the secret as closely 
 as you do," she continued. 
 
 " We will be as mute as fishes. That is our business. I 
 myself can read, but I cannot write, and that is why I want 
 a capable wife that has had education like you. I have 
 thought of nothing but earning my bread all my days, and 
 now I wish I had some little Remonencqs. Do leave that 
 Cibot of yours." 
 
 "Why, here comes your Jew," said the portress; "we can 
 arrange the whole business." 
 
 Elie Magus came every third day very early in the morning to
 
 300 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 know when he could buy his pictures. " Well, my dear lady," 
 said he, " how are we getting on ? " 
 
 " Has nobody been to speak to you about Monsieur Pons 
 and his gimcracks ? " asked La Cibot. 
 
 " I received a letter from a lawyer," said Elie Magus, "a 
 rascal that seems to me to be trying to make work for himself; 
 I don't like people of that sort, so I took no notice of his 
 letter. Three days afterward he came to see me, and left his 
 card. I told my porter that I am never at home when he 
 calls." 
 
 "You are a love of a Jew," said La Cibot. Little did she 
 know Elie Magus' prudence. " Well, sonnies, in a few days' 
 time I will bring Monsieur Schmucke to the point of selling 
 you seven or eight pictures, ten at most. But on two condi- 
 tions. Absolute secrecy in the first place. Monsieur Schmucke 
 will send for you, sir, is not that so ? And Monsieur Remon- 
 encq suggested that you might be a purchaser, eh? And, 
 come what may, I will not meddle in it for nothing. You 
 are giving forty-six thousand francs for four pictures, are you 
 not?" 
 
 " So be it," groaned the Jew. 
 
 " Very good. This is the second condition. You will 
 give me forty-three thousand francs, and pay three thousand 
 only to Monsieur Schmucke ; Remonencq will buy four for 
 two thousand francs, and hand over the surplus to me. But, 
 at the same time, you see, my dear Monsieur Magus, I am 
 going to help you and Remonencq to a splendid bit of busi- 
 ness on condition that the profits are shared among the three 
 of us. I will introduce you to that lawyer, as he, no doubt, 
 will come here. You shall make a valuation of Monsieur 
 Pons' things at the prices which you can give for them, so 
 that Monsieur Fraisier may know how much the property is 
 worth. But not until after our sale, you understand ! " 
 
 " I understand," said the Jew, " but it takes time to look at 
 the things and value them."
 
 COUSIN PONS. 301 
 
 "You shall have half a day. But, there, that is my affair. 
 Talk it over between yourselves, my boys, and for that matter 
 the business will be settled by the day after to-morrow. I 
 will go round to speak to this Fraisier ; for Dr. Poulain tells 
 tells him everything that goes on in the house, and it is a 
 great bother to keep that scarecrow quiet." 
 
 La Cibot met Fraisier halfway between the Rue de la Perle 
 and the Rue de Normandie ; so impatient was he to know the 
 "elements of the case" (to use his own expression), that he 
 was coming to see her. 
 
 " I say ! I was going to you," said she. 
 
 Fraisier grumbled because Elie Magus had refused to see 
 him. But La Cibot extinguished the spark of distrust that 
 gleamed in the lawyer's eyes by informing him that Elie 
 Magus had returned from a journey, and that she would ar- 
 range for an interview in Pens' rooms and for the valuation 
 of the property ; for the day after to-morrow at latest. 
 
 "Deal frankly with me," returned Fraisier. "It is more 
 than probable that I shall act for Monsieur Pons' next-of-kin. 
 In that case, I shall be even better able to serve you." 
 
 The words were spoken so drily that La Cibot quaked. This 
 starving limb of the law was sure to manoeuvre on his side as 
 she herself was doing. She resolved forthwith to hurry on the 
 sale of the pictures. 
 
 La Cibot was right. The doctor and lawyer had clubbed 
 together to buy a new suit of clothes in which Fraisier could 
 decently present himself before Mme. la Presidente Camusot 
 de Marville. Indeed, if the clothes had been ready, the in- 
 terview would have taken place sooner, for the fate of the 
 couple hung upon its issues. Fraisier left Mme. Cibot and 
 went to try on his new clothes. He found them waiting for 
 him, went home, adjusted his new wig, and toward ten o'clock 
 that morning set out in a carriage from a livery stable for the 
 Rue de Hanovre, hoping for an audience. In his white tie, 
 yellow gloves, and new wig, redolent of Portugal water, he
 
 302 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 looked something like a poisonous essence kept in a cut-glass 
 bottle, seeming but the more deadly because everything about 
 it is daintily neat, from the stopper covered with white kid 
 to the label and the thread. His peremptory manner, the 
 eruption on his blotched countenance, the green eyes, and a 
 malignant something about him all these things struck the 
 beholder with the same sense of surprise as storm-clouds in a 
 blue sky. If in his private office, as he showed himself to La 
 Cibot, he was the common knife that a murderer catches up 
 for his crime now, at the presidente's door, he was the 
 daintily wrought dagger which a woman sets among the orna- 
 ments of her whatnot. 
 
 A great change had taken place in the Rue de Hanovre. 
 The Count and Countess Popinotand the young people would 
 not allow the president and his wife to leave the house that 
 they had settled upon their daughter to pay rent elsewhere. 
 M. and Mme. la Presidente, therefore, were installed on the 
 third floor, now left at liberty, for the elderly lady had made 
 up her mind to end her days in the country. 
 
 Mme. Camusot took Madeleine Vivet, with her cook and her 
 manservant, to the third floor, and would have been as much 
 pinched for money as in the early days, if the house had not 
 been rent-free, and the president's salary increased to ten 
 thousand francs. This aurea mcdiocritas was but little satis- 
 factory to Mme. de Marville. Even now she wished for means 
 more in accordance with her ambitions ; for when she handed 
 over their fortune to their daughter, she spoiled her husband's 
 prospects. Now Amelia had set her heart upon seeing her 
 husband in the Chamber of Deputies ; she was not one of those 
 women who find it easy to give up their way ; and she by no 
 means despaired of returning her husband for the arrondisse- 
 ment in which Marville is situated. So for the past two months 
 she had teased her father-in-law, M. le Baron Camusot (for the 
 new peer of France had been advanced to that rank), and done 
 her utmost to extort an advance of a hundred thousand francs
 
 COUSIN PONS. 303 
 
 of the inheritance which one day would be theirs. She 
 wanted, she said, to buy a small estate worth about two thou- 
 sand francs per annum set like a wedge within the Marville 
 lands. There she and her husband would be near their chil- 
 dren and in their own house, while the addition would round out 
 the Marville property. With that the presidente laid stress upon 
 the recent sacrifices which she and her husband had been com- 
 pelled to make in order to marry Cecile to Viscount Popinot, 
 and asked the old man how he could bar his eldest son's way 
 to the highest honors of the magistracy, when such honors 
 were only to be had by those who made themselves a strong 
 position in parliament. Her husband would know how to 
 take up such a position, he would make himself feared by 
 those in office, and so on and so on. " They do nothing for 
 you unless you tighten a halter round their necks to loosen 
 their tongues," said she. "They are ungrateful. What do 
 they not owe to Camusot ! Camusot brought the House of 
 Orleans to the throne by enforcing the ordinances of July." 
 
 M. Camusot senior answered that he had gone out of his 
 depth in railway speculations. He quite admitted that it was 
 necessary to come to the rescue, but put off the day until shares 
 should rise, as they were expected to do. 
 
 This half-promise, extracted some few days before Fraisier's 
 visit, had plunged the presidente into depths of affliction. It 
 was doubtful whether the ex-proprietor of Marville was eligible 
 for reelection without the land qualification. 
 
 Fraisier found no difficulty in obtaining speech of Madeleine 
 Vivet ; such viper natures own their kinship at once. 
 
 " I should like to see Madame la Presidente for a few mo- 
 ments, mademoiselle," Fraisier said in bland accents; "I 
 have come on a matter of business which touches her fortune j 
 it is a question of a legacy, be sure you mention that. I have 
 not the honor of being known to Madame la Presidente, so 
 my name is of no consequence. I am not in the habit of 
 leaving my chambers, but I know the respect that is due to a
 
 304 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 president's wife, and I took the trouble of coming myself to 
 save all possible delay." 
 
 The matter thus broached, when repeated and amplified by 
 the waiting-maid, naturally brought a favorable answer. It 
 was a decisive moment for the double ambition hidden in 
 Fraisier's mind. Bold as a petty provincial attorney, sharp, 
 rough-spoken, and curt as he was, he felt as captains feel be- 
 fore the decisive battle of a campaign. As he went into the 
 little drawing-room where Amelie was waiting for him, he felt 
 a slight perspiration breaking out upon his forehead and down 
 his back. Every sudorific hitherto employed had failed to 
 produce this result upon a skin which horrible diseases had 
 left impervious. "Even if I fail to make my fortune," said 
 he to himself, " I shall recover. Poulain said that if I could 
 only perspire I should recover." 
 
 The presidente came forward in her morning gown. 
 
 "Madame " said Fraisier, stopping short to bow with 
 
 the humility by which officials recognize the superior rank of 
 the person whom they address. 
 
 "Take a seat, monsieur," said the presidente. She saw at 
 a glance that this was a man of law. 
 
 " Madame la Presidente, if I take the liberty of calling 
 your attention to a matter which concerns Monsieur le Presi- 
 dent, it is because I am sure that Monsieur de Marville, occu- 
 pying, as he does, a high position, would leave matters to 
 take their natural course, and so lose seven or eight hundred 
 thousand francs, a sum which ladies (who, in my opinion, 
 have a far better understanding of private business than the 
 best of magistrates) a sum which ladies, I repeat, would by 
 no means despise " 
 
 "You spoke of a legacy," interrupted the lady, dazzled by 
 the wealth and anxious to hide her surprise. Amelie de Mar- 
 ville, like an impatient novel-reader, wanted the end of the 
 story. 
 
 "Yes, madame, a legacy that you are like to lose; yes,
 
 COUSIN PONS. 305 
 
 to lose altogether ; but I can, that is, I could recover it for 
 you, if " 
 
 "Speak out, monsieur." Mme. de Mar vi lie spoke frigidly, 
 scanning Fraisier as she spoke with a sagacious eye. 
 
 " Madame, your eminent capacity is known to me ; I was 
 once at Mantes. Monsieur Leboeuf, president of the Tribunal, 
 is acquainted with Monsieur de Marville, and can answer in- 
 quiries about me " 
 
 The presidente's shrug was so ruthlessly significant that 
 Fraisier was compelled to make short work of his parenthetic 
 discourse. 
 
 " So distinguished a woman will at once understand why I 
 speak of myself in the first place. It is the shortest way to 
 the property." 
 
 To this acute observation the lady replied by a gesture. 
 Fraisier took the sign for a permission to continue. 
 
 " I was an attorney, madame, at Mantes. My connection 
 was all the fortune that I was likely to have. I took over 
 Monsieur Levroux's practice. You knew him, no doubt ? " 
 
 The presidente inclined her head. 
 
 " With borrowed capital and some ten thousand francs of 
 my own, I went to Mantes. I had been with Desroches, one 
 of the cleverest attorneys in Paris ; I had been his head-clerk 
 for six years. I was so unlucky as to make an enemy of the 
 attorney for the crown at Mantes, Monsieur " 
 
 "Olivier Vinet." 
 
 " Son of the attorney-general, yes, madame. He was pay- 
 ing his court to a little person " 
 
 "Whom?" 
 
 "Madame Vatinelle." 
 
 "Oh! Madame Vatinelle. She was very pretty and very 
 er when I was there " 
 
 " She was not unkind to me : inde irce," Fraisier continued. 
 " I was industrious ; I wanted to repay my friends and to 
 marry ; I wanted work ; I went in search of it ; and before 
 20
 
 306 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 long I had more on my hands than anybody else. Bah ! I 
 had every soul in Mantes against me attorneys, notaries, and 
 even the bailiffs. They tried to fasten a quarrel on me. In 
 our ruthless profession, as you know, madame, if you wish to 
 ruin a man, it is soon done. I was concerned for both parties 
 in a case, and they found it out. It was a trifle irregular ; but 
 it is sometimes done in Paris, attorneys in certain cases hand 
 the rhubarb and take the senna. They do things differently 
 at Mantes. I had done Monsieur Bouyonnet this little service 
 before; but, egged on by his colleagues and the attorneys for 
 the crown, he betrayed me. I am keeping back nothing, you 
 see. There was a great hue and cry about it. I was a scoun- 
 drel ; they made me out blacker than Marat ; forced me to 
 sell out ; ruined me. And I am in Paris now. I have tried 
 to get together a practice; but my health is so bad that I 
 have only two quiet hours out of the twenty-four. 
 
 "At this moment I have but one ambition, and a very 
 small one. Some day," he continued, "you will be the wife 
 of the keeper of the seals, or of the home secretary, it may 
 be ; but I, poor and sickly as I am, desire nothing but a post 
 in which I can live in peace for the rest of my life, a place 
 without any opening in which to vegetate. I should like to 
 be a justice of the peace in Paris. It would be a mere trifle 
 to you and Monsieur le President to gain the appointment for 
 me ; for the present keeper of the seals must be anxious to 
 keep on good terms with you 
 
 "And that is not all, madame," added Fraisier. Seeing 
 that Mme. de Marville was about to speak, he cut her short 
 with a gesture. "I have a friend, the doctor in attendance 
 on the old man who ought to leave his property to Monsieur 
 le President. (We are coming to the point, you see.) The 
 doctor's cooperation is indispensable, and the doctor is pre- 
 cisely in my position : he has abilities, he is unlucky. I 
 learned through him how far your interests were imperiled; 
 for, even as I speak, all may be over, and the will disinheriting
 
 COUSIN PONS. 307 
 
 Monsieur le President may have been made. The doctor 
 wishes to be head-surgeon of a hospital or of a Government 
 
 school. He must have a position in Paris equal to mine 
 
 Pardon me if I have enlarged on a matter so delicate; but 
 we must have no misunderstandings in this business. The 
 doctor is, beside, much respected and learned ; he saved the 
 life of the Comtesse Popinot's great-uncle, Monsieur Pille- 
 rault. 
 
 "Now, if you are so good as to promise these two posts 
 the appointment of justice of the peace and the sinecure for 
 my friend I will undertake to bring you the property, almost 
 intact. Almost intact, I say, for the cooperation of the legatee 
 and of several other persons is absolutely indispensable, and 
 some obligations will be incurred. You will not redeem your 
 promises until I have fulfilled mine." 
 
 The presidente had folded her arms, and for the last minute 
 or two sat like a person compelled to listen to a sermon. Now 
 she unfolded her arms, and looked at Fraisier as she said : 
 " Monsieur, all that you say concerning your interests has the 
 merit of clearness ; but my own interests in the matter are by 
 no means so clear " 
 
 "A word or two will explain everything, madame. Mon- 
 sieur le President is Monsieur Pons' first cousin once removed, 
 and his sole heir. Monsieur Pons is very ill ; he is about to 
 make his will, if it is not made already, in favor of a German, 
 a friend of his named Schmucke ; and he has more than seven 
 hundred thousand francs to leave. I hope to have an accurate 
 valuation made in two or three days " 
 
 " If this is so," said the presidente, " I made a great mis- 
 take in quarreling with him and throwing the blame " she 
 
 thought aloud, amazed by the possibility of such a sum. 
 
 " No, madame. If there had been no rupture, he would be 
 as blithe as a lark at this moment, and might outlive you and 
 Monsieur le President and me. The ways of Providence are 
 mysterious, let us not seek to fathom them," he added, to
 
 308 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 palliate to some extent the hideous idea. "It cannot be 
 helped. We men of business look at the practical aspects of 
 things. Now you see clearly, madame, that Monsieur de 
 Marville in his public position would do nothing, and could 
 do nothing, as things are. He has broken off all relations 
 with his cousin. You see nothing now of Pons; you have 
 forbidden him the house ; you had excellent reasons, no doubt, 
 for doing as you did, but the old man is ill, and he is leaving 
 his property to the only friend left to him. A president of 
 the Court of Appeals in Paris could say nothing under such 
 circumstances if the will was made out in due form. But 
 between ourselves, madame, when one has a right to expect 
 seven or eight hundred thousand francs or a million, it may 
 be (how should I know?) it is very unpleasant to have it slip 
 through one's fingers, especially if one happens to be the heir- 
 at-law. But, on the other hand, to prevent this, one is obliged 
 to stoop to dirty work ; work so difficult, so ticklish, bringing 
 you cheek by jowl with such low people, servants and subor- 
 dinates ; and into such close contact with them, too, that no 
 barrister, no attorney in Paris could take up such a case. 
 
 "What you want is a briefless barrister like me," said he, 
 "a man who should have real and solid ability, who has 
 learned to be devoted, and yet, being in a precarious position, 
 is brought temporarily to a level with such people. In my 
 arrondissement I undertake business for small tradespeople and 
 working folk. Yes, madame, you see the straits to which I 
 have been brought by the enmity of an attorney for the crown, 
 now a deputy public prosecutor in Paris, who could not for- 
 give me my superiority. I know you, madame, I know that 
 your influence means a solid certainty ; and in such a service 
 rendered to you, I saw the end of my troubles and success for 
 my friend Dr. Poulain." 
 
 The lady sat pensive during a moment of unspeakable tor- 
 ture for Fraisier. Vinet, an orator of the Centre, attorney- 
 general (J)rocurcur-general} for the past sixteen years, nomi-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 309 
 
 nated half-a-score of times for the chancellorship, the father, 
 moreover, of the attorney for the crown at Mantes who had 
 been appointed to a post in Paris within the last year Vinet 
 was an enemy and a rival for the malignant presidente. The 
 haughty attorney-general did not hide his contempt for Presi- 
 dent Camusot. This fact Fraisier did not know, and could 
 not know. 
 
 " Have you nothing on your conscience but the fact that 
 you were concerned for both parties?" asked she, looking 
 steadfastly at Fraisier. 
 
 " Madame la Presidente can see Monsieur Lebceuf ; he was 
 favorable to me." 
 
 " Do you feel sure that Monsieur Leboeuf will give Mon- 
 sieur de Marville and Monsieur le Comte Popinot a good 
 account of you?" 
 
 " I will answer for it, especially now that Monsieur Oliver 
 Vinet has left Mantes ; for between ourselves, good Monsieur 
 Leboeuf was afraid of that crabbed little official. If you will 
 permit me, Madame la Presidente, I will go to Mantes and 
 see Monsieur Leboeuf. No time will be lost, for I cannot be 
 certain of the precise value of the property for two or three 
 days. I do not wish that you should know all the ins and 
 outs of this affair ; you ought not to know them, Madame la 
 Presidente, but is not the reward that I expect for my com- 
 plete devotion a pledge of my success ? " 
 
 " Very well. If Monsieur Lebceuf will speak in your favor, 
 and if the property is worth as much as you think (I doubt it 
 myself), you shall have both appointments, if you succeed, 
 mind you " 
 
 " I will answer for it, madame. Only, you must be so 
 good as to have your notary and your attorney here when I 
 shall need them ; you must give me a power of attorney to 
 act for Monsieur le President, and tell those gentlemen to 
 follow my instructions, and to do nothing on their own re- 
 sponsibility."
 
 310 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "The responsibility rests with you," the presidente an- 
 swered solemnly, " so you ought to have full powers. But is 
 Monsieur Pons very ill ? " she asked, smiling. 
 
 "Upon my word, madame, he might pull through, espe- 
 cially with so conscientious a doctor as Poulain in attendance ; 
 for this friend of mine, madame, is simply an unconscious spy 
 directed by me in your interests. Left to himself, he would 
 save the old man's life ; but there is some one else by the 
 sick-bed, a portress, who would push him into his grave for 
 thirty thousand francs. Not that she would kill him outright ; 
 she will not give him arsenic, she is not so merciful ; she will 
 do worse, she will kill him by inches, she will worry him to 
 death day by day. If the poor old man were kept quiet and 
 left in peace j if he were taken into the country and cared 
 for and made much of by friends, he would get well again ; 
 but he is harassed by a sort of Madame Evrard. When the 
 woman was young she was one of thirty Belles Ecaill'eres, 
 famous in Paris ; she is a rough, greedy, gossiping woman ; 
 she torments him to make a will and to leave her something 
 handsome, and the end of it will be induration of the liver ; 
 calculi are possibly forming at this moment, and he has not 
 strength to bear an operation. The doctor, noble soul, is in 
 a horrible predicament. He really ought to send the woman 
 away " 
 
 "Why, then, this vixen is a monster ! " cried the lady in 
 thin flute-like tones. 
 
 Fraisier smiled inwardly at the likeness between himself 
 and the terrible presidente ; he knew all about those suave 
 modulations of a naturally sharp voice. He thought of an- 
 other president, the hero of an anecdote related by Louis 
 XL, stamped by that monarch's final phrase. Blessed with a 
 wife after the pattern of Socrates' spouse, and ungifted with 
 the sage's philosophy, he mingled salt with the corn in the 
 mangers and forbade the grooms to give water to the horses. 
 As his wife rode out along the Seine toward their country-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 311 
 
 house, the animals bolted into the river with the lady, and 
 the magistrate returned thanks to Providence for ridding him 
 of his wife "in so natural a manner." At this present mo- 
 ment Mme. de Ma.rville thanked heaven for placing at Pons' 
 bedside a woman so likely to get him " decently " out of the 
 way. 
 
 Aloud she said, " I would not take a million at the price 
 of a single scruple. Your friend ought to speak to Monsieur 
 Pons and have the woman sent away." 
 
 "In the first place, madame, Messrs. Schmucke and Pons 
 think the woman an angel ; they would send my friend away. 
 And, secondly, the doctor lies under an obligation to this 
 horrid oyster-woman ; she called him in to attend Monsieur 
 Pillerault. When he tells her to be as gentle as possible with 
 the patient, he simply shows the creature how to make matters 
 worse. ' ' 
 
 " What does your friend think of my cousin's condition?" 
 
 This man's clear, business-like way of putting the facts of 
 the case frightened Mme. de Marville ; she felt that his keen 
 gaze read the thoughts of a heart as greedy as La Cibot's 
 own. 
 
 " In six weeks the property will change hands." 
 
 The presidente dropped her eyes. 
 
 " Poor man ! " she sighed, vainly striving after a dolorous 
 expression. 
 
 " Have you any message, madame, for Monsieur Lebceuf? 
 I am taking the train to Mantes." 
 
 "Yes. Wait a moment, and I will write asking him to 
 dine with us to-morrow. I want to see him, so that we may 
 act in concert to repair the injustice to which you have fallen 
 a victim." 
 
 The presidente left the room. Fraisier saw himself a justice 
 of the peace. He felt transformed at the thought ; he grew 
 stouter ; his lungs were filled with the breath of success, the 
 breeze of prosperity. He dipped into the mysterious reservoirs
 
 312 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 of volition for fresh and strong doses of the divine essence. 
 To reach succe:s, he felt, as Remonencq had feU, that he was 
 ready for anything, for crime itself, provided that no proofs 
 of it remained. He had faced the presidente boldly ; he had 
 transmuted conjecture into reality; he had made assertions 
 right and left, all to the end that she might authorize him to 
 protect her interests and win her influence. As he stood 
 there, he represented the infinite misery of two lives, and the 
 no less boundless desires of two men. He spurned the squalid 
 horrors of the Rue de la Perle. He saw the glitter of a thou- 
 sand crowns in fees from La Cibot, and five thousand francs 
 from the presidente. This meant an abode such as befitted 
 his future prospects. Finally, he was repaying Dr. Poulain. 
 
 There are hard, ill-natured beings, goaded by distress or 
 disease into active malignity, that yet entertain diametrically 
 opposed sentiments with a like degree of vehemence. If Rich- 
 elieu was a good hater, he was no less a good friend. Fraisier, 
 in his gratitude, would have let himself be cut in two for 
 Poulain. 
 
 So absorbed was he in these visions of a comfortable and 
 prosperous life that he did not see the presidente come in with 
 the letter in her hand, and she, looking at him, thought him 
 less ugly now than at first. He was about to be useful to her, 
 and as soon as a tool belongs to us we look upon it with other 
 eyes. 
 
 " Monsieur Fraisier," said she, " you have convinced me 
 of your intelligence, and I think that you can speak 
 frankly." 
 
 Fraisier replied by an eloquent gesture. 
 
 "Very well," continued the lady, " I must ask you to give 
 a candid reply to this question : Are we, either of us, Mon- 
 sieur de Marville or I, likely to be compromised, directly or 
 indirectly, by your action in this matter?" 
 
 " I would not have come to you, madame if I thought that 
 some day I should have to reproach myself for bringing so
 
 COUSIN PONS. 313 
 
 much as a splash of mud upon you, for in your position a 
 speck the size of a pin's head is seen by all the world. You 
 forget, madame, that I must satisfy you if I am to be a justice 
 of the peace in Paris. I have received one lesson at the outset 
 of my life ; it was so sharp that I do not care to lay myself open 
 to a second thrashing. To sum it up in a last word, madame, 
 I will not take a step in which you are directly involved with- 
 out previously consulting you " 
 
 " Very good. Here is the letter. And now I shall expect 
 to be informed of the exact value of the estate." 
 
 "There is the whole matter," said Fraisier shrewdly, mak- 
 ing his bow to the presidente with as much graciousness as 
 his countenance could exhibit. 
 
 "What a providence!" thought Mme. Camusot de Mar- 
 ville. "So I am to be rich! Camusot will be sure of his 
 election if we let loose this Fraisier upon the Bolbec constit- 
 uency. What a tool ! " 
 
 "What a providence ! " Fraisier said to himself as he de- 
 scended the staircase; " and what a sharp woman Madame 
 Camusot is ! I should want a woman in these circumstances. 
 Now to work ! " 
 
 And he departed for Mantes to gain the good graces of a 
 man he scarcely knew ; but he counted upon Mme. Vatinelle, 
 to whom, unfortunately, he owed all his troubles and some 
 troubles are of a kind that resemble a protested bill while the 
 defaulter is yet solvent, in that they bear interest. 
 
 Three days afterward, while Schmucke slept (for in accord- 
 ance with the compact he now sat up at night with the patient), 
 La Cibot had a " tiff," as she was pleased to call it, with Pons. 
 It will not be out of place to call attention to one particularly 
 distressing symptom of liver complaint. The sufferer is al- 
 ways more or less inclined to impatience and fits of anger ; an 
 outburst of this kind seems to give relief at the time, much 
 as a patient while the fever fit is upon him feels that he has 
 boundless strength ; but collapse sets in so soon as the excite-
 
 314 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 ment passes off, and the full extent of mischief sustained by 
 the system is discernible. This is especially the case when 
 the disease has been induced by some great shock ; and the 
 prostration is so much the more dangerous because the patient 
 is kept upon a restricted diet. It is a kind of fever affecting 
 neither the blood nor the brain, but the humoristic mechanism, 
 fretting the whole system, producing melancholy, in which 
 the patient hates himself; in such a crisis anything may cause 
 dangerous irritation. 
 
 In spite of all that the doctor could say, La Cibot had no 
 belief in this wear and tear of the nervous system by the 
 humoristic. She was a woman of the people, without ex- 
 perience or education ; Dr. Poulain's explanations for her 
 were simply "doctors' notions." Like most of her class, she 
 thought that sick people must be fed, and nothing short of 
 Dr. Poulain's direct order prevented her from administering 
 ham, a nice omelette, or vanilla chocolate upon the sly. 
 
 " Give Monsieur Pons one single mouthful of any solid food 
 whatsoever, and you will kill him as surely as if you put a 
 bullet through him," he said. 
 
 The infatuation of the working-classes on this point is very 
 strong. The reason of their reluctance to enter a hospital is 
 the idea that they will be starved there. The mortality caused 
 by the food smuggled in by the wives of patients on visiting- 
 days was at one time so great that the doctors were obliged 
 to institute a very strict search for contraband provisions. 
 
 If La Cibot was to realize her profits at once, a momentary 
 quarrel must be worked up in some way. She began by telling 
 Pons about her visit to the theatre, not omitting her passage 
 of arms with Mile. Heloise the dancer. 
 
 "But why did you go?" the invalid asked for the third 
 time. La Cibot once launched on a stream of words, he was 
 powerless to stop her. 
 
 " So, then, when I had given her a piece of my mind, 
 Mademoiselle Heloise saw who I was and knuckled under, and
 
 COUSIN PONS. 315 
 
 we were the best of friends. And now do you ask me why I 
 went?" she added, repeating Pons' question. 
 
 There are certain babblers, babblers of genius are they, 
 who sweep up interruptions, objections, and observations in 
 this way as they go along, by way of provision to swell the 
 matter of their conversation, as if that source were ever in 
 any danger of running dry. 
 
 " Why I went ? " repeated she. " I went to get your 
 Monsieur Gaudissart out of a fix. He wants some music for 
 a ballet, and you are hardly fit to scribble on sheets of paper 
 and do your work, dearie. So I understood, things being 
 so, that a Monsieur Garangeot was to be asked to set the 
 * Mohicans ' to music " 
 
 "Garangeot!" roared Pons in fury. "Garangeot! a 
 man with no talent; I would not have him for first violin ! 
 He is very clever, he is very good at musical criticism, but 
 as to composing I doubt it ! And what the devil put the 
 notion of going to the theatre into your head ? " 
 
 " How confoundedly contrairy the man is ! Look here, 
 dearie, we mustn't boil over like milk on the fire ! How are 
 you to write music in the state that you are in ? Why, you 
 can't have looked at yourself in the glass ! Will you have the 
 glass and see? You are nothing but skin and bone you are 
 as weak as a sparrow, and do you think that you are fit to 
 make your notes? why, you would not so much as make out 
 mine. And that reminds me that I ought to go up to the 
 fcurth-^oor lodger's that owes us seventeen francs ; it is worth 
 going to fetch is seventeen francs, for when the chemist has 
 been paid we shall not have twenty left. So I had to tell le 
 Gaudissart (I like that name), a good sort he seems to be a 
 regular Roger Bontempts that would just suit me. He will 
 never have liver complaint ! Well, so I had to tell him how 
 you were. Lord ! you are not well, and he has put some one 
 else in your place for a bit ' ' 
 
 "Some one else in my place ! " cried Pons in a terrible
 
 316 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 voice, as he sat upright in bed. Sick people, generally speak- 
 ing, and those more particularly who lie within the sweep of 
 the scythe of Death, cling to their places with the same pas- 
 sionate energy that the beginner displays to gain a start in 
 life. To hear that some one had taken his place was like a 
 foretaste of death to the dying man. 
 
 " Why, the doctor told me that I was going on as well 
 as possible," continued he; "he said that I should soon be 
 about again as usual. You have killed me, ruined me, mur- 
 dered me ! " 
 
 "Tut, tut, tut!" cried La Cibot, "there you go ! I am 
 killing you, am I ? Mercy on us ! these are the pretty things 
 that you are always telling Monsieur Schmucke when my 
 back is turned. I hear all that you say, that I do ! You are 
 a monster of ingratitude." 
 
 " But you do not know that if I am only away for another 
 fortnight they will tell me that I have had my day, that I am 
 old-fashioned, out of date, Empire, rococo, when I go back. 
 Garangeot will have made friends all over the theatre, high 
 and low. He will lower the pitch to suit some actress that 
 cannot sing, he will lick Monsieur Gaudissart's boots ! " 
 cried the sick man, who clung to life. " He has friends that 
 will praise him in all the newspapers ; and when things are 
 like that in such a shop, Madame Cibot, they can find holes 
 in anybody's coat. What fiend drove you to do it ?" 
 
 "Why! plague take it, Monsieur Schmucke talked it over 
 with me for a week. What would you have? You see 
 nothing but yourself! You are so selfish that other people 
 may die if you can only get better. Why, poor Monsieur 
 Schmucke has been tired out this month past ! he is tied by 
 the leg, he can go nowhere, he cannot give lessons nor take 
 his place at the theatre. Do you really see nothing? He 
 sits up with you at night, and I take the nursing in the day. 
 If I were to sit up at night with you, as I tried to do at first 
 when I thought you were so poor, I should have to sleep all
 
 COUSIN PONS. 317 
 
 day. And who would see to the house and look out for 
 squalls ! Illness is illness, it cannot be helped, and here are 
 you " 
 
 " This was not Schmucke's idea, it is quite impossible " 
 
 " That means that it was / who took it into my head to do 
 it, does it ? Do you think that we are made of iron ? Why, if 
 Monsieur Schmucke had given seven or eight lessons every day 
 and conducted the orchestra every evening at the theatre 
 from six o'clock till half-past eleven at night, he would 
 have died in ten days' time. Poor man, he would give his 
 life for you, and do you want to be the death of him ? By 
 the authors of my days, I have never seen a sick man to match 
 you ! Where are your senses ? have you put them in pawn ? 
 We are all slaving our lives out for you ; we do all for the best, 
 and you are not satisfied ! Do you want to drive us raging 
 mad? I myself, to begin with, am tired out as it is " 
 
 La Cibot rattled on at her ease ; Pons was too angry to say 
 a word. He writhed on his bed, painfully uttering inarticu- 
 late sounds ; the blow was killing him. And at this point, as 
 usual, the scolding turned suddenly to tenderness. The nurse 
 dashed at her patient, grasped him by the head, made him lie 
 down by main force, and dragged the blankets over him. 
 
 " How any one can get into such a state ! " exclaimed she. 
 "After all, it is your illness, dearie. That is what good Mon- 
 sieur Poulain says. See now, keep quiet and be good, my 
 dear little sonny. Everybody that comes near you worships 
 you, and the doctor himself comes to see you twice a day. 
 What would he say if he found you in such a way ? You put 
 me out of all patience ; you ought not to behave like this. If 
 you have Ma'am Cibot to nurse you, you should treat her 
 better. You shout and you talk ! you ought not to do it, 
 you know that. Talking irritates you. And why do you fly 
 into a passion? The wrong is all on your side; you are 
 always bothering me. Look here, let us have it out ! If 
 Monsieur Schmucke and I, who love you like our life, thought
 
 318 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 that we were doing right well, my cherub, it was right, you 
 may be sure." 
 
 " Schmucke never could have told you to go to the theatre 
 without speaking to me about it " 
 
 "And must I wake him, poor dear, when he is sleeping like 
 one of the blest, and call him in as witness ? " 
 
 " No, no ! " cried Pons. " If my kind and loving Schmucke 
 made the resolution, perhaps I am worse than I thought." 
 His eyes wandered round the room, dwelling on the beautiful 
 things in it with a melancholy look painful to see. 
 
 " So I must say good-by to my dear pictures, to all the 
 things that have come to be like so many friends to me and 
 to my divine friend Schmucke ? Oh ! can it be true? " 
 
 La Cibot, acting her heartless comedy, held her handker- 
 chief to her eyes ; and at that mute response the sufferer fell 
 to dark musings so sorely stricken was he by the double stab 
 dealt to health and his interests by the loss of his post and the 
 near prospect of death that he had no strength left for anger. 
 He lay, ghastly and wan, like a consumptive patient after a 
 wrestling bout with the Destroyer. 
 
 " In Monsieur Schmucke's interests, you see, you would do 
 well to send for Monsieur Trognon ; he is the notary of the 
 quarter and a very good man," said La Cibot, seeing that her 
 victim was completely exhausted. 
 
 " You are always talking about this Trognon 
 
 "Oh ! he or another, it is all one to me, for anything you 
 will leave me." 
 
 She tossed her head to signify that she despised riches. 
 There was silence in the room. 
 
 A moment later Schmucke came in. He had slept for six 
 hours, hunger awakened him, and now he stood at Pons' bed- 
 side watching his friend without saying a word, for Mme. 
 Cibot had laid a finger on her lips. 
 
 " Hush ! " she whispered. Then she rose and went up to 
 add under her breath : " He is going off to sleep at last, thank
 
 COUSIN PONS. 319 
 
 heaven ! He is as cross as a red donkey ! What can you 
 expect, he is struggling with his illness " 
 
 "No, on the contrary, I am very patient," said the victim 
 in a weary voice that told of a dreadful exhaustion; "but, 
 oh ! Schmucke, my dear friend, she has been to the theatre to 
 turn me out of my place." 
 
 There was a pause. Pons was too weak to say more. La 
 Cibot took the opportunity and tapped her head significantly. 
 " Do not contradict him," she said to Schmucke; " it would 
 kill him." 
 
 Pons gazed into Schmucke's honest face. " And she says 
 that you sent her " he continued. 
 
 "Yes," Schmucke affirmed heroically. "It had to pe. 
 Hush ! let us safe your life. It is absurd to vork and train 
 your sdrength gif you haf a dreasure. Get better ; we vill sell 
 some pric-a-prac und end our tays kvietly in a corner som- 
 veres, mit kind Montame Zipod." 
 
 "She has perverted you," moaned Pons. 
 
 Mme. Cibot had taken up her station behind the bed to 
 make signals unobserved. Pons thought that she had left the 
 room. " She is murdering me," he added. 
 
 "What is that? I am murdering you, am I?" cried La 
 Cibot, suddenly appearing, hand on hips and eyes aflame. 
 " I am as faithful as a dog, and this is all I get ! God Al- 
 mighty ! " 
 
 She burst into tears and dropped down into the great chair, 
 a tragical movement which wrought a most disastrous revul- 
 sion in Pons. 
 
 " Very good," she said, rising to her feet. The woman's 
 malignant eyes looked poison and bullets at the two friends. 
 " Very good. Nothing that I can do is right here, and I am 
 tired of slaving my life out. You shall take a nurse." 
 
 Pons and Schmucke exchanged glances in dismay. 
 
 " Oh ! you may look at each other like actors. I mean it. 
 I shall ask Dr. Poulain to find a nurse for you. And now we
 
 320 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 will settle accounts. You shall pay me back the money that I 
 have spent on you, and that I would never have asked you 
 for, I that have gone to Monsieur Pillerault to borrow another 
 five hundred francs of him " 
 
 "It ees his illness ! " cried Schmucke he sprang to Mme. 
 Cibot and put an arm round her waist " haf batience." 
 
 " As for you, you are an angel, I could kiss the ground you 
 tread upon," said she. " But Monsieur Pons never liked me, 
 he always hated me. Beside, he thinks perhaps that I want 
 to be mentioned in his will " 
 
 " Hush ! you vill kill him ! " cried Schmucke. 
 
 "Good-by, sir," said La Cibot, with a withering look at 
 Pons. "You may keep well for all the harm I wish you. 
 When you can speak to me pleasantly, when you can believe 
 that what I do is done for the best, I will come back again. 
 Till then I shall stay in my own room. You were like my 
 own child to me ; did anybody ever see a child revolt against 
 its mother? No, no, Monsieur Schmucke, I do not want to 
 hear more. I will bring you your dinner and wait upon you, 
 but you must take a nurse. Ask Monsieur Poulain about it." 
 
 And out she went, slamming the door after her so violently 
 that the precious fragile objects in the room trembled. To 
 Pons in his torture, the rattle of china was like the final blow 
 dealt by the executioner to a victim broken on the wheel. 
 
 An hour later La Cibot called to Schmucke through the 
 door, telling him that his dinner was waiting for him in the 
 dining-room. She would not cross the threshold. Poor 
 Schmucke went out to her with a haggard, tear-stained face. 
 
 " Mein boor Bons is vandering," said he; "he says dat 
 you are ein padvoman. It ees his illness," he added hastily, 
 to soften La Cibot and excuse his friend. 
 
 "Oh, I have had enough of his illness ! Look here, he is 
 neither father, nor husband, nor brother, nor child of mine. 
 He has taken a dislike to me ; well and good, that is enough ! 
 As for you, you see, I would follow you to the end of the
 
 COUSIN PONS. 321 
 
 world; but when a woman gives her life, her heart, and all 
 her savings, and neglects her husband (for here has Cibot 
 fallen ill), and then hears that she is a bad woman it is coja- 
 ing it rather too strong, it is." 
 
 " Too sthrong ? " 
 
 "Too strong, yes. Never mind idle words. Let us come 
 to the facts. As to that, you owe me for three months at a 
 hundred and ninety francs that is five hundred and seventy 
 francs ; then there is the rent that I have paid twice (here are 
 the receipts), six hundred more, including rates and the sou 
 in the franc for the porter something under twelve hun- 
 dred francs altogether, and with the two thousand francs 
 beside without interest, mind you the total amounts to 
 three thousand one hundred and ninety-two francs. And 
 remember that you will want at least two thousand francs 
 before long for the doctor, and the nurse, and the medicine, 
 and the nurse's board. That was why I borrowed a thousand 
 francs of Monsieur Pillerault," and with that she held up 
 Gaudissart's bill. 
 
 It may readily be conceived that Schmucke listened to this 
 reckoning with amazement, for he knew about as much of 
 business as a cat knows of music. 
 
 "Montame Zipod," he expostulated, " Bons haf lost his 
 head. Bardon him, und nurse him as pefore, und pe our 
 profidence; I peg it of you on mine knees," and he knelt 
 before La Cibot and kissed the tormentor's hands. 
 
 La Cibot raised Schmucke and kissed him on the forehead. 
 "Listen, my lamb," said she, "here is Cibot ill in bed; I 
 have just sent for Dr. Poulain. So I ought to set my affairs 
 in order. And what is more, Cibot saw me crying, and flew 
 into such a passion that he will not have me set foot in here 
 again. It is he who wants the money ; it is his, you see. We 
 women can do nothing when it comes to that. But if you let 
 him have his money back again the three thousand two 
 hundred francs he will be quiet perhaps. Poor man, it is 
 21
 
 322 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 his all, earned by the sweat of his brow, the savings of twenty- 
 six years of life together. He must have his money to-mor- 
 row ; there is no getting round him. You do not know Cibot ; 
 when he is angry he would kill a man. Well, I might perhaps 
 get leave of him to look after you both as before. Be easy. 
 I will just let him say anything that comes into his head. I 
 will bear it all for love of you, an angel as you are." 
 
 " No, I am ein boor man, dot lof his friend and vould gif 
 his life to save him " 
 
 "But the money?" broke in La Cibot. "My good Monsieur 
 Schmucke, let us suppose that you pay me nothing ; you will 
 want three thousand francs, and where are they to come from? 
 Upon my word, do you know what I should do in your place ? 
 I should not think twice, I should just sell seven or eight good- 
 for-nothing pictures and put up some of those instead that are 
 standing in your closet with their faces to the wall for want 
 of room. One picture or another, what difference does it 
 make?" 
 
 "Undvy?" 
 
 " He is so cunning. It is his illness, for he is a lamb when 
 he is well. He is capable of getting up and prying about ; 
 and if by any chance he went into the salon, he is so weak 
 that he could not go beyond the door ; he would see that they 
 were all still there." 
 
 "Drue! " 
 
 " And when he is quite well, we will tell him about the 
 sale. And if you wish to confess, throw it all upon me, say 
 that you were obliged to pay me. Come ! I have a broad 
 back " 
 
 "I cannot tispose of dings dot are not mine," the good 
 German answered simply. 
 
 " Very well. I will summons you, yes, you and your Mon- 
 sieur Pons." 
 
 "It vould kill him " 
 
 " Take your choice ! Dear me, sell the pictures and
 
 COUSIN PONS. 323 
 
 tell him about it afterward you can show him the sum- 
 mons " 
 
 " Ver' goot. Summons us. Dot shall pe mine egscuse. I 
 shall show him der chudgment." 
 
 Mme. Cibot went down to the court, and that very day at 
 seven o'clock she called to Schmucke. Schmucke found him- 
 self confronted with M. Tabareau the bailiff, who called upon 
 him to pay. Schmucke made answer, trembling from head 
 to foot, and was forthwith summoned, together with Pons, to 
 appear in the county court to hear judgment against him. 
 The sight of the bailiff and a bit of stamped paper covered 
 with scrawls produced such an effect upon Schmucke that he 
 held out no longer. 
 
 " Sell die bictures," he said, with the tears in his eyes. 
 
 Next morning, at six o'clock, Elie Magus and Remonencq 
 took down the paintings of their choice. Two receipts for 
 two thousand five hundred francs were made out in correct 
 form : 
 
 " I, the undersigned, representing M. Pons, acknowledge 
 the receipt of two thousand five hundred francs from M. Elie 
 Magus for the four pictures sold to him, the said sum being 
 appropriated to the use of M. Pons. The first picture, attri- 
 buted to Diirer, is a portrait of a woman ; the second, like- 
 wise a portrait, is of the Italian School ; the third, a Dutch 
 landscape by Breughel ; and the fourth, a Holy Family, by 
 an unknown master of the Florentine School." 
 
 Remonencq's receipt was worded in precisely the same 
 way ; a Greuze, a Claude Lorraine, a Rubens, and a Van 
 Dyck being disguised as pictures of the French and Flemish 
 schools. 
 
 "Der monny makes me beleef dot the chimcracks haf some 
 value," said Schmucke when the five thousand francs were 
 paid over.
 
 324 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "They are certainly worth something," said Remonencq. 
 "I would willingly give a hundred thousand francs for the 
 lot," he added. 
 
 Remonencq, asked to do a trifling service, hung eight 
 pictures of the proper size in the same frames, taking them 
 from among the less valuable pictures in Schmucke's bed- 
 room. 
 
 No sooner was Elie Magus in possession of the four great 
 pictures than he went, taking La Cibot with him, under 
 pretense of settling accounts. But he pleaded poverty, he 
 found fault with the pictures, they needed rebacking, he 
 offered La Cibot thirty thousand francs by way of commis- 
 sion, and finally dazzled her with the sheets of paper on 
 which the Bank of France engraves the words " One thou- 
 sand francs" in capital letters. Magus thereupon condemned 
 Remonencq to pay the like sum to La Cibot, by lending him 
 the money on the security of his four pictures, which he took 
 with him as a guarantee. So glorious were they that Magus 
 could not bring himself to part with them, and next day he 
 bought them of Remonencq for six thousand francs over and 
 above the original price, and an invoice was duly made out 
 for the four. Mme. Cibot, the richer by sixty-eight thousand 
 francs, once more swore her two accomplices to absolute 
 secrecy. Then she asked the Jew's advice. She wanted to 
 invest the money in such a way that no one should know 
 of it. 
 
 "Buy shares in the Orleans Railway," said he; " they are 
 thirty francs below par, you will double your capital in three 
 years. They will give you scraps of paper, which you can 
 keep safe in a portfolio." 
 
 "Stay here, Monsieur Magus. I will go and fetch the 
 man of business who acts for Monsieur Pons' family. He 
 wants to know how much you will give for the whole bag of 
 tricks upstairs. I will go for him now." 
 
 " If only she were a widow ! " said Remonencq when she
 
 COUSIN PONS. 325 
 
 was gone. " She would just suit me ; she will have plenty of 
 money now " 
 
 " Especially if she puts her money into the Orleans Rail- 
 way; she will double her capital in two years' time. I have 
 put all my poor little savings into it," added the Jew, " for my 
 daughter's portion. Come, let us take a turn on the boulevard 
 until this lawyer arrives." 
 
 "Cibot is very bad as it is," continued Remonencq ; "if 
 it should please God to take him to Himself, I should have 
 a famous wife to keep a store ; I could set up on a large 
 scale " 
 
 "Good-day, Monsieur Fraisier," La Cibot began in an in- 
 gratiating tone as she entered her legal adviser's office. " Why, 
 what is this that your porter has been telling me ? are you 
 going to move? " 
 
 " Yes, my dear Madame Cibot. I am taking the second 
 floor above Dr. Poulain, and trying to borrow two or three 
 thousand francs so as to furnish the place properly ; it is very 
 nice, upon my word, the landlord has just papered and painted 
 it ; I am acting, as I told you, in President de Marville's in- 
 terests and in yours. I am not an attorney now ; I mean to 
 have my name entered on the roll of barristers, and I must be 
 well lodged. A barrister in Paris cannot have his name on 
 the rolls unless he has decent furniture and books and the like. 
 I am a doctor of law, I have kept my terms, and have powerful 
 interest already. Well, how are we getting on ? " 
 
 "Perhaps you would accept my savings," said La Cibot. 
 " I have put them in the savings bank. I have not much, only 
 three thousand francs, the fruits of twenty-five years of stinting 
 and scraping. You might give me a bill of exchange, as Re- 
 monencq says ; for I am ignorant myself, I only know what 
 they tell me." 
 
 " No. It is against the rules of the guild for a barrister 
 (avocaf) to put his name to a bill. I will give you a re-
 
 326 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 ceipt, bearing interest at five per cent, per annum, on the un- 
 derstanding that if I make an income of twelve hundred francs 
 for you out of old Pens' estate you will cancel it." 
 
 La Cibot, caught in the trap, uttered not a word. 
 
 "Silence gives consent," Fraisier continued. "Let me 
 have it to-morrow morning." 
 
 " Oh, I am quite willing to pay fees in advance," said La 
 Cibot ; " it is one way of making sure of my money." 
 
 Fraisier nodded. " How are we getting on? " he repeated. 
 "I saw Poulain yesterday; you are hurrying your invalid 
 along, it seems. One more scene such as yesterday's, and 
 gall-stones will form. Be gentle with him, my dear Madame 
 Cibot, do not lay up remorse for yourself. Life is not too 
 long." 
 
 " Just let me alone with your remorse ! Are you going to 
 talk about the guillotine again ? Monsieur Pons is a contrairy 
 old thing. You don't know him. It is him that bothers me. 
 There is not a more cross-grained man alive ; his relations are 
 in the right of it, he is sly, revengeful, and contrairy. Old 
 Magus has come, as I told you, and is waiting to see you." 
 
 "Right ! I will be there as soon as you. Your income de- 
 pends upon the price the collection will fetch. If it brings in 
 eight hundred thousand francs, you shall have fifteen hundred 
 francs a year. It is a fortune." 
 
 " Very well. I will tell them to value the things on their 
 consciences." 
 
 An hour later Pons was fast asleep. The doctor had or- 
 dered a soothing draught, which Schmucke administered, all 
 unconscious that La Cibot had doubled the dose. Fraisier, 
 Remonencq, and Magus, three gallows-birds, were examining 
 the seventeen hundred different objects which formed the old 
 musician's collection, one by one. 
 
 Schmucke had gone to bed. The three kites, drawn by 
 the scent of a corpse, were masters of the field.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 327 
 
 " Make no noise," said La Cibot whenever Magus went 
 into ecstasies or explained the value of some work of art to 
 Remonencq. The dying man slept on in the neighboring 
 room, while greed in four different forms appraised the treas- 
 ures that he must leave behind, and waited impatiently for him 
 to die a sight to wring the heart. 
 
 Three hours went by before they had finished the salon. 
 
 "On an average," said the grimy old Jew, "everything 
 here is worth a thousand francs." 
 
 " Seventeen hundred thousand francs ! " exclaimed Fraisier 
 in bewilderment. 
 
 " Not to me," Magus answered promptly, and his eyes 
 grew dull. "I would not give more than a hundred thousand 
 francs myself for the collection. You cannot tell how long 
 you may keep a thing on hand. There are masterpieces 
 that wait ten years for a buyer, and meanwhile the purchase- 
 money is doubled by compound interest. Still, I should pay 
 cash." 
 
 " There is stained glass in the other room, as well as enamels 
 and miniatures and gold and silver snuff-boxes," put in 
 Remonencq. 
 
 " Can they be seen ? " inquired Fraisier. 
 
 "I'll see if he is sound asleep," replied La Cibot. She 
 made a sign, and the three birds of prey came in. 
 
 "There are masterpieces yonder ! " said Magus, indicating 
 the salon, every bristle of his white beard twitching as he 
 spoke. " But the riches are here ! And what riches ! Kings 
 have nothing more glorious in royal treasuries." 
 
 Remonencq's eyes lighted up till they glowed like car- 
 buncles at the sight of the gold snuff-boxes. Fraisier, cool 
 and calm as a serpent, or some snake-creature with the power 
 of rising erect, stood with his viper's head stretched out, in 
 such an attitude as a painter would choose for Mephistopheles. 
 The three covetous beings, thirsting for gold as devils thirst 
 for the dew of heaven, looked simultaneously, as it chanced,
 
 328 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 at the owner of all this wealth. Some nightmare troubled 
 Pons ; he stirred, and suddenly, under the influence of those 
 diabolical glances, he opened his eyes with a shrill cry. 
 
 " Thieves ! There they are ! Help ! Murder ! 
 
 Help!" 
 
 The nightmare was evidently still upon him, for he sat up 
 in bed, staring before him with blank, wide-open eyes, and 
 had not power to move. 
 
 Elie Magus and Remonencq made for the door, but a word 
 glued them to the spot. 
 
 "Magus here ! I am betrayed ! " 
 
 Instinctively the sick man had known that his, beloved pic- 
 tures were in danger, a thought that touched him at least as 
 closely as any dread for himself, and he awoke. Fraisier 
 meanwhile did not stir. 
 
 "Madame Cibot ! who is that gentleman?" cried Pons, 
 shivering at the sight. 
 
 "Goodness me ! how could I put him out of the door?" 
 she inquired, with a wink and gesture for Fraisier's benefit. 
 "This gentleman came just a minute ago, from your family." 
 
 Fraisier could not conceal his admiration for La Cibot. 
 
 "Yes, sir," he said, "I have come on behalf of Madame 
 la Presidente de Marville, her husband, and her daughter to 
 express their regret. They learned quite by accident that you 
 are ill, and they would like to nurse you themselves. They 
 want you to go to Marville and get well there. Madame la 
 Vicomtesse Popinot, the little Cecile that you love so much, 
 will be your nurse. She took your part with her mother. 
 She convinced Madame de Marville that she had made a 
 mistake." 
 
 "So my next-of-kin have sent you to me, have they?" 
 Pons exclaimed indignantly, "and sent the best judge and 
 expert in all Paris with you to show you the way? Oh! a. 
 nice commission ! " he cried, bursting into wild laughter. 
 "You have come to value my pictures and curiosities, my
 
 COUSIN PONS. 329 
 
 snuff-boxes and miniatures ! Make your valuation. You 
 have a man there who understands everything, and more he 
 can buy everything, for he is a millionaire ten times over. 
 My dear relatives will not have long to wait," he added with 
 bitter irony, "they have choked the last breath out of me. 
 Ah ! Madame Cibot, you said you were a mother to me, and 
 you bring dealers into the house, and my competitor and the 
 Camusots, while I am asleep ! Get out, all of you ! " 
 
 The unhappy man was beside himself with anger and fear ; 
 he rose from the bed and stood upright, a gaunt, wasted 
 figure. 
 
 "Take my arm, sir," said La Cibot, rushing to the Rescue, 
 lest Pons should fall. "Pray calm yourself, the gentlemen 
 are gone." 
 
 " I want to see the salon " said the death-stricken man. 
 
 La Cibot made a sign to the three ravens to take flight. Then 
 she caught up Pons as if he had been a feather, and put him 
 in bed again, in spite of his cries. When she saw that he was 
 quite helpless and exhausted, she went to shut the door on the 
 staircase. The three who had done Pons to death were still 
 on the landing ; La Cibot told them to wait. She heard 
 Fraisier say to Magus 
 
 "Let me have it in writing, and sign it, both of you. 
 Undertake to pay nine hundred thousand francs in cash for 
 Monsieur Pons' collection, and we will see about putting you 
 in the way of making a handsome profit." 
 
 With that he said something to La Cibot in a voice so low 
 that the others could not catch it, and went down after the 
 two dealers to the porter's room. 
 
 "Have they gone, Madame Cibot ?" asked the unhappy 
 Pons, when she came back again. 
 
 " Gone ? who ? " asked she. 
 
 " Those men." 
 
 "What men? There, now! you have seen men," said 
 she. "You have just had a raving fit; if it hadn't been for
 
 330 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 me you would have gone out of the window, and now you are 
 still talking of men in the room. Is it always a-going to be like 
 this?" 
 
 " What ! was there not a gentleman here just now, saying 
 that my relatives had sent him? " 
 
 "Will you still stand me out?" said she. "Upon my 
 word, do you know where you ought to be sent? To the 
 asylum at Charenton. You see men " 
 
 " Elie Magus, Remonencq, and " 
 
 " Oh ! as for Remonencq, you may have seen him, for he 
 came-up to tell me that my poor Cibot is so bad that I must 
 clear out of this and come down. My Cibot comes first, you 
 see. When my husband is ill, I can think of nobody else. 
 Try to keep quiet and sleep for a couple of hours ; I have sent 
 for Dr. Poulain, and I will come up with him. Take a drink 
 and be good " 
 
 " Then was there no one in the room just now, when I 
 waked? " 
 
 "No one," said she. "You must have seen Monsieur 
 Remonencq in one of your looking-glasses." 
 
 "You are right, Madame Cibot," said Pons, meek as a 
 lamb. 
 
 " Well, now you are sensible again. Good-by, my cherub ; 
 keep quiet, I shall be back again in a minute." 
 
 When Pons heard the outer door close upon her, he sum- 
 moned up all his remaining strength to rise. 
 
 "They are cheating me," he muttered to himself, "they 
 are robbing me ! Schmucke is a child that would let them 
 tie him up in a sack." 
 
 The terrible scene had seemed so real, it could not be a 
 dream, he thought ; a desire to throw light upon the puzzle 
 excited him ; he managed to reach the door, opened it after 
 many efforts, and stood on the threshold of his salon. There 
 they were his dear pictures, his statues, his Florentine 
 bronzes, his porcelain ; the sight of them revived him. The
 
 COUSIN PONS. 331 
 
 old collector walked in his dressing-gown along the narrow 
 spaces between the credence- tables and the sideboards that 
 lined the wall ; his feet bare, his head on fire. His first 
 glance of ownership told him that everything was there ; he 
 turned to go back to bed again, when he noticed that a 
 Greuze portrait looked out of the frame that had held Sebas- 
 tian del Piombo's Templar. Suspicion flashed across his 
 brain, making his dark thoughts apparent to him, as a flash 
 of lightning marks the outlines of the cloud-bars on a stormy 
 sky. He looked round for the eight capital pictures of the 
 collection ; each one of them was replaced by another. A 
 dark film suddenly overspread his eyes ; his strength failed 
 him ; he fell fainting upon the polished floor. 
 
 So heavy was the swoon that for two hours he lay as he fell, 
 till Schmucke awoke and went to see his friend, and found 
 him laying unconscious in the salon. With endless pains 
 Schmucke raised the half-dead body and laid it on the bed ; 
 but when he came to question the death-stricken man, and- 
 saw the look in the dull eyes and heard the vague, inarticulate 
 words, the good German, so far from losing his head, rose to 
 the very heroism of friendship. Man and child as he was, 
 with the pressure of despair came the inspiration of a mother's 
 tenderness, a woman's love. He warmed towels (he found 
 towels !), he wrapped them about Pens' hands, he laid them 
 over the pit of the stomach ; he took the cold, moist fore- 
 head in his hands, he summoned back life with a might of 
 will worthy of Apollonius of Tyana; laying kisses on his 
 friend's eyelids like some Mary bending over the dead Christ, 
 in zpicta carved in bas-relief by some great Italian sculptor. 
 The divine effort, the outpouring of one life into another, 
 the work of mother and of lover, was crowned with success. 
 In half an hour the warmth revived Pons ; he became himself 
 again, the hues of life returned to his eyes, suspended facul- 
 ties gradually resumed their play under the influence of arti- 
 ficial heat. Schmucke gave him balm-water with a little wine
 
 332 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 in it; the spirit of life spread through the body ; intelligence 
 lighted up the forehead so short a while ago insensible as a 
 stone ; and Pons knew that he had been brought back to life, 
 by what sacred devotion, what might of friendship ! 
 
 "But for you, I should die," he said, and as he spoke he 
 felt the good German's tears falling on his face. Schmucke 
 was laughing and crying at once. 
 
 Poor Schmucke ! he had waited for those words with a frenzy 
 of hope as costly as the frenzy of despair ; and now his 
 strength utterly failed him, he collapsed like a rent balloon. 
 It was his turn to fall ; he sank into the easy-chair, clasped 
 his hands, and thanked God in fervent prayer. For him a 
 miracle had just been wrought. He put no belief in the 
 efficacy of the prayer of his deeds ; the miracle had been 
 wrought by God in direct answer to his cry. And yet that 
 miracle was a natural effect, such as medical science often 
 records. 
 
 A sick man, surrounded by those who love him, nursed by 
 those who wish earnestly that he should live, will recover 
 (other things being equal), when another patient tended by 
 hirelings will die. Doctors decline to see unconscious mag- 
 netism in this phenomenon ; for them it is the result of intel- 
 ligent nursing, of exact obedience to their orders ; but many 
 a mother knows the virtue of such ardent projection of strong, 
 unceasing prayer. 
 
 " My good Schmucke " 
 
 " Say nodings ; I shall hear you mit mein heart rest, 
 
 rest ! " said Schmucke, smiling at him. 
 
 "Poor friend, noble creature, child of God living in 
 
 God ! The one being that has loved me " The 
 
 words came out with pauses between them ; there was a new 
 note, a something never heard before, in Pens' voice. All 
 the soul, so soon to take flight, found utterance in the words 
 that filled Schmucke with happiness almost like a lover's 
 rapture.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 333 
 
 "Yes, yes. I shall be shtrong as a lion. I shall vork for 
 two ! " 
 
 "Listen, my good, my faithful, adorable friend. Let me 
 speak, I have not much time left. I am a dead man. I 
 cannot recover from these repeated shocks." 
 
 Schmucke was crying like a child. 
 
 "Just listen," continued Pons, "and cry afterward. As a 
 Christian, you must submit. I have been robbed. It is La 
 Cibot's doing. I ought to open your eyes before I go ; you 
 know nothing of life. Somebody has taken away eight of the 
 pictures, and they were worth a great deal of money." 
 
 "Vorgif me I sold dem." 
 
 "Kwsold them?" 
 
 "Yes, I," said poor Schmucke. "Dey summoned us to 
 der court " 
 
 "Summoned? Who summoned us?" 
 
 " Wait," said Schmucke. He went for the bit of stamped 
 paper left by the bailiff, and gave it to Pons. Pons read the 
 scrawl through with close attention, then he let the paper drop 
 and lay quite silent for awhile. A close observer of the work 
 of men's hands, unheedful so far of the workings of the brain, 
 Pons finally counted out the threads of the plot woven about 
 him by La Cibot. The artist's fire, the intellect that won the 
 Roman scholarship all his youth came back to him for a 
 little. 
 
 "My good Schmucke," he said at last, "you must do as I 
 tell you, and obey like a soldier. Listen ! go downstairs into 
 the lodge and tell that abominable woman that I should like 
 to see the person sent to me by my cousin the president ; and 
 that unless he comes, I shall leave my collection to the Musee. 
 Say that a will is in question." 
 
 Schmucke went on his errand; but at the first word, La 
 Cibot answered by a smile. 
 
 " My good Monsieur Schmucke, our dear invalid has had a 
 delirious fit ; he thought that there were men in the room.
 
 334 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 On my word as an honest woman, no one has come from the 
 family." 
 
 Schmucke went back with this answer, which he repeated 
 word for word. 
 
 " She is cleverer, more astute and cunning and wily, than 
 I thought," said Pons with a smile. "She lies even in her 
 room. Imagine it ! This morning she brought a Jew here, 
 Elie Magus by name, and Remonencq, and a third whom I 
 do not know, more terrific than the other two put together. 
 She meant to make a valuation while I was asleep ; I happened 
 to wake, and saw them all three, estimating the worth of my 
 snuff-boxes. The stranger said, indeed, that the Camusots 
 had sent him here ; I spoke to him. That shameless woman 
 stood me out that I was dreaming ! My good Schmucke, it 
 was not a dream. I heard the man perfectly plain ; he spoke 
 to me. The two dealers took fright and made for the door. 
 I thought that La Cibot would contradict herself the experi- 
 ment failed. I will lay another snare, and trap the wretched 
 woman. Poor Schmucke, you think that La Cibot is an 
 angel ; and for this month past she has been killing me by 
 inches to gain her covetous ends. I would not believe that a 
 woman who served us faithfully for years could be so wicked. 
 That doubt has been my ruin. How much did the eight 
 pictures fetch?" 
 
 "Vife tausend vrancs.' 
 
 " Good heavens ! they were worth twenty times as much ! " 
 cried Pons; "the gems of the collection ! I have not time 
 now to institute proceedings ; and if I did, you would figure 
 in court as the dupe of those rascals. A lawsuit would be the 
 death of you. You do not know what justice means a court 
 of justice is a sink of iniquity. At the sight of such horrors, 
 a soul like yours would give way. And, beside, you will have 
 enough. The pictures cost me forty thousand francs. I have 
 had them for thirty-six years. Oh, we have been robbed with 
 surprising dexterity. I am on the brink of the grave, I care
 
 COUSIN PONS. 335 
 
 for nothing now but thee for thee, the best soul under the 
 sun. 
 
 "I will not have you plundered; all that I have is yours. 
 So you must trust nobody, Schmucke, you that have never 
 suspected any one in your life. I know God watches over 
 you, but He may forget for one moment, and you will be 
 seized like a vessel among pirates. La Cibot is a monster ! 
 She is killing me ; and you think her an angel ! You shall 
 see what she is. Go and ask her to give you the name of a 
 notary, and I will show you her with her hand in the bag." 
 
 Schmucke listened as if Pons proclaimed an apocalypse. 
 Could so depraved a creature as La Cibot exist ? If Pons was 
 right, it seemed to imply that there was no God in the world. 
 He went down again to Mme. Cibot. 
 
 " Mein boor vriend Bons feel so ill," he said, " dat he vish 
 to make his vill. Go und pring ein nodary." 
 
 This was said in the hearing of several persons, for Cibot's 
 life was despaired of. Remonencq and his sister, two women 
 from neighboring porters' lodges, two or three servants, and 
 the lodger from the second floor on the side next the street 
 were all standing outside in the gateway. 
 
 " Oh ! you can just fetch a notary yourself, and have your 
 will made as you please," cried La Cibot, with tears in her 
 eyes. "My poor Cibot is dying, and it is no time to leave 
 him. I would give all the Ponses in the world to save Cibot, 
 that has never given me an ounce of unhappiness in these 
 thirty years since we were married." 
 
 And in she went, leaving Schmucke in confusion. 
 
 "Is Monsieur Pons really seriously ill, sir?" asked the 
 second-floor lodger, one Jolivard, a clerk in the registrar's 
 office at the Palais de Justice. 
 
 "He nearly died chust now," said Schmucke, with deep 
 sorrow in his voice. 
 
 " Monsieur Trognon lives near by in the Rue Saint-Louis,'* 
 said Monsieur Jolivard, "he is the notary of the quarter."'
 
 336 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 " Would you like me to go for him? " asked Remonencq. 
 
 "I should pe fery glad," said Schmucke ; "for gif Mon- 
 tame Zipod cannot pe mit mein vriend, I shall not vish to leaf 
 him in der shtate he is in " 
 
 "Madame Cibot told us that he was going out of his mind," 
 resumed Jolivard. 
 
 " Bons ! out off his mind ! " cried Schmucke, terror-stricken 
 by the idea. " Nefer vas he so clear in der head dat is chust 
 der reason vy I am anxious for him." 
 
 The little group of persons listened to the conversation 
 with a very natural curiosity, which stamped the scene upon 
 their memories. Schmucke did not know Fraisier, and could 
 not note his satanic countenance and glittering eyes. But 
 two words whispered by Fraisier in La Cibot's ear had 
 prompted a daring piece of acting, somewhat beyond La 
 Cibot's range, it may be, though she played her part through- 
 out in a masterly style. To make others believe that the 
 dying man was out of his mind it was the very corner-stone 
 of the edifice reared by the petty lawyer. The morning's in- 
 cident had done Fraisier good service ; but for him, La Cibot 
 in her trouble might have fallen into the snare innocently 
 spread by Schmucke, when he asked her to send back the 
 person sent by the family. 
 
 Remonencq saw Dr. Poulain coming toward them, and 
 asked no better than to vanish. The fact was that for the 
 last ten days the Auvergnat had been playing Providence in a 
 manner singularly displeasing to Justice, which claims the 
 monopoly of that part. He had made up his mind to rid 
 himself at all costs of the one obstacle in his way to happiness, 
 and happiness for him meant capital trebled and marriage with 
 the irresistibly charming portress. He had watched the little 
 tailor drinking his herb-tea, and a thought struck him. He 
 would convert the ailment into mortal sickness ; his stock of 
 old metals supplied him with the means. 
 
 One morning as he leaned against the door-post, smoking
 
 COUSIN PONS. 337 
 
 his pipe and dreaming of that fine store on the Boulevard de 
 la Madeleine where Mme. Cibot, gorgeously arrayed, should 
 some day sit enthroned, his eyes fell upon a copper disc, about 
 the size of a five-franc piece, covered thickly with verdigris. 
 The economical idea of using Cibot's medicine to clean the 
 disc immediately occurred to him. He fastened the thing to 
 a bit of twine, and came over every morning to inquire for 
 tidings of his friend the tailor, timing his visit during La 
 Cibot's visit to her gentlemen upstairs. He dropped the disc 
 into the tumbler, allowed it to steep there while he talked, 
 and drew it out again by the string when he went away. 
 
 The trace of tarnished copper, commonly called verdigris, 
 poisoned the wholesome draught ; a minute dose administered 
 by stealth did incalculable mischief. Behold the results of 
 this criminal homoeopathy ! On the third day poor Cibot's 
 hair came out, his teeth were loosened in their sockets, his 
 whole system was deranged by a scarcely perceptible trace of 
 poison. Dr. Poulain racked his brains. He was enough of a 
 man of science to see that some destructive agent was at work. 
 He privately carried off the decoction, analyzed it himself, 
 but found nothing. It so chanced that Remonencq had 
 taken fright and omitted to dip the disc in the tumbler that 
 day. 
 
 Then Dr. Poulain fell back on himself and science and got 
 out of the difficulty with a theory. A sedentary life in a 
 damp room ; a cramped position before the barred window 
 these conditions had vitiated the blood in the absence of 
 proper exercise, especially as the patient continually breathed 
 an atmosphere saturated with the fetid exhalations of the gutter. 
 The Rue de Normandie is one of the old-fashioned streets that 
 slope toward the middle ; the municipal authorities of Paris 
 as yet have laid on no water-supply to flush the central kennel 
 which drains the houses on either side, and as a result a stream 
 of filthy ooze meanders among the cobble-stones, filters into 
 the soil, and produces the mud peculiar to the city. La Cibot 
 22
 
 338 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 came and went; but her husband, a hard-working man, sat 
 day in day out like a fakir on the table in the window, till 
 his knee-joints were stiffened, the blood stagnated in his body, 
 and his legs grew so thin and crooked that he almost lost the 
 use of them. The deep copper tint of the man's complexion 
 naturally suggested that he had been out of health for a very 
 long time. The wife's good health and the husband's illness 
 seemed to the doctor to be satisfactorily accounted for by this 
 theory. 
 
 "Then what is the matter with my poor Cibot?" asked 
 the portress. 
 
 " My dear Madame Cibot, he is dying of the porter's 
 disease," said the doctor. "Incurable vitiation of the blood 
 is evident from the general anaemic condition." 
 
 No one had anything to gain by a crime so objectless. Dr. 
 Poulain's first suspicions were effaced by this thought. Who 
 could have any possible interest in Cibot's death? His wife? 
 the doctor saw her taste the herb-tea as she sweetened it. 
 Crimes which escape social vengeance are many enough, and 
 as a rule they are of this order to wit, murders committed 
 without any startling sign of violence, without bloodshed, 
 bruises, marks of strangling, without any bungling of the 
 business, in short ; if there seems to be no motive for the 
 crime, it most likely goes unpunished, especially if the death 
 occurs among the poorer classes. Murder is almost always 
 announced by its advanced guards, by hatred or greed well 
 known to those under whose eyes the whole matter has passed. 
 But in the case of the Cibots no one save the doctor had any 
 interest in discovering the actual cause of death. The little 
 copper-faced tailor's wife adored her husband ; he had no 
 money and no enemies ; La Cibot's fortune and the marine- 
 store-dealer's motives were alike hidden in the shade. Pou- 
 lain knew the portress and her way of thinking perfectly well ; 
 he thought her capable of tormenting Pons, but he saw that 
 she had neither motive enough nor wit enough for murder ;
 
 COUSIN PONS. 339 
 
 and beside every time the doctor came and she gave her 
 husband a draught, she took a spoonful herself. Poulain him- 
 self, the only person who might have thrown light on the 
 matter, inclined to believe that this was one of the unaccount- 
 able freaks of disease, one of the astonishing exceptions which 
 make medicine so perilous a profession. And in truth, the 
 little tailor's unwholesome life and insanitary surroundings 
 had unfortunately brought him to such a pass that the trace 
 of copper-poisoning was like the last straw. Gossips and 
 neighbors took it upon themselves to explain the sudden 
 death, and no suspicion of blame lighted upon Remonencq. 
 
 " Oh, this long time past I have said that Monsieur Cibot 
 was not well," cried one. 
 
 " He worked too hard, he did," said another; " he heated 
 his blood." 
 
 " He would not listen to me," put in a neighbor; " I ad- 
 vised him to walk out of a Sunday and keep Saint Monday ; 
 two days in the week is not too much for amusement." 
 
 In short, the gossip of the quarter, the tell-tale voice to 
 which Justice, in the person of the commissary of police, the 
 king of the poorer classes, lends an attentive ear gossip ex- 
 plained the little tailor's demise in a perfectly satisfactory 
 manner. Yet M. Poulain's pensive air and uneasy eyes em- 
 barrassed Remonencq not a little, and at sight of the doctor 
 he offered eagerly to go in search of M. Trognon, Fraisier's 
 acquaintance. Fraisier turned to La Cibot to say in a low 
 voice, " I shall come back again as soon as the will is made. 
 In spite of your sorrow, you must look out for squalls." 
 Then he slipped away like a shadow and met his friend the 
 doctor. 
 
 "Ah, Poulain ! " he exclaimed, "it is all right. We are 
 safe ! I will tell you about it to-night. Look out a post that 
 will suit you, you shall have it ! For my own part, I am a 
 justice of the peace. Tabareau will not refuse me now for a 
 son-in-law. And as for you, I will undertake that you shall
 
 340 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 marry Mademoiselle Vitel, granddaughter of our justice of the 
 peace." 
 
 Fraisier left Poulain reduced to dumb bewilderment by 
 these wild words ; bounced like a ball into the boulevard, 
 hailed an omnibus, and was set down ten minutes later by the 
 modern coach at the corner of the Rue de Choiseul. By this 
 time it was nearly four o'clock. Fraisier felt quite sure of a 
 word in private with the presidente, for officials seldom leave 
 the Palais de Justice before five o'clock. 
 
 Mme. de Marville's reception of him assured Fraisier that 
 M. Lebceuf had kept the promise made to Mme. Vatinelle and 
 spoken favorably of the sometime attorney of Mantes. Amelie's 
 manner was almost caressing. So might the Duchesse de 
 Montpensier have treated Jacques Clement. The petty at- 
 torney was a knife to her hand. But, when Fraisier produced 
 the joint-letter signed by Elie Magus and Remonencq offering 
 the sum of nine hundred thousand francs in cash for Pons' 
 collection, then the presidente looked at her man of business 
 and the gleam of the money flashed from her eyes. That 
 ripple of greed reached the attorney. 
 
 " Monsieur le President left a message with me," she said ; 
 " he hopes that you will dine with us to-morrow. It will be a 
 family party. Monsieur Godeschal, Desroche's successor and 
 my attorney, will come to meet you, and Berthier, our notary, 
 and my daughter and son-in-law. After dinner, you and I 
 and the notary and attorney will have the little consultation 
 for which you ask, and I will give you full powers. The two 
 gentlemen will do as you require and act upon your inspira- 
 tion ; and see that everything goes well. You shall have a 
 power of attorney from Monsieur de Marville as soon as you 
 want it." 
 
 "I shall want it on the day of the decease." 
 
 " It shall be in readiness." 
 
 " Madame le Presidente, if I ask for a power of attorney, 
 and would prefer that your attorney's name should not appear,
 
 COUSIN PONS. 341 
 
 I wish it less in my own interest than in yours. When I give 
 myself, it is without reserve. And in return, madame, I ask 
 the same fidelity ; I ask my patrons (I do not venture to call 
 you my clients) to put the same confidence in me. You may 
 think that in acting thus I am trying to fasten upon this affair 
 no, no, madame ; there may be reprehensible things done ; 
 
 with an inheritance in view one is dragged on especially 
 
 with nine hundred thousand francs in the balance. Well, now, 
 you could not disavow a man like Maitre Godeschal, honesty 
 itself, but you can throw all the blame on the back of a miser- 
 able pettifogging lawyer " 
 
 Mme. Camusot de Marville looked admiringly at Fraisier. 
 
 " You ought to go very high," said she, " or sink very low. 
 In your place, instead of asking to hide myself away as a 
 justice of the peace, I would aim at a crown attorney's appoint- 
 ment at, say, Mantes ! and make a great career for myself." 
 
 " Let me hnve my way, madame. The post of justice of 
 the peace is an ambling pad for Monsieur Vitel ; for me it 
 shall be a war-horse." 
 
 And in this way the presidente proceeded to a final confi- 
 dence. 
 
 "You seem to be so completely devoted to our interests," 
 she began, " that I will tell you about the difficulties of 
 our position and our hopes. The president's great desire, 
 ever since a match was projected between his daughter and 
 an adventurer who recently started a bank the president's 
 wish, I say, has been to round out the Marville estate with 
 some grazing land, at that time in the market. We dis- 
 possessed ourselves of fine property, as you know, to settle it 
 upon our daughter ; but I wish very much, my daughter being 
 an only child, to buy all that remains of the grass land. Part 
 has been sold already. The estate belongs to an Englishman 
 who is returning to England after a twenty years' residence in 
 France. He built the most charming cottage in a delightful 
 situation, between Marville Park and the meadows which once
 
 342 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 were part of the Marville lands ; he bought up covers, copse, 
 and gardens at fancy prices to make the grounds about the 
 cottage. The house and its surroundings make a feature of 
 the landscape, and it lies close to my daughter's park palings. 
 The whole, land and house, should be bought for seven hun- 
 dred thousand francs, for the net revenue is about twenty 
 thousand francs. But if Mr. Wadman finds out that we think 
 of buying it, he is sure to add another two or three hundred 
 thousand francs to the price ; for he will lose money if the house 
 counts for nothing, as it usually does when you buy land in 
 the country." 
 
 " Why, madame," Fraisier broke in, "my opinion is you can 
 be so sure that the inheritance is yours that I will offer to act 
 the part of purchaser for you. I will undertake that you shall 
 have the land at the best possible price, and have a written 
 engagement made out under private seal, like a contract to 
 deliver goods. I will go to the Englishman in the character 
 of buyer. I well understand that sort of thing ; it was my 
 specialty at Mantes. Vatinelle doubled the value of his 
 practice, while I worked in his name." 
 
 " Hence your connection with little Madame Vatinelle. 
 He must be very well off " 
 
 "But Madame Vatinelle has expensive tastes. So be easy, 
 madame I will serve you up the Englishman done to a 
 turn " 
 
 " If you can manage that you will have eternal claims to 
 my gratitude. Good-day, my dear Monsieur Fraisier. Till 
 to-morrow ' ' 
 
 Fraisier went. His parting bow was a degree less cringing 
 than on the first occasion. 
 
 " I am to dine to-morrow with President de Marville ! " he 
 said to himself. " Come, now, I have these people in my 
 power. Only, to be absolute master, I ought to be the Ger- 
 man's legal adviser in the person of Tabareau, the justice's 
 clerk. Tabareau will not have me now for his daughter, h'is
 
 COUSIN PONS. 343 
 
 only daughter, but he will give her to me when I am a justice 
 of the peace. I shall be eligible. Mademoiselle Tabareau, 
 that tall consumptive girl with the red hair, has a house in the 
 Place Royale in right of her mother. At her father's death 
 she is sure to come in for six thousand livres per annum as 
 well. She is not handsome ; but, good Lord, if you step from 
 nothing at all to an income of eighteen thousand francs, you 
 must not look too hard at the plank." 
 
 As he went back to the Rue de Normandie by way of the 
 boulevards, he dreamed out his golden dream ; he gave him- 
 self up to the happiness of the thought that he should never 
 know want again. He would marry his friend Poulain to 
 Mile. Vitel, the daughter of the justice of the peace ; together, 
 he and his friend the doctor would reign like kings in the 
 quarter ; he would carry all the elections municipal, military, 
 or political. The boulevards seem short if, while you pace 
 afoot, you mount your ambition on the steed of fancy in this 
 way. 
 
 Schmucke meanwhile went back to his friend Pons with the 
 news that Cibot was dying, and Remonencq gone in search of 
 M. Trognon the notary. Pons was struck by the name. It 
 had come up again and again in La Cibot's interminable talk, 
 and La Cibot always recommended him as honesty incarnate. 
 And with that a luminous idea occurred to Pons, in whom 
 mistrust had grown paramount since the morning, an idea 
 which completed his plan for outwitting La Cibot and un- 
 masking her completely for the too-credulous Schmucke. 
 
 So many unexpected things had happened that day that 
 poor Schmucke was quite bewildered. Pons took his friend's 
 hand. 
 
 " There must be a good deal of confusion in the house, 
 Schmucke ; if the porter is at death's door, we are almost free 
 for a minute or two ; that is to say, there will be no spies 
 for we are watched, you may be sure of that. Go out, take a 
 cab, go the theatre, and tell Mile. Hdloise Brisetout that I
 
 344 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 should like to see her before I die. Ask her to come here to- 
 night when she leaves the theatre. Then go to your friends 
 Brunner and Schwab and beg them to come to-morrow morn- 
 ing at nine o'clock to inquire after me ; let them come up as 
 if they were just passing by and called in to see me." 
 
 The old artist felt that he was dying, and this was the 
 scheme that he forged. He meant Schmucke to be his uni- 
 versal legatee. To protect Schmucke from any possible legal 
 quibbles he proposed to dictate his will to a notary in the 
 presence of witnesses, lest his sanity should be called in ques- 
 tion and the Camusots should attempt upon that pretext to 
 dispute the will. At the name of Trognon he caught a glimpse 
 of machinations of some kind j perhaps a flaw purposely in- 
 serted, or premeditated treachery on La Cibot's part. He 
 would prevent this. Trognon should dictate a holograph will 
 which should be signed and deposited in a sealed envelope in 
 a drawer. Then Schmucke, hidden in one of the cabinets in 
 his alcove, should see La Cibot search for the will, find it, 
 open the envelope, read it through, and seal it again. Next 
 morning, at nine o'clock, he would cancel the will and make 
 a new one in the presence of two notaries, everything in due 
 form and order. La Cibot had treated him as a madman and 
 a visionary ; he saw what this meant he saw the presidente's 
 hate and greed, her revenge in La Cibot's behavior. In the 
 sleepless hours and lonely days of the last two months, the 
 poor man had sifted the events of his past life. 
 
 It has been the wont of sculptors, ancient and modern, to 
 set a tutelary genius with a lighted torch upon either side of a 
 tomb. Those torches that light up the paths of death throw 
 light for dying eyes upon the spectacle of a life's mistakes and 
 sins ; the carved stone figures express great ideas, they are 
 symbols of a fact in human experience. The agony of death 
 has its own wisdom. Not seldom a simple girl, scarcely more 
 than a child, will grow wise with the experience of a hundred 
 years, will gain prophetic vision, judge her family, and see
 
 COUSIN PONS. 345 
 
 clearly through all pretenses, at the near approach of death. 
 Herein lies Death's poetry. But, strange and worthy of 
 remark it is, there are two manners of death. 
 
 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 battle-field 
 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 gayly to his part, like a joyous 
 artist finding a pretext for caricature and laughter in every- 
 thing. 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 Chris- 
 tian 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.
 
 346 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 It was this father-thought that led him to fix his choice upon 
 the leading lady of the ballet. Mile. Brisetout should help 
 him to baffle surrounding treachery, and those who in all 
 probability would never forgive his innocent universal legatee. 
 
 HeloTse 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 re- 
 turned 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 farther 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 aH that passed at the supreme moment. 
 
 " Sir," said Pons, " I am in the full possession of my facul- 
 ties, 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 Monsieur 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;
 
 COUSIN PONS. 347 
 
 " that is the drawback of human justice. But in the matter 
 of wills, there are wills so drafted that they cannot be up- 
 set " 
 
 "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 posses- 
 sion 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 ac- 
 count 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 holo- 
 graph 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 reflec- 
 tion 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 tes-
 
 348 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 tator asked for the key, tied it to the corner of his handker- 
 chief, 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 Monsieur 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. Monsieur 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 un- 
 imaginable pitch. She went downstairs and spent the night 
 at Cibot's bedside, inwardly resolving that Mile. Remon- 
 encq should take her place toward two or three in the morn- 
 ing, when she would go up and have a look at the document. 
 
 Mille. Brisetout's visit toward 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 Mile. HeloTse had been a queen. 
 
 " Ah ! my dear, you are much nicer here on your own 
 ground than at the theatre," HeloTse remarked. " I advise 
 you to keep to your employment." 
 
 HeloTse 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 second-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, Madame Cibot?" asked Mme. Chapoulot. 
 
 "A no-better-than-she-should-be, a light-skirts that you
 
 COUSIN PONS. 349 
 
 may see half-naked any evening for a couple of francs," La 
 Cibot answered in an undertone for Mrne. Chapoulot's ear. 
 
 "Victorinel " called the braid manufacturer's wife, "let 
 the lady pass, child." 
 
 The matron's alarm-signal was not lost upon HeloTse. 
 
 " 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 uncom- 
 monly handsome off the stage," he remarked. Whereupon 
 Mme. Chapoulot pinched him sharply and drove him indoors. 
 
 " Here is a third-floor lodger that has a mind to set up for 
 being on the fourth floor," said HeloYse, as she continued to 
 climb. 
 
 " But mademoiselle is accustomed to going higher and 
 higher." 
 
 "Well, old boy," said HeloTse, 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 ' ' 
 
 " Madame Cibot," said the patient, " be so kind as to leave 
 us ; we want to talk about the theatre and my post as con- 
 ductor, with this lady. Schmucke, will you go to the door 
 with Madame 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 Monsieur Pons' doing; he taught him these dis- 
 gusting tricks. But you shall pay for this, my dears," she
 
 350 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 thought, as she went down the 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, lean 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 very 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," HeloYse 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 jRats,* because he in- 
 stills 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 notariesses. 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 paterfamilias, 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 
 * Father to the rats.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 351 
 
 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 Antonio. So I will send round my man to-morrow morn- 
 ing 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 folk economizzle. Artists have nothing left 
 here 11 (tapping her breast) "it is a time to die in. Good- 
 by, old boy." 
 
 " HeloTse, 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?" 
 
 " Monsieur Baudoyer, the mayor of your arrondissement, a 
 man as stupid as the late Crevel ; Crevel once financed Gau- 
 dissart, 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-by, 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 curiosi- 
 ties 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 tiptoe, watched the lady of the ballet pass on her 
 way out. It was quite an event in the house. 
 
 Fraisier, like the bull-dog that sets his teeth and never lets 
 go, was on the spot. He stood beside La Cibot when Mile. 
 Brisetout passed under the gateway and asked for the door to 
 be opened. Knowing that a will had been made, he had
 
 352 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 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 Madame 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 Monsieur 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 holo- 
 graph 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 offense 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 Monsieur 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 min- 
 utes." 
 
 " Good. I will come up about four o'clock, and I will 
 knock very softly " 
 
 " Mademoiselle 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."
 
 COUSIN PONS. 353 
 
 "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. 
 "Yes, 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- 
 Frangois. 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 my- 
 self 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 
 23
 
 354 THE POOK PAXENTS. 
 
 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 Madame 
 Cibot, who left the door ajar and watched us closely while 
 Monsieur 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 mil you," said Schmucke, crushed 
 with pain. 
 
 He went over to the bed, took one of Pens' hands in both 
 his own, and within himself put up a fervent prayer. 
 
 " What is that that you are mumbling in German ? " asked 
 the sick man. 
 
 " I asked of 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. 
 
 "See here, listen, my good Schmucke, you must do as 
 dying people tell you " 
 
 *' I am lisdening."
 
 COUSIN PONS. 355 
 
 "The little door in the recess in your bedroom opens into 
 that closet." 
 
 " Yes, but it is blocked up mit bictures." 
 
 " Clear them away at once, without making too much 
 noise." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Clear a passage on both sides, so that you can pass from 
 your room into mine. Now, leave the door ajar. When La 
 Cibot conies to take your place (and she is capable of coming 
 an hour earlier than usual), you can go away to bed as if 
 nothing had happened, and look very tired. Try to look 
 sleepy. As soon as she settles down into the armchair, go 
 into the closet, draw aside the muslin curtains over the glass 
 door, and watch her. Do you understand ? " 
 
 "I ocndershtand ; you belief dat die pad voman is going 
 to purn der vill." 
 
 " I do not know what she will do; but I am sure of this 
 that you will not take her for an angel afterward. And now 
 play for me ; improvise and make me happy. It will divert 
 your thoughts ; your gloomy ideas will vanish, and for me the 
 dark hours will be filled with your dreams " 
 
 Schmucke sat down to the piano. Here he was in his 
 element ; and in a few moments musical inspiration, quickened 
 by the pain with which he was quivering and the consequent 
 irritation that followed, came upon the kindly German, and, 
 after his wont, he was caught up and borne above the world. 
 On one sublime theme after another he executed variations, 
 putting into them sometimes Chopin's sorrow, Chopin's 
 Raphael-like perfection ; sometimes the stormy Dante's gran- 
 deur of Liszt the two musicians who most nearly approach 
 Paganini's temperament. When execution reaches this su- 
 preme degree, the executant stands beside the poet, as it were ; 
 he is to the composer as the actor is to the writer of plays, a 
 divinely inspired interpreter of things divine. But that night, 
 when Schmucke gave Pons an earnest of diviner symphonies,
 
 356 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 of that heavenly music for which Saint Cecilia let fall her 
 instruments, he was at once Beethoven and Paganini, creator 
 and interpreter. It was an outpouring of music inexhaustible 
 as the nightingale's song varied and full of delicate under- 
 growth as the forest flooded with her trills ; sublime as the sky 
 overhead. Schmucke played as he had never played before, 
 and the soul of the old musician listening to him rose to 
 ecstasy such as Raphael once painted in a picture which you 
 may see at Bologna. 
 
 A terrific ring at the door-bell put an end to these visions. 
 The second-floor lodgers sent up the servant with a message. 
 Would Schmucke please to stop the racket overhead. Madame, 
 Monsieur, and Mademoiselle Chapoulot had been wakened, 
 and could not sleep for the noise ; they called his attention to 
 the fact that the day was quite long enough for rehearsals of 
 theatrical music, and added that people ought not to " strum " 
 all night in a house in the Marais. It was then three o'clock 
 in the morning. At half-past three, La Cibot appeared, just 
 as Pons had predicted. He might have actually heard the 
 conference between Fraisier and the portress; "Did I not 
 guess exactly how it would be? " his eyes seemed to say as he 
 glanced at Schmucke, and, turning a little, he seemed to be 
 fast asleep. 
 
 Schmucke's guileless simplicity was an article of belief with 
 La Cibot (and be it noted that this faith in simplicity is the 
 great source and secret of the success of all infantine strategy); 
 La Cibot, therefore, could not suspect Schmucke of deceit 
 when he came to say to her, with a face half of distress, half 
 of glad relief 
 
 "I haf had a derrible night ! a derrible dime of it ! I vas 
 opliged to blay to keep him kviet, and the secont-floor lodgers 
 vas kom up to tell me to be kviet ! It was frightful, fer der 
 life of mein friend vas at shtake. I am so tired mit der blay- 
 ing all night, dat dis morning I am all knocked up." 
 
 " My poor Cibot is very bad, too ; one more day like yes-
 
 FKAIS1ER KEAD THE CURIOUS DOCUMENT.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 357 
 
 terday, and he will have no strength left. One can't help it ; 
 it is God's will." 
 
 "You haf a heart so honest, a soul so peautiful, dot gif der 
 Zipod die, ve shall lif togedder," said the simple but cunning 
 Schmucke. 
 
 The craft of simple, straightforward people is formidable 
 indeed; they are exactly like children, setting their unsus- 
 pected snares with the perfect craft of the savage. 
 
 "Oh, well, go and sleep, sonny!" returned La Cibot. 
 " Your eyes look tired, they are as big as my fist. But there ! 
 if anything could comfort me for losing Cibot, it would be the 
 thought of ending my days with a good man like you. Be 
 easy. I will give Madame Chapoulot a dressing down. To 
 think of a retired haberdasher's wife giving herself such airs ! " 
 
 Schmucke went to his room and took up his post in the 
 closet. 
 
 La Cibot had left the door ajar on the landing ; Fraisier 
 came in and closed it noiselessly as soon as he heard Schmucke 
 shut his bedroom door. He had brought with him a lighted 
 taper and a bit of very fine wire to open the seal of the will. 
 La Cibot, meanwhile, looking under the pillow, found the 
 handkerchief with the key of the bureau knotted to one cor- 
 ner ; and this so much the more easily because Pons purposely 
 left the end hanging out over the bolster, and lay with his face 
 to the wall. 
 
 La Cibot went straight to the bureau, opened it cautiously 
 so as to make as little noise as possible, found the spring of 
 the secret drawer, and hurried into the salon with the will in 
 her hand. Her flight roused Pons' curiosity to the highest 
 pitch ; and as for Schmucke, he trembled as if he were the 
 guilty person. 
 
 " Go back," said Fraisier, when she handed over the will. 
 " He may wake, and he must find you there." 
 
 Fraisier opened the seal with a dexterity which proved that 
 his was no 'prentice hand, and read the following curious
 
 3oS THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 document, headed "My Will," with ever-deepening aston- 
 ishment : 
 
 " On this fifteenth day of April, eighteen hundred and forty- 
 five, I, being in my sound mind (as this my Will, drawn up 
 in concert with M. Trognon, will testify) and feeling that I 
 must shortly die of the malady from which I have suffered 
 since the beginning of February last, am anxious to dispose 
 of my property, and have herein recorded my last wishes : 
 
 " I have always been impressed by the untoward circum- 
 stances that injure great pictures, and not infrequently bring 
 about total destruction. I have felt sorry for the beautiful 
 paintings condemned to travel from land to land, never find- 
 ing some fixed abode whither admirers of great masterpieces 
 may travel to see them. And I have always thought that the 
 truly deathless work of a great master ought to be national 
 property; put where every one of every nation may see it, 
 even as the Light, God's masterpiece, shines for all His chil- 
 dren. 
 
 "And as I have spent my life in collecting together and 
 choosing a few pictures, some of the greatest masters' most 
 glorious work, and as these pictures are as the master left 
 them genuine examples, neither repainted nor retouched 
 it has been a painful thought to me that the paintings which 
 have been the joy of my life, may be sold by public auction, 
 and go, some to England, some to Russia, till they are all 
 scattered abroad again as if they had never been gathered 
 together. From this wretched fate I have determined to save 
 both them and the frames in which they are set, all of them 
 the work of skilled craftsmen. 
 
 "On these grounds, therefore, I give and bequeath the 
 pictures which compose my collection to the King, for the 
 gallery in the Louvre, subject to the charge (if the legacy is 
 accepted) of a life-annuity of two thousand four hundred francs 
 to my friend Wilhelm Schmucke.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 359 
 
 "If the King, as usufructuary of the Louvre collection, 
 should refuse the legacy with the charge upon it, the said 
 pictures shall form a part of the estate which I leave to my 
 friend Schmucke, on condition that he shall deliver the 
 Monkey's Head, by Goya, to my cousin, President Camusot ; 
 a Flower-piece, the tulips, by Abraham Mignon, to M. Trog- 
 non, notary (whom I appoint as my executor); and allow 
 Madame Cibot, who has acted as my housekeeper for ten 
 years, the sum of two hundred francs per annum. 
 
 " Finally, my friend Schmucke is to give the Descent from 
 the Cross, Rubens' sketch for his great picture at Antwerp, to 
 adorn a chapel in the parish church, in grateful acknowledg- 
 ment of M. Duplanty's kindness to me ; for to him I owe it 
 that I can die as a Christian and a Catholic." So ran the 
 will. 
 
 " This is ruin ! " mused Fraisier, " the ruin of all my hopes. 
 Ha ! I begin to believe all that the presidente told me about 
 this old artist and his cunning." 
 
 "Well ? " La Cibot came back to say. 
 
 " Your gentleman is a monster. He is leaving everything 
 
 to the Crown. Now, you cannot plead against the Crown 
 
 The will cannot be disputed We are robbed, ruined, 
 
 spoiled, and murdered ! " 
 
 " What has he left to me ? " 
 
 "Two hundred francs a year." 
 
 "A pretty come-down ! Why, he is a finished scoundrel ! " 
 
 "Go and see," said Fraisier, "and I will put your scoun- 
 drel's will back again in the envelope." 
 
 While Mme. Cibot's back was turned, Fraisier nimbly 
 slipped a sheet of blank paper into the envelope ; the will he 
 put in his pocket. He next proceeded to seal the envelope 
 again so cleverly that he showed the seal to Mme. Cibot when 
 she returned, and asked her if she could see the slightest trace 
 of the operation. La Cibot took up the envelope, felt it over,
 
 360 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 assured herself that it was not empty, and heaved a deep sigh. 
 She had entertained hopes that Fraisier himself would have 
 burned the unlucky document while she was out of the room. 
 
 " Well, my dear Monsieur Fraisier, what is to be done? " 
 
 "Oh! that is your affair! I am not one of the next-of- 
 kin, myself; but if I had the slightest claim to any of that" 
 (indicating the collection), " I know very well what I should 
 do." 
 
 "That is just what I want to know," La Cibot answered, 
 with sufficient simplicity. 
 
 " There is a fire in the grate " he said. Then he rose 
 
 to go. 
 
 " After all, no one will know about it but you and me " 
 
 began La Cibot. 
 
 "It can never be proved that a will existed," asserted the 
 man of law. 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 "I? If Monsieur Pons dies intestate, you shall have a 
 hundred thousand francs." 
 
 "Oh yes, no doubt," returned she. "People promise you 
 heaps of money, and when they come by their own, and 
 there is talk of paying, they swindle you like Like 
 
 Elie Magus, she was going to say, but she stopped herself 
 just in time. 
 
 "lam going," said Fraisier; "it is not to your interest 
 that I should be found here : but I shall see you again down- 
 stairs." 
 
 La Cibot shut the door and returned with the sealed packet 
 in her hand. She had quite made up her mind to burn it ; 
 but as she went toward the bedroom fireplace, she felt the 
 grasp of a hand on each arm, and saw Schmucke on one 
 hand and Pons himself on the other, leaning against the par- 
 tition wall on either side of the door. 
 
 La Cibot cried out, and fell face downward in a fit ; real or 
 feigned, no one ever knew the truth. The sight produced
 
 COUSIN PONS. 361 
 
 such an impression on Pons that a deadly faintness came upon 
 him, and Schmucke left the woman on the floor to help Pons 
 back to bed. The friends trembled in every limb ; they had 
 set themselves a hard task, it was done, but it had been too 
 much for their strength. When Pons lay in bed again, and 
 Schmucke had regained strength to some extent, he heard a 
 sound of sobbing. La Cibot, on her knees, bursting into 
 tears, held out supplicating hands to them in very expressive 
 pantomine. 
 
 "It was pure curiosity?" she sobbed, when she saw that 
 Pons and Schmucke were paying any attention to her proceed- 
 ings. ' 'Pure curiosity ; a woman's fault, you know. But I did 
 not know how else to get a sight of your will, and I brought 
 it back again " 
 
 "Go ! " said Schmucke, standing erect, his tall figure gain- 
 ing in height by the full extent of his indignation. " You 
 are a monster ! You dried to kill mein goot Bons ! He is 
 right. You are worse than a monster, you are a lost soul ! " 
 
 La Cibot saw the look of abhorrence in the frank German's 
 face; she rose, proud as Tartuffe, gave Schmucke a glance 
 which made him quake, and went out, carrying off under her 
 dress an exquisite little picture of Metzu's pointed out by 
 Elie Magus. "A diamond," he had called it. Fraisier 
 downstairs in the porter's lodge was waiting to hear that La 
 Cibot had burned the envelope and the sheet of blank paper 
 inside it. Great was his astonishment when he beheld his fair 
 client's agitation and dismay. 
 
 " What has happened ? " 
 
 " This has happened, dear Maitre Fraisier. Under pre- 
 tense of giving me good advice and telling me what to do, 
 you have lost me my annuity and the gentlemen's confidence." 
 
 One of the word-tornadoes in which she excelled was in 
 full progress, but Fraisier cut her short. 
 
 "This is idle talk. The facts, the facts! and be quick 
 about it."
 
 362 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 " Well ; it came about in this way : " and she told him of 
 the scene which she had just come through. 
 
 "You have lost nothing through me," was Fraisier's com- 
 ment. " The gentlemen had their doubts, or they would not 
 have set this trap for you. They were lying in wait and spy- 
 ing upon you. You have not told me everything," he added, 
 with a tiger's glance at the woman before him. 
 
 "/ hide anything from you!" cried she "after all that 
 we have done together ! " she added with a shudder. 
 
 " My dear madame, / have done nothing blameworthy," 
 returned Fraisier. Evidently he meant to deny his nocturnal 
 visit to Pons' rooms. 
 
 Every hair on La Cibot's head seemed to scorch her, while 
 a sense of icy coldness swept over her from head to foot. 
 
 " What?" she faltered in bewilderment. 
 
 " Here is a criminal charge on the face of it. You may be 
 accused of suppressing the will," Fraisier made answer drily. 
 
 La Cibot started. 
 
 " Don't be alarmed ; I am your legal adviser. I only 
 wished to show you how easy it is, in one way or another, to 
 do as I once explained to you. Let us see, now ; what have 
 you done that this simple German should be hiding in the 
 room?" 
 
 "Nothing at all, unless it was that scene the other day 
 when I stood Monsieur Pons out that his eyes dazzled. And 
 ever since, the two gentlemen have been as different as can be. 
 So you have brought all my troubles upon me ; I might have 
 lost my influence with Monsieur Pons, but I was sure of the 
 German ; just now he was talking of marrying me or of taking 
 me with him it is all one." 
 
 The excuse was so plausible that Fraisier was fain to be 
 satisfied with it. "You need fear nothing," he resumed. 
 " I gave you my word that you shall have your money, and I 
 shall keep my word. The whole matter, so far, was up in 
 the air, but now it is as good as bank-bills. You shall have
 
 COUSIN PONS. 363 
 
 at least twelve hundred francs per annum. But, my good 
 lady, you must act intelligently under my orders." 
 
 "Yes, my dear Monsieur Fraisier," said La Cibot with 
 cringing servility. She was completely subdued. 
 
 "Very good. Good-by," and Fraisier went, taking the 
 dangerous document with him. He reached home in great 
 spirits. The will was a terrible weapon. 
 
 " Now," thought he, ' ' I have a hold on Madame la Presi- 
 dente de Marville ; she must keep her word with me. If she 
 did not, she would lose the property." 
 
 At daybreak, when Remonencq had taken down his shut- 
 ters and left his sister in charge of the store, he came, after 
 his wont of late, to inquire for his good friend Cibot. The 
 portress was contemplating the Metzu,* privately wondering 
 how a little bit of painted wood could be worth such a lot of 
 money. 
 
 " Aha ! " said he, looking over her shoulder, " that is the 
 one picture which Monsieur Elie Magus regretted ; with that 
 little bit of a thing, he says, his happiness would be com- 
 plete." 
 
 " What would he give for it ? " asked La Cibot. 
 
 "Why, if you will promise to marry me within a year of 
 widowhood, I will undertake to get twenty thousand francs 
 for it from Elie Magus ; and unless you marry me you will 
 never get a thousand francs for the picture." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Because you would be obliged to give a receipt for the 
 money, and then you might have a lawsuit with the heirs-at- 
 law. If you were my wife, I myself should sell the thing to 
 Monsieur Magus, and in the way of business it is enough to 
 make an entry in the day-book, and I should note that Mon- 
 sieur Schmucke sold it to me. There, leave the panel with 
 me. If your husband were to die you might have a lot of 
 bother over it, but no one would think it odd that I should 
 * A noted Dutch painter of genre. Died 1630.
 
 364 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 have a picture in the store. You know me quite well. Be- 
 side, I will give you a receipt if you like." 
 
 The covetous portress felt that she had been caught ; she 
 agreed to a proposal which was to bind her for the rest of her 
 life to the marine-store-dealer. 
 
 "You are right." said she, as she locked the picture away 
 in a chest ; "bring me the bit of writing." 
 
 Remonencq beckoned her to the door. 
 
 " I can see, neighbor, that we shall not save our poor dear 
 Cibot," he said, lowering his voice. " Dr. Poulain gave him 
 up yesterday evening, and said that he could not last out the 
 day. It is a great misfortune. But after all, this was not the 
 place for you. You ought to be in a fine curiosity store on 
 the Boulevard des Capucines. Do you know that I have made 
 nearly a hundred thousand francs in ten years? and if you 
 will have as much some day, 1 will undertake to make a 
 handsome fortune for you as my wife. You would be the 
 mistress my sister should wait on you and do the work of 
 the house, and " 
 
 A heart-rending moan from the little tailor cut the tempter 
 short ; the death-agony had begun. 
 
 "Go away," said La Cibot. "You are a monster to talk 
 of such things and my poor man dying like this " 
 
 "Ah! it is because I love you," said Remonencq; "I 
 could let everything else go to have you " 
 
 " If you loved me, you would say nothing to me just now," 
 returned she. And Remonencq departed to his store, sure of 
 marrying La Cibot. 
 
 Toward ten o'clock there was a sort of commotion in the 
 street ; M. Cibot was taking the sacrament. All the friends 
 of the pair, all the porters and porters' wives in the Rue de 
 Normandie and neighboring streets, had crowded into the 
 lodge, under the archway, and stood on the pavement outside. 
 Nobody so much as noticed the arrival of M. Leopold Man- 
 nequin and a brother lawyer. Schwab and Brunner reached
 
 COUSIN PONS. 365 
 
 Pons' rooms unseen by Mme. Cibot. The notary, inquiring 
 for Pons, was shown upstairs by the portress of a neighboring 
 house. Brunner remembered his previous visit to the museum, 
 and went straight in with his friend Schwab. 
 
 Pons formally revoked his previous will and constituted 
 Schmucke his universal legatee. This accomplished, he 
 thanked Schwab and Brunner, and earnestly begged M. 
 Leopold Hannequin to protect Schmucke's interests. The 
 demands made upon him by last night's scene with La Cibot, 
 and this final settlement of his worldly affairs, left him so 
 faint and exhausted that Schmucke begged Schwab to go for 
 the Abbe Duplanty; it was Pons' great desire to take the 
 sacrament, and Schmucke could not bring himself to leave 
 his friend. 
 
 La Cibot, sitting at the foot of her husband's bed, gave not 
 so much as a thought to Schmucke's breakfast for that matter 
 had been forbidden to return ; but the morning's events, the 
 sight of Pons' heroic resignation in the death-agony, so op- 
 pressed Schmucke's heart that he was not conscious of hunger. 
 Toward two o'clock, however, as nothing had been seen of 
 the old German, La Cibot sent Remonencq's sister to see 
 whether Schmucke wanted anything ; prompted not so much 
 by interest as by curiosity. The Abbe Duplanty had just 
 heard the old musician's dying confession, and the adminis- 
 tration of the sacrament of extreme unction was disturbed by 
 repeated ringing of the door-bell. Pons, in his terror of 
 robbery, had made Schmucke promise solemnly to admit no 
 one into the house ; so Schmucke did not stir. Again and 
 again Mile. Remonencq pulled the cord, and finally went 
 downstairs in alarm to tell La Cibot that Schmucke would 
 not open the door ; Fraisier made a note of this. Schmucke 
 had never seen any one die in his life ; before long he would 
 be perplexed by the many difficulties which beset those who 
 are left with a dead body in Paris, this more especially if they 
 are lonely and helpless and have no one to act for them.
 
 366 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Fraisier knew, moreover, that in real affliction people lose 
 their heads, and therefore immediately after breakfast he took 
 up his position in the porter's lodge, and, sitting there in 
 perpetual committee with Dr. Poulain, conceived the idea of 
 directing all Schmucke's actions himself. 
 
 To obtain the important result, the doctor and the lawyer 
 took their measures on this wise : 
 
 The beadle of Saint-Francois, Cantinet by name, at one time 
 a retail dealer in glassware, lived in the Rue d' Orleans, next 
 door to Dr. Poulain and under the same roof. Mme. Canti- 
 net, who saw to the letting of the chairs at Saint-Francois, 
 once had fallen ill and Dr. Poulain had attended her gratu- 
 itously; she was, as might be expected, grateful, and often 
 confided her troubles to him. The "nutcrackers," punctual 
 in their attendance at Saint-Francois on Sundays and saints'- 
 days, were on friendly terms with the beadle and the lowest 
 ecclesiastical rank and file, commonly called in Paris le has 
 clerge, to whom the devout usually gave little presents from 
 time to time. Mme. Cantinet, therefore, knew Schmucke 
 almost as well as Schmucke knew her. And Mme. Cantinet 
 was afflicted with two sore troubles which enabled the lawyer 
 to use her as a blind and involuntary agent. Cantinet junior, 
 a stage-struck youth, had deserted the paths of the church and 
 turned his back on the prospect of one day becoming a beadle, 
 to make his debut among the supernumeraries of the Cirque- 
 Olympique; he was leading a wild life, breaking his mother's 
 heart and draining her purse by frequent forced loans. Cantinet 
 senior, much addicted to spirituous liquors and idleness, had, 
 in fact, been driven to retire from business by those two fail- 
 ings. So far from reforming, the incorrigible offender had 
 found scope in his new occupation for the indulgence of both 
 cravings ; he did nothing, and he drank with drivers of wed- 
 ding-coaches, with the undertaker's men at funerals, with 
 poor folk relieved by the vicar, till his morning's occupation 
 was set forth in rubric on his countenance by noon.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 367 
 
 Mme. Cantinet saw no prospect but want in her old age, and 
 yet she had brought her husband twelve thousand francs, she 
 said. The tale of her woes, related for the hundredth time, 
 suggested an idea to Dr. Poulain. Once introduce her into 
 the old bachelors' quarters, and it would be easy by her means 
 to establish Mme. Sauvage there as working housekeeper. It 
 was quite impossible to present Mme. Sauvage herself, for 
 the "nutcrackers" had grown suspicious of every one. 
 Schmucke's refusal to admit Mile. Remonencq had sufficiently 
 opened Fraisier's eyes. Still, it seemed evident that Ponsand 
 Schmucke, being pious souls, would take any one recom- 
 mended by the abbe, with blind confidence. Mme. Can- 
 tinet should bring Mme. Sauvage with her, and to put in 
 Fraisier's servant was almost tantamount to installing Fraisier 
 himself. 
 
 The Abbe Duplanty, coming downstairs, found the gateway 
 blocked by the Cibots' friends, all of them bent upon showing 
 their interest in one of the oldest and most respectable porters 
 in the Marais. 
 
 Dr. Poulain raised his hat, and took the abbe aside. 
 
 "I am just about to go to poor Monsieur Pons," he said. 
 "There is still a chance of recovery; but it is a question of 
 inducing him to undergo an operation. The calculi are per- 
 ceptible to the touch, they are setting up an inflammatory 
 condition which will end fatally, but perhaps it is not too 
 late to remove them. You should really use your influence to 
 persuade the patient to submit to surgical treatment ; I will 
 answer for his life, provided that no untoward circumstance 
 occurs during the operation." 
 
 " I will return as soon as I have taken the sacred ciborium 
 back to the church," said the Abbe Duplanty, " for Monsieur 
 Schmucke's condition claims the support of religion." 
 
 "I have just heard that he is alone," said Dr. Poulain. 
 " The German, good soul, had a little altercation this morn- 
 ing with Madame Cibot, who has acted as housekeeper to
 
 368 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 them both for the past ten years. They have quarreled (for 
 the moment only, no doubt), but under the circumstances 
 they must have some one in to help upstairs. It would be a 
 charity to look after him. I say, Cantinet," continued the 
 doctor, beckoning to the beadle, "just go and ask your wife 
 if she will nurse Monsieur Pons, and look after Monsieur 
 Schmucke, and take Madame Cibot's place for a day or two. 
 Even without the quarrel, Madame Cibot would still require a 
 substitute. Madame Cantinet is honest?" added the doctor, 
 turning to M. Duplanty. 
 
 "You could not make a better choice," said the good 
 priest ; " she is intrusted with the letting of chairs in the 
 church." 
 
 A few minutes later, Dr. Poulain stood by Pens' pillow 
 watching the progress made by death, and Schmucke's vain 
 efforts to persuade his friend to consent to the operation. To 
 all the poor German's despairing entreaties Pons only replied 
 by a shake of the head and occasional impatient movements ; 
 till, after a while, he summoned up all his fast-failing strength 
 to say, with a heart-rending look : 
 
 " Do let me die in peace ! " 
 
 Schmucke almost died of sorrow, but he took Pons' hand 
 and softly kissed it, and held it between his own, as if trying 
 a second time to give his own vitality to his friend. 
 
 Just at this moment the bell rang, and Dr. Poulain, going 
 to the door, admitted the Abbe Duplanty. 
 
 "Our poor patient is struggling in the grasp of death," he 
 said. "All will be over in a few hours. You will send a 
 priest, no doubt, to watch to-night. But it is time that 
 Madame Cantinet came, as well as a woman to do the work, 
 for Monsieur Schmucke is quite unfit to think of anything : I 
 am afraid for his reason ; and there are valuables here which 
 ought to be in the custody of honest persons." 
 
 The Abbe Duplanty, a kindly, upright priest, guileless and 
 unsuspicious, was struck with the truth of Dr. Poulain 's re-
 
 COUSIN PONS, 369 
 
 marks. He had, moreover, a certain belief in the doctor of 
 the quarter. So on the threshold of the death-chamber he 
 stopped and beckoned to Schmucke, but Schmucke could not 
 bring himself to loosen the grasp of the hand that grew tighter 
 and tighter. Pons seemed to think that he was slipping over 
 the edge of a precipice and must catch at something to save 
 himself. But, as many know, the dying are haunted by a 
 hallucination that leads them to snatch at things about them, 
 like men eager to save their most precious possessions from a 
 fire. Presently Pons released Schmucke to clutch at the bed- 
 clothes, dragging them and huddling them about himself 
 with a hasty, covetous movement significant and painful to 
 see. 
 
 "What will you do, left alone with your dead friend?" 
 asked M. 1'Abbe Duplanty when Schmucke came to the door. 
 " You have not Madame Cibot now " 
 
 " Ein monster dat haf killed Bons ! " 
 
 "But you must have somebody with you," began Dr. Pou- 
 lain. " Some one must sit up with the body to-night." 
 
 " I shall sit up; I shall say die prayers to Gott," the inno- 
 cent German answered. 
 
 "But you must eat and who is to cook for you now ?" 
 asked the doctor. 
 
 "Grief haf taken afay mein abbetite," Schmucke said, 
 simply. 
 
 "And some one must give notice to the registrar," said 
 Poulain, "and lay out the body, and order the funeral ; and 
 the person who sits up with the body and the priest will want 
 meals. Can you do all this by yourself? A man cannot die 
 like a dog in the capital of the civilized world." 
 
 Schmucke opened wide eyes of dismay. A brief fit of mad- 
 ness seized him. 
 
 " But Bons shall not tie ! " he cried aloud. " I shall safe 
 him!" 
 
 " You cannot go without sleep much longer, and who will 
 24
 
 370 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 take your place ? Some one must look after Monsieur Pons, 
 and give him drink, and nurse him " 
 
 " Ah ! dat is drue." 
 
 "Very well," said the abbe, "I am thinking of sending 
 you Madame Cantinet, a good and honest creature 
 
 The practical details of the care of the dead bewildered 
 Schmucke, till he was fain to die with his friend. 
 
 "He is a child," said the doctor, turning to the Abbe 
 Duplanty. 
 
 "Ein child," Schmucke repeated mechanically. 
 
 "There, then," said the curate; "I will speak to Madame 
 Cantinet, and send her to you." 
 
 "Do not trouble yourself," said the doctor; "I am going 
 home, and she lives in the next house." 
 
 The dying seem to struggle with Death as with an invisible 
 assassin ; in the agony at the last, as the final thrust is made, 
 the act of dying seems to be a conflict, a hand-to-hand fight 
 for life. Pons had reached the supreme moment. At the 
 sound of his groans and cries, the three standing in the door- 
 way hurried to the bedside. Then came the last blow, smiting 
 asunder the bonds between soul and body, striking down to 
 life's sources; and suddenly Pons regained for a few brief 
 moments the perfect calm that follows the struggle. He 
 came to himself, and with the serenity of death in his face he 
 looked round almost smilingly at them. 
 
 "Ah, doctor, I have had a hard time of it; but you were 
 right, I am doing better. Thank you, my good abbe ; I was 
 wondering what had become of Schmucke " 
 
 " Schmucke has had nothing to eat since yesterday evening, 
 and now it is four o'clock ! You have no one with you now, 
 and it would not be wise to send for Madame Cibot." 
 
 " She is capable of anything ! " said Pons, without attempt- 
 ing to conceal all his abhorrence at the sound of her name. 
 " It is true, Schmucke certainly ought to have some trustworthy 
 person."
 
 COUSIN PONS. 371 
 
 " Monsieur Duplanty and I have been thinking about you 
 both " 
 
 " Ah ! thank you, I had not thought of that." 
 
 " and Monsieur Duplanty suggests that you should have 
 Madame Cantinet " 
 
 " Oh ! Madame Cantinet who lets the chairs ! " exclaimed 
 Pons. " Yes; she is an excellent creature." 
 
 "She has no liking for Madame Cibot," continued the 
 doctor, " and she would take good care of Monsieur Schmucke 
 who " 
 
 " Send her to me, Monsieur Duplanty send her and her 
 
 husband too. I shall be easy. Nothing will be stolen here." 
 
 Schmucke had taken Por.s' hand again, and held it joyously 
 in his own. Pons was almost well again, he thought. 
 
 "Let us go, Monsieur 1'Abbe," said the doctor. "I will 
 send Madame Cantinet round at once. I see how it is. She 
 perhaps may not find Monsieur Pons alive." 
 
 While the Abbe Duplanty was persuading Pons to engage 
 Madame Cantinet as his nurse, Fraisier had sent for her. He 
 had plied the beadle's wife with sophistical reasoning and 
 subtlety. It was difficult to resist his corrupting influence. 
 As for Madame Cantinet a lean, sallow woman, with large 
 teeth and thin lips her intelligence, as so often happens with 
 women of the people, had been blunted by a hard life, till she 
 had come to look upon the slenderest daily wage as prosperity. 
 She soon consented to take Mme. Sauvage with her as general 
 servant. 
 
 Mme. Sauvage had had her instructions already. She had 
 undertaken to weave a web of iron-wire about the two musi- 
 cians, and to watch them as a spider watches a fly caught in 
 the toils ; and her reward was to be a tobacconist's license. 
 Fraisier had found a convenient opportunity of getting rid of 
 his so-called foster-mother, while he posted her as a detective 
 and policeman to supervise Madame Cantinet. As there was
 
 372 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 a servant's bedroom and a little kitchen included in the apart- 
 ments, La Sauvage could sleep on a truckle-bed and cook for 
 the German. Dr. Poulain came with the two women just as 
 Pons drew his last breath. Schmucke was sitting beside his 
 friend, all unconscious of the crisis, holding the hand that 
 slowly grew colder in his grasp. He signed to Madame Can- 
 tinet to be silent ; but Mme. Sauvage's soldierly figure sur- 
 prised him so much that he started in spite of himself, a kind 
 of homage to which the virago was quite accustomed. 
 
 " Monsieur Duplanty answers for this lady," whispered 
 Mme. Cantinet by way of introduction. "She once was cook 
 to a bishop; she is honesty itself; she will do the cooking." 
 
 "Oh ! you may talk out loud," wheezed the stalwart dame. 
 " The poor gentleman is dead. He has just gone." 
 
 A shrill cry broke from Schmucke. He felt Pons' cold 
 hand stiffening in his, and sat staring into his friend's eyes; 
 the look in them would have driven him mad, if Mme. 
 Sauvage, doubtless accustomed to scenes of this sort, had not 
 come to the bedside with a mirror which she held over the 
 lips of the dead. When she saw that there was no mist upon 
 the surface, she briskly snatched Schmucke's hand away. 
 
 "Just take away your hand, sir ; you may not be able to do 
 it in a little while. You do not know how the bones harden. 
 A corpse grows cold very quickly. If you do not lay out a 
 body while it is warm, you very often have to break the joints 
 later on." 
 
 And so it was this terrible woman who closed the poor 
 dead musician's eyes. 
 
 With a business-like dexterity acquired in ten years of ex- 
 perience, she stripped and straightened the body, laid the 
 arms by the sides, and covered the face with the bedclothes, 
 exactly as a clerk wraps a parcel. 
 
 " A sheet will be wanted to lay him out. Where is there 
 a sheet?" she demanded, turning on the terror-stricken 
 Schmucke.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 373 
 
 He had watched the religious ritual with its deep reverence 
 for the creature made for such high destinies in heaven ; and 
 now he saw his dead friend treated simply as a thing in this 
 packing process saw with the sharp pain that dissolves the 
 very elements of thought. 
 
 " Do as you vill " he answered mechanically. The in- 
 nocent creature for the first time in his life had seen a man 
 die, and that man was Pons, his only friend, the one human 
 being who understood him and loved him. 
 
 " I will go and ask Madame Cibot where the sheets are 
 kept," said La Sauvage. 
 
 "A truckle-bed will be wanted for the person to sleep 
 upon," Mme. Cantinet came to tell Schmucke. 
 
 Schmucke nodded and broke out into weeping. Mme. 
 Cantiner left the unhappy man in peace ; but an hour later 
 she came back to say 
 
 " Have you any money, sir, to pay for the things ? " 
 
 The look that Schmucke gave Mme. Cantinet would have 
 disarmed the fiercest hate; it was the white, blank, peaked 
 face of death that he turned upon her, as an explanation 
 that met everything. 
 
 "Dake it all and leaf me to mein prayers and tears," he 
 said, and knelt. 
 
 Mme. Sauvage went to Fraisier with the news of Pons' 
 death. Fraisier took a hack and went to the presidente. 
 To-morrow she must give him the power of attorney to en- 
 able him to act for the heirs. 
 
 Another hour went by, and Mme. Cantinet came again to 
 Schmucke. 
 
 " I have been to Madame Cibot, sir, who knows all about 
 things here," she said. " I asked her to tell me where every- 
 thing is kept. But she almost jawed me to death with her 
 abuse. Sir, do listen to me." 
 
 Schmucke looked up at the woman, and she went on, inno- 
 cent of any barbarous intentionj for women of her class are
 
 374 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 accustomed to take the worst of moral suffering passively, as a 
 matter of course. 
 
 " We must have linen for the shroud, sir ; we must have 
 money to buy a truckle-bed for the person to sleep upon, and 
 some things for the kitchen plates, and dishes, and glasses 
 for a priest will be coming to pass the night here, and the 
 person says that there is absolutely nothing in the kitchen." 
 
 " And what is more, sir, I must have coal and firing if I am 
 to get the dinner ready," echoed La Sauvage, "and not a 
 thing can I find. Not that there is anything so very surpris- 
 ing in that, as La Cibot used to do everything for you " 
 
 Schmucke lay at the feet of the dead ; he heard nothing, 
 knew nothing, saw nothing. Mme. Cantinet pointed to him. 
 " My dear woman, you would not believe me," she said. 
 "Whatever you say, he does not answer." 
 
 "Very well, child," said La Sauvage; "now I will show 
 you what to do in a case of this kind." 
 
 She looked round the room as a thief looks in search of 
 possible hiding-places for money ; then she went straight to 
 Pens' chest, opened the first drawer, saw the bag in which 
 Schmucke had put the rest of the money after the sale of the 
 pictures, and held it up before him. He nodded mechan- 
 ically. 
 
 "Here is money, child," said La Sauvage, turning to 
 Mme. Cantinet. " I will count it first and take enough to 
 buy everything we want wine, provisions, wax-candles, all 
 sorts of things, in fact, for there is nothing in the house. 
 Just look in the drawers for a sheet to bury him in. I cer- 
 tainly was told that the poor gentleman was simple, but I 
 don't know what he is; he is worse. He is like a new-born 
 child ; we shall have to feed him with a funnel." 
 
 The women went about their work, and Schmucke looked 
 on precisely as an idiot might have done. Broken down with 
 sorrow, wholly absorbed, in a half-cataleptic state, he could 
 not take his eyes from the face that seemed to fascinate
 
 COUSIN PONS. 37$ 
 
 him, Pens' face refined by the absolute repose of death. 
 Schmucke hoped to die ; everything was alike indifferent. 
 If the room had been on fire he would not have stirred. 
 
 "There are twelve hundred and fifty francs here," La 
 Sauvage told him. 
 
 Schmucke shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 But when La Sauvage came near to measure the body by 
 laying the sheet over it, before cutting out the shroud, a hor- 
 rible struggle ensued between her and the poor German. 
 Schmucke was furious. He behaved like a dog that watches 
 by his dead master's body, and shows his teeth at all who try 
 to touch it. La Sauvage grew impatient. She grasped him, 
 set him in the armchair, and held him down with herculean 
 strength. 
 
 "Go on, child; sew him in his shroud," she said, turning 
 to Mme. Cantinet. 
 
 As soon as this operation was completed, La Sauvage set 
 Schmucke back in his place at the foot of the bed. 
 
 " Do you understand? " said she. " The poor dead man 
 lying there must be done up, there is no help for it." 
 
 Schmucke began to cry. The women left him and took 
 possession of the kitchen, whither they brought all the neces- 
 saries in a very short time. La Sauvage made out a prelimi- 
 nary statement accounting for three hundred and sixty francs, 
 and then proceeded to prepare a dinner for four persons. 
 And what a dinner ! A fat goose (the cobbler's pheasant) by 
 way of a substantial roast, an omelette with preserves, a salad, 
 and the inevitable soup the quantities of the ingredients for 
 this last being so excessive that the soup was more like a 
 strong meat-jelly. 
 
 At nine o'clock the priest, sent by the curate to watch by 
 the dead, came in with Cantinet, who brought four tall wax- 
 candles and some tapers. In the death-chamber Schmucke 
 was lying with his arms about the body of his friend, holding 
 him in a tight clasp ; nothing but the authority of religion
 
 876 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 availed to separate him from his dead. Then the priest settled 
 himself comfortably in the easy-chair and read his prayers ; 
 while Schmucke, kneeling beside the couch, besought God to 
 work a miracle and unite him to Pons, so that they might be 
 buried in the same grave ; and Mme. Cantinet went on her 
 way to the Temple to buy a pallet and complete bedding for 
 Mme. Sauvage. The twelve hundred and fifty francs were 
 regarded as plunder. At eleven o'clock Mme. Cantinet came 
 in to ask if Schmucke would not eat a morsel, but with a 
 gesture he signified that he wished to be left in peace. 
 
 "Your supper is ready, Monsieur Pastelot," she said, 
 addressing the priest, and they went. 
 
 Schmucke, left alone in the room, smiled to himself like a 
 madman free at last to gratify a desire like the longing of 
 pregnancy. He flung himself down beside Pons, and yet again 
 he held his friend in a long, close embrace. At midnight the 
 priest came back and scolded him, and Schmucke returned to 
 his prayers. At daybreak the priest went, and at seven o'clock 
 in the morning the doctor came to see Schmucke, and spoke 
 kindly and tried hard to persuade him to eat, but the German 
 refused. 
 
 " If you do not eat now you will feel very hungry when you 
 come back," the doctor told him, "for you must go to the 
 mayor's office and take a witness with you, so that the registrar 
 may issue a certificate of death." 
 
 "/ must go !" cried Schmucke in frightened tones. 
 
 "Who else? You must go, for you were the one person 
 who saw him die." 
 
 "Mein legs vill nicht carry me," pleaded Schmucke, im- 
 ploring the doctor to come to the rescue. 
 
 " Take a coach," the hypocritical doctor blandly suggested. 
 " I have given notice already. Ask some one in the house to 
 go with you. The two women will look after the place while 
 you are away." 
 
 No one imagines how the requirements of the law jar upon
 
 COUSIN PONS. 377 
 
 a heartfelt sorrow. The thought of it is enough to make one 
 turn from civilization and choose rather the customs of the 
 savage. At nine o'clock that morning Mme. Sauvage half- 
 carried Schmucke downstairs, and from the hack he was obliged 
 to beg Remonencq to come with him to the registrar as a 
 second witness. Here in Paris, in this land of ours besotted 
 with Equality, the inequality of conditions is glaringly apparent 
 everywhere and in everything. The immutable tendency of 
 things peeps out even in the practical aspects of death. In 
 well-to-do families, a relative, a friend, or a man of business 
 spares the mourners these painful details ; but in this, as in the 
 matter of taxation, the whole burden falls heaviest upon the 
 shoulders of the poor. 
 
 "Ah ! you have good reason to regret him," said Remon- 
 encq in answer to the poor martyr's moan; "he was a very 
 good, a very honest man, and he has left a fine collection 
 behind him. But being a foreigner, sir, do you know that 
 you are like to find yourself in a great predicament for every- 
 body says that Monsieur Pons left everything to you? " 
 
 Schmucke was not listening. He was sounding the dark 
 depths of sorrow that border upon madness. There is such a 
 thing as tetanus of the soul. 
 
 "And you would do well to find some one some man 
 of business to advise you and act for you," pursued Re- 
 monencq. 
 
 "Ein mann of pizness ! " echoed Schmucke. 
 
 " You will find that you will want some one to act for you. 
 If I were you, I should take an experienced man, somebody 
 well known in the quarter, a man you can trust. I always go 
 to Tabareau myself for my bits of affairs he is the bailiff. If 
 you give his clerk power to act for you, you need not trouble 
 yourself any further." 
 
 Remonencq and La Cibot, prompted by Fraisier, had agreed 
 beforehand to make a suggestion which stuck in Schmucke's 
 memory ; for there are times in our lives when grief, as it were,
 
 378 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 congeals the mind by arresting all its functions, and any 
 chance impression made at such moments is retained by a 
 frost-bound memory. Schmucke heard his companion with 
 such a fixed, mindless stare, that Remonencq said no more. 
 
 "If he is always to be idiotic like this," thought Remon- 
 encq, " I might easily buy the whole bag of tricks up yonder 
 for a hundred thousand francs ; if it is really his. Here we 
 are at the mayor's office, sir." 
 
 Remonencq was obliged to take Schmucke out of the coach 
 and to half-carry him to the registrar's department, where a 
 wedding-party was assembled. Here they had to wait for 
 their turn, for, by no very uncommon chance, the clerk had 
 five or six certificates to make out that morning; and here it 
 was appointed that poor Schmucke should surfer excruciating 
 anguish. 
 
 " Monsieur is Monsieur Schmucke?" remarked a person in 
 a suit of black, reducing Schmucke to stupefaction by the 
 mention of his name. He looked up with the same blank, 
 unseeing eyes that he had turned upon Remonencq, who now 
 interposed. 
 
 " What do you want with him ? " he said. " Just leave him 
 in peace; you can see plainly that he is in trouble." 
 
 " The gentleman has just lost his friend, and proposes, no 
 doubt, to do honor to his memory, being, as he is, the sole 
 heir. The gentleman, no doubt, will not haggle over it ; he 
 will buy a piece of ground outright for a grave. And as Mon- 
 sieur Pons was such a lover of the arts, it would be a great 
 pity not to put Music, Painting, and Sculpture* on his tomb 
 three handsome full-length figures, weeping " 
 
 Remonencq waved the speaker away, in Auvergnat fashion, 
 but the man replied with another gesture, which, being inter- 
 preted, means "Don't spoil sport;" a piece of commercial 
 freemasonry, as it were, which the dealer understood. 
 
 "I represent the firm of Sonet & Company, monumental 
 stonemasons ; Sir Walter Scott would have dubbed me Young
 
 COUSIN PONS. 379 
 
 Mortality," continued this person. "If you, sir, should de- 
 cide to intrust your orders to us, we would spare you the 
 trouble of the journey to purchase the ground necessary for 
 the interment of a friend lost to the arts " 
 
 At this Remonencq nodded assent, and jogged Schmucke's 
 elbow. 
 
 " Every day we receive orders from families to arrange all 
 formalities," continued he of the black coat, thus encouraged 
 by Remonencq. "In the first moment of bereavement, the 
 heir-at-law finds it very difficult to attend to such matters, and 
 we are accustomed to perform these little services for our cli- 
 ents. Our charges, sir, are on a fixed scale, so much per 
 foot, freestone or marble. Family vaults a specialty. We 
 undertake everything at the most moderate prices. Our firm 
 executed the magnificent monument erected to the fair Esther 
 Gobseck and Lucien de Rubempre, one of the finest orna- 
 ments of Pere-Lachaise. We only employ the best workmen, 
 and I must warn you, sir, against small contractors who turn 
 out nothing but trash," he added, seeing that another person 
 in a black suit was coming up to say a word for another firm 
 of marble-workers. 
 
 It is often said that "death is the end of a journey," but 
 the aptness of the simile is realized most fully in Paris. Any 
 arrival, especially of a person of condition, upon the "dark 
 brink," is hailed in much the same way as the traveler recently 
 landed is hailed by hotel touts and pestered with their recom- 
 mendations. With the exception of a few philosophically 
 minded persons, or here and there a family secure of handing 
 down a name to posterity, nobody thinks beforehand of the 
 practical aspects of death. Death always comes before he is 
 expected ; and, from a sentiment easy to understand, the heirs 
 usually act as if the event were impossible. For which reason, 
 almost every one that loses father or mother, wife or child, is 
 immediately beset by scouts that profit by the confusion caused 
 by grief to snare orders. In former days, agents for monu-
 
 380 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 ments used to live round about the famous cemetery of Pere- 
 Lachaise, and were gathered together in a single thoroughfare 
 which should by rights have been called the Street of Tombs ; 
 issuing thence, they fell upon the relatives of the dead as they 
 came from the cemetery, or even at the grave-side. But com- 
 petition and the spirit of speculation induced them to spread 
 themselves farther and farther afield, till descending into Paris 
 itself they reached the very precincts of the mayor's office. 
 Indeed, the stonemason's agent has often been known to 
 invade the house of mourning with a design for the sepulchre 
 in his hand. 
 
 "I am in treaty with this gentleman," said the repre- 
 sentative of the firm of Sonet to another agent who came 
 up. 
 
 "Pons deceased! " called the clerk at this moment. 
 
 " Where are the witnesses ? " 
 
 "This way, sir," said the stonemason's agent, this time 
 addressing Remonencq. 
 
 Schmucke stayed where he had been placed on the bench, 
 an inert mass. Remonencq begged the agent to help him, 
 and together they pulled Schmucke toward the balustrade, 
 behind which the registrar shelters himself from the mourn- 
 ing public. Remonencq, Schmucke's Providence, was assisted 
 by Dr. Poulain, who filled in the necessary information as to 
 Pons' age and birthplace ; the German knew but one thing 
 that Pons was his friend. So soon as the signatures were 
 affixed, Remonencq and the doctor (followed by the stone- 
 mason's man), put Schmucke into a coach, the desperate agent 
 whisking in afterward, bent upon taking a definite order. 
 
 La Sauvage, on the lookout in the gateway, half-carried 
 Schmucke's almost unconscious form upstairs. Remonencq 
 and the agent went up with her. 
 
 " He will be ill ! " exclaimed the agent, anxious to make 
 an end of the piece of business which, according to him, was 
 in progress.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 381 
 
 " I should think he will ! " returned Mme. Sauvage. " He 
 has been crying for twenty-fours on end, and he would not take 
 anything. There is nothing like grief for giving one a sinking 
 in the stomach." 
 
 "My dear client," urged the representative of the firm of 
 Sonet, "do take some broth. You have so much to do; 
 some one must go to the Hotel de Ville to buy the ground in 
 the cemetery on which you mean to erect a monument to per- 
 petuate the memory of the friend of the arts, and bear record 
 to your gratitude." 
 
 "Why, there is no sense in this!" added Mme. Cantinet, 
 conning in with broth and bread. 
 
 " If you are as weak as this, you ought to think of finding 
 some one to act for you," added Remonencq, " for you have a 
 good deal on your hands, my dear sir. There is the funeral 
 to order. You would not have your friend buried like a 
 pauper ! " 
 
 "Come, come, my dear sir," put in La. Sauvage, seizing 
 a moment when Schmucke laid his head back in the great 
 chair to pour a spoonful of soup into his mouth. She fed 
 him as if he had been a child, and almost in spite of himself. 
 
 " Now, if you were wise, sir, since you are inclined to give 
 yourself up quietly to grief, you would find some one to act 
 for you " 
 
 "As you are thinking of raising a magnificent monument 
 to the memory of your friend, sir, you have only to leave it 
 all to me; I will undertake " 
 
 " "What is all this ? What is all this? " asked La Sauvage. 
 "Has Monsieur Schmucke ordered something? Who may 
 you be ? " 
 
 " I represent the firm of Sonet, my dear madame, the big- 
 gest monumental stonemasons in Paris," said the person in 
 black, handing a business card to the stalwart Sauvage. 
 
 " Very well, that will do. Some one will go to you when 
 the time comes; but you must not take advantage of the gen-
 
 382 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 tleman's condition now. You can quite see that he is not 
 himself " 
 
 The agent led her out upon the landing. 
 
 "If you will undertake to get the order for us," he said 
 confidentially, " I am empowered to offer you forty francs." 
 
 Mme. Sauvage grew placable. " Very well, let me have 
 your address," said she. 
 
 Schmucke meantime being left to himself, and feeling the 
 stronger for the soup and bread that he had been forced to 
 swallow, returned at once to Pens' room, and to his prayers. 
 He had lost himself in the fathomless depths of sorrow, when 
 a voice sounding in his ears drew him back from the abyss of 
 grief, and a young man in a suit of black returned for the 
 eleventh time to the charge, pulling the poor, tortured victim's 
 coat-sleeve until he listened. 
 
 "Sir!" said he. 
 
 "Vat ees it now?" 
 
 " Sir ! we owe a supreme discovery to Dr. Gannal : we do 
 not dispute his fame, he has worked the miracles of Egypt 
 afresh ; but there have been improvements made upon his 
 system. We have obtained surprising results. So, if you 
 would like to see your friend again, as he was when he was 
 alive " 
 
 "See him again!" cried Schmucke. "Shall he speak 
 to me?" 
 
 "Not exactly. Speech is the only thing wanting," con- 
 tinued the embalmer's agent. "But he will remain as he is 
 after embalming for all eternity. The operation is over in a 
 few seconds. Just an incision in the carotid artery and an 
 injection. But it is high time ; if you wait one single quarter 
 of an hour, sir, you will not have the sweet satisfaction of 
 preserving the body " 
 
 " Go to der teufel ! Bons is ein spirit und dat spirit is in 
 hefn." 
 
 " That man has no gratitude in his composition," remarked
 
 COUSIN PONS. 383 
 
 the youthful agent of one of the famous Gannal's rivals; " he 
 will not embalm his friend." 
 
 The words were spoken under the archway, and addressed 
 to La Cibot, who had just submitted her beloved to the pro- 
 cess. 
 
 " What would you have, sir ! " she said. " He is the heir, 
 the universal legatee. As soon as they get what they want, 
 the dead are nothing to them." 
 
 An hour later, Schmucke saw Mme. Sauvage come into the 
 room, followed by another man in a suit of black, a workman 
 to all appearance. 
 
 " Cantinet has been so obliging as to send this gentleman, 
 sir," she said ; " he is a coffin-maker to the parish." 
 
 The coffin-maker made his bow with a sympathetic and 
 compassionate air, but none the less he had a business-like 
 look, and seemed to know that he was indispensable. He 
 turned an expert's eye upon the dead. 
 
 "How does the gentleman wish 'it' to be made? Deal, 
 plain oak, or oak lead-lined ? Oak with a lead lining is the 
 best style. The body is a stock size " he felt for the feet 
 and proceeded to take the measure "one metre seventy!" 
 he added. "You will be thinking of ordering the funeral 
 service at the church, sir, no doubt ? " 
 
 Schmucke looked at him as a dangerous madman might 
 look before striking a blow. La Sauvage put in a word. 
 
 " You ought to find somebody to look after all these things," 
 she said. 
 
 "Yes " the victim murmured at length. 
 
 "Shall I fetch Monsieur Tabareau? for you will have a 
 good deal on your hands before long. Monsieur Tabareau is 
 the most honest man in the quarter, you know." 
 
 " Yes. Mennesir Dapareau ! Somepody vas speaking of 
 him chust now " said Schmucke, completely beaten. 
 
 "Very well. You can be quiet, sir, and give yourself up 
 to grief, when you have seen your deputy."
 
 384 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 It was nearly two o'clock when Monsieur Tabareau's head- 
 clerk, a young man who aimed at a bailiff's career, modestly 
 presented himself. Youth has wonderful privileges ; no one 
 is alarmed by youth. This young man, Villemot by name, 
 sat down by Schmucke's side and waited his opportunity to 
 speak. His diffidence touched Schmucke very much. 
 
 "I am Monsieur Tabareau's head-clerk, sir," he said ; " he 
 sent me here to take charge of your interests, and to superin- 
 tend the funeral arrangements. Is this your wish? " 
 
 "You cannot safe my life, I haf not long to lif; but you 
 vill leaf me in beace ! " 
 
 " Oh ! you shall not be disturbed," said Villemot. 
 
 " Ver' goot. Vat must I do for dat ? " 
 
 " Sign this paper appointing Monsieur Tabareau to act for 
 you in all matters relating to the settlement of the affairs of 
 the deceased. ' ' 
 
 " Goot ! gif it to me," said Schmucke, anxious only to sign 
 it at once. 
 
 " No, I must read it over to you first." 
 
 "Read it ofer." 
 
 Schmucke paid not the slightest attention 'to the reading of 
 the power of attorney, but he set his name to it. The young 
 clerk took Schmucke's orders for the funeral, the interment, 
 and the burial service; undertaking that he should not be 
 troubled again in any way, nor asked for money. 
 
 "I vould gif all dat I haf to pe left in beace," said the un- 
 happy man. And once more he knelt beside the dead body 
 of his friend. 
 
 Fraisier had triumphed. Villemot and La Sauvage com- 
 pleted the circle which he had traced about Pens' heir. 
 
 There is no sorrow that sleep cannot overcome. Toward 
 the end of the day La Sauvage, coming in, found Schmucke 
 stretched asleep at the bed-foot. She carried him off, put 
 him to bed, tucked him in maternally, and till the morning 
 Schmucke slept.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 385 
 
 When he awoke, or rather when the truce was over, and he 
 again became conscious of his sorrows, Pons' coffin lay under 
 the gateway in such state as a third-class funeral may claim, 
 and Schmucke seeking vainly for his friend, wandered from 
 room to room, across vast spaces, as it seemed to him, empty 
 of everything save hideous memories. La Sauvage took him 
 in hand, much as a nurse manages a child ; she made him 
 take his breakfast before starting for the church ; and while 
 the poor sufferer forced himself to eat, she discovered, with 
 lamentations worthy of Jeremiah, that he had not a black coat 
 in his possession. La Cibot took entire charge of his ward- 
 robe ; since Pons fell ill his apparel, like his dinner, had been 
 reduced to the lowest terms to a couple of coats and two 
 pairs of trousers. 
 
 "And you are going just as you are to Monsieur Pons' 
 funeral ? It is an unheard-of thing ; the whole quarter will 
 cry shame upon us ! " 
 
 " Und how vill you dat I go?" 
 
 "Why, in mourning " 
 
 " Mourning?" 
 
 "It is the proper thing." 
 
 " Der bropper ding ! confound all dis stupid nonsense ! " 
 
 cried poor Schmucke, driven to the last degree of exasperation 
 which a childlike soul can reach under stress of sorrow. 
 
 "Why, the man is a monster of ingratitude!" said La 
 Sauvage, turning to a person who just then appeared. At the 
 sight of this functionary Schmucke shuddered. The new- 
 comer wore a splendid suit of black, black knee-breeches, 
 black silk stockings, a pair of white cuffs, an extremely cor- 
 rect white muslin tie, and white gloves. A silver chain with 
 a coin attached ornamented his person. A typical official, 
 stamped with the official expression of decorous gloom, an 
 ebony wand in his hand by way of insignia of office, he stood 
 waiting with a three-cornered hat adorned with the tricolor 
 cockade under his arm. 
 25
 
 386 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "I am the master of the ceremonies," this person remarked 
 in a subdued voice. 
 
 Accustomed daily to superintend funerals, to move among 
 families plunged in one and the same kind of tribulation, real 
 or feigned, this man, like the rest of his fraternity, spoke in 
 hushed and soothing tones; he was decorous, polished, and 
 formal, like an allegorical stone figure of Death. 
 
 Schmucke quivered through every nerve as if he were con- 
 fronting his executioner. 
 
 "Is this gentleman the son, brother, or father of the 
 deceased ? ' ' inquired the official. 
 
 "I am all dat und more pesides I am his frient," said 
 Schmucke through a torrent of weeping. 
 
 "Are you his heir ? " 
 
 "Heir? " repeated Schmucke. " Noding matters to 
 
 me more in dis vorld," returning to his attitude of hopeless 
 sorrow. 
 
 "Where are the relatives, the friends?" asked the master 
 of the ceremonies. 
 
 " All here ! " exclaimed the German, indicating the pictures 
 and rarities. " Not von of dem haf efer gifn bain to mein 
 boor Bons. Here ees everydings dot he lofed, after me." 
 
 "He is off his head, sir," put in La Sauvage. "It is 
 useless to listen to him." 
 
 Schmucke had taken his seat again, and looked as vacant as 
 before ; he dried his eyes mechanically. Villemot came up 
 at that moment ; he had ordered the funeral, and the master 
 of the ceremonies, recognizing him, made an appeal to the 
 new-comer. 
 
 "Well, sir, it is time to start. The hearse is here; but I 
 have not often seen such a funeral as this. Where are the 
 relatives and friends?" 
 
 "We have been pressed for time," replied Villemot. 
 " This gentleman was in such deep grief that he could think 
 of nothing. And there is only one relative."
 
 COUSIN PONS. 387 
 
 The master of the ceremonies looke^ compassionately at 
 Schmucke ; this expert in sorrow knew real grief when he saw 
 it. 
 
 He went across to him. 
 
 " Come, take heart, my dear sir. Think of paying honor 
 to your friend's memory." 
 
 "We forgot to send out cards; but I took care to send a 
 special message to Monsieur le President de Marville, the one 
 relative that I mentioned to you. There are no friends. 
 Monsieur Pons was conductor of an orchestra at a theatre, but 
 I do not think that any one will come. This gentleman is 
 the universal legatee, I believe." 
 
 "Then he ought to be chief mourner," said the master of 
 the ceremonies. "Have you not a black coat?" he con- 
 tinued, noticing Schmucke's costume. 
 
 "lam all in plack insite ! " poor Schmucke replied in 
 heart-rending tones; " so plack it is dot I feel death in me. 
 Gott in hefn is going to haf pity upon me ; He vill send me 
 to mein frient in der grafe, und I dank Him for it " 
 
 He clasped his hands. 
 
 " I have told our management before now that we ought to 
 have a wardrobe department and lend the proper mourning 
 costumes on hire," said the master of the ceremonies, address- 
 ing Villemot ; " it is a want that is more and more felt every 
 day, and we have even now introduced improvements. But 
 as this gentleman is chief mourner he ought to wear a cloak, 
 and this one that I have brought with me will cover him from 
 head to foot ; no one need know that he is not in proper 
 mourning costume. Will you be so kind as to rise?" 
 
 Schmucke rose, but he tottered on his feet. 
 
 " Support him," said the master of the ceremonies, turning 
 to Villemot ; " you are his legal representative." 
 
 Villemot held Schmucke's arm while the master of the cer- 
 emonies invested Schmucke with the ample, dismal-looking 
 garment worn by heirs-at-law in the procession to and from
 
 388 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 the house and the church. He tied the black silken cords 
 under the chin, and Schmucke as heir was in " full dress." 
 
 "And now comes a great difficulty," continued the master 
 of the ceremonies; "we want four bearers for the pall. If 
 nobody comes to the funeral, who is to fill the corners ? It 
 is half- past ten already," he added, looking at his watch; 
 " they are waiting for us at the church." 
 
 "Oh! here comes Fraisier ! " Villemot exclaimed, very 
 imprudently ; but there was no one to hear the tacit confes- 
 sion of complicity. 
 
 "Who is this gentleman?" inquired the master of the 
 ceremonies. 
 
 " Oh ! he comes on behalf of the family." 
 
 "Whose family?" 
 
 "The disinherited family. He is Monsieur Camusot de 
 Marville's representative." 
 
 "Good," said the master of the ceremonies, with a satis- 
 fied air. " We shall have two pall-bearers at any rate you 
 and he." 
 
 And, happy to find two of the places filled up, he took out 
 some wonderful white buckskin gloves, and politely presented 
 Fraisier and Villemot with a pair apiece. 
 
 "If you two gentlemen will be so good as to act as pall- 
 bearers " said he. 
 
 Fraisier, in black from head to foot, pretentiously dressed, 
 with his white tie and official air, was a sight to shudder at ; 
 he embodied a hundred briefs. 
 
 "Willingly, sir," said he. 
 
 "If only two more persons will come, the four corners will 
 be filled up," said the master of the ceremonies. 
 
 At that very moment the indefatigable representative of the 
 firm of Sonet came up, and closely following him, the one 
 man who remembered Pons and thought of paying him a last 
 tribute of respect. This was a supernumerary at the theatre, 
 the man who put out the scores on the music-stands for the
 
 COUSIN PONS. 389 
 
 orchestra. Pons had been wont to give him a five-franc piece 
 once a month, knowing that he had a wife and family. 
 
 "Oh, Dobinard (Topinard) ! " Schmucke cried out at the 
 sight of him, "you love Bons ! " 
 
 "Why, I have come to ask news of Monsieur Pons every 
 morning, sir." 
 
 "Efery morning! boor Dobinard!" and Schmucke 
 squeezed the man's hand. 
 
 " But they took me for a relation, no doubt, and did not 
 like my visits at all. I told them that I belonged to the 
 theatre and came to inquire after Maitre Pons; but it was no 
 good. They saw through that dodge, they said. I asked to 
 see the poor dear man, but they never would let me come 
 upstairs." 
 
 " Dat apominable Zipod! " said Schmucke, squeezing Topi- 
 nard's horny hand to his heart. 
 
 "He was the best of men, that good Monsieur Pons. 
 Every month he used to give me five francs. He knew that I 
 had three children and a wife. My wife has gone to the 
 church." 
 
 " I shall difide mein pread mit you," cried Schmucke, in his 
 joy at finding at his side some one who loved Pons. 
 
 " If this gentleman will take a corner of the pall, we shall 
 have all four filled up," said the master of the ceremonies. 
 
 There had been no difficulty over persuading the agent for 
 monuments. He took a corner the more readily when he was 
 shown the handsome pair of gloves which, according to 
 custom, was to be his property. 
 
 " A quarter to eleven ! We absolutely must go down. 
 They are waiting for us at the church." 
 
 The six persons thus assembled went two-and-two down the 
 staircase. 
 
 The cold-blooded lawyer remained a moment to speak to 
 the two women on the landing. " Stop here, and let nobody 
 come in," he said, "especially if you wish to remain in
 
 390 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 charge, Madame Cantinet. Aha ! two francs a day, you 
 know ! " 
 
 By a coincidence in nowise extraordinary in Paris, two 
 hearses were waiting at the door and two coffins standing 
 under the archway ; Cibot's funeral was to take place at the 
 same hour. Nobody came to pay any tribute of affection to 
 the "deceased friend of the arts," lying in state among the 
 lighted tapers, but every porter in the neighborhood sprinkled 
 a drop of holy water upon the second bier. And this con- 
 trast between the crowd at Cibot's funeral and the solitary 
 state in which Pons was lying was made even more striking in 
 the street. Schmucke was the only mourner that followed 
 Pons' coffin ; Schmucke, supported by one of the undertaker's 
 men, for he tottered at every step. From the Rue de Nor- 
 mandie to the Rue d'Orleans and the church of Saint- 
 Francois the two r "nerals went between a double row of 
 curious onlookers, for everything (as was said before) makes a 
 sensation in the quarter. Every one remarked the splendor 
 of the white funeral car, with a big embroidered P suspended 
 on a hatchment, and the one solitary mourner behind it; 
 while the cheap bier that came after it was followed by an 
 immense crowd. Happily, Schmucke was so bewildered by 
 the throng of idlers and the rows of heads in the windows 
 that he heard no remarks and only saw the faces through a 
 mist of tears. 
 
 "Oh, it is the nutcracker! " said one, "the musician you 
 know " 
 
 " Who can the pall-bearers be ? " 
 
 "Pooh! play-actors." 
 
 " I say, just look at poor old Cibot's funeral. There is one 
 worker the less. What a man ! he could never get enough 
 work ! " 
 
 " He never went out." 
 
 " He never kept Saint Monday." 
 
 " How fond he was of his wife ! "
 
 COUSIN PONS. 391 
 
 " Ah ! There is an unhappy woman ! " 
 
 Remonencq walked behind his victim's coffin. People 
 condoled with him on the loss of his neighbor. 
 
 The two funerals reached the church. Cantinet and the 
 doorkeeper saw that no beggars troubled Schmucke. Ville- 
 mot had given his word that Pons' heir should be left in peace; 
 he watched over his client, and gave the requisite sums ; and 
 Cibot's humble bier, escorted by sixty or eighty persons, drew 
 all the crowd after it to the cemetery. At the church-door 
 Pons' funeral procession mustered four mourning-coaches, 
 one for the priest and three for the relations; but one only was 
 required, for the representative of the firm of Sonet departed 
 during mass to give notice to his principal that the funeral was 
 on the way, so that the design for the monument might be 
 ready for the survivor at the gates of the cemetery. A single 
 coach sufficed for Fraisier, Villemot, Schmucke, and Topinard ; 
 but the remaining two, instead of returning to the undertaker, 
 followed in the procession to Pere-Lachaise a useless proces- 
 sion, not infrequently seen ; there are always too many coaches 
 when the dead are unknown beyond their own circle and there 
 is no crowd at the funeral. Dear, indeed, the dead must have 
 been in their lifetime if relative or friend will go with them so 
 far as the cemetery in this Paris, where every one would fain 
 have twenty-five hours in the day. But with the coachmen it 
 is different ; they lose their tips if they do not make the jour- 
 ney ; so, empty or full, the mourning-coaches go to church 
 and cemetery and return to the house for gratuities. A death 
 is a sort of drinking-fountain for an unimagined crowd of 
 thirsty mortals. The attendants at the church, the poor, 
 the undertaker's men, the drivers and sextons, are creatures 
 like sponges that dip into a hearse and come out again satu- 
 rated. 
 
 From the church-door, where he was beset with a swarm of 
 beggars (promptly dispersed by the beadle), to Pere-Lachaise, 
 poor Schmucke went as criminals went in old times from the
 
 392 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Palais de Justice to the Place de Greve. It was his own 
 funeral that he followed, clinging to Topinard's hand, to the 
 one living creature beside himself who felt a pang of real regret 
 for Pons* death. 
 
 As for Topinard greatly touched by the honor of the re- 
 quest to act as pall-bearer, content to drive in a carriage, the 
 possessor of a new pair of gloves it began to dawn upon him 
 that this was to be one of the great days of his life. Schmucke 
 was driven passively along the road, as some unlucky calf is 
 driven in a butcher's cart to the slaughter-house. Fraisier and 
 Villemot sat with their backs to the horses. Now, as those 
 know whose sad fortune it has been to accompany many of 
 their friends to their last resting-place, all hypocrisy breaks 
 down in the coach during the journey (often a very long one) 
 from the church to the eastern cemetery, to that one of the 
 burying-grounds of Paris in which all vanities, all kinds of 
 display, are met, so rich is it in sumptuous monuments. On 
 these occasions those who feel least begin to talk soonest, 
 and in the end the saddest listen, and their thoughts are 
 diverted. 
 
 "Monsieur le President had already started for the Court," 
 Fraisier told Villemot, " and I did not think it necessary to 
 tear him away from business ; he would have come too late in 
 any case. He is the next-of-kin ; but as he has been disin- 
 herited and Monsieur Schmucke gets everything, I thought 
 that if his legal representative were present it would be 
 enough." 
 
 Topinard lent an ear to this. 
 
 " Who was the queer customer that took the fourth corner? " 
 continued Fraisier. 
 
 " He is an agent for a firm of monumental stonemasons. 
 He would like an order for a tomb, on which he proposes to 
 put three sculptured marble figures Music, Painting, and 
 Sculpture shedding tears over the deceased." 
 
 "It is an idea," said Fraisier; "the old gentleman cer-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 393 
 
 tainly deserved that much ; but the monument would cost 
 seven or eight hundred francs." 
 
 "Oh! quite that!" 
 
 " If Monsieur Schmucke gives the order, it cannot affect 
 the estate. You might eat up a whole property with such ex- 
 penses. ' ' 
 
 " There would be a lawsuit, but you would gain it " 
 
 "Very well," said Fraisier, " then it will be his affair. It 
 would be a nice practical joke to play upon the monument- 
 makers," Fraisier added in Villemot's ear; "for if the will is 
 upset (and I can answer for that), or if there is no will at all, 
 who would pay them ? ' ' 
 
 Villemot grinned like a monkey, and the pair began to 
 talk confidentially, lowering their voices ; but the man from 
 the theatre, with his wits and senses sharpened in the world 
 behind the scenes, could guess at the nature of their discourse ; 
 in spite of the rumbling of the carriage and other hindrances, 
 he began to understand that these representatives of justice 
 were scheming to plunge poor Schmucke into difficulties; and 
 when at last he heard the ominous word "Clichy,"* the 
 honest and loyal servitor of the stage made up his mind to 
 watch over Pons' friend. 
 
 At the cemetery, where three square yards of ground had 
 been purchased through the good offices of the firm of Sonet 
 (Villemot having announced Schmucke's intention of erecting 
 a magnificent monument), the master of the ceremonies led 
 Schmucke through a curious crowd to the grave into which 
 Pons' coffin was about to be lowered ; but here, at the sight 
 of the square hole, the four men waiting with ropes to lower 
 the bier, and the clergy saying the last prayer for the dead at 
 the grave-side, something clutched tightly at the German's 
 heart. He fainted away. 
 
 Sonet's agent and M. Sonet himself came to help Topinard 
 to carry poor Schmucke into the marble-works hard by, where 
 * The old debtors' prison in the Rue de Clichy.
 
 894 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 Mme. Sonet and Mme. Vitelot (Sonet's partner's wife) were 
 eagerly prodigal of efforts to revive him. Topinard stayed. 
 He had seen Fraisier in conversation with Sonet's agent, and 
 Fraisier, in his opinion, had gallows-bird written on his ma- 
 levolent face. 
 
 An hour later, toward half-past two o'clock, the poor, in- 
 nocent German came to himself. Schmucke thought that he 
 had been dreaming for the past two days ; if he could only 
 wake, he should find Pons still alive. So many wet towels 
 had been laid on his forehead, he had been made to inhale 
 salts and vinegar to such an extent, that he opened his eyes at 
 last. Mme. Sonet made him take some meat-soup, for they 
 had put the pot on the fire at the marble-works. 
 
 " Our clients do not often take things to heart like this ; 
 still, it happens once in a year or two " 
 
 At last Schmucke talked of returning to the Rue de Nor- 
 mandie, and at this Sonet began at once. 
 
 "Here is the design, sir," he said; "Vitelot drew it ex- 
 pressly for you, and sat up last night to do it. And he has 
 been happily inspired, it will look fine " 
 
 "One of the finest in Pere-Lachaise ! " said little Mme. 
 Sonet. "But you really ought to honor the memory of a 
 friend who left you all his fortune." 
 
 The design, supposed to have been drawn on purpose, had 
 as a matter of fact been prepared for de Marsay, the famous 
 cabinet minister. His widow, however, had given the com- 
 mission to Stidmann ; people were disgusted with the tawdri- 
 ness of the project, and it was refused. The three figures at 
 that period represented the Three Days of July which brought 
 the eminent minister to power. Subsequently, Sonet and Vite- 
 lot had turned the Three Glorious Days lt les trots glorieuscs " 
 into the Army, Finance, and the Family, and sent in the 
 design for the sepulchre of the late lamented Charles Keller ; 
 and here again Stidmann took the commission. In the eleven 
 years that followed, the sketch had been modified to suit all
 
 COUSIN PONS. 395 
 
 kinds of requirements, and now in Vitelot's fresh tracing they 
 reappeared as Music, Sculpture, and Painting. 
 
 "It is a mere trifle when you think of the details and cost 
 of setting it up; for it will take six months," said Vitelot. 
 "Here is the estimate and the order-form seven thousand 
 francs, sketch in plaster not included." 
 
 "If Monsieur Schmucke would like marble," put in Sonet 
 (marble being his special department), "it would cost twelve 
 thousand francs, and monsieur would immortalize himself as 
 well as his friend." 
 
 Topinard turned to Vitelot. 
 
 " I have just heard that they are going to dispute the will," 
 he whispered, " and the relatives are likely to come by their 
 property. Go and speak to Monsieur Camusot, for this poor, 
 harmless creature has not a farthing." 
 
 " This is the kind of customer that you always bring us," 
 said Mme. Vitelot, beginning a quarrel with the agent. 
 
 Topinard led Schmucke way, and they returned home on 
 foot to the Rue de Normandie, for the mourning-coaches 
 had been sent back. 
 
 "Do not leaf me," Schmucke said, when Topinard had 
 seen him safe into Mme. Sauvage's hands, and wanted to go. 
 
 " It is four o'clock, dear Monsieur Schmucke. I must go 
 home to dinner. My wife is a box-opener she will not know 
 what has become of* me. The theatre opens at a quarter to 
 six, you know." 
 
 "Yes, I know but remember dat I am alone in die earth, 
 dat I h'af no frient. You dat haf shed a tear for Bons, en- 
 liden me ; I am in teep tarkness, und Bons said dat I vas in 
 der midst of shcoundrels." 
 
 " I have seen that plainly already ; I have just prevented 
 them from sending you to Clichy." 
 
 " Gligy / " repeated Schmucke ; " I do not understand." 
 
 "Poor man! Well, never mind, I will come to you. 
 Good-by."
 
 396 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "Goot-by; kom again soon," said Schmucke, dropping 
 half-dead with weariness. 
 
 "Farewell, mosieu," said Mme. Sauvage, and there was 
 something in her tone that struck Topinard. 
 
 "Oh, come, what is the matter now ? " he asked banteringly. 
 " You are attitudinizing like a traitor in a melodrama." 
 
 "Traitor yourself! Why have you come meddling here ? 
 Do you want to have a hand in the master's affairs, and 
 swindle him, eh?" 
 
 "Swindle him! Your very humble servant!" Topinard 
 answered with superb disdain. " I am only a poor super at a 
 theatre, but I am something of an artist, and you may as well 
 know that I never asked anything of anybody yet ! Who 
 asked anything of you? Who owes you anything? eh, old 
 lady ! " 
 
 "You are employed at a theatre, and your name is 
 
 "Topinard, at your service." 
 
 "Kind regards to all at home," said La Sauvage, "and my 
 compliments to your missus, if you are married, mister. 
 That was all I wanted to know." 
 
 "Why, what is the matter, dear?" asked Mme. Cantinet, 
 coming out. 
 
 " This, child stop here and look after the dinner while I 
 run round to speak to monsieur." 
 
 " He is down below, talking with poor Madame Cibot, 
 that is crying her eyes out," said Mme. Cantinet. 
 
 La Sauvage dashed down in such headlong haste that the 
 stairs trembled beneath her tread. 
 
 " Monsieur ! " she called, and drew him aside a few paces 
 to point out Topinard. 
 
 Topinard was just going away, proud at heart to have made 
 some return already to the man who had done him so many 
 a kindness. He had saved Pons' friend from a trap, by a 
 stratagem from that world behind the scenes in which every 
 one has more or less ready wit. And within himself he vowed
 
 COUSIN PONS. 397 
 
 to protect a musician in his orchestra from future snares set for 
 his simple sincerity. 
 
 " Do you see that little wretch? " said La Sauvage. " He 
 is a kind of honest man that has a mind to poke his nose into 
 Monsieur Schmucke's affairs." 
 
 " Who is he ? " asked Fraisier. 
 
 "Oh! he is a nobody." 
 
 " In business there is no such thing as a nobody." 
 
 " Oh, he is employed at the theatre," said she; "his name 
 is Topinard." 
 
 " Good, Madame Sauvage ! Go on like this, and you shall 
 have your tobacconist's store." 
 
 And Fraisier resumed his conversation with Mme. Cibot. 
 
 " So I say, my dear client, that you have not played openly 
 and above-board with me, and that one is not bound in any 
 way to a partner who cheats." 
 
 "And how have I cheated you! " asked La Cibot, hands 
 on hips. " Do you think that you will frighten me with your 
 sour looks and your frosty airs ! You look about for bad 
 reasons for breaking your promises, and you call yourself an 
 honest man ! Do you know what you are ? You are a black- 
 guard ! Yes ! yes ! scratch your arm ; but just pocket that, 
 mister " 
 
 " No words, and keep your temper, dearie. Listen to me. 
 You have been feathering your nest. I found this catalogue 
 this morning while we were getting ready for the funeral ; it is 
 all in old Pens' handwriting, and made out in duplicate. And 
 as it chanced, my eyes fell on this " 
 
 And opening the catalogue, he read 
 
 "No. 7. Magnificent portrait painted on marble, by Sebastian 
 del Piombo, in 1546. Sold by a family who had it removed 
 from Terni cathedral. The picture, which represents a Knight- 
 Templar kneeling in prayer, used to hang above a tomb of the 
 Rossi family with a companion portrait of a Bishop, afterward 
 purchased by an Englishman. The portrait might be attributed
 
 398 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 to Raphael, but for the date. This example is, to my mind, supe- 
 rior to the portrait of Baccio Bandinelli in the Musee ; the latter 
 is a little hard, while the Templar, being painted upon ' lavagna,' 
 or slate, has preserved its freshness of coloring." 
 
 "When I come to look for No. 7," continued Fraisier, "I 
 find a portrait of a lady, signed ' Chardin,' without a number 
 on it ! I went through the pictures with the catalogue while 
 the master of the ceremonies was making up the number of 
 pall-bearers, and found that eight of those indicated as works 
 of capital importance by Monsieur Pons had disappeared, and 
 eight paintings of no special merit, and without numbers, were 
 there instead. And, finally, one was missing altogether, a 
 little panel-painting by Metzu, described in the catalogue as a 
 masterpiece. ' ' 
 
 "And was / in charge of the pictures?" demanded L:i 
 Cibot. 
 
 " No ; but you were in a position of trust. You were Mon- 
 sieur Pons' housekeeper, you looked after his affairs, and he 
 has been robbed " 
 
 "Robbed! Let me tell you this, sir : Monsieur Schmucke 
 sold the pictures, by Monsieur Pons' orders, to meet expenses." 
 
 "And to whom?" 
 
 " To Messrs. Elie Magus and Remonencq." 
 
 " For how much?" 
 
 " I am sure I do not remember." 
 
 " Look here, my dear madame ; you have been feathering 
 your nest, and very snugly. I shall keep an eye upon you ; I 
 have you safe. Help me, I will say nothing ! In any case 
 you know that since you judged it expedient to plunder Mon- 
 sieur le President Camusot, you ought not to expect anything 
 from him." 
 
 " I was sure that this would all end in smoke for me," said 
 La Cibot, mollified by the words " I will say nothing." 
 
 Remonencq chimed in at this point. 
 
 " Here are you finding fault with Madame Cibot ; that is
 
 COUSIN PONS. 399 
 
 not right!" he said. "The pictures were sold by private 
 treaty between Monsieur Pons, Monsieur Magus, and me. 
 We waited for three days before we came to terms with the 
 deceased ; he slept on his pictures. We took receipts in proper 
 form : and if we gave Madame Cibot a few forty-franc pieces, 
 it is the custom of the trade we always do so in private 
 houses when we conclude a bargain. Ah ! my dear sir, if you 
 think to cheat a defenseless woman, you will not make a good 
 bargain ! Do you understand, mister lawyer ? E. Magus 
 rules the market, and if you do not come down off the high 
 horse, if you do not keep your word to Madame Cibot, I shall 
 wait till the collection is sold, and you shall see what you will 
 lose if you have Monsieur Magus and me against you ; we can 
 get the dealers in a ring. Instead of realizing seven or eight 
 hundred thousand francs, you will not so much as make two 
 hundred thousand." 
 
 " Good, good, we shall see. We are not going to sell ; or 
 if we do, it will be in London." 
 
 " We know London," said Remonencq. " Monsieur Magus 
 is as powerful there as at Paris." 
 
 " Good-day, madame ; I shall sift these matters to the 
 bottom," said Fraisier ''unless you continue to do as I tell 
 you," he added. 
 
 "You little pickpocket ! " 
 
 " Take care ! I shall be a justice of the peace before 
 long." And with threats understood to the full upon either 
 side, they separated. 
 
 " Thank you, Remonencq !" said La Cibot; "it is very 
 pleasant to a poor widow to find a champion." 
 
 Toward ten o'clock that evening, Gaudissart sent for Topi- 
 nard. The manager was standing with his back to the fire, 
 in a Napoleonic attitude a trick which he had learned since 
 he began to command his army of actors, dancers, figurants, 
 musicians, and stage-carpenters. He grasped his left-hand
 
 400 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 suspender with his right hand, always thrust into his vest ; 
 his head was flung far back, his eyes gazed out into space. 
 
 " Ah ! I say, Topinard, have you independent means ? " 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 " Are you on the lookout to better yourself somewhere 
 else?" 
 
 "No, sir " said Topinard, with a ghastly countenance. 
 
 " Why, hang it all, your wife takes the first row of boxes 
 out of respect to my predecessor, who came to grief; I gave 
 you the job of cleaning the lamps in the wings in the daytime, 
 and you put out the scores. And that is not all, either. 
 You get twenty sous for acting monsters and managing devils 
 when a hell is required. There is not a super that does not 
 covet your post, and there are those that are jealous of you, 
 my friend ; you have enemies in the theatre." 
 
 "Enemies ! " repeated Topinard. 
 
 " And you have three children ; the oldest takes children's 
 parts at fifty centimes " 
 
 "Sir! " 
 
 "Allow me to speak " thundered Gaudissart. "And 
 
 in your position, you want to leave " 
 
 Sir ! " 
 
 " You want to meddle in other people's business, and put 
 your finger into a will case. Why, you wretched man, you 
 would be crushed like an egg-shell ! My patron is his excel- 
 lency, Monseigneur le Comte Popinot, a clever man and a 
 man of high character, whom the King in his wisdom has 
 summoned back to the privy council. This statesman, this 
 great politician, has married his eldest son to a daughter of 
 Monsieur le President de Marville, one of the foremost men 
 among the high courts of justice ; one of the leading lights 
 of the law-courts. Do you know the law-courts? Very 
 good. Well, he is cousin and heir to Monsieur Pons, to our 
 old conductor whose funeral you attended this morning. I 
 do not blame you for going to pay the last respects to him,
 
 COUSIN PONS. 401 
 
 poor man. But if you meddle in Monsieur Schmucke's 
 affairs, you will lose your place. I wish very well to Mon- 
 sieur Schmucke, but he is in a delicate position with regard 
 to the heirs and as the German is almost nothing to me, and 
 the president and Count Popinot are a great deal, I recom- 
 mend you to leave the worthy German to get out of his diffi- 
 culties 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 can- 
 not 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. Yester- 
 day 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 ; the 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 
 26
 
 402 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 remark was Greek to Schmucke ; he gazed in dismay at his 
 three visitors. 
 
 "We have come at the request of Monsieur Fraisier, legal 
 representative of Monsieur Camusot de Marville, heir of the 
 late Pons " added the clerk. 
 
 " The collection is here in this great room and in the bed- 
 room of the deceased," remarked Fraisier. 
 
 " Very well, let us go into the next room. Pardon us, sir; 
 do not let us interrupt you 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. 
 
 "Monsieur 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 hem?" 
 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 
 Monsieur 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 Monsieur Villemot, Tabareau's 
 head-clerk, was acting for you, and if it was a matter of busi- 
 ness, I said, he might speak to Monsieur 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
 
 COUSIN PONS. 403 
 
 told him to ask Monsieur 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. Monsieur 
 Villemot will give them a piece of his mind. I have put my- 
 self in a passion once already with that abominable hussy, La 
 Cibot, a porter's wife that sets up to judge her lodgers, for- 
 sooth, and insists that you have filched the money from the 
 heirs ; you locked Monsieur 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 gentle- 
 men,' 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 Monsieur 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 cer- 
 tainly be confirmed by the court, and you will be put in pos- 
 session. 
 
 "You will have a fine fortune." 
 
 "I? Ein fein vordune?" cried Schmucke despairingly.
 
 404 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 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, Monsieur Schmucke, 
 you have a right to be present." 
 
 "No go in yourself." 
 
 " But where is the use of the seals Monsieur 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. 
 
 "Monsieur Schmucke is not in possession, madame ; he is 
 in Monsieur Pens' 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 buf- 
 foonery 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
 
 COUSIN PONS. 405 
 
 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 Monsieur Schmucke's own room," remonstrated 
 La Sauvage, springing in front of the door. 
 
 "We found the lease among the papers," Fraisier said ruth- 
 lessly ; " there is no mention of Monsieur Schmucke in it ; it is 
 taken out in Monsieur Pens' name only. The whole place, 
 and every room in it, is part of the estate. And beside " 
 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 re- 
 plied banteringly. "At this moment, if the legatee with- 
 draws everything that he declares to be his, we shall raise no 
 objections, but the room itself will be sealed. And Monsieur 
 Schmucke may lodge where he pleases." 
 
 "No," said Villemot ; "Monsieur 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.
 
 406 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 "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 as in a criminal case, by calling 
 witnesses. Do you mean to plunge into experts' fees and veri- 
 fications, 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 to- 
 bacco-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, ad- 
 dressing Fraisier. "The justice of the peace gives orders 
 here ; he is supreme." 
 
 "There are valuables in the room," put in the clerk. 
 
 "And beside," added the justice of the peace, "Monsieur 
 Schmucke is going out of his own free will." 
 
 " Did any one ever see such a client ! " Villemot cried in- 
 dignantly, 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 tigers' faces. I shall send som- 
 pody to vetch mein bits of dings."
 
 COUSIN PONS. 407 
 
 " 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 Pou- 
 lain ; he will be head-surgeon at the Quinze-Vingts."* 
 
 "We shall see. Good-day, Monsieur Fraisier," said the 
 justice of the peace with a friendly air. 
 
 "There is a man with a head on his shoulders," remarked 
 the justice's clerk. " That dog will go a long way." 
 
 By this time it was eleven o'clock. The old German went 
 like an automaton down the road along which Pons and he 
 had so often walked together. Wherever he went he saw 
 Pons, he almost thought that Pons was by his side ; and so 
 he reached the theatre just as his friend Topinard was coming 
 out of it after a morning spent in cleaning the lamps and 
 meditating on the manager's tyranny. 
 
 " Oh, shoost der ding for me ! " cried Schmucke, stopping 
 his acquaintance. " Dopinart ! you haf a lodging somveres, 
 eh?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " A home off your own ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Are you villing to take me for ein poarder ? Oh ! I shall 
 bay ver' veil ; I haf nine hundert vrancs of inkomm, und I 
 haf not ver' long to lif. I shall gif no drouble vatefer. I 
 
 * The Asylum founded by St. Louis for three hundred blind people.
 
 408 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 can eat onydings I only vant to shmoke mein bipe. Und 
 you are der only von dat haf shed a tear for Bons, mit me ; 
 und so, I lof you." 
 
 " I should be very glad, sir ; but, to begin with, Monsieur 
 Gaudissart has given me a proper wigging 
 
 " That is one way of saying that he combed my hair for 
 me." 
 
 "Combed your hair ? ' ' 
 
 " He gave me a scolding for meddling in your affairs. So 
 we must be very careful if you come to me. But I doubt 
 whether you will stay when you have seen the place ; you do 
 not know how we poor devils live." 
 
 " I should rader der boor home of a goot-hearted man dot 
 haf mourned Bons, dan der Duileries mit men dot haf ein 
 tiger's face. I haf shoost left tigers in Bons' house ; dey vill 
 eat up everydings - " 
 
 " Come with me, sir, and you shall see. But well, any- 
 how, there is a garret. Let us see what Madame Topinard 
 says." 
 
 Schmucke followed like a sheep, while Topinard led the 
 way into one of the squalid districts which might be called 
 the cancers of Paris a spot known as the Cit6 Bordin. It is 
 a slum out of the Rue de Bondy, a double row of houses run 
 up by the speculative builder, under the shadow of the huge 
 mass of the Porte Saint-Martin theatre. The pavement at the 
 higher end lies below the level of the Rue de Bondy ; at the 
 lower it falls away toward the Rue des Mathurins du Temple. 
 Follow its course and you find that it terminates in another 
 slum running at right angles to the first the Cit6 Bordin is, 
 in fact, a T-shaped blind alley. Its two streets thus arranged 
 contain some thirty houses, six or seven stories high ; and 
 every story, and every room in every story, is a workshop and 
 a warehouse for goods of every sort and description, for this 
 wart upon the face of Paris is a miniature Faubourg Saint-
 
 COUSTN PONS. 409 
 
 Antoine. Cabinet-work and brass-work, theatrical costumes, 
 blown glass, painted porcelain all the various fancy goods 
 known as r article Paris are made here. Dirty and produc- 
 tive like commerce, always full of traffic foot-passengers, 
 vans, and wagons the Cite Bordin is an unsavory-looking 
 neighborhood, with a seething population in keeping with the 
 squalid surroundings. It is a not unintelligent artisan popu- 
 lation, though the whole power of the intellect is absorbed by 
 the day's manual labor. Topinard, like every other inhab- 
 itant of the Cite Bordin, lived in it for the sake of the com- 
 paratively low rent, the cause of its existence and prosperity. 
 His sixth-floor lodging, in the second house to the left, looked 
 out upon the belt of green garden, still in existence, at the 
 back of three or four large mansions in the Rue de Bondy. 
 
 Topinard's apartment consisted of a kitchen and two bed- 
 rooms. The first was a nursery with two little deal bedsteads 
 and a cradle in it, the second was the bedroom, and the 
 kitchen did duty as a dining-room. Above, reached by a 
 short ladder, known among builders as a "trap-ladder," there 
 was a kind of garret, six feet high, with a sash-window let 
 into the roof. This room, given as a servant's bed-room, 
 raised the Topinards' establishment from mere "rooms" to 
 the dignity of a tenement, and the rent to a corresponding 
 sum of four hundred francs. An arched lobby, lighted from 
 the kitchen by a small round window, did duty as an ante- 
 chamber, and filled the space between the bedroom, the 
 kitchen, and house doors three doors in all. The rooms 
 were paved with bricks, and hung with a hideous wall-paper 
 at six sous a piece ; the chimneypieces that adorned them 
 were of the kind called capacities a shelf set on a couple of 
 brackets painted to resemble wood. Here in these three 
 rooms dwelt five human beings, three of them children. Any 
 one, therefore, can imagine how the walls were covered with 
 scores and scratches so far as an infant arm can reach. 
 
 Rich people can scarcely realize the extreme simplicity of
 
 410 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 a poor man's kitchen. A Dutch-oven, a kettle, a gridiron, a 
 saucepan, two or three dumpy cooking-pots, and a frying-pan 
 that was all. All the crockery in the place, white and 
 brown earthenware together, was not worth more than twelve 
 francs. Dinner was served on the kitchen table, which with 
 a couple of chairs and a couple of stools completed the furni- 
 ture. The stock of fuel was kept under the stove with a 
 funnel-shaped chimney, and in a corner stood the wash-tub 
 in which the family linen lay, often steeping over-night in 
 soapsuds. The nursery ceiling was covered with clothes- 
 lines, the walls were variegated with theatrical placards and 
 woodcuts from newspapers or advertisements. Evidently the 
 eldest boy, the owner of the school-books stacked in a corner, 
 was left in charge while his parents were absent at the theatre. 
 In many a French workingman's family, so soon as a child 
 reaches the age of six or seven, it plays the part of mother to 
 younger sisters and brothers. 
 
 From this bare outline, it may be imagined that the 
 Topinards, to use the hackneyed formula, were " poor but 
 honest." Topinard himself was verging on forty; Mme. 
 Topinard, once leader of a chorus mistress too, it was said, 
 of Gaudissart's predecessor was certainly thirty years old. 
 Lolotte had been a fine woman in her day ; but the misfor- 
 tunes of the previous management had told upon her to such 
 an extent that it had seemed to her to be both advisable and 
 necessary to contract a stage-marriage with Topinard. She 
 did not doubt but that, as soon as they could muster the sum 
 of a hundred and fifty francs, her Topinard would perform 
 his vows agreeably to the civil law, were it only to legitimize 
 the three children, whom he worshiped. Meantime, Mme. 
 Topinard sewed for the theatre wardrobe in the morning ; and 
 with prodigious effort, the brave couple made nine hundred 
 francs per annum between them. 
 
 "One more flight!" Topinard had twice repeated since 
 they reached the third floor. Schmucke, engulfed in his sor-
 
 COUSIN PONS. 411 
 
 row, did not so much as know whether he was going up or 
 coming down. 
 
 In another minute Topinard had opened the door ; but 
 before he appeared in his white workman's blouse Mme. Topi- 
 nard's voice rang from the kitchen 
 
 " There, there ! children, be quiet ! here comes papa ! " 
 
 But the children, no doubt, did as they pleased with papa, 
 for the oldest member of the little family, sitting astride a 
 broomstick, continued to command a charge of cavalry (a 
 reminiscence of the Cirque-Olympique), the second blew a 
 tin trumpet, while the third did its best to keep up with the 
 main body of the army. Their mother was at work on a 
 theatrical costume. 
 
 "Be quiet ! or I shall slap you ! " shouted Topinard in a 
 formidable voice ; then in an aside for Schmucke's benefit 
 "Always have to say that ! Here, little one," he continued, 
 addressing his Lolotte, " this is Monsieur Schmucke, poor 
 Monsieur Pons' friend. He does not know where to go, and 
 he would like to live with us. I told him that we were not 
 very spick and span up here, that we lived on the sixth floor, 
 and had only the garret to offer him ; but it was no use, he 
 would come " 
 
 Schmucke had taken the chair which the woman brought 
 him, and the children, stricken with sudden shyness, had 
 gathered together to give the stranger that mute, earnest, so 
 soon-finished scrutiny characteristic of childhood. For a 
 child, like a dog, is wont to judge by instinct rather than 
 reason-. Schmucke looked up ; his eyes rested on that charm- 
 ing little picture ; he saw the performer on the tin trumpet, a 
 little five-year-old maiden with wonderful golden hair. 
 
 "She looks like ein liddle German girl," said Schmucke, 
 holding out his arms to the child. 
 
 "Monsieur will not be very comfortable here," said Mme. 
 Topinard. " I would propose that he should have our room, 
 at once, but I am obliged to have the children near me."
 
 412 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 She opened the door as she spoke, and bade Schmucke 
 come in. Such splendor as their abode possessed was all con- 
 centrated here. Blue calico curtains with a white fringe hung 
 from the mahogany bedstead and adorned the window ; the 
 chest of drawers, bureau, and chairs, though all made of 
 mahogany, were neatly kept. The clock and candlesticks on 
 the mantel were evidently the gift of the bankrupt manager, 
 whose portrait, a truly frightful performance of Pierre Gras- 
 sou's, looked down upon the chest of drawers. The children 
 tried to peep in at the forbidden glories. 
 
 "Monsieur might be comfortable in here," said their 
 mother. 
 
 " No, no," Schmucke replied. " Eh ! I haf not ver' long 
 to lif, I only vant a corner to die in." 
 
 The door was closed, and the three went up to the garret. 
 " Dis is der ding for me," Schmucke cried at once. " Pefore 
 I lifd mit Bons, I vas nefer better lodged." 
 
 "Very well. A truckle-bed, a couple of mattresses, a 
 bolster, a pillow, a couple of chairs, and a table that is all 
 that you need to buy. That will not ruin you it may cost a 
 hundred and fifty francs, with the crockeryware and strip of 
 carpet for the bedside." 
 
 Everything was settled save the money, which was not 
 forthcoming. Schmucke saw that his new friends were very 
 poor, and, recollecting that the theatre was only a few steps 
 away, it naturally occurred to him to apply to the manager 
 for his salary. He went at once, and found Gaudissart in his 
 office. Gaudissart received him with the somewhat stiffly 
 polite manner which he reserved for professionals. Schmucke's 
 demand for a month's salary took him by surprise, but on 
 inquiry he found that it was due. 
 
 "Oh, confound it, my good man, a German can always 
 count, even if he has tears in his eyes. I thought that you 
 would have taken the thousand francs that I sent you into 
 account, as a final year's salary, and that we were quits."
 
 COUSIN PONS. 413 
 
 " We haf receifed nodings," said Schmucke ; " und gif I 
 kom to you, it ees because I am in der shtreet, und haf not 
 ein benny. How did you send us der ponus ? " 
 
 "By your portress." 
 
 "By Montame Zipod ! " exclaimed Schmucke. "She 
 killed Bons, she robbed him, she sold him she tried to purn 
 his vill she is a pad creature, a monster? " 
 
 " But, my good man, how come you to be out in the street 
 without a roof over your head or a penny in your pocket, 
 when you are the sole heir ? That does not necessarily follow, 
 as the saying is." 
 
 "They haf put me out at der door. I am a voreigner, I 
 know nodings of die laws." 
 
 " Poor man ! " thought Gaudissart, foreseeing the probable 
 end of the unequal contest. "Listen," he began, "do you 
 know what you ought to do in this business? " 
 
 " I haf ein man of pizness ! " 
 
 " Very good, come to terms at once with the next-of-kin ; 
 make them pay you a lump sum of money down and an annuity, 
 and you can live in peace " 
 
 " I ask noding more." 
 
 "Very well. Let me arrange it for you," said Gaudissart. 
 Fraisier had told him the whole story only yesterday, and he 
 thought that he saw his way to making interest out of the case 
 with the young Vicomtesse Popinot and her mother. He 
 would finish a dirty piece of work, and some day he would be 
 a privy councilor at least ; or so he told himself. 
 
 " I gtf you full powers." 
 
 " Well. Let us see. Now, to begin with," said Gaudis- 
 sart, Napoleon of the boulevard theatres, " to begin with, 
 
 here are a hundred crowns " (he took fifteen louis from 
 
 his purse and handed them to Schmucke). 
 
 "That is yours, on account of six months' salary. If you 
 leave the theatre, you can repay me the money. Now for 
 your budget. What are your yearly expenses ? How much
 
 414 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 do you want to be comfortable ? Come, now, scheme out a 
 life for a Sardanapalus " 
 
 "I only need two suits of clothes, von for der vinter, von 
 for der sommer." 
 
 "Three hundred francs," said Gaudissart. 
 
 " Shoes. Vourbairs." 
 
 "Sixty francs." 
 
 "Shtockings " 
 
 "A dozen pairs thirty-six francs." 
 
 " Half a tozzen shirts." 
 
 " Six calico shirts, twenty-four francs ; as many linen shirts, 
 forty-eight francs; let us say seventy-two. That makes four 
 hundred and sixty-eight francs altogether. Say five hundred 
 including cravats and pocket-handkerchiefs ; a hundred francs 
 for the laundress six hundred. And now, how much for 
 your board three francs a day ? ' ' 
 
 " No, it ees too much." 
 
 " After all, you want hats ; that brings it to fifteen hundred. 
 Five hundred more for rent ; that makes two thousand. If I 
 can get two thousand francs per annum for you, are you 
 willing? Good securities." 
 
 "Und mein tobacco." 
 
 " Two thousand four hundred, then. Oh ! Papa Schmucke, 
 do you call that tobacco ? Very well, the tobacco shall be 
 given in. So that is two thousand four hundred francs per 
 annum." 
 
 " Dat ees not all ! I should like some monny." 
 
 " Pin-money ! Just so ! Oh, these Germans ! And calls 
 himself an innocent, the old Robert Macaire ! " thought 
 Gaudissart. Aloud he said, "How much do you want? 
 But this must be the last." 
 
 " It ees to bay a zacred debt." 
 
 "A debt ! " said Gaudissart to himself. " What a shark it 
 is ! He is worse than an eldest son. He will invent a bill or 
 two next ! We must cut him short. This Fraisier canngj;
 
 COUSIN PONS. 415 
 
 take large views. What debt is this, my good man ? Speak 
 out. ' 
 
 "Dere vas but von man dot haf mourned Bons mit me. 
 He haf a tear liddle girl mit wunderschones haar ; it vas as if 
 I saw mine boor Deutschland dot I should nefer haf left. 
 Baris is no blace for die Germans ; dey laugh at dem ' ' (with 
 a little nod as he spoke, and the air of a man who knows 
 something of life in this world below). 
 
 " He is off his head," Gaudissart said to himself. And a 
 sudden pang of pity for this poor innocent before him brought 
 a tear to the manager's eyes. 
 
 "Ah ! you understand, Mennesir le Directeur ! Ver' goot. 
 Dat man mit die liddle taughter is Dobinard, vat tidies der 
 orchestra und lights die lamps. Bons vas fery fond of him, 
 und helped him. He vas der only von dat accombanied mein 
 only frient to die church und to die grafe. I vant dree 
 tausend vrancs for him, und dree tausend for die liddle von 
 dat " 
 
 " Poor fellow ! " said Gaudissart to himself. 
 
 Rough, self-made man though he was, he felt touched by 
 this nobleness of nature, by a gratitude for a mere trifle, as 
 the world views it ; though for the eyes of this divine inno- 
 cence the trifle, like Bossuet's cup of water, was worth more 
 than the victories of great captains. Beneath all Gaudissart's 
 vanity, beneath the fierce desire to succeed in life at all costs, 
 to rise to the social level of his old friend Popinot, there lay a 
 warm heart and a kindly nature. Wherefore he canceled his 
 too hasty judgments and went over to Schmucke's side. 
 
 " You shall have it all ! But I will do better still, my dear 
 Schmucke. Topinard is a good sort " 
 
 " Yes. I haf chust peen to see him in his boor home, vere 
 he ees happy mit his children " 
 
 " I will give him the cashier's place. Old Baudrand is 
 goinc to leave." 
 
 "Ah ! Gott pless you !" cried Schmucke.
 
 416 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 " Very well, my good, kind fellow, meet me at Berthier's 
 office about four o'clock this afternoon. Everything shall be 
 ready, and you shall be secured from want for the rest of your 
 days. You shall draw your six thousand francs, and you shall 
 have the same salary with Garangeot that you used to have 
 with Pons." 
 
 "No," Schmucke answered. "I shall not lif. I have no 
 heart for anydings; I feel that I am attacked " 
 
 " Poor lamb ! " Gaudissart muttered to himself as the Ger- 
 man took his leave. " But, after all, one lives on mutton ; 
 and, as the sublime Beranger says : ' Poor sheep ! you were 
 made to be shorn ; '" and he hummed the political squib by 
 way of giving vent to his feelings. Then he rang for the 
 office-boy. 
 
 " Call my carriage," he said. 
 
 " Rue de Hanovre," he told the coachman. 
 
 The man of ambitions by this time had reappeared ; he saw 
 the way to the Council of State lying straight before him. 
 
 And Schmucke ? He was busy buying flowers and cakes for 
 Topinard's children, and went home almost joyously. 
 
 " I am gifing die bresents " he said, and he smiled. It 
 
 was the first smile for three months, but any one who had 
 seen Schmucke's face would have shuddered to see it there. 
 
 " But dere is ein condition " 
 
 "It is too kind of you, sir," said the mother. 
 
 " De liddle girl shall gif me a kiss and put die flowers in 
 her hair, like die liddle German maidens " 
 
 "Olga, child, do just as the gentleman wishes," said the 
 mother, assuming an air of discipline. 
 
 "Do not scold mein liddle German girl," implored 
 Schmucke. It seemed to him that the little one was his dear 
 Germany. Topinard came in. 
 
 " Three porters are bringing up the whole bag of tricks," 
 he said.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 417 
 
 - Oh ! here are two hundred vrancs to bay for eferydings," 
 said Schmucke. " But, mein frient, your Montarae Dobinard 
 is ver' nice ; you shall marry her, is it not so ? I shall gif you 
 tausend crowns, and die liddle von shall haf tausend crowns 
 for her toury, and you shall infest it in her name. Und you 
 are not to pe ein zuper any more you are to pe de cashier at 
 de teatre " 
 
 "// instead of old Baudrand?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Who told you so?" 
 
 " Mennesir Gautissart ! ' 
 
 Oh ! it is enough to send one wild with joy ! Eh ! I say, 
 Rosalie, what a rumpus there will be at the theatre ! But it is 
 not possible " 
 
 " Our benefactor must not live in a garret " 
 
 " Pshaw ! for die few tays dat I haf to live, it ees fery kom- 
 fortable," said Schmucke. "Goot-py; I am going to der 
 zemetery, to see vat dey haf don mit Bons, und to order som 
 flowers for his grafe." 
 
 Mme. Camusot de Marville was consumed by the liveliest 
 apprehensions. At a council held with Fraisier, Berthier, and 
 Godeschal, the two last-named authorities gave it as their 
 opinion that it was hopeless to dispute a will drawn up by two 
 notaries in the presence of two witnesses, so precisely was the 
 instrument worded by Leopold Hannequin. Honest Godes- 
 chal said that even if Schmucke's own legal adviser should 
 succeed in deceiving him, he would find out the truth at last, 
 if it were only from some officious barrister, the gentlemen of 
 the robe being wont to perform such acts of generosity and 
 disinterestedness by way of self-advertisement. And the two 
 officials took their leave of the presidente with a parting cau- 
 tion against Fraisier, concerning whom they had naturally 
 made inquiries. 
 
 At that very moment Fraisier, straight from the affixing of 
 27
 
 418 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 the seals in the Rue de Normandie, was waiting for an interview 
 with Mme. de Marville. Berthier and Godeschal had suggested 
 that he should be shown into the study ; the whole affair was 
 too dirty for the president to look into (to use their own ex- 
 pression), and they wished to give Mme. de Marville their 
 opinion in Fraisier's absence. 
 
 "Well, madame, where are these gentlemen?" asked Frai- 
 sier, admitted to audience. 
 
 " They are gone. They advise me to give up," said Mme. 
 de Marville. 
 
 " Give up ! " repeated Fraisier, suppressed fury in his voice. 
 "Give up ! Listen to this, madame: 
 
 " 'At the request of and so forth (I will omit the for- 
 malities) ' Whereas, there has been deposited in the hands 
 
 of M. le President of the Court of First Instance, a will drawn 
 up by Maitres Leopold Hannequin and Alexandre Crottat, 
 notaries of Paris, and in the presence of two witnesses, the 
 Sieur= Brunner and Schwab, aliens domiciled at Paris, and 
 by the said will the Sieur Pons, deceased, has bequeathed his 
 property to one Sieur Schmucke, a German, to the prejudice 
 of his natural heirs : 
 
 " * Whereas, the applicant undertakes to prove that the said 
 will was obtained under undue influence and by unlawful 
 means ; and persons of credit are prepared to show that it was 
 the testator's intention to leave his fortune to Mile. Cecile, 
 daughter of the aforesaid Sieur de Marville, and the applicant 
 can show that the said will was extorted from the testator's 
 weakness, he being unaccountable for his actions at the time. 
 
 " 'Whereas as the Sieur Schmucke, to obtain a will in his 
 favor, sequestrated the testator, and prevented the family 
 from approaching the deceased during his last illness; and 
 his subsequent notorious ingratitude was of a nature to scan- 
 dalize the house and residents in the quarter who chanced to 
 witness it when attending the funeral of the porter at the testa- 
 tor's place of abode :
 
 COUSIN PONS. 419 
 
 " Whereas as still more serious charges, of which appli- 
 cant is collecting proofs, will be formally made before their 
 worships the judges : 
 
 " ' I, the undersigned Registrar of the Court, etal., on behalf 
 of the aforesaid, etc., have summoned the Sieur Schmucke, 
 pleading, etc., to appear before their worships the judges of 
 the first chamber of the Tribunal, and to be present when 
 application is made that the will received by Maitres Hanne- 
 quin and Crottat, being evidently obtained by undue influence, 
 shall be regarded as null and void in law ; and I, the under- 
 signed, on behalf of the aforesaid, etc., have likewise given 
 notice of protest, should the Sieur Schmucke as universal 
 legatee make application for an order to be put into posses- 
 sion of the estate, seeing that the applicant opposes such order, 
 and makes objection by his application bearing date of to- 
 day, of which a copy has been duly deposited with the Sieur 
 Schmucke, costs being charged to etc., etc.* 
 
 " I know the man, Madame la Presidente. He will come 
 to terms as soon as he reads this little love-letter. He will 
 consult Tabareau, and Tabareau will advise him to take our 
 terms. Are you going to give the thousand crowns per 
 annum ? " 
 
 " Certainly. I only wish I were paying the first installment 
 now." 
 
 " It will be done in three days. The summons will come 
 down upon him while he is stupefied with grief, for the poor 
 soul regrets Pons and is taking the death to heart." 
 
 " Can the application be withdrawn ? " inquired the lady. 
 
 " Certainly, madame. You can withdraw at any time you 
 may please." 
 
 " Very well, monsieur, let it be so go on ! Yes, the pur- 
 chase of land that you have arranged for me is worth the 
 trouble ; and, beside, I have managed Vitel's business he is 
 to retire, and you must pay Vitel's sixty thousand francs out 
 of Pons' property. So, you see, you must succeed "
 
 420 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 " Have you Vitel's resignation ? " 
 
 " Yes, monsieur. Monsieur Vitel has put himself in Mon- 
 sieur de Marville's hands." 
 
 " Very good, madame. I have already saved you sixty 
 thousand francs which I expected to give to that vile creature 
 Madame Cibot. But I still require the tobacconist's license 
 for the woman Sauvage, and an appointment to the vacant 
 place of head-physician at the Quinze-Vingts for my friend 
 Poulain." 
 
 "Agreed it is all arranged." 
 
 " Very well. There is no more to be said. Every one is 
 for you in this business, even Gaudissart, the manager of the 
 theatre. I went to look him up yesterday, and he under- 
 took to crush the workman who seemed likely to give us 
 trouble." 
 
 " Oh, I know Monsieur Gaudissart is devoted to the Popi- 
 nots." 
 
 Fraisier went out. Unluckily, he missed Gaudissart, and 
 the fatal summons was served forthwith. 
 
 If all covetous minds will sympathize with the presidente, 
 all honest folk will turn in abhorrence from her joy when 
 Gaudissart came twenty minutes later to report his conversa- 
 tion with poor Schmucke. She gave her full approval ; she 
 was obliged beyond all expression for the thoughtful way in 
 which the manager relieved her of any remaining scruples 
 by observations which seemed to her to be very sensible and 
 just. 
 
 "I thought as I came, Madame la Presidente, that the poor 
 devil would not know what to do with the money. 'Tis a 
 patriarchally simple nature. He is a child, he is a German, 
 he ought to be stuffed and put in a glass case like a waxen 
 image. Which is to say that, in my opinion, he is quite 
 puzzled enough already with his income of two thousand five 
 hundred francs, and here you are provoking him into extrava- 
 gance "
 
 COUSIN PONS. 421 
 
 "It is very generous of him to wish to enrich the poor 
 fellow who regrets the loss of our cousin," pronounced the 
 presidente. " For my own part, I am sorry for the little 
 squabble that estranged Monsieur Pons and me. If he had 
 come back again, all would have been forgiven. If you only 
 knew how my husband misses him ! Monsieur de Marville 
 received no notice of the death, and was in despair ; family 
 claims are sacred for him, he would have gone to the service 
 and the interment, and I myself should have been at the 
 mass ' ' 
 
 "Very well, fair lady," said Gaudissart. "Be so good as 
 to have the documents drawn up, and at four o'clock I will 
 bring this German to you. Please remember me to your 
 charming daughter the vicomtesse, and ask her to tell my 
 illustrious friend the great statesman, her good and excellent 
 father-in-law, how deeply I am devoted to him and his, and 
 ask him to continue his valued favors. I owe my life to his 
 uncle the judge, and my success in life to him ; and I should 
 wish to be bound to both you and your daughter by the high 
 esteem which links us with persons of rank and influence. I 
 wish to leave the theatre and become a serious person." 
 
 "As you are already, monsieur! " said the presidente. 
 
 " Adorable ! " returned Gaudissart, kissing the lady's shriv- 
 eled fingers. 
 
 At four o'clock that afternoon several people were gathered 
 together at Berthier's office: Fraisier, arch-concocter of the 
 whole scheme, Tabareau, appearing on behalf of Schmucke, 
 and Schmucke himself. Gaudissart had come with him. 
 Fraisier had been careful to spread out the money on Ber- 
 thier's desk, and so dazzled was Schmucke by the sight of 
 the six thousand-franc bank-notes for which he had asked, 
 and six hundred francs for the first quarter's allowance, that 
 he paid no heed whatsoever to the reading of the document. 
 Poor man, he was scarcely in full possession of his faculties, 
 shaken as they had already been by so many shocks. Gaud is-
 
 422 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 sart had snatched him up on his return from the cemetery, 
 where he had been talking with Pons, promising to join him 
 soon very soon. So Schmucke did not listen to the pre- 
 amble in which it was set forth that Maitre Tabaraeau, bailiff, 
 was acting as his proxy, and that the presidente, in the in- 
 terests of her daughter, was taking legal proceedings against 
 him. Altogether, in that preamble the German played a sorry 
 part, but he put his name to the document, and thereby ad- 
 mitted the truth of Fraisier's abominable allegations ; and so 
 joyous was he over receiving the money for the Topinards, so 
 glad to bestow wealth according to his little ideas upon the 
 one creature who loved Pons, that he heard not a word of 
 lawsuit nor compromise. 
 
 But in the middle of the reading a clerk came into the 
 private office to speak to his employer. "There is a man 
 here, sir, who wishes to speak to Monsieur Schmucke," said 
 he. 
 
 The notary looked at Fraisier, and, taking his cue from 
 him, shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Never disturb us when we are signing documents. Just 
 ask his name is it a man or a gentleman ? Is he a creditor ? " 
 
 The clerk went and returned. "He insists that he must 
 speak to Monsieur Schmucke." 
 
 "His name?" 
 
 " His name is Topinard, he says." 
 
 " I will go out to him. Sign without disturbing yourself," 
 said Gaudissart, addressing Schmucke. " Make an end of it ; 
 I will find out what he wants with us." 
 
 Gaudissart understood Fraisier ; both scented danger. 
 
 " Why are you here ? " Gaudissart began. " So you have 
 no mind to be cashier at the theatre ? Discretion is a cashier's 
 first recommendation." 
 
 "Sir " 
 
 "Just mind your own business; you will never be anything 
 if you meddle in other people's affairs."
 
 COUSIN PONS. 423 
 
 "Sir, I cannot eat bread if every mouthful of it is to stick 
 in my throat. Monsieur Schmucke ! Oh, Schmucke ! " he 
 shouted aloud. 
 
 Schmucke came out at the sound of Topinard's voice. He 
 had just signed. He held the money in his hand. 
 
 " Thees ees for die liddle German maiden und for you," 
 he said. 
 
 " Oh ! my dear Monsieur Schmucke, you have given away 
 your wealth to inhuman wretches, to people who are trying to 
 take away your good name. I took this paper to a good man, 
 an attorney who knows this Fraisier, and he says that you 
 ought to punish such wickedness ; you ought to let them sum- 
 mon you and leave them to get out of it. Read this," and 
 Schmucke's imprudent friend held out the summons delivered 
 in the Cite Bordin. 
 
 Standing in the notary's gateway, Schmucke read the docu- 
 ment, saw the imputations made against him, and, all ignorant 
 as he was of the amenities of the law, the blow was deadly. 
 The little grain of sand stopped his heart's beating. Topi- 
 nard caught him in his arms, hailed a passing cab, and put 
 the poor German into it. He was suffering from congestion 
 of the brain ; his eyes were dim, his head was throbbing, but 
 he had enough strength left to put the money into Topinard's 
 hands. 
 
 Schmucke rallied from the first attack, but he never recov- 
 ered consciousness, and refused to eat. Ten days afterward 
 he died without a complaint ; to the last he had not spoken a 
 word. Mme. Topinard nursed him, and Topinard laid him 
 by Pons' side. It was an obscure funeral ; Topinard was the 
 only mourner who followed the son of Germany to his last 
 resting-place. 
 
 Fraisier, now a justice of the peace, is very intimate with 
 the president's family, and much valued by the presidente. 
 She could not think of allowing him to marry " that girl of 
 Tabareau's," and promises infinitely better things for the
 
 424 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 clever man to whom she considers that she owes not merely 
 the pasture-land and the English cottage at Marville, but also 
 the president's seat in the Chamber of Deputies, for M. le 
 President was returned at the general election in 1846. 
 
 Every one, no doubt, wishes to know what became of the 
 heroine of a story only too veracious in its details ; a chronicle 
 which, taken with its twin sister the preceding volume, proves 
 that Character is the great social force. You, O amateurs, 
 connoisseurs, and dealers, will guess at once that Pons' collec- 
 tion is now in question. Wherefore it will suffice if we are 
 present during a conversation that took place only a few days 
 ago in Count Popinot's house. He was showing his splendid 
 collection to some visitors. 
 
 " Monsieur le Comte, you possess treasures indeed," re- 
 marked a distinguished foreigner. 
 
 " Oh ! as to pictures, nobody can hope to rival an obscure 
 collector, one Elie Magus, a Jew, an old monomaniac, the 
 prince of picture-lovers," the count replied modestly. "And 
 when I say nobody, I do not speak of Paris only, but of all 
 Europe. When the old Croesus dies, France ought to spare 
 seven or eight millions of francs to buy the gallery. For curi- 
 osities, my collection is good enough to be talked about 
 
 " But how, busy as you are, and with a fortune so honestly 
 earned in the first instance in business " 
 
 " In the drug business," broke in Popinot ; " you ask how 
 I can continue to interest myself in things that are a drug in 
 the market " 
 
 "No," returned the foreign visitor, " no, but how do you 
 find time to collect? The curiosities do not come to find 
 you." 
 
 "My father-in-law owned the nucleus of the collection," 
 said the young Vicomtesse ; " he loved the arts and beautiful 
 work, but most of his treasures came to him through me." 
 
 "Through you, madame? So young I and yet have you 
 such vices as this? " asked a Russian prince.
 
 COUSIN PONS. 425 
 
 Russians are by nature imitative ; imitative indeed to such 
 an extent that the diseases of civilization break out among 
 them in epidemics. The bric-a-brac mania had appeared in 
 an acute form in St. Peterburg, and the Russians caused such a 
 rise of prices in the "art line," as Remonencq would say, 
 that collections became impossible. The prince who spoke 
 had come to Paris solely to buy bric-a-brac. 
 
 "The treasures came to me, prince, on the death of a 
 cousin. He was very fond of me," added the Vicomtesse Popi- 
 not, "and he had spent some forty-odd years since 1805 in 
 picking up these masterpieces everywhere, but more especially 
 in Italy " 
 
 " And what was his name?" inquired the English lord. 
 
 " Pons," said President Camusot. 
 
 "A charming man he was," piped the presidente in her 
 thin, flute tones, " very clever, very eccentric, and yet very 
 good-hearted. This fan that you admire once belonged to 
 Madame de Pompadour ; he gave it to me one morning with 
 a pretty speech which you must permit me not to repeat," 
 and she glanced at her daughter. 
 
 " Madame la Vicomtesse, tell us the pretty speech," begged 
 the Russian prince. 
 
 " The speech was as pretty as the fan," returned the vicom- 
 tesse, who brought out the stereotyped remark on all occasions. 
 " He told my mother that it was quite time that it should pass 
 from the hands of vice into those of virtue." 
 
 The English lord looked at Mme. de Marville with an air 
 of doubt not a little gratifying to so withered a woman. 
 
 " He used to dine at our house two or three times a week," 
 she said ; " he was so fond of us ! We could appreciate him, 
 and artists like the society of those who relish their wit. My 
 husband was, beside, his one surviving relative. So when, 
 quite unexpectedly, Monsieur de Marville came into the prop- 
 erty, Monsieur le Comte preferred to take over the whole 
 collection to save it from a sale by auction ; and we ourselves
 
 426 THE POOR PARENTS. 
 
 much preferred to dispose of it in that way, for it would have 
 been so painful to us to see the beautiful things, in which our 
 dear cousin was so much interested, all scattered abroad. 
 Elie Magus valued them, and in that way I became possessed 
 of the cottage that your uncle built, and I hope you will do 
 us the honor of coming to see us there." 
 
 Gaudissart's theatre passed into other hands a year ago, 
 but M. Topinard is still the cashier. M. Topinard, however, 
 has grown gloomy and misanthropic ; he says little. People 
 think that he has something on his conscience. Wags at the 
 theatre suggest that his gloom dates from his marriage with 
 Lolotte. Honest Topinard starts whenever he hears Fraisier's 
 name mentioned. Some people may think it strange that the 
 one nature worthy of Pons and Schmucke should be found on 
 the third floor beneath the stage of a boulevard theatre. 
 
 Mme. Remonencq, much impressed with Mme. Fontaine's 
 prediction, declines to retire to the country. She is still 
 living in her splendid store on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, 
 but she is a widow now for the second time. Remonencq, 
 in fact, by the terms of the marriage-contract, settled the prop- 
 erty upon the survivor, and left a little glass of vitriol about 
 for his wife to drink by mistake ; but his wife, with the very 
 best intentions, put the glass elsewhere, and Remonencq 
 swallowed the draught himself. The rascal's appropriate end 
 vindicates Providence, as well as the chronicler of manners, 
 who is sometimes accused of neglect on this head, perhaps, 
 because Providence has been so overworked by playwrights of 
 late. 
 
 Pardon the transcriber's errors. 
 
 FINIS.
 
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