 |
He went over to the bed, took one of Pons' hands in both his own, and within himself put up a fervent prayer.
"What is that that you are mumbling in German?"
"I asked Gott dat He vould take us poth togedders to Himself!" Schmucke answered simply when he had finished his prayer.
Pons bent over—it was a great effort, for he was suffering intolerable pain; but he managed to reach Schmucke, and kissed him on the forehead, pouring out his soul, as it were, in benediction upon a nature that recalled the lamb that lies at the foot of the Throne of God.
"See here, listen, my good Schmucke, you must do as dying people tell you—"
"I am lisdening."
"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 comes 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 oondershtand; 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 afterwards.—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 at 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 grandeur of Liszt—the two musicians who most nearly approach Paganini's temperament. When execution reaches this supreme 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, of that heavenly music for which Saint Cecile 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 undergrowth 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 ringing of the door-bell put an end to these visions. The first-floor lodgers sent up a servant with a message. Would Schmucke please 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 play to keep him kviet, and the virst-floor lodgers vas komm up to tell me to be kviet! . . . It was frightful, for der life of mein friend vas at shtake. I am so tired mit der blaying all night, dat dis morning I am all knocked up."
"My poor Cibot is very bad, too; one more day like yesterday, 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 cunning Schmucke.
The craft of simple, straightforward folk is formidable indeed; they are exactly like children, setting their unsuspected 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 Mme. 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 corner; and this so much the more easily because Pons purposely left the end hanging 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 document, headed "My Will," with ever-deepening astonishment:
"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 circumstances that injure great pictures, and not unfrequently bring about total destruction. I have felt sorry for the beautiful paintings condemned to travel from land to land, never finding 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 children.
"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.
"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. Trognon, notary (whom I appoint as my executor): and allow Mme. 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, Ruben's sketch for his great picture at Antwerp, to adorn a chapel in the parish church, in grateful acknowledgment 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 scoundrel'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, 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 M. 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 M. 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.
"I am going," said Fraisier; "it is not to your interest that I should be found here; but I shall see you again downstairs."
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 towards 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 partition wall on either side of the door.
La Cibot cried out, and fell face downwards in a fit; real or feigned, no one ever knew the truth. This sight produced 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 pantomime.
"It was pure curiosity!" she sobbed, when she saw that Pons and Schmucke were paying attention to her proceedings. "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 gaining in height by the full height 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, my dear M. Fraisier. Under pretence 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."
"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 comment. "The gentlemen had their doubts, or they would not have set this trap for you. They were lying in wait and spying upon you. . . . You have not told me everything," he added, with a tiger's glance at the woman before him.
"I hide anything from you!" cried she—"after all that we have done together!" she added with a shudder.
"My dear madame, I 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 cold 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 M. 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 M. 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-notes. . . . You shall have at least twelve hundred francs per annum. . . . But, my good lady, you must act intelligently under my orders."
"Yes, my dear M. Fraisier," said La Cibot with cringing servility. She was completely subdued.
"Very good. Good-bye," 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 Mme. la Presidente 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 shutters and left his sister in charge of the shop, 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 M. Elie Magus regretted; with that little bit of a thing, he says, his happiness would be complete."
"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 M. Magus, and in the way of business it is enough to make an entry in the day-book, and I should note that M. 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 have a picture in the shop. . . . You know me quite well. Besides, 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 shop 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, I 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 heartrending 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 shop, sure of marrying La Cibot.
Towards 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 Hannequin and a brother lawyer. Schwab and Brunner reached 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 oppressed Schmucke's heart that he was not conscious of hunger. Towards 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 administration 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 Mlle. 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. 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. Cantinet, who saw to the letting of the chairs at Saint-Francois, once had fallen ill and Dr. Poulain had attended her gratuitously; 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 bas clerge, to whom the devout usually give 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 failings. 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 wedding-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.
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 bachelor's 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 Mlle. Remonencq had sufficiently opened Fraisier's eyes. Still, it seemed evident that Pons and Schmucke, being pious souls, would take any one recommended by the Abbe, with blind confidence. Mme. Cantinet 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 M. 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 perceptible 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 M. 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 morning with Mme. Cibot, who has acted as housekeeper to 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 M. Pons, and look after M. Schmucke, and take Mme. Cibot's place for a day or two. . . . Even without the quarrel, Mme. Cibot would still require a substitute. Mme. 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 Pons' 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 awhile, he summoned up all his fast-failing strength to say, with a heartrending 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 Mme. Cantinet came, as well as a woman to do the work, for M. 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 remarks. 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 an 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. l'Abbe Duplanty when Schmucke came to the door. "You have not Mme. Cibot now—"
"Ein monster dat haf killed Bons!"
"But you must have somebody with you," began Dr. Poulain. "Some one must sit up with the body to-night."
"I shall sit up; I shall say die prayers to Gott," the innocent 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 madness seized him.
"But Bons shall not tie! . . ." he cried aloud. "I shall safe him!"
"You cannot go without sleep much longer, and who will take your place? Some one must look after M. Pons, and give him drink, and nurse him—"
"Ah! dat is drue."
"Very well," said the Abbe, "I am thinking of sending your Mme. 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 Mme. 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 doorway 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 be wise to send for Mme. Cibot."
"She is capable of anything!" said Pons, without attempting to conceal all his abhorrence at the sound of her name. "It is true, Schmucke ought to have some trustworthy person."
"M. Duplanty and I have been thinking about you both—"
"Ah! thank you, I had not thought of that."
"—And M. Duplanty suggests that you should have Mme. Cantinet—"
"Oh! Mme. Cantinet who lets the chairs!" exclaimed Pons. "Yes, she is an excellent creature."
"She has no liking for Mme. Cibot," continued the doctor, "and she would take good care of M. Schmucke—"
"Send her to me, M. Duplanty . . . send her and her husband too. I shall be easy. Nothing will be stolen here."
Schmucke had taken Pons' hand again, and held it joyously in his own. Pons was almost well again, he thought.
"Let us go, Monsieur l'Abbe," said the doctor. "I will send Mme. Cantinet round at once. I see how it is. She perhaps may not find M. Pons alive."
While the Abbe Duplanty was persuading Pons to engage Mme. 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. And as for Mme. 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 musicians, 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 Mme. Cantinet. As there was a servant's bedroom and a little kitchen included in the apartment, 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 Mme. Cantinet to be silent; but Mme. Sauvage's soldierly figure surprised him so much that he started in spite of himself, a kind of homage to which the virago was quite accustomed.
"M. 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 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 experience, she stripped and straightened the body, laid the arms by the sides, and covered the face with the bedclothes, exactly as a shopman 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.
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 innocent 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 Mme. 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. Cantinet 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 cab and went to the Presidente. To-morrow she must give him the power of attorney to enable him to act for the heirs.
Another hour went by, and Mme. Cantinet came again to Schmucke.
"I have been to Mme. Cibot, sir, who knows all about things here," she said. "I asked her to tell me where everything 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, innocent of any barbarous intention, for women of her class are 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 surprising 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 Pons' 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 mechanically.
"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 certainly 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 him, Pons' 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 horrible 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 necessaries in a very short time. La Sauvage made out a preliminary 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 broth—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 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, M. 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."
"I 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, imploring the doctor to come to the rescue.
"Take a cab," 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 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 cab 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 Remonencq 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 everybody says that M. 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 Remonencq.
"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 to you 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, 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 Remonencq, "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 cab 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 suffer excruciating anguish.
"Monsieur is M. 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 plainly see 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 M. 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 interpreted means "Don't spoil sport"; a piece of commercial free-masonry, as it were, which the dealer understood.
"I represent the firm of Sonet and Company, monumental stone-masons; Sir Walter Scott would have dubbed me Young Mortality," continued this person. "If you, sir, should decide 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 clients. 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 ornaments 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 recommendations. 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 others. In former days, agents for monuments 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 competition and the spirit of speculation induced them to spread themselves further and further afield, till descending into Paris itself they reached the very precincts of the mayor's office. Indeed, the stone-mason'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 representative 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 stone-mason'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 towards the balustrade, behind which the registrar shelters himself from the mourning 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 cab, the desperate agent whisking in afterwards, 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.
"I should think he will!" returned Mme. Sauvage. "He has been crying for twenty-four hours 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 perpetuate the memory of the friend of the arts, and bear record to your gratitude."
"Why, there is no sense in this!" added Mme. Cantinet, coming 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 M. Schmucke ordered something? Who may you be?"
"I represent the firm of Sonet, my dear madame, the biggest monumental stone-masons in Paris," said the person in black, handing a business-card to the stalwart Sauvage.
"Very well, that will do. Some one will go with you when the time comes; but you must not take advantage of the gentleman'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 Pons' rooms, 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 coatsleeve 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 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," continued 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 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 process.
"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 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 M. Tabareau?—for you will have a good deal on your hands before long. M. Tabareau is the most honest man in the quarter, you see."
"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."
It was nearly two o'clock when M. 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 M. Tabareau's head-clerk, sir," he said; "he sent me here to take charge of your interests, and to superintend 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 M. 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 be left in beace," said the unhappy man. And once more he knelt beside the dead body of his friend.
Fraisier had triumphed. Villemot and La Sauvage completed the circle which he had traced about Pons' heir.
There is no sorrow that sleep cannot overcome. Towards 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.
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 a 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 wardrobe; 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 M. 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 personage who just then appeared. At the sight of this functionary Schmucke shuddered. The newcomer wore a splendid suit of black, black knee-breeches, black silk stockings, a pair of white cuffs, an extremely correct 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.
"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 confronting his executioner.
"Is this gentleman the son, brother, or father of the deceased?" inquired the official.
"I am all dat and more pesides—I am his friend," 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."
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 newcomer.
"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."
The master of the ceremonies looked 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 M. le Presidente de Marville, the one relative that I mentioned to you.—There are no friends.—M. 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 a black coat?" he continued, noticing Schmucke's costume.
"I am all in plack insite!" poor Schmucke replied in heartrending 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 friend 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, addressing 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 ceremonies invested Schmucke with the ample, dismal-looking garment worn by heirs-at-law in the procession to and from 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 confession 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 M. Camusot de Marville's representative."
"Good," said the master of the ceremonies, with a satisfied 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 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 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 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 M. 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 M. 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 Topinard's horny hand to his heart.
"He was the best of men, that good M. Pons. Every month he use 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 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 charge, Mme. 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 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 Normandie to the Rue d'Orleans and the Church of Saint-Francois the two funerals 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 of work!"
"He never went out."
"He never kept Saint Monday."
"How fond he was of his wife!"
"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. Villemot 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 possession 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 procession, not unfrequently 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 journey; so, empty or full, the mourning coaches go to the 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 saturated.
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 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 besides himself who felt a pang of real regret for Pons' death.
As for Topinard, greatly touched by the honor of the request 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.
"M. 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 disinherited, and M. 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 stone-masons. 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 certainly deserved that much; but the monument would cost seven or eight hundred francs."
"Oh! quite that!"
"If M. Schmucke gives the order, it cannot affect the estate. You might eat up a whole property with such expenses."
"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 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 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 face.
An hour later, towards half-past two o'clock, the poor, innocent 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 make 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 Normandie, and at this Sonet began at once.
"Here is the design, sir," he said; "Vitelot drew it expressly 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 the 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 commission to Stidmann; people were disgusted with the tawdriness 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 Vitelot had turned the Three Glorious Days—"les trois glorieuses"—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 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 M. 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 M. 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 away, 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 M. 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 haf no friend. You dat haf shed a tear for Bons enliden 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-bye."
"Goot-bye; komm again soon," said Schmucke, dropping half-dead with weariness.
"Good-bye, 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 Mme. 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 kindnesses. 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 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 M. 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, Mme. Sauvage! Go on like this, and you shall have your tobacconist's shop."
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 blackguard! Yes! yes! scratch your arm; but just pocket that—"
"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 M. Pons' 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, afterwards purchased by an Englishman. The portrait might be attributed to Raphael, but for the date. This example is, to my mind, superior 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 ceremonies was making up the number of pall-bearers, and found that eight of those indicated as works of capital importance by M. 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 I in charge of the pictures?" demanded La Cibot.
"No; but you were in a position of trust. You were M. Pons' housekeeper, you looked after his affairs, and he has been robbed—"
"Robbed! Let me tell you this, sir: M. Schmucke sold the pictures, by M. 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 deemed it expedient to plunder M. 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 Mme. Cibot; that is not right!" he said. "The pictures were sold by private treaty between M. Pons, M. 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 defenceless woman, you will not make a good bargain! Do you understand, master lawyer?—M. Magus rules the market, and if you do not come down off the high horse, if you do not keep your word to Mme. Cibot, I shall wait till the collection is sold, and you shall see what you will lose if you have M. 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. "M. 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."
Towards ten o'clock that evening, Gaudissart sent for Topinard. The manager was standing with his back to the fire, in a Napoleonic attitude—a trick which he had learned since be began to command his army of actors, dancers, figurants, musicians, and stage carpenters. He grasped his left-hand brace with his right hand, always thrust into his waistcoat; he 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!—"
"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 Excellency, 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 M. 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 M. 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, poor man. . . . But if you meddle in M. Schmucke's affairs, you will lose your place. I wish very well to M. 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 recommend you to leave the worthy German to get out of his difficulties by himself. There is a special Providence that watches over Germans, and the part of deputy guardian-angel would not suit you at all. Do you see? Stay as you are—you cannot do better."
"Very good, monsieur le directeur," said Topinard, much distressed. And in this way Schmucke lost the protector sent to him by fate, the one creature that shed a tear for Pons, the poor super for whose return he looked on the morrow.
Next morning poor Schmucke awoke to a sense of his great and heavy loss. He looked round the empty rooms. Yesterday and the day before yesterday the preparations for the funeral had made a stir and bustle which distracted his eyes; but the silence which follows the day, when the friend, father, son, or loved wife has been laid in the grave—the dull, cold silence of the morrow is terrible, is glacial. Some irresistible force drew him to Pons' chamber, but the sight of it was more than the poor man could bear; he shrank away and sat down in the dining-room, where Mme. Sauvage was busy making breakfast ready.
Schmucke drew his chair to the table, but he could eat nothing. A sudden, somewhat sharp ringing of the door-bell rang through the house, and Mme. Cantinet and Mme. Sauvage allowed three black-coated personages to pass. First came Vitel, the justice of the peace, with his highly respectable clerk; third was Fraisier, neither sweeter nor milder for the disappointing discovery of a valid will canceling the formidable instrument so audaciously stolen by him.
"We have come to affix seals on the property," the justice of the peace said gently, addressing Schmucke. But the remark was Greek to Schmucke; he gazed in dismay at his three visitors.
"We have come at the request of M. Fraisier, legal representative of M. Camusot de Marville, heir of the late Pons—" added the clerk.
"The collection is here in this great room, and in the bedroom of the deceased," remarked Fraisier.
"Very well, let us go into the next room.—Pardon us, sir; do not let us interrupt with your breakfast."
The invasion struck an icy chill of terror into poor Schmucke. Fraisier's venomous glances seemed to possess some magnetic influence over his victims, like the power of a spider over a fly.
"M. Schmucke understood how to turn a will, made in the presence of a notary, to his own advantage," he said, "and he surely must have expected some opposition from the family. A family does not allow itself to be plundered by a stranger without some protest; and we shall see, sir, which carries the day—fraud and corruption or the rightful heirs. . . . We have a right as next of kin to affix seals, and seals shall be affixed. I mean to see that the precaution is taken with the utmost strictness."
"Ach, mein Gott! how haf I offended against Hefn?" cried the innocent Schmucke.
"There is a good deal of talk about you in the house," said La Sauvage. "While you were asleep, a little whipper-snapper in a black suit came here, a puppy that said he was M. Hannequin's head-clerk, and must see you at all costs; but as you were asleep and tired out with the funeral yesterday, I told him that M. Villemot, Tabareau's head-clerk, was acting for you, and if it was a matter of business, I said, he might speak to M. Villemot. 'Ah, so much the better!' the youngster said. 'I shall come to an understanding with him. We will deposit the will at the Tribunal, after showing it to the President.' So at that, I told him to ask M. Villemot to come here as soon as he could.—Be easy, my dear sir, there are those that will take care of you. They shall not shear the fleece off your back. You will have some one that has beak and claws. M. Villemot will give them a piece of his mind. I have put myself in a passion once already with that abominable hussy, La Cibot, a porter's wife that sets up to judge her lodgers, forsooth, and insists that you have filched the money from the heirs; you locked M. Pons up, she says, and worked upon him till he was stark, staring mad. She got as good as she gave, though, the wretched woman. 'You are a thief and a bad lot,' I told her; 'you will get into the police-courts for all the things that you have stolen from the gentlemen,' and she shut up."
The clerk came out to speak to Schmucke.
"Would you wish to be present, sir, when the seals are affixed in the next room?"
"Go on, go on," said Schmucke; "I shall pe allowed to die in beace, I bresume?"
"Oh, under any circumstances a man has a right to die," the clerk answered, laughing; "most of our business relates to wills. But, in my experience, the universal legatee very seldom follows the testator to the tomb."
"I am going," said Schmucke. Blow after blow had given him an intolerable pain at the heart.
"Oh! here comes M. Villemot!" exclaimed La Sauvage.
"Mennesir Fillemod," said poor Schmucke, "rebresent me."
"I hurried here at once," said Villemot. "I have come to tell you that the will is completely in order; it will certainly be confirmed by the court, and you will be put in possession. You will have a fine fortune."
"I? Ein fein vordune?" cried Schmucke, despairingly. That he of all men should be suspected of caring for the money!
"And meantime what is the justice of the peace doing here with his wax candles and his bits of tape?" asked La Sauvage.
"Oh, he is affixing seals. . . . Come, M. Schmucke, you have a right to be present."
"No—go in yourself."
"But where is the use of the seals if M. Schmucke is in his own house and everything belongs to him?" asked La Sauvage, doing justice in feminine fashion, and interpreting the Code according to their fancy, like one and all of her sex.
"M. Schmucke is not in possession, madame; he is in M. Pons' house. Everything will be his, no doubt; but the legatee cannot take possession without an authorization—an order from the Tribunal. And if the next-of-kin set aside by the testator should dispute the order, a lawsuit is the result. And as nobody knows what may happen, everything is sealed up, and the notaries representing either side proceed to draw up an inventory during the delay prescribed by the law. . . . And there you are!"
Schmucke, hearing such talk for the first time in his life, was completely bewildered by it; his head sank down upon the back of his chair—he could not support it, it had grown so heavy.
Villemot meanwhile went off to chat with the justice of the peace and his clerk, assisting with professional coolness to affix the seals—a ceremony which always involves some buffoonery and plentiful comments on the objects thus secured, unless, indeed, one of the family happens to be present. At length the party sealed up the chamber and returned to the dining-room, whither the clerk betook himself. Schmucke watched the mechanical operation which consists in setting the justice's seal at either end of a bit of tape stretched across the opening of a folding-door; or, in the case of a cupboard or ordinary door, from edge to edge above the door-handle.
"Now for this room," said Fraisier, pointing to Schmucke's bedroom, which opened into the dining-room.
"But that is M. Schmucke's own room," remonstrated La Sauvage, springing in front of the door.
"We found the lease among the papers," Fraisier said ruthlessly; "there was no mention of M. Schmucke in it; it is taken out in M. Pons' name only. The whole place, and every room in it, is a part of the estate. And besides"—flinging open the door—"look here, monsieur le juge de la paix, it is full of pictures."
"So it is," answered the justice of the peace, and Fraisier thereupon gained his point.
"Wait a bit, gentlemen," said Villemot. "Do you know that you are turning the universal legatee out of doors, and as yet his right has not been called in question?"
"Yes, it has," said Fraisier; "we are opposing the transfer of the property."
"And upon what grounds?"
"You shall know that by and by, my boy," Fraisier replied, banteringly. "At this moment, if the legatee withdraws everything that he declares to be his, we shall raise no objections, but the room itself will be sealed. And M. Schmucke may lodge where he pleases."
"No," said Villemot; "M. Schmucke is going to stay in his room."
"And how?"
"I shall demand an immediate special inquiry," continued Villemot, "and prove that we pay half the rent. You shall not turn us out. Take away the pictures, decide on the ownership of the various articles, but here my client stops—'my boy.'" |
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