Cousin Pons

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 Wilheim beside those of Damon and Pythias, Castor and Pollux, Orestes and Pylades, Dubreuil and Pmejah, Schmucke and Pons, and all the names that we imagine for the two friends of Monomotapa, for La Fontaine (man of genius though he was) has made of them two disembodied 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, 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 really must 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 coxcomb, 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 Graff’s 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 incidents – 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 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 immense amount of money out of Baden railways, though neither his son nor M. 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, mine friend,” said Schmucke. “But who is die prite?”

“She is Mlle. Graff, the daughter of our host, the landlord of the Hotel du Rhin. I have loved Mlle. 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, M. Graff the tailor is adding another five hundred thousand francs, and Mlle. 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 and Company will start with two millions 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 friend,” remarked Schmucke, who had listened with great interest. “Kann 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. 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.”

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 that struck the stoic Schmucke dumb with amazement. He grew woefully 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 expected, 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 otherwise 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 if he were saying something original, and in giving his opinion 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’ disappearance; 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 (Russian 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 her parent. “Why, Government is just about to buy the late M. le Conseiller Dusommerard’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 and fifty thousand francs, is ‘rubbish’ which reveals the perfection of art at the 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 comprehends 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 sportsmen say.

“He must have taken offence 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 Griodet, and M. de Forbin and M. 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 meekness, 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 seeing Pons’ face at their tables, and to send him on errands, had 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 the bric-a-brac dealer’s shop 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 audacious 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 Mme. Popinot does not know what to think of your desertion.”

“M. 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 indefinitely beholden to those who honor me by allowing me to sit at table with them; my friends, and 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 permit me to say that at my house surely you have always met with consideration – ”

“You are the one exception,” said the artist. “And besides, 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 management 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 servants 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,” continued 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 call on his cousin before going down to the court. The apparition 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 connection. My servants have all been dismissed. My wife and daughter are in despair; they want to see you to have an explanation. In all this, my cousin, there is one innocent person, 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 suppose 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 informing 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.”

“Mme. 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.”

“M. Brunner, a German, my first flute’s future partner, 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 M. Graff, the flute’s father-in-law.”

“Very well, on Saturday. Between now and then you will have time to reassure a little girl who has shed tears already 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’ second 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 pensions… 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 passion 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 extended 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 enjoyments restored to him without any loss of self-respect. The 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 Partant 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, perhaps 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 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 ground floor of their great house to the young couple, and here the bank of Brunner, Schwab and 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 advantage of the delay to redecorate the first 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 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 details 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 desire to make a match between Fritz Brunner and Cecile 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! M. 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 curiosity?”

“Old folk are sensitive,” replied the worthy musician; “they make the mistake of being a century behind the times, but how can it be helped? It is quite enough 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 lawyer 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 Appeal in Paris if she brings him only a hundred thousand francs. In the rank of life in which Mlle. 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 entre-sol; 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.