Cousin Pons

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘Hearts of stone, that’s it exactly!’ Pons replied. And he poured all his troubles and vexations into Madame Cibot’s ears. In return she launched out into abuse of the Camusots and displayed the most emphatic sympathy at every word in his sorry tale. In the end she burst into tears!

  This sudden familiarity between the old musician and Madame Cibot is explicable enough if one imagines a bachelor’s predicament when he is seriously ill for the first time in his life, lying on a bed of pain, alone in the world, face to face with himself the whole day long and finding the time drag all the more because he is at grips with the unspeakable sufferings caused by hepatitis, which throws a dark shadow on even the brightest of lives. Also, robbed of his numerous occupations, he misses all the sights which Paris affords free of charge, and falls into a black depression such as Parisians alone experience.

  This deep and gloomy solitude, the attacks of pain which lower both moral and physical vitality, the emptiness of existence: all this induces a bachelor, particularly one who is inclined to be weak in character, sensitive of soul, and credulous, to cling to the person who waits on him as a drowning man clings to a straw. That is why Pons listened so avidly to La Cibot’s gossip. Schmucke, Madame Cibot and Dr Poulain were the whole of mankind for him; his room was the whole wide world. Sick people in general concentrate their attention on the narrow sphere their eyes encompass; their egoism is of such limited range that it is subordinated to the persons and things inside a single room. What then could be expected of an old bachelor with no attachments, one who had never known a woman’s love? Three weeks had been enough to bring Pons -at certain moments – to regret not having married Madeleine Vivet! And so, during the same three weeks, Madame Cibot had been acquiring an enormous ascendancy over the sick man’s mind. He felt he would be lost without her, for in Schmucke the unfortunate invalid only saw a replica of himself. La Cibot’s prodigious artfulness – though she herself was scarcely aware of this – consisted in giving expression to certain ideas which were passing through Pons’s own mind.

  ‘Ah! Here’s the doctor,’ she said on hearing the doorbell ring. And, knowing full well that the visitors were the Jew and Rémonencq, she left Pons to himself.

  ‘Don’t make any noise, gentlemen,’ she said to them. ‘He mustn’t notice a thing! He’s terribly cantankerous about his collection.’

  ‘A quick look round will do,’ the Jew replied. He had come provided with his magnifying glass and a lorgnette.

  16. Corruption in conference

  THE room containing the greater part of the Pons collection was one of those ancient salons such as the architects employed by the French nobility designed: twenty-five feet wide, thirty feet long and thirteen feet high. Pons’s pictures, sixty-seven in all, were all hung on the four walls of this salon which was panelled in white and gold. But Time had softened the white to yellow, and the gold to red, and these mellowed tones did not spoil the effect of the canvases. Fourteen statues rising from pedestals by Buhl stood in the corners of the room or between the pictures. Ebony sideboards, all richly and regally carved, lined the lower portions of the walls to elbow height. These sideboards contained the curios. In the middle of the room, a row of carved wood credence tables displayed the rarest products of human art: ivories, bronzes, wood-carvings, enamels, goldsmith’s work, porcelains and so forth.

  Once the Jew was in this sanctuary, he went straight to four masterpieces which he recognized as the finest in this collection, by great masters not represented in his own. They meant as much to him as those rare plants which send a naturalist off on his voyages, from west to east, through tropical countries, deserts, pampas, savannahs and virgin forests. One was a Sebastiano del Piombo, the second a Fra Bartolommeo della Porta, the third a Hobbema landscape, the last a female portrait by Dürer: four pictorial gems! In the art of painting Sebastiano del Piombo is, as it were, a brilliant node in which three schools converge, each contributing its outstanding qualities. A Venetian painter, he moved to Rome and there acquired the technique of Raphael under the direction of Michelangelo, who wanted to set him in opposition to Raphael and so use one of his own pupils to pit himself against that sovereign pontiff of art. In consequence this easy-going genius made a fusion of Venetian colour, Florentine composition and Raphaelesque technique in the few pictures he deigned to paint, the cartoons for which, it is said, were drawn by Michelangelo himself. And so one can see the peak of perfection reached by this man with his three-fold technique, when one studies the Louvre portrait of Baccio Bandinelli, which, without losing by the comparison, can be set beside Titian’s Man with a Glove, the Portrait of an Old Man in which Raphael blended his own artistic perfection with that of Correggio, and Leonardo da Vinci’s Charles VII. These are four pearls of the same water, the same orient, the same roundness, the same sheen, the same pricelessness. Human art can go no further. It surpasses nature, which gave but momentary existence to the originals. One work by this great but incurably indolent genius, this immortal master of the palette, was in Pons’s possession: a Knight of Malta at Prayer, painted on slate, having a freshness, a finish, a depth far superior to the qualities which the Baccio Bandinelli portrait displays. The Fra Bartolommeo, depicting The Holy Family, would have been attributed to Raphael by many connoisseurs. The Hobbema would have fetched sixty thousand francs at a public sale. As for the Albrecht Dürer, this Portrait of a Woman was similar to the famous Nuremberg Holzschuer, which the Kings of Bavaria, Holland and Prussia tried several times, unsuccessfully, to buy for two hundred thousand francs. Does it represent the wife or daughter of the Ritter Holzschuer, Dürer’s friend? This appears to be a safe conjecture since the woman in Pons’s collection is posed in such a way as to suggest a companion picture, and the painted coat of arms is similarly arranged in both portraits. Finally the subscription aetatis suae XLI agrees exactly with the age shown in the portrait so piously preserved by the Holzschuer family at Nuremberg – of which an engraving has recently been completed.

  Elias Magus had tears in his eyes as he scanned these four masterpieces, one by one.

  ‘I will give you a commission of two thousand francs for each of these pictures if you can get them for me for forty thousand francs,’ he whispered in La Cibot’s ear. She was stupefied at the prospect of such an unexpected fortune.

  Elias Magus’s admiration or, to be more exact, his delirious ecstasy, had so disturbed his intelligence and his habitual cupidity that, as can be seen, the Jew in him was quite submerged.

  ‘What about me?’ asked Rémonencq, who had no knowledge of pictures.

  ‘Every one of them is up to the same standard,’ the Jew’s whispered answer, with its quick suggestion, came at once: ‘Get me any ten of these pictures and your fortune is made.’

  This trio of thieves were still exchanging glances, each yielding in his own way to that most intense of all delights – satisfaction at the prospect of imminent gain – when the sick man’s voice rang out in echoing tones:

  ‘Who’s there?’ cried Pons.

  ‘Monsieur Pons, lie down again,’ said La Cibot, rushing to Pons’s bed and pushing him back on to it. ‘What next! Do you want to kill yourself?… Well, it wasn’t Monsieur Poulain after all. It’s only kind Rémonencq, so anxious about you that he’s come for news of you. You’re so well-liked that everybody in the building is all in a flutter about you. What’s worrying you?’

  ‘But it sounds as if there are several of you,’ said the sick man.

  ‘Several! The idea! What’s got into your head? My goodness, you’ll soon be going out of your mind. Here, see for yourself.’

  La Cibot made quickly for the door and opened it, motioning Magus to withdraw, and beckoning Rémonencq forward.

  ‘Well, my dear sir,’ said the Auvergnat, thus ushered in by La Cibot. ‘I’ve come to ask about you. The whole house is in a state about you. Nobody likes the idea of a death on the premises. And another thing: old Monistrol – you know him well – asked me to tell you that if yo
u need money he’ll be ready to oblige you.’

  ‘He’s only sent you to have a look at my trinkets,’ said the old collector in sour and suspicious tones.

  Those who suffer from diseases of the liver almost always contract a special and fleeting antipathy: their irascibility singles out some particular object or person. Now Pons had got it into his head that people had designs on his treasures and his mind was set on watching over them. At frequent intervals he had been sending Schmucke to make sure that no one had slipped into his sanctuary.

  ‘You certainly have a fine collection,’ was Rémonencq’s astute reply. ‘It might well attract the chineurs’ attention. I don’t know a thing about valuable antiques, but they do say that you, sir, are a great expert, and although I’m not much of a judge, I’d shut my eyes and buy anything from you… if it so happened you needed any money now and then, for nothing costs more than these cursed diseases. Take my sister now: she used to have giddy turns, and in less than a fortnight she spent thirty sous on quackeries, and she’d have got over it just the same… Doctors are rogues and they take advantage of our ailments to…’

  ‘Good day to you, Monsieur, and thank you,’ replied Pons to the scrap-iron merchant, casting anxious glances at him.

  ‘I’ll see him out,’ La Cibot whispered to her patient. ‘So that he can’t touch anything.’

  ‘Yes, please do!’ answered the patient with a grateful look.

  She closed the bedroom door, and that reawakened Pons’s suspicions. She found Magus stock-still in front of the four pictures. Such immobility, such admiration can only be understood by those whose souls are open to supreme beauty, to the ineffable emotion aroused by perfection in art: those who will stand for hours on end in the Louvre contemplating Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Correggio’s Antiope, Titian’s Mistress, Andrea del Sarto’s Holy Family, Domenichino’s Children among Flowers, Raphael’s little cameos and his Portrait of an Old Man, all of them of immeasurable artistic value.

  ‘Don’t make any noise as you go out!’ she said.

  The Jew withdrew slowly, walking backwards, gazing at the pictures with the lingering look of a lover saying good-bye to his mistress.

  *

  The steadiness of his contemplation had put ideas into La Cibot’s mind, and so, when the Jew had reached the head of the stairs, she tapped his scrawny arm.

  ‘Four thousand francs for each of those pictures, or nothing doing!’

  ‘I’m a poor man,’ said Magus. ‘It’s just love, just love of art, my dear, that makes me want these pictures.’

  ‘You’re as hard as nails, my lad,’ said the concierge, ‘and I can guess what love like that means. Anyhow, if you don’t promise me sixteen thousand francs this very day in Rémonencq’s hearing, it’ll be twenty thousand tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll make it sixteen,’ replied the Jew, appalled by the concierge’s greed.

  ‘What’s a Jew’s promise worth?’ La Cibot asked Rémonencq.

  ‘You can take his word for it,’ replied the scrap-iron merchant. ‘He’s as honest as I am myself.’

  ‘Well, how about you? If I get you some of them to sell, what’ll you give me?’

  ‘Half shares in the profits,’ was Rémonencq’s prompt reply.

  ‘I prefer hard cash straight away. I’m not a businesswoman,’ she retorted.

  ‘You’ve a wonderful head for figures!’ said Elias Magus with a smile. ‘You would make a fine saleswoman.’

  ‘I’m ready to go in with her, lock, stock and barrel,’ said the Auvergnat, taking hold of La Cibot’s plump arm and giving it a vigorous pat. ‘I don’t ask her to put money into it, only her good looks! You’re silly to stick to your cross-legged Turk and his needle! Can a miserable little porter put a good-looking woman like you in money’s way? What a figure you’d cut in a shop on the boulevards, with antiques all around you, chattering away with amateurs and twisting them round your little finger! Say good-bye to your lodge when you’ve made your pile in this affair, and just think what we can do working together!’

  ‘Make my pile!’ exclaimed La Cibot. ‘I wouldn’t steal a pennyworth of stuff here, understand that, Rémonencq. Everybody round here knows I’m an honest woman, see!’ Her eyes were blazing.

  ‘Calm down!’ said Elias Magus. ‘Our friend from Auvergne seems to admire you far too much to want to insult you.’

  ‘Wouldn’t she bring in the customers!’ cried the Auvergnat.

  Madame Cibot was mollified.

  ‘Be fair to me, my friends,’ she continued, ‘and judge for yourselves what my position is here. I’ve been wearing myself out the last ten years for those two old bachelors and never been paid back in anything but words. Ask Rémonencq. I’ve been feeding those two old sticks at a loss. I’ve been losing twenty to thirty sous a day at it. All I’ve laid up has gone on them. I’ll swear that on my own mother’s grave, and she’s the only parent I ever knew. As true as I stand here in God’s own daylight, may my next cup of coffee poison me if I’m a farthing out in my reckoning! Well, there’s a man who’s going to die right enough, and he’s the best off of those two old fogies I’ve treated like my own children. Would you credit it, my dear sir? I’ve been telling him these last three weeks that he’s ripe for the churchyard, and Monsieur Poulain has given him up. And the old skinflint hasn’t said a word about mentioning me in his will, no more than he would a total stranger. Take my word for it, if we want our due we’ve got to take it, sure as I’m an honest woman. Some hope there’d be from his heirs, I don’t think! Look now, I’ve got to speak my mind: they’re dirty rogues, every one of them.’

  ‘True enough,’ replied Elias with a sly grimace. ‘It’s people like us,’ he added with a glance at Rémonencq, ‘who are the most reliable.’

  ‘Let me explain,’ La Cibot went on. ‘It’s not you I’m talking about. As the old actor said, “pressing company is always accepted”. I swear those two men already owe me nigh on three thousand francs, and what little I’ve got has already gone on medicine and their little wants. Suppose they don’t take any account of what I’ve paid out for them!… I’m such a fool, I’m so honest I don’t dare mention it to them. Well then, my dear sir, you who are in business, would you advise me to see a lawyer?…’

  ‘A lawyer!’ cried Rémonencq. ‘You know more than all the lawyers put together.’

  The sound of a heavy body falling on to the flagstones in the dining-room echoed through the wide spaces of the stairway.

  ‘Oh, my goodness!’ cried La Cibot. ‘What’s that? It sounds as if it’s Monsieur Pons who’s just had a nasty tumble.’

  She gave a push to her two accomplices and they hurried briskly downstairs. Then she turned round, dashed into the dining-room and found Pons in his shirt, stretched full-length on the floor, in a faint. She put her arms round him, lifted him up as if he weighed no more than a feather, and carried him to his bed. When she had laid the unconscious man down she set to work reviving him by burning feathers under his nose and moistening his temples with eau de Cologne. Once she saw that his eyes were open and that he had recovered consciousness, she stood over him with her arms akimbo.

  ‘No slippers! Nothing on you but a shirt! You might have caught your death! And why do you distrust me, Monsieur Pons? If that’s how things are, it’s all over between us. Fine thanks I get, after serving you for ten years and putting money of mine into your housekeeping, so that all I’ve got has gone to save poor Monsieur Schmucke any worry, and him going up and down the stairs crying his eyes out… And that’s all the thanks I get! You come spying on me… The Lord has paid you out, and so He should! And me straining my insides to carry you back and maybe rupturing myself for the rest of my days… Oh my goodness, I’ve left the door open…’

  ‘Who were you talking to?’

  ‘That’s a fine thing to ask!’ La Cibot exclaimed. ‘The very idea! I’m your slave, am I? Have I got to tell you everything I do? You just take this in: if you plague me like this, I’m clearing out!
You can get a nurse in.’

  Appalled at this threat, Pons unwittingly showed La Cibot exactly how far she could go in holding this sword of Damocles over his head.

  ‘It’s my liver!’ he said in piteous tones.

  ‘That’s all very well!’ was La Cibot’s surly reply.

  She went off, leaving Pons in a state of confusion, full of remorse, admiring the strident devotion of his sick-bed attendant, heaping reproaches upon himself, and not realizing the terrible harm his fall on to the flagstones of the dining-room had done him, or how much it had aggravated his disease.

  *

  La Cibot caught sight of Schmucke as he came upstairs.

  ‘Do come in, Monsieur Schmucke. There’s bad news, very bad. Monsieur Pons is going out of his mind! Just think, he got out of bed with nothing on and tried to follow me, but he fell down full-length on the floor in there. And it’s no use asking him why… He doesn’t know… He’s in a bad way. I never did a thing to make him so violent, except I might have given him ideas when I was talking to him about his early loves. You never know where you are with men. Old rakes every one of them… I never ought to have made him look at my arms – his eyes were shining like carbuncles…’

  Schmucke was listening to Madame Cibot as though she were talking double Dutch.

  ‘I gave myself such a strain that I shan’t get over it for the rest of my days!’ she added, making a pretence of suffering acute pain, with the thought of exploiting an idea which a slight feeling of muscular fatigue had suggested to her. ‘Why am I such a fool? When I saw him lying flat like that I picked him up and put him back to bed, just as if he were a baby. And now I’ve ricked my back. I feel terrible, I’m going downstairs. You must look after the patient. I’m going to send Cibot to fetch the doctor to me. I’d rather die than become a cripple.’