Cousin Pons

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘Did you say Crease-us or Fleece-us?’ retorted Bixiou, who often understudied for him with the leading dancer, the celebrated Héloïse Brisetout.

  In fact, the once ‘illustrious’ Gaudissart ran his theatre solely and uncompromisingly in his own interests. After forcing his way in as joint author of several ballets, plays and vaudevilles, taking advantage of his collaborators’ ever-pressing needs, he bought up their share in them. These plays and vaudevilles -always billed to appear with successful dramas – brought Gaudissart a fair number of gold coins per diem. He also trafficked – by proxy – in the sale of tickets, and as he had allotted himself a certain number of these as director’s perquisites, he was able to levy a tithe on all the takings. These three ways of collecting directorial imposts, and in addition, the sale of theatre boxes, and bribes from untalented actresses keen on getting walking-on parts and flaunting themselves as queens and pages, so swelled out his third share of the profits that his sleeping partners, on whom the other two thirds devolved, drew scarcely a tenth part of the proceeds. None the less, this tenth part still brought them fifteen per cent interest on their capital. And so, Gaudissart, on the strength of this fifteen per cent dividend, made great talk of his intelligence, his probity and his zeal, and pointed out how lucky his partners were. When the Comte Popinot, with some show of concern, asked Monsieur Matifat, General Gouraud, Matifat’s son-in-law, and Célestin Crevel if they were pleased with Gaudissart, Gouraud, now a Peer of France, replied:

  ‘They say he fleeces us, but he does it with such wit and good humour that we are satisfied.’

  ‘Like the cuckold in La Fontaine’s story – delighted to get a thrashing!’ said the former Minister with a smile.

  Gaudissart was putting his capital to use in ventures outside the theatre. He had shrewdly appraised the Graffs, Schwabs and Brunners and invested in the railway enterprise now being launched by this firm. Concealing his astuteness behind the bluff jauntiness of the libertine and the voluptuary, he appeared to be concerned only with dissipation and flashy attire. But he kept an eye on everything, and exploited the immense business experience he had acquired as a commercial traveller. This self-made man who seemed not to take himself seriously lived in a sumptuous flat which his scene-painter had fitted out with great care and in which he gave suppers and parties to well-known figures. Fond of display, and liking to do things on a grand scale, he made himself out to be an easy-going man, and he seemed so much the less dangerous because he had kept up the ‘patter’ as he called it, of his former occupation, though it was overlaid with stage slang. And since theatre people are not addicted to mincing words, he borrowed enough wit from the green-room (it has its own brand of wit) and seasoned it with enough of the commercial traveller’s lively pleasantries to pass himself off as a superior man. Just now he was thinking of selling his theatre licence and, to quote his expression, ‘passing on to higher activities’… He wanted to be a railway director, a man of consequence, an administrator, and marry Mademoiselle Minard, the daughter of one of the richest mayors of Paris. He hoped to be elected to the Chamber of Deputies on the strength of his own ‘speciality’ and, with Popinot’s patronage, to end up in the Council of State.

  ‘To whom have I the honour of speaking?’ asked Gaudissart, fixing his managerial gaze on La Cibot.

  ‘Monsieur, I am Monsieur Pons’s confidential friend.’

  ‘Well, how is he, the dear old chap?’

  ‘Bad, very bad, Monsieur.’

  ‘Dear me! Dear me! I’m sorry to hear it… I must go and see him. There aren’t many men like him.’

  ‘Very true, Monsieur, he’s a real cherub… I can’t think how a man like him came to take up with the theatre.’

  ‘Why, Madame,’ said Gaudissart, ‘the theatre is a school for the reform of morals… Poor Pons!… Upon my word, there ought to be special kinds of feeding-stock to keep up the supply of men like that – an exemplary man, and such talent! When do you think he will be able to start work again? Unfortunately, the theatre’s like a stage-coach: full or empty, it must leave on time. Every evening the curtain goes up at six o’clock; it’s no use being sorry for people. That won’t supply us with the music we want… Tell me, what’s the position?’

  ‘Alas, kind sir!’ said La Cibot, pulling out her handkerchief and wiping her eyes. ‘It’s a terrible thing to say, but I believe we’re going to be unlucky enough to lose him, even though we’re caring for him like the apple of our eye, Monsieur Schmucke and me… What’s more, I’ve come to tell you that you mustn’t reckon any more on getting dear Monsieur Schmucke back – he never gets a night’s sleep – and there it is… You can’t help keeping on as if there was still some hope and trying to snatch the dear, worthy man from the grave… But the doctor says there’s no hope…’

  ‘What’s he dying of?’

  ‘Vexation, jaundice, liver, not to speak of lots of family worries.’

  ‘And of his doctor,’ said Gaudissart. ‘He should have called in Dr Lebrun. He’s the theatre doctor and there would have been no bill.’

  ‘Monsieur Pons has a doctor straight from Heaven. But what can the cleverest doctor do when he’s up against all that?’

  ‘I really did need those two excellent “Nutcrackers” to do the music in my new fairy-play.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do instead?’ asked La Cibot, with all the naïveté of a Simple Simon.

  Gaudissart burst out laughing.

  ‘Monsieur, I’m their confidential agent, and there are many things that these gentlemen…’

  At the sound of Gaudissart’s laughter, a female voice cried out:

  ‘If you’re laughing, it means I can come in, darling.’ And the leading dancer bounded into the office and flung herself down on its only settee. It was Héloïse Brisetout, wrapped in a gorgeous multicoloured wrap.

  ‘What’s making you laugh? Is it this lady? What job’s she come for?’ asked the dancer, treating La Cibot to one of those glances – from one artiste to another – which would make a good subject for a painting.

  Héloïse was well up in literary circles, a prominent figure in the Bohemia of the time, on close terms with all the prominent artistes, elegant, smart and graceful. She had more wit than leading dancers usually have. As she put these questions she took a sniff from a phial of heady perfume.

  ‘Madame,’ said La Cibot, ‘one good-looking woman’s no worse than another, and just because I don’t sniff up pestiferous smells out of bottles and plaster brick-dust on my cheeks…’

  ‘With what Nature has already put on yours, my dear, it would be gilding the lily,’ said Héloïse, glancing sideways at her director.

  ‘I’m a respectable woman…’

  ‘Hard luck. It isn’t all that easy, I assure you, to be a kept woman! I’m one, Madame, and I’m doing splendidly.’

  ‘No credit to you! You can give yourself airs and wear all the colours of the rainbow, you still won’t get the gentlemen round you as I used to, Meddem! And you’ll never be a patch on the lovely oyster-girl of the Cadran Bleu…’

  The dancer sprang to her feet, stood to attention and brought the back of her hand to her forehead like a private saluting a general.

  ‘What,’ said Gaudissart. ‘Are you the lovely oyster-girl my father told me about?’

  ‘If that’s so, both the cachucha and the polka must be too up-to-date for you, Madame. Madame must be over fifty!’ said Héloïse. She assumed a theatrical pose and declaimed the line from Corneille:

  ‘Cinna, let us be friends!…’

  ‘That’s enough, Héloïse. This lady can’t compete with you. Leave her alone.’

  ‘Could this lady be the new Héloïse that Rousseau wrote about?’ asked the concierge, with mock innocence and much sarcasm.

  ‘Not bad, you old stager!’ exclaimed Gaudissart.

  ‘Very stale,’ said the dancer. ‘That joke’s got whiskers on it. Try something more up to date, you old stager… or have a cigarette.’

&
nbsp; ‘You must excuse me, Madame,’ said La Cibot. ‘I’ve too much on my mind to go on bandying words with you. I’ve two very sick gentlemen on my hands. And to feed them and save them trouble, I’ve had to pawn my husband’s clothes this morning. Look, here’s the ticket.’

  ‘Oh, now we’re going all melodramatic!’ cried the fair Héloïse. ‘What’s it all about?’

  ‘This lady,’ La Cibot continued, ‘flounces in here like…’

  ‘Like a leading dancer,’ said Héloïse. ‘I’m prompting you. Get on with it, Meddem!’

  ‘That will do, I’m in a hurry,’ said Gaudissart. ‘Enough of this fooling, Héloïse. This lady is the confidential agent of our poor conductor who’s at death’s door. She’s just come to tell me we can’t expect him here any more. I’m in a fix.’

  ‘Oh, the poor man! We ought to give him a benefit performance.’

  ‘He’d be ruined!’ said Gaudissart. ‘The next day he might have to turn over five hundred francs to the alms-houses. They don’t recognize any charitable causes in Paris other than their own…. Here, my good woman, since you’re competing for the prize for this year’s good deed…’

  Gaudissart rang, and the commissionaire promptly appeared.

  ‘Tell the cashier to send me a thousand-franc note. Sit down again, Madame.’

  ‘Oh, the poor woman’s in tears!…’ cried the dancer. ‘It’s a shame… Come on, old lady, we’ll go and see him, cheer up – See here, you old Chink,’ she said to the director, drawing him aside. ‘You want me to take the leading dancer’s part in the Ariana ballet. You’re getting married, and you know I can put a spoke in your wheel!’

  ‘Héloïse, my heart is copper-bottomed like a frigate.’

  ‘I’ll show her the children you’ve fathered on me. I’ll borrow some.’

  ‘I’ve told my fiancée about you and me…’

  ‘Be a nice boy, give Pons’s job to Garangeot. The poor fellow has talent. He’s down on his luck. Do that and I’ll keep quiet.’

  ‘You might wait till Pons is dead… The old chap may still get over it.’

  ‘Oh, no, Monsieur,’ La Cibot broke in. ‘He hasn’t been in his right mind since last night. He’s just raving. He won’t last long, I’m sorry to say.’

  ‘In any case, let Garangeot fill in the gap,’ said Héloïse. ‘All the press is on his side.’

  At this moment the cashier came in with two five-hundred-franc notes.

  ‘Hand them over to this lady,’ said Gaudissant. ‘Good-bye, my good woman. Take good care of the dear man, and tell him I’ll come and see him to morrow… or the next day… as soon as I can.’

  ‘Man overboard!’ cried Héloïse.

  ‘Oh, Monsieur, people with hearts like yours are only to be found in the theatre. May God bless you!’

  ‘What account is that to go on?’ asked the cashier.

  ‘I’ll sign a chit, you can put it down in the gratuities account.’

  Before leaving, La Cibot made a fine curtsey to the dancer, and her ear caught the following question put by Gaudissart to his former mistress :

  ‘Is Garangeot capable of composing the music for our ballet The Mohicans in a matter of twelve days? If he can manage that he can take over Pons’s job.’

  *

  The concierge, reaping a better reward for such a disservice than if she had done a good deed, withheld all the payments due to the two friends. She had also robbed them of their means of existence in the eventuality of Pons recovering his health. In a few days time this perfidious manoeuvre was to bring about the desired end: the sale of the pictures coveted by Elias Magus. In order to carry out this initial spoliation, she had to hoodwink the terrible collaborator she had engaged, the advocate Fraisier, and ensure absolute discretion on the part of Magus and Rémonencq.

  As for the Auvergnat, he had gradually become a prey to one of those passions conceived by uneducated people, such as come up to Paris with a set of notions inspired by the isolation of country life; the ignorance of these primitive creatures and the brutishness of their desires converts such notions into idées fixes. Madame Cibot’s beauty and her market-place brand of wit had been the object of the second-hand dealer’s attentions, and he had it in mind to filch her away from Cibot and live in concubinage with her: a sort of bigamous union more frequent than one imagines among the lower classes in Paris. But day by day the noose of avarice tightened its hold on Rémonencq and ended by stifling his reasoning faculties. And so, reckoning that the commission which La Cibot would extract from Magus and himself would amount to forty thousand francs, he moved forward from misdemeanour to felony and aimed to get her as his lawful wife. His purely mercenary attachment, lengthily ruminated as he leaned against the doorway smoking his pipe, eventually brought him to the point of wishing for the little tailor’s death. In this way his capital would be almost tripled, and he told himself what an excellent saleswoman La Cibot would make and what a fine figure she would cut in a splendid shop on the boulevard. This twofold covetousness intoxicated Rémonencq: he would rent a shop in the Boulevard de la Madeleine and stock it with the finest articles from the Pons collection. But then, after basking in these dreams of a golden future and watching millions of francs curling skywards from the bowl of his pipe, he used to wake up and find himself face to face with the little tailor sweeping up the courtyard, entry and street, at the moment when he himself was opening up his shop-front and laying out his wares – for, since Pons had fallen ill, Cibot had taken over the functions which his wife had allotted to herself. So the Auvergnat regarded this stunted little tailor with his sallow, almost coppery complexion as the only obstacle to happiness, and he began to wonder how to get rid of him. This growing passion filled La Cibot with pride, for she was reaching the time of life when women begin to realize that it is possible to grow old.

  One morning then, on rising, La Cibot studied Rémonencq with a thoughtful gaze, as he was setting out the paltry articles in his shop-window; she decided to find out how far his infatuation would go…

  The Auvergnat came up to her and said:

  ‘Well now, are things going the way you want?’

  ‘It’s you I’m bothered about,’ replied La Cibot. ‘You’ll be getting me talked about,’ she added; ‘the neighbours will spot you goggling at me with your sheep’s eyes.’

  She passed through the door and dived into the depths of Rémonencq’s shop.

  ‘What an idea!’ said the Auvergnat.

  ‘Here, I want to talk to you,’ she said. ‘Monsieur Pons’s lawful heirs are going to get moving and they could cause us a lot of trouble. God alone knows what would happen to us if they saw dealers nosing about the place like dogs after a bone. I can only get Monsieur Schmucke to sell a few pictures if you’re keen enough about me to keep it secret – so dead secret you wouldn’t breathe a word about where they came from or who sold them – not even with a rope round your neck. It’s like this: once Monsieur Pons is dead and buried, if they find fifty-three pictures instead of sixty-seven, nobody will know how many there were. And besides, Monsieur Pons might have sold some of them while he was still alive, and nobody can gainsay that.’

  ‘That’s all right for me,’ answered Rémonencq. ‘But Monsieur Magus will want regular receipts.’

  ‘God help you, you’ll get your receipt too! You don’t think I’d be the one to write them out? Monsieur Schmucke’ll do that. But you tell your Jew,’ she added, ‘to keep as mum as you.’

  ‘We’ll be as silent as the grave. It’s part of our job. Now look, I can read, but I can’t write, and that’s why I need a capable woman, one with schooling, like you!… Well now – here was I with never a thought but laying up a bit for my old age, and blessed if I aren’t hankering after some little Rémonencqs!… Come on now, get rid of your Cibot!’

  ‘Why, here’s your Jew coming,’ said the concierge. ‘We can get things settled now.’

  ‘Well, my dear lady,’ said Elias Magus, who was in the habit of coming along on
ce every three days, very early, to find out when he could buy his pictures. ‘Where do we stand?’

  ‘Have you had anybody talking to you about Monsieur Pons and his knick-knacks?’ asked La Cibot.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Magus, ‘I’ve hada letter from a queer sort of lawyer, who looks to me like a small-time busybody, and as I distrust such people, I didn’t answer. Three days later he came to see me and left his card. I told my concierge I should never be in when he called!’

  ‘You’re a lovely old Jew,’ said La Cibot, who was little used to such cautiousness as Magus had shown. ‘Well, my chicks, in a few days’ time I’ll get Monsieur Schmucke to sell you seven or eight pictures – ten at the most. But on two conditions. One is, mouths tight shut. It’s Monsieur Schmucke who’ll have sent for you, you see, Monsieur Magus. It’s Monsieur Rémonencq who’ll have brought you to Monsieur Schmucke as a buyer. In short, whatever comes of it, I’ve nothing to do with it. Will you pay forty-six thousand francs for the four pictures?’

  ‘I will,’ answered the Jew with a sigh.

  ‘All right then,’ the concierge continued. ‘And here’s my second condition. You’ll hand over forty-three thousand to me, and you’ll be buying them from Monsieur Schmucke for three thousand francs. Rémonencq will buy four for two thousand francs and hand on the surplus to me… But that’s not all. See here, my dear Monsieur Magus: when that’s all over, I’m going to put a fine bit of business in your way, the two of you, on condition the three of us share the proceeds. I’ll take you to that lawyer or, more likely, he’ll come to us. You’ll value everything Monsieur Pons has at the price you’re able to pay, so that Monsieur Fraisier can be sure how much the succession is worth. But he mustn’t come here before our little sale. Understand?’

  ‘I understand,’ said the Jew. ‘But it will take time to inspect the goods and fix a price.’

  ‘You can have half a day. Trust me, I’ll see to that. Talk it over between yourselves, my friends. There you are then: the job will be done the day after tomorrow. I’ll go and have a talk with Monsieur Fraisier – he knows everything that goes on here through Dr Poulain. It’s no end of trouble keeping that customer quiet.’