Pons was charmed to hear La Cibot’s tittle-tattle. Schmucke, Mme. Cibot, and Dr. Poulain meant all humanity to him now, when his sickroom became the universe. If invalid’s thoughts, as a rule, never travel beyond in the little space over which his eyes can wander; if their selfishness, in its narrow sphere, subordinates all creatures and all things to itself, you can imagine the lengths to which an old bachelor may go. Before three weeks were out he had even gone so far as to regret, once and again, that he had not married Madeleine Vivet! Mme. Cibot, too, had made immense progress in his esteem in those three weeks; without her he felt that he should have been utterly lost; for as for Schmucke, the poor invalid looked upon him as a second Pons. La Cibot’s prodigious art consisted in expressing Pons’ own ideas, and this she did quite unconsciously.
“Ah! here comes the doctor!” she exclaimed, as the bell rang, and away she went, knowing very well that Remonencq had come with the Jew.
“Make no noise, gentlemen,” said she, “he must not know anything. He is all on the fidget when his precious treasures are concerned.”
“A walk round will be enough,” said the Hebrew, armed with a magnifying-glass and a lorgnette.
The greater part of Pons’ collection was installed in a great old-fashioned salon such as French architects used to build for the old noblesse; a room twenty-five feet broad, some thirty feet in length, and thirteen in height. Pons’ pictures to the number of sixty-seven hung upon the white-and-gold paneled walls; time, however, had reddened the gold and softened the white to an ivory tint, so that the whole was toned down, and the general effect subordinated to the effect of the pictures. Fourteen statues stood on pedestals set in the corners of the room, or among the pictures, or on brackets inlaid by Boule; sideboards of carved ebony, royally rich, surrounded the walls to elbow height, all the shelves filled with curiosities; in the middle of the room stood a row of carved credence-tables, covered with rare miracles of handicraft — with ivories and bronzes, wood-carvings and enamels, jewelry and porcelain.
As soon as Elie Magus entered the sanctuary, he went straight to the four masterpieces; he saw at a glance that these were the gems of Pons’ collection, and masters lacking in his own. For Elie Magus these were the naturalist’s desiderata for which men undertake long voyages from east to west, through deserts and tropical countries, across southern savannahs, through virgin forests.
The first was a painting by Sebastian del Piombo, the second a Fra Bartolommeo della Porta, the third a Hobbema landscape, and the fourth and last a Durer — a portrait of a woman. Four diamonds indeed! In the history of art, Sebastian del Piombo is like a shining point in which three schools meet, each bringing its pre-eminent qualities. A Venetian painter, he came to Rome to learn the manner of Raphael under the direction of Michael Angelo, who would fain oppose Raphael on his own ground by pitting one of his own lieutenants against the reigning king of art. And so it came to pass that in Del Piombo’s indolent genius Venetian color was blended with Florentine composition and a something of Raphael’s manner in the few pictures which he deigned to paint, and the sketches were made for him, it is said, by Michael Angelo himself.
If you would see the perfection to which the painter attained (armed as he was with triple power), go to the Louvre and look at the Baccio Bandinelli portrait; you might place it beside Titian’s Man with a Glove, or by that other Portrait of an Old Man in which Raphael’s consummate skill blends with Correggio’s art; or, again, compare it with Leonardo da Vinci’s Charles VIII., and the picture would scarcely lose. The four pearls are equal; there is the same lustre and sheen, the same rounded completeness, the same brilliancy. Art can go no further than this. Art has risen above Nature, since Nature only gives her creatures a few brief years of life.
Pons possessed one example of this immortal great genius and incurably indolent painter; it was a Knight of Malta, a Templar kneeling in prayer. The picture was painted on slate, and in its unfaded color and its finish was immeasurably finer than the Baccio Bandinelli.
Fra Bartolommeo was represented by a Holy Family, which many connoisseurs might have taken for a Raphael. The Hobbema would have fetched sixty thousand francs at a public sale; and as for the Durer, it was equal to the famous Holzschuer portrait at Nuremberg for which the kings of Bavaria, Holland, and Prussia have vainly offered two hundred thousand francs again and again. Was it the portrait of the wife or the daughter of Holzschuer, Albrecht Durer’s personal friend? — The hypothesis seems to be a certainty, for the attitude of the figure in Pons’ picture suggests that it is meant for a pendant, the position of the coat-of-arms is the same as in the Nuremberg portrait; and, finally, the oetatis suoe XLI. accords perfectly with the age inscribed on the picture religiously kept by the Holzschuers of Nuremberg, and but recently engraved.
The tears stood in Elie Magus’ eyes as he looked from one masterpiece to another. He turned round to La Cibot, “I will give you a commission of two thousand francs on each of the pictures if you can arrange that I shall have them for forty thousand francs,” he said. La Cibot was amazed at this good fortune dropped from the sky. Admiration, or, to be more accurate, delirious joy, had wrought such havoc in the Jew’s brain, that it had actually unsettled his habitual greed, and he fell headlong into enthusiasm, as you see.
“And I? — — ” put in Remonencq, who knew nothing about pictures.
“Everything here is equally good,” the Jew said cunningly, lowering his voice for Remonencq’s ears; “take ten pictures just as they come and on the same conditions. Your fortune will be made.”
Again the three thieves looked each other in the face, each one of them overcome with the keenest of all joys — sated greed. All of a sudden the sick man’s voice rang through the room; the tones vibrated like the strokes of a bell:
“Who is there?” called Pons.
“Monsieur! just go back to bed!” exclaimed La Cibot, springing upon Pons and dragging him by main force. “What next! Have you a mind to kill yourself? — Very well, then, it is not Dr. Poulain, it is Remonencq, good soul, so anxious that he has come to ask after you! — Everybody is so fond of you that the whole house is in a flutter. So what is there to fear?”
“It seems to me that there are several of you,” said Pons.
“Several? that is good! What next! Are you dreaming! — You will go off your head before you have done, upon my word! — Here, look!” — and La Cibot flung open the door, signed to Magus to go, and beckoned to Remonencq.
“Well, my dear sir,” said the Auvergnat, now supplied with something to say, “I just came to ask after you, for the whole house is alarmed about you. — Nobody likes Death to set foot in a house! — And lastly, Daddy Monistrol, whom you know very well, told me to tell you that if you wanted money he was at your service — — ”
“He sent you here to take a look round at my knick-knacks!” returned the old collector from his bed; and the sour tones of his voice were full of suspicion.
A sufferer from liver complaint nearly always takes momentary and special dislikes to some person or thing, and concentrates all his ill-humor upon the object. Pons imagined that some one had designs upon his precious collection; the thought of guarding it became a fixed idea with him; Schmucke was continually sent to see if any one had stolen into the sanctuary.
“Your collection is fine enough to attract the attention of chineurs,” Remonencq answered astutely. “I am not much in the art line myself; but you are supposed to be such a great connoisseur, sir, that with my eyes shut — supposing, for instance, that you should need money some time or other, for nothing costs so much as these confounded illnesses; there was my sister now, when she would have got better again just as well without. Doctors are rascals that take advantage of your condition to — ”
“Thank you, good-day, good-day,” broke in Pons, eying the marine store-dealer uneasily.
“I will go to the door with him, for fear he should touch something,” La Cibot whispered to her patient.
&
nbsp; “Yes, yes,” answered the invalid, thanking her by a glance.
La Cibot shut the bedroom door behind her, and Pons’ suspicions awoke again at once.
She found Magus standing motionless before the four pictures. His immobility, his admiration, can only be understood by other souls open to ideal beauty, to the ineffable joy of beholding art made perfect; such as these can stand for whole hours before the Antiope — Correggio’s masterpiece — before Leonardo’s Gioconda, Titian’s Mistress, Andrea del Sarto’s Holy Family, Domenichino’s Children Among the Flowers, Raphael’s little cameo, or his Portrait of an Old Man — Art’s greatest masterpieces.
“Be quick and go, and make no noise,” said La Cibot.
The Jew walked slowly backwards, giving the pictures such a farewell gaze as a lover gives his love. Outside on the landing, La Cibot tapped his bony arm. His rapt contemplations had put an idea into her head.
“Make it four thousand francs for each picture,” said she, “or I do nothing.”
“I am so poor!...” began Magus. “I want the pictures simply for their own sake, simply and solely for the love of art, my dear lady.”
“I can understand that love, sonny, you are so dried up. But if you do not promise me sixteen thousand francs now, before Remonencq here, I shall want twenty to-morrow.”
“Sixteen; I promise,” returned the Jew, frightened by the woman’s rapacity.
La Cibot turned to Remonencq.
“What oath can a Jew swear?” she inquired.
“You may trust him,” replied the marine store-dealer. “He is as honest as I am.”
“Very well; and you?” asked she, “if I get him to sell them to you, what will you give me?”
“Half-share of profits,” Remonencq answered briskly.
“I would rather have a lump sum,” returned La Cibot; “I am not in business myself.”
“You understand business uncommonly well!” put in Elie Magus, smiling; “a famous saleswoman you would make!”
“I want her to take me into partnership, me and my goods,” said the Auvergnat, as he took La Cibot’s plump arm and gave it playful taps like hammer-strokes. “I don’t ask her to bring anything into the firm but her good looks! You are making a mistake when your stick to your Turk of a Cibot and his needle. Is a little bit of a porter the man to make a woman rich — a fine woman like you? Ah, what a figure you would make in a shop on the boulevard, all among the curiosities, gossiping with amateurs and twisting them round your fingers! Just you leave your lodge as soon as you have lined your purse here, and you shall see what will become of us both.”
“Lined my purse!” cried Cibot. “I am incapable of taking the worth of a single pin; you mind that, Remonencq! I am known in the neighborhood for an honest woman, I am.”
La Cibot’s eyes flashed fire.
“There, never mind,” said Elie Magus; “this Auvergnat seems to be too fond of you to mean to insult you.”
“How she would draw on the customers!” cried the Auvergnat.
Mme. Cibot softened at this.
“Be fair, sonnies,” quoth she, “and judge for yourselves how I am placed. These ten years past I have been wearing my life out for these two old bachelors yonder, and neither or them has given me anything but words. Remonencq will tell you that I feed them by contract, and lose twenty or thirty sous a day; all my savings have gone that way, by the soul of my mother (the only author of my days that I ever knew), this is as true as that I live, and that this is the light of day, and may my coffee poison me if I lie about a farthing. Well, there is one up there that will die soon, eh? and he the richer of the two that I have treated like my own children. Would you believe it, my dear sir, I have told him over and over again for days past that he is at death’s door (for Dr. Poulain has given him up), he could not say less about putting my name down in his will. We shall only get our due by taking it, upon my word, as an honest woman, for as for trusting to the next-of-kin! — No fear! There! look you here, words don’t stink; it is a bad world!”
“That is true,” Elie Magus answered cunningly, “that is true; and it is just the like of us that are among the best,” he added, looking at Remonencq.
“Just let me be,” returned La Cibot; “I am not speaking of you. ‘Pressing company is always accepted,’ as the old actor said. I swear to you that the two gentlemen already owe me nearly three thousand francs; the little I have is gone by now in medicine and things on their account; and now suppose they refuse to recognize my advances? I am so stupidly honest that I did not dare to say nothing to them about it. Now, you that are in business, my dear sir, do you advise me to got to a lawyer?”
“A lawyer?” cried Remonencq; “you know more about it than all the lawyers put together — ”
Just at that moment a sound echoed in the great staircase, a sound as if some heavy body had fallen in the dining-room.
“Oh, goodness me!” exclaimed La Cibot; “it seems to me that monsieur has just taken a ticket for the ground floor.”
She pushed her fellow-conspirators out at the door, and while the pair descended the stairs with remarkable agility, she ran to the dining-room, and there beheld Pons, in his shirt, stretched out upon the tiles. He had fainted. She lifted him as if he had been a feather, carried him back to his room, laid him in bed, burned feathers under his nose, bathed his temples with eau-de-cologne, and at last brought him to consciousness. When she saw his eyes unclose and life return, she stood over him, hands on hips.
“No slippers! In your shirt! That is the way to kill yourself! Why do you suspect me? — If this is to be the way of it, I wish you good-day, sir. Here have I served you these ten years, I have spent money on you till my savings are all gone, to spare trouble to that poor M. Schmucke, crying like a child on the stairs — and this is my reward! You have been spying on me. God has punished you! It serves you right! Here I am straining myself to carry you, running the risk of doing myself a mischief that I shall feel all my days. Oh dear, oh dear! and the door left open too — ”
“You were talking with some one. Who was it?”
“Here are notions!” cried La Cibot. “What next! Am I your bond-slave? Am I to give account of myself to you? Do you know that if you bother me like this, I shall clear out! You shall take a nurse.”
Frightened by this threat, Pons unwittingly allowed La Cibot to see the extent of the power of her sword of Damocles.
“It is my illness!” he pleaded piteously.
“It is as you please,” La Cibot answered roughly.
She went. Pons, confused, remorseful, admiring his nurse’s scalding devotion, reproached himself for his behavior. The fall on the paved floor of the dining-room had shaken and bruised him, and aggravated his illness, but Pons was scarcely conscious of his physical sufferings.
La Cibot met Schmucke on the staircase.
“Come here, sir,” she said. “There is bad news, that there is! M. Pons is going off his head! Just think of it! he got up with nothing on, he came after me — and down he came full-length. Ask him why — he knows nothing about it. He is in a bad way. I did nothing to provoke such violence, unless, perhaps, I waked up ideas by talking to him of his early amours. Who knows men? Old libertines that they are. I ought not to have shown him my arms when his eyes were glittering like carbuckles.”
Schmucke listened. Mme. Cibot might have been talking Hebrew for anything that he understood.
“I have given myself a wrench that I shall feel all my days,” added she, making as though she were in great pain. (Her arms did, as a matter of fact, ache a little, and the muscular fatigue suggested an idea, which she proceeded to turn to profit.) “So stupid I am. When I saw him lying there on the floor, I just took him up in my arms as if he had been a child, and carried him back to bed, I did. And I strained myself, I can feel it now. Ah! how it hurts! — I am going downstairs. Look after our patient. I will send Cibot for Dr. Poulain. I had rather die outright than be crippled.”
La Cibot crawled
downstairs, clinging to the banisters, and writhing and groaning so piteously that the tenants, in alarm, came out upon their landings. Schmucke supported the suffering creature, and told the story of La Cibot’s devotion, the tears running down his cheeks as he spoke. Before very long the whole house, the whole neighborhood indeed, had heard of Mme. Cibot’s heroism; she had given herself a dangerous strain, it was said, with lifting one of the “nutcrackers.”
Schmucke meanwhile went to Pons’ bedside with the tale. Their factotum was in a frightful state. “What shall we do without her?” they said, as they looked at each other; but Pons was so plainly the worse for his escapade, that Schmucke did not dare to scold him.
“Gonfounded pric-a-prac! I would sooner purn dem dan loose mein friend!” he cried, when Pons told him of the cause of the accident. “To suspect Montame Zipod, dot lend us her safings! It is not goot; but it is der illness — ”
“Ah! what an illness! I am not the same man, I can feel it,” said Pons. “My dear Schmucke, if only you did not suffer through me!”
“Scold me,” Schmucke answered, “und leaf Montame Zipod in beace.”
As for Mme. Cibot, she soon recovered in Dr. Poulain’s hands; and her restoration, bordering on the miraculous, shed additional lustre on her name and fame in the Marais. Pons attributed the success to the excellent constitution of the patient, who resumed her ministrations seven days later to the great satisfaction of her two gentlemen. Her influence in their household and her tyranny was increased a hundred-fold by the accident. In the course of a week, the two nutcrackers ran into debt; Mme. Cibot paid the outstanding amounts, and took the opportunity to obtain from Schmucke (how easily!) a receipt for two thousand francs, which she had lent, she said, to the friends.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 741