“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 co
uld 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 m
ein 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.”
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 753