Cousin Pons

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 could 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 mein 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.”

The women went about their work, and Schmucke looked on precisely as an idiot might have done.  Broken down with sorrow, wholly absorbed, in a half-cataleptic state, he could not take his eyes from the face that seemed to fascinate him, Pons’ face refined by the absolute repose of Death.  Schmucke hoped to die; everything was alike indifferent.  If the room had been on fire he would not have stirred.

“There are twelve hundred and fifty francs here,” La Sauvage told him.

Schmucke shrugged his shoulders.

But when La Sauvage came near to measure the body by laying the sheet over it, before cutting out the shroud, a horrible struggle ensued between her and the poor German.  Schmucke was furious.  He behaved like a dog that watches by his dead master’s body, and shows his teeth at all who try to touch it.  La Sauvage grew impatient.  She grasped him, set him in the armchair, and held him down with herculean strength.

“Go on, child; sew him in his shroud,” she said, turning to Mme. Cantinet.

As soon as this operation was completed, La Sauvage set Schmucke back in his place at the foot of the bed.

“Do you understand?” said she.  “The poor dead man lying there must be done up, there is no help for it.”

Schmucke began to cry.  The women left him and took possession of the kitchen, whither they brought all the necessaries in a very short time.  La Sauvage made out a preliminary statement accounting for three hundred and sixty francs, and then proceeded to prepare a dinner for four persons.  And what a dinner!  A fat goose (the cobbler’s pheasant) by way of a substantial roast, an omelette with preserves, a salad, and the inevitable broth—­the quantities of the ingredients for this last being so excessive that the soup was more like a strong meat-jelly.

At nine o’clock the priest, sent by the curate to watch by the dead, came in with Cantinet, who brought four tall wax candles and some tapers.  In the death-chamber Schmucke was lying with his arms about the body of his friend, holding him in a tight clasp; nothing but the authority of religion availed to separate him from his dead.  Then the priest settled himself comfortably in the easy-chair and read his prayers while Schmucke, kneeling beside the couch, besought God to work a miracle and unite him to Pons, so that they might be buried in the same grave; and Mme. Cantinet went on her way to the Temple to buy a pallet and complete bedding for Mme. Sauvage.  The twelve hundred and fifty francs were regarded as plunder.  At eleven o’clock Mme. Cantinet came in to ask if Schmucke would not eat a morsel, but with a gesture he signified that he wished to be left in peace.

“Your supper is ready, M. Pastelot,” she said, addressing the priest, and they went.

Schmucke, left alone in the room, smiled to himself like a madman free at last to gratify a desire like the longing of pregnancy.  He flung himself down beside Pons, and yet again he held his friend in a long, close embrace.  At midnight the priest came back and scolded him, and Schmucke returned to his prayers.  At daybreak the priest went, and at seven o’clock in the morning the doctor came to see Schmucke, and spoke kindly and tried hard to persuade him to eat, but the German refused.

“If you do not eat now you will feel very hungry when you come back,” the doctor told him, “for you must go to the mayor’s office and take a witness with you, so that the registrar may issue a certificate of death.”

“I must go!” cried Schmucke in frightened tones.

“Who else? . . .  You must go, for you were the one person who saw him die.”

“Mein legs vill nicht carry me,” pleaded Schmucke, imploring the doctor to come to the rescue.

“Take a cab,” the hypocritical doctor blandly suggested.  “I have given notice already.  Ask some one in the house to go with you.  The two women will look after the place while you are away.”

No one imagines how the requirements of the law jar upon a heartfelt sorrow.  The thought of it is enough to make one turn from civilization and choose rather the customs of the savage.  At nine o’clock that morning Mme. Sauvage half-carried Schmucke downstairs, and from the cab he was obliged to beg Remonencq to come with him to the registrar as a second witness.  Here in Paris, in this land of ours besotted with Equality, the inequality of conditions is glaringly apparent everywhere and in everything.  The immutable tendency of things peeps out even in the practical aspects of Death.  In well-to-do families, a relative, a friend, or a man of business spares the mourners these painful details; but in this, as in the matter of taxation, the whole burden falls heaviest upon the shoulders of the poor.

“Ah! you have good reason to regret him,” said Remonencq in answer to the poor martyr’s moan; “he was a very good, a very honest man, and he has left a fine collection behind him.  But being a foreigner, sir, do you know that you are like to find yourself in a great predicament —­for everybody says that M. Pons left everything to you?”

Schmucke was not listening.  He was sounding the dark depths of sorrow that border upon madness.  There is such a thing as tetanus of the soul.

“And you would do well to find some one—­some man of business—­to advise you and act for you,” pursued Remonencq.

“Ein mann of pizness!” echoed Schmucke.

“You will find that you will want some one to act for you.  If I were you, I should take an experienced man, somebody well known to you in the quarter, a man you can trust. . . .  I always go to Tabareau myself for my bits of affairs—­he is the bailiff.  If you give his clerk power to act for you, you need not trouble yourself any further.”

Remonencq and La Cibot, prompted by Fraisier, had agreed beforehand to make a suggestion which stuck in Schmucke’s memory; for there are times in our lives when grief, as it were, congeals the mind by arresting all its functions, and any chance impression made at such moments is retained by a frost-bound memory.  Schmucke heard his companion with such a fixed, mindless stare, that Remonencq said no more.

“If he is always to be idiotic like this,” thought Remonencq, “I might easily buy the whole bag of tricks up yonder for a hundred thousand francs; if it is really his. . . .  Here we are at the mayor’s office, sir.”

Remonencq was obliged to take Schmucke out of the cab and to half-carry him to the registrar’s department, where a wedding-party was assembled.  Here they had to wait for their turn, for, by no very uncommon chance, the clerk had five or six certificates to make out that morning; and here it was appointed that poor Schmucke should suffer excruciating anguish.

“Monsieur is M. Schmucke?” remarked a person in a suit of black, reducing Schmucke to stupefaction by the mention of his name.  He looked up with the same blank, unseeing eyes that he had turned upon Remonencq, who now interposed.

“What do you want with him?” he said.  “Just leave him in peace; you can plainly see that he is in trouble.”

“The gentleman has just lost his friend, and proposes, no doubt, to do honor to his memory, being, as he is, the sole heir.  The gentleman, no doubt, will not haggle over it, he will buy a piece of ground outright for a grave.  And as M. Pons was such a lover of the arts, it would be a great pity not to put Music, Painting, and Sculpture on his tomb —­three handsome full-length figures, weeping—­”

Remonencq waved the speaker away, in Auvergnat fashion, but the man replied with another gesture, which being interpreted means “Don’t spoil sport”; a piece of commercial free-masonry, as it were, which the dealer understood.

“I represent the firm of Sonet and Company, monumental stone-masons; Sir Walter Scott would have dubbed me Young Mortality,” continued this person.  “If you, sir, should decide to intrust your orders to us, we would spare you the trouble of the journey to purchase the ground necessary for the interment of a friend lost to the arts—­”

At this Remonencq nodded assent, and jogged Schmucke’s elbow.

“Every day we receive orders from families to arrange all formalities,” continued he of the black coat, thus encouraged by Remonencq.  “In the first moment of bereavement, the heir-at-law finds it very difficult to attend to such matters, and we are accustomed to perform these little services for our clients.  Our charges, sir, are on a fixed scale, so much per foot, freestone or marble.  Family vaults a specialty.—­We undertake everything at the most moderate prices.  Our firm executed the magnificent monument erected to the fair Esther Gobseck and Lucien de Rubempre, one of the finest ornaments of Pere-Lachaise.  We only employ the best workmen, and I must warn you, sir, against small contractors—­who turn out nothing but trash,” he added, seeing that another person in a black suit was coming up to say a word for another firm of marble-workers.

It is often said that “death is the end of a journey,” but the aptness of the simile is realized most fully in Paris.  Any arrival, especially of a person of condition, upon the “dark brink,” is hailed in much the same way as the traveler recently landed is hailed by hotel touts and pestered with their recommendations.  With the exception of a few philosophically-minded persons, or here and there a family secure of handing down a name to posterity, nobody thinks beforehand of the practical aspects of death.  Death always comes before he is expected; and, from a sentiment easy to understand, the heirs usually act as if the event were impossible.  For which reason, almost every one that loses father or mother, wife or child, is immediately beset by scouts that profit by the confusion caused by grief to snare others.  In former days, agents for monuments used to live round about the famous cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, and were gathered together in a single thoroughfare, which should by rights have been called the Street of Tombs; issuing thence, they fell upon the relatives of the dead as they came from the cemetery, or even at the grave-side.  But competition and the spirit of speculation induced them to spread themselves further and further afield, till descending into Paris itself they reached the very precincts of the mayor’s office.  Indeed, the stone-mason’s agent has often been known to invade the house of mourning with a design for the sepulchre in his hand.

“I am in treaty with this gentleman,” said the representative of the firm of Sonet to another agent who came up.

“Pons deceased! . . .” called the clerk at this moment.  “Where are the witnesses?”

“This way, sir,” said the stone-mason’s agent, this time addressing Remonencq.

Schmucke stayed where he had been placed on the bench, an inert mass.  Remonencq begged the agent to help him, and together they pulled Schmucke towards the balustrade, behind which the registrar shelters himself from the mourning public.  Remonencq, Schmucke’s Providence, was assisted by Dr. Poulain, who filled in the necessary information as to Pons’ age and birthplace; the German knew but one thing—­that Pons was his friend.  So soon as the signatures were affixed, Remonencq and the doctor (followed by the stone-mason’s man), put Schmucke into a cab, the desperate agent whisking in afterwards, bent upon taking a definite order.

La Sauvage, on the lookout in the gateway, half-carried Schmucke’s almost unconscious form upstairs.  Remonencq and the agent went up with her.

“He will be ill!” exclaimed the agent, anxious to make an end of the piece of business which, according to him, was in progress.

“I should think he will!” returned Mme. Sauvage.  “He has been crying for twenty-four hours on end, and he would not take anything.  There is nothing like grief for giving one a sinking in the stomach.”

“My dear client,” urged the representative of the firm of Sonet, “do take some broth.  You have so much to do; some one must go to the Hotel de Ville to buy the ground in the cemetery on which you mean to erect a monument to perpetuate the memory of the friend of the arts, and bear record to your gratitude.”

“Why, there is no sense in this!” added Mme. Cantinet, coming in with broth and bread.

“If you are as weak as this, you ought to think of finding some one to act for you,” added Remonencq, “for you have a good deal on your hands, my dear sir.  There is the funeral to order.  You would not have your friend buried like a pauper!”

“Come, come, my dear sir,” put in La Sauvage, seizing a moment when Schmucke laid his head back in the great chair to pour a spoonful of soup into his mouth.  She fed him as if he had been a child, and almost in spite of himself.

“Now, if you were wise, sir, since you are inclined to give yourself up quietly to grief, you would find some one to act for you—­”

“As you are thinking of raising a magnificent monument to the memory of your friend, sir, you have only to leave it all to me; I will undertake—­”

“What is all this?  What is all this?” asked La Sauvage.  “Has M. Schmucke ordered something?  Who may you be?”

“I represent the firm of Sonet, my dear madame, the biggest monumental stone-masons in Paris,” said the person in black, handing a business-card to the stalwart Sauvage.

“Very well, that will do.  Some one will go with you when the time comes; but you must not take advantage of the gentleman’s condition now.  You can quite see that he is not himself——­”

The agent led her out upon the landing.

“If you will undertake to get the order for us,” he said confidentially, “I am empowered to offer you forty francs.”

Mme. Sauvage grew placable.  “Very well, let me have your address,” said she.

Schmucke meantime being left to himself, and feeling the stronger for the soup and bread that he had been forced to swallow, returned at once to Pons’ rooms, and to his prayers.  He had lost himself in the fathomless depths of sorrow, when a voice sounding in his ears drew him back from the abyss of grief, and a young man in a suit of black returned for the eleventh time to the charge, pulling the poor, tortured victim’s coatsleeve until he listened.

“Sir!” said he.

“Vat ees it now?”

“Sir! we owe a supreme discovery to Dr. Gannal; we do not dispute his fame; he has worked miracles of Egypt afresh; but there have been improvements made upon his system.  We have obtained surprising results.  So, if you would like to see your friend again, as he was when he was alive—­”

“See him again!” cried Schmucke.  “Shall he speak to me?”

“Not exactly.  Speech is the only thing wanting,” continued the embalmer’s agent.  “But he will remain as he is after embalming for all eternity.  The operation is over in a few seconds.  Just an incision in the carotid artery and an injection.—­But it is high time; if you wait one single quarter of an hour, sir, you will not have the sweet satisfaction of preserving the body. . . .”

“Go to der teufel! . . .  Bons is ein spirit—­und dat spirit is in hefn.”

“That man has no gratitude in his composition,” remarked the youthful agent of one of the famous Gannal’s rivals; “he will not embalm his friend.”

The words were spoken under the archway, and addressed to La Cibot, who had just submitted her beloved to the process.

“What would you have, sir!” she said.  “He is the heir, the universal legatee.  As soon as they get what they want, the dead are nothing to them.”

An hour later, Schmucke saw Mme. Sauvage come into the room, followed by another man in a suit of black, a workman, to all appearance.

“Cantinet has been so obliging as to send this gentleman, sir,” she said; “he is coffin-maker to the parish.”

The coffin-maker made his bow with a sympathetic and compassionate air, but none the less he had a business-like look, and seemed to know that he was indispensable.  He turned an expert’s eye upon the dead.

“How does the gentleman wish ‘it’ to be made?  Deal, plain oak, or oak lead-lined?  Oak with a lead lining is the best style.  The body is a stock size,”—­he felt for the feet, and proceeded to take the measure —­“one metre seventy!” he added.  “You will be thinking of ordering the funeral service at the church, sir, no doubt?”

Schmucke looked at him as a dangerous madman might look before striking a blow.  La Sauvage put in a word.

“You ought to find somebody to look after all these things,” she said.

“Yes——­” the victim murmured at length.

“Shall I fetch M. Tabareau?—­for you will have a good deal on your hands before long.  M. Tabareau is the most honest man in the quarter, you see.”

“Yes.  Mennesir Dapareau!  Somepody vas speaking of him chust now—­” said Schmucke, completely beaten.

“Very well.  You can be quiet, sir, and give yourself up to grief, when you have seen your deputy.”

It was nearly two o’clock when M. Tabareau’s head-clerk, a young man who aimed at a bailiff’s career, modestly presented himself.  Youth has wonderful privileges; no one is alarmed by youth.  This young man Villemot by name, sat down by Schmucke’s side and waited his opportunity to speak.  His diffidence touched Schmucke very much.

“I am M. Tabareau’s head-clerk, sir,” he said; “he sent me here to take charge of your interests, and to superintend the funeral arrangements.  Is this your wish?”

“You cannot safe my life, I haf not long to lif; but you vill leaf me in beace!”

“Oh! you shall not be disturbed,” said Villemot.

“Ver’ goot.  Vat must I do for dat?”

“Sign this paper appointing M. Tabareau to act for you in all matters relating to the settlement of the affairs of the deceased.”

“Goot! gif it to me,” said Schmucke, anxious only to sign it at once.

“No, I must read it over to you first.”

“Read it ofer.”

Schmucke paid not the slightest attention to the reading of the power of attorney, but he set his name to it.  The young clerk took Schmucke’s orders for the funeral, the interment, and the burial service; undertaking that he should not be troubled again in any way, nor asked for money.

“I vould gif all dat I haf to be left in beace,” said the unhappy man.  And once more he knelt beside the dead body of his friend.

Fraisier had triumphed.  Villemot and La Sauvage completed the circle which he had traced about Pons’ heir.