Honoré Balzac - Cousin Pons

The old artist’s power had not failed him; with tone and gesture he put such bitterness into the words, that the peer of France was struck by them. He drew Pons aside.

“Come, now, my old friend, what is it? What has hurt you? Could you not tell me in confidence? You will permit me to say that at my house surely you have always met with consideration – ”

“You are the one exception,” said the artist. “And besides, you are a great lord and a statesman, you have so many things to think about. That would excuse anything, if there were need for it.”

The diplomatic skill that Popinot had acquired in the management of men and affairs was brought to bear upon Pons, till at length the story of his misfortunes in the President’s house was drawn from him.

Popinot took up the victim’s cause so warmly that he told the story to Mme. Popinot as soon as he went home, and that excellent and noble-natured woman spoke to the Presidente on the subject at the first opportunity. As Popinot himself likewise said a word or two to the President, there was a general explanation in the family of Camusot de Marville.

Camusot was not exactly master in his own house; but this time his remonstrance was so well founded in law and in fact, that his wife and daughter were forced to acknowledge the truth. They both humbled themselves and threw the blame on the servants. The servants, first bidden, and then chidden, only obtained pardon by a full confession, which made it clear to the President’s mind that Pons had done rightly to stop away. The President displayed himself before the servants in all his masculine and magisterial dignity, after the manner of men who are ruled by their wives. He informed his household that they should be dismissed forthwith, and forfeit any advantages which their long term of service in his house might have brought them, unless from that time forward his cousin and all those who did him the honor of coming to his house were treated as he himself was. At which speech Madeleine was moved to smile.

“You have only one chance of salvation as it is,” continued the President. “Go to my cousin, make your excuses to him, and tell him that you will lose your situations unless he forgives you, for I shall turn you all away if he does not.”

Next morning the President went out fairly early to pay a call on his cousin before going down to the court. The apparition of M. le President de Marville, announced by Mme. Cibot, was an event in the house. Pons, thus honored for the first time in his life saw reparation ahead.

“At last, my dear cousin,” said the President after the ordinary greetings; “at last I have discovered the cause of your retreat. Your behavior increases, if that were possible, my esteem for you. I have but one word to say in that connection. My servants have all been dismissed. My wife and daughter are in despair; they want to see you to have an explanation. In all this, my cousin, there is one innocent person, and he is an old judge; you will not punish me, will you, for the escapade of a thoughtless child who wished to dine with the Popinots? especially when I come to beg for peace, admitting that all the wrong has been on our side?.. An old friendship of thirty-six years, even suppose that there had been a misunderstanding, has still some claims. Come, sign a treaty of peace by dining with us to-night – ”

Pons involved himself in a diffuse reply, and ended by informing his cousin that he was to sign a marriage contract that evening; how that one of the orchestra was not only going to be married, but also about to fling his flute to the winds to become a banker.

“Very well. To-morrow.”

“Mme. la Comtesse Popinot has done me the honor of asking me, cousin. She was so kind as to write – ”

“The day after to-morrow then.”

“M. Brunner, a German, my first flute’s future partner, returns the compliment paid him to-day by the young couple – ”

“You are such pleasant company that it is not surprising that people dispute for the honor of seeing you. Very well, next Sunday? Within a week, as we say at the courts?”

“On Sunday we are to dine with M. Graff, the flute’s father-in-law.”

“Very well, on Saturday. Between now and then you will have time to reassure a little girl who has shed tears already over her fault. God asks no more than repentance; you will not be more severe than the Eternal father with poor little Cecile? – ”

Pons, thus reached on his weak side, again plunged into formulas more than polite, and went as far as the stairhead with the President.

An hour later the President’s servants arrived in a troop on poor Pons’ second floor. They behaved after the manner of their kind; they cringed and fawned; they wept. Madeleine took M. Pons aside and flung herself resolutely at his feet.

“It is all my fault; and monsieur knows quite well that I love him,” here she burst into tears. “It was vengeance boiling in my veins; monsieur ought to throw all the blame of the unhappy affair on that. We are all to lose our pensions… Monsieur, I was mad, and I would not have the rest suffer for my fault… I can see now well enough that fate did not make me for monsieur. I have come to my senses, I aimed too high, but I love you still, monsieur. These ten years I have thought of nothing but the happiness of making you happy and looking after things here. What a lot!.. Oh! if monsieur but knew how much I love him! But monsieur must have seen it through all my mischief-making. If I were to die to-morrow, what would they find? – A will in your favor, monsieur… Yes, monsieur, in my trunk under my best things.”

Madeleine had set a responsive chord vibrating; the passion inspired in another may be unwelcome, but it will always be gratifying to self-love; this was the case with the old bachelor. After generously pardoning Madeleine, he extended his forgiveness to the other servants, promising to use his influence with his cousin the Presidente on their behalf.

It was unspeakably pleasant to Pons to find all his old enjoyments restored to him without any loss of self-respect. The world had come to Pons, he had risen in the esteem of his circle; but Schmucke looked so downcast and dubious when he heard the story of the triumph, that Pons felt hurt. When, however, the kind-hearted German saw the sudden change wrought in Pons’ face, he ended by rejoicing with his friend, and made a sacrifice of the happiness that he had known during those four months that he had had Pons all to himself. Mental suffering has this immense advantage over physical ills – when the cause is removed it ceases at once. Pons was not like the same man that morning. The old man, depressed and visibly failing, had given place to the serenely contented Pons, who entered the Presidente’s house that October afternoon with the Marquise de Pompadour’s fan in his pocket. Schmucke, on the other hand, pondered deeply over this phenomenon, and could not understand it; your true stoic never can understand the courtier that dwells in a Frenchman. Pons was a born Frenchman of the Empire; a mixture of eighteenth century gallantry and that devotion to womankind so often celebrated in songs of the type of Partant pour la Syrie .

So Schmucke was fain to bury his chagrin beneath the flowers of his German philosophy; but a week later he grew so yellow that Mme. Cibot exerted her ingenuity to call in the parish doctor. The leech had fears of icterus, and left Mme. Cibot frightened half out of her wits by the Latin word for an attack of the jaundice.

Meantime the two friends went out to dinner together, perhaps for the first time in their lives. For Schmucke it was a return to the Fatherland; for Johann Graff of the Hotel du Rhin and his daughter Emilie, Wolfgang Graff the tailor and his wife, Fritz Brunner and Wilhelm Schwab, were Germans, and Pons and the notary were the only Frenchmen present at the banquet. The Graffs of the tailor’s business owned a splendid house in the Rue de Richelieu, between the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs and the Rue Villedo; they had brought up their niece, for Emilie’s father, not without reason, had feared contact with the very mixed society of an inn for his daughter. The good tailor Graffs, who loved Emilie as if she had been their own daughter, were giving up the ground floor of their great house to the young couple, and here the bank of Brunner, Schwab and Company was to be established. The arrangements for the marriage had been made about a month ago; some time must elapse before Fritz Brunner, author of all this felicity, could settle his deceased father’s affairs, and the famous firm of tailors had taken advantage of the delay to redecorate the first floor and to furnish it very handsomely for the bride and bridegroom. The offices of the bank had been fitted into the wing which united a handsome business house with the hotel at the back, between courtyard and garden.