Cousin Pons Part 42

"And how?"

"I shall demand an immediate special inquiry," continued Villemot, "and prove that we pay half the rent. You shall not turn us out. Take away the pictures, decide on the owners.h.i.+p of the various articles, but here my client stops--'my boy.'"

"I shall go out!" the old musician suddenly said. He had recovered energy during the odious dispute.

"You had better," said Fraisier. "Your course will save expense to you, for your contention would not be made good. The lease is evidence--"

"The lease! the lease!" cried Villemot, "it is a question of good faith--"

"That could only be proved in a criminal case, by calling witnesses.--Do you mean to plunge into experts' fees and verifications, and orders to show cause why judgment should not be given, and law proceedings generally?"

"No, no!" cried Schmucke in dismay. "I shall turn out; I am used to it--"

In practice Schmucke was a philosopher, an unconscious cynic, so greatly had he simplified his life. Two pairs of shoes, a pair of boots, a couple of suits of clothes, a dozen s.h.i.+rts, a dozen bandana handkerchiefs, four waistcoats, a superb pipe given to him by Pons, with an embroidered tobacco-pouch--these were all his belongings. Overwrought by a fever of indignation, he went into his room and piled his clothes upon a chair.

"All dese are mine," he said, with simplicity worthy of Cincinnatus.

"Der biano is also mine."

Fraisier turned to La Sauvage. "Madame, get help," he said; "take that piano out and put it on the landing."

"You are too rough into the bargain," said Villemot, addressing Fraisier. "The justice of the peace gives orders here; he is supreme."

"There are valuables in the room," put in the clerk.

"And besides," added the justice of the peace, "M. Schmucke is going out of his own free will."

"Did any one ever see such a client!" Villemot cried indignantly, turning upon Schmucke. "You are as limp as a rag--"

"Vat dos it matter vere von dies?" Schmucke said as he went out. "Dese men haf tiger faces.... I shall send somebody to vetch mein bits of dings."

"Where are you going, sir?"

"Vere it shall blease Gott," returned Pons' universal legatee with supreme indifference.

"Send me word," said Villemot.

Fraisier turned to the head-clerk. "Go after him," he whispered.

Mme. Cantinet was left in charge, with a provision of fifty francs paid out of the money that they found. The justice of the peace looked out; there Schmucke stood in the courtyard looking up at the windows for the last time.

"You have found a man of b.u.t.ter," remarked the justice.

"Yes," said Fraisier, "yes. The thing is as good as done. You need not hesitate to marry your granddaughter to Poulain; he will be head-surgeon at the Quinze-Vingts." (The Asylum founded by St. Louis for three hundred blind people.)

"We shall see.--Good-day, M. Fraisier," said the justice of the peace with a friendly air.

"There is a man with a head on his shoulders," remarked the justice's clerk. "The dog will go a long way."

By this time it was eleven o'clock. The old German went like an automaton down the road along which Pons and he had so often walked together. Wherever he went he saw Pons, he almost thought that Pons was by his side; and so he reached the theatre just as his friend Topinard was coming out of it after a morning spent in cleaning the lamps and meditating on the manager's tyranny.

"Oh, shoost der ding for me!" cried Schmucke, stopping his acquaintance.

"Dopinart! you haf a lodging someveres, eh?"

"Yes, sir."

"A home off your own?"

"Yes, sir."

"Are you villing to take me for ein poarder? Oh! I shall pay ver'

vell; I haf nine hundert vrancs of inkomm, und--I haf not ver' long ter lif.... I shall gif no drouble vatefer.... I can eat onydings--I only vant to shmoke mein bipe. Und--you are der only von dat haf shed a tear for Bons, mit me; und so, I lof you."

"I should be very glad, sir; but, to begin with, M. Gaudissart has given me a proper wigging--"

"_Vigging?_"

"That is one way of saying that he combed my hair for me."

"_Combed your hair?_"

"He gave me a scolding for meddling in your affairs.... So we must be very careful if you come to me. But I doubt whether you will stay when you have seen the place; you do not know how we poor devils live."

"I should rader der boor home of a goot-hearted mann dot haf mourned Bons, dan der Duileries mit men dot haf ein tiger face.... I haf chust left tigers in Bons' house; dey vill eat up everydings--"

"Come with me, sir, and you shall see. But--well, anyhow, there is a garret. Let us see what Mme. Topinard says."

Schmucke followed like a sheep, while Topinard led the way into one of the squalid districts which might be called the cancers of Paris--a spot known as the Cite Bordin. It is a slum out of the Rue de Bondy, a double row of houses run up by the speculative builder, under the shadow of the huge ma.s.s of the Porte Saint-Martin theatre. The pavement at the higher end lies below the level of the Rue de Bondy; at the lower it falls away towards the Rue des Mathurins du Temple. Follow its course and you find that it terminates in another slum running at right angles to the first--the Cite Bordin is, in fact, a T-shaped blind alley. Its two streets thus arranged contain some thirty houses, six or seven stories high; and every story, and every room in every story, is a workshop and a warehouse for goods of every sort and description, for this wart upon the face of Paris is a miniature Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Cabinet-work and bra.s.swork, theatrical costumes, blown gla.s.s, painted porcelain--all the various fancy goods known as _l'article Paris_ are made here. Dirty and productive like commerce, always full of traffic--foot-pa.s.sengers, vans, and drays--the Cite Bourdin is an unsavory-looking neighborhood, with a seething population in keeping with the squalid surroundings. It is a not unintelligent artisan population, though the whole power of the intellect is absorbed by the day's manual labor. Topinard, like every other inhabitant of the Cite Bourdin, lived in it for the sake of comparatively low rent, the cause of its existence and prosperity. His sixth floor lodging, in the second house to the left, looked out upon the belt of green garden, still in existence, at the back of three or four large mansions in the Rue de Bondy.

Topinard's apartment consisted of a kitchen and two bedrooms. The first was a nursery with two little deal bedsteads and a cradle in it, the second was the bedroom, and the kitchen did duty as a dining-room.

Above, reached by a short ladder, known among builders as a "trap-ladder," there was a kind of garret, six feet high, with a sash-window let into the roof. This room, given as a servants' bedroom, raised the Topinards' establishment from mere "rooms" to the dignity of a tenement, and the rent to a corresponding sum of four hundred francs.

An arched lobby, lighted from the kitchen by a small round window, did duty as an ante-chamber, and filled the s.p.a.ce between the bedroom, the kitchen, and house doors--three doors in all. The rooms were paved with bricks, and hung with a hideous wall-paper at threepence apiece; the chimneypieces that adorned them were of the kind called _capucines_--a shelf set on a couple of brackets painted to resemble wood. Here in these three rooms dwelt five human beings, three of them children. Any one, therefore, can imagine how the walls were covered with scores and scratches so far as an infant arm can reach.

Rich people can scarcely realize the extreme simplicity of a poor man's kitchen. A Dutch oven, a kettle, a gridiron, a saucepan, two or three dumpy cooking-pots, and a frying-pan--that was all. All the crockery in the place, white and brown earthenware together, was not worth more than twelve francs. Dinner was served on the kitchen table, which, with a couple of chairs and a couple of stools, completed the furniture. The stock of fuel was kept under the stove with a funnel-shaped chimney, and in a corner stood the wash-tub in which the family linen lay, often steeping over-night in soapsuds. The nursery ceiling was covered with clothes-lines, the walls were variegated with theatrical placards and wood-cuts from newspapers or advertis.e.m.e.nts. Evidently the eldest boy, the owner of the school-books stacked in a corner, was left in charge while his parents were absent at the theatre. In many a French workingman's family, so soon as a child reaches the age of six or seven, it plays the part of mother to younger sisters and brothers.

From this bare outline, it may be imagined that the Topinards, to use the hackneyed formula, were "poor but honest." Topinard himself was verging on forty; Mme. Topinard, once leader of a chorus--mistress, too, it was said, of Gaudissart's predecessor, was certainly thirty years old. Lolotte had been a fine woman in her day; but the misfortunes of the previous management had told upon her to such an extent, that it had seemed to her to be both advisable and necessary to contract a stage-marriage with Topinard. She did not doubt but that, as soon as they could muster the sum of a hundred and fifty francs, her Topinard would perform his vows agreeably to the civil law, were it only to legitimize the three children, whom he wors.h.i.+ped. Meantime, Mme.

Topinard sewed for the theatre wardrobe in the morning; and with prodigious effort, the brave couple made nine hundred francs per annum between them.

"One more flight!" Topinard had twice repeated since they reached the third floor. Schmucke, engulfed in his sorrow, did not so much as know whether he was going up or coming down.

In another minute Topinard had opened the door; but before he appeared in his white workman's blouse Mme. Topinard's voice rang from the kitchen:

"There, there! children, be quiet! here comes papa!"

But the children, no doubt, did as they pleased with papa, for the oldest member of the family, sitting astride a broomstick, continued to command a charge of cavalry (a reminiscence of the Cirque-Olympique), the second blew a tin trumpet, while the third did its best to keep up with the main body of the army. Their mother was at work on a theatrical costume.

"Be quiet! or I shall slap you!" shouted Topinard in a formidable voice; then in an aside for Schmucke's benefit--"Always have to say that!--Here, little one," he continued, addressing his Lolotte, "this is M. Schmucke, poor M. Pons' friend. He does not know where to go, and he would like to live with us. I told him that we were not very spick-and-span up here, that we lived on the sixth floor, and had only the garret to offer him; but it was no use, he would come--"

Schmucke had taken the chair which the woman brought him, and the children, stricken with sudden shyness, had gathered together to give the stranger that mute, earnest, so soon-finished scrutiny characteristic of childhood. For a child, like a dog, is wont to judge by instinct rather than reason. Schmucke looked up; his eyes rested on that charming little picture; he saw the performer on the tin trumpet, a little five-year-old maiden with wonderful golden hair.