Cousin Pons Part 21

"I resume," he continued. "So, our friend Poulain was once called in by you to attend old M. Pillerault, the Countess Popinot's great-uncle; that is one of your claims to my devotion. Poulain goes to see your landlord (mark this!) once a fortnight; he learned all these particulars from him. M. Pillerault was present at his grand-nephew's wedding--for he is an uncle with money to leave; he has an income of fifteen thousand francs, though he has lived like a hermit for the last five-and-twenty years, and scarcely spends a thousand crowns--well, _he_ told Poulain all about this marriage. It seems that your old musician was precisely the cause of the row; he tried to disgrace his own family by way of revenge.--If you only hear one bell, you only hear one sound.--Your invalid says that he meant no harm, but everybody thinks him a monster of--"

"And it would not astonish me if he was!" cried La Cibot. "Just imagine it!--For these ten years past I have been money out of pocket for him, spending my savings on him, and he knows it, and yet he will not let me lie down to sleep on a legacy!--No, sir! he will _not_. He is obstinate, a regular mule he is.--I have talked to him these ten days, and the cross-grained cur won't stir no more than a sign-post. He shuts his teeth and looks at me like--The most that he would say was that he would recommend me to M. Schmucke."

"Then he means to make his will in favor of this Schmucke?"

"Everything will go to him--"

"Listen, my dear Mme. Cibot, if I am to arrive at any definite conclusions and think of a plan, I must know M. Schmucke. I must see the property and have some talk with this Jew of whom you speak; and then, let me direct you--"

"We shall see, M. Fraisier."

"What is this? 'We shall see?'" repeated Fraisier, speaking in the voice natural to him, as he gave La Cibot a viperous glance. "Am I your legal adviser or am I not, I say? Let us know exactly where we stand."

La Cibot felt that he read her thoughts. A cold chill ran down her back.

"I have told you all I know," she said. She saw that she was at the tiger's mercy.

"We attorneys are accustomed to treachery. Just think carefully over your position; it is superb.--If you follow my advice point by point, you will have thirty or forty thousand francs. But there is a reverse side to this beautiful medal. How if the Presidente comes to hear that M. Pons' property is worth a million of francs, and that you mean to have a bit out of it?--for there is always somebody ready to take that kind of errand--" he added parenthetically.

This remark, and the little pause that came before and after it, sent another shudder through La Cibot. She thought at once that Fraisier himself would probably undertake that office.

"And then, my dear client, in ten minutes old Pillerault is asked to dismiss you, and then on a couple of hours' notice--"

"What does that matter to me?" said La Cibot, rising to her feet like a Bellona; "I shall stay with the gentlemen as their housekeeper."

"And then, a trap will be set for you, and some fine morning you and your husband will wake up in a prison cell, to be tried for your lives--"

"_I?_" cried La Cibot, "I that have not a farthing that doesn't belong to me?... _I!_... _I!_"

For five minutes she held forth, and Fraisier watched the great artist before him as she executed a concerto of self-praise. He was quite untouched, and even amused by the performance. His keen glances p.r.i.c.ked La Cibot like stilettos; he chuckled inwardly, till his shrunken wig was shaking with laughter. He was a Robespierre at an age when the Sylla of France was make couplets.

"And how? and why? And on what pretext?" demanded she, when she had come to an end.

"You wish to know how you may come to the guillotine?"

La Cibot turned pale as death at the words; the words fell like a knife upon her neck. She stared wildly at Fraisier.

"Listen to me, my dear child," began Fraisier, suppressing his inward satisfaction at his client's discomfiture.

"I would sooner leave things as they are--" murmured La Cibot, and she rose to go.

"Stay," Fraisier said imperiously. "You ought to know the risks that you are running; I am bound to give you the benefit of my lights.--You are dismissed by M. Pillerault, we will say; there is no doubt about that, is there? You enter the service of these two gentlemen. Very good!

That is a declaration of war against the Presidente. You mean to do everything you can to gain possession of the property, and to get a slice of it at any rate--

"Oh, I am not blaming you," Fraisier continued, in answer to a gesture from his client. "It is not my place to do so. This is a battle, and you will be led on further than you think for. One grows full of one's ideas, one hits hard--"

Another gesture of denial. This time La Cibot tossed her head.

"There, there, old lady," said Fraisier, with odious familiarity, "you will go a very long way!--"

"You take me for a thief, I suppose?"

"Come, now, mamma, you hold a receipt in M. Schmucke's hand which did not cost you much.--Ah! you are in the confessional, my lady! Don't deceive your confessor, especially when the confessor has the power of reading your thoughts."

La Cibot was dismayed by the man's perspicacity; now she knew why he had listened to her so intently.

"Very good," continued he, "you can admit at once that the Presidente will not allow you to pa.s.s her in the race for the property.--You will be watched and spied upon.--You get your name into M. Pons' will; nothing could be better. But some fine day the law steps in, a.r.s.enic is found in a gla.s.s, and you and your husband are arrested, tried, and condemned for attempting the life of the Sieur Pons, so as to come by your legacy. I once defended a poor woman at Versailles; she was in reality as innocent as you would be in such a case. Things were as I have told you, and all that I could do was to save her life. The unhappy creature was sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude. She is working out her time now at St. Lazare."

Mme. Cibot's terror grew to the highest pitch. She grew paler and paler, staring at the little, thin man with the green eyes, as some wretched Moor, accused of adhering to her own religion, might gaze at the inquisitor who doomed her to the stake.

"Then, do you tell me, that if I leave you to act, and put my interests in your hands, I shall get something without fear?"

"I guarantee you thirty thousand francs," said Fraisier, speaking like a man sure of the fact.

"After all, you know how fond I am of dear Dr. Poulain," she began again in her most coaxing tones; "he told me to come to you, worthy man, and he did not send me here to be told that I shall be guillotined for poisoning some one."

The thought of the guillotine so moved her that she burst into tears, her nerves were shaken, terror clutched at her heart, she lost her head.

Fraisier gloated over his triumph. When he saw his client hesitate, he thought that he had lost his chance; he had set himself to frighten and quell La Cibot till she was completely in his power, bound hand and foot. She had walked into his study as a fly walks into a spider's web; there she was doomed to remain, entangled in the toils of the little lawyer who meant to feed upon her. Out of this bit of business, indeed, Fraisier meant to gain the living of old days; comfort, competence, and consideration. He and his friend Dr. Poulain had spent the whole previous evening in a microscopic examination of the case; they had made mature deliberations. The doctor described Schmucke for his friend's benefit, and the alert pair had plumbed all hypotheses and scrutinized all risks and resources, till Fraisier, exultant, cried aloud, "Both our fortunes lie in this!" He had gone so far as to promise Poulain a hospital, and as for himself, he meant to be justice of the peace of an arrondiss.e.m.e.nt.

To be a justice of the peace! For this man with his abundant capacity, for this doctor of law without a pair of socks to his name, the dream was a hippogriff so restive, that he thought of it as a deputy-advocate thinks of the silk gown, as an Italian priest thinks of the tiara. It was indeed a wild dream!

M. Vitel, the justice of the peace before whom Fraisier pleaded, was a man of sixty-nine, in failing health; he talked of retiring on a pension; and Fraisier used to talk with Poulain of succeeding him, much as Poulain talked of saving the life of some rich heiress and marrying her afterwards. No one knows how greedily every post in the gift of authority is sought after in Paris. Every one wants to live in Paris. If a stamp or tobacco license falls in, a hundred women rise up as one and stir all their friends to obtain it. Any vacancy in the ranks of the twenty-four collectors of taxes sends a flood of ambitious folk surging in upon the Chamber of Deputies. Decisions are made in committee, all appointments are made by the Government. Now the salary of a justice of the peace, the lowest stipendiary magistrate in Paris, is about six thousand francs. The post of registrar to the court is worth a hundred thousand francs. Few places are more coveted in the administration.

Fraisier, as a justice of the peace, with the head physician of a hospital for his friend, would make a rich marriage himself and a good match for Dr. Poulain. Each would lend a hand to each.

Night set its leaden seal upon the plans made by the sometime attorney of Mantes, and a formidable scheme sprouted up, a flourishing scheme, fertile in harvests of gain and intrigue. La Cibot was the hinge upon which the whole matter turned; and for this reason, any rebellion on the part of the instrument must be at once put down; such action on her part was quite unexpected; but Fraisier had put forth all the strength of his rancorous nature, and the audacious portress lay trampled under his feet.

"Come, rea.s.sure yourself, my dear madame," he remarked, holding out his hand. The touch of the cold, serpent-like skin made a terrible impression upon the portress. It brought about something like a physical reaction, which checked her emotion; Mme. Fontaine's toad, Astaroth, seemed to her to be less deadly than this poison-sac that wore a sandy wig and spoke in tones like the creaking of a hinge.

"Do not imagine that I am frightening you to no purpose," Fraisier continued. (La Cibot's feeling of repulsion had not escaped him.) "The affairs which made Mme. la Presidente's dreadful reputation are so well known at the law-courts, that you can make inquiries there if you like.

The great person who was all but sent into a lunatic asylum was the Marquis d'Espard. The Marquis d'Esgrignon was saved from the hulks. The handsome young man with wealth and a great future before him, who was to have married a daughter of one of the first families of France, and hanged himself in a cell of the Conciergerie, was the celebrated Lucien de Rubempre; the affair made a great deal of noise in Paris at the time.

That was a question of a will. His mistress, the notorious Esther, died and left him several millions, and they accused the young fellow of poisoning her. He was not even in Paris at the time of her death, nor did he so much as know the woman had left the money to him!--One cannot well be more innocent than that! Well, after M. Camusot examined him, he hanged himself in his cell. Law, like medicine, has its victims. In the first case, one man suffers for the many, and in the second, he dies for science," he added, and an ugly smile stole over his lips. "Well, I know the risks myself, you see; poor and obscure little attorney as I am, the law has been the ruin of me. My experience was dearly bought--it is all at your service."

"Thank you, no," said La Cibot; "I will have nothing to do with it, upon my word!... I shall have nourished ingrat.i.tude, that is all! I want nothing but my due; I have thirty years of honesty behind me, sir. M.

Pons says that he will recommend me to his friend Schmucke; well and good, I shall end my days in peace with the German, good man."

Fraisier had overshot his mark. He had discouraged La Cibot. Now he was obliged to remove these unpleasant impressions.

"Do not let us give up," he said; "just go away quietly home. Come, now, we will steer the affair to a good end."

"But what about my _rentes_, what am I to do to get them, and--"

"And feel no remorse?" he interrupted quickly. "Eh! it is precisely for that that men of business were invented; unless you keep within the law, you get nothing. You know nothing of law; I know a good deal. I will see that you keep on the right side of it, and you can hold your own in all men's sight. As for your conscience, that is your own affair."

"Very well, tell me how to do it," returned La Cibot, curious and delighted.

"I do not know how yet. I have not looked at the strong points of the case yet; I have been busy with the obstacles. But the first thing to be done is to urge him to make a will; you cannot go wrong over that; and find out, first of all, how Pons means to leave his fortune; for if you were his heir--"

"No, no; he does not like me. Ah! if I had but known the value of his gimcracks, and if I had known what I know now about his amours, I should be easy in my mind this day--"