“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.