Cousin Pons

THE HUMAN COMEDY – Honoré de Balzac Seventeenth volume of works of Honoré de Balzac edited by widow André Houssiaux, publisher, Hebert and Co, successors, 7 rue Perronet – Paris (1877) Scenes from Parisian life

 

COUSIN PONS   Date of work: Paris, July 1846 – May 1847

Analysis of the work This volume includes one of Balzac’s most important novels, Le Cousin Pons, which belongs to the Scènes de la vie parisienne series , followed by a number of short stories that Balzac classified in the same division. Le Cousin Pons is the second part ofHistoire des parents pauvres, which appeared as a serial in the daily Le Constitutionnel from October 1846 to March 1847. This major work comprises two equally famous symmetrical novels, La Cousine Bette and Le Cousin Pons. Balzac summed up the two parts of this diptych as follows: ” Le Vieux musicien (the title Balzac wanted to give to Le Cousin Pons for some time) is the poor, insulted, kind-hearted relative; La Cousine Bette is the poor, insulted relative, living inside three or four families and taking revenge for all her pain. “This contrast was to provide an opportunity to paint two single people, two isolated individuals, reacting in opposite ways to the family environment to which they’re attached. In fact, in both cases, the study of the environment took on as much importance as the central figure. And this study of the milieu led to an even more significant contrast than the one Balzac had intended, for it ultimately showed the same greed, the same cruelty in two very different social zones, the rich, powerful, seemingly invulnerable upper bourgeoisie, and the petty bourgeoisie and common people, so rarely represented in La Comédie Humaine, as bitter and harsh as the rich they accuse. The two parts ofHistoire des Parents pauvres were published one after the other in the following order, La Cousine Bette first, Le Cousin Pons immediately afterwards. This order has been preserved in all presentations of TheStory of the Poor Parents. But it was not in this order that the two subjects were conceived. Balzac began, on the contrary, by writing Le Cousin Pons, which he then called Les Deux Musiciens. He wrote a first version, then stopped, gave up and began writing La Cousine Bette, which was an instant hit. He then went back to Cousin Pons, transformed it into a novel much more extensive than its initial draft, which was as successful as La Cousine Bette. We know nothing about the first version of Cousin Pons except that Balzac conceived it as a short story. This transformation of a short story into a novel is not unique in Balzac’s work: it was already at the root of two of his most famous novels, Eugénie Grandet and Le Père Goriot. But this transformation has left no trace in these two examples, whereas it is still noticeable in the final version of Le Cousin Pons. Indeed, there’s a clear difference between the beginning of the novel, which shows Pons in his bourgeois, disdainful, intimidating family environment, and the rest of the novel, which takes place in a new social setting that’s very different from the first: the neighbors, the doorman, the neighborhood doctor, the starving lawyer who becomes his accomplice. It feels like a new novel is beginning, replacing the first. It is at this point that the novel takes on its full meaning. Pons ceases to be a poor relative whose friendship consoles him for the pettiness and disdain he finds in his rich relatives. Pons and his friend Schmucke are happy in their desert. But they’re alone, unarmed, helplessly exposed to social ferocity, crushed, says the sinister lawyer Fraisier, “like an egg under a tumbrel”. We learn by chance that the collection assembled by Pons is of immense value. The drama unfolds at this point. It is, says Balzac, “the terrible comedy of the death of a bachelor delivered by force of circumstance to the rapacity of the greedy natures who gather at his bed”, – and the drama takes place, indeed, swift, ferocious, pathetic.

Balzac’s own definition of action links Le Cousin Pons to long-standing and constant preoccupations of Balzac’s, which have no connection whatsoever withHistoire des parents pauvres. The bachelor’s life he describes is similar to the works grouped together in The Human Comedy under the general heading The Singles which includes a number of Balzac’s best-known novels and short stories, Pierrette, Le Curé de Tours, La Vieille fille, La Rabouilleuse first entitled A boy’s household in the provinces. As he explained in one of his prefaces, for Balzac, bachelors constituted a species apart from humanity, characterized by an erosion of the vital force under the effect of a mechanical and withdrawn life, a physiological phenomenon that interested him greatly. On the other hand, the subject of succession was also a project that had long tempted him. He had noted the title in a list drawn up in 1831 or 1832 of situations whose dramatic possibilities he intended to exploit. This project also left its mark on The Human Comedy since it is covered in Ursule Mirouët and inspired Balzac to create a work he wrote about several times, but which was never realized. Les Héritiers Boirouge. Finally, the plot that underpins the drama is an example of these “hidden crimes”, skilfully committed using procedures that the law cannot reach because they skirt the edges of legality without ever falling under a qualification that could lead to an indictment. This was a very old idea of Balzac’s, who had already given a list of companies that escape criminal sanctions in one of his early novels, Annette et le criminel. This theme runs throughout Balzac’s work. His belief in the “impurity” of parvenus’ wealth is one of the key ideas of his social drama. These similarities mean that Le Cousin Pons is in line with Balzac’s usual thinking. As such, it is particularly representative of the Balzacian novel. But it is also so in another way, as Balzac builds his plot on the rich background of characters and resources provided by La Comédie Humaine. In a way, Le Cousin Pons is, like La Cousine Bette, an eccentric work in La Comédie Humaine. Throughout the second half of the novel, the reader is transported into an environment that Balzac had not yet explored, and meets characters who had never appeared in previous works. But whereas in La Cousine Bette, this “eccentricity” of the work was maintained throughout, in Le Cousin PonsOn the contrary, Balzac bases all his exposition on bourgeois families that his reader knows well, since they are characters he has already heard about in César Birotteauin The Cabinet des Antiquesin the last part of Splendors and miseries of courtesans. But then a very curious phenomenon of “budding” occurs in this milieu, the beginnings of which Balzac has described elsewhere, and which we find again here, transformed: as if, while Balzac wasn’t writing, The Human Comedy continued its life and growth, producing, as the already familiar characters reappeared, not the young coppice that Balzac had shown us, but the dense forest it has become over the years. This secret efflorescence of La Comédie Humaine ‘s characters is particularly noticeable when the reader meets Pons’ parents, who have suddenly become not just characters, but personalities – and fearsome because of it. Thus, the little examining magistrate Camusot whom the reader knew, distraught and overwhelmed by events in Alençon when the Victurnien d’Esgrignon forgery affair broke out, later examining magistrate in Paris, servile at the time of the trial recounted by Prohibitionin the midst of the tragedy that ends the day Splendors and miseries of courtesansDespite his nullity, he became a considerable magistrate, president of the Indictments Chamber, aspiring to a seat on the Court of Cassation, and dreaming of an even more prestigious destiny. But that’s not all. The others made as much progress as he did. The little Popinot, an employee of César Birotteau‘s, then his son-in-law, enriched in the drug trade, we find him Minister of Commerce. Cardot, a clerk at the “Cocon d’Or”, has made a fortune in silks: he is now a peer of France. Gaudissart is no longer the clerk-traveler who used to place life insurance policies in Vouvray; he runs a major boulevard theater, belongs to the Tout-Paris and is about to become a major banker. La Comédie Humaine thus provides the pillars, as Stendhal would say, that will support all the action, and the characters already introduced will all participate to a greater or lesser extent, because of the power they have acquired, in the crushing of Pons and Schmucke. This abundance, this monstrous fecundity of Balzac’s society, which grows like plants in a tropical forest, is accompanied by another no less dizzying development: that of fortunes. It’s difficult for anyone reading Balzac today to see the full extent of the acceleration Balzac brings to fortunes. The figures he quotes don’t appeal to our imagination. They all need to be rectified and updated. To get an accurate idea of the sums Balzac mentions in his novel, we need to multiply all the figures by at least twenty, to transform them into French francs (1985). When, for example, Gaudissart gives Pons a thousand-franc bill that he asks his cashier to give him and that Mother Cibot keeps for herself, this is a “gratification” representing twenty thousand francs in 1985. Any figure quoted by Balzac in his novel must undergo this transformation to represent what Balzac wanted to express. Today in 2020, one thousand francs in 1850 are worth around 3,270 Euros. What Balzac adds here is the swarming of woodlice that greed provokes in a social zone he had rarely portrayed before. This novelist of the bourgeoisie, as he was often criticized, seemed to have ignored everything that didn’t belong to this central nebula. That wasn’t quite true: there were “good women” in Balzac’s work, such as Mother Corchard, her daughter’s madam in A double familyold Ida Gruget in Ferragus and even workers like the Tascheron from Village priest. But they rarely appear, and never in broad daylight. Reflecting on The Human Comedy and in cataloguing the subjects he had not yet dealt with, Balzac realized the extent of what remained to be done: peasants, soldiers, ports, the inhabitants of Paris’s outskirts (not yet called the suburbs), the shadowy lives that Paris conceals. And so he set out to explore environments that were completely new to him, research that gave rise to the projects we see emerging or taking shape at this time: Les Paysans, Les Traînards, Les Petits bourgeois . La ménagerie du Cousin Pons (The Menagerie of Cousin Pons ) was part of the same campaign of discovery. Newcomers to the Balzac novel include the scrap metal dealer Rémonencq, the local doctor Poulain, who has no clientele, Fraisier, the lawyer with no cause who had to leave Mantes after a few dubious cases, and above all the terrible doorman, Mère Cibot. It’s not surprising that some of Balzac’s most vigorous characters are often remembered more for their originality and strength than for the role they play in the novel. You can sense Balzac’s hunter’s delight in this game-filled terrain. He feels both the satisfaction of the zoologist who has beautiful specimens to display and the satisfaction of the novelist who finds good instruments for the layout of his plot. He also gave himself another joy. In Le Cousin Pons, we see another unknown Balzac. The prospect, now assured, of his marriage to Madame Hanska had whipped him into a frenzy, the urge to gather the finest furniture, the most precious trinkets and paintings for the home that was to house their life of love and happiness. He had traveled through Europe with Madame Hanska and her children, her daughter Anna and her fiancé, Count Georges Mniszech. On these trips, Balzac succumbed to every temptation. His passion for bric-a-brac had taken hold, and he bought furniture, porcelain, enamels and paintings by masters. The letters he wrote to Madame Hanska during this period were largely devoted to his purchases, his plans to buy, and the steps he was taking. The wonders collected by Pons are the ideal museum that Balzac would have wanted to create. Balzac’s acquisitions are less miraculous. But he was the proud owner of the Chevalier de Malte of which cousin Pons was so proud, and of a Dutch landscape, not by Breughel, alas, but by a Breughel imitator reminiscent of the one smuggled into the novel. Are there any other projections of Balzac’s life in Le Cousin Pons? The conjectures that have been made on this subject are not certain. It’s unlikely that resentment towards his mother provided him with traits for the horrible Pons porter, who tortures and robs him. His servant-mistress, Mme de Brugnol, does not appear to be the source of this portrait either. As with the lawyer Fraisier and the doctor Poulain, we have to admit that we don’t know which models Balzac might have drawn inspiration from. We know more about Schmucke, the musician and friend of Pons, for whom Balzac may have been thinking of the shy Ambroise Thomas who, during his difficult early years, had given piano lessons to Balzac’s niece, little Sophie Surville, and who, like Pons, was said to be “very greedy”. We’ve also thought of musician Jacques Strunz, to whom Balzac dedicated Massimilla Doni, or Henri Karr, father of Alphonse Karr, a German musician who barely spoke French. These references, or the particularities of structure and inspiration that we have mentioned, are not, however, the main point. The beauty of the novel, the quality of emotion it provokes, comes from a spring rarely employed by him: the pathetic, and particularly the pathetic of pity. In his other novels, Balzac has a hard edge: he describes, and when he judges, it’s society he’s judging. He reserves his pity for women, for certain women, who are for him noble and generous victims, the pathetic is reserved for them. All men have to do is understand and fight, freeing themselves from their illusions. For the first time, it’s a softer, more tender, perhaps more confidential light that sheds a light not found in any of her other novels. For it’s their weakness, their irredeemable ineptitude for life, that Balzac wants the reader to feel. For a while, Pons was just that bizarre, archaic passer-by who, under Louis-Philippe, kept the short-skirted garb and thick tie of the muscadins of the Consulate. Immediately, we forget this flâneur who has been baffled by adversity. All we see is this pair of old men who have only one refuge, their friendship: at the same time, guardians of a treasure. And Schmucke’s affection, Schmucke’s inexperience, provoke in the reader both a tenderness that speaks to all the weak, and a wonder at the feeling, so childlike, so pure, so total, that realizes so well between these two old men everything we put in the word “love”. Balzac had wanted to title his novel The Two Friends after La Fontaine’s famous fable. He renounced it, regarding this usurpation as a kind of sacrilege. But this intention is enlightening. We can understand how much of himself Balzac put into the character of Pons: he saw in this animal affection, in this total devotion, what he had lacked throughout his whole life, so brilliant and so empty. This poem of friendship ends with a very beautiful, very moving ending, in which we see the whole social apparatus with which men surround death crush poor Schmucke like a collapsing scaffolding, while in his despair he wraps his head in the black veil of the condemned. It’s a poignant, bitter ending that shows just how, in Fraisier’s excruciating words, the heavy social cart crushes everything. Does Le Cousin Pons reflect Balzac’s pessimism and despondency at the end of his life? Madame Hanska had accepted the idea of his marriage, he had joined her in Frankfurt, she was near him in Paris by the time he finished his novel: the engagement was so well decided that Madame Hanska had given Balzac a very large sum to buy their house and clear his debts. So why would Balzac be particularly pessimistic and despondent? And what’s bitter and pessimistic about Le Cousin Pons that isn’t in Le Père Goriot?

The Story Set in the middle of the 19th century, the scene recounts the miseries of a man in his sixties, Cousin Pons, a poor relative by marriage to the Camusot family. He is the first cousin of the rich silk merchant’s first wife. The second Madame Camusot is a Miss Cardot. As a relative of the Camusots, Pons enters the large Cardot family, a bourgeois society no less brilliant than that of the Camusots. A harmless old man full of sensitivity and delicacy, this figure is endowed with a beautiful soul. His only fault is that he loves good food too much. His meager salary as a musician in a boulevard theater, and his passion for works of art, don’t allow him the luxury of sumptuous meals. He remedied the situation by inviting himself into a dozen bourgeois homes. These include : of Count Popinot, peer de France, former Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, at the home of Monsieur Cardot, former notary, mayor and deputy of a Paris arrondissement, of old Monsieur Camusot, deputy, member of the Paris City Council and the General Council of Manufactures, on his way to the peerage, of Monsieur Camusot de Marville, son of the first marriage and Pons’ only real cousin. This Camusot, who, along with his brother from his second marriage, had added the Marville estate to his name, was in 1844 President of the Chamber of the Royal Court of Paris, Pons also had the right to fork in his capacity as cousin of cousins in other families by marriage. Of these bourgeois homes, the one where the artist was best received was that of President Camusot de Marville. Alas, the president, daughter of the late Thirion, bailiff to the cabinet of kings Louis XVIII and Charles X, hates her husband’s little cousin. Pons, who loves this family, makes every effort to please the president and her daughter Cécile. He serves as their slave and “handyman”, fulfilling their every whim. Despite his attentions, the old man is barely tolerated by his terrible relative, who shows him scorn and contempt. The first great wound inflicted on the dignity and integrity of this noble old man came when Pons, a fine secondhand dealer, offered the President a magnificent fan, a creation by Watteau, that had belonged to Madame de Pompadour. Amélie, unaware of the jewel’s great value, not only accepts it as a due, but uses a false pretext to get rid of this annoying cousin – a maneuver carried out so indelicately by the masters and housekeepers that it is intercepted by Pons. Bruised to the core, Pons returns to his apartment on Rue de Normandie, which he shares with his colleague and good friend, the German musician Schmucke. Pons declines day by day – he lives as a recluse and shares his meals with Schmucke. This old boys’ household is run by the concierge, the dreadful Cibot, who plays a decisive role in the drama of this story. Following Pons’ absence, a family explanation takes place at the president’s home. To avoid admitting the truth, mother and daughter blame the servants, who at the President’s behest and threat of dismissal apologize to Pons. Believing only in the moral good as he did in the beautiful arts, Pons’ moral illness was cured instantly. Cécile, already twenty-four, is a spoiled, capricious child. Despite her family’s high status, Cécile had only a modest dowry of one hundred thousand francs, and was rejected by all the parties presented to her, much to her mother’s despair. She was destined to remain a daughter until her parents offered her the land of Marville to supplement her dowry. Pons, happy with his reconciliation with his closest relatives, intends to prove his gratitude to the Camusots and suggests Frédéric Brunner, the son of old banker Fritz Brunner, for their daughter. Introductions go smoothly, and the wedding is soon planned – when the groom is officially presented to all Cécile’s families. During the evening, Frédéric hears that the President will pay Pons a life annuity of twelve hundred francs. Thinking it’s a bounty the old man has obtained from this family in exchange for the arranged marriage, he rejects the proposal and leaves the salon. This is where all the action takes place and the drama unfolds. Disgraced by the cancellation of a wedding announced to the entire Parisian bourgeoisie, Amélie and Cécile try to redeem their reputation by accusing Pons of having set a trap for them out of revenge.

Pons was sullied and banished from all the families he had visited. Shame and dishonor befall him. When he strolls along the boulevards, the notables and dignitaries of Paris look at him with contempt, reproach and disapproval. The blow is fatal for the old man, who buries himself in his room and locks himself away in morbid suffering and silence. A long descent into hell begins for Pons. Declining day by day, his friend Schmucke and his close neighbors worry about the poor man. Although the neighborhood’s expressions of sympathy were sincere at first, they soon turned self-serving when concierge Cibot, scrap dealer Rémonencq, antique dealer Elie Magus and doctor Poulain learned of the Pons museum’s value. All wearing the mask of benevolence, these protagonists will use any tactic to isolate the victim and cut off all social relations with the outside world. Schmucke’s naivety prevents him from realizing that his friend is being plotted against. La Cibot, mandates, Fraisier, (crooked little lawman) as counsel to get laid on Pons’ will. Fraisier will play a decisive role in Pons’ skinning. In order to make the most of the affair, he alerted the legitimate family to the artist’s impending death and promised, in exchange for an attractive fee, to retrocede part of Pons’ inheritance to the Camusots. Schmucke will fall into all the traps set, and despite the precautions Pons will take to leave his inheritance to his friend Schmucke, the latter will be virtually disinherited in favor of the wolves of the story. Only Schmucke and gagman Topinard will follow Pons’ funeral procession.

The characters Cousin Pons: First cousin of Monsieur Camusot’s first wife, the wealthy silk merchant Pons becomes the poor cousin befriended by the Camusot tribe, and in particular by President Camusot. This affection is not shared by his wife, President Camusot, née Thirion, who loathes her husband’s little cousin. Pons, a shy and naive soul, quickly becomes his whipping boy. Madame de Manerville’s mockery of Pons was known throughout the house and its staff, and the contempt in which he was held was widespread. The old man’s agony begins after the failure of the Camusots’ daughter Cécile’s plans to marry a wealthy banker. The President blames Pons for this failure and bans him from her company and the world. Disgraced and humiliated, he is the disgrace of an entire society – the old man’s body cannot withstand this attack and he falls ill. His mortified state does not allow him to leave his bed. From that moment on, he was delivered by force of circumstance to the rapacity of the greedy natures who clustered around his bed, and who, in history, had the most virulent passions as their instruments: that of a collector of art paintings, the greed of the lawyer Fraisier, the venality of the Auvergne-born Rémonencq, capable of anything to enrich himself, the dreams of ambition and notoriety nurtured by Doctor Poulain, the concierge’s wish to inherit from her tenant, the president’s desire to inherit from this cousin to marry Cécile off properly. Pons’ only friend is pianist Schmucke, who is none other than a second Pons. He won’t have a level playing field when it comes to fighting the pack of brain wolves. Schmucke: Piano teacher and friend of Pons. They first met in 1834 at a prize-giving ceremony. Reciprocally confidant and highly complementary, they are like brothers to each other – but with a difference: Schmucke is as absent-minded as Pons is attentive. A German pianist, Schmucke, like his friend Pons, is all heart and naiveté. This naïveté, combined with his good nature, prevented him from seeing the enemies that gravitated around Pons, and of whom he himself was the dupe. Amélie Camusot: Madame de Marville is the wife of President Camusot, Pons’ second cousin. Daughter of sieur and dame Thirion, she inherited one hundred and fifty thousand francs on their death. A small, dry woman with a rounded forehead and inverted mouth, she dreams of a glorious destiny for her husband, which is slow in coming. She resents her father-in-law, the former druggist merchant and former president of the commercial court, who went on to become MP, minister, count and peer – she doesn’t forgive him for having made himself, instead of her son, the MP for her arrondissement. His modest fortune, compared with that of the bourgeois families in his social sphere, was a further wound to his self-esteem – not least because Cécile’s dowry of one hundred thousand francs was insufficient to marry her off properly. Cécile is still a girl at 23, and the president is desperate to marry her off for money. A headstrong, embittered woman whose domination is absolute in the home, she naturally wears an air of disdain – she wants to be harsh and dry in order to obtain, through fear, the self-sacrifice and submission of all those who don’t bend to her desires. Bitter to the core, she hates Pons the poor cousin. She takes out her frustrations on the old man, finding him a scapegoat. Cécile: The only daughter of the president and presidentess of Marville, she is the icon and idol of her mother, who gives her everything. Raised as a spoiled, capricious child, Cécile couldn’t hope to find a good match in the world, given her modest dowry. Pons, who loves his niece, introduces banker Fritz Brunner to the family as Cécile’s future husband. A wedding is arranged, but unfortunately cancelled, much to the despair of Cécile and her family. This is where the drama of the story begins. Fritz Brunner: Born in Frankfurt am Main, Fritz Brunner was the son of a converted Jewish mother and Gédéon Brunner, a famous innkeeper. Young Fritz loses his mother at the age of twelve. He lives under his father’s guardianship. The fortune bequeathed by his mother was placed under the supervision of his maternal uncle Virlaz. The father remarries and the new wife takes a dislike to little Fritz. Unable to have children, and jealous of the heir of the late, beautiful Madame Brunner, she becomes a stepmother to young Brunner. Dispendent, the second Madame Brunner dies after ruining the innkeeper. Blaming all his misfortunes on his son, Gédéon disowns Fritz who, as a young adult, leaves to find his friend Wilhem in Strasbourg. Wilhem will take Fritz in, offering him shelter, food and board as well as friendship. From there, on the recommendation of Graff, Gédéon’s former first boy and now master of the Hotel du Rhin, they headed for Paris, where Fritz joined the Keller brothers, bankers, as a clerk. As for Wilhem, he finds a job as a bookkeeper with Graff’s brother, a famous tailor. He takes on a second job as flautist in the orchestra conducted by Pons. These difficult beginnings in life teach young people the value of fortune, the meaning of economics, the world and life. On the death of Gédéon Brunner, one of the founders of Baden’s railroads, the profits left four million to his son, not including the real estate acquired by the father. Fritz buys a bank house and becomes part of the wealthy bourgeoisie. Pons proposes Fritz to President Camusot as a match for her daughter. After the first promising interviews between the lovers, wedding plans are drawn up to ensure that the ceremony takes place as soon as possible. A few days before the wedding, a tragic event cancels the wedding. Humiliated in front of the world, the president holds Pons responsible for the situation. She banished the old man from society and his home for good. This judgment will be the old man’s death warrant. President Camusot de Marville: Son of a wealthy drugstore merchant, former president of the Commercial Court, member of parliament, minister, count and peer of France. Président de Chambre at the Royal Court of Paris, he is Pons’s only real grand cousin. A small, fat man, he is the son of Camusot’s first marriage. The second Madame Camusot was a Miss Cardot, who also had a son. To distinguish himself from his father and his brother from the second marriage, Camusot added the Marville land he owned to his name. Madame Cibot: A former scaler at the Cadran Bleu restaurant, renowned at the time for her beauty, she marries Cibot for love…and goes from being a beautiful scaler to the janitor of the house where Pons and his friend Schmucke are staying. Madame Cibot rounded out her monthly income, becoming the “good fairy of the house” for the two old men. She takes care of their housework and meals, and becomes indispensable to the two nutcrackers. Warned of the value of Pons’s art collection, she plots with Rémonencq, Dr. Poulain and lawyer Fraisier, a Machiavellian plan to get herself and her acolytes to lie on the sick old man’s will and seize his works of art. She sequesters the old man – her malice and mistreatment hastening the sick old man to his certain death. Elie Magus: Wealthy art dealer and collector. A miser like his friend the late Gobseck, he has a passion for the rarest and most beautiful works. As passionate as Pons was about fine art, he was in direct competition with him. He took advantage of the old man’s weakened state to steal Pons’ finest paintings at a low price, with the help of Cibot. Rémonencq: A junk dealer and curios dealer, Rémonencq is stingy and greedy. He has taken in his sister, who is none other than his slave. Both living on twelve pennies a day, these venal creatures will play an active part in the plot hatched against Pons to appropriate his collections. Doctor Poulain: A small doctor in the Marais district, despite his skills and experience, he remains a doctor with no customers, apart from the penniless wretches who live within his perimeter. Ambitious, he covets the position of chief medical officer in a ministry, hospital or prison. With his friend Fraisier, they play devil’s advocate for the Cibot in order to get their piece of the pie and see all their desires realized. Monsieur Fraisier: A small-time, shady lawyer, he’s Dr. Poulain’s college friend and accomplice. Fraisier is a cunning and intelligent character, but his intelligence is used for mischief and trickery. Venal, he will play a double game between Cibot and President de Marville, whose advisor he will become, to extract the maximum amount of money from Pons’ death.  

Source analysis/history: Preface (Volume XVI) compiled from the full text of the Comédie Humaine published by France Loisirs 1986 under the auspices of the Société des Amis d’Honoré de Balzac.

Source additional notes: Wikipedia.