Cousin Pons
Cousin Pons is a devastating portrait of how society measures a man's worth in francs rather than in humanity. The aging musician Pons, whose brief celebrity has faded into obscurity, lives quietly in Paris with his devoted friend Schmucke. He possesses two great passions: excellent food at the tables of relatives who barely tolerate him, and a magnificent collection of antiques assembled over decades. These wealthy cousins view Pons as an embarrassment, a poor relation whose presence at dinner is endured rather than desired. But when they finally learn the staggering value of his art collection, their sneering contempt transforms overnight into predatory affection. What follows is Balzac at his most ruthlessly funny and heartbreaking: a man watching himself be valued for the first time in his life, and realizing the valuation has nothing to do with him. The relatives who never gave Pons a second thought now orbit him with sinister tenderness, waiting for him to die. This companion to Cousin Bette stands among the greatest of Balzac's novels about Parisian society, a cynical, pessimistic, darkly comic examination of how we price the people we claim to love.
