Le Cousin Pons, the second part of the Poor Relations, is the counterpart of Cousin Bette and one of the most moving works of the cycle. Sylvain Pons, an old musician, ugly, old-fashioned, and timid, conceals beneath his apparent poverty a treasure: he has patiently assembled, over the course of his life, a collection of paintings and art objects of inestimable value, of which no one suspects the worth. An inveterate gourmand, Pons cadges his dinners from his rich relatives, the Camusot de Marvilles, who despise and humiliate him. His sole happiness is the pure and touching friendship that unites him to the German pianist Schmucke, a candid soul with whom he shares a modest, tender existence. When the fabulous value of Pons's collection comes to be guessed, a veritable conspiracy of cupidity is woven around the two defenseless old men: the scheming concierge Mme Cibot, rapacious dealers like Rémonencq and Élie Magus, and crooked men of law strive to despoil them. Fallen ill, overwhelmed by the betrayal and malice surrounding him, Pons dies, robbed in his own lifetime. Schmucke, his heart broken by the loss of his friend and frustrated by the maneuvers over the inheritance that should have come to him, scarcely survives him and dies in turn, victim of the same rapacity. Balzac paints the persecution of innocence and disinterestedness by universal greed, and makes of the friendship of Pons and Schmucke an island of purity in a world of predators. The novel is an implacable study of human cupidity unleashed over an inheritance, and an elegy on the fate of gentle, defenseless beings. Pons's collection, fruit of an artist's passion, becomes the instrument of his ruin.