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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Fromont and Risler by Alphonse Daudet, v2
+#64 in our series The French Immortals Crowned by the French Academy
+#5 in our series by Alphonse Daudet
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+Title: Fromont and Risler, v2
+
+Author: Alphonse Daudet
+
+Release Date: April, 2003  [Etext #3977]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 09/23/01]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Fromont and Risler by Alphonse Daudet, v2
+***********This file should be named 3977.txt or 3977.zip*********
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+
+
+
+FROMONT AND RISLER
+
+By ALPHONSE DAUDET
+
+
+
+BOOK 2.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE TRUE PEARL AND THE FALSE
+
+"What can be the matter?  What have I done to her?"  Claire Fromont very
+often wondered when she thought of Sidonie.
+
+She was entirely ignorant of what had formerly taken place between her
+friend and Georges at Savigny.  Her own life was so upright, her mind so
+pure, that it was impossible for her to divine the jealous, mean-spirited
+ambition that had grown up by her side within the past fifteen years.
+And yet the enigmatical expression in that pretty face as it smiled upon
+her gave her a vague feeling of uneasiness which she could not
+understand.  An affectation of politeness, strange enough between
+friends, was suddenly succeeded by an ill-dissembled anger, a cold,
+stinging tone, in presence of which Claire was as perplexed as by a
+difficult problem.  Sometimes, too, a singular presentiment, the ill-
+defined intuition of a great misfortune, was mingled with her uneasiness;
+for all women have in some degree a kind of second sight, and, even in
+the most innocent, ignorance of evil is suddenly illumined by visions of
+extraordinary lucidity.
+
+From time to time, as the result of a conversation somewhat longer than
+usual, or of one of those unexpected meetings when faces taken by
+surprise allow their real thoughts to be seen, Madame Fromont reflected
+seriously concerning this strange little Sidonie; but the active, urgent
+duties of life, with its accompaniment of affections and preoccupations,
+left her no time for dwelling upon such trifles.
+
+To all women comes a time when they encounter such sudden windings in the
+road that their whole horizon changes and all their points of view become
+transformed.
+
+Had Claire been a young girl, the falling away of that friendship bit by
+bit, as if torn from her by an unkindly hand, would have been a source of
+great regret to her.  But she had lost her father, the object of her
+greatest, her only youthful affection; then she had married.  The child
+had come, with its thrice welcome demands upon her every moment.
+Moreover, she had with her her mother, almost in her dotage, still
+stupefied by her husband's tragic death.  In a life so fully occupied,
+Sidonie's caprices received but little attention; and it had hardly
+occurred to Claire Fromont to be surprised at her marriage to Risler.
+He was clearly too old for her; but, after all, what difference did it
+make, if they loved each other?
+
+As for being vexed because little Chebe had attained that lofty position,
+had become almost her equal, her superior nature was incapable of such
+pettiness.  On the contrary, she would have been glad with all her heart
+to know that that young wife, whose home was so near her own, who lived
+the same life, so to speak, and had been her playmate in childhood, was
+happy and highly esteemed.  Being most kindly disposed toward her, she
+tried to teach her, to instruct her in the ways of society, as one might
+instruct an attractive provincial, who fell but little short of being
+altogether charming.
+
+Advice is not readily accepted by one pretty young woman from another.
+When Madame Fromont gave a grand dinner-party, she took Madame Risler to
+her bedroom, and said to her, smiling frankly in order not to vex her:
+"You have put on too many jewels, my dear.  And then, you know, with a
+high dress one doesn't wear flowers in the hair."  Sidonie blushed, and
+thanked her friend, but wrote down an additional grievance against her in
+the bottom of her heart.
+
+In Claire's circle her welcome was decidedly cold.  The Faubourg Saint-
+Germain has its pretensions; but do not imagine that the Marais has none!
+Those wives and daughters of mechanics, of wealthy manufacturers, knew
+little Chebe's story; indeed, they would have guessed it simply by her
+manner of making her appearance and by her demeanor among them.
+
+Sidonie's efforts were unavailing.  She retained the manners of a shop-
+girl.  Her slightly artificial amiability, sometimes too humble, was as
+unpleasant as the spurious elegance of the shop; and her disdainful
+attitudes recalled the superb airs of the head saleswomen in the great
+dry-goods establishments, arrayed in black silk gowns, which they take
+off in the dressing-room when they go away at night--who stare with an
+imposing air, from the vantage-point of their mountains of curls, at the
+poor creatures who venture to discuss prices.
+
+She felt that she was being examined and criticised, and her modesty was
+compelled to place itself upon a war footing.  Of the names mentioned in
+her presence, the amusements, the entertainments, the books of which they
+talked to her, she knew nothing.  Claire did her best to help her, to
+keep her on the surface, with a friendly hand always outstretched; but
+many of these ladies thought Sidonie pretty; that was enough to make them
+bear her a grudge for seeking admission to their circle.  Others, proud
+of their husbands' standing and of their wealth, could not invent enough
+unspoken affronts and patronizing phrases to humiliate the little
+parvenue.
+
+Sidonie included them all in a single phrase: "Claire's friends--that is
+to say, my enemies!"  But she was seriously incensed against but one.
+
+The two partners had no suspicion of what was taking place between their
+wives.  Risler, continually engrossed in his press, sometimes remained at
+his draughting-table until midnight.  Fromont passed his days abroad,
+lunched at his club, was almost never at the factory.  He had his reasons
+for that.
+
+Sidonie's proximity disturbed him.  His capricious passion for her, that
+passion that he had sacrificed to his uncle's last wishes, recurred too
+often to his memory with all the regret one feels for the irreparable;
+and, conscious that he was weak, he fled.  His was a pliable nature,
+without sustaining purpose, intelligent enough to appreciate his
+failings, too weak to guide itself.  On the evening of Risler's wedding--
+he had been married but a few months himself--he had experienced anew, in
+that woman's presence, all the emotion of the stormy evening at Savigny.
+Thereafter, without self-examination, he avoided seeing her again or
+speaking with her.  Unfortunately, as they lived in the same house, as
+their wives saw each other ten times a day, chance sometimes brought them
+together; and this strange thing happened--that the husband, wishing to
+remain virtuous, deserted his home altogether and sought distraction
+elsewhere.
+
+Claire was not astonished that it was so.  She had become accustomed,
+during her father's lifetime, to the constant comings and goings of a
+business life; and during her husband's absences, zealously performing
+her duties as wife and mother, she invented long tasks, occupations of
+all sorts, walks for the child, prolonged, peaceful tarryings in the
+sunlight, from which she would return home, overjoyed with the little
+one's progress, deeply impressed with the gleeful enjoyment of all
+infants in the fresh air, but with a touch of their radiance in the
+depths of her serious eyes.
+
+Sidonie also went out a great deal.  It often happened, toward night,
+that Georges's carriage, driving through the gateway, would compel Madame
+Risler to step hastily aside as she was returning in a gorgeous costume
+from a triumphal promenade.  The boulevard, the shop-windows, the
+purchases, made after long deliberation as if to enjoy to the full the
+pleasure of purchasing, detained her very late.  They would exchange a
+bow, a cold glance at the foot of the staircase; and Georges would hurry
+into his apartments, as into a place of refuge, concealing beneath a
+flood of caresses, bestowed upon the child his wife held out to him, the
+sudden emotion that had seized him.
+
+Sidonie, for her part, seemed to have forgotten everything, and to have
+retained no other feeling but contempt for that weak, cowardly creature.
+Moreover, she had many other things to think about.
+
+Her husband had just had a piano placed in her red salon, between the
+windows.
+
+After long hesitation she had decided to learn to sing, thinking that it
+was rather late to begin to play the piano; and twice a week Madame
+Dobson, a pretty, sentimental blonde, came to give her lessons from
+twelve o'clock to one.  In the silence of the neighborhood the a-a-a and
+o-oo, persistently prolonged, repeated again and again, with windows
+open, gave the factory the atmosphere of a boarding-school.
+
+And it was in reality a schoolgirl who was practising these exercises,
+an inexperienced, wavering little soul, full of unconfessed longings,
+with everything to learn and to find out in order to become a real woman.
+But her ambition confined itself to a superficial aspect of things.
+
+"Claire Fromont plays the piano; I will sing.  She is considered a
+refined and distinguished woman, and I intend that people shall say the
+same of me."
+
+Without a thought of improving her education, Sidonie passed her life
+running about among milliners and dressmakers.  "What are people going to
+wear this winter?"  was her cry.  She was attracted by the gorgeous
+displays in the shop-windows, by everything that caught the eye of the
+passers-by.
+
+The one thing that Sidonie envied Claire more than all else was the
+child, the luxurious plaything, beribboned from the curtains of its
+cradle to its nurse's cap.  She did not think of the sweet, maternal
+duties, demanding patience and self-abnegation, of the long rockings when
+sleep would not come, of the laughing awakenings sparkling with fresh
+water.  No!  she saw in the child naught but the daily walk.  It is such
+a pretty sight, the little bundle of finery, with floating ribbons and
+long feathers, that follows young mothers through the crowded streets.
+
+When she wanted company she had only her parents or her husband.  She
+preferred to go out alone.  The excellent Risler had such an absurd way
+of showing his love for her, playing with her as if she were a doll,
+pinching her chin and her cheek, capering about her, crying, "Hou! hou!"
+or staring at her with his great, soft eyes like an affectionate and
+grateful dog.  That senseless love, which made of her a toy, a mantel
+ornament, made her ashamed.  As for her parents, they were an
+embarrassment to her in presence of the people she wished to know, and
+immediately after her marriage she almost got rid of them by hiring a
+little house for them at Montrouge.  That step had cut short the frequent
+invasions of Monsieur Chebe and his long frock-coat, and the endless
+visits of good Madame Chebe, in whom the return of comfortable
+circumstances had revived former habits of gossip and of indolence.
+
+Sidonie would have been very glad to rid herself of the Delobelles in the
+same way, for their proximity annoyed her.  But the Marais was a central
+location for the old actor, because the boulevard theatres were so near;
+then, too, Desiree, like all sedentary persons, clung to the familiar
+outlook, and her gloomy courtyard, dark at four o'clock in winter, seemed
+to her like a friend, like a familiar face which the sun lighted up at
+times as if it were smiling at her.  As she was unable to get rid of
+them, Sidonie had adopted the course of ceasing to visit them.
+
+In truth, her life would have been lonely and depressing enough, had it
+not been for the distractions which Claire Fromont procured for her.
+Each time added fuel to her wrath.  She would say to herself:
+
+"Must everything come to me through her?"
+
+And when, just at dinner-time, a box at the theatre or an invitation for
+the evening was sent to her from the floor below, while she was dressing,
+overjoyed at the opportunity to exhibit herself, she thought of nothing
+but crushing her rival.  But such opportunities became more rare as
+Claire's time was more and more engrossed by her child.  When Grandfather
+Gardinois came to Paris, however, he never failed to bring the two
+families together.  The old peasant's gayety, for its freer expansion,
+needed little Sidonie, who did not take alarm at his jests.  He would
+take them all four to dine at Philippe's, his favorite restaurant, where
+he knew all the patrons, the waiters and the steward, would spend a lot
+of money, and then take them to a reserved box at the Opera-Comique or
+the Palais-Royal.
+
+At the theatre he laughed uproariously, talked familiarly with the box-
+openers, as he did with the waiters at Philippe's, loudly demanded
+footstools for the ladies, and when the performance was over insisted on
+having the topcoats and fur wraps of his party first of all, as if he
+were the only three-million parvenu in the audience.
+
+For these somewhat vulgar entertainments, from which her husband usually
+excused himself, Claire, with her usual tact, dressed very plainly and
+attracted no attention.  Sidonie, on the contrary, in all her finery, in
+full view of the boxes, laughed with all her heart at the grandfather's
+anecdotes, happy to have descended from the second or third gallery, her
+usual place in the old days, to that lovely proscenium box, adorned with
+mirrors, with a velvet rail that seemed made expressly for her light
+gloves, her ivory opera-glass, and her spangled fan.  The tawdry glitter
+of the theatre, the red and gold of the hangings, were genuine splendor
+to her.  She bloomed among them like a pretty paper flower in a filigree
+jardiniere.
+
+One evening, at the performance of a successful play at the Palais-Royal,
+among all the noted women who were present, painted celebrities wearing
+microscopic hats and armed with huge fans, their rouge-besmeared faces
+standing out from the shadow of the boxes in the gaudy setting of their
+gowns, Sidonie's behavior, her toilette, the peculiarities of her laugh
+and her expression attracted much attention.  All the opera-glasses in
+the hall, guided by the magnetic current that is so powerful under the
+great chandeliers, were turned one by one upon the box in which she sat.
+Claire soon became embarrassed, and modestly insisted upon changing
+places with her husband, who, unluckily, had accompanied them that
+evening.
+
+Georges, youthful and elegant, sitting beside Sidonie, seemed her natural
+companion, while Risler Allle, always so placid and self-effacing, seemed
+in his proper place beside Claire Fromont, who in her dark clothes
+suggested the respectable woman incog. at the Bal de l'Opera.
+
+Upon leaving the theatre each of the partners offered his arm to his
+neighbor.  A box-opener, speaking to Sidonie, referred to Georges as
+"your husband," and the little woman beamed with delight.
+
+"Your husband!"
+
+That simple phrase was enough to upset her and set in motion a multitude
+of evil currents in the depths of her heart.  As they passed through the
+corridors and the foyer, she watched Risler and Madame "Chorche" walking
+in front of them.  Claire's refinement of manner seemed to her to be
+vulgarized and annihilated by Risler's shuffling gait.  "How ugly he must
+make me look when we are walking together!"  she said to herself.  And
+her heart beat fast as she thought what a charming, happy, admired couple
+they would have made, she and this Georges Fromont, whose arm was
+trembling beneath her own.
+
+Thereupon, when the blue-lined carriage drove up to the door of the
+theatre, she began to reflect, for the first time, that, when all was
+said, Claire had stolen her place and that she would be justified in
+trying to recover it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE BREWERY ON THE RUE BLONDEL
+
+After his marriage Risler had given up the brewery.  Sidonie would have
+been glad to have him leave the house in the evening for a fashionable
+club, a resort of wealthy, well-dressed men; but the idea of his
+returning, amid clouds of pipe-smoke, to his friends of earlier days,
+Sigismond, Delobelle, and her own father, humiliated her and made her
+unhappy.  So he ceased to frequent the place; and that was something of a
+sacrifice.  It was almost a glimpse of his native country, that brewery
+situated in a remote corner of Paris.  The infrequent carriages, the
+high, barred windows of the ground floors, the odor of fresh drugs, of
+pharmaceutical preparations, imparted to that narrow little Rue Blondel a
+vague resemblance to certain streets in Basle or Zurich.
+
+The brewery was managed by a Swiss and crowded with men of that
+nationality.  When the door was opened, through the smoke-laden
+atmosphere, dense with the accents of the North, one had a vision of a
+vast, low room with hams hanging from the rafters, casks of beer standing
+in a row, the floor ankle-deep with sawdust, and on the counter great
+salad-bowls filled with potatoes as red as chestnuts, and baskets of
+pretzels fresh from the oven, their golden knots sprinkled with white
+salt.
+
+For twenty years Risler had had his pipe there, a long pipe marked with
+his name in the rack reserved for the regular customers.  He had also his
+table, at which he was always joined by several discreet, quiet
+compatriots, who listened admiringly, but without comprehending them,
+to the endless harangues of Chebe and Delobelle.  When Risler ceased his
+visits to the brewery, the two last-named worthies likewise turned their
+backs upon it, for several excellent reasons.  In the first place, M.
+Chebe now lived a considerable distance away.  Thanks to the generosity
+of his children, the dream of his whole life was realized at last.
+
+"When I am rich," the little man used to say in his cheerless rooms in
+the Marais, "I will have a house of my own, at the gates of Paris, almost
+in the country, a little garden which I will plant and water myself.
+That will be better for my health than all the excitement of the
+capital."
+
+Well, he had his house now, but he did not enjoy himself in it.  It was
+at Montrouge, on the road that runs around the city.  "A small chalet,
+with garden," said the advertisement, printed on a placard which gave an
+almost exact idea of the dimensions of the property.  The papers were new
+and of rustic design, the paint perfectly fresh; a water-butt planted
+beside a vine-clad arbor played the part of a pond.  In addition to all
+these advantages, only a hedge separated this paradise from another
+"chalet with garden" of precisely the same description, occupied by
+Sigismond Planus the cashier, and his sister.  To Madame Chebe that was a
+most precious circumstance.  When the good woman was bored, she would
+take a stock of knitting and darning and go and sit in the old maid's
+arbor, dazzling her with the tale of her past splendors.  Unluckily, her
+husband had not the same source of distraction.
+
+However, everything went well at first.  It was midsummer, and M. Chebe,
+always in his shirt-sleeves, was busily employed in getting settled.
+Each nail to be driven in the house was the subject of leisurely
+reflections, of endless discussions.  It was the same with the garden.
+He had determined at first to make an English garden of it, lawns always
+green, winding paths shaded by shrubbery.  But the trouble of it was that
+it took so long for the shrubbery to grow.
+
+"I have a mind to make an orchard of it," said the impatient little man.
+
+And thenceforth he dreamed of nothing but vegetables, long lines of
+beans, and peach-trees against the wall.  He dug for whole mornings,
+knitting his brows in a preoccupied way and wiping his forehead
+ostentatiously before his wife, so that she would say:
+
+"For heaven's sake, do rest a bit--you're killing yourself."
+
+The result was that the garden was a mixture: flowers and fruit, park and
+kitchen garden; and whenever he went into Paris M. Chebe was careful to
+decorate his buttonhole with a rose from his rose-bushes.
+
+While the fine weather lasted, the good people did not weary of admiring
+the sunsets behind the fortifications, the long days, the bracing country
+air.  Sometimes, in the evening, when the windows were open, they sang
+duets; and in presence of the stars in heaven, which began to twinkle
+simultaneously with the lanterns on the railway around the city,
+Ferdinand would become poetical.  But when the rain came and he could not
+go out, what misery!  Madame Chebe, a thorough Parisian, sighed for the
+narrow streets of the Marais, her expeditions to the market of Blancs-
+Manteaux, and to the shops of the quarter.
+
+As she sat by the window, her usual place for sewing and observation,
+she would gaze at the damp little garden, where the volubilis and the
+nasturtiums, stripped of their blossoms, were dropping away from the
+lattices with an air of exhaustion, at the long, straight line of the
+grassy slope of the fortifications, still fresh and green, and, a little
+farther on, at the corner of a street, the office of the Paris omnibuses,
+with all the points of their route inscribed in enticing letters on the
+green walls.  Whenever one of the omnibuses lumbered away on its journey,
+she followed it with her eyes, as a government clerk at Cayenne or Noumea
+gazes after the steamer about to return to France; she made the trip with
+it, knew just where it would stop, at what point it would lurch around a
+corner, grazing the shop-windows with its wheels.
+
+As a prisoner, M. Chebe became a terrible trial.  He could not work in
+the garden.  On Sundays the fortifications were deserted; he could no
+longer strut about among the workingmen's families dining on the grass,
+and pass from group to group in a neighborly way, his feet encased in
+embroidered slippers, with the authoritative demeanor of a wealthy
+landowner of the vicinity.  This he missed more than anything else,
+consumed as he was by the desire to make people think about him.
+So that, having nothing to do, having no one to pose before, no one to
+listen to his schemes, his stories, the anecdote of the accident to the
+Duc d'Orleans--a similar accident had happened to him in his youth, you
+remember--the unfortunate Ferdinand overwhelmed his wife with reproaches.
+
+"Your daughter banishes us--your daughter is ashamed of us!"
+
+She heard nothing but that "Your daughter--your daughter--your daughter!"
+For, in his anger with Sidonie, he denied her, throwing upon his wife the
+whole responsibility for that monstrous and unnatural child.  It was a
+genuine relief for poor Madame Chebe when her husband took an omnibus at
+the office to go and hunt up Delobelle--whose hours for lounging were
+always at his disposal--and pour into his bosom all his rancor against
+his son-in-law and his daughter.
+
+The illustrious Delobelle also bore Risler a grudge, and freely said of
+him: "He is a dastard."
+
+The great man had hoped to form an integral part of the new household, to
+be the organizer of festivities, the 'arbiter elegantiarum'.  Instead of
+which, Sidonie received him very coldly, and Risler no longer even took
+him to the brewery.  However, the actor did not complain too loud, and
+whenever he met his friend he overwhelmed him with attentions and
+flattery; for he had need of him.
+
+Weary of awaiting the discerning manager, seeing that the engagement he
+had longed for so many years did not come, it had occurred to Delobelle
+to purchase a theatre and manage it himself.  He counted upon Risler for
+the funds.  Opportunely enough, a small theatre on the boulevard happened
+to be for sale, as a result of the failure of its manager.  Delobelle
+mentioned it to Risler, at first very vaguely, in a wholly hypothetical
+form--"There would be a good chance to make a fine stroke."  Risler
+listened with his usual phlegm, saying, "Indeed, it would be a good thing
+for you."  And to a more direct suggestion, not daring to answer, "No,"
+he took refuge behind such phrases as "I will see"--"Perhaps later"--
+"I don't say no"--and finally uttered the unlucky words "I must see the
+estimates."
+
+For a whole week the actor had delved away at plans and figures, seated
+between his wife and daughter, who watched him in admiration, and
+intoxicated themselves with this latest dream.  The people in the house
+said, "Monsieur Delobelle is going to buy a theatre."  On the boulevard,
+in the actors' cafes, nothing was talked of but this transaction.
+Delobelle did not conceal the fact that he had found some one to advance
+the funds; the result being that he was surrounded by a crowd of
+unemployed actors, old comrades who tapped him familiarly on the shoulder
+and recalled themselves to his recollection--" You know, old boy."  He
+promised engagements, breakfasted at the cafe, wrote letters there,
+greeted those who entered with the tips of his fingers, held very
+animated conversations in corners; and already two threadbare authors had
+read to him a drama in seven tableaux, which was "exactly what he wanted"
+for his opening piece.  He talked about "my theatre!"  and his letters
+were addressed, "Monsieur Delobelle, Manager."
+
+When he had composed his prospectus and made his estimates, he went to
+the factory to see Risler, who, being very busy, made an appointment to
+meet him in the Rue Blondel; and that same evening, Delobelle, being the
+first to arrive at the brewery, established himself at their old table,
+ordered a pitcher of beer and two glasses, and waited.  He waited a long
+while, with his eye on the door, trembling with impatience.  Whenever any
+one entered, the actor turned his head.  He had spread his papers on the
+table, and pretended to be reading them, with animated gestures and
+movements of the head and lips.
+
+It was a magnificent opportunity, unique in its way.  He already fancied
+himself acting--for that was the main point--acting, in a theatre of his
+own, roles written expressly for him, to suit his talents, in which he
+would produce all the effect of--
+
+Suddenly the door opened, and M. Chebe made his appearance amid the pipe-
+smoke.  He was as surprised and annoyed to find Delobelle there as
+Delobelle himself was by his coming.  He had written to his son-in-law
+that morning that he wished to speak with him on a matter of very serious
+importance, and that he would meet him at the brewery.  It was an affair
+of honor, entirely between themselves, from man to man.  The real fact
+concerning this affair of honor was that M. Chebe had given notice of his
+intention to leave the little house at Montrouge, and had hired a shop
+with an entresol in the Rue du Mail, in the midst of a business district.
+A shop?  Yes, indeed!  And now he was a little alarmed regarding his
+hasty step, anxious to know how his son-in-law would take it, especially
+as the shop cost much more than the Montrouge house, and there were some
+repairs to be made at the outset.  As he had long been acquainted with
+his son-in-law's kindness of heart, M. Chebe had determined to appeal to
+him at once, hoping to lead him into his game and throw upon him the
+responsibility for this domestic change.  Instead of Risler he found
+Delobelle.
+
+They looked askance at each other, with an unfriendly eye, like two dogs
+meeting beside the same dish.  Each divined for whom the other was
+waiting, and they did not try to deceive each other.
+
+"Isn't my son-in-law here?"  asked M. Chebe, eying the documents spread
+over the table, and emphasizing the words "my son-in-law," to indicate
+that Risler belonged to him and to nobody else.
+
+"I am waiting for him," Delobelle replied, gathering up his papers.
+
+He pressed his lips together, as he added with a dignified, mysterious,
+but always theatrical air:
+
+"It is a matter of very great importance."
+
+"So is mine," declared M. Chebe, his three hairs standing erect like a
+porcupine's quills.
+
+As he spoke, he took his seat on the bench beside Delobelle, ordered a
+pitcher and two glasses as the former had done, then sat erect with his
+hands in his pockets and his back against the wall, waiting in his turn.
+The two empty glasses in front of them, intended for the same absentee,
+seemed to be hurling defiance at each other.
+
+But Risler did not come.
+
+The two men, drinking in silence, lost their patience and fidgeted about
+on the bench, each hoping that the other would tire of waiting.
+
+At last their ill-humor overflowed, and naturally poor Risler received
+the whole flood.
+
+"What an outrage to keep a man of my years waiting so long!"  began M.
+Chebe, who never mentioned his great age except upon such occasions.
+
+"I believe, on my word, that he is making sport of us," replied M.
+Delobelle.
+
+And the other:
+
+"No doubt Monsieur had company to dinner."
+
+"And such company!"  scornfully exclaimed the illustrious actor, in whose
+mind bitter memories were awakened.
+
+"The fact is--" continued M. Chebe.
+
+They drew closer to each other and talked.  The hearts of both were full
+in respect to Sidonie and Risler.  They opened the flood-gates.  That
+Risler, with all his good-nature, was an egotist pure and simple, a
+parvenu.  They laughed at his accent and his bearing, they mimicked
+certain of his peculiarities.  Then they talked about his household, and,
+lowering their voices, they became confidential, laughed familiarly
+together, were friends once more.
+
+M. Chebe went very far: "Let him beware!  he has been foolish enough to
+send the father and mother away from their daughter; if anything happens
+to her, he can't blame us.  A girl who hasn't her parents' example before
+her eyes, you understand--"
+
+"Certainly--certainly," said Delobelle; "especially as Sidonie has become
+a great flirt.  However, what can you expect?  He will get no more than
+he deserves.  No man of his age ought to--Hush! here he is!"
+
+Risler had entered the room, and was walking toward them, distributing
+hand-shakes all along the benches.
+
+There was a moment of embarrassment between the three friends.  Risler
+excused himself as well as he could.  He had been detained at home;
+Sidonie had company--Delobelle touched M. Chebe's foot under the table--
+and, as he spoke, the poor man, decidedly perplexed by the two empty
+glasses that awaited him, wondered in front of which of the two he ought
+to take his seat.
+
+Delobelle was generous.
+
+"You have business together, Messieurs; do not let me disturb you."
+
+He added in a low tone, winking at Risler:
+
+"I have the papers."
+
+"The papers?"  echoed Risler, in a bewildered tone.
+
+"The estimates," whispered the actor.
+
+Thereupon, with a great show of discretion, he withdrew within himself,
+and resumed the reading of his documents, his head in his hands and his
+fingers in his ears.
+
+The two others conversed by his side, first in undertones, then louder,
+for M. Chebe's shrill, piercing voice could not long be subdued.--He
+wasn't old enough to be buried, deuce take it!--He should have died of
+ennui at Montrouge.--What he must have was the bustle and life of the Rue
+de Mail or the Rue du Sentier--of the business districts.
+
+"Yes, but a shop?  Why a shop?"  Risler timidly ventured to ask.
+
+"Why a shop?--why a shop?"  repeated M. Chebe, red as an Easter egg, and
+raising his voice to its highest pitch.  "Why, because I'm a merchant,
+Monsieur Risler, a merchant and son of a merchant.  Oh!  I see what
+you're coming at.  I have no business.  But whose fault is it?  If the
+people who shut me up at Montrouge, at the gates of Bicetre, like a
+paralytic, had had the good sense to furnish me with the money to start
+in business--"
+
+At that point Risler succeeded in silencing him, and thereafter only
+snatches of the conversation could be heard: "a more convenient shop--
+high ceilings--better air--future plans--enormous business--I will speak
+when the time comes--many people will be astonished."
+
+As he caught these fragments of sentences, Delobelle became more and more
+absorbed in his estimates, presenting the eloquent back of the man who is
+not listening.  Risler, sorely perplexed, slowly sipped his beer from
+time to time to keep himself, in countenance.
+
+At last, when M. Chebe had grown calm, and with good reason, his son-in-
+law turned with a smile to the illustrious Delobelle, and met the stern,
+impassive glance which seemed to say, "Well! what of me?"
+
+"Ah! Mon Dieu!--that is true," thought the poor fellow.
+
+Changing at once his chair and his glass, he took his seat opposite the
+actor.  But M. Chebe had not Delobelle's courtesy.  Instead of discreetly
+moving away, he took his glass and joined the others, so that the great
+man, unwilling to speak before him, solemnly replaced his documents in
+his pocket a second time, saying to Risler:
+
+"We will talk this over later."
+
+Very much later, in truth, for M. Chebe had reflected:
+
+"My son-in-law is so good-natured!  If I leave him with this swindler,
+who knows what he may get out of him?"
+
+And he remained on guard.  The actor was furious.  It was impossible to
+postpone the matter to some other day, for Risler told them that he was
+going the next day to spend the next month at Savigny.
+
+"A month at Savigny!"  exclaimed M. Chebe, incensed at the thought of his
+son-in-law escaping him.  "How about business?"
+
+"Oh!  I shall come to Paris every day with Georges.  Monsieur Gardinois
+is very anxious to see his little Sidonie."
+
+M. Chebe shook his head.  He considered it very imprudent.  Business is
+business.  A man ought to be on the spot, always on the spot, in the
+breach.  Who could say?--the factory might take fire in the night.  And
+he repeated sententiously: "The eye of the master, my dear fellow, the
+eye of the master," while the actor--who was little better pleased by
+this intended departure--opened his great eyes; giving them an expression
+at once cunning and authoritative, the veritable expression of the eye of
+the master.
+
+At last, about midnight, the last Montrouge omnibus bore away the
+tyrannical father-in-law, and Delobelle was able to speak.
+
+"Let us first look at the prospectus," he said, preferring not to attack
+the question of figures at once; and with his eyeglasses on his nose, he
+began, in a declamatory tone, always upon the stage: "When one considers
+coolly the decrepitude which dramatic art has reached in France, when one
+measures the distance that separates the stage of Moliere--"
+
+There were several pages like that.  Risler listened, puffing at his
+pipe, afraid to stir, for the reader looked at him every moment over his
+eyeglasses, to watch the effect of his phrases.  Unfortunately, right in
+the middle of the prospectus, the cafe closed.  The lights were
+extinguished; they must go.--And the estimates?--It was agreed that they
+should read them as they walked along.  They stopped at every gaslight.
+The actor displayed his figures.  So much for the hall, so much for the
+lighting, so much for poor-rates, so much for the actors.  On that
+question of the actors he was firm.
+
+"The best point about the affair," he said, "is that we shall have no
+leading man to pay.  Our leading man will be Bibi."  (When Delobelle
+mentioned himself, he commonly called himself Bibi.) "A leading man is
+paid twenty thousand francs, and as we have none to pay, it's just as if
+you put twenty thousand francs in your pocket.  Tell me, isn't that
+true?"
+
+Risler did not reply.  He had the constrained manner, the wandering eyes
+of the man whose thoughts are elsewhere.  The reading of the estimates
+being concluded, Delobelle, dismayed to find that they were drawing near
+the corner of the Rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes, put the question
+squarely.  Would Risler advance the money, yes or no?
+
+"Well!--no," said Risler, inspired by heroic courage, which he owed
+principally to the proximity of the factory and to the thought that the
+welfare of his family was at stake.
+
+Delobelle was astounded.  He had believed that the business was as good
+as done, and he stared at his companion, intensely agitated, his eyes as
+big as saucers, and rolling his papers in his hand.
+
+"No," Risler continued, "I can't do what you ask, for this reason."
+
+Thereupon the worthy man, slowly, with his usual heaviness of speech,
+explained that he was not rich.  Although a partner in a wealthy house,
+he had no available funds.  Georges and he drew a certain sum from the
+concern each month; then, when they struck a balance at the end of the
+year they divided the profits.  It had cost him a good deal to begin
+housekeeping: all his savings.  It was still four months before the
+inventory.  Where was he to obtain the 30,000 francs to be paid down at
+once for the theatre?  And then, beyond all that, the affair could not be
+successful.
+
+"Why, it must succeed.  Bibi will be there!"  As he spoke, poor Bibi drew
+himself up to his full height; but Risler was determined, and all Bibi's
+arguments met the same refusal--"Later, in two or three years, I don't
+say something may not be done."
+
+The actor fought for a long time, yielding his ground inch by inch.
+He proposed revising his estimates.  The thing might be done cheaper.
+"It would still be too dear for me," Risler interrupted.  "My name
+doesn't belong to me.  It is a part of the firm.  I have no right to
+pledge it.  Imagine my going into bankruptcy!"  His voice trembled as he
+uttered the word.
+
+"But if everything is in my name," said Delobelle, who had no
+superstition.  He tried everything, invoked the sacred interests of art,
+went so far as to mention the fascinating actresses whose alluring
+glances--Risler laughed aloud.
+
+"Come, come, you rascal!  What's that you're saying?  You forget that
+we're both married men, and that it is very late and our wives are
+expecting us.  No ill-will, eh?--This is not a refusal, you understand.
+--By the way, come and see me after the inventory.  We will talk it over
+again.  Ah!  there's Pere Achille putting out his gas.--I must go in.
+Good-night."
+
+It was after one o'clock when the actor returned home.  The two women
+were waiting for him, working as usual, but with a sort of feverish
+activity which was strange to them.  Every moment the great scissors that
+Mamma Delobelle used to cut the brass wire were seized with strange fits
+of trembling, and Desiree's little fingers, as she mounted an insect,
+moved so fast that it made one dizzy to watch them.  Even the long
+feathers of the little birds scattered about on the table before her
+seemed more brilliant, more richly colored, than on other days.  It was
+because a lovely visitor named Hope had called upon them that evening.
+She had made the tremendous effort required to climb five dark flights of
+stairs, and had opened the door of the little room to cast a luminous
+glance therein.  However much you may have been deceived in life, those
+magic gleams always dazzle you.
+
+"Oh!  if your father could only succeed!"  said Mamma Delobelle from time
+to time, as if to sum up a whole world of happy thoughts to which her
+reverie abandoned itself.
+
+"He will succeed, mamma, never fear.  Monsieur Risler is so kind, I will
+answer for him.  And Sidonie is very fond of us, too, although since she
+was married she does seem to neglect her old friends a little.  But we
+must make allowance for the difference in our positions.  Besides,
+I never shall forget what she did for me."
+
+And, at the thought of what Sidonie had done for her, the little cripple
+applied herself with even more feverish energy to her work.  Her
+electrified fingers moved with redoubled swiftness.  You would have said
+that they were running after some fleeing, elusive thing, like happiness,
+for example, or the love of some one who loves you not.
+
+"What was it that she did for you?"  her mother would naturally have
+asked her; but at that moment she was only slightly interested in what
+her daughter said.  She was thinking exclusively of her great man.
+
+"No!  do you think so, my dear?  Just suppose your father should have a
+theatre of his own and act again as in former days.  You don't remember;
+you were too small then.  But he had tremendous success, no end of
+recalls.  One night, at Alencon, the subscribers to the theatre gave him
+a gold wreath.  Ah!  he was a brilliant man in those days, so
+lighthearted, so glad to be alive.  Those who see him now don't know him,
+poor man, misfortune has changed him so.  Oh, well!  I feel sure that all
+that's necessary is a little success to make him young and happy again.
+And then there's money to be made managing theatres.  The manager at
+Nantes had a carriage.  Can you imagine us with a carriage?  Can you
+imagine it, I say?  That's what would be good for you.  You could go out,
+leave your armchair once in a while.  Your father would take us into the
+country.  You would see the water and the trees you have had such a
+longing to see."
+
+"Oh!  the trees," murmured the pale little recluse, trembling from head
+to foot.
+
+At that moment the street door of the house was closed violently, and M.
+Delobelle's measured step echoed in the vestibule.  There was a moment of
+speechless, breathless anguish.  The women dared not look at each other,
+and mamma's great scissors trembled so that they cut the wire crooked.
+
+The poor devil had unquestionably received a terrible blow.  His
+illusions crushed, the humiliation of a refusal, the jests of his
+comrades, the bill at the cafe where he had breakfasted on credit during
+the whole period of his managership, a bill which must be paid--all these
+things occurred to him in the silence and gloom of the five flights he
+had to climb.  His heart was torn.  Even so, the actor's nature was so
+strong in him that he deemed it his duty to envelop his distress, genuine
+as it was, in a conventional tragic mask.
+
+As he entered, he paused, cast an ominous glance around the work-room,
+at the table covered with work, his little supper waiting for him in a
+corner, and the two dear, anxious faces looking up at him with glistening
+eyes.  He stood a full minute without speaking--and you know how long a
+minute's silence seems on the stage; then he took three steps forward,
+sank upon a low chair beside the table, and exclaimed in a hissing voice:
+
+"Ah!  I am accursed!"
+
+At the same time he dealt the table such a terrible blow with his fist
+that the "birds and insects for ornament" flew to the four corners of the
+room.  His terrified wife rose and timidly approached him, while Desiree
+half rose in her armchair with an expression of nervous agony that
+distorted all her features.
+
+Lolling in his chair, his arms hanging despondently by his sides, his
+head on his chest, the actor soliloquized--a fragmentary soliloquy,
+interrupted by sighs and dramatic hiccoughs, overflowing with
+imprecations against the pitiless, selfish bourgeois, those monsters to
+whom the artist gives his flesh and blood for food and drink.
+
+Then he reviewed his whole theatrical life, his early triumphs, the
+golden wreath from the subscribers at Alencon, his marriage to this
+"sainted woman," and he pointed to the poor creature who stood by his
+side, with tears streaming from her eyes, and trembling lips, nodding her
+head dotingly at every word her husband said.
+
+In very truth, a person who never had heard of the illustrious Delobelle
+could have told his history in detail after that long monologue.  He
+recalled his arrival in Paris, his humiliations, his privations.  Alas!
+he was not the one who had known privation.  One had but to look at his
+full, rotund face beside the thin, drawn faces of the two women.  But the
+actor did not look so closely.
+
+"Oh!"  he said, continuing to intoxicate himself with declamatory
+phrases, "oh!  to have struggled so long.  For ten years, fifteen years,
+have I struggled on, supported by these devoted creatures, fed by them."
+
+"Papa, papa, hush," cried Desiree, clasping her hands.
+
+"Yes, fed by them, I say--and I do not blush for it.  For I accept all
+this devotion in the name of sacred art.  But this is too much.  Too much
+has been put upon me.  I renounce the stage!"
+
+"Oh!  my dear, what is that you say?"  cried Mamma Delobelle, rushing to
+his side.
+
+"No, leave me.  I have reached the end of my strength.  They have slain
+the artist in me.  It is all over.  I renounce the stage."
+
+If you had seen the two women throw their arms about him then, implore
+him to struggle on, prove to him that he had no right to give up, you
+could not have restrained your tears.  But Delobelle resisted.
+
+He yielded at last, however, and promised to continue the fight a little
+while, since it was their wish; but it required many an entreaty and
+caress to carry the point.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+AT SAVIGNY
+
+It was a great misfortune, that sojourn of the two families at Savigny
+for a month.
+
+After an interval of two years Georges and Sidonie found themselves side
+by side once more on the old estate, too old not to be always like
+itself, where the stones, the ponds, the trees, always the same, seemed
+to cast derision upon all that changes and passes away.  A renewal of
+intercourse under such circumstances must have been disastrous to two
+natures that were not of a very different stamp, and far more virtuous
+than those two.
+
+As for Claire, she never had been so happy; Savigny never had seemed so
+lovely to her.  What joy to walk with her child over the greensward where
+she herself had walked as a child; to sit, a young mother, upon the
+shaded seats from which her own mother had looked on at her childish
+games years before; to go, leaning on Georges's arm, to seek out the
+nooks where they had played together.  She felt a tranquil contentment,
+the overflowing happiness of placid lives which enjoy their bliss in
+silence; and all day long her skirts swept along the paths, guided by the
+tiny footsteps of the child, her cries and her demands upon her mother's
+care.
+
+Sidonie seldom took part in these maternal promenades.  She said that the
+chatter of children tired her, and therein she agreed with old Gardinois,
+who seized upon any pretext to annoy his granddaughter.  He believed that
+he accomplished that object by devoting himself exclusively to Sidonie,
+and arranging even more entertainments for her than on her former visit.
+The carriages that had been shut up in the carriage-house for two years,
+and were dusted once a week because the spiders spun their webs on the
+silk cushions, were placed at her disposal.  The horses were harnessed
+three times a day, and the gate was continually turning on its hinges.
+Everybody in the house followed this impulse of worldliness.  The
+gardener paid more attention to his flowers because Madame Risler
+selected the finest ones to wear in her hair at dinner.  And then there
+were calls to be made.  Luncheon parties were given, gatherings at which
+Madame Fromont Jeune presided, but at which Sidonie, with her lively
+manners, shone supreme.  Indeed, Claire often left her a clear field.
+The child had its hours for sleeping and riding out, with which no
+amusements could interfere.  The mother was compelled to remain away, and
+it often happened that she was unable to go with Sidonie to meet the
+partners when they came from Paris at night.
+
+"You will make my excuses," she would say, as the went up to her room.
+
+Madame Risler was triumphant.  A picture of elegant indolence, she would
+drive away behind the galloping horses, unconscious of the swiftness of
+their pace, without a thought in her mind.
+
+Other carriages were always waiting at the station.  Two or three times
+she heard some one near her whisper, "That is Madame Fromont Jeune," and,
+indeed, it was a simple matter for people to make the mistake, seeing the
+three return together from the station, Sidonie sitting beside Georges on
+the back seat, laughing and talking with him, and Risler facing them,
+smiling contentedly with his broad hands spread flat upon his knees,
+but evidently feeling a little out of place in that fine carriage.
+The thought that she was taken for Madame Fromont made her very proud,
+and she became a little more accustomed to it every day.  On their
+arrival at the chateau, the two families separated until dinner; but,
+in the presence of his wife sitting tranquilly beside the sleeping child,
+Georges Fromont, too young to be absorbed by the joys of domesticity, was
+continually thinking of the brilliant Sidonie, whose voice he could hear
+pouring forth triumphant roulades under the trees in the garden.
+
+While the whole chateau was thus transformed in obedience to the whims of
+a young woman, old Gardinois continued to lead the narrow life of a
+discontented, idle, impotent 'parvenu'.  The most successful means of
+distraction he had discovered was espionage.  The goings and comings of
+his servants, the remarks that were made about him in the kitchen, the
+basket of fruit and vegetables brought every morning from the kitchen-
+garden to the pantry, were objects of continual investigation.
+
+For the purposes of this constant spying upon his household, he made use
+of a stone bench set in the gravel behind an enormous Paulownia.  He
+would sit there whole days at a time, neither reading nor thinking,
+simply watching to see who went in or out.  For the night he had invented
+something different.  In the great vestibule at the main entrance, which
+opened upon the front steps with their array of bright flowers, he had
+caused an opening to be made leading to his bedroom on the floor above.
+An acoustic tube of an improved type was supposed to convey to his ears
+every sound on the ground floor, even to the conversation of the servants
+taking the air on the steps.
+
+Unluckily, the instrument was so powerful that it exaggerated all the
+noises, confused them and prolonged them, and the powerful, regular
+ticking of a great clock, the cries of a paroquet kept in one of the
+lower rooms, the clucking of a hen in search of a lost kernel of corn,
+were all Monsieur Gardinois could hear when he applied his ear to the
+tube.  As for voices, they reached him in the form of a confused buzzing,
+like the muttering of a crowd, in which it was impossible to distinguish
+anything.  He had nothing to show for the expense of the apparatus, and
+he concealed his wonderful tube in a fold of his bed-curtains.
+
+One night Gardinois, who had fallen asleep, was awakened suddenly by the
+creaking of a door.  It was an extraordinary thing at that hour.  The
+whole house hold was asleep.  Nothing could be heard save the footsteps
+of the watch-dogs on the sand, or their scratching at the foot of a tree
+in which an owl was screeching.  An excellent opportunity to use his
+listening-tube!  Upon putting it to his ear, M. Gardinois was assured
+that he had made no mistake.  The sounds continued.  One door was opened,
+then another.  The bolt of the front door was thrown back with an effort.
+But neither Pyramus nor Thisbe, not even Kiss, the formidable
+Newfoundland, had made a sign.  He rose softly to see who those strange
+burglars could be, who were leaving the house instead of entering it;
+and this is what he saw through the slats of his blind:
+
+A tall, slender young man, with Georges's figure and carriage, arm-in-arm
+with a woman in a lace mantilla.  They stopped first at the bench by the
+Paulownia, which was in full bloom.
+
+It was a superb moonlight night.  The moon, silvering the treetops, made
+numberless flakes of light amid the dense foliage.  The terraces, white
+with moonbeams, where the Newfoundlands in their curly coats went to and
+fro, watching the night butterflies, the smooth, deep waters of the
+ponds, all shone with a mute, calm brilliance, as if reflected in a
+silver mirror.  Here and there glow-worms twinkled on the edges of the
+greensward.
+
+The two promenaders remained for a moment beneath the shade of the
+Paulownia, sitting silent on the bench, lost in the dense darkness which
+the moon makes where its rays do not reach.  Suddenly they appeared in
+the bright light, wrapped in a languishing embrace; then walked slowly
+across the main avenue, and disappeared among the trees.
+
+"I was sure of it!"  said old Gardinois, recognizing them.  Indeed, what
+need had he to recognize them?  Did not the silence of the dogs, the
+aspect of the sleeping house, tell him more clearly than anything else
+could, what species of impudent crime, unknown and unpunished, haunted
+the avenues in his park by night?  Be that as it may, the old peasant was
+overjoyed by his discovery.  He returned to bed without a light,
+chuckling to himself, and in the little cabinet filled with hunting-
+implements, whence he had watched them, thinking at first that he had to
+do with burglars, the moon's rays shone upon naught save the fowling-
+pieces hanging on the wall and the boxes of cartridges of all sizes.
+
+Sidonie and Georges had taken up the thread of their love at the corner
+of the same avenue.  The year that had passed, marked by hesitation, by
+vague struggles, by fruitless resistance, seemed to have been only a
+preparation for their meeting.  And it must be said that, when once the
+fatal step was taken, they were surprised at nothing so much as the fact
+that they had postponed it so long.  Georges Fromont especially was
+seized by a mad passion.  He was false to his wife, his best friend; he
+was false to Risler, his partner, the faithful companion of his every
+hour.
+
+He felt a constant renewal, a sort of overflow of remorse, wherein his
+passion was intensified by the magnitude of his sin.  Sidonie became his
+one engrossing thought, and he discovered that until then he had not
+lived.  As for her, her love was made up of vanity and spite.  The thing
+that she relished above all else was Claire's degradation in her eyes.
+Ah!  if she could only have said to her, "Your husband loves me--he is
+false to you with me," her pleasure would have been even greater.  As for
+Risler, in her view he richly deserved what had happened to him.  In her
+old apprentice's jargon, in which she still thought, even if she did not
+speak it, the poor man was only "an old fool," whom she had taken as a
+stepping-stone to fortune.  "An old fool" is made to be deceived!
+
+During the day Savigny belonged to Claire, to the child who ran about
+upon the gravel, laughing at the birds and the clouds, and who grew
+apace.  The mother and child had for their own the daylight, the paths
+filled with sunbeams.  But the blue nights were given over to sin, to
+that sin firmly installed in the chateau, which spoke in undertones,
+crept noiselessly behind the closed blinds, and in face of which the
+sleeping house became dumb and blind, and resumed its stony
+impassibility, as if it were ashamed to see and hear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+SIGISMOND PLANUS TREMBLES FOR HIS CASH-BOX
+
+"Carriage, my dear Chorche?--I--have a carriage?  What for?"
+
+"I assure you, my dear Risler, that it is quite essential for you.  Our
+business, our relations, are extending every day; the coupe is no longer
+enough for us.  Besides, it doesn't look well to see one of the partners
+always in his carriage and the other on foot.  Believe me, it is a
+necessary outlay, and of course it will go into the general expenses of
+the firm.  Come, resign yourself to the inevitable."
+
+It was genuine resignation.  It seemed to Risler as if he were stealing
+something in taking the money for such an unheard-of luxury as a
+carriage; however, he ended by yielding to Georges's persistent
+representations, thinking as he did so:
+
+"This will make Sidonie very happy!"
+
+The poor fellow had no suspicion that Sidonie herself, a month before,
+had selected at Binder's the coupe which Georges insisted upon giving
+her, and which was to be charged to expense account in order not to alarm
+the husband.
+
+Honest Risler was so plainly created to be deceived.  His inborn
+uprightness, the implicit confidence in men and things, which was the
+foundation of his transparent nature, had been intensified of late by
+preoccupation resulting from his pursuit of the Risler Press, an
+invention destined to revolutionize the wall-paper industry and
+representing in his eyes his contribution to the partnership assets.
+When he laid aside his drawings and left his little work-room on the
+first floor, his face invariably wore the absorbed look of the man who
+has his life on one side, his anxieties on another.  What a delight it
+was to him, therefore, to find his home always tranquil, his wife always
+in good humor, becomingly dressed and smiling.
+
+Without undertaking to explain the change to himself, he recognized that
+for some time past the "little one" had not been as before in her
+treatment of him.  She allowed him to resume his old habits: the pipe at
+dessert, the little nap after dinner, the appointments at the brewery
+with Chebe and Delobelle.  Their apartments also were transformed,
+embellished.
+
+A grand piano by a famous maker made its appearance in the salon in place
+of the old one, and Madame Dobson, the singing-teacher, came no longer
+twice a week, but every day, music-roll in hand.
+
+Of a curious type was that young woman of American extraction, with hair
+of an acid blond, like lemon-pulp, over a bold forehead and metallic blue
+eyes.  As her husband would not allow her to go on the stage, she gave
+lessons, and sang in some bourgeois salons.  As a result of living in the
+artificial world of compositions for voice and piano, she had contracted
+a species of sentimental frenzy.
+
+She was romance itself.  In her mouth the words "love" and "passion"
+seemed to have eighty syllables, she uttered them with so much
+expression.  Oh, expression!  That was what Mistress Dobson placed before
+everything, and what she tried, and tried in vain, to impart to her
+pupil.
+
+'Ay Chiquita,' upon which Paris fed for several seasons, was then at the
+height of its popularity.  Sidonie studied it conscientiously, and all
+the morning she could be heard singing:
+
+                   "On dit que tu te maries,
+                    Tu sais que j'en puis mourir."
+
+                    [They say that thou'rt to marry
+                    Thou know'st that I may die.]
+
+"Mouri-i-i-i-i-r!"  the expressive Madame Dobson would interpose, while
+her hands wandered feebly over the piano-keys; and die she would, raising
+her light blue eyes to the ceiling and wildly throwing back her head.
+Sidonie never could accomplish it.  Her mischievous eyes, her lips,
+crimson with fulness of life, were not made for such AEolian-harp
+sentimentalities.  The refrains of Offenbach or Herve, interspersed with
+unexpected notes, in which one resorts to expressive gestures for aid, to
+a motion of the head or the body, would have suited her better; but she
+dared not admit it to her sentimental instructress.  By the way, although
+she had been made to sing a great deal at Mademoiselle Le Mire's, her
+voice was still fresh and not unpleasing.
+
+Having no social connections, she came gradually to make a friend of her
+singing-mistress.  She would keep her to breakfast, take her to drive in
+the new coupe and to assist in her purchases of gowns and jewels.  Madame
+Dobson's sentimental and sympathetic tone led one to repose confidence in
+her.  Her continual repinings seemed too long to attract other repinings.
+Sidonie told her of Georges, of their relations, attempting to palliate
+her offence by blaming the cruelty of her parents in marrying her by
+force to a man much older than herself.  Madame Dobson at once showed a
+disposition to assist them; not that the little woman was venal, but she
+had a passion for passion, a taste for romantic intrigue.  As she was
+unhappy in her own home, married to a dentist who beat her, all husbands
+were monsters in her eyes, and poor Risler especially seemed to her a
+horrible tyrant whom his wife was quite justified in hating and
+deceiving.
+
+She was an active confidant and a very useful one.  Two or three times a
+week she would bring tickets for a box at the Opera or the Italiens, or
+some one of the little theatres which enjoy a temporary vogue, and cause
+all Paris to go from one end of Paris to the other for a season.  In
+Risler's eyes the tickets came from Madame Dobson; she had as many as she
+chose to the theatres where operas were given.  The poor wretch had no
+suspicion that one of those boxes for an important "first night" had
+often cost his partner ten or fifteen Louis.
+
+In the evening, when his wife went away, always splendidly attired, he
+would gaze admiringly at her, having no suspicion of the cost of her
+costumes, certainly none of the man who paid for them, and would await
+her return at his table by the fire, busy with his drawings, free from
+care, and happy to be able to say to himself, "What a good time she is
+having!"
+
+On the floor below, at the Fromonts', the same comedy was being played,
+but with a transposition of parts.  There it was the young wife who sat
+by the fire.  Every evening, half an hour after Sidonie's departure, the
+great gate swung open to give passage to the Fromont coupe conveying
+Monsieur to his club.  What would you have?  Business has its demands.
+All the great deals are arranged at the club, around the bouillotte
+table, and a man must go there or suffer the penalty of seeing his
+business fall off.  Claire innocently believed it all.  When her husband
+had gone, she felt sad for a moment.  She would have liked so much to
+keep him with her or to go out leaning on his arm, to seek enjoyment with
+him.  But the sight of the child, cooing in front of the fire and kicking
+her little pink feet while she was being undressed, speedily soothed the
+mother.  Then the eloquent word "business," the merchant's reason of
+state, was always at hand to help her to resign herself.
+
+Georges and Sidonie met at the theatre.  Their feeling at first when they
+were together was one of satisfied vanity.  People stared at them a great
+deal.  She was really pretty now, and her irregular but attractive
+features, which required the aid of all the eccentricities of the
+prevailing style in order to produce their full effect, adapted
+themselves to them so perfectly that you would have said they were
+invented expressly for her.  In a few moments they went away, and Madame
+Dobson was left alone in the box.  They had hired a small suite on the
+Avenue Gabriel, near the 'rond-point' of the Champs Elysees--the dream of
+the young women at the Le Mire establishment--two luxuriously furnished,
+quiet rooms, where the silence of the wealthy quarter, disturbed only by
+passing carriages, formed a blissful surrounding for their love.
+
+Little by little, when she had become accustomed to her sin, she
+conceived the most audacious whims.  From her old working-days she had
+retained in the depths of her memory the names of public balls, of famous
+restaurants, where she was eager to go now, just as she took pleasure in
+causing the doors to be thrown open for her at the establishments of the
+great dressmakers, whose signs only she had known in her earlier days.
+For what she sought above all else in this liaison was revenge for the
+sorrows and humiliations of her youth.  Nothing delighted her so much,
+for example, when returning from an evening drive in the Bois, as a
+supper at the Cafe Anglais with the sounds of luxurious vice around her.
+From these repeated excursions she brought back peculiarities of speech
+and behavior, equivocal songs, and a style of dress that imported into
+the bourgeois atmosphere of the old commercial house an accurate
+reproduction of the most advanced type of the Paris cocotte of that
+period.
+
+At the factory they began to suspect something.  The women of the people,
+even the poorest, are so quick at picking a costume to pieces!  When
+Madame Risler went out, about three o'clock, fifty pairs of sharp,
+envious eyes, lying in ambush at the windows of the polishing-shop,
+watched her pass, penetrating to the lowest depths of her guilty
+conscience through her black velvet dolman and her cuirass of sparkling
+jet.
+
+Although she did not suspect it, all the secrets of that mad brain were
+flying about her like the ribbons that played upon her bare neck; and her
+daintily-shod feet, in their bronzed boots with ten buttons, told the
+story of all sorts of clandestine expeditions, of the carpeted stairways
+they ascended at night on their way to supper, and the warm fur robes in
+which they were wrapped when the coupe made the circuit of the lake in
+the darkness dotted with lanterns.
+
+The work-women laughed sneeringly and whispered:
+
+"Just look at that Tata Bebelle!  A fine way to dress to go out.  She
+don't rig herself up like that to go to mass, that's sure!  To think that
+it ain't three years since she used to start for the shop every morning
+in an old waterproof, and two sous' worth of roasted chestnuts in her
+pockets to keep her fingers warm.  Now she rides in her carriage."
+
+And amid the talc dust and the roaring of the stoves, red-hot in winter
+and summer alike, more than one poor girl reflected on the caprice of
+chance in absolutely transforming a woman's existence, and began to dream
+vaguely of a magnificent future which might perhaps be in store for
+herself without her suspecting it.
+
+In everybody's opinion Risler was a dishonored husband.  Two assistants
+in the printing-room--faithful patrons of the Folies Dramatiques--
+declared that they had seen Madame Risler several times at their theatre,
+accompanied by some escort who kept out of sight at the rear of the box.
+Pere Achille, too, told of amazing things.  That Sidonie had a lover,
+that she had several lovers, in fact, no one entertained a doubt.  But no
+one had as yet thought of Fromont jeune.
+
+And yet she showed no prudence whatever in her relations with him.  On
+the contrary, she seemed to make a parade of them; it may be that that
+was what saved them.  How many times she accosted him boldly on the steps
+to agree upon a rendezvous for the evening!  How many times she had
+amused herself in making him shudder by looking into his eyes before
+every one!  When the first confusion had passed, Georges was grateful to
+her for these exhibitions of audacity, which he attributed to the
+intensity of her passion.  He was mistaken.
+
+What she would have liked, although she did not admit it to herself,
+would have been to have Claire see them, to have her draw aside the
+curtain at her window, to have her conceive a suspicion of what was
+passing.  She needed that in order to be perfectly happy: that her rival
+should be unhappy.  But her wish was ungratified; Claire Fromont noticed
+nothing and lived, as did Risler, in imperturbable serenity.
+
+Only Sigismond, the old cashier, was really ill at ease.  And yet he was
+not thinking of Sidonie when, with his pen behind his ear, he paused a
+moment in his work and gazed fixedly through his grating at the drenched
+soil of the little garden.  He was thinking solely of his master, of
+Monsieur "Chorche," who was drawing a great deal of money now for his
+current expenses and sowing confusion in all his books.  Every time it
+was some new excuse.  He would come to the little wicket with an
+unconcerned air:
+
+"Have you a little money, my good Planus?  I was worsted again at
+bouillotte last night, and I don't want to send to the bank for such a
+trifle."
+
+Sigismond Planus would open his cash-box, with an air of regret, to get
+the sum requested, and he would remember with terror a certain day when
+Monsieur Georges, then only twenty years old, had confessed to his uncle
+that he owed several thousand francs in gambling debts.  The elder man
+thereupon conceived a violent antipathy for the club and contempt for all
+its members.  A rich tradesman who was a member happened to come to the
+factory one day, and Sigismond said to him with brutal frankness:
+
+"The devil take your 'Cercle du Chateau d'Eau!'  Monsieur Georges has
+left more than thirty thousand francs there in two months."
+
+The other began to laugh.
+
+"Why, you're greatly mistaken, Pere Planus--it's at least three months
+since we have seen your master."
+
+The cashier did not pursue the conversation; but a terrible thought took
+up its abode in his mind, and he turned it over and over all day long.
+
+If Georges did not go to the club, where did he pass his evenings?  Where
+did he spend so much money?
+
+There was evidently a woman at the bottom of the affair.
+
+As soon as that idea occurred to him, Sigismond Planus began to tremble
+seriously for his cash-box.  That old bear from the canton of Berne, a
+confirmed bachelor, had a terrible dread of women in general and Parisian
+women in particular.  He deemed it his duty, first of all, in order to
+set his conscience at rest, to warn Risler.  He did it at first in rather
+a vague way.
+
+"Monsieur Georges is spending a great deal of money," he said to him one
+day.
+
+Risler exhibited no surprise.
+
+"What do you expect me to do, my old Sigismond?  It is his right."
+
+And the honest fellow meant what he said.  In his eyes Fromont jeune was
+the absolute master of the establishment.  It would have been a fine
+thing, and no mistake, for him, an ex-draughtsman, to venture to make any
+comments.  The cashier dared say no more until the day when a messenger
+came from a great shawl-house with a bill for six thousand francs for a
+cashmere shawl.
+
+He went to Georges in his office.
+
+"Shall I pay it, Monsieur?"
+
+Georges Fromont was a little annoyed.  Sidonie had forgotten to tell him
+of this latest purchase; she used no ceremony with him now.
+
+"Pay it, pay it, Pere Planus," he said, with a shade of embarrassment,
+and added: "Charge it to the account of Fromont jeune.  It is a
+commission intrusted to me by a friend."
+
+That evening, as Sigismond was lighting his little lamp, he saw Risler
+crossing the garden, and tapped on the window to call him.
+
+"It's a woman," he said, under his breath.  "I have the proof of it now."
+
+As he uttered the awful words "a woman" his voice shook with alarm and
+was drowned in the great uproar of the factory.  The sounds of the work
+in progress had a sinister meaning to the unhappy cashier at that moment.
+It seemed to him as if all the whirring machinery, the great chimney
+pouring forth its clouds of smoke, the noise of the workmen at their
+different tasks--as if all this tumult and bustle and fatigue were for
+the benefit of a mysterious little being, dressed in velvet and adorned
+with jewels.
+
+Risler laughed at him and refused to believe him.  He had long been
+acquainted with his compatriot's mania for detecting in everything the
+pernicious influence of woman.  And yet Planus's words sometimes recurred
+to his thoughts, especially in the evening when Sidonie, after all the
+commotion attendant upon the completion of her toilette, went away to the
+theatre with Madame Dobson, leaving the apartment empty as soon as her
+long train had swept across the threshold.  Candles burning in front of
+the mirrors, divers little toilette articles scattered about and thrown
+aside, told of extravagant caprices and a reckless expenditure of money.
+Risler thought nothing of all that; but, when he heard Georges's carriage
+rolling through the courtyard, he had a feeling of discomfort at the
+thought of Madame Fromont passing her evenings entirely alone.  Poor
+woman!  Suppose what Planus said were true!
+
+Suppose Georges really had a second establishment!  Oh, it would be
+frightful!
+
+Thereupon, instead of beginning to work, he would go softly downstairs
+and ask if Madame were visible, deeming it his duty to keep her company.
+
+The little girl was always in bed, but the little cap, the blue shoes,
+were still lying in front of the fire.  Claire was either reading or
+working, with her silent mother beside her, always rubbing or dusting
+with feverish energy, exhausting herself by blowing on the case of her
+watch, and nervously taking the same thing up and putting it down again
+ten times in succession, with the obstinate persistence of mania.  Nor
+was honest Risler a very entertaining companion; but that did not prevent
+the young woman from welcoming him kindly.  She knew all that was said
+about Sidonie in the factory; and although she did not believe half of
+it, the sight of the poor man, whom his wife left alone so often, moved
+her heart to pity.  Mutual compassion formed the basis of that placid
+friendship, and nothing could be more touching than these two deserted
+ones, one pitying the other and each trying to divert the other's
+thoughts.
+
+Seated at the small, brightly lighted table in the centre of the salon,
+Risler would gradually yield to the influence of the warmth of the fire
+and the harmony of his surroundings.  He found there articles of
+furniture with which he had been familiar for twenty years, the portrait
+of his former employer; and his dear Madame Chorche, bending over some
+little piece of needle work at his side, seemed to him even younger and
+more lovable among all those old souvenirs.  From time to time she would
+rise to go and look at the child sleeping in the adjoining room, whose
+soft breathing they could hear in the intervals of silence.  Without
+fully realizing it, Risler felt more comfortable and warmer there than in
+his own apartment; for on certain days those attractive rooms, where the
+doors were forever being thrown open for hurried exits or returns, gave
+him the impression of a hall without doors or windows, open to the four
+winds.  His rooms were a camping-ground; this was a home.  A care-taking
+hand caused order and refinement to reign everywhere.  The chairs seemed
+to be talking together in undertones, the fire burned with a delightful
+sound, and Mademoiselle Fromont's little cap retained in every bow of its
+blue ribbons suggestions of sweet smiles and baby glances.
+
+And while Claire was thinking that such an excellent man deserved a
+better companion in life, Risler, watching the calm and lovely face
+turned toward him, the intelligent, kindly eyes, asked himself who the
+hussy could be for whom Georges Fromont neglected such an adorable woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE INVENTORY
+
+The house in which old Planus lived at Montrouge adjoined the one which
+the Chebes had occupied for some time.  There was the same ground floor
+with three windows, and a single floor above, the same garden with its
+latticework fence, the same borders of green box.  There the old cashier
+lived with his sister.  He took the first omnibus that left the office in
+the morning, returned at dinner-time, and on Sundays remained at home,
+tending his flowers and his poultry.  The old maid was his housekeeper
+and did all the cooking and sewing.  A happier couple never lived.
+
+Celibates both, they were bound together by an equal hatred of marriage.
+The sister abhorred all men, the brother looked upon all women with
+suspicion; but they adored each other, each considering the other an
+exception to the general perversity of the sex.
+
+In speaking of him she always said: "Monsieur Planus, my brother!"--and
+he, with the same affectionate solemnity, interspersed all his sentences
+with "Mademoiselle Planus, my sister!"  To those two retiring and
+innocent creatures, Paris, of which they knew nothing, although they
+visited it every day, was a den of monsters of two varieties, bent upon
+doing one another the utmost possible injury; and whenever, amid the
+gossip of the quarter, a conjugal drama came to their ears, each of them,
+beset by his or her own idea, blamed a different culprit.
+
+"It is the husband's fault," would be the verdict of "Mademoiselle
+Planus, my sister."
+
+"It is the wife's fault," "Monsieur Planus, my brother," would reply.
+
+"Oh!  the men--"
+
+"Oh!  the women--"
+
+That was their one never-failing subject of discussion in those rare
+hours of idleness which old Sigismond set aside in his busy day, which
+was as carefully ruled off as his account-books.  For some time past the
+discussions between the brother and sister had been marked by
+extraordinary animation.  They were deeply interested in what was taking
+place at the factory.  The sister was full of pity for Madame Fromont and
+considered her husband's conduct altogether outrageous; as for Sigismond,
+he could find no words bitter enough for the unknown trollop who sent
+bills for six-thousand-franc shawls to be paid from his cashbox.  In his
+eyes, the honor and fair fame of the old house he had served since his
+youth were at stake.
+
+"What will become of us?"  he repeated again and again.  "Oh!  these
+women--"
+
+One day Mademoiselle Planus sat by the fire with her knitting, waiting
+for her brother.
+
+The table had been laid for half an hour, and the old lady was beginning
+to be worried by such unheard-of tardiness, when Sigismond entered with a
+most distressed face, and without a word, which was contrary to all his
+habits.
+
+He waited until the door was shut tight, then said in a low voice, in
+response to his sister's disturbed and questioning expression:
+
+"I have some news.  I know who the woman is who is doing her best to ruin
+us."
+
+Lowering his voice still more, after glancing about at the silent walls
+of their little dining-room, he uttered a name so unexpected that
+Mademoiselle Planus made him repeat it.
+
+"Is it possible?"
+
+"It is the truth."
+
+And, despite his grief, he had almost a triumphant air.
+
+His old sister could not believe it.  Such a refined, polite person, who
+had received her with so much cordiality!--How could any one imagine such
+a thing?
+
+"I have proofs," said Sigismond Planus.
+
+Thereupon he told her how Pere Achille had met Sidonie and Georges one
+night at eleven o'clock, just as they entered a small furnished lodging-
+house in the Montmartre quarter; and he was a man who never lied.  They
+had known him for a long while.  Besides, others had met them.  Nothing
+else was talked about at the factory.  Risler alone suspected nothing.
+
+"But it is your duty to tell him," declared Mademoiselle Planus.
+
+The cashier's face assumed a grave expression.
+
+"It is a very delicate matter.  In the first place, who knows whether he
+would believe me?  There are blind men so blind that--And then,
+by interfering between the two partners, I risk the loss of my place.
+Oh! the women--the women!  When I think how happy Risler might have been.
+When I sent for him to come to Paris with his brother, he hadn't a sou;
+and to-day he is at the head of one of the first houses in Paris.  Do you
+suppose that he would be content with that?  Oh!  no, of course not!
+Monsieur must marry.  As if any one needed to marry!  And, worse yet, he
+marries a Parisian woman, one of those frowsy-haired chits that are the
+ruin of an honest house, when he had at his hand a fine girl, of almost
+his own age, a countrywoman, used to work, and well put together, as you
+might say!"
+
+"Mademoiselle Planus, my sister," to whose physical structure he alluded,
+had a magnificent opportunity to exclaim, "Oh! the men, the men!"  but
+she was silent.  It was a very delicate question, and perhaps, if Risler
+had chosen in time, he might have been the only one.
+
+Old Sigismond continued:
+
+"And this is what we have come to.  For three months the leading wall-
+paper factory in Paris has been tied to the petticoats of that good-for-
+nothing.  You should see how the money flies.  All day long I do nothing
+but open my wicket to meet Monsieur Georges's calls.  He always applies
+to me, because at his banker's too much notice would be taken of it,
+whereas in our office money comes and goes, comes in and goes out.  But
+look out for the inventory!  We shall have some pretty figures to show at
+the end of the year.  The worst part of the whole business is that Risler
+won't listen to anything.  I have warned him several times: 'Look out,
+Monsieur Georges is making a fool of himself for some woman.' He either
+turns away with a shrug, or else he tells me that it is none of his
+business and that Fromont Jeune is the master.  Upon my word, one would
+almost think--one would almost think--"
+
+The cashier did not finish his sentence; but his silence was pregnant
+with unspoken thoughts.
+
+The old maid was appalled; but, like most women under such circumstances,
+instead of seeking a remedy for the evil, she wandered off into a maze of
+regrets, conjectures, and retrospective lamentations.  What a misfortune
+that they had not known it sooner when they had the Chebes for neighbors.
+Madame Chebe was such an honorable woman.  They might have put the matter
+before her so that she would keep an eye on Sidonie and talk seriously to
+her.
+
+"Indeed, that's a good idea," Sigismond interrupted.  "You must go to the
+Rue du Mail and tell her parents.  I thought at first of writing to
+little Frantz.  He always had a great deal of influence over his brother,
+and he's the only person on earth who could say certain things to him.
+But Frantz is so far away.  And then it would be such a terrible thing to
+do.  I can't help pitying that unlucky Risler, though.  No!  the best way
+is to tell Madame Chebe.  Will you undertake to do it, sister?"
+
+It was a dangerous commission.  Mademoiselle Planus made some objections,
+but she never had been able to resist her brother's wishes, and the
+desire to be of service to their old friend Risler assisted materially in
+persuading her.
+
+Thanks to his son-in-law's kindness, M. Chebe had succeeded in gratifying
+his latest whim.  For three months past he had been living at his famous
+warehouse on the Rue du Mail, and a great sensation was created in the
+quarter by that shop without merchandise, the shutters of which were
+taken down in the morning and put up again at night, as in wholesale
+houses.  Shelves had been placed all around the walls, there was a new
+counter, a safe, a huge pair of scales.  In a word, M. Chebe possessed
+all the requisites of a business of some sort, but did not know as yet
+just what business he would choose.
+
+He pondered the subject all day as he walked to and fro across the shop,
+encumbered with several large pieces of bedroom furniture which they had
+been unable to get into the back room; he pondered it, too, as he stood
+on his doorstep, with his pen behind his ear, and feasted his eyes
+delightedly on the hurly-burly of Parisian commerce.  The clerks who
+passed with their packages of samples under their arms, the vans of the
+express companies, the omnibuses, the porters, the wheelbarrows, the
+great bales of merchandise at the neighboring doors, the packages of rich
+stuffs and trimmings which were dragged in the mud before being consigned
+to those underground regions, those dark holes stuffed with treasures,
+where the fortune of business lies in embryo--all these things delighted
+M. Chebe.
+
+He amused himself guessing at the contents of the bales and was first
+at the fray when some passer-by received a heavy package upon his feet,
+or the horses attached to a dray, spirited and restive, made the long
+vehicle standing across the street an obstacle to circulation.  He had,
+moreover, the thousand-and-one distractions of the petty tradesman
+without customers, the heavy showers, the accidents, the thefts, the
+disputes.
+
+At the end of the day M. Chebe, dazed, bewildered, worn out by the labor
+of other people, would stretch himself out in his easy-chair and say to
+his wife, as he wiped his forehead:
+
+"That's the kind of life I need--an active life."
+
+Madame Chebe would smile softly without replying.  Accustomed as she was
+to all her husband's whims, she had made herself as comfortable as
+possible in a back room with an outlook upon a dark yard, consoling
+herself with reflections on the former prosperity of her parents and her
+daughter's wealth; and, being always neatly dressed, she had succeeded
+already in acquiring the respect of neighbors and tradesmen.
+
+She asked nothing more than not to be confounded with the wives of
+workingmen, often less poor than herself, and to be allowed to retain, in
+spite of everything, a petty bourgeois superiority.  That was her
+constant thought; and so the back room in which she lived, and where it
+was dark at three in the afternoon, was resplendent with order and
+cleanliness.  During the day the bed became a couch, an old shawl did
+duty as a tablecloth, the fireplace, hidden by a screen, served as a
+pantry, and the meals were cooked in modest retirement on a stove no
+larger than a foot-warmer.  A tranquil life--that was the dream of the
+poor woman, who was continually tormented by the whims of an uncongenial
+companion.
+
+In the early days of his tenancy, M. Chebe had caused these words to be
+inscribed in letters a foot long on the fresh paint of his shop-front:
+
+                    COMMISSION--EXPORTATION
+
+No specifications.  His neighbors sold tulle, broadcloth, linen; he was
+inclined to sell everything, but could not make up his mind just what.
+With what arguments did his indecision lead him to favor Madame Chebe as
+they sat together in the evening!
+
+"I don't know anything about linen; but when you come to broadcloth, I
+understand that.  Only, if I go into broadcloths I must have a man to
+travel; for the best kinds come from Sedan and Elbeuf.  I say nothing
+about calicoes; summer is the time for them.  As for tulle, that's out of
+the question; the season is too far advanced."
+
+He usually brought his discourse to a close with the words:
+
+"The night will bring counsel--let us go to bed."
+
+And to bed he would go, to his wife's great relief.
+
+After three or four months of this life, M. Chebe began to tire of it.
+The pains in the head, the dizzy fits gradually returned.  The quarter
+was noisy and unhealthy: besides, business was at a standstill.  Nothing
+was to be done in any line, broadcloths, tissues, or anything else.
+
+It was just at the period of this new crisis that "Mademoiselle Planus,
+my sister," called to speak about Sidonie.
+
+The old maid had said to herself on the way, "I must break it gently."
+But, like all shy people, she relieved herself of her burden in the first
+words she spoke after entering the house.
+
+It was a stunning blow.  When she heard the accusation made against her
+daughter, Madame Chebe rose in indignation.  No one could ever make her
+believe such a thing.  Her poor Sidonie was the victim of an infamous
+slander.
+
+M. Chebe, for his part, adopted a very lofty tone, with significant
+phrases and motions of the head, taking everything to himself as was his
+custom.  How could any one suppose that his child, a Chebe, the daughter
+of an honorable business man known for thirty years on the street, was
+capable of Nonsense!
+
+Mademoiselle Planus insisted.  It was a painful thing to her to be
+considered a gossip, a hawker of unsavory stories.  But they had
+incontestable proofs.  It was no longer a secret to anybody.
+
+"And even suppose it were true," cried M. Chebe, furious at her
+persistence.  "Is it for us to worry about it?  Our daughter is married.
+She lives a long way from her parents.  It is for her husband, who is
+much older than she, to advise and guide her.  Does he so much as think
+of doing it?"
+
+Upon that the little man began to inveigh against his son-in-law, that
+cold-blooded Swiss, who passed his life in his office devising machines,
+refused to accompany his wife into society, and preferred his old-
+bachelor habits, his pipe and his brewery, to everything else.
+
+You should have seen the air of aristocratic disdain with which M. Chebe
+pronounced the word "brewery!"  And yet almost every evening he went
+there to meet Risler, and overwhelmed him with reproaches if he once
+failed to appear at the rendezvous.
+
+Behind all this verbiage the merchant of the Rue du Mail--"Commission-
+Exportation"--had a very definite idea.  He wished to give up his shop,
+to retire from business, and for some time he had been thinking of going
+to see Sidonie, in order to interest her in his new schemes.  That was
+not the time, therefore, to make disagreeable scenes, to prate about
+paternal authority and conjugal honor.  As for Madame Chebe, being
+somewhat less confident than before of her daughter's virtue, she took
+refuge in the most profound silence.  The poor woman wished that she were
+deaf and blind--that she never had known Mademoiselle Planus.
+
+Like all persons who have been very unhappy, she loved a benumbed
+existence with a semblance of tranquillity, and ignorance seemed to her
+preferable to everything.  As if life were not sad enough, good heavens!
+And then, after all, Sidonie had always been a good girl; why should she
+not be a good woman?
+
+Night was falling.  M. Chebe rose gravely to close the shutters of the
+shop and light a gas-jet which illumined the bare walls, the empty,
+polished shelves, and the whole extraordinary place, which reminded one
+strongly of the day following a failure.  With his lips closed
+disdainfully, in his determination to remain silent, he seemed to say to
+the old lady, "Night has come--it is time for you to go home."  And all
+the while they could hear Madame Chebe sobbing in the back room, as she
+went to and fro preparing supper.
+
+Mademoiselle Planus got no further satisfaction from her visit.
+
+"Well?"  queried old Sigismond, who was impatiently awaiting her return.
+
+"They wouldn't believe me, and politely showed me the door."
+
+She had tears in her eyes at the thought of her humiliation.
+
+The old man's face flushed, and he said in a grave voice, taking his
+sister's hand:
+
+"Mademoiselle Planus, my sister, I ask your pardon for having made you
+take this step; but the honor of the house of Fromont was at stake."
+
+From that moment Sigismond became more and more depressed.  His cash-box
+no longer seemed to him safe or secure.  Even when Fromont Jeune did not
+ask him for money, he was afraid, and he summed up all his apprehensions
+in four words which came continually to his lips when talking with his
+sister:
+
+"I ha no gonfidence," he would say, in his hoarse Swiss patois.
+
+Thinking always of his cash-box, he dreamed sometimes that it had broken
+apart at all the joints, and insisted on remaining open, no matter how
+much he turned the key; or else that a high wind had scattered all the
+papers, notes, cheques, and bills, and that he ran after them all over
+the factory, tiring himself out in the attempt to pick them up.
+
+In the daytime, as he sat behind his grating in the silence of his
+office, he imagined that a little white mouse had eaten its way through
+the bottom of the box and was gnawing and destroying all its contents,
+growing plumper and prettier as the work of destruction went on.
+
+So that, when Sidonie appeared on the steps about the middle of the
+afternoon, in her pretty Parisian plumage, old Sigismond shuddered with
+rage.  In his eyes it was the ruin of the house that stood there, ruin in
+a magnificent costume, with its little coupe at the door, and the placid
+bearing of a happy coquette.
+
+Madame Risler had no suspicion that, at that window on the ground floor,
+sat an untiring foe who watched her slightest movements, the most trivial
+details of her life, the going and coming of her music-teacher, the
+arrival of the fashionable dressmaker in the morning, all the boxes that
+were brought to the house, and the laced cap of the employe of the
+Magasin du Louvre, whose heavy wagon stopped at the gate with a jingling
+of bells, like a diligence drawn by stout horses which were dragging the
+house of Fromont to bankruptcy at break-neck speed.
+
+Sigismond counted the packages, weighed them with his eye as they passed,
+and gazed inquisitively into Risler's apartments through the open
+windows.  The carpets that were shaken with a great noise, the
+jardinieres that were brought into the sunlight filled with fragile,
+unseasonable flowers, rare and expensive, the gorgeous hangings--none of
+these things escaped his notice.
+
+The new acquisitions of the household stared him in the face, reminding
+him of some request for a large amount.
+
+But the one thing that he studied more carefully than all else was
+Risler's countenance.
+
+In his view that woman was in a fair way to change his friend, the best,
+the most upright of men, into a shameless villain.  There was no
+possibility of doubt that Risler knew of his dishonor, and submitted to
+it.  He was paid to keep quiet.
+
+Certainly there was something monstrous in such a supposition.  But it is
+the tendency of innocent natures, when they are made acquainted with evil
+for the first time, to go at once too far, beyond reason.  When he was
+once convinced of the treachery of Georges and Sidonie, Risler's
+degradation seemed to the cashier less impossible of comprehension.  On
+what other theory could his indifference, in the face of his partner's
+heavy expenditures, be explained?
+
+The excellent Sigismond, in his narrow, stereotyped honesty, could not
+understand the delicacy of Risler's heart.  At the same time, the
+methodical bookkeeper's habit of thought and his clear-sightedness in
+business were a thousand leagues from that absent-minded, flighty
+character, half-artist, half-inventor.  He judged him by himself, having
+no conception of the condition of a man with the disease of invention,
+absorbed by a fixed idea.  Such men are somnambulists.  They look, but do
+not see, their eyes being turned within.
+
+It was Sigismond's belief that Risler did see.  That belief made the old
+cashier very unhappy.  He began by staring at his friend whenever he
+entered the counting-room; then, discouraged by his immovable
+indifference, which he believed to be wilful and premeditated, covering
+his face like a mask, he adopted the plan of turning away and fumbling
+among his papers to avoid those false glances, and keeping his eyes fixed
+on the garden paths or the interlaced wires of the grating when he spoke
+to him.  Even his words were confused and distorted, like his glances.
+No one could say positively to whom he was talking.
+
+No more friendly smiles, no more reminiscences as they turned over the
+leaves of the cash-book together.
+
+"This was the year you came to the factory.  Your first increase of pay.
+Do you remember?  We dined at Douix's that day.  And then the Cafe des
+Aveugles in the evening, eh?  What a debauch!"
+
+At last Risler noticed the strange coolness that had sprung up between
+Sigismond and himself.  He mentioned it to his wife.
+
+For some time past she had felt that antipathy prowling about her.
+Sometimes, as she crossed the courtyard, she was oppressed, as it were,
+by malevolent glances which caused her to turn nervously toward the old
+cashier's corner.  This estrangement between the friends alarmed her,
+and she very quickly determined to put her husband on his guard against
+Planus's unpleasant remarks.
+
+"Don't you see that he is jealous of you, of your position?  A man who
+was once his equal, now his superior, he can't stand that.  But why
+bother one's head about all these spiteful creatures?  Why, I am
+surrounded by them here."
+
+Risler looked at her with wide-open eyes:--"You?"
+
+"Why, yes, it is easy enough to see that all these people detest me.
+They bear little Chebe a grudge because she has become Madame Risler
+Aine.  Heaven only knows all the outrageous things that are said about
+me!  And your cashier doesn't keep his tongue in his pocket, I assure
+you.  What a spiteful fellow he is!"
+
+These few words had their effect.  Risler, indignant, but too proud to
+complain, met coldness with coldness.  Those two honest men, each
+intensely distrustful of the other, could no longer meet without a
+painful sensation, so that, after a while, Risler ceased to go to the
+counting-room at all.  It was not difficult for him, as Fromont Jeune had
+charge of all financial matters.  His month's allowance was carried to
+him on the thirtieth of each month.  This arrangement afforded Sidonie
+and Georges additional facilities, and opportunity for all sorts of
+underhand dealing.
+
+She thereupon turned her attention to the completion of her programme of
+a life of luxury.  She lacked a country house.  In her heart she detested
+the trees, the fields, the country roads that cover you with dust.  "The
+most dismal things on earth," she used to say.  But Claire Fromont passed
+the summer at Savigny.  As soon as the first fine days arrived, the
+trunks were packed and the curtains taken down on the floor below; and a
+great furniture van, with the little girl's blue bassinet rocking on top,
+set off for the grandfather's chateau.  Then, one morning, the mother,
+grandmother, child, and nurse, a medley of white gowns and light veils,
+would drive away behind two fast horses toward the sunny lawns and the
+pleasant shade of the avenues.
+
+At that season Paris was ugly, depopulated; and although Sidonie loved it
+even in the summer, which heats it like a furnace, it troubled her to
+think that all the fashion and wealth of Paris were driving by the
+seashore under their light umbrellas, and would make their outing an
+excuse for a thousand new inventions, for original styles of the most
+risque sort, which would permit one to show that one has a pretty ankle
+and long, curly chestnut hair of one's own.
+
+The seashore bathing resorts!  She could not think of them; Risler could
+not leave Paris.
+
+How about buying a country house?  They had not the means.  To be sure,
+there was the lover, who would have asked nothing better than to gratify
+this latest whim; but a country house cannot be concealed like a bracelet
+or a shawl.  The husband must be induced to accept it.  That was not an
+easy matter; however, they might venture to try it with Risler.
+
+To pave the way, she talked to him incessantly about a little nook in the
+country, not too expensive, very near Paris.  Risler listened with a
+smile.  He thought of the high grass, of the orchard filled with fine
+fruit-trees, being already tormented by the longing to possess which
+comes with wealth; but, as he was prudent, he said:
+
+"We will see, we will see.  Let us wait till the end of the year."
+
+The end of the year, that is to say, the striking of the balance-sheet.
+
+The balance-sheet!  That is the magic word.  All through the year we go
+on and on in the eddying whirl of business.  Money comes and goes,
+circulates, attracts other money, vanishes; and the fortune of the firm,
+like a slippery, gleaming snake, always in motion, expands, contracts,
+diminishes, or increases, and it is impossible to know our condition
+until there comes a moment of rest.  Not until the inventory shall we
+know the truth, and whether the year, which seems to have been
+prosperous, has really been so.
+
+The account of stock is usually taken late in December, between Christmas
+and New Year's Day.  As it requires much extra labor to prepare it,
+everybody works far into the night.  The whole establishment is alert.
+The lamps remain lighted in the offices long after the doors are closed,
+and seem to share in the festal atmosphere peculiar to that last week of
+the year, when so many windows are illuminated for family gatherings.
+Every one, even to the least important 'employe' of the firm, is
+interested in the results of the inventory.  The increases of salary, the
+New Year's presents, depend upon those blessed figures.  And so, while
+the vast interests of a wealthy house are trembling in the balance, the
+wives and children and aged parents of the clerks, in their fifth-floor
+tenements or poor apartments in the suburbs, talk of nothing but the
+inventory, the results of which will make themselves felt either by a
+greatly increased need of economy or by some purchase, long postponed,
+which the New Year's gift will make possible at last.
+
+On the premises of Fromont Jeune and Risler Aine, Sigismond Planus is the
+god of the establishment at that season, and his little office a
+sanctuary where all the clerks perform their devotions.  In the silence
+of the sleeping factory, the heavy pages of the great books rustle as
+they are turned, and names called aloud cause search to be made in other
+books.  Pens scratch.  The old cashier, surrounded by his lieutenants,
+has a businesslike, awe-inspiring air.  From time to time Fromont Jeune,
+on the point of going out in his carriage, looks in for a moment, with a
+cigar in his mouth, neatly gloved and ready for the street.  He walks
+slowly, on tiptoe, puts his face to the grating:
+
+"Well!--are you getting on all right?"
+
+Sigismond gives a grunt, and the young master takes his leave, afraid to
+ask any further questions.  He knows from the cashier's expression that
+the showing will be a bad one.
+
+In truth, since the days of the Revolution, when there was fighting in
+the very courtyard of the factory, so pitiable an inventory never had
+been seen in the Fromont establishment.  Receipts and expenditures
+balanced each other.  The general expense account had eaten up
+everything, and, furthermore, Fromont Jeune was indebted to the firm in a
+large sum.  You should have seen old Planus's air of consternation when,
+on the 31st of December, he went up to Georges's office to make report of
+his labors.
+
+Georges took a very cheerful view of the matter.  Everything would go
+better next year.  And to restore the cashier's good humor he gave him an
+extraordinary bonus of a thousand francs, instead of the five hundred his
+uncle used always to give.  Everybody felt the effects of that generous
+impulse, and, in the universal satisfaction, the deplorable results of
+the yearly accounting were very soon forgotten.  As for Risler, Georges
+chose to take it upon himself to inform him as to the situation.
+
+When he entered his partner's little closet, which was lighted from above
+by a window in the ceiling, so that the light fell directly upon the
+subject of the inventor's meditations, Fromont hesitated a moment, filled
+with shame and remorse for what he was about to do.
+
+The other, when he heard the door, turned joyfully toward his partner.
+
+"Chorche, Chorche, my dear fellow--I have got it, our press.  There are
+still a few little things to think out.  But no matter!  I am sure now of
+my invention: you will see--you will see!  Ah!  the Prochassons can
+experiment all they choose.  With the Risler Press we will crush all
+rivalry."
+
+"Bravo, my comrade!"  replied Fromont Jeune.  "So much for the future;
+but you don't seem to think about the present.  What about this
+inventory?"
+
+"Ah, yes!  to be sure.  I had forgotten all about it.  It isn't very
+satisfactory, is it?"
+
+He said that because of the somewhat disturbed and embarrassed expression
+on Georges's face.
+
+"Why, yes, on the contrary, it is very satisfactory indeed," was the
+reply.  "We have every reason to be satisfied, especially as this is our
+first year together.  We have forty thousand francs each for our share of
+the profits; and as I thought you might need a little money to give your
+wife a New Year's present--"
+
+Ashamed to meet the eyes of the honest man whose confidence he was
+betraying, Fromont jeune placed a bundle of cheques and notes on the
+table.
+
+Risler was deeply moved for a moment.  So much money at one time for him!
+His mind dwelt upon the generosity of these Fromonts, who had made him
+what he was; then he thought of his little Sidonie, of the longing which
+she had so often expressed and which he would now be able to gratify.
+
+With tears in his eyes and a happy smile on his lips, he held out both
+hands to his partner.
+
+"I am very happy!  I am very happy!"
+
+That was his favorite phrase on great occasions.  Then he pointed to the
+bundles of bank notes spread out before him in the narrow bands which are
+used to confine those fugitive documents, always ready to fly away.
+
+"Do you know what that is?"  he said to Georges, with an air of triumph.
+"That is Sidonie's house in the country!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A LETTER
+
+     "TO M. FRANTZ RISLER,
+
+     "Engineer of the Compagnie Francaise, "Ismailia, Egypt.
+
+     Frantz, my boy, it is old Sigismond who is writing to you.  If I
+     knew better how to put my ideas on paper, I should have a very long
+     story to tell you.  But this infernal French is too hard, and
+     Sigismond Planus is good for nothing away from his figures.  So I
+     will come to the point at once.
+
+     "Affairs in your brother's house are not as they should be.  That
+     woman is false to him with his partner.  She has made her husband a
+     laughing-stock, and if this goes on she will cause him to be looked
+     upon as a rascal.  Frantz, my boy, you must come home at once.  You
+     are the only one who can speak to Risler and open his eyes about
+     that little Sidonie.  He would not believe any of us.  Ask leave of
+     absence at once, and come.
+
+     "I know that you have your bread to earn out there, and your future
+     to assure; but a man of honor should think more of the name his
+     parents gave him than of anything else.  And I tell you that if you
+     do not come at once, a time will come when the name of Risler will
+     be so overwhelmed with shame that you will not dare to bear it.
+
+                                   SIGISMOND PLANUS,
+                                             "Cashier."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE JUDGE
+
+Those persons who live always in doors, confined by work or infirmity to
+a chair by the window, take a deep interest in the people who pass, just
+as they make for themselves a horizon of the neighboring walls, roofs,
+and windows.
+
+Nailed to their place, they live in the life of the streets; and the busy
+men and women who pass within their range of vision, sometimes every day
+at the same hour, do not suspect that they serve as the mainspring of
+other lives, that interested eyes watch for their coming and miss them if
+they happen to go to their destination by another road.
+
+The Delobelles, left to themselves all day, indulged in this sort of
+silent observation.  Their window was narrow, and the mother, whose eyes
+were beginning to weaken as the result of hard usage, sat near the light
+against the drawn muslin curtain; her daughter's large armchair was a
+little farther away.  She announced the approach of their daily passers-
+by.  It was a diversion, a subject of conversation; and the long hours of
+toil seemed shorter, marked off by the regular appearance of people who
+were as busy as they.  There were two little sisters, a gentleman in a
+gray overcoat, a child who was taken to school and taken home again, and
+an old government clerk with a wooden leg, whose step on the sidewalk had
+a sinister sound.
+
+They hardly ever saw him; he passed after dark, but they heard him, and
+the sound always struck the little cripple's ears like a harsh echo of
+her own mournful thoughts.  All these street friends unconsciously
+occupied a large place in the lives of the two women.  If it rained, they
+would say:
+
+"They will get wet.  I wonder whether the child got home before the
+shower."  And when the season changed, when the March sun inundated the
+sidewalks or the December snow covered them with its white mantle and its
+patches of black mud, the appearance of a new garment on one of their
+friends caused the two recluses to say to themselves, "It is summer," or,
+"winter has come."
+
+Now, on a certain evening in May, one of those soft, luminous evenings
+when life flows forth from the houses into the street through the open
+windows, Desiree and her mother were busily at work with needles and
+fingers, exhausting the daylight to its last ray, before lighting the
+lamp.  They could hear the shouts of children playing in the yards, the
+muffled notes of pianos, and the voice of a street peddler, drawing his
+half-empty wagon.  One could smell the springtime in the air, a vague
+odor of hyacinth and lilac.
+
+Mamma Delobelle had laid aside her work, and, before closing the window,
+leaned upon the sill listening to all these noises of a great toiling
+city, taking delight in walking through the streets when its day's work
+was ended.  From time to time she spoke to her daughter, without turning
+her head.
+
+"Ah!  there's Monsieur Sigismond.  How early he leaves the factory to-
+night!  It may be because the days are lengthening so fast, but I don't
+think it can be seven o'clock.  Who can that man be with the old
+cashier?--What a funny thing!--One would say--Why, yes!--One would say it
+was Monsieur Frantz.  But that isn't possible.  Monsieur Frantz is a long
+way from here at this moment; and then he had no beard.  That man looks
+like him all the same!  Just look, my dear."
+
+But "my dear" does not leave her chair; she does not even stir.  With her
+eyes staring into vacancy, her needle in the air, arrested in its pretty,
+industrious movement, she has gone away to the blue country, that
+wonderful country whither one may go at will, without thought of any
+infirmity.  The name "Frantz," uttered mechanically by her mother,
+because of a chance resemblance, represented to her a whole lifetime of
+illusions, of fervent hopes, ephemeral as the flush that rose to her
+cheeks when, on returning home at night, he used to come and chat with
+her a moment.  How far away that was already!  To think that he used to
+live in the little room near hers, that they used to hear his step on the
+stairs and the noise made by his table when he dragged it to the window
+to draw!  What sorrow and what happiness she used to feel when he talked
+to her of Sidonie, sitting on the low chair at her knees, while she
+mounted her birds and her insects.
+
+As she worked, she used to cheer and comfort him, for Sidonie had caused
+poor Frantz many little griefs before the last great one.  His tone when
+he spoke of Sidonie, the sparkle in his eyes when he thought of her,
+fascinated Desiree in spite of everything, so that when he went away in
+despair, he left behind him a love even greater than that he carried with
+him--a love which the unchanging room, the sedentary, stagnant life, kept
+intact with all its bitter perfume, whereas his would gradually fade away
+and vanish in the fresh air of the outer world.
+
+It grows darker and darker.  A great wave of melancholy envelops the poor
+girl with the falling darkness of that balmy evening.  The blissful gleam
+from the past dies away as the last glimmer of daylight vanishes in the
+narrow recess of the window, where her mother still stands leaning on the
+sill.
+
+Suddenly the door opens.  Some one is there whose features can not be
+distinguished.  Who can it be?  The Delobelles never receive calls.  The
+mother, who has turned her head, thinks at first that some one has come
+from the shop to get the week's work.
+
+"My husband has just gone to your place, Monsieur.  We have nothing here.
+Monsieur Delobelle has taken everything."
+
+The man comes forward without speaking, and as he approaches the window
+his features can be distinguished.  He is a tall, solidly built fellow
+with a bronzed face, a thick, red beard, and a deep voice, and is a
+little slow of speech.
+
+"Ah! so you don't know me, Mamma Delobelle?"
+
+"Oh! I knew you at once, Monsieur Frantz," said Desiree, very calmly, in
+a cold, sedate tone.
+
+"Merciful heavens!  it's Monsieur Frantz."
+
+Quickly Mamma Delobelle runs to the lamp, lights it, and closes the
+window.
+
+"What! it is you, is it, my dear Frantz?"  How coolly she says it, the
+little rascal!  "I knew you at once."  Ah, the little iceberg!  She will
+always be the same.
+
+A veritable little iceberg, in very truth.  She is very pale, and her
+hand as it lies in Frantz's is white and cold.
+
+She seems to him improved, even more refined than before.  He seems to
+her superb, as always, with a melancholy, weary expression in the depths
+of his eyes, which makes him more of a man than when he went away.
+
+His weariness is due to his hurried journey, undertaken immediately on
+his receipt of Sigismond's letter.  Spurred on by the word dishonor, he
+had started instantly, without awaiting his leave of absence, risking his
+place and his future prospects; and, hurrying from steamships to
+railways, he had not stopped until he reached Paris.  Reason enough for
+being weary, especially when one has travelled in eager haste to reach
+one's destination, and when one's mind has been continually beset by
+impatient thoughts, making the journey ten times over in incessant doubt
+and fear and perplexity.
+
+His melancholy began further back.  It began on the day when the woman he
+loved refused to marry him, to become, six months later, the wife of his
+brother; two terrible blows in close succession, the second even more
+painful than the first.  It is true that, before entering into that
+marriage, Risler had written to him to ask his permission to be happy,
+and had written in such touching, affectionate terms that the violence of
+the blow was somewhat diminished; and then, in due time, life in a
+strange country, hard work, and long journeys had softened his grief.
+Now only a vast background of melancholy remains; unless, indeed, the
+hatred and wrath by which he is animated at this moment against the woman
+who is dishonoring his brother may be a remnant of his former love.
+
+But no!  Frantz Risler thinks only of avenging the honor of the Rislers.
+He comes not as a lover, but as a judge; and Sidonie may well look to
+herself.
+
+The judge had gone straight to the factory on leaving the train, relying
+upon the surprise, the unexpectedness, of his arrival to disclose to him
+at a glance what was taking place.
+
+Unluckily he had found no one.  The blinds of the little house at the
+foot of the garden had been closed for two weeks.  Pere Achille informed
+him that the ladies were at their respective country seats where the
+partners joined them every evening.
+
+Fromont Jeune had left the factory very early; Risler Aine had just gone.
+Frantz decided to speak to old Sigismond.  But it was Saturday, the
+regular pay-day, and he must needs wait until the long line of workmen,
+extending from Achille's lodge to the cashier's grated window, had
+gradually dispersed.
+
+Although very impatient and very depressed, the excellent youth, who had
+lived the life of a Paris workingman from his childhood, felt a thrill of
+pleasure at finding himself once more in the midst of the animated scenes
+peculiar to that time and place.  Upon all those faces, honest or
+vicious, was an expression of satisfaction that the week was at an end.
+You felt that, so far as they were concerned, Sunday began at seven
+o'clock Saturday evening, in front of the cashier's little lamp.
+
+One must have lived among workingmen to realize the full charm of that
+one day's rest and its solemnity.  Many of these poor creatures, bound
+fast to unhealthful trades, await the coming of the blessed Sunday like a
+puff of refreshing air, essential to their health and their life.  What
+an overflow of spirits, therefore, what a pressing need of noisy mirth!
+It seems as if the oppression of the week's labor vanishes with the steam
+from the machinery, as it escapes in a hissing cloud of vapor over the
+gutters.
+
+One by one the workmen moved away from the grating, counting the money
+that glistened in their black hands.  There were disappointments,
+mutterings, remonstrances, hours missed, money drawn in advance; and
+above the tinkling of coins, Sigismond's voice could be heard, calm and
+relentless, defending the interests of his employers with a zeal
+amounting to ferocity.
+
+Frantz was familiar with all the dramas of pay-day, the false accents and
+the true.  He knew that one man's wages were expended for his family, to
+pay the baker and the druggist, or for his children's schooling.
+
+Another wanted his money for the wine-shop or for something even worse.
+And the melancholy, downcast shadows passing to and fro in front of the
+factory gateway--he knew what they were waiting for--that they were all
+on the watch for a father or a husband, to hurry him home with
+complaining or coaxing words.
+
+Oh! the barefooted children, the tiny creatures wrapped in old shawls,
+the shabby women, whose tear-stained faces were as white as the linen
+caps that surmounted them.
+
+Oh! the lurking vice that prowls about on pay-day, the candles that are
+lighted in the depths of dark alleys, the dirty windows of the wine-shops
+where the thousand-and-one poisonous concoctions of alcohol display their
+alluring colors.
+
+Frantz was familiar with all these forms of misery; but never had they
+seemed to him so depressing, so harrowing as on that evening.
+
+When the last man was paid, Sigismond came out of his office.  The two
+friends recognized each other and embraced; and in the silence of the
+factory, at rest for twenty-four hours and deathly still in all its empty
+buildings, the cashier explained to Frantz the state of affairs.  He
+described Sidonie's conduct, her mad extravagance, the total wreck of the
+family honor.  The Rislers had bought a country house at Asnieres,
+formerly the property of an actress, and had set up a sumptuous
+establishment there.  They had horses and carriages, and led a luxurious,
+gay life.  The thing that especially disturbed honest Sigismond was the
+self restraint of Fromont jeune.  For some time he had drawn almost no
+money from the strong-box, and yet Sidonie was spending more than ever.
+
+"I haf no gonfidence!" said the unhappy cashier, shaking his head, "I haf
+no gonfidence!"
+
+Lowering his voice he added:
+
+"But your brother, my little Frantz, your brother?  Who can explain his
+actions?  He goes about through it all with his eyes in the air, his
+hands in his pockets, his mind on his famous invention, which
+unfortunately doesn't move fast.  Look here! do you want me to give you
+my opinion?--He's either a knave or a fool."
+
+They were walking up and down the little garden as they talked, stopping
+for a moment, then resuming their walk.  Frantz felt as if he were living
+in a horrible dream.  The rapid journey, the sudden change of scene and
+climate, the ceaseless flow of Sigismond's words, the new idea that he
+had to form of Risler and Sidonie--the same Sidonie he had loved so
+dearly--all these things bewildered him and almost drove him mad.
+
+It was late.  Night was falling.  Sigismond proposed to him to go to
+Montrouge for the night; he declined on the plea of fatigue, and when he
+was left alone in the Marais, at that dismal and uncertain hour when the
+daylight has faded and the gas is still unlighted, he walked
+instinctively toward his old quarters on the Rue de Braque.
+
+At the hall door hung a placard: Bachelor's Chamber to let.
+
+It was the same room in which he had lived so long with his brother.  He
+recognized the map fastened to the wall by four pins, the window on the
+landing, and the Delobelles' little sign: 'Birds and Insects for
+Ornament.'
+
+Their door was ajar; he had only to push it a little in order to enter
+the room.
+
+Certainly there was not in all Paris a surer refuge for him, a spot
+better fitted to welcome and console his perturbed spirit, than that
+hard-working familiar fireside.  In his present agitation and perplexity
+it was like the harbor with its smooth, deep water, the sunny, peaceful
+quay, where the women work while awaiting their husbands and fathers,
+though the wind howls and the sea rages.  More than all else, although he
+did not realize that it was so, it was a network of steadfast affection,
+that miraculous love-kindness which makes another's love precious to us
+even when we do not love that other.
+
+That dear little iceberg of a Desiree loved him so dearly.  Her eyes
+sparkled so even when talking of the most indifferent things with him.
+As objects dipped in phosphorus shine with equal splendor, so the most
+trivial words she said illuminated her pretty, radiant face.  What a
+blissful rest it was for him after Sigismond's brutal disclosures!
+
+They talked together with great animation while Mamma Delobelle was
+setting the table.
+
+"You will dine with us, won't you, Monsieur Frantz?  Father has gone to
+take back the work; but he will surely come home to dinner."
+
+He will surely come home to dinner!
+
+The good woman said it with a certain pride.
+
+In fact, since the failure of his managerial scheme, the illustrious
+Delobelle no longer took his meals abroad, even on the evenings when he
+went to collect the weekly earnings.  The unlucky manager had eaten so
+many meals on credit at his restaurant that he dared not go there again.
+By way of compensation, he never failed, on Saturday, to bring home with
+him two or three unexpected, famished guests--"old comrades"--"unlucky
+devils."  So it happened that, on the evening in question, he appeared
+upon the stage escorting a financier from the Metz theatre and a comique
+from the theatre at Angers, both waiting for an engagement.
+
+The comique, closely shaven, wrinkled, shrivelled by the heat from the
+footlights, looked like an old street-arab; the financier wore cloth
+shoes, and no linen, so far as could be seen.
+
+"Frantz!--my Frantz!" cried the old strolling player in a melodramatic
+voice, clutching the air convulsively with his hands.  After a long and
+energetic embrace he presented his guests to one another.
+
+"Monsieur Robricart, of the theatre at Metz.
+
+"Monsieur Chaudezon, of the theatre at Angers.
+
+"Frantz Risler, engineer."
+
+In Delobelle's mouth that word "engineer" assumed vast proportions!
+
+Desiree pouted prettily when she saw her father's friends.  It would have
+been so nice to be by themselves on a day like to-day.  But the great man
+snapped his fingers at the thought.  He had enough to do to unload his
+pockets.  First of all, he produced a superb pie "for the ladies," he
+said, forgetting that he adored pie.  A lobster next made its appearance,
+then an Arles sausage, marrons glaces and cherries, the first of the
+season!
+
+While the financier enthusiastically pulled up the collar of his
+invisible shirt, while the comique exclaimed "gnouf!  gnouf!" with a
+gesture forgotten by Parisians for ten years, Desiree thought with dismay
+of the enormous hole that impromptu banquet would make in the paltry
+earnings of the week, and Mamma Delobelle, full of business, upset the
+whole buffet in order to find a sufficient number of plates.
+
+It was a very lively meal.  The two actors ate voraciously, to the great
+delight of Delobelle, who talked over with them old memories of their
+days of strolling.  Fancy a collection of odds and ends of scenery,
+extinct lanterns, and mouldy, crumbling stage properties.
+
+In a sort of vulgar, meaningless, familiar slang, they recalled their
+innumerable triumphs; for all three of them, according to their own
+stories, had been applauded, laden with laurel-wreaths, and carried in
+triumph by whole cities.
+
+While they talked they ate as actors usually eat, sitting with their
+faces turned three-fourths toward the audience, with the unnatural haste
+of stage guests at a pasteboard supper, alternating words and mouthfuls,
+seeking to produce an effect by their manner of putting down a glass or
+moving a chair, and expressing interest, amazement, joy, terror,
+surprise, with the aid of a skilfully handled knife and fork.  Madame
+Delobelle listened to them with a smiling face.
+
+One can not be an actor's wife for thirty years without becoming somewhat
+accustomed to these peculiar mannerisms.
+
+But one little corner of the table was separated from the rest of the
+party as by a cloud which intercepted the absurd remarks, the hoarse
+laughter, the boasting.  Frantz and Desiree talked together in
+undertones, hearing naught of what was said around them.  Things that
+happened in their childhood, anecdotes of the neighborhood, a whole ill-
+defined past which derived its only value from the mutual memories
+evoked, from the spark that glowed in the eyes of both-those were the
+themes of their pleasant chat.
+
+Suddenly the cloud was torn aside, and Delobelle's terrible voice
+interrupted the dialogue.
+
+"Have you not seen your brother?"  he asked, in order to avoid the
+appearance of neglecting him too much.  "And you have not seen his wife,
+either?  Ah! you will find her a Madame.  Such toilettes, my dear fellow,
+and such chic!  I assure you.  They have a genuine chateau at Asnieres.
+The Chebes are there also.  Ah! my old friend, they have all left us
+behind.  They are rich, they look down on old friends.  Never a word,
+never a call.  For my part, you understand, I snap my fingers at them,
+but it really wounds these ladies."
+
+"Oh, papa!"  said Desiree hastily, "you know very well that we are too
+fond of Sidonie to be offended with her."
+
+The actor smote the table a violent blow with his fist.
+
+"Why, then, you do wrong.  You ought to be offended with people who seek
+always to wound and humiliate you."
+
+He still had upon his mind the refusal to furnish funds for his
+theatrical project, and he made no secret of his wrath.
+
+"If you knew," he said to Frantz, "if you knew how money is being
+squandered over yonder!  It is a great pity.  And nothing substantial,
+nothing sensible.  I who speak to you, asked your brother for a paltry
+sum to assure my future and himself a handsome profit.  He flatly
+refused.  Parbleu!  Madame requires too much.  She rides, goes to the
+races in her carriage, and drives her husband at the same rate as her
+little phaeton on the quay at Asnieres.  Between you and me, I don't
+think that our good friend Risler is very happy.  That woman makes him
+believe black is white."
+
+The ex-actor concluded his harangue with a wink at the comique and the
+financier, and for a moment the three exchanged glances, conventional
+grimaces, 'ha-has!' and 'hum-hums!'  and all the usual pantomime
+expressive of thoughts too deep for words.
+
+Frantz was struck dumb.  Do what he would, the horrible certainty
+assailed him on all sides.  Sigismond had spoken in accordance with his
+nature, Delobelle with his.  The result was the same.
+
+Fortunately the dinner was drawing near its close.  The three actors left
+the table and betook themselves to the brewery on the Rue Blondel.
+Frantz remained with the two women.
+
+As he sat beside her, gentle and affectionate in manner, Desiree was
+suddenly conscious of a great outflow of gratitude to Sidonie.  She said
+to herself that, after all, it was to her generosity that she owed this
+semblance of happiness, and that thought gave her courage to defend her
+former friend.
+
+"You see, Monsieur Frantz, you mustn't believe all my father told you
+about your sister-in-law.  Dear papa! he always exaggerates a little.
+For my own part, I am very sure that Sidonie is incapable of all the evil
+she is accused of.  I am sure that her heart has remained the same; and
+that she is still fond of her friends, although she does neglect them a
+little.  Such is life, you know.  Friends drift apart without meaning to.
+Isn't that true, Monsieur Frantz?"
+
+Oh! how pretty she was in his eyes, while she talked in that strain.  He
+never had taken so much notice of the refined features, the aristocratic
+pallor of her complexion; and when he left her that evening, deeply
+touched by the warmth she had displayed in defending Sidonie, by all the
+charming feminine excuses she put forward for her friend's silence and
+neglect, Frantz Risler reflected, with a feeling of selfish and ingenuous
+pleasure, that the child had loved him once, and that perhaps she loved
+him still, and kept for him in the bottom of her heart that warm,
+sheltered spot to which we turn as to the sanctuary when life has wounded
+us.
+
+All night long in his old room, lulled by the imaginary movement of the
+vessel, by the murmur of the waves and the howling of the wind which
+follow long sea voyages, he dreamed of his youthful days, of little Chebe
+and Desiree Delobelle, of their games, their labors, and of the Ecole
+Centrale, whose great, gloomy buildings were sleeping near at hand, in
+the dark streets of the Marais.
+
+And when daylight came, and the sun shining in at his bare window vexed
+his eyes and brought him back to a realization of the duty that lay
+before him and to the anxieties of the day, he dreamed that it was time
+to go to the School, and that his brother, before going down to the
+factory, opened the door and called to him:
+
+"Come, lazybones!  Come!"
+
+That dear, loving voice, too natural, too real for a dream, made him open
+his eyes without more ado.
+
+Risler was standing by his bed, watching his awakening with a charming
+smile, not untinged by emotion; that it was Risler himself was evident
+from the fact that, in his joy at seeing his brother Frantz once more, he
+could find nothing better to say than, "I am very happy, I am very
+happy!"
+
+Although it was Sunday, Risler, as was his custom, had come to the
+factory to avail himself of the silence and solitude to work at his
+press.  Immediately on his arrival, Pere Achille had informed him that
+his brother was in Paris and had gone to the old house on the Rue de
+Braque, and he had hastened thither in joyful surprise, a little vexed
+that he had not been forewarned, and especially that Frantz had defrauded
+him of the first evening.  His regret on that account came to the surface
+every moment in his spasmodic attempts at conversation, in which
+everything that he wanted to say was left unfinished, interrupted by
+innumerable questions on all sorts of subjects and explosions of
+affection and joy.  Frantz excused himself on the plea of fatigue, and
+the pleasure it had given him to be in their old room once more.
+
+"All right, all right," said Risler, "but I sha'n't let you alone now--
+you are coming to Asnieres at once.  I give myself leave of absence
+today.  All thought of work is out of the question now that you have
+come, you understand.  Ah!  won't the little one be surprised and glad!
+We talk about you so often!  What joy!  what joy!"
+
+The poor fellow fairly beamed with happiness; he, the silent man,
+chattered like a magpie, gazed admiringly at his Frantz and remarked
+upon his growth.  The pupil of the Ecole Centrale had had a fine physique
+when he went away, but his features had acquired greater firmness,
+his shoulders were broader, and it was a far cry from the tall, studious-
+looking boy who had left Paris two years before, for Ismailia, to this
+handsome, bronzed corsair, with his serious yet winning face.
+
+While Risler was gazing at him, Frantz, on his side, was closely
+scrutinizing his brother, and, finding him the same as always, as
+ingenuous, as loving, and as absent-minded as times, he said to himself:
+
+"No! it is not possible--he has not ceased to be an honest man."
+
+Thereupon, as he reflected upon what people had dared to imagine, all his
+wrath turned against that hypocritical, vicious woman, who deceived her
+husband so impudently and with such absolute impunity that she succeeded
+in causing him to be considered her confederate.  Oh!  what a terrible
+reckoning he proposed to have with her; how pitilessly he would talk to
+her!
+
+"I forbid you, Madame--understand what I say--I forbid you to dishonor my
+brother!"
+
+He was thinking of that all the way, as he watched the still leafless
+trees glide along the embankment of the Saint-Germain railway.  Sitting
+opposite him, Risler chattered, chattered without pause.  He talked about
+the factory, about their business.  They had gained forty thousand francs
+each the last year; but it would be a different matter when the Press was
+at work.  "A rotary press, my little Frantz, rotary and dodecagonal,
+capable of printing a pattern in twelve to fifteen colors at a single
+turn of the wheel--red on pink, dark green on light green, without the
+least running together or absorption, without a line lapping over its
+neighbor, without any danger of one shade destroying or overshadowing
+another.  Do you understand that, little brother?  A machine that is an
+artist like a man.  It means a revolution in the wallpaper trade."
+
+"But," queried Frantz with some anxiety, "have you invented this Press of
+yours yet, or are you still hunting for it?"
+
+"Invented!--perfected!  To-morrow I will show you all my plans.  I have
+also invented an automatic crane for hanging the paper on the rods in the
+drying-room.  Next week I intend to take up my quarters in the factory,
+up in the garret, and have my first machine made there secretly, under my
+own eyes.  In three months the patents must be taken out and the Press
+must be at work.  You'll see, my little Frantz, it will make us all rich-
+you can imagine how glad I shall be to be able to make up to these
+Fromonts for a little of what they have done for me.  Ah! upon my word,
+the Lord has been too good to me."
+
+Thereupon he began to enumerate all his blessings.  Sidonie was the best
+of women, a little love of a wife, who conferred much honor upon him.
+They had a charming home.  They went into society, very select society.
+The little one sang like a nightingale, thanks to Madame Dobson's
+expressive method.  By the way, this Madame Dobson was another most
+excellent creature.  There was just one thing that disturbed poor Risler,
+that was his incomprehensible misunderstanding with Sigismond.  Perhaps
+Frantz could help him to clear up that mystery.
+
+"Oh! yes, I will help you, brother," replied Frantz through his clenched
+teeth; and an angry flush rose to his brow at the idea that any one could
+have suspected the open-heartedness, the loyalty, that were displayed
+before him in all their artless spontaneity.  Luckily he, the judge, had
+arrived; and he proposed to restore everything to its proper place.
+
+Meanwhile, they were drawing near the house at Asnieres.  Frantz had
+noticed at a distance a fanciful little turreted affair, glistening with
+a new blue slate roof.  It seemed to him to have been built expressly for
+Sidonie, a fitting cage for that capricious, gaudy-plumaged bird.
+
+It was a chalet with two stories, whose bright mirrors and pink-lined
+curtains could be seen from the railway, shining resplendent at the far
+end of a green lawn, where an enormous pewter ball was suspended.
+
+The river was near at hand, still wearing its Parisian aspect, filled
+with chains, bathing establishments, great barges, and multitudes of
+little, skiffs, with a layer of coaldust on their pretentious, freshly-
+painted names, tied to the pier and rocking to the slightest motion of
+the water.  From her windows Sidonie could see the restaurants on the
+beach, silent through the week, but filled to overflowing on Sunday with
+a motley, noisy crowd, whose shouts of laughter, mingled with the dull
+splash of oars, came from both banks to meet in midstream in that current
+of vague murmurs, shouts, calls, laughter, and singing that floats
+without ceasing up and down the Seine on holidays for a distance of ten
+miles.
+
+During the week she saw shabbily-dressed idlers sauntering along the
+shore, men in broad-brimmed straw hats and flannel shirts, women who sat
+on the worn grass of the sloping bank, doing nothing, with the dreamy
+eyes of a cow at pasture.  All the peddlers, handorgans, harpists;
+travelling jugglers, stopped there as at a quarantine station.  The quay
+was crowded with them, and as they approached, the windows in the little
+houses near by were always thrown open, disclosing white dressing-
+jackets, half-buttoned, heads of dishevelled hair, and an occasional
+pipe, all watching these paltry strolling shows, as if with a sigh of
+regret for Paris, so near at hand.  It was a hideous and depressing
+sight.
+
+The grass, which had hardly begun to grow, was already turning yellow
+beneath the feet of the crowd.  The dust was black; and yet, every
+Thursday, the cocotte aristocracy passed through on the way to the
+Casino, with a great show of rickety carriages and borrowed postilions.
+All these things gave pleasure to that fanatical Parisian, Sidonie; and
+then, too, in her childhood, she had heard a great deal about Asnieres
+from the illustrious Delobelle, who would have liked to have, like so
+many of his profession, a little villa in those latitudes, a cozy nook in
+the country to which to return by the midnight train, after the play is
+done.
+
+All these dreams of little Chebe, Sidonie Risler had realized.
+
+The brothers went to the gate opening on the quay, in which the key was
+usually left.  They entered, making their way among trees and shrubs of
+recent growth.  Here and there the billiard-room, the gardener's lodge, a
+little greenhouse, made their appearance, like the pieces of one of the
+Swiss chalets we give to children to play with; all very light and
+fragile, hardly more than resting on the ground, as if ready to fly away
+at the slightest breath of bankruptcy or caprice: the villa of a cocotte
+or a pawnbroker.
+
+Frantz looked about in some bewilderment.  In the distance, opening on a
+porch surrounded by vases of flowers, was the salon with its long blinds
+raised.  An American easy-chair, folding-chairs, a small table from which
+the coffee had not been removed, could be seen near the door.  Within
+they heard a succession of loud chords on the piano and the murmur of low
+voices.
+
+"I tell you Sidonie will be surprised," said honest Risler, walking
+softly on the gravel; "she doesn't expect me until tonight.  She and
+Madame Dobson are practising together at this moment."
+
+Pushing the door open suddenly, he cried from the threshold in his loud,
+good-natured voice:
+
+"Guess whom I've brought."
+
+Madame Dobson, who was sitting alone at the piano, jumped up from her
+stool, and at the farther end of the grand salon Georges and Sidonie rose
+hastily behind the exotic plants that reared their heads above a table,
+of whose delicate, slender lines they seemed a prolongation.
+
+"Ah!  how you frightened me!"  said Sidonie, running to meet Risler.
+
+The flounces of her white peignoir, through which blue ribbons were
+drawn, like little patches of blue sky among the clouds, rolled in
+billows over the carpet, and, having already recovered from her
+embarrassment, she stood very straight, with an affable expression and
+her everlasting little smile, as she kissed her husband and offered her
+forehead to Frantz, saying:
+
+"Good morning, brother."
+
+Risler left them confronting each other, and went up to Fromont Jeune,
+whom he was greatly surprised to find there.
+
+"What, Chorche, you here?  I supposed you were at Savigny."
+
+"Yes, to be sure, but--I came--I thought you stayed at Asnieres Sundays.
+I wanted to speak to you on a matter of business."
+
+Thereupon, entangling himself in his words, he began to talk hurriedly of
+an important order.  Sidonie had disappeared after exchanging a few
+unmeaning words with the impassive Frantz.  Madame Dobson continued her
+tremolos on the soft pedal, like those which accompany critical
+situations at the theatre.
+
+In very truth, the situation at that moment was decidedly strained.
+But Risler's good-humor banished all constraint.  He apologized to his
+partner for not being at home, and insisted upon showing Frantz the
+house.  They went from the salon to the stable, from the stable to the
+carriage-house, the servants' quarters, and the conservatory.  Everything
+was new, brilliant, gleaming, too small, and inconvenient.
+
+"But," said Risler, with a certain pride, "it cost a heap of money!"
+
+He persisted in compelling admiration of Sidonie's purchase even to its
+smallest details, exhibited the gas and water fixtures on every floor,
+the improved system of bells, the garden seats, the English billiard-
+table, the hydropathic arrangements, and accompanied his exposition with
+outbursts of gratitude to Fromont Jeune, who, by taking him into
+partnership, had literally placed a fortune in his hands.
+
+At each new effusion on Risler's part, Georges Fromont shrank visibly,
+ashamed and embarrassed by the strange expression on Frantz's face.
+
+The breakfast was lacking in gayety.
+
+Madame Dobson talked almost without interruption, overjoyed to be
+swimming in the shallows of a romantic love-affair.  Knowing, or rather
+believing that she knew her friend's story from beginning to end, she
+understood the lowering wrath of Frantz, a former lover furious at
+finding his place filled, and the anxiety of Georges, due to the
+appearance of a rival; and she encouraged one with a glance, consoled the
+other with a smile, admired Sidonie's tranquil demeanor, and reserved all
+her contempt for that abominable Risler, the vulgar, uncivilized tyrant.
+She made an effort to prevent any of those horrible periods of silence,
+when the clashing knives and forks mark time in such an absurd and
+embarrassing way.
+
+As soon as breakfast was at an end Fromont Jeune announced that he must
+return to Savigny.  Risler did not venture to detain him, thinking that
+his dear Madame Chorche would pass her Sunday all alone; and so, without
+an opportunity to say a word to his mistress, the lover went away in the
+bright sunlight to take an afternoon train, still attended by the
+husband, who insisted upon escorting him to the station.
+
+Madame Dobson sat for a moment with Frantz and Sidonie under a little
+arbor which a climbing vine studded with pink buds; then, realizing that
+she was in the way, she returned to the salon, and as before, while
+Georges was there, began to play and sing softly and with expression.
+In the silent garden, that muffled music, gliding between the branches,
+seemed like the cooing of birds before the storm.
+
+At last they were alone.  Under the lattice of the arbor, still bare and
+leafless, the May sun shone too bright.  Sidonie shaded her eyes with her
+hand as she watched the people passing on the quay.  Frantz likewise
+looked out, but in another direction; and both of them, affecting to be
+entirely independent of each other, turned at the same instant with the
+same gesture and moved by the same thought.
+
+"I have something to say to you," he said, just as she opened her mouth.
+
+"And I to you," she replied gravely; "but come in here; we shall be more
+comfortable."
+
+And they entered together a little summer-house at the foot of the
+garden.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Charm of that one day's rest and its solemnity
+Clashing knives and forks mark time
+Faces taken by surprise allow their real thoughts to be seen
+Make for themselves a horizon of the neighboring walls and roofs
+Wiping his forehead ostentatiously
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Fromont and Risler, v2
+by Alphonse Daudet
+
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