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Updated: June 27, 2025
"The little one is tired, Madame Chebe. She needs diversion. Next Sunday I will take you all into the country." These Sunday excursions, which honest Risler organized to amuse Sidonie, served only to sadden her still more.
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.
Punctually on the last day of the month the little man appeared to collect his little income, stiff and formal in his dealings with Sigismond, as became an annuitant on duty. Madame Chebe had tried to obtain an interview with her son-in-law, whom she pitied and loved; but the mere appearance of her palm-leaf shawl on the steps put Sidonie's husband to flight.
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.
Even in those days, the Fromonts, whose name was always on Rider's lips, irritated and humiliated him by their wealth. Moreover, it was to be a fancy ball, and M. Chebe who did not sell wallpapers, not he! could not afford to dress his daughter as a circus-dancer. But Risler insisted, declared that he would get everything himself, and at once set about designing a costume.
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.
Monsieur Chebe stared at him in amazement, and assumed the idiotic expression which led many people to believe that the accident that had happened to him exactly like that of the Duc d'Orleans, you know was not a fable of his own invention; but he dared not make the slightest observation. Surely some one had changed his son-in-law.
Madame Chebe made it a point of honor, and the pretty, lame girl was always at hand to place her treasures of unused coquetry at her little friend's service. But M. Chebe, who was always hostile to the Fromonts, looked frowningly upon this growing intimacy.
That was nothing unusual, by the way, for Monsieur Chebe was in a frenzy the whole year long.
That haughty smile, in which there was a touch of profound pity and of scorn as well, such scorn as a parvenu feels for his poor beginnings, was evidently addressed to the poor sickly child whom she fancied she saw up at that window, in the depths of the past and the darkness. It seemed to say to Claire, pointing at the factory: "What do you say to this little Chebe? She is here at last, you see!"
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