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The coarse face of M. Gardinois, surrounded by a travelling- cap with ear-pieces, is before him. "I am not mistaken, it is Monsieur Risler. Are you going to Marseilles by the express? I am not going far." He explains to Frantz that he has missed the Orleans train, and is going to try to connect with Savigny by the Lyon line; then he talks about Risler Aine and the factory.
In the idleness consequent upon his wealth, M. Gardinois, being greatly bored in Paris, lived at Savigny throughout the year, and the Fromonts lived with him during the summer. Madame Fromont was a mild, dull woman, whom her father's brutal despotism had early molded to passive obedience for life.
To go and ask M. Gardinois for a hundred thousand francs M. Gardinois, a man who boasted that he had never borrowed or loaned a sou in his life, who never lost an opportunity to tell how, on one occasion, being driven to ask his father for forty francs to buy a pair of trousers, he had repaid the loan in small amounts.
His black coat, new and magnificent, made a fitting pendant to the green gown; but unfortunately his thoughts were of the color of his coat. Why had they not seated him beside the bride, as was his right? Why had they given his seat to young Fromont? And there was old Gardinois, the Fromonts' grandfather, what business had he by Sidonie's side? Ah! that was how it was to be!
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.
Wild flowers always seemed to her like the flowers of the poor, something like her lilac dress. She remembered that she had seen flowers of a different sort at the house of M. Gardinois, at the Chateau de Savigny, in the hothouses, on the balconies, and all about the gravelled courtyard bordered with tall urns. Those were the flowers she loved; that was her idea of the country!
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.
Day after day he came unexpectedly to take her by surprise, uneasy, suspicious, afraid to leave that perverse and deceitful character to its own devices for long. "What in the deuce has become of your husband?" Pere Gardinois would ask his grand-daughter with a cunning leer. "Why doesn't he come here oftener?" Claire apologized for Georges, but his continual neglect began to disturb her.
The chateau of M. Gardinois was built in the valley of the Orge, on the bank of that capriciously lovely stream, with its windmills, its little islands, its dams, and its broad lawns that end at its shores.
He would never have dared to suggest that to her. Indeed, it would never have occurred to him. She was so proud and old Gardinois so hard! Surely that was a great sacrifice for her to make for him, and a striking proof of her love. "Claire, Claire how good your are!" he said. Without replying, she led him to their child's cradle.
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