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"Do you remember, Sigismond?" he said, after a pause. The old cashier, engrossed in his memories of long ago, of Risler's first employment at the factory, replied: "I should think I do remember listen! The first time we dined together at the Palais-Royal was in February, 'forty-six, the year we put in the planches-plates at the factory." Risler shook his head. "Oh! no I mean three years ago.
Now, Risler's god was work, and as he no longer found comfort or serenity therein, he no longer believed in it, but cursed it. Often in those hours of mental struggle the door of the draughting-room would open gently and Claire Fromont would appear.
It was impossible now for Frantz to expose her, even in the frenzy of his disappointment, knowing that she had such a weapon in her hands; and if he did speak, she would show the letter, and all his accusations would become in Risler's eyes calumny pure and simple. Ah, master judge, we have you now! "I am born again I am born again!" she cried to Madame Dobson.
Risler's first feeling upon entering the room was one of mad indignation, a longing to fall upon the things before him, to tear and rend and shatter everything. Nothing, you see, resembles a woman so much as her bedroom. Even when she is absent, her image still smiles in the mirrors that have reflected it. A little something of her, of her favorite perfume, remains in everything she has touched.
She was a very young woman, of about the same age as Sidonie, but of a more regular, quiet and placid type of beauty. She talked little, being out of her element in that conglomerate assemblage; but she tried to appear affable. On Risler's other side sat Madame Chebe, the bride's mother, radiant and gorgeous in her green satin gown, which gleamed like a shield.
And if Desiree spoke with great confidence, it was because she was intimately acquainted with the woman who was so well adapted to Frantz Risler's needs. She was only a year younger than he, just enough to make her younger than her husband and a mother to him at the same time. Pretty? No, not exactly, but attractive rather than ugly, notwithstanding her infirmity, for she was lame, poor child!
The next morning he woke as usual when the drums beat the reveille in the fortifications; for the little family, surrounded by barracks, regulated its life by the military calls. The sister had already risen and was feeding the poultry. When she saw Sigismond she came to him in agitation. "It is very strange," she said, "I hear nothing stirring in Monsieur Risler's room.
Suddenly he spied a light in Planus's office, at the end of that long line of deserted rooms. The old cashier was still at work, at one o'clock in the morning! That was really most extraordinary. Risler's first impulse was to retrace his steps.
When he reached it, he inquired timidly if Madame Chebe's little allowance would be continued. "Yes," was Risler's reply, "but never go beyond it, for my position here is not what it was. I am no longer a partner in the house."
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.
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