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To the devil with sadness for to-day! Play us something lively, a good waltz, so that I can take a turn with Madame Chebe." "Risler, Risler, are you crazy, my son-in-law?" "Come, come, mamma! We must dance."
And that is how it happened that, on the evening of her wedding-day, young Madame Risler, in her white wedding-dress, gazed with a smile of triumph at the window on the landing which had been the narrow setting of ten years of her life.
Unnoticed by Risler, he led him away from the factory, and as his affectionate heart suggested to the old cashier what he had best say to his friend, he talked to him all the time of Frantz, his little Frantz whom he loved so dearly. "That was genuine affection, genuine and trustworthy. No treachery to fear with such hearts as that!"
"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.
Guillaume Risler, the third tenant on the landing, lived with his brother Frantz, who was fifteen years his junior. The two young Swiss, tall and fair, strong and ruddy, brought into the dismal, hard-working house glimpses of the country and of health.
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.
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.
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!
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!"
Sometimes, leaving the Chebes and Delobelle in the midst of the fete, Risler would go into the fields with his brother and the "little one" in search of flowers for patterns for his wall-papers. Frantz, with his long arms, would pull down the highest branches of a hawthorn, or would climb a park wall to pick a leaf of graceful shape he had spied on the other side.
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