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Updated: May 14, 2025
Sigismond's window is the first to show a light on the ground floor; the cashier trims his lamp himself with painstaking care, and his tall shadow passes in front of the flame and bends double behind the grating. Sidonie's wrath is diverted a moment by these familiar details. Suddenly a small coupe drives into the garden and stops in front of the door. At last some one is coming.
She had reached that point with the man whom she had adored so blindly, with the hope of a long and happy life together. At that moment the ball in Sidonie's apartments began to become very animated. The ceiling trembled rhythmically, for Madame had had all the carpets removed from her salons for the greater comfort of the dancers.
Thereupon Frantz made up his mind to ring at the small gate. The gardener was raking the paths. The house was astir; and, early as it was, he heard Sidonie's voice as clear and vibrating as the song of a bird among the rose-bushes of the facade. She was talking with animation. Frantz, deeply moved, drew near to listen. "No, no cream. The 'cafe parfait' will be enough.
Meanwhile Claire, trembling from head to foot, looked out through the window at the little garden, white with snow, where Sidonie's footsteps were already effaced by the fast-falling flakes, as if to bear witness that that precipitate departure was without hope of return. Up-stairs they were still dancing.
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.
Suddenly some one hailed him from the shore: "Ah! Monsieur Frantz. How early you are today!" It was Sidonie's coachman taking his horses to bathe in the river. "Has anything happened at the house?" inquired Frantz tremblingly. "No, Monsieur Frantz." "Is my brother at home?" "No, Monsieur slept at the factory." "No one sick?" "No, Monsieur Frantz, no one, so far as I know."
As for Georges, all these eccentricities amused him; it seemed to him that he had ten women in one. He was the real husband, the master of the house. To divert Sidonie's thoughts, he had provided a simulacrum of society for her his bachelor friends, a few fast tradesmen, almost no women, women have too sharp eyes. Madame Dobson was the only friend of Sidonie's sex.
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.
That 'etagere' was Sidonie's very soul, and her thoughts, always commonplace, petty, vain, and empty, resembled those gewgaws. Yes, in very truth, if Risler, while he held her in his grasp last night, had in his frenzy broken that fragile little head, a whole world of 'etagere' ornaments would have come from it in place of a brain.
A new personage, a new hope came into her life. After Sidonie's arrival, Georges Fromont, who was seldom seen at Savigny except on Sundays, adopted the habit of coming to dinner almost every day. He was a tall, slender, pale youth, of refined appearance.
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