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Updated: June 14, 2025
Our friend Risler does us the honor to pass the night with us." The sister hastened away to prepare the bedroom with an almost affectionate zeal; for, as we know, beside "Monsieur Planus, my brother," Risler was the only man excepted from the general reprobation in which she enveloped the whole male sex. Upon leaving the cafe concert, Sidonie's husband had had a moment of frantic excitement.
Knowing, or rather believing that she knew her friend's story from beginning to end, she understood the lowering wrath of Frantz, a former lover furious at finding his place filled, and the anxiety of Georges, due to the appearance of a rival; and she encouraged one with a glance, consoled the other with a smile, admired Sidonie's tranquil demeanor, and reserved all her contempt for that abominable Risler, the vulgar, uncivilized tyrant.
"No, dear chil'run; but grasp hold, every one, the ropes, the cawds, the shawt chil'run reaching up shawtly, the long chil'run the more longly." Few understood his words, but they quietly caught the idea, and yielded themselves eagerly to his arranging hand. The highest grasp was Claude's. There was a little empty space under it, and then one only of Sidonie's hands, timid, smooth, and brown.
Mademoiselle Le Mire seated her in front of a great drawer filled with pearls, needles, and bodkins, with instalments of four-sou novels thrown in at random among them. It was Sidonie's business to sort the pearls and string them in necklaces of equal length, which were tied together to be sold to the small dealers.
He persisted in compelling admiration of Sidonie's purchase even to its smallest details, exhibited the gas and water fixtures on every floor, the improved system of bells, the garden seats, the English billiard- table, the hydropathic arrangements, and accompanied his exposition with outbursts of gratitude to Fromont Jeune, who, by taking him into partnership, had literally placed a fortune in his hands.
I am very happy!" That was his favorite phrase on great occasions. Then he pointed to the bundles of bank notes spread out before him in the narrow bands which are used to confine those fugitive documents, always ready to fly away. "Do you know what that is?" he said to Georges, with an air of triumph. "That is Sidonie's house in the country!"
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.
Shadows passed and repassed behind the fluttering veil of the curtains; the orchestra seemed to follow the movements of those stealthy apparitions with the rising and falling of its muffled notes. The guests were dancing. Risler let his eyes rest for a moment on that phantasmagoria of the ball, and fancied that he recognized Sidonie's shadow in a small room adjoining the salon.
In a life so fully occupied, Sidonie's caprices received but little attention; and it had hardly occurred to Claire Fromont to be surprised at her marriage to Risler. He was clearly too old for her; but, after all, what difference did it make, if they loved each other?
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.
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