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Updated: June 11, 2025
After two or three years of intimacy with Claire, of sharing her amusements, years during which Sidonie acquired the familiarity with luxury and the graceful manners of the children of the wealthy, the friendship was suddenly broken. Cousin Georges, whose guardian M. Fromont was, had entered college some time before.
The actor, who had been witnessing at Beaumarchais some dark-browed melodrama drenched with gore even to the illustrated headlines of its poster, was startled by that knock at such an advanced hour. "Who is there?" he asked in some alarm. "It is I, Sidonie. Open the door quickly."
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!"
Two or three times she heard some one near her whisper, "That is Madame Fromont Jeune," and, indeed, it was a simple matter for people to make the mistake, seeing the three return together from the station, Sidonie sitting beside Georges on the back seat, laughing and talking with him, and Risler facing them, smiling contentedly with his broad hands spread flat upon his knees, but evidently feeling a little out of place in that fine carriage.
"No, Monsieur, no one." In the beautiful red drawing-room for they have a drawing-room in red damask, with a console between the windows and a pretty table in the centre of the light-flowered carpet Sidonie has established herself in the attitude of a woman holding a reception, a circle of chairs of many shapes around her.
Before sailing from Marseilles, young Risler wrote Sidonie a farewell letter, at once laughable and touching, wherein, mingling the most technical details with the most heartrending adieux, the unhappy engineer declared that he was about to set sail, with a broken heart, on the transport Sahib, "a sailing-ship and steamship combined, with engines of fifteen-hundred-horse power," as if he hoped that so considerable a capacity would make an impression on his ungrateful betrothed, and cause her ceaseless remorse.
Sidonie would have been glad to have him leave the house in the evening for a fashionable club, a resort of wealthy, well-dressed men; but the idea of his returning, amid clouds of pipe-smoke, to his friends of earlier days, Sigismond, Delobelle, and her own father, humiliated her and made her unhappy. So he ceased to frequent the place; and that was something of a sacrifice.
The great man had hoped to form an integral part of the new household, to be the organizer of festivities, the 'arbiter elegantiarum'. Instead of which, Sidonie received him very coldly, and Risler no longer even took him to the brewery. However, the actor did not complain too loud, and whenever he met his friend he overwhelmed him with attentions and flattery; for he had need of him.
He made Sidonie rehearse two or three stately curtseys which he had taught her, the proper way to walk, to stand, to smile with her mouth slightly open, and the exact position of the little finger. It was truly amusing to see the precision with which the child went through the drill.
Sidonie, leaning on the piano, objected with a melancholy air, while Madame Dobson ran her fingers over the keys, shaking her long curls. "But I don't know anything. What do you wish me to sing?" She ended, however, by being persuaded.
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