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Updated: May 6, 2025
I must live!" When he recovered consciousness, he was sitting on the cushioned bench on which the workmen sat huddled together on pay-day, his cloak on the floor, his cravat untied, his shirt open at the neck, cut by Sigismond's knife. Luckily for him, he had cut his hands when he tore the grating apart; the blood had flowed freely, and that accident was enough to avert an attack of apoplexy.
A timid, melancholy ring, in no wise resembling Sigismond's vigorous pull. "Is it you, Monsieur Planus?" queried the old lady from behind the door. It was he; but he was not alone. A tall, bent old man accompanied him, and, as they entered, bade her good-evening in a slow, hesitating voice.
As objects dipped in phosphorus shine with equal splendor, so the most trivial words she said illuminated her pretty, radiant face. What a blissful rest it was for him after Sigismond's brutal disclosures! They talked together with great animation while Mamma Delobelle was setting the table. "You will dine with us, won't you, Monsieur Frantz?
Frantz felt as if he were living in a horrible dream. The rapid journey, the sudden change of scene and climate, the ceaseless flow of Sigismond's words, the new idea that he had to form of Risler and Sidonie the same Sidonie he had loved so dearly all these things bewildered him and almost drove him mad. It was late. Night was falling.
The idea of having to endure the presence of that hypocritical face, that false smile, was so distasteful to her that she rushed to close the door. "I am not at home to any one." The door resisted her efforts, and Sigismond's square head appeared in the opening. "It is I, Madame," he said in an undertone. "I have come to get the money."
And what an event in the factory! Madame Fromont was informed at once. "Madame, Madame! Monsieur Risler is going out!" Claire looked at him from her window, and that tall form, bowed by sorrow, leaning on Sigismond's arm, aroused in her a profound, unusual emotion which she remembered ever after. In the street people bowed to Risler with great interest. Even their greetings warmed his heart.
There were disappointments, mutterings, remonstrances, hours missed, money drawn in advance; and above the tinkling of coins, Sigismond's voice could be heard, calm and relentless, defending the interests of his employers with a zeal amounting to ferocity. Frantz was familiar with all the dramas of pay-day, the false accents and the true.
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.
They look, but do not see, their eyes being turned within. It was Sigismond's belief that Risler did see. That belief made the old cashier very unhappy.
There were disappointments, mutterings, remonstrances, hours missed, money drawn in advance; and above the tinkling of coins, Sigismond's voice could be heard, calm and relentless, defending the interests of his employers with a zeal amounting to ferocity. Frantz was familiar with all the dramas of pay-day, the false accents and the true.
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