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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Fromont and Risler by Alphonse Daudet, v1
+#63 in our series The French Immortals Crowned by the French Academy
+#4 in our series by Alphonse Daudet
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+Title: Fromont and Risler, v1
+
+Author: Alphonse Daudet
+
+Release Date: April, 2003  [Etext #3976]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 09/23/01]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Fromont and Risler by Alphonse Daudet, v1
+***********This file should be named 3976.txt or 3976.zip*********
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+
+
+
+
+
+FROMONT AND RISLER
+
+By ALPHONSE DAUDET
+
+
+
+With a Preface by LECONTE DE LISLE, of the French Academy
+
+
+
+BOOK 1.
+
+
+ALPHONSE DAUDET
+
+Nominally Daudet, with the Goncourts and Zola, formed a trio representing
+Naturalism in fiction.  He adopted the watchwords of that school, and by
+private friendship, no less than by a common profession of faith, was one
+of them.  But the students of the future, while recognizing an obvious
+affinity between the other two, may be puzzled to find Daudet's name
+conjoined with theirs.
+
+Decidedly, Daudet belonged to the Realistic School.  But, above all, he
+was an impressionist.  All that can be observed--the individual picture,
+scene, character--Daudet will render with wonderful accuracy, and all his
+novels, especially those written after 1870, show an increasing firmness
+of touch, limpidity of style, and wise simplicity in the use of the
+sources of pathetic emotion, such as befit the cautious Naturalist.
+Daudet wrote stories, but he had to be listened to.  Feverish as his
+method of writing was--true to his Southern character he took endless
+pains to write well, revising every manuscript three times over from
+beginning to end.  He wrote from the very midst of the human comedy; and
+it is from this that he seems at times to have caught the bodily warmth
+and the taste of the tears and the very ring of the laughter of men and
+women.  In the earlier novels, perhaps, the transitions from episode to
+episode or from scene to scene are often abrupt, suggesting the manner of
+the Goncourts.  But to Zola he forms an instructive contrast, of the same
+school, but not of the same family.  Zola is methodical, Daudet
+spontaneous.  Zola works with documents, Daudet from the living fact.
+Zola is objective, Daudet with equal scope and fearlessness shows more
+personal feeling and hence more delicacy.  And in style also Zola is
+vast, architectural; Daudet slight, rapid, subtle, lively, suggestive.
+And finally, in their philosophy of life, Zola may inspire a hate of vice
+and wrong, but Daudet wins a love for what is good and true.
+
+Alphonse Daudet was born in Nimes, Provence, May 13, 1840.  His father
+had been a well-to-do silk manufacturer, but, while Alphonse was still a
+child, lost his property.  Poverty compelled the son to seek the wretched
+post of usher (pion) in a school at Alais.  In November, 1857, he settled
+in Paris and joined his almost equally penniless brother Ernest.  The
+autobiography, 'Le Petit Chose' (1868), gives graphic details about this
+period.  His first years of literary life were those of an industrious
+Bohemian, with poetry for consolation and newspaper work for bread.  He
+had secured a secretaryship with the Duc de Morny, President of the Corps
+Legislatif, and had won recognition for his short stories in the
+'Figaro', when failing health compelled him to go to Algiers.  Returning,
+he married toward that period a lady (Julia Allard, born 1847), whose
+literary talent comprehended, supplemented, and aided his own.  After the
+death of the Duc de Morny (1865) he consecrated himself entirely to
+literature and published 'Lettres de mon Moulin' (1868), which also made
+his name favorably known.  He now turned from fiction to the drama, and
+it was not until after 1870 that he became fully conscious of his
+vocation as a novelist, perhaps through the trials of the siege of Paris
+and the humiliation of his country, which deepened his nature without
+souring it.  Daudet's genial satire, 'Tartarin de Tarascon', appeared in
+1872; but with the Parisian romance 'Fromont jeune et Risler aine',
+crowned by the Academy (1874), he suddenly advanced into the foremost
+rank of French novelists; it was his first great success, or, as he puts
+it, "the dawn of his popularity."
+
+How numberless editions of this book were printed, and rights of
+translations sought from other countries, Daudet has told us with natural
+pride.  The book must be read to be appreciated.  "Risler, a self-made,
+honest man, raises himself socially into a society against the
+corruptness of which he has no defence and from which he escapes only by
+suicide.  Sidonie Chebe is a peculiarly French type, a vain and heartless
+woman; Delobelle, the actor, a delectable figure; the domestic simplicity
+of Desiree Delobelle and her mother quite refreshing."
+
+Success followed now after success.  'Jack (1876); Le Nabab (1877); Les
+Rois en exil (1879); Numa Roumestan (1882); L'Evangeliste (1883); Sapho
+(1884); Tartarin sur des Alces (1886); L'Immortel (1888); Port Tarascon
+(1890); Rose et Ninette (1892); La petite Parvisse (1895); and Soutien de
+Famille (1899)'; such is the long list of the great life-artist.  In Le
+Nabab we find obvious traces of Daudet's visits to Algiers and Corsica-
+Mora is the Duc de Morny.  Sapho is the most concentrated of his novels,
+with never a divergence, never a break, in its development.  And of the
+theme--legitimate marriage contra common-law--what need be said except
+that he handled it in a manner most acceptable to the aesthetic and least
+offensive to the moral sense?
+
+L'Immortel is a satire springing from personal reasons; L'Evangeliste and
+Rose et Ninette--the latter on the divorce problem--may be classed as
+clever novels; but had Daudet never written more than 'Fromont et
+Risler', 'Tartarin sur les Alces', and 'Port Tarascon', these would keep
+him in lasting remembrance.
+
+We must not omit to mention also many 'contes' and his 'Trente ans de
+Paris (A travers ma vie et mes livres), Souvenirs d'un Homme de lettres
+(1888), and Notes sur la Vie (1899)'.
+
+Alphonse Daudet died in Paris, December 16, 1897
+
+                                        LECONTE DE LISLE
+                                   de l'Academie Francaise.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FROMONT AND RISLER
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A WEDDING-PARTY AT THE CAFE VEFOUR
+
+"Madame Chebe!"
+
+"My boy--"
+
+"I am so happy!"
+
+This was the twentieth time that day that the good Risler had said that
+he was happy, and always with the same emotional and contented manner,
+in the same low, deep voice-the voice that is held in check by emotion
+and does not speak too loud for fear of suddenly breaking into violent
+tears.
+
+Not for the world would Risler have wept at that moment--imagine a newly-
+made husband giving way to tears in the midst of the wedding-festival!
+And yet he had a strong inclination to do so.  His happiness stifled him,
+held him by the throat, prevented the words from coming forth.  All that
+he could do was to murmur from time to time, with a slight trembling of
+the lips, "I am happy; I am happy!"
+
+Indeed, he had reason to be happy.
+
+Since early morning the poor man had fancied that he was being whirled
+along in one of those magnificent dreams from which one fears lest he may
+awake suddenly with blinded eyes; but it seemed to him as if this dream
+would never end.  It had begun at five o'clock in the morning, and at ten
+o'clock at night, exactly ten o'clock by Vefour's clock, he was still
+dreaming.
+
+How many things had happened during that day, and how vividly he
+remembered the most trivial details.
+
+He saw himself, at daybreak, striding up and down his bachelor quarters,
+delight mingled with impatience, clean-shaven, his coat on, and two pairs
+of white gloves in his pocket.  Then there were the wedding-coaches, and
+in the foremost one--the one with white horses, white reins, and a yellow
+damask lining--the bride, in her finery, floated by like a cloud.  Then
+the procession into the church, two by two, the white veil in advance,
+ethereal, and dazzling to behold.  The organ, the verger, the cure's
+sermon, the tapers casting their light upon jewels and spring gowns, and
+the throng of people in the sacristy, the tiny white cloud swallowed up,
+surrounded, embraced, while the bridegroom distributed hand-shakes among
+all the leading tradesmen of Paris, who had assembled to do him honor.
+And the grand crash from the organ at the close, made more solemn by the
+fact that the church door was thrown wide open, so that the whole street
+took part in the family ceremony--the music passing through the vestibule
+at the same time with the procession--the exclamations of the crowd, and
+a burnisher in an ample lute-string apron remarking in a loud voice, "The
+groom isn't handsome, but the bride's as pretty as a picture."  That is
+the kind of thing that makes you proud when you happen to be the
+bridegroom.
+
+And then the breakfast at the factory, in a workroom adorned with
+hangings and flowers; the drive in the Bois--a concession to the wishes
+of his mother-in-law, Madame Chebe, who, being the petty Parisian
+bourgeoise that she was, would not have deemed her daughter legally
+married without a drive around the lake and a visit to the Cascade.
+Then the return for dinner, as the lamps were being lighted along the
+boulevard, where people turned to look after the wedding-party, a typical
+well-to-do bourgeois wedding-party, as it drove up to the grand entrance
+at Vefour's with all the style the livery horses could command.
+
+Risler had reached that point in his dream.
+
+And now the worthy man, dazed with fatigue and well-being, glanced
+vaguely about that huge table of twenty-four covers, curved in the shape
+of a horseshoe at the ends, and surrounded by smiling, familiar faces,
+wherein he seemed to see his happiness reflected in every eye.  The
+dinner was drawing near its close.  The wave of private conversation
+flowed around the table.  Faces were turned toward one another, black
+sleeves stole behind waists adorned with bunches of asclepias, a childish
+face laughed over a fruit ice, and the dessert at the level of the
+guests' lips encompassed the cloth with animation, bright colors, and
+light.
+
+Ah, yes!  Risler was very happy.
+
+Except his brother Frantz, everybody he loved was there.  First of all,
+sitting opposite him, was Sidonie--yesterday little Sidonie, to-day his
+wife.  For the ceremony of dinner she had laid aside her veil; she had
+emerged from her cloud.  Now, above the smooth, white silk gown, appeared
+a pretty face of a less lustrous and softer white, and the crown of hair-
+beneath that other crown so carefully bestowed--would have told you of a
+tendency to rebel against life, of little feathers fluttering for an
+opportunity to fly away.  But husbands do not see such things as those.
+
+Next to Sidonie and Frantz, the person whom Risler loved best in the
+world was Madame Georges Fromont, whom he called "Madame Chorche," the
+wife of his partner and the daughter of the late Fromont, his former
+employer and his god.  He had placed her beside him, and in his manner of
+speaking to her one could read affection and deference.  She was a very
+young woman, of about the same age as Sidonie, but of a more regular,
+quiet and placid type of beauty.  She talked little, being out of her
+element in that conglomerate assemblage; but she tried to appear affable.
+
+On Risler's other side sat Madame Chebe, the bride's mother, radiant and
+gorgeous in her green satin gown, which gleamed like a shield.  Ever
+since the morning the good woman's every thought had been as brilliant as
+that robe of emblematic hue.  At every moment she said to herself: "My
+daughter is marrying Fromont Jeune and Risler Aine, of Rue des Vieilles
+Haudriettes!"  For, in her mind, it was not Risler alone whom her
+daughter took for her husband, but the whole sign of the establishment,
+illustrious in the commercial annals of Paris; and whenever she mentally
+announced that glorious event, Madame Chebe sat more erect than ever,
+stretching the silk of the bodice until it almost cracked.
+
+What a contrast to the attitude of Monsieur Chebe, who was seated at a
+short distance.  In different households, as a general rule, the same
+causes produce altogether different results.  That little man, with the
+high forehead of a visionary, as inflated and hollow as a ball, was as
+fierce in appearance as his wife was radiant.  That was nothing unusual,
+by the way, for Monsieur Chebe was in a frenzy the whole year long.
+On this particular evening, however, he did not wear his customary woe-
+begone, lack-lustre expression, nor the full-skirted coat, with the
+pockets sticking out behind, filled to repletion with samples of oil,
+wine, truffles, or vinegar, according as he happened to be dealing in one
+or the other of those articles.  His black coat, new and magnificent,
+made a fitting pendant to the green gown; but unfortunately his thoughts
+were of the color of his coat.  Why had they not seated him beside the
+bride, as was his right?  Why had they given his seat to young Fromont?
+And there was old Gardinois, the Fromonts' grandfather, what business had
+he by Sidonie's side?  Ah!  that was how it was to be!  Everything for
+the Fromonts and nothing for the Chebes!  And yet people are amazed that
+there are such things as revolutions!
+
+Luckily the little man had by his side, to vent his anger upon, his
+friend Delobelle, an old, retired actor, who listened to him with his
+serene and majestic holiday countenance.
+
+Strangely enough, the bride herself had something of that same
+expression.  On that pretty and youthful face, which happiness enlivened
+without making glad, appeared indications of some secret preoccupation;
+and, at times, the corners of her lips quivered with a smile, as if she
+were talking to herself.
+
+With that same little smile she replied to the somewhat pronounced
+pleasantries of Grandfather Gardinois, who sat by her side.
+
+"This Sidonie, on my word!" said the good man, with a laugh.  "When I
+think that not two months ago she was talking about going into a convent.
+We all know what sort of convents such minxes as she go to!  As the
+saying is in our province: The Convent of Saint Joseph, four shoes under
+the bed!"
+
+And everybody at the table laughed heartily at the rustic jests of the
+old Berrichon peasant, whose colossal fortune filled the place of
+manliness, of education, of kindness of heart, but not of wit; for he had
+plenty of that, the rascal--more than all his bourgeois fellow-guests
+together.  Among the very rare persons who inspired a sympathetic feeling
+in his breast, little Chebe, whom he had known as an urchin, appealed
+particularly to him; and she, for her part, having become rich too
+recently not to venerate wealth, talked to her right-hand neighbor with a
+very perceptible air of respect and coquetry.
+
+With her left-hand-neighbor, on the contrary, Georges Fromont, her
+husband's partner, she exhibited the utmost reserve.  Their conversation
+was restricted to the ordinary courtesies of the table; indeed there was
+a sort of affectation of indifference between them.
+
+Suddenly there was that little commotion among the guests which indicates
+that they are about to rise: the rustling of silk, the moving of chairs,
+the last words of conversations, the completion of a laugh, and in that
+half-silence Madame Chebe, who had become communicative, observed in a
+very loud tone to a provincial cousin, who was gazing in an ecstasy of
+admiration at the newly made bride's reserved and tranquil demeanor, as
+she stood with her arm in Monsieur Gardinois's:
+
+"You see that child, cousin--well, no one has ever been able to find out
+what her thoughts were."
+
+Thereupon the whole party rose and repaired to the grand salon.
+
+While the guests invited for the ball were arriving and mingling with the
+dinner-guests, while the orchestra was tuning up, while the cavaliers,
+eyeglass in position, strutted before the impatient, white-gowned
+damsels, the bridegroom, awed by so great a throng, had taken refuge with
+his friend Planus--Sigismond Planus, cashier of the house of Fromont for
+thirty years--in that little gallery decorated with flowers and hung with
+a paper representing shrubbery and clambering vines, which forms a sort
+of background of artificial verdure to Vefour's gilded salons.
+
+"Sigismond, old friend--I am very happy."
+
+And Sigismond too was happy; but Risler did not give him time to say so.
+Now that he was no longer in dread of weeping before his guests, all the
+joy in his heart overflowed.
+
+"Just think of it, my friend!--It's so extraordinary that a young girl
+like Sidonie would consent to marry me.  For you know I'm not handsome.
+I didn't need to have that impudent creature tell me so this morning to
+know it.  And then I'm forty-two--and she such a dear little thing!
+There were so many others she might have chosen, among the youngest and
+the richest, to say nothing of my poor Frantz, who loved her so.  But,
+no, she preferred her old Risler.  And it came about so strangely.  For a
+long time I noticed that she was sad, greatly changed.  I felt sure there
+was some disappointment in love at the bottom of it.  Her mother and I
+looked about, and we cudgelled our brains to find out what it could be.
+One morning Madame Chebe came into my room weeping, and said, 'You are
+the man she loves, my dear friend!'--And I was the man--I was the man!
+Bless my soul!  Whoever would have suspected such a thing?  And to think
+that in the same year I had those two great pieces of good fortune--
+a partnership in the house of Fromont and married to Sidonie--Oh!"
+
+At that moment, to the strains of a giddy, languishing waltz, a couple
+whirled into the small salon.  They were Risler's bride and his partner,
+Georges Fromont.  Equally young and attractive, they were talking in
+undertones, confining their words within the narrow circle of the waltz.
+
+"You lie!"  said Sidonie, slightly pale, but with the same little smile.
+
+And the other, paler than she, replied:
+
+"I do not lie.  It was my uncle who insisted upon this marriage.  He was
+dying--you had gone away.  I dared not say no."
+
+Risler, at a distance, gazed at them in admiration.
+
+"How pretty she is!  How well they dance!"
+
+But, when they spied him, the dancers separated, and Sidonie walked
+quickly to him.
+
+"What!  You here?  What are you doing?  They are looking everywhere for
+you.  Why aren't you in there?"
+
+As she spoke she retied his cravat with a pretty, impatient gesture.
+That enchanted Risler, who smiled at Sigismond from the corner of his
+eye, too overjoyed at feeling the touch of that little gloved hand on his
+neck, to notice that she was trembling to the ends of her slender
+fingers.
+
+"Give me your arm," she said to him, and they returned together to the
+salons.  The white bridal gown with its long train made the badly cut,
+awkwardly worn black coat appear even more uncouth; but a coat can not be
+retied like a cravat; she must needs take it as it was.  As they passed
+along, returning the salutations of all the guests who were so eager to
+smile upon them, Sidonie had a momentary thrill of pride, of satisfied
+vanity.  Unhappily it did not last.  In a corner of the room sat a young
+and attractive woman whom nobody invited to dance, but who looked on at
+the dances with a placid eye, illumined by all the joy of a first
+maternity.  As soon as he saw her, Risler walked straight to the corner
+where she sat and compelled Sidonie to sit beside her.  Needless to say
+that it was Madame "Chorche."  To whom else would he have spoken with
+such affectionate respect?  In what other hand than hers could he have
+placed his little Sidonie's, saying: "You will love her dearly, won't
+you?  You are so good.  She needs your advice, your knowledge of the
+world."
+
+"Why, my dear Risler," Madame Georges replied, "Sidonie and I are old
+friends.  We have reason to be fond of each other still."
+
+And her calm, straightforward glance strove unsuccessfully to meet that
+of her old friend.
+
+With his ignorance of women, and his habit of treating Sidonie as a
+child, Risler continued in the same tone:
+
+"Take her for your model, little one.  There are not two people in the
+world like Madame Chorche.  She has her poor father's heart.  A true
+Fromont!"
+
+Sidonie, with her eyes cast down, bowed without replying, while an
+imperceptible shudder ran from the tip of her satin shoe to the topmost
+bit of orange-blossom in her crown.  But honest Risler saw nothing.
+The excitement, the dancing, the music, the flowers, the lights made
+him drunk, made him mad.  He believed that every one breathed the same
+atmosphere of bliss beyond compare which enveloped him.  He had no
+perception of the rivalries, the petty hatreds that met and passed one
+another above all those bejewelled foreheads.
+
+He did not notice Delobelle, standing with his elbow on the mantel, one
+hand in the armhole of his waistcoat and his hat upon his hip, weary of
+his eternal attitudinizing, while the hours slipped by and no one thought
+of utilizing his talents.  He did not notice M. Chebe, who was prowling
+darkly between the two doors, more incensed than ever against the
+Fromonts.  Oh! those Fromonts!--How large a place they filled at that
+wedding!  They were all there with their wives, their children, their
+friends, their friends' friends.  One would have said that one of
+themselves was being married.  Who had a word to say of the Rislers or
+the Chebes?  Why, he--he, the father, had not even been presented!--
+And the little man's rage was redoubled by the attitude of Madame Chebe,
+smiling maternally upon one and all in her scarab-hued dress.
+
+Furthermore, there were at this, as at almost all wedding-parties, two
+distinct currents which came together but without mingling.  One of the
+two soon gave place to the other.  The Fromonts, who irritated Monsieur
+Chebe so much and who formed the aristocracy of the ball, the president
+of the Chamber of Commerce, the syndic of the solicitors, a famous
+chocolate-manufacturer and member of the Corps Legislatif, and the old
+millionaire Gardinois, all retired shortly after midnight.  Georges
+Fromont and his wife entered their carriage behind them.  Only the Risler
+and Chebe party remained, and the festivity at once changed its aspect,
+becoming more uproarious.
+
+The illustrious Delobelle, disgusted to see that no one called upon him
+for anything, decided to call upon himself for something, and began in a
+voice as resonant as a gong the monologue from Ruy Blas: "Good appetite,
+Messieurs!" while the guests thronged to the buffet, spread with
+chocolate and glasses of punch.  Inexpensive little costumes were
+displayed upon the benches, overjoyed to produce their due effect at
+last; and here and there divers young shop-clerks, consumed with conceit,
+amused themselves by venturing upon a quadrille.
+
+The bride had long wished to take her leave.  At last she disappeared
+with Risler and Madame Chebe.  As for Monsieur Chebe, who had recovered
+all his importance, it was impossible to induce him to go.  Some one must
+be there to do the honors, deuce take it!  And I assure you that the
+little man assumed the responsibility!  He was flushed, lively,
+frolicsome, noisy, almost seditious.  On the floor below he could be
+heard talking politics with Vefour's headwaiter, and making most
+audacious statements.
+
+Through the deserted streets the wedding-carriage, the tired coachman
+holding the white reins somewhat loosely, rolled heavily toward the
+Marais.
+
+Madame Chebe talked continuously, enumerating all the splendors of that
+memorable day, rhapsodizing especially over the dinner, the commonplace
+menu of which had been to her the highest display of magnificence.
+Sidonie mused in the darkness of the carriage, and Risler, sitting
+opposite her, even though he no longer said, "I am very happy," continued
+to think it with all his heart.  Once he tried to take possession of a
+little white hand that rested against the closed window, but it was
+hastily withdrawn, and he sat there without moving, lost in mute
+admiration.
+
+
+They drove through the Halles and the Rue de Rambuteau, thronged with
+kitchen-gardeners' wagons; and, near the end of the Rue des Francs-
+Bourgeois, they turned the corner of the Archives into the Rue de Braque.
+There they stopped first, and Madame Chebe alighted at her door, which
+was too narrow for the magnificent green silk frock, so that it vanished
+in the hall with rustlings of revolt and with all its folds muttering.
+A few minutes later, a tall, massive portal on the Rue des Vieilles-
+Haudriettes, bearing on the escutcheon that betrayed the former family
+mansion, beneath half-effaced armorial bearings, a sign in blue letters,
+Wall Papers, was thrown wide open to allow the wedding-carriage to pass
+through.
+
+Thereupon the bride, hitherto motionless and like one asleep, seemed to
+wake suddenly, and if all the lights in the vast buildings, workshops or
+storehouses, which surrounded the courtyard, had not been extinguished,
+Risler might have seen that pretty, enigmatical face suddenly lighted by
+a smile of triumph.  The wheels revolved less noisily on the fine gravel
+of a garden, and soon stopped before the stoop of a small house of two
+floors.  It was there that the young Fromonts lived, and Risler and his
+wife were to take up their abode on the floor above.  The house had an
+aristocratic air.  Flourishing commerce avenged itself therein for the
+dismal street and the out-of-the-way quarter.  There was a carpet on the
+stairway leading to their apartment, and on all sides shone the gleaming
+whiteness of marble, the reflection of mirrors and of polished copper.
+
+While Risler was parading his delight through all the rooms of the new
+apartment, Sidonie remained alone in her bedroom.  By the light of the
+little blue lamp hanging from the ceiling, she glanced first of all at
+the mirror, which gave back her reflection from head to foot, at all her
+luxurious surroundings, so unfamiliar to her; then, instead of going to
+bed, she opened the window and stood leaning against the sill, motionless
+as a statue.
+
+The night was clear and warm.  She could see distinctly the whole
+factory, its innumerable unshaded windows, its glistening panes, its tall
+chimney losing itself in the depths of the sky, and nearer at hand the
+lovely little garden against the ancient wall of the former mansion.  All
+about were gloomy, miserable roofs and squalid streets.  Suddenly she
+started.  Yonder, in the darkest, the ugliest of all those attics
+crowding so closely together, leaning against one another, as if
+overweighted with misery, a fifth-floor window stood wide open, showing
+only darkness within.  She recognized it at once.  It was the window of
+the landing on which her parents lived.
+
+The window on the landing!
+
+How many things the mere name recalled!  How many hours, how many days
+she had passed there, leaning on that damp sill, without rail or balcony,
+looking toward the factory.  At that moment she fancied that she could
+see up yonder little Chebe's ragged person, and in the frame made by that
+poor window, her whole child life, her deplorable youth as a Parisian
+street arab, passed before her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+LITTLE CHEBE'S STORY
+
+In Paris the common landing is like an additional room, an enlargement of
+their abodes, to poor families confined in their too small apartments.
+They go there to get a breath of air in summer, and there the women talk
+and the children play.
+
+When little Chebe made too much noise in the house, her mother would say
+to her: "There there!  you bother me, go and play on the landing."  And
+the child would go quickly enough.
+
+This landing, on the upper floor of an old house in which space had not
+been spared, formed a sort of large lobby, with a high ceiling, guarded
+on the staircase side by a wrought-iron rail, lighted by a large window
+which looked out upon roofs, courtyards, and other windows, and, farther
+away, upon the garden of the Fromont factory, which was like a green
+oasis among the huge old walls.
+
+There was nothing very cheerful about it, but the child liked it much
+better than her own home.  Their rooms were dismal, especially when it
+rained and Ferdinand did not go out.
+
+With his brain always smoking with new ideas, which unfortunately never
+came to anything, Ferdinand Chebe was one of those slothful, project-
+devising bourgeois of when there are so many in Paris.  His wife, whom he
+had dazzled at first, had soon detected his utter insignificance, and had
+ended by enduring patiently and with unchanged demeanor his continual
+dreams of wealth and the disasters that immediately followed them.
+
+Of the dot of eighty thousand francs which she had brought him, and which
+he had squandered in his absurd schemes, only a small annuity remained,
+which still gave them a position of some importance in the eyes of their
+neighbors, as did Madame Chebe's cashmere, which had been rescued from
+every wreck, her wedding laces and two diamond studs, very tiny and very
+modest, which Sidonie sometimes begged her mother to show her, as they
+lay in the drawer of the bureau, in an old-fashioned white velvet case,
+on which the jeweller's name, in gilt letters, thirty years old, was
+gradually fading.  That was the only bit of luxury in that poor
+annuitant's abode.
+
+For a very long time M. Chebe had sought a place which would enable him
+to eke out their slender income.  But he sought it only in what he called
+standing business, his health forbidding any occupation that required him
+to be seated.
+
+It seemed that, soon after his marriage, when he was in a flourishing
+business and had a horse and tilbury of his own, the little man had had
+one day a serious fall.  That fall, to which he referred upon every
+occasion, served as an excuse for his indolence.
+
+One could not be with M. Chebe five minutes before he would say in a
+confidential tone:
+
+"You know of the accident that happened to the Duc d'Orleans?"
+
+And then he would add, tapping his little bald pate "The same thing
+happened to me in my youth."
+
+Since that famous fall any sort of office work made him dizzy, and he had
+found himself inexorably confined to standing business.  Thus, he had
+been in turn a broker in wines, in books, in truffles, in clocks, and in
+many other things beside.  Unluckily, he tired of everything, never
+considered his position sufficiently exalted for a former business man
+with a tilbury, and, by gradual degrees, by dint of deeming every sort of
+occupation beneath him, he had grown old and incapable, a genuine idler
+with low tastes, a good-for-nothing.
+
+Artists are often rebuked for their oddities, for the liberties they take
+with nature, for that horror of the conventional which impels them to
+follow by-paths; but who can ever describe all the absurd fancies, all
+the idiotic eccentricities with which a bourgeois without occupation can
+succeed in filling the emptiness of his life?  M. Chebe imposed upon
+himself certain rules concerning his goings and comings, and his walks
+abroad.  While the Boulevard Sebastopol was being built, he went twice a
+day "to see how it was getting on."
+
+No one knew better than he the fashionable shops and the bargains; and
+very often Madame Chebe, annoyed to see her husband's idiotic face at the
+window while she was energetically mending the family linen, would rid
+herself of him by giving him an errand to do.  "You know that place, on
+the corner of such a street, where they sell such nice cakes.  They would
+be nice for our dessert."
+
+And the husband would go out, saunter along the boulevard by the shops,
+wait for the omnibus, and pass half the day in procuring two cakes, worth
+three sous, which he would bring home in triumph, wiping his forehead.
+
+M. Chebe adored the summer, the Sundays, the great footraces in the dust
+at Clamart or Romainville, the excitement of holidays and the crowd.  He
+was one of those who went about for a whole week before the fifteenth of
+August, gazing at the black lamps and their frames, and the scaffoldings.
+Nor did his wife complain.  At all events, she no longer had that chronic
+grumbler prowling around her chair for whole days, with schemes for
+gigantic enterprises, combinations that missed fire in advance,
+lamentations concerning the past, and a fixed determination not to work
+at anything to earn money.
+
+She no longer earned anything herself, poor woman; but she knew so well
+how to save, her wonderful economy made up so completely for everything
+else, that absolute want, although a near neighbor of such impecuniosity
+as theirs, never succeeded in making its way into those three rooms,
+which were always neat and clean, or in destroying the carefully mended
+garments or the old furniture so well concealed beneath its coverings.
+
+Opposite the Chebes' door, whose copper knob gleamed in bourgeois fashion
+upon the landing, were two other and smaller ones.
+
+On the first, a visiting-card, held in place by four nails, according to
+the custom in vogue among industrial artists, bore the name of
+
+                                 RISLER
+                         DESIGNER OF PATTERNS.
+
+On the other was a small square of leather, with these words in gilt
+letters:
+
+                           MESDAMES DELOBELLE
+                    BIRDS AND INSECTS FOR ORNAMENT.
+
+The Delobelles' door was often open, disclosing a large room with a brick
+floor, where two women, mother and daughter, the latter almost a child,
+each as weary and as pale as the other, worked at one of the thousand
+fanciful little trades which go to make up what is called the 'Articles
+de Paris'.
+
+It was then the fashion to ornament hats and ballgowns with the lovely
+little insects from South America that have the brilliant coloring of
+jewels and reflect the light like diamonds.  The Delobelles had adopted
+that specialty.
+
+A wholesale house, to which consignments were made directly from the
+Antilles, sent to them, unopened, long, light boxes from which, when the
+lid was removed, arose a faint odor, a dust of arsenic through which
+gleamed the piles of insects, impaled before being shipped, the birds
+packed closely together, their wings held in place by a strip of thin
+paper.  They must all be mounted--the insects quivering upon brass wire,
+the humming-birds with their feathers ruffled; they must be cleansed and
+polished, the beak in a bright red, claw repaired with a silk thread,
+dead eyes replaced with sparkling pearls, and the insect or the bird
+restored to an appearance of life and grace.  The mother prepared the
+work under her daughter's direction; for Desiree, though she was still a
+mere girl, was endowed with exquisite taste, with a fairy-like power of
+invention, and no one could, insert two pearl eyes in those tiny heads or
+spread their lifeless wings so deftly as she.  Happy or unhappy, Desiree
+always worked with the same energy.  From dawn until well into the night
+the table was covered with work.  At the last ray of daylight, when the
+factory bells were ringing in all the neighboring yards, Madame Delobelle
+lighted the lamp, and after a more than frugal repast they returned to
+their work.  Those two indefatigable women had one object, one fixed
+idea, which prevented them from feeling the burden of enforced vigils.
+That idea was the dramatic renown of the illustrious Delobelle.  After he
+had left the provincial theatres to pursue his profession in Paris,
+Delobelle waited for an intelligent manager, the ideal and providential
+manager who discovers geniuses, to seek him out and offer him a role
+suited to his talents.  He might, perhaps, especially at the beginning,
+have obtained a passably good engagement at a theatre of the third order,
+but Delobelle did not choose to lower himself.
+
+He preferred to wait, to struggle, as he said!  And this is how he
+awaited the struggle.
+
+In the morning in his bedroom, often in his bed, he rehearsed roles in
+his former repertory; and the Delobelle ladies trembled with emotion when
+they heard behind the partition tirades from 'Antony' or the 'Medecin des
+Enfants', declaimed in a sonorous voice that blended with the thousand-
+and-one noises of the great Parisian bee-hive.  Then, after breakfast,
+the actor would sally forth for the day; would go to "do his boulevard,"
+that is to say, to saunter to and fro between the Chateau d'Eau and the
+Madeline, with a toothpick in the corner of his mouth, his hat a little
+on one side-always gloved, and brushed, and glossy.
+
+That question of dress was of great importance in his eyes.  It was one
+of the greatest elements of success, a bait for the manager--the famous,
+intelligent manager--who never would dream of engaging a threadbare,
+shabbily dressed man.
+
+So the Delobelle ladies took good care that he lacked nothing; and you
+can imagine how many birds and insects it required to fit out a blade of
+that temper!  The actor thought it the most natural thing in the world.
+
+In his view, the labors, the privations of his wife and daughter were
+not, strictly speaking, for his benefit, but for the benefit of that
+mysterious and unknown genius, whose trustee he considered himself to be.
+
+There was a certain analogy between the position of the Chebe family and
+that of the Delobelles.  But the latter household was less depressing.
+The Chebes felt that their petty annuitant existence was fastened upon
+them forever, with no prospect of amelioration, always the same; whereas,
+in the actor's family, hope and illusion often opened magnificent vistas.
+
+The Chebes were like people living in a blind alley; the Delobelles on a
+foul little street, where there was no light or air, but where a great
+boulevard might some day be laid out.  And then, too, Madame Chebe no
+longer believed in her husband, whereas, by virtue of that single magic
+word, "Art!" her neighbor never had doubted hers.
+
+And yet for years and years Monsieur Delobelle had been unavailingly
+drinking vermouth with dramatic agents, absinthe with leaders of claques,
+bitters with vaudevillists, dramatists, and the famous what's-his-name,
+author of several great dramas.  Engagements did not always follow.  So
+that, without once appearing on the boards, the poor man had progressed
+from jeune premier to grand premier roles, then to the financiers, then
+to the noble fathers, then to the buffoons--
+
+He stopped there!
+
+On two or three occasions his friends had obtained for him a chance to
+earn his living as manager of a club or a cafe as an inspector in great
+warehouses, at the 'Phares de la Bastille' or the 'Colosse de Rhodes.'
+All that was necessary was to have good manners.  Delobelle was not
+lacking in that respect, God knows!  And yet every suggestion that was
+made to him the great man met with a heroic refusal.
+
+"I have no right to abandon the stage!"  he would then assert.
+
+In the mouth of that poor devil, who had not set foot on the boards for
+years, it was irresistibly comical.  But one lost the inclination to
+laugh when one saw his wife and his daughter swallowing particles of
+arsenic day and night, and heard them repeat emphatically as they broke
+their needles against the brass wire with which the little birds were
+mounted:
+
+"No! no!  Monsieur Delobelle has no right to abandon the stage."
+
+Happy man, whose bulging eyes, always smiling condescendingly, and whose
+habit of reigning on the stage had procured for him for life that
+exceptional position of a spoiled and admired child-king!  When he left
+the house, the shopkeepers on the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, with the
+predilection of the Parisian for everything and everybody connected with
+the theatre, saluted him respectfully.  He was always so well dressed!
+And then he was so kind, so obliging!  When you think that every Saturday
+night, he, Ruy Blas, Antony, Raphael in the 'Filles de Maybre,' Andres in
+the 'Pirates de la Savane,' sallied forth, with a bandbox under his arm,
+to carry the week's work of his wife and daughter to a flower
+establishment on the Rue St.-Denis!
+
+Why, even when performing such a commission as that, this devil of a
+fellow had such nobility of bearing, such native dignity, that the young
+woman whose duty it was to make up the Delobelle account was sorely
+embarrassed to hand to such an irreproachable gentleman the paltry
+stipend so laboriously earned.
+
+On those evenings, by the way, the actor did not return home to dinner.
+The women were forewarned.
+
+He always met some old comrade on the boulevard, some unlucky devil like
+himself--there are so many of them in that sacred profession!--whom he
+entertained at a restaurant or cafe.  Then, with scrupulous fidelity--and
+very grateful they were to him--he would carry the rest of the money
+home, sometimes with a bouquet for his wife or a little present for
+Desiree, a nothing, a mere trifle.  What would you have?  Those are the
+customs of the stage.  It is such a simple matter in a melodrama to toss
+a handful of louis through the window!
+
+"Ho!  varlet, take this purse and hie thee hence to tell thy mistress I
+await her coming."
+
+And so, notwithstanding their marvellous courage, and although their
+trade was quite lucrative, the Delobelles often found themselves in
+straitened circumstances, especially in the dull season of the 'Articles
+de Paris.'
+
+Luckily the excellent Risler was at hand, always ready to accommodate his
+friends.
+
+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 elder was a draughtsman at
+the Fromont factory and was paying for the education of his brother, who
+attended Chaptal's lectures, pending his admission to the Ecole Centrale.
+
+On his arrival at Paris, being sadly perplexed as to the installation of
+his little household, Guillaume had derived from his neighbors, Mesdames
+Chebe and Delobelle, advice and information which were an indispensable
+aid to that ingenuous, timid, somewhat heavy youth, embarrassed by his
+foreign accent and manner.  After a brief period of neighborhood and
+mutual services, the Risler brothers formed a part of both families.
+
+On holidays places were always made for them at one table or the other,
+and it was a great satisfaction to the two exiles to find in those poor
+households, modest and straitened as they were, a taste of affection and
+family life.
+
+The wages of the designer, who was very clever at his trade, enabled him
+to be of service to the Delobelles on rent-day, and to make his
+appearance at the Chebes' in the guise of the rich uncle, always laden
+with surprises and presents, so that the little girl, as soon as she saw
+him, would explore his pockets and climb on his knees.
+
+On Sunday he would take them all to the theatre; and almost every evening
+he would go with Messieurs Chebe and Delobelle to a brewery on the Rue
+Blondel, where he regaled them with beer and pretzels.  Beer and pretzels
+were his only vice.
+
+For his own part, he knew no greater bliss than to sit before a foaming
+tankard, between his two friends, listening to their talk, and taking
+part only by a loud laugh or a shake of the head in their conversation,
+which was usually a long succession of grievances against society.
+
+A childlike shyness, and the Germanisms of speech which he never had laid
+aside in his life of absorbing toil, embarrassed him much in giving
+expression to his ideas.  Moreover, his friends overawed him.  They had
+in respect to him the tremendous superiority of the man who does nothing
+over the man who works; and M. Chebe, less generous than Delobelle, did
+not hesitate to make him feel it.  He was very lofty with him, was M.
+Chebe!  In his opinion, a man who worked, as Risler did, ten hours a
+day, was incapable, when he left his work, of expressing an intelligent
+idea.  Sometimes the designer, coming home worried from the factory,
+would prepare to spend the night over some pressing work.  You should
+have seen M. Chebe's scandalized expression then!
+
+"Nobody could make me follow such a business!"  he would say, expanding
+his chest, and he would add, looking at Risler with the air of a
+physician making a professional call, "Just wait till you've had one
+severe attack."
+
+Delobelle was not so fierce, but he adopted a still loftier tone.  The
+cedar does not see a rose at its foot.  Delobelle did not see Risler at
+his feet.
+
+When, by chance, the great man deigned to notice his presence, he had a
+certain air of stooping down to him to listen, and to smile at his words
+as at a child's; or else he would amuse himself by dazzling him with
+stories of actresses, would give him lessons in deportment and the
+addresses of outfitters, unable to understand why a man who earned so
+much money should always be dressed like an usher at a primary school.
+Honest Risler, convinced of his inferiority, would try to earn
+forgiveness by a multitude of little attentions, obliged to furnish all
+the delicacy, of course, as he was the constant benefactor.
+
+Among these three households living on the same floor, little Chebe,
+with her goings and comings, formed the bond of union.
+
+At all times of day she would slip into the workroom of the Delobelles,
+amuse herself by watching their work and looking at all the insects, and,
+being already more coquettish than playful, if an insect had lost a wing
+in its travels, or a humming-bird its necklace of down, she would try to
+make herself a headdress of the remains, to fix that brilliant shaft of
+color among the ripples of her silky hair.  It made Desiree and her
+mother smile to see her stand on tiptoe in front of the old tarnished
+mirror, with affected little shrugs and grimaces.  Then, when she had had
+enough of admiring herself, the child would open the door with all the
+strength of her little fingers, and would go demurely, holding her head
+perfectly straight for fear of disarranging her headdress, and knock at
+the Rislers' door.
+
+No one was there in the daytime but Frantz the student, leaning over his
+books, doing his duty faithfully.  But when Sidonie enters, farewell to
+study!  Everything must be put aside to receive that lovely creature with
+the humming-bird in her hair, pretending to be a princess who had come to
+Chaptal's school to ask his hand in marriage from the director.
+
+It was really a strange sight to see that tall, overgrown boy playing
+with that little girl of eight, humoring her caprices, adoring her as he
+yielded to her, so that later, when he fell genuinely in love with her,
+no one could have said at what time the change began.
+
+Petted as she was in those two homes, little Chebe was very fond of
+running to the window on the landing.  There it was that she found her
+greatest source of entertainment, a horizon always open, a sort of vision
+of the future toward which she leaned with eager curiosity and without
+fear, for children are not subject to vertigo.
+
+Between the slated roofs sloping toward one another, the high wall of the
+factory, the tops of the plane-trees in the garden, the many-windowed
+workshops appeared to her like a promised land, the country of her
+dreams.
+
+That Fromont establishment was to her mind the highest ideal of wealth.
+
+The place it occupied in that part of the Marais, which was at certain
+hours enveloped by its smoke and its din, Risler's enthusiasm, his
+fabulous tales concerning his employer's wealth and goodness and
+cleverness, had aroused that childish curiosity; and such portions as she
+could see of the dwelling-houses, the carved wooden blinds, the circular
+front steps, with the garden-seats before them, a great white bird-house
+with gilt stripes glistening in the sun, the blue-lined coupe standing in
+the courtyard, were to her objects of continual admiration.
+
+She knew all the habits of the family: At what hour the bell was rung,
+when the workmen went away, the Saturday payday which kept the cashier's
+little lamp lighted late in the evening, and the long Sunday afternoon,
+the closed workshops, the smokeless chimney, the profound silence which
+enabled her to hear Mademoiselle Claire at play in the garden, running
+about with her cousin Georges.  From Risler she obtained details.
+
+"Show me the salon windows," she would say to him, "and Claire's room."
+
+Risler, delighted by this extraordinary interest in his beloved factory,
+would explain to the child from their lofty position the arrangement of
+the buildings, point out the print-shop, the gilding-shop, the designing-
+room where he worked, the engine-room, above which towered that enormous
+chimney blackening all the neighboring walls with its corrosive smoke,
+and which never suspected that a young life, concealed beneath a
+neighboring roof, mingled its inmost thoughts with its loud,
+indefatigable panting.
+
+At last one day Sidonie entered that paradise of which she had heretofore
+caught only a glimpse.
+
+Madame Fromont, to whom Risler often spoke of her little neighbor's
+beauty and intelligence, asked him to bring her to the children's ball
+she intended to give at Christmas.  At first Monsieur Chebe replied by a
+curt refusal.  Even in those days, the Fromonts, whose name was always on
+Rider's lips, irritated and humiliated him by their wealth.  Moreover, it
+was to be a fancy ball, and M. Chebe--who did not sell wallpapers, not
+he!--could not afford to dress his daughter as a circus-dancer.  But
+Risler insisted, declared that he would get everything himself, and at
+once set about designing a costume.
+
+It was a memorable evening.
+
+In Madame Chebe's bedroom, littered with pieces of cloth and pins and
+small toilet articles, Desiree Delobelle superintended Sidonie's toilet.
+The child, appearing taller because of her short skirt of red flannel
+with black stripes, stood before the mirror, erect and motionless, in the
+glittering splendor of her costume.  She was charming.  The waist, with
+bands of velvet laced over the white stomacher, the lovely, long tresses
+of chestnut hair escaping from a hat of plaited straw, all the trivial
+details of her Savoyard's costume were heightened by the intelligent
+features of the child, who was quite at her ease in the brilliant colors
+of that theatrical garb.
+
+The whole assembled neighborhood uttered cries of admiration.  While some
+one went in search of Delobelle, the lame girl arranged the folds of the
+skirt, the bows on the shoes, and cast a final glance over her work,
+without laying aside her needle; she, too, was excited, poor child!  by
+the intoxication of that festivity to which she was not invited.  The
+great man arrived.  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.
+
+"She has dramatic blood in her veins!"  exclaimed the old actor
+enthusiastically, unable to understand why that stupid Frantz was
+strongly inclined to weep.
+
+A year after that happy evening Sidonie could have told you what flowers
+there were in the reception rooms, the color of the furniture, and the
+music they were playing as she entered the ballroom, so deep an
+impression did her enjoyment make upon her.  She forgot nothing, neither
+the costumes that made an eddying whirl about her, nor the childish
+laughter, nor all the tiny steps that glided over the polished floors.
+For a moment, as she sat on the edge of a great red-silk couch, taking
+from the plate presented to her the first sherbet of her life, she
+suddenly thought of the dark stairway, of her parents' stuffy little
+rooms, and it produced upon her mind the effect of a distant country
+which she had left forever.
+
+However, she was considered a fascinating little creature, and was much
+admired and petted.  Claire Fromont, a miniature Cauchoise dressed in
+lace, presented her to her cousin Georges, a magnificent hussar who
+turned at every step to observe the effect of his sabre.
+
+"You understand, Georges, she is my friend.  She is coming to play with
+us Sundays.  Mamma says she may."
+
+And, with the artless impulsiveness of a happy child, she kissed little
+Chebe with all her heart.
+
+But the time came to go.  For a long time, in the filthy street where the
+snow was melting, in the dark hall, in the silent room where her mother
+awaited her, the brilliant light of the salons continued to shine before
+her dazzled eyes.
+
+"Was it very fine?  Did you have a charming time?"  queried Madame Chebe
+in a low tone, unfastening the buckles of the gorgeous costume, one by
+one.
+
+And Sidonie, overcome with fatigue, made no reply, but fell asleep
+standing, beginning a lovely dream which was to last throughout her youth
+and cost her many tears.
+
+Claire Fromont kept her word.  Sidonie often went to play in the
+beautiful gravelled garden, and was able to see at close range the carved
+blinds and the dovecot with its threads of gold.  She came to know all
+the corners and hiding-places in the great factory, and took part in many
+glorious games of hide-and-seek behind the printing-tables in the
+solitude of Sunday afternoon.  On holidays a plate was laid for her at
+the children's table.
+
+Everybody loved her, although she never exhibited much affection for any
+one.  So long as she was in the midst of that luxury, she was conscious
+of softer impulses, she was happy and felt that she was embellished by
+her surroundings; but when she returned to her parents, when she saw the
+factory through the dirty panes of the window on the landing, she had an
+inexplicable feeling of regret and anger.
+
+And yet Claire Fromont treated her as a friend.
+
+Sometimes they took her to the Bois, to the Tuileries, in the famous
+blue-lined carriage, or into the country, to pass a whole week at
+Grandfather Gardinois's chateau, at Savigny-sur-Orge.  Thanks to the
+munificence of Risler, who was very proud of his little one's success,
+she was always presentable and well dressed.  Madame Chebe made it a
+point of honor, and the pretty, lame girl was always at hand to place her
+treasures of unused coquetry at her little friend's service.
+
+But M. Chebe, who was always hostile to the Fromonts, looked frowningly
+upon this growing intimacy.  The true reason was that he himself never
+was invited; but he gave other reasons, and would say to his wife:
+
+"Don't you see that your daughter's heart is sad when she returns from
+that house, and that she passes whole hours dreaming at the window?"
+
+But poor Madame Chebe, who had been so unhappy ever since her marriage,
+had become reckless.  She declared that one should make the most of the
+present for fear of the future, should seize happiness as it passes, as
+one often has no other support and consolation in life than the memory of
+a happy childhood.
+
+For once it happened that M. Chebe was right.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FALSE PEARLS
+
+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.  Claire in her turn took her departure for the convent with
+the outfit of a little queen; and at that very time the Chebes were
+discussing the question of apprenticing Sidonie to some trade.  They
+promised to love each other as before and to meet twice a month, on the
+Sundays that Claire was permitted to go home.
+
+Indeed, little Chebe did still go down sometimes to play with her
+friends; but as she grew older she realized more fully the distance that
+separated them, and her clothes began to seem to her very simple for
+Madame Fromont's salon.
+
+When the three were alone, the childish friendship which made them equals
+prevented any feeling of embarrassment; but visitors came, girl friends
+from the convent, among others a tall girl, always richly dressed, whom
+her mother's maid used to bring to play with the little Fromonts on
+Sunday.
+
+As soon as she saw her coming up the steps, resplendent and disdainful,
+Sidonie longed to go away at once.  The other embarrassed her with
+awkward questions.  Where did she live?  What did her parents do?  Had
+she a carriage?
+
+As she listened to their talk of the convent and their friends, Sidonie
+felt that they lived in a different world, a thousand miles from her own;
+and a deathly sadness seized her, especially when, on her return home,
+her mother spoke of sending her as an apprentice to Mademoiselle Le Mire,
+a friend of the Delobelles, who conducted a large false-pearl
+establishment on the Rue du Roi-Dore.
+
+Risler insisted upon the plan of having the little one serve an
+apprenticeship.  "Let her learn a trade," said the honest fellow.
+"Later I will undertake to set her up in business."
+
+Indeed, this same Mademoiselle Le Mire spoke of retiring in a few years.
+It was an excellent opportunity.
+
+One morning, a dull day in November, her father took her to the Rue du
+Rio-Dore, to the fourth floor of an old house, even older and blacker
+than her own home.
+
+On the ground floor, at the entrance to the hall, hung a number of signs
+with gilt letters: Depot for Travelling-Bags, Plated Chains, Children's
+Toys, Mathematical Instruments in Glass, Bouquets for Brides and Maids of
+Honor, Wild Flowers a Specialty; and above was a little dusty show-case,
+wherein pearls, yellow with age, glass grapes and cherries surrounded the
+pretentious name of Angelina Le Mire.
+
+What a horrible house!
+
+It had not even a broad landing like that of the Chebes, grimy with old
+age, but brightened by its window and the beautiful prospect presented by
+the factory.  A narrow staircase, a narrow door, a succession of rooms
+with brick floors, all small and cold, and in the last an old maid with a
+false front and black thread mitts, reading a soiled copy of the 'Journal
+pour Tous,' and apparently very much annoyed to be disturbed in her
+reading.
+
+Mademoiselle Le Mire (written in two words) received the father and
+daughter without rising, discoursed at great length of the rank she had
+lost, of her father, an old nobleman of Le Rouergue--it is most
+extraordinary how many old noblemen Le Rouergue has produced!--and of an
+unfaithful steward who had carried off their whole fortune.  She
+instantly aroused the sympathies of M. Chebe, for whom decayed gentlefolk
+had an irresistible charm, and he went away overjoyed, promising his
+daughter to call for her at seven o'clock at night in accordance with the
+terms agreed upon.
+
+The apprentice was at once ushered into the still empty workroom.
+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.  Then the young women would soon be there and they would show
+her exactly what she would have to do, for Mademoiselle Le Mire (always
+written in two words!) did not interfere at all, but overlooked her
+business from a considerable distance, from that dark room where she
+passed her life reading newspaper novels.
+
+At nine o'clock the work-women arrived, five tall, pale-faced, faded
+girls, wretchedly dressed, but with their hair becomingly arranged, after
+the fashion of poor working-girls who go about bare-headed through the
+streets of Paris.
+
+Two or three were yawning and rubbing their eyes, saying that they were
+dead with sleep.
+
+At last they went to work beside a long table where each had her own
+drawer and her own tools.  An order had been received for mourning
+jewels, and haste was essential.  Sidonie, whom the forewoman instructed
+in her task in a tone of infinite superiority, began dismally to sort a
+multitude of black pearls, bits of glass, and wisps of crape.
+
+The others, paying no attention to the little girl, chatted together as
+they worked.  They talked of a wedding that was to take place that very
+day at St. Gervais.
+
+"Suppose we go," said a stout, red-haired girl, whose name was Malvina.
+"It's to be at noon.  We shall have time to go and get back again if we
+hurry."
+
+And, at the lunch hour, the whole party rushed downstairs four steps at a
+time.
+
+Sidonie had brought her luncheon in a little basket, like a school-girl;
+with a heavy heart she sat at a corner of the table and ate alone for the
+first time in her life.  Great God!  what a sad and wretched thing life
+seemed to be; what a terrible revenge she would take hereafter for her
+sufferings there!
+
+At one o'clock the girls trooped noisily back, highly excited.
+
+"Did you see the white satin gown?  And the veil of point d'Angleterre?
+There's a lucky girl!"
+
+Thereupon they repeated in the workroom the remarks they had made in
+undertones in the church, leaning against the rail, throughout the
+ceremony.  That question of a wealthy marriage, of beautiful clothes,
+lasted all day long; nor did it interfere with their work-far from it.
+
+These small Parisian industries, which have to do with the most trivial
+details of the toilet, keep the work-girls informed as to the fashions
+and fill their minds with thoughts of luxury and elegance.  To the poor
+girls who worked on Mademoiselle Le Mire's fourth floor, the blackened
+walls, the narrow street did not exist.  They were always thinking of
+something else and passed their lives asking one another:
+
+"Malvina, if you were rich what would you do?  For my part, I'd live on
+the Champs-Elysees."  And the great trees in the square, the carriages
+that wheeled about there, coquettishly slackening their pace, appeared
+momentarily before their minds, a delicious, refreshing vision.
+
+Little Chebe, in her corner, listened without speaking, industriously
+stringing her black grapes with the precocious dexterity and taste she
+had acquired in Desiree's neighborhood.  So that in the evening, when M.
+Chebe came to fetch his daughter, they praised her in the highest terms.
+
+Thereafter all her days were alike.  The next day, instead of black
+pearls, she strung white pearls and bits of false coral; for at
+Mademoiselle Le Mire's they worked only in what was false, in tinsel,
+and that was where little Chebe was to serve her apprenticeship to life.
+
+For some time the new apprentice-being younger and better bred than the
+others--found that they held aloof from her.  Later, as she grew older,
+she was admitted to their friendship and their confidence, but without
+ever sharing their pleasures.  She was too proud to go to see weddings
+at midday; and when she heard them talking of a ball at Vauxhall or the
+'Delices du Marais,' or of a nice little supper at Bonvalet's or at the
+'Quatre Sergents de la Rochelle,' she was always very disdainful.
+
+We looked higher than that, did we not, little Chebe?
+
+Moreover, her father called for her every evening.  Sometimes, however,
+about the New Year, she was obliged to work late with the others, in
+order to complete pressing orders.  In the gaslight those pale-faced
+Parisians, sorting pearls as white as themselves, of a dead, unwholesome
+whiteness, were a painful spectacle.  There was the same fictitious
+glitter, the same fragility of spurious jewels.  They talked of nothing
+but masked balls and theatres.
+
+"Have you seen Adele Page, in 'Les Trois Mousquetaires?'  And Melingue?
+And Marie Laurent?  Oh!  Marie Laurent!"
+
+The actors' doublets, the embroidered costumes of the queens of
+melodrama, appeared before them in the white light of the necklaces
+forming beneath their fingers.
+
+In summer the work was less pressing.  It was the dull season.  In the
+intense heat, when through the drawn blinds fruit-sellers could be heard
+in the street, crying their mirabelles and Queen Claudes, the workgirls
+slept heavily, their heads on the table.  Or perhaps Malvina would go and
+ask Mademoiselle Le Mire for a copy of the 'Journal pour Tous,' and read
+aloud to the others.
+
+But little Chebe did not care for the novels.  She carried one in her
+head much more interesting than all that trash.
+
+The fact is, nothing could make her forget the factory.  When she set
+forth in the morning on her father's arm, she always cast a glance in
+that direction.  At that hour the works were just stirring, the chimney
+emitted its first puff of black smoke.  Sidonie, as she passed, could
+hear the shouts of the workmen, the dull, heavy blows of the bars of the
+printing-press, the mighty, rhythmical hum of the machinery; and all
+those sounds of toil, blended in her memory with recollections of fetes
+and blue-lined carriages, haunted her persistently.
+
+They spoke louder than the rattle of the omnibuses, the street cries, the
+cascades in the gutters; and even in the workroom, when she was sorting
+the false pearls even at night, in her own home, when she went, after
+dinner, to breathe the fresh air at the window on the landing and to gaze
+at the dark, deserted factory, that murmur still buzzed in her ears,
+forming, as it were, a continual accompaniment to her thoughts.
+
+"The little one is tired, Madame Chebe.  She needs diversion.  Next
+Sunday I will take you all into the country."
+
+These Sunday excursions, which honest Risler organized to amuse Sidonie,
+served only to sadden her still more.
+
+On those days she must rise at four o'clock in the morning; for the poor
+must pay for all their enjoyments, and there was always a ribbon to be
+ironed at the last moment, or a bit of trimming to be sewn on in an
+attempt to rejuvenate the everlasting little lilac frock with white
+stripes which Madame Chebe conscientiously lengthened every year.
+
+They would all set off together, the Chebes, the Rislers, and the
+illustrious Delobelle.  Only Desiree and her mother never were of the
+party.  The poor, crippled child, ashamed of her deformity, never would
+stir from her chair, and Mamma Delobelle stayed behind to keep her
+company.  Moreover, neither possessed a suitable gown in which to show
+herself out-of-doors in their great man's company; it would have
+destroyed the whole effect of his appearance.
+
+When they left the house, Sidonie would brighten up a little.  Paris in
+the pink haze of a July morning, the railway stations filled with light
+dresses, the country flying past the car windows, and the healthful
+exercise, the bath in the pure air saturated with the water of the Seine,
+vivified by a bit of forest, perfumed by flowering meadows, by ripening
+grain, all combined to make her giddy for a moment.  But that sensation
+was soon succeeded by disgust at such a commonplace way of passing her
+Sunday.
+
+It was always the same thing.
+
+They stopped at a refreshment booth, in close proximity to a very noisy
+and numerously attended rustic festival, for there must be an audience
+for Delobelle, who would saunter along, absorbed by his chimera, dressed
+in gray, with gray gaiters, a little hat over his ear, a light top coat
+on his arm, imagining that the stage represented a country scene in the
+suburbs of Paris, and that he was playing the part of a Parisian
+sojourning in the country.
+
+As for M. Chebe, who prided himself on being as fond of nature as the
+late Jean Jacques Rousseau, he did not appreciate it without the
+accompaniments of shooting-matches, wooden horses, sack races, and a
+profusion of dust and penny-whistles, which constituted also Madame
+Chebe's ideal of a country life.
+
+But Sidonie had a different ideal; and those Parisian Sundays passed in
+strolling through noisy village streets depressed her beyond measure.
+Her only pleasure in those throngs was the consciousness of being stared
+at.  The veriest boor's admiration, frankly expressed aloud at her side,
+made her smile all day; for she was of those who disdain no compliment.
+
+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.  But they reaped their richest harvests on the banks of the
+stream.
+
+There they found those flexible plants, with long swaying stalks, which
+made such a lovely effect on hangings, tall, straight reeds, and the
+volubilis, whose flower, opening suddenly as if in obedience to a
+caprice, resembles a living face, some one looking at you amid the
+lovely, quivering foliage.  Risler arranged his bouquets artistically,
+drawing his inspiration from the very nature of the plants, trying to
+understand thoroughly their manner of life, which can not be divined
+after the withering of one day.
+
+Then, when the bouquet was completed, tied with a broad blade of grass as
+with a ribbon, and slung over Frantz's back, away they went.  Risler,
+always engrossed in his art, looked about for subjects, for possible
+combinations, as they walked along.
+
+"Look there, little one--see that bunch of lily of the valley, with its
+white bells, among those eglantines.  What do you think?  Wouldn't that
+be pretty against a sea-green or pearl-gray background?"
+
+But Sidonie cared no more for lilies of the valley than for eglantine.
+Wild flowers always seemed to her like the flowers of the poor, something
+like her lilac dress.
+
+She remembered that she had seen flowers of a different sort at the house
+of M. Gardinois, at the Chateau de Savigny, in the hothouses, on the
+balconies, and all about the gravelled courtyard bordered with tall urns.
+Those were the flowers she loved; that was her idea of the country!
+
+The little stations in the outskirts of Paris are so terribly crowded and
+stuffy on those Sunday evenings in summer!  Such artificial enjoyment,
+such idiotic laughter, such doleful ballads, sung in whispers by voices
+that no longer have the strength to roar!  That was the time when M.
+Chebe was in his element.
+
+He would elbow his way to the gate, scold about the delay of the train,
+declaim against the station-agent, the company, the government; say to
+Delobelle in a loud voice, so as to be overheard by his neighbors:
+
+"I say--suppose such a thing as this should happen in America!"  Which
+remark, thanks to the expressive by-play of the illustrious actor, and to
+the superior air with which he replied, "I believe you!"  gave those who
+stood near to understand that these gentlemen knew exactly what would
+happen in America in such a case.  Now, they were equally and entirely
+ignorant on that subject; but upon the crowd their words made an
+impression.
+
+Sitting beside Frantz, with half of his bundle of flowers on her knees,
+Sidonie would seem to be blotted out, as it were, amid the uproar, during
+the long wait for the evening trains.  From the station, lighted by a
+single lamp, she could see the black clumps of trees outside, lighted
+here and there by the last illuminations of the fete, a dark village
+street, people continually coming in, and a lantern hanging on a deserted
+pier.
+
+From time to time, on the other side of the glass doors, a train would
+rush by without stopping, with a shower of hot cinders and the roar of
+escaping steam.  Thereupon a tempest of shouts and stamping would arise
+in the station, and, soaring above all the rest, the shrill treble of M.
+Chebe, shrieking in his sea-gull's voice: "Break down the doors!  break
+down the doors!"--a thing that the little man would have taken good care
+not to do himself, as he had an abject fear of gendarmes.  In a moment
+the storm would abate.  The tired women, their hair disarranged by the
+wind, would fall asleep on the benches.  There were torn and ragged
+dresses, low-necked white gowns, covered with dust.
+
+The air they breathed consisted mainly of dust.  It lay upon their
+clothes, rose at every step, obscured the light of the lamp, vexed one's
+eyes, and raised a sort of cloud before the tired faces.  The cars which
+they entered at last, after hours of waiting, were saturated with it
+also.  Sidonie would open the window, and look out at the dark fields, an
+endless line of shadow.  Then, like innumerable stars, the first lanterns
+of the outer boulevards appeared near the fortifications.
+
+So ended the ghastly day of rest of all those poor creatures.  The sight
+of Paris brought back to each one's mind the thought of the morrow's
+toil.  Dismal as her Sunday had been, Sidonie began to regret that it had
+passed.  She thought of the rich, to whom all the days of their lives
+were days of rest; and vaguely, as in a dream, the long park avenues of
+which she had caught glimpses during the day appeared to her thronged
+with those happy ones of earth, strolling on the fine gravel, while
+outside the gate, in the dust of the highroad, the poor man's Sunday
+hurried swiftly by, having hardly time to pause a moment to look and
+envy.
+
+Such was little Chebe's life from thirteen to seventeen.
+
+The years passed, but did not bring with them the slightest change.
+Madame Chebe's cashmere was a little more threadbare, the little lilac
+frock had undergone a few additional repairs, and that was all.  But, as
+Sidonie grew older, Frantz, now become a young man, acquired a habit of
+gazing at her silently with a melting expression, of paying her loving
+attentions that were visible to everybody, and were unnoticed by none
+save the girl herself.
+
+Indeed, nothing aroused the interest of little Chebe.  In the work-room
+she performed her task regularly, silently, without the slightest thought
+of the future or of saving.  All that she did seemed to be done as if she
+were waiting for something.
+
+Frantz, on the other hand, had been working for some time with
+extraordinary energy, the ardor of those who see something at the end of
+their efforts; so that, at the age of twenty-four, he graduated second in
+his class from the Ecole Centrale, as an engineer.
+
+On that evening Risler had taken the Chebe family to the Gymnase, and
+throughout the evening he and Madame Chebe had been making signs and
+winking at each other behind the children's backs.  And when they left
+the theatre Madame Chebe solemnly placed Sidonie's arm in Frantz's, as if
+she would say to the lovelorn youth, "Now settle matters--here is your
+chance."
+
+Thereupon the poor lover tried to settle matters.
+
+It is a long walk from the Gymnase to the Marais.  After a very few steps
+the brilliancy of the boulevard is left behind, the streets become darker
+and darker, the passers more and more rare.  Frantz began by talking of
+the play.  He was very fond of comedies of that sort, in which there was
+plenty of sentiment.
+
+"And you, Sidonie?"
+
+"Oh!  as for me, Frantz, you know that so long as there are fine
+costumes--"
+
+In truth she thought of nothing else at the theatre.  She was not one of
+those sentimental creatures; a la Madame Bovary, who return from the play
+with love-phrases ready-made, a conventional ideal.  No!  the theatre
+simply made her long madly for luxury and fine raiment; she brought away
+from it nothing but new methods of arranging the hair, and patterns of
+gowns.  The new, exaggerated toilettes of the actresses, their gait, even
+the spurious elegance of their speech, which seemed to her of the highest
+distinction, and with it all the tawdry magnificence of the gilding and
+the lights, the gaudy placard at the door, the long line of carriages,
+and all the somewhat unwholesome excitement that springs up about a
+popular play; that was what she loved, that was what absorbed her
+thoughts.
+
+"How well they acted their love-scene!"  continued the lover.
+
+And, as he uttered that suggestive phrase, he bent fondly toward a little
+face surrounded by a white woollen hood, from which the hair escaped in
+rebellious curls.
+
+Sidonie sighed:
+
+"Oh!  yes, the love-scene.  The actress wore beautiful diamonds."
+
+There was a moment's silence.  Poor Frantz had much difficulty in
+explaining himself.  The words he sought would not come, and then, too,
+he was afraid.  He fixed the time mentally when he would speak:
+
+"When we have passed the Porte Saint-Denis--when we have left the
+boulevard."
+
+But when the time arrived, Sidonie began to talk of such indifferent
+matters that his declaration froze on his lips, or else it was stopped by
+a passing carriage, which enabled their elders to overtake them.
+
+At last, in the Marais, he suddenly took courage:
+
+"Listen to me, Sidonie--I love you!"
+
+That night the Delobelles had sat up very late.
+
+It was the habit of those brave-hearted women to make their working-day
+as long as possible, to prolong it so far into the night that their lamp
+was among the last to be extinguished on the quiet Rue de Braque.  They
+always sat up until the great man returned home, and kept a dainty little
+supper warm for him in the ashes on the hearth.
+
+In the days when he was an actor there was some reason for that custom;
+actors, being obliged to dine early and very sparingly, have a terrible
+gnawing at their vitals when they leave the theatre, and usually eat when
+they go home.  Delobelle had not acted for a long time; but having, as he
+said, no right to abandon the stage, he kept his mania alive by clinging
+to a number of the strolling player's habits, and the supper on returning
+home was one of them, as was his habit of delaying his return until the
+last footlight in the boulevard theatres was extinguished.  To retire
+without supping, at the hour when all other artists supped, would have
+been to abdicate, to abandon the struggle, and he would not abandon it,
+sacre bleu!
+
+On the evening in question the actor had not yet come in and the women
+were waiting for him, talking as they worked, and with great animation,
+notwithstanding the lateness of the hour.  During the whole evening they
+had done nothing but talk of Frantz, of his success, of the future that
+lay before him.
+
+"Now," said Mamma Delobelle, "the only thing he needs is to find a good
+little wife."
+
+That was Desiree's opinion, too.  That was all that was lacking now to
+Frantz's happiness, a good little wife, active and brave and accustomed
+to work, who would forget everything for him.  And if Desiree spoke with
+great confidence, it was because she was intimately acquainted with the
+woman who was so well adapted to Frantz Risler's needs.  She was only a
+year younger than he, just enough to make her younger than her husband
+and a mother to him at the same time.
+
+Pretty?
+
+No, not exactly, but attractive rather than ugly, notwithstanding her
+infirmity, for she was lame, poor child!  And then she was clever and
+bright, and so loving!  No one but Desiree knew how fondly that little
+woman loved Frantz, and how she had thought of him night and day for
+years.  He had not noticed it himself, but seemed to have eyes for nobody
+but Sidonie, a gamine.  But no matter!  Silent love is so eloquent, such
+a mighty power lies hid in restrained feelings.  Who knows?  Perhaps some
+day or other:
+
+And the little cripple, leaning over her work, started upon one of those
+long journeys to the land of chimeras of which she had made so many in
+her invalid's easychair, with her feet resting on the stool; one of those
+wonderful journeys from which she always returned happy and smiling,
+leaning on Frantz's arm with all the confidence of a beloved wife.  As
+her fingers followed her thought, the little bird she had in her hand at
+the moment, smoothing his ruffled wings, looked as if he too were of the
+party and were about to fly far, far away, as joyous and light of heart
+as she.
+
+Suddenly the door flew open.
+
+"I do not disturb you?"  said a triumphant voice.
+
+The mother, who was slightly drowsy, suddenly raised her head.
+
+"Ah!  it's Monsieur Frantz.  Pray come in, Monsieur Frantz.  We're
+waiting for father, as you see.  These brigands of artists always stay
+out so late!  Take a seat--you shall have supper with him."
+
+"Oh! no, thank you," replied Frantz, whose lips were still pale from the
+emotion he had undergone, "I can't stop.  I saw a light and I just
+stepped in to tell you--to tell you some great news that will make you
+very happy, because I know that you love me--"
+
+"Great heavens, what is it?"
+
+"Monsieur Frantz Risler and Mademoiselle Sidonie are engaged to be
+married."
+
+"There!  didn't I say that all he needed was a good little wife,"
+exclaimed Mamma Delobelle, rising and throwing her arms about his neck.
+
+Desiree'had not the strength to utter a word.  She bent still lower over
+her work, and as Frantz's eyes were fixed exclusively upon his happiness,
+as Mamma Delobelle did nothing but look at the clock to see whether her
+great man would return soon, no one noticed the lame girl's emotion, nor
+her pallor, nor the convulsive trembling of the little bird that lay in
+her hands with its head thrown back, like a bird with its death-wound.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE GLOW-WORMS OF SAVIGNY
+
+
+"SAVIGNY-SUR-ORGE.
+
+"DEAR SMONIE:--We were sitting at table yesterday in the great dining-room
+which you remember, with the door wide open leading to the terrace, where
+the flowers are all in bloom.  I was a little bored.  Dear grandpapa had
+been cross all the morning, and poor mamma dared not say a word, being
+afraid of those frowning eyebrows which have always laid down the law for
+her.  I was thinking what a pity it was to be so entirely alone, in the
+middle of the summer, in such a lovely spot, and that I should be very
+glad, now that I have left the convent, and am destined to pass whole
+seasons in the country, to have as in the old day, some one to run about
+the woods and paths with me.
+
+"To be sure, Georges comes occasionally, but he always arrives very late,
+just in time for dinner, and is off again with my father in the morning
+before I am awake.  And then he is a serious-minded man now, is Monsieur
+Georges.  He works at the factory, and business cares often bring frowns
+to his brow.
+
+"I had reached that point in my reflections when suddenly dear grandpapa
+turned abruptly to me:
+
+"'What has become of your little friend Sidonie?  I should be glad to
+have her here for a time.'
+
+"You can imagine my delight.  What happiness to meet again, to renew the
+pleasant friendship that was broken off by the fault of the events of
+life rather than by our own!  How many things we shall have to tell each
+other!  You, who alone had the knack of driving the frowns from my
+terrible grandpapa's brow, will bring us gayety, and I assure you we need
+it.
+
+"This lovely Savigny is so lonely!  For instance, sometimes in the
+morning I choose to be a little coquettish.  I dress myself, I make
+myself beautiful with my hair in curls and put on a pretty gown; I walk
+through all the paths, and suddenly I realize that I have taken all this
+trouble for the swans and ducks, my dog Kiss, and the cows, who do not
+even turn to look at me when I pass.  Thereupon, in my wrath, I hurry
+home, put on a thick gown and busy myself on the farm, in the servants'
+quarters, everywhere.  And really, I am beginning to believe that ennui
+has perfected me, and that I shall make an excellent housekeeper.
+
+"Luckily the hunting season will soon be here, and I rely upon that for a
+little amusement.  In the first place, Georges and father, both
+enthusiastic sportsmen, will come oftener.  And then you will be here,
+you know.  For you will reply at once that you will come, won't you?
+Monsieur Risler said not long ago that you were not well.  The air of
+Savigny will do you worlds of good.
+
+"Everybody here expects you.  And I am dying with impatience.
+
+
+                              CLAIRE."
+
+
+Her letter written, Claire Fromont donned a large straw hat for the first
+days of August were warm and glorious--and went herself to drop it in the
+little box from which the postman collected the mail from the chateau
+every morning.
+
+It was on the edge of the park, at a turn in the road.  She paused a
+moment to look at the trees by the roadside, at the neighboring meadows
+sleeping in the bright sunlight.  Over yonder the reapers were gathering
+the last sheaves.  Farther on they were ploughing.  But all the
+melancholy of the silent toil had vanished, so far as the girl was
+concerned, so delighted was she at the thought of seeing her friend once
+more.
+
+No breeze came from the hills in the distance, no voice from the trees,
+to warn her by a presentiment, to prevent her from sending that fatal
+letter.  And immediately upon her return she gave her attention to the
+preparation of a pretty bedroom for Sidonie adjoining her own.
+
+The letter did its errand faithfully.  From the little green, vine-
+embowered gate of the chateau it found its way to Paris, and arrived that
+same evening, with its Savigny postmark and impregnated with the odor of
+the country, at the fifth-floor apartment on the Rue de Braque.
+
+What an event that was!  They read it again and again; and for a whole
+week, until Sidonie's departure, it lay on the mantel-shelf beside Madame
+Chebe's treasures, the clock under a glass globe and the Empire cups.  To
+Sidonie it was like a wonderful romance filled with tales of enchantment
+and promises, which she read without opening it, merely by gazing at the
+white envelope whereon Claire Fromont's monogram was engraved in relief.
+
+Little she thought of marriage now.  The important question was, What
+clothes should she wear at the chateau?  She must give her whole mind to
+that, to cutting and planning, trying on dresses, devising new ways of
+arranging her hair.  Poor Frantz!  How heavy his heart was made by these
+preparations!  That visit to Savigny, which he had tried vainly to
+oppose, would cause a still further postponement of their wedding, which
+Sidonie-why, he did not know--persisted in putting off from day to day.
+He could not go to see her; and when she was once there, in the midst of
+festivities and pleasures, who could say how long she would remain?
+
+The lover in his despair always went to the Delobelles to confide his
+sorrows, but he never noticed how quickly Desiree rose as soon as he
+entered, to make room for him by her side at the work-takle, and how she
+at once sat down again, with cheeks as red as fire and shining eyes.
+
+For some days past they had ceased to work at birds and insects for
+ornament.  The mother and daughter were hemming pink flounces destined
+for Sidonie's frock, and the little cripple never had plied her needle
+with such good heart.
+
+In truth little Desiree was not Delobelle's daughter to no purpose.
+
+She inherited her father's faculty of retaining his illusions, of hoping
+on to the end and even beyond.
+
+While Frantz was dilating upon his woe, Desire was thinking that, when
+Sidonie was gone, he would come every day, if it were only to talk about
+the absent one; that she would have him there by her side, that they
+would sit up together waiting for "father," and that, perhaps, some
+evening, as he sat looking at her, he would discover the difference
+between the woman who loves you and the one who simply allows herself to
+be loved.
+
+Thereupon the thought that every stitch taken in the frock tended to
+hasten the departure which she anticipated with such impatience imparted.
+extraordinary activity to her needle, and the unhappy lover ruefully
+watched the flounces and ruffles piling up about her, like little pink,
+white-capped waves.
+
+When the pink frock was finished, Mademoiselle Chebe started for Savigny.
+
+The chateau of M. Gardinois was built in the valley of the Orge, on the
+bank of that capriciously lovely stream, with its windmills, its little
+islands, its dams, and its broad lawns that end at its shores.
+
+The chateau, an old Louis-Quinze structure, low in reality, although made
+to appear high by a pointed roof, had a most depressing aspect,
+suggestive of aristocratic antiquity; broad steps, balconies with rusty
+balustrades, old urns marred by time, wherein the flowers stood out
+vividly against the reddish stone.  As far as the eye could see, the
+walls stretched away, decayed and crumbling, descending gradually toward
+the stream.  The chateau overlooked them, with its high, slated roofs,
+the farmhouse, with its red tiles, and the superb park, with its lindens,
+ash-trees, poplars and chestnuts growing confusedly together in a dense
+black mass, cut here and there by the arched openings of the paths.
+
+But the charm of the old place was the water, which enlivened its silence
+and gave character to its beautiful views.  There were at Savigny, to say
+nothing of the river, many springs, fountains, and ponds, in which the
+sun sank to rest in all his glory; and they formed a suitable setting for
+that venerable mansion, green and mossy as it was, and slightly worn
+away, like a stone on the edge of a brook.
+
+Unluckily, at Savigny, as in most of those gorgeous Parisian summer
+palaces, which the parvenus in commerce and speculation have made their
+prey, the chatelains were not in harmony with the chateau.
+
+Since he had purchased his chateau, old Gardinois had done nothing but
+injure the beauty of the beautiful property chance had placed in his
+hands; cut down trees "for the view," filled his park with rough
+obstructions to keep out trespassers, and reserved all his solicitude for
+a magnificent kitchen-garden, which, as it produced fruit and vegetables
+in abundance, seemed to him more like his own part of the country--the
+land of the peasant.
+
+As for the great salons, where the panels with paintings of famous
+subjects were fading in the autumn fogs, as for the ponds overrun with
+water-lilies, the grottoes, the stone bridges, he cared for them only
+because of the admiration of visitors, and because of such elements was
+composed that thing which so flattered his vanity as an ex-dealer in
+cattle--a chateau!
+
+Being already old, unable to hunt or fish, he passed his time
+superintending the most trivial details of that large property.  The
+grain for the hens, the price of the last load of the second crop of hay,
+the number of bales of straw stored in a magnificent circular granary,
+furnished him with matter for scolding for a whole day; and certain it is
+that, when one gazed from a distance at that lovely estate of Savigny,
+the chateau on the hillside, the river, like a mirror, flowing at its
+feet, the high terraces shaded by ivy, the supporting wall of the park
+following the majestic slope of the ground, one never would have
+suspected the proprietor's niggardliness and meanness of spirit.
+
+In the idleness consequent upon his wealth, M. Gardinois, being greatly
+bored in Paris, lived at Savigny throughout the year, and the Fromonts
+lived with him during the summer.
+
+Madame Fromont was a mild, dull woman, whom her father's brutal despotism
+had early molded to passive obedience for life.  She maintained the same
+attitude with her husband, whose constant kindness and indulgence never
+had succeeded in triumphing over that humiliated, taciturn nature,
+indifferent to everything, and, in some sense, irresponsible.  Having
+passed her life with no knowledge of business, she had become rich
+without knowing it and without the slightest desire to take advantage of
+it.  Her fine apartments in Paris, her father's magnificent chateau, made
+her uncomfortable.  She occupied as small a place as possible in both,
+filling her life with a single passion, order--a fantastic, abnormal sort
+of order, which consisted in brushing, wiping, dusting, and polishing the
+mirrors, the gilding and the door-knobs, with her own hands, from morning
+till night.
+
+When she had nothing else to clean, the strange woman would attack her
+rings, her watch-chain, her brooches, scrubbing the cameos and pearls,
+and, by dint of polishing the combination of her own name and her
+husband's, she had effaced all the letters of both.  Her fixed idea
+followed her to Savigny.  She picked up dead branches in the paths,
+scratched the moss from the benches with the end of her umbrella, and
+would have liked to dust the leaves and sweep down the old trees; and
+often, when in the train, she looked with envy at the little villas
+standing in a line along the track, white and clean, with their gleaming
+utensils, the pewter ball, and the little oblong gardens, which resemble
+drawers in a bureau.  Those were her ideal of a country-house.
+
+M. Fromont, who came only occasionally and was always absorbed by his
+business affairs, enjoyed Savigny little more than she.  Claire alone
+felt really at home in that lovely park.  She was familiar with its
+smallest shrub.  Being obliged to provide her own amusements, like all
+only children, she had become attached to certain walks, watched the
+flowers bloom, had her favorite path, her favorite tree, her favorite
+bench for reading.  The dinner-bell always surprised her far away in the
+park.  She would come to the table, out of breath but happy, flushed with
+the fresh air.  The shadow of the hornbeams, stealing over that youthful
+brow, had imprinted a sort of gentle melancholy there, and the deep, dark
+green of the ponds, crossed by vague rays, was reflected in her eyes.
+
+Those lovely surroundings had in very truth shielded her from the
+vulgarity and the abjectness of the persons about her.  M. Gardinois
+might deplore in her presence, for hours at a time, the perversity of
+tradesmen and servants, or make an estimate of what was being stolen from
+him each month, each week, every day, every minute; Madame Fromont might
+enumerate her grievances against the mice, the maggots, dust and
+dampness, all desperately bent upon destroying her property, and engaged
+in a conspiracy against her wardrobes; not a word of their foolish talk
+remained in Claire's mind.  A run around the lawn, an hour's reading on
+the river-bank, restored the tranquillity of that noble and intensely
+active mind.
+
+Her grandfather looked upon her as a strange being, altogether out of
+place in his family.  As a child she annoyed him with her great, honest
+eyes, her straightforwardness on all occasions, and also because he did
+not find in her a second edition of his own passive and submissive
+daughter.
+
+"That child will be a proud chit and an original, like her father," he
+would say in his ugly moods.
+
+How much better he liked that little Chebe girl who used to come now and
+then and play in the avenues at Savigny!  In her, at least, he detected
+the strain of the common people like himself, with a sprinkling of
+ambition and envy, suggested even in those early days by a certain little
+smile at the corner of the mouth.  Moreover, the child exhibited an
+ingenuous amazement and admiration in presence of his wealth, which
+flattered his parvenu pride; and sometimes, when he teased her, she would
+break out with the droll phrases of a Paris gamine, slang redolent of the
+faubourgs, seasoned by her pretty, piquant face, inclined to pallor,
+which not even superficiality could deprive of its distinction.  So he
+never had forgotten her.
+
+On this occasion above all, when Sidonie arrived at Savigny after her
+long absence, with her fluffy hair, her graceful figure, her bright,
+mobile face, the whole effect emphasized by mannerisms suggestive of the
+shop-girl, she produced a decided sensation.  Old Gardinois, wondering
+greatly to see a tall young woman in place of the child he was expecting
+to see, considered her prettier and, above all, better dressed than
+Claire.
+
+It was a fact that, when Mademoiselle Chebe had left the train and was
+seated in the great wagonette from the chateau, her appearance was not
+bad; but she lacked those details that constituted her friend's chief
+beauty and charm--a distinguished carriage, a contempt for poses, and,
+more than all else, mental tranquillity.  Her prettiness was not unlike
+her gowns, of inexpensive materials, but cut according to the style of
+the day-rags, if you will, but rags of which fashion, that ridiculous but
+charming fairy, had regulated the color, the trimming, and the shape.
+Paris has pretty faces made expressly for costumes of that sort, very
+easy to dress becomingly, for the very reason that they belong to no
+type, and Mademoiselle Sidonie's face was one of these.
+
+What bliss was hers when the carriage entered the long avenue, bordered
+with velvety grass and primeval elms, and at the end Savigny awaiting her
+with its great gate wide open!
+
+And how thoroughly at ease she felt amid all those refinements of wealth!
+How perfectly that sort of life suited her!  It seemed to her that she
+never had known any other.
+
+Suddenly, in the midst of her intoxication, arrived a letter from Frantz,
+which brought her back to the realities of her life, to her wretched fate
+as the future wife of a government clerk, which transported her, whether
+she would or no, to the mean little apartment they would occupy some day
+at the top of some dismal house, whose heavy atmosphere, dense with
+privation, she seemed already to breathe.
+
+Should she break her betrothal promise?
+
+She certainly could do it, as she had given no other pledge than her
+word.  But when he had left her, who could say that she would not wish
+him back?
+
+In that little brain, turned by ambition, the strangest ideas chased one
+another.  Sometimes, while Grandfather Gardinois, who had laid aside in
+her honor his old-fashioned hunting-jackets and swanskin waistcoats, was
+jesting with her, amusing himself by contradicting her in order to draw
+out a sharp reply, she would gaze steadily, coldly into his eyes, without
+replying.  Ah! if only he were ten years younger!  But the thought of
+becoming Madame Gardinois did not long occupy her.  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.  Having no
+father or mother, he had been brought up by his uncle, M. Fromont, and
+was looked upon by him to succeed him in business, and probably to become
+Claire's husband.  That ready-made future did not arouse any enthusiasm
+in Georges.  In the first place business bored him.  As for his cousin,
+the intimate good-fellowship of an education in common and mutual
+confidence existed between them, but nothing more, at least on his side.
+
+With Sidonie, on the contrary, he was exceedingly embarrassed and shy,
+and at the same time desirous of producing an effect--a totally different
+man, in short.  She had just the spurious charm, a little free, which was
+calculated to attract a superficial nature, and it was not long before
+she discovered the impression that she produced upon him.
+
+When the two girls were walking together in the park, it was always
+Sidonie who remembered that it was time for the train from Paris to
+arrive.  They would go together to the gate to meet the travellers, and
+Georges's first glance was always for Mademoiselle Chebe, who remained a
+little behind her friend, but with the poses and airs that go halfway to
+meet the eyes.  That manoeuvring between them lasted some time.  They did
+not mention love, but all the words, all the smiles they exchanged were
+full of silent avowals.
+
+One cloudy and threatening summer evening, when the two friends had left
+the table as soon as dinner was at an end and were walking in the long,
+shady avenue, Georges joined them.  They were talking upon indifferent
+subjects, crunching the gravel beneath their idling footsteps, when
+Madame Fromont's voice, from the chateau, called Claire away.  Georges
+and Sidonie were left alone.  They continued to walk along the avenue,
+guided by the uncertain whiteness of the path, without speaking of
+drawing nearer to each other.
+
+A warm wind rustled among the leaves.  The ruffled surface of the pond
+lapped softly against the arches of the little bridge; and the blossoms
+of the acacias and lindens, detached by the breeze, whirled about in
+circles, perfuming the electricity-laden air.  They felt themselves
+surrounded by an atmosphere of storm, vibrant and penetrating.  Dazzling
+flashes of heat passed before their troubled eyes, like those that played
+along the horizon.
+
+"Oh!  what lovely glow-worms!"  exclaimed Sidonie, embarrassed by the
+oppressive silence broken by so many mysterious sounds.
+
+On the edge of the greensward a blade of grass here and there was
+illuminated by a tiny, green, flickering light.  She stooped to lift one
+on her glove.  Georges knelt close beside her; and as they leaned down,
+their hair and cheeks touching, they gazed at each other for a moment by
+the light of the glow-worms.  How weird and fascinating she seemed to him
+in that green light, which shone upon her face and died away in the fine
+network of her waving hair!  He put his arm around her waist, and
+suddenly, feeling that she abandoned herself to him, he clasped her in a
+long, passionate embrace.
+
+"What are you looking for?"  asked Claire, suddenly coming up in the
+shadow behind them.
+
+Taken by surprise, and with a choking sensation in his throat, Georges
+trembled so that he could not reply.  Sidonie, on the other hand, rose
+with the utmost coolness, and said as she shook out her skirt:
+
+"The glow-worms.  See how many of them there are tonight.  And how they
+sparkle."
+
+Her eyes also sparkled with extraordinary brilliancy.
+
+"The storm makes them, I suppose," murmured Georges, still trembling.
+
+The storm was indeed near.  At brief intervals great clouds of leaves and
+dust whirled from one end of the avenue to the other.  They walked a few
+steps farther, then all three returned to the house.  The young women
+took their work, Georges tried to read a newspaper, while Madame Fromont
+polished her rings and M. Gardinois and his son-in-law played billiards
+in the adjoining room.
+
+How long that evening seemed to Sidonie!  She had but one wish, to be
+alone-alone with her thoughts.
+
+But, in the silence of her little bedroom, when she had put out her
+light, which interferes with dreams by casting too bright an illumination
+upon reality, what schemes, what transports of delight!  Georges loved
+her, Georges Fromont, the heir of the factory!  They would marry; she
+would be rich.  For in that mercenary little heart the first kiss of love
+had awakened no ideas save those of ambition and a life of luxury.
+
+To assure herself that her lover was sincere, she tried to recall the
+scene under the trees to its most trifling details, the expression of his
+eyes, the warmth of his embrace, the vows uttered brokenly, lips to lips,
+it that weird light shed by the glow-worms, which one solemn moment had
+fixed forever in her heart.
+
+Oh! the glow-worms of Savigny!
+
+All night long they twinkled like stars before her closed eyes.  The park
+was full of them, to the farthest limits of its darkest paths.  There
+were clusters of them all along the lawns, on the trees, in the
+shrubbery.  The fine gravel of the avenues, the waves of the river,
+seemed to emit green sparks, and all those microscopic flashes formed a
+sort of holiday illumination in which Savigny seemed to be enveloped in
+her honor, to celebrate the betrothal of Georges and Sidonie.
+
+When she rose the next day, her plan was formed.  Georges loved her; that
+was certain.  Did he contemplate marrying her?  She had a suspicion that
+he did not, the clever minx!  But that did not frighten her.  She felt
+strong enough to triumph over that childish nature, at once weak and
+passionate.  She had only to resist him, and that is exactly what she
+did.
+
+For some days she was cold and indifferent, wilfully blind and devoid of
+memory.  He tried to speak to her, to renew the blissful moment, but she
+avoided him, always placing some one between them.
+
+Then he wrote to her.
+
+He carried his notes himself to a hollow in a rock near a clear spring
+called "The Phantom," which was in the outskirts of the park, sheltered
+by a thatched roof.  Sidonie thought that a charming episode.  In the
+evening she must invent some story, a pretext of some sort for going to
+"The Phantom" alone.  The shadow of the trees across the path, the
+mystery of the night, the rapid walk, the excitement, made her heart beat
+deliciously.  She would find the letter saturated with dew, with the
+intense cold of the spring, and so white in the moonlight that she would
+hide it quickly for fear of being surprised.
+
+And then, when she was alone, what joy to open it, to decipher those
+magic characters, those words of love which swam before her eyes,
+surrounded by dazzling blue and yellow circles, as if she were reading
+her letter in the bright sunlight.
+
+"I love you!  Love me!"  wrote Georges in every conceivable phrase.
+
+At first she did not reply; but when she felt that he was fairly caught,
+entirely in her power, she declared herself concisely:
+
+"I never will love any one but my husband."
+
+Ah! she was a true woman already, was little Chebe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HOW LITTLE CHEBE'S STORY ENDED
+
+Meanwhil September arrived.  The hunting season brought together a large,
+noisy, vulgar party at the chateau.  There were long dinners at which the
+wealthy bourgeois lingered slothfully and wearily, prone to fall asleep
+like peasants.  They went in carriages to meet the returning hunters in
+the cool air of the autumn evening.  The mist arose from the fields, from
+which the crops had been gathered; and while the frightened game flew
+along the stubble with plaintive cries, the darkness seemed to emerge
+from the forests whose dark masses increased in size, spreading out over
+the fields.
+
+The carriage lamps were lighted, the hoods raised, and they drove quickly
+homeward with the fresh air blowing in their faces.  The dining-hall,
+brilliantly illuminated, was filled with gayety and laughter.
+
+Claire Fromont, embarrassed by the vulgarity of those about her, hardly
+spoke at all.  Sidonie was at her brightest.  The drive had given
+animation to her pale complexion and Parisian eyes.  She knew how to
+laugh, understood a little too much, perhaps, and seemed to the male
+guests the only woman in the party.  Her success completed Georges's
+intoxication; but as his advances became more pronounced, she showed more
+and more reserve.  Thereupon he determined that she should be his wife.
+He swore it to himself, with the exaggerated emphasis of weak characters,
+who seem always to combat beforehand the difficulties to which they know
+that they must yield some day.
+
+It was the happiest moment of little Chebe's life.  Even aside from any
+ambitious project, her coquettish, false nature found a strange
+fascination in this intrigue, carried on mysteriously amid banquets and
+merry-makings.
+
+No one about them suspected anything.  Claire was at that healthy and
+delightful period of youth when the mind, only partly open, clings to the
+things it knows with blind confidence, in complete ignorance of treachery
+and falsehood.  M. Fromont thought of nothing but his business.  His wife
+polished her jewels with frenzied energy.  Only old Gardinois and his
+little, gimlet-like eyes were to be feared; but Sidonie entertained him,
+and even if he had discovered anything, he was not the man to interfere
+with her future.
+
+Her hour of triumph was near, when a sudden, unforeseen disaster blasted
+her hopes.
+
+One Sunday morning M. Fromont was brought back fatally wounded from a
+hunting expedition.  A bullet intended for a deer had pierced his temple.
+The chateau was turned upside-down.
+
+All the hunters, among them the unknown bungler that had fired the fatal
+shot, started in haste for Paris.  Claire, frantic with grief, entered
+the room where her father lay on his deathbed, there to remain; and
+Risler, being advised of the catastrophe, came to take Sidonie home.
+
+On the night before her departure she had a final meeting with Georges at
+The Phantom,--a farewell meeting, painful and stealthy, and made solemn
+by the proximity of death.  They vowed, however, to love each other
+always; they agreed upon a method of writing to each other.  Then they
+parted.
+
+It was a sad journey home.
+
+Sidonie returned abruptly to her every-day life, escorted by the
+despairing grief of Risler, to whom his dear master's death was an
+irreparable loss.  On her arrival, she was compelled to describe her
+visit to the smallest detail; discuss the inmates of the chateau, the
+guests, the entertainments, the dinners, and the final catastrophe.
+What torture for her, when, absorbed as she was by a single, unchanging
+thought, she had so much need of silence and solitude!  But there was
+something even more terrible than that.
+
+On the first day after her return Frantz resumed his former place; and
+the glances with which he followed her, the words he addressed to her
+alone, seemed to her exasperating beyond endurance.
+
+Despite all his shyness and distrust of himself, the poor fellow believed
+that he had some rights as an accepted and impatient lover, and little
+Chebe was obliged to emerge from her dreams to reply to that creditor,
+and to postpone once more the maturity of his claim.
+
+A day came, however, when indecision ceased to be possible.  She had
+promised to marry Frantz when he had obtained a good situation; and now
+an engineer's berth in the South, at the smelting-furnaces of Grand
+Combe, was offered to him.  That was sufficient for the support of a
+modest establishment.
+
+There was no way of avoiding the question.  She must either keep her
+promise or invent an excuse for breaking it.  But what excuse could she
+invent?
+
+In that pressing emergency, she thought of Desiree.  Although the lame
+little girl had never confided in her, she knew of her great love for
+Frantz.  Long ago she had detected it, with her coquette's eyes, bright
+and changing mirrors, which reflected all the thoughts of others without
+betraying any of her own.  It may be that the thought that another woman
+loved her betrothed had made Frantz's love more endurable to her at
+first; and, just as we place statues on tombstones to make them appear
+less sad, Desiree's pretty, little, pale face at the threshold of that
+uninviting future had made it seem less forbidding to her.
+
+Now it provided--her with a simple and honorable pretext for freeing
+herself from her promise.
+
+"No!  I tell you, mamma," she said to Madame Chebe one day, "I never will
+consent to make a friend like her unhappy.  I should suffer too much from
+remorse,--poor Desiree!  Haven't you noticed how badly she looks since I
+came home; what a beseeching way she has of looking at me?  No, I won't
+cause her that sorrow; I won't take away her Frantz."
+
+Even while she admired her daughter's generous spirit, Madame Chebe
+looked upon that as a rather exaggerated sacrifice, and remonstrated with
+her.
+
+"Take care, my child; we aren't rich.  A husband like Frantz doesn't turn
+up every day."
+
+"Very well!  then I won't marry at all," declared Sidonie flatly, and,
+deeming her pretext an excellent one, she clung persistently to it.
+Nothing could shake her determination, neither the tears shed by Frantz,
+who was exasperated by her refusal to fulfil her promise, enveloped as it
+was in vague reasons which she would not even explain to him, nor the
+entreaties of Risler, in whose ear Madame Chebe had mysteriously mumbled
+her daughter's reasons, and who in spite of everything could not but
+admire such a sacrifice.
+
+"Don't revile her, I tell you!  She's an angel!" he said to his brother,
+striving to soothe him.
+
+"Ah!  yes, she is an angel," assented Madame Chebe with a sigh, so that
+the poor betrayed lover had not even the right to complain.  Driven to
+despair, he determined to leave Paris, and as Grand Combe seemed too near
+in his frenzied longing for flight, he asked and obtained an appointment
+as overseer on the Suez Canal at Ismailia.  He went away without knowing,
+or caring to know aught of, Desiree's love; and yet, when he went to bid
+her farewell, the dear little cripple looked up into his face with her
+shy, pretty eyes, in which were plainly written the words:
+
+"I love you, if she does not."
+
+But Frantz Risler did not know how to read what was written in those
+eyes.
+
+Fortunately, hearts that are accustomed to suffer have an infinite store
+of patience.  When her friend had gone, the lame girl, with her charming
+morsel of illusion, inherited from her father and refined by her feminine
+nature, returned bravely to her work, saying to herself:
+
+"I will wait for him."
+
+And thereafter she spread the wings of her birds to their fullest extent,
+as if they were all going, one after another, to Ismailia in Egypt.  And
+that was a long distance!
+
+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.  But Sidonie had very different matters on her
+mind.
+
+She was beginning to be disturbed by Georges's silence.  Since she left
+Savigny she had heard from him only once.  All her letters were left
+unanswered.  To be sure, she knew through Risler that Georges was very
+busy, and that his uncle's death had thrown the management of the factory
+upon him, imposing upon him a responsibility that was beyond his
+strength.  But to abandon her without a word!
+
+From the window on the landing, where she had resumed her silent
+observations--for she had so arranged matters as not to return to
+Mademoiselle Le Mire--little Chebe tried to distinguish her lover,
+watched him as he went to and fro across the yards and among the
+buildings; and in the afternoon, when it was time for the train to start
+for Savigny, she saw him enter his carriage to go to his aunt and cousin,
+who were passing the early months of their period of mourning at the
+grandfather's chateau in the country.
+
+All this excited and alarmed her; and the proximity of the factory
+rendered Georges's avoidance of her even more apparent.  To think that by
+raising her voice a little she could make him turn toward the place where
+she stood!  To think that they were separated only by a wall!  And yet,
+at that moment they were very far apart.
+
+Do you remember, little Chebe, that unhappy winter evening when the
+excellent Risler rushed into your parents' room with an extraordinary
+expression of countenance, exclaiming, "Great news!"?
+
+Great news, indeed!  Georges Fromont had just informed him that, in
+accordance with his uncle's last wishes, he was to marry his cousin
+Claire, and that, as he was certainly unequal to the task of carrying on
+the business alone, he had resolved to take him, Risler, for a partner,
+under the firm name of FROMONT JEUNE AND RISLER AINE.
+
+How did you succeed, little Chebe, in maintaining your self-possession
+when you learned that the factory had eluded your grasp and that another
+woman had taken your place?  What a terrible evening!--Madame Chebe sat
+by the table mending; M. Chebe before the fire drying his clothes, which
+were wet through by his having walked a long distance in the rain.  Oh!
+that miserable room, overflowing with gloom and ennui!  The lamp gave a
+dim light.  The supper, hastily prepared, had left in the room the odor
+of the poor man's kitchen.  And Risler, intoxicated with joy, talking
+with increasing animation, laid great plans!
+
+All these things tore your heart, and made the treachery still more
+horrible by the contrast between the riches that eluded your outstretched
+hand and the ignoble mediocrity in which you were doomed to pass your
+life.
+
+Sidonie was seriously ill for a long while.  As she lay in bed, whenever
+the window-panes rattled behind the curtains, the unhappy creature
+fancied that Georges's wedding-coaches were driving through the street;
+and she had paroxysms of nervous excitement, without words and
+inexplicable, as if a fever of wrath were consuming her.
+
+At last, time and youthful strength, her mother's care, and, more than
+all, the attentions of Desiree, who now knew of the sacrifice her friend
+had made for her, triumphed over the disease.  But for a long while
+Sidonie was very weak, oppressed by a deadly melancholy, by a constant
+longing to weep, which played havoc with her nervous system.
+
+Sometimes she talked of travelling, of leaving Paris.  At other times she
+insisted that she must enter a convent.  Her friends were sorely
+perplexed, and strove to discover the cause of that singular state of
+mind, which was even more alarming than her illness; when she suddenly
+confessed to her mother the secret of her melancholy.
+
+She loved the elder Risler!  She never had dared to whisper it; but it
+was he whom she had always loved and not Frantz.
+
+This news was a surprise to everybody, to Risler most of all; but little
+Chebe was so pretty, her eyes were so soft when she glanced at him, that
+the honest fellow instantly became as fond of her as a fool!  Indeed, it
+may be that love had lain in his heart for a long time without his
+realizing it.
+
+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.  That haughty smile, in which there was a touch of
+profound pity and of scorn as well, such scorn as a parvenu feels for his
+poor beginnings, was evidently addressed to the poor sickly child whom
+she fancied she saw up at that window, in the depths of the past and the
+darkness.  It seemed to say to Claire, pointing at the factory:
+
+"What do you say to this little Chebe?  She is here at last, you see!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Noon.  The Marais is breakfasting.
+
+Sitting near the door, on a stone which once served as a horse-block
+for equestrians, Risler watches with a smile the exit from the factory.
+He never loses his enjoyment of the outspoken esteem of all these good
+people whom he knew when he was insignificant and humble like themselves.
+The "Good-day, Monsieur Risler," uttered by so many different voices, all
+in the same affectionate tone, warms his heart.  The children accost him
+without fear, the long-bearded designers, half-workmen, half-artists,
+shake hands with him as they pass, and address him familiarly as "thou."
+Perhaps there is a little too much familiarity in all this, for the
+worthy man has not yet begun to realize the prestige and authority of his
+new station; and there was some one who considered this free-and-easy
+manner very humiliating.  But that some one can not see him at this
+moment, and the master takes advantage of the fact to bestow a hearty
+greeting upon the old bookkeeper, Sigismond, who comes out last of all,
+erect and red-faced, imprisoned in a high collar and bareheaded--whatever
+the weather--for fear of apoplexy.
+
+He and Risler are fellow-countrymen.  They have for each other a profound
+esteem, dating from their first employment at the factory, from that
+time, long, long ago, when they breakfasted together at the little
+creamery on the corner, to which Sigismond Planus goes alone now and
+selects his refreshment for the day from the slate hanging on the wall.
+
+But stand aside!  The carriage of Fromont Jeune drives through the
+gateway.  He has been out on business all the morning; and the partners,
+as they walk toward the pretty little house in which they both live at
+the end of the garden, discuss matters of business in a friendly way.
+
+"I have been at Prochasson's," says Fromont.  "They showed me some new
+patterns, pretty ones too, I assure you.  We must be on our guard.  They
+are dangerous rivals."
+
+But Risler is not at all anxious.  He is strong in his talent, his
+experience; and then--but this is strictly confidential--he is on the
+track of a wonderful invention, an improved printing-press, something
+that--but we shall see.  Still talking, they enter the garden, which is
+as carefully kept as a public park, with round-topped acacias almost as
+old as the buildings, and magnificent ivies that hide the high, black
+walls.
+
+Beside Fromont jeune, Risler Aine has the appearance of a clerk making
+his report to his employer.  At every step he stops to speak, for his
+gait is heavy, his mind works slowly, and words have much difficulty in
+finding their way to his lips.  Oh, if he could see the little flushed
+face up yonder, behind the window on the second floor, watching
+everything so attentively!
+
+Madame Risler is waiting for her husband to come to breakfast, and waxes
+impatient over the good man's moderation.  She motions to him with her
+hand:
+
+"Come, come!"  but Risler does not notice it.  His attention is engrossed
+by the little Fromont, daughter of Claire and Georges, who is taking a
+sun-bath, blooming like a flower amid her lace in her nurse's arms.  How
+pretty she is!  "She is your very picture, Madame Chorche."
+
+"Do you think so, my dear Risler?  Why, everybody says she looks like her
+father."
+
+"Yes, a little.  But--"
+
+And there they all stand, the father and mother, Risler and the nurse,
+gravely seeking resemblances in that miniature model of a human being,
+who stares at them out of her little eyes, blinking with the noise and
+glare.  Sidonie, at her open window, leans out to see what they are
+doing, and why her husband does not come up.
+
+At that moment Risler has taken the tiny creature in his arms, the whole
+fascinating bundle of white draperies and light ribbons, and is trying to
+make it laugh and crow with baby-talk and gestures worthy of a
+grandfather.  How old he looks, poor man!  His tall body, which he
+contorts for the child's amusement, his hoarse voice, which becomes a low
+growl when he tries to soften it, are absurd and ridiculous.
+
+Above, the wife taps the floor with her foot and mutters between her
+teeth:
+
+"The idiot!"
+
+At last, weary of waiting, she sends a servant to tell Monsieur that
+breakfast is served; but the game is so far advanced that Monsieur does
+not see how he can go away, how he can interrupt these explosions of
+laughter and little bird-like cries.  He succeeds at last, however, in
+giving the child back to its nurse, and enters the hall, laughing
+heartily.  He is laughing still when he enters the dining-room; but a
+glance from his wife stops him short.
+
+Sidonie is seated at table before the chafing-dish, already filled.  Her
+martyr-like attitude suggests a determination to be cross.
+
+"Oh!  there you are.  It's very lucky!"
+
+Risler took his seat, a little ashamed.
+
+"What would you have, my love?  That child is so--"
+
+"I have asked you before now not to speak to me in that way.  It isn't
+good form."
+
+"What, not when we're alone?"
+
+"Bah!  you will never learn to adapt yourself to our new fortune.  And
+what is the result?  No one in this place treats me with any respect.
+Pere Achille hardly touches his hat to me when I pass his lodge.  To be
+sure, I'm not a Fromont, and I haven't a carriage."
+
+"Come, come, little one, you know perfectly well that you can use Madame
+Chorche's coupe.  She always says it is at our disposal."
+
+"How many times must I tell you that I don't choose to be under any
+obligation to that woman?"
+
+"O Sidonie"
+
+"Oh!  yes, I know, it's all understood.  Madame Fromont is the good Lord
+himself.  Every one is forbidden to touch her.  And I must make up my
+mind to be a nobody in my own house, to allow myself to be humiliated,
+trampled under foot."
+
+"Come, come, little one--"
+
+Poor Risler tries to interpose, to say a word in favor of his dear Madame
+"Chorche."  But he has no tact.  This is the worst possible method of
+effecting a reconciliation; and Sidonie at once bursts forth:
+
+"I tell you that that woman, with all her calm airs, is proud and
+spiteful.  In the first place, she detests me, I know that.  So long as I
+was poor little Sidonie and she could toss me her broken dolls and old
+clothes, it was all right, but now that I am my own mistress as well as
+she, it vexes her and humiliates her.  Madame gives me advice with a
+lofty air, and criticises what I do.  I did wrong to have a maid.  Of
+course!  Wasn't I in the habit of waiting on myself?  She never loses a
+chance to wound me.  When I call on her on Wednesdays, you should hear
+the tone in which she asks me, before everybody, how 'dear Madame Chebe'
+is.  Oh! yes.  I'm a Chebe and she's a Fromont.  One's as good as the
+other, in my opinion.  My grandfather was a druggist.  What was hers?
+A peasant who got rich by money-lending.  I'll tell her so one of these
+days, if she shows me too much of her pride; and I'll tell her, too, that
+their little imp, although they don't suspect it, looks just like that
+old Pere Gardinois, and heaven knows he isn't handsome."
+
+"Oh!"  exclaims Risler, unable to find words to reply.
+
+"Oh!  yes, of course!  I advise you to admire their child.  She's always
+ill.  She cries all night like a little cat.  It keeps me awake.  And
+afterward, through the day, I have mamma's piano and her scales--tra, la
+la la!  If the music were only worth listening to!"
+
+Risler has taken the wise course.  He does not say a word until he sees
+that she is beginning to calm down a little, when he completes the
+soothing process with compliments.
+
+"How pretty we are to-day!  Are we going out soon to make some calls,
+eh?"
+
+He resorts to this mode of address to avoid the more familiar form, which
+is so offensive to her.
+
+"No, I am not going to make calls," Sidonie replies with a certain pride.
+"On the contrary, I expect to receive them.  This is my day."
+
+In response to her husband's astounded, bewildered expression she
+continues:
+
+"Why, yes, this is my day.  Madame Fromont has one; I can have one also,
+I fancy."
+
+"Of course, of course," said honest Risler, looking about with some
+little uneasiness.  "So that's why I saw so many flowers everywhere, on
+the landing and in the drawing-room."
+
+"Yes, my maid went down to the garden this morning.  Did I do wrong?
+Oh! you don't say so, but I'm sure you think I did wrong.  'Dame'!
+I thought the flowers in the garden belonged to us as much as to the
+Fromonts."
+
+"Certainly they do--but you--it would have been better perhaps--"
+
+"To ask leave?  That's it-to humble myself again for a few paltry
+chrysanthemums and two or three bits of green.  Besides, I didn't make
+any secret of taking the flowers; and when she comes up a little later--"
+
+"Is she coming?  Ah! that's very kind of her."
+
+Sidonie turned upon him indignantly.
+
+"What's that?  Kind of her?  Upon my word, if she doesn't come, it would
+be the last straw.  When I go every Wednesday to be bored to death in her
+salon with a crowd of affected, simpering women!"
+
+She did not say that those same Wednesdays of Madame Fromont's were very
+useful to her, that they were like a weekly journal of fashion, one of
+those composite little publications in which you are told how to enter
+and to leave a room, how to bow, how to place flowers in a jardiniere and
+cigars in a case, to say nothing of the engravings, the procession of
+graceful, faultlessly attired men and women, and the names of the best
+modistes.  Nor did Sidonie add that she had entreated all those friends
+of Claire's, of whom she spoke so scornfully, to come to see her on her
+own day, and that the day was selected by them.
+
+Will they come?  Will Madame Fromont Jeune insult Madame Risler Aine by
+absenting herself on her first Friday?  The thought makes her almost
+feverish with anxiety.
+
+"For heaven's sake, hurry!"  she says again and again.  "Good heavens!
+how long you are at your, breakfast!"
+
+It is a fact that it is one of honest Risler's ways to eat slowly, and to
+light his pipe at the table while he sips his coffee.  To-day he must
+renounce these cherished habits, must leave the pipe in its case because
+of the smoke, and, as soon as he has swallowed the last mouthful, run
+hastily and dress, for his wife insists that he must come up during the
+afternoon and pay his respects to the ladies.
+
+What a sensation in the factory when they see Risler Aine come in, on a
+week-day, in a black frock-coat and white cravat!
+
+"Are you going to a wedding, pray?"  cries Sigismond, the cashier, behind
+his grating.
+
+And Risler, not without a feeling of pride, replies:
+
+"This is my wife's reception day!"
+
+Soon everybody in the place knows that it is Sidonie's day; and Pere
+Achille, who takes care of the garden, is not very well pleased to find
+that the branches of the winter laurels by the gate are broken.
+
+Before taking his seat at the table upon which he draws, in the bright
+light from the tall windows, Risler has taken off his fine frock-coat,
+which embarrasses him, and has turned up his clean shirt-sleeves; but the
+idea that his wife is expecting company preoccupies and disturbs him; and
+from time to time he puts on his coat and goes up to her.
+
+"Has no one come?"  he asks timidly.
+
+"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.  Here and there are books, reviews, a little work-
+basket in the shape of a gamebag, with silk tassels, a bunch of violets
+in a glass vase, and green plants in the jardinieres.  Everything is
+arranged exactly as in the Fromonts' apartments on the floor below; but
+the taste, that invisible line which separates the distinguished from the
+vulgar, is not yet refined.  You would say it was a passable copy of a
+pretty genre picture.  The hostess's attire, even, is too new; she looks
+more as if she were making a call than as if she were at home.  In
+Risler's eyes everything is superb, beyond reproach; he is preparing to
+say so as he enters the salon, but, in face of his wife's wrathful
+glance, he checks himself in terror.
+
+"You see, it's four o'clock," she says, pointing to the clock with an
+angry gesture.  "No one will come.  But I take it especially ill of
+Claire not to come up.  She is at home--I am sure of it--I can hear her."
+
+Indeed, ever since noon, Sidonie has listened intently to the slightest
+sounds on the floor below, the child's crying, the closing of doors.
+Risler attempts to go down again in order to avoid a renewal of the
+conversation at breakfast; but his wife will not allow him to do so.  The
+very least he can do is to stay with her when everybody else abandons
+her, and so he remains there, at a loss what to say, rooted to the spot,
+like those people who dare not move during a storm for fear of attracting
+the lightning.  Sidonie moves excitedly about, going in and out of the
+salon, changing the position of a chair, putting it back again, looking
+at herself as she passes the mirror, and ringing for her maid to send her
+to ask Pere Achille if no one has inquired for her.  That Pere Achille is
+such a spiteful creature!  Perhaps when people have come, he has said
+that she was out.
+
+But no, the concierge has not seen any one.
+
+Silence and consternation.  Sidonie is standing at the window on the
+left, Risler at the one on the right.  From there they can see the little
+garden, where the darkness is gathering, and the black smoke which the
+chimney emits beneath the lowering clouds.  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.  In that pretty whirl of silk and
+flowers and jet and flounces and furs, as it runs quickly up the step,
+Sidonie has recognized one of the most fashionable frequenters of the
+Fromont salon, the wife of a wealthy dealer in bronzes.  What an honor to
+receive a call from such an one!  Quick, quick!  the family takes its
+position, Monsieur in front of the hearth, Madame in an easychair,
+carelessly turning the leaves of a magazine.  Wasted pose!  The fair
+caller did not come to see Sidonie; she has stopped at the floor below.
+
+Ah! if Madame Georges could hear what her neighbor says of her and her
+friends!
+
+At that moment the door opens and "Mademoiselle Planus" is announced.
+She is the cashier's sister, a poor old maid, humble and modest, who has
+made it her duty to make this call upon the wife of her brother's
+employer, and who is amazed at the warm welcome she receives.  She is
+surrounded and made much of.  "How kind of you to come!  Draw up to the
+fire."  They overwhelm her with attentions and show great interest in her
+slightest word.  Honest Risler's smiles are as warm as his thanks.
+Sidonie herself displays all her fascinations, overjoyed to exhibit
+herself in her glory to one who was her equal in the old days, and to
+reflect that the other, in the room below, must hear that she has had
+callers.  So she makes as much noise as possible, moving chairs, pushing
+the table around; and when the lady takes her leave, dazzled, enchanted,
+bewildered, she escorts her to the landing with a great rustling of
+flounces, and calls to her in a very loud voice, leaning over the rail,
+that she is at home every Friday.  "You understand, every Friday."
+
+Now it is dark.  The two great lamps in the salon are lighted.  In the
+adjoining room they hear the servant laying the table.  It is all over.
+Madame Fromont Jeune will not come.
+
+Sidonie is pale with rage.
+
+"Just fancy, that minx can't come up eighteen steps!  No doubt Madame
+thinks we're not grand enough for her.  Ah!  but I'll have my revenge."
+
+As she pours forth her wrath in unjust words, her voice becomes coarse,
+takes on the intonations of the faubourg, an accent of the common people
+which betrays the ex-apprentice of Mademoiselle Le Mire.
+
+Risler is unlucky enough to make a remark.
+
+"Who knows?  Perhaps the child is ill."
+
+She turns upon him in a fury, as if she would like to bite him.
+
+"Will you hold your tongue about that brat?  After all, it's your fault
+that this has happened to me.  You don't know how to make people treat me
+with respect."
+
+And as she closed the door of her bedroom violently, making the globes on
+the lamps tremble, as well as all the knick-knacks on the etageres,
+Risler, left alone, stands motionless in the centre of the salon, looking
+with an air of consternation at his white cuffs, his broad patent-leather
+shoes, and mutters mechanically:
+
+"My wife's reception day!"
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Affectation of indifference
+Always smiling condescendingly
+Convent of Saint Joseph, four shoes under the bed!
+Deeming every sort of occupation beneath him
+Dreams of wealth and the disasters that immediately followed
+He fixed the time mentally when he would speak
+Little feathers fluttering for an opportunity to fly away
+No one has ever been able to find out what her thoughts were
+Pass half the day in procuring two cakes, worth three sous
+She was of those who disdain no compliment
+Such artificial enjoyment, such idiotic laughter
+Superiority of the man who does nothing over the man who works
+Terrible revenge she would take hereafter for her sufferings
+The groom isn't handsome, but the bride's as pretty as a picture
+The poor must pay for all their enjoyments
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Fromont and Risler, v1
+by Alphonse Daudet
+