CHAPTER XIII. THE JUDGE

Those persons who live always in doors, confined by work or infirmity to

a chair by the window, take a deep interest in the people who pass, just

as they make for themselves a horizon of the neighboring walls, roofs,

and windows.

Nailed to their place, they live in the life of the streets; and the

busy men and women who pass within their range of vision, sometimes

every day at the same hour, do not suspect that they serve as the

mainspring of other lives, that interested eyes watch for their coming

and miss them if they happen to go to their destination by another road.

The Delobelles, left to themselves all day, indulged in this sort of

silent observation. Their window was narrow, and the mother, whose eyes

were beginning to weaken as the result of hard usage, sat near the light

against the drawn muslin curtain; her daughter’s large armchair was

a little farther away. She announced the approach of their daily

passers-by. It was a diversion, a subject of conversation; and the long

hours of toil seemed shorter, marked off by the regular appearance

of people who were as busy as they. There were two little sisters, a

gentleman in a gray overcoat, a child who was taken to school and taken

home again, and an old government clerk with a wooden leg, whose step on

the sidewalk had a sinister sound.

They hardly ever saw him; he passed after dark, but they heard him, and

the sound always struck the little cripple’s ears like a harsh echo

of her own mournful thoughts. All these street friends unconsciously

occupied a large place in the lives of the two women. If it rained, they

would say:

“They will get wet. I wonder whether the child got home before the

shower.” And when the season changed, when the March sun inundated the

sidewalks or the December snow covered them with its white mantle and

its patches of black mud, the appearance of a new garment on one of

their friends caused the two recluses to say to themselves, “It is

summer,” or, “winter has come.”

Now, on a certain evening in May, one of those soft, luminous evenings

when life flows forth from the houses into the street through the open

windows, Desiree and her mother were busily at work with needles and

fingers, exhausting the daylight to its last ray, before lighting the

lamp. They could hear the shouts of children playing in the yards, the

muffled notes of pianos, and the voice of a street peddler, drawing his

half-empty wagon. One could smell the springtime in the air, a vague

odor of hyacinth and lilac.

Mamma Delobelle had laid aside her work, and, before closing the window,

leaned upon the sill listening to all these noises of a great toiling

city, taking delight in walking through the streets when its day’s work

was ended. From time to time she spoke to her daughter, without turning

her head.

“Ah! there’s Monsieur Sigismond. How early he leaves the factory

to-night! It may be because the days are lengthening so fast, but I

don’t think it can be seven o’clock. Who can that man be with the old

cashier?--What a funny thing!--One would say--Why, yes!--One would say

it was Monsieur Frantz. But that isn’t possible. Monsieur Frantz is a

long way from here at this moment; and then he had no beard. That man

looks like him all the same! Just look, my dear.”

But “my dear” does not leave her chair; she does not even stir. With

her eyes staring into vacancy, her needle in the air, arrested in its

pretty, industrious movement, she has gone away to the blue country,

that wonderful country whither one may go at will, without thought of

any infirmity. The name “Frantz,” uttered mechanically by her mother,

because of a chance resemblance, represented to her a whole lifetime

of illusions, of fervent hopes, ephemeral as the flush that rose to her

cheeks when, on returning home at night, he used to come and chat with

her a moment. How far away that was already! To think that he used to

live in the little room near hers, that they used to hear his step on

the stairs and the noise made by his table when he dragged it to the

window to draw! What sorrow and what happiness she used to feel when he

talked to her of Sidonie, sitting on the low chair at her knees, while

she mounted her birds and her insects.

As she worked, she used to cheer and comfort him, for Sidonie had caused

poor Frantz many little griefs before the last great one. His tone when

he spoke of Sidonie, the sparkle in his eyes when he thought of her,

fascinated Desiree in spite of everything, so that when he went away

in despair, he left behind him a love even greater than that he carried

with him--a love which the unchanging room, the sedentary, stagnant

life, kept intact with all its bitter perfume, whereas his would

gradually fade away and vanish in the fresh air of the outer world.

It grows darker and darker. A great wave of melancholy envelops the poor

girl with the falling darkness of that balmy evening. The blissful gleam

from the past dies away as the last glimmer of daylight vanishes in the

narrow recess of the window, where her mother still stands leaning on

the sill.

Suddenly the door opens. Some one is there whose features can not be

distinguished. Who can it be? The Delobelles never receive calls. The

mother, who has turned her head, thinks at first that some one has come

from the shop to get the week’s work.

“My husband has just gone to your place, Monsieur. We have nothing here.

Monsieur Delobelle has taken everything.”

The man comes forward without speaking, and as he approaches the window

his features can be distinguished. He is a tall, solidly built fellow

with a bronzed face, a thick, red beard, and a deep voice, and is a

little slow of speech.

“Ah! so you don’t know me, Mamma Delobelle?”

“Oh! I knew you at once, Monsieur Frantz,” said Desiree, very calmly, in

a cold, sedate tone.

“Merciful heavens! it’s Monsieur Frantz.”

Quickly Mamma Delobelle runs to the lamp, lights it, and closes the

window.

“What! it is you, is it, my dear Frantz?” How coolly she says it, the

little rascal! “I knew you at once.” Ah, the little iceberg! She will

always be the same.

A veritable little iceberg, in very truth. She is very pale, and her

hand as it lies in Frantz’s is white and cold.

She seems to him improved, even more refined than before. He seems to

her superb, as always, with a melancholy, weary expression in the depths

of his eyes, which makes him more of a man than when he went away.

His weariness is due to his hurried journey, undertaken immediately on

his receipt of Sigismond’s letter. Spurred on by the word dishonor, he

had started instantly, without awaiting his leave of absence, risking

his place and his future prospects; and, hurrying from steamships to

railways, he had not stopped until he reached Paris. Reason enough for

being weary, especially when one has travelled in eager haste to reach

one’s destination, and when one’s mind has been continually beset by

impatient thoughts, making the journey ten times over in incessant doubt

and fear and perplexity.

His melancholy began further back. It began on the day when the woman he

loved refused to marry him, to become, six months later, the wife of his

brother; two terrible blows in close succession, the second even more

painful than the first. It is true that, before entering into that

marriage, Risler had written to him to ask his permission to be happy,

and had written in such touching, affectionate terms that the violence

of the blow was somewhat diminished; and then, in due time, life in a

strange country, hard work, and long journeys had softened his grief.

Now only a vast background of melancholy remains; unless, indeed, the

hatred and wrath by which he is animated at this moment against the

woman who is dishonoring his brother may be a remnant of his former

love.

But no! Frantz Risler thinks only of avenging the honor of the Rislers.

He comes not as a lover, but as a judge; and Sidonie may well look to

herself.

The judge had gone straight to the factory on leaving the train, relying

upon the surprise, the unexpectedness, of his arrival to disclose to him

at a glance what was taking place.

Unluckily he had found no one. The blinds of the little house at the

foot of the garden had been closed for two weeks. Pere Achille informed

him that the ladies were at their respective country seats where the

partners joined them every evening.

Fromont Jeune had left the factory very early; Risler Aine had just

gone. Frantz decided to speak to old Sigismond. But it was Saturday, the

regular pay-day, and he must needs wait until the long line of workmen,

extending from Achille’s lodge to the cashier’s grated window, had

gradually dispersed.

Although very impatient and very depressed, the excellent youth, who had

lived the life of a Paris workingman from his childhood, felt a thrill

of pleasure at finding himself once more in the midst of the animated

scenes peculiar to that time and place. Upon all those faces, honest or

vicious, was an expression of satisfaction that the week was at an end.

You felt that, so far as they were concerned, Sunday began at seven

o’clock Saturday evening, in front of the cashier’s little lamp.

One must have lived among workingmen to realize the full charm of that

one day’s rest and its solemnity. Many of these poor creatures, bound

fast to unhealthful trades, await the coming of the blessed Sunday like

a puff of refreshing air, essential to their health and their life. What

an overflow of spirits, therefore, what a pressing need of noisy mirth!

It seems as if the oppression of the week’s labor vanishes with the

steam from the machinery, as it escapes in a hissing cloud of vapor over

the gutters.

One by one the workmen moved away from the grating, counting the

money that glistened in their black hands. There were disappointments,

mutterings, remonstrances, hours missed, money drawn in advance; and

above the tinkling of coins, Sigismond’s voice could be heard, calm

and relentless, defending the interests of his employers with a zeal

amounting to ferocity.

Frantz was familiar with all the dramas of pay-day, the false accents

and the true. He knew that one man’s wages were expended for his family,

to pay the baker and the druggist, or for his children’s schooling.

Another wanted his money for the wine-shop or for something even worse.

And the melancholy, downcast shadows passing to and fro in front of the

factory gateway--he knew what they were waiting for--that they were

all on the watch for a father or a husband, to hurry him home with

complaining or coaxing words.

Oh! the barefooted children, the tiny creatures wrapped in old shawls,

the shabby women, whose tear-stained faces were as white as the linen

caps that surmounted them.

Oh! the lurking vice that prowls about on pay-day, the candles that

are lighted in the depths of dark alleys, the dirty windows of the

wine-shops where the thousand-and-one poisonous concoctions of alcohol

display their alluring colors.

Frantz was familiar with all these forms of misery; but never had they

seemed to him so depressing, so harrowing as on that evening.

When the last man was paid, Sigismond came out of his office. The two

friends recognized each other and embraced; and in the silence of the

factory, at rest for twenty-four hours and deathly still in all its

empty buildings, the cashier explained to Frantz the state of affairs.

He described Sidonie’s conduct, her mad extravagance, the total wreck

of the family honor. The Rislers had bought a country house at Asnieres,

formerly the property of an actress, and had set up a sumptuous

establishment there. They had horses and carriages, and led a luxurious,

gay life. The thing that especially disturbed honest Sigismond was the

self restraint of Fromont jeune. For some time he had drawn almost no

money from the strong-box, and yet Sidonie was spending more than ever.

“I haf no gonfidence!” said the unhappy cashier, shaking his head, “I

haf no gonfidence!”

Lowering his voice he added:

“But your brother, my little Frantz, your brother? Who can explain his

actions? He goes about through it all with his eyes in the air,

his hands in his pockets, his mind on his famous invention, which

unfortunately doesn’t move fast. Look here! do you want me to give you

my opinion?--He’s either a knave or a fool.”

They were walking up and down the little garden as they talked, stopping

for a moment, then resuming their walk. Frantz felt as if he were living

in a horrible dream. The rapid journey, the sudden change of scene and

climate, the ceaseless flow of Sigismond’s words, the new idea that

he had to form of Risler and Sidonie--the same Sidonie he had loved so

dearly--all these things bewildered him and almost drove him mad.

It was late. Night was falling. Sigismond proposed to him to go to

Montrouge for the night; he declined on the plea of fatigue, and when he

was left alone in the Marais, at that dismal and uncertain hour when

the daylight has faded and the gas is still unlighted, he walked

instinctively toward his old quarters on the Rue de Braque.

At the hall door hung a placard: Bachelor’s Chamber to let.

It was the same room in which he had lived so long with his brother. He

recognized the map fastened to the wall by four pins, the window on

the landing, and the Delobelles’ little sign: ‘Birds and Insects for

Ornament.’

Their door was ajar; he had only to push it a little in order to enter

the room.

Certainly there was not in all Paris a surer refuge for him, a spot

better fitted to welcome and console his perturbed spirit, than that

hard-working familiar fireside. In his present agitation and perplexity

it was like the harbor with its smooth, deep water, the sunny, peaceful

quay, where the women work while awaiting their husbands and fathers,

though the wind howls and the sea rages. More than all else, although he

did not realize that it was so, it was a network of steadfast affection,

that miraculous love-kindness which makes another’s love precious to us

even when we do not love that other.

That dear little iceberg of a Desiree loved him so dearly. Her eyes

sparkled so even when talking of the most indifferent things with him.

As objects dipped in phosphorus shine with equal splendor, so the most

trivial words she said illuminated her pretty, radiant face. What a

blissful rest it was for him after Sigismond’s brutal disclosures!

They talked together with great animation while Mamma Delobelle was

setting the table.

“You will dine with us, won’t you, Monsieur Frantz? Father has gone to

take back the work; but he will surely come home to dinner.”

He will surely come home to dinner!

The good woman said it with a certain pride.

In fact, since the failure of his managerial scheme, the illustrious

Delobelle no longer took his meals abroad, even on the evenings when he

went to collect the weekly earnings. The unlucky manager had eaten so

many meals on credit at his restaurant that he dared not go there again.

By way of compensation, he never failed, on Saturday, to bring home with

him two or three unexpected, famished guests--“old comrades”--“unlucky

devils.” So it happened that, on the evening in question, he appeared

upon the stage escorting a financier from the Metz theatre and a comique

from the theatre at Angers, both waiting for an engagement.

The comique, closely shaven, wrinkled, shrivelled by the heat from the

footlights, looked like an old street-arab; the financier wore cloth

shoes, and no linen, so far as could be seen.

“Frantz!--my Frantz!” cried the old strolling player in a melodramatic

voice, clutching the air convulsively with his hands. After a long and

energetic embrace he presented his guests to one another.

“Monsieur Robricart, of the theatre at Metz.

“Monsieur Chaudezon, of the theatre at Angers.

“Frantz Risler, engineer.”

In Delobelle’s mouth that word “engineer” assumed vast proportions!

Desiree pouted prettily when she saw her father’s friends. It would have

been so nice to be by themselves on a day like to-day. But the great man

snapped his fingers at the thought. He had enough to do to unload his

pockets. First of all, he produced a superb pie “for the ladies,” he

said, forgetting that he adored pie. A lobster next made its appearance,

then an Arles sausage, marrons glaces and cherries, the first of the

season!

While the financier enthusiastically pulled up the collar of his

invisible shirt, while the comique exclaimed “gnouf! gnouf!” with a

gesture forgotten by Parisians for ten years, Desiree thought with

dismay of the enormous hole that impromptu banquet would make in the

paltry earnings of the week, and Mamma Delobelle, full of business,

upset the whole buffet in order to find a sufficient number of plates.

It was a very lively meal. The two actors ate voraciously, to the great

delight of Delobelle, who talked over with them old memories of their

days of strolling. Fancy a collection of odds and ends of scenery,

extinct lanterns, and mouldy, crumbling stage properties.

In a sort of vulgar, meaningless, familiar slang, they recalled their

innumerable triumphs; for all three of them, according to their own

stories, had been applauded, laden with laurel-wreaths, and carried in

triumph by whole cities.

While they talked they ate as actors usually eat, sitting with their

faces turned three-fourths toward the audience, with the unnatural haste

of stage guests at a pasteboard supper, alternating words and mouthfuls,

seeking to produce an effect by their manner of putting down a glass

or moving a chair, and expressing interest, amazement, joy, terror,

surprise, with the aid of a skilfully handled knife and fork. Madame

Delobelle listened to them with a smiling face.

One can not be an actor’s wife for thirty years without becoming

somewhat accustomed to these peculiar mannerisms.

But one little corner of the table was separated from the rest of the

party as by a cloud which intercepted the absurd remarks, the

hoarse laughter, the boasting. Frantz and Desiree talked together in

undertones, hearing naught of what was said around them. Things that

happened in their childhood, anecdotes of the neighborhood, a whole

ill-defined past which derived its only value from the mutual memories

evoked, from the spark that glowed in the eyes of both-those were the

themes of their pleasant chat.

Suddenly the cloud was torn aside, and Delobelle’s terrible voice

interrupted the dialogue.

“Have you not seen your brother?” he asked, in order to avoid the

appearance of neglecting him too much. “And you have not seen his wife,

either? Ah! you will find her a Madame. Such toilettes, my dear fellow,

and such chic! I assure you. They have a genuine chateau at Asnieres.

The Chebes are there also. Ah! my old friend, they have all left us

behind. They are rich, they look down on old friends. Never a word,

never a call. For my part, you understand, I snap my fingers at them,

but it really wounds these ladies.”

“Oh, papa!” said Desiree hastily, “you know very well that we are too

fond of Sidonie to be offended with her.”

The actor smote the table a violent blow with his fist.

“Why, then, you do wrong. You ought to be offended with people who seek

always to wound and humiliate you.”

He still had upon his mind the refusal to furnish funds for his

theatrical project, and he made no secret of his wrath.

“If you knew,” he said to Frantz, “if you knew how money is being

squandered over yonder! It is a great pity. And nothing substantial,

nothing sensible. I who speak to you, asked your brother for a paltry

sum to assure my future and himself a handsome profit. He flatly

refused. Parbleu! Madame requires too much. She rides, goes to the races

in her carriage, and drives her husband at the same rate as her little

phaeton on the quay at Asnieres. Between you and me, I don’t think that

our good friend Risler is very happy. That woman makes him believe black

is white.”

The ex-actor concluded his harangue with a wink at the comique and the

financier, and for a moment the three exchanged glances, conventional

grimaces, ‘ha-has!’ and ‘hum-hums!’ and all the usual pantomime

expressive of thoughts too deep for words.

Frantz was struck dumb. Do what he would, the horrible certainty

assailed him on all sides. Sigismond had spoken in accordance with his

nature, Delobelle with his. The result was the same.

Fortunately the dinner was drawing near its close. The three actors

left the table and betook themselves to the brewery on the Rue Blondel.

Frantz remained with the two women.

As he sat beside her, gentle and affectionate in manner, Desiree was

suddenly conscious of a great outflow of gratitude to Sidonie. She said

to herself that, after all, it was to her generosity that she owed this

semblance of happiness, and that thought gave her courage to defend her

former friend.

“You see, Monsieur Frantz, you mustn’t believe all my father told you

about your sister-in-law. Dear papa! he always exaggerates a little. For

my own part, I am very sure that Sidonie is incapable of all the evil

she is accused of. I am sure that her heart has remained the same; and

that she is still fond of her friends, although she does neglect them a

little. Such is life, you know. Friends drift apart without meaning to.

Isn’t that true, Monsieur Frantz?”

Oh! how pretty she was in his eyes, while she talked in that strain. He

never had taken so much notice of the refined features, the aristocratic

pallor of her complexion; and when he left her that evening, deeply

touched by the warmth she had displayed in defending Sidonie, by all the

charming feminine excuses she put forward for her friend’s silence

and neglect, Frantz Risler reflected, with a feeling of selfish and

ingenuous pleasure, that the child had loved him once, and that perhaps

she loved him still, and kept for him in the bottom of her heart that

warm, sheltered spot to which we turn as to the sanctuary when life has

wounded us.

All night long in his old room, lulled by the imaginary movement of the

vessel, by the murmur of the waves and the howling of the wind which

follow long sea voyages, he dreamed of his youthful days, of little

Chebe and Desiree Delobelle, of their games, their labors, and of the

Ecole Centrale, whose great, gloomy buildings were sleeping near at

hand, in the dark streets of the Marais.

And when daylight came, and the sun shining in at his bare window vexed

his eyes and brought him back to a realization of the duty that lay

before him and to the anxieties of the day, he dreamed that it was time

to go to the School, and that his brother, before going down to the

factory, opened the door and called to him:

“Come, lazybones! Come!”

That dear, loving voice, too natural, too real for a dream, made him

open his eyes without more ado.

Risler was standing by his bed, watching his awakening with a charming

smile, not untinged by emotion; that it was Risler himself was evident

from the fact that, in his joy at seeing his brother Frantz once more,

he could find nothing better to say than, “I am very happy, I am very

happy!”

Although it was Sunday, Risler, as was his custom, had come to the

factory to avail himself of the silence and solitude to work at his

press. Immediately on his arrival, Pere Achille had informed him that

his brother was in Paris and had gone to the old house on the Rue de

Braque, and he had hastened thither in joyful surprise, a little

vexed that he had not been forewarned, and especially that Frantz had

defrauded him of the first evening. His regret on that account came to

the surface every moment in his spasmodic attempts at conversation, in

which everything that he wanted to say was left unfinished, interrupted

by innumerable questions on all sorts of subjects and explosions of

affection and joy. Frantz excused himself on the plea of fatigue, and

the pleasure it had given him to be in their old room once more.

“All right, all right,” said Risler, “but I sha’n’t let you alone

now--you are coming to Asnieres at once. I give myself leave of absence

today. All thought of work is out of the question now that you have

come, you understand. Ah! won’t the little one be surprised and glad! We

talk about you so often! What joy! what joy!”

The poor fellow fairly beamed with happiness; he, the silent man,

chattered like a magpie, gazed admiringly at his Frantz and remarked

upon his growth. The pupil of the Ecole Centrale had had a fine physique

when he went away, but his features had acquired greater firmness,

his shoulders were broader, and it was a far cry from the tall,

studious-looking boy who had left Paris two years before, for Ismailia,

to this handsome, bronzed corsair, with his serious yet winning face.

While Risler was gazing at him, Frantz, on his side, was closely

scrutinizing his brother, and, finding him the same as always, as

ingenuous, as loving, and as absent-minded as times, he said to himself:

“No! it is not possible--he has not ceased to be an honest man.”

Thereupon, as he reflected upon what people had dared to imagine, all

his wrath turned against that hypocritical, vicious woman, who deceived

her husband so impudently and with such absolute impunity that she

succeeded in causing him to be considered her confederate. Oh! what a

terrible reckoning he proposed to have with her; how pitilessly he would

talk to her!

“I forbid you, Madame--understand what I say--I forbid you to dishonor

my brother!”

He was thinking of that all the way, as he watched the still leafless

trees glide along the embankment of the Saint-Germain railway. Sitting

opposite him, Risler chattered, chattered without pause. He talked about

the factory, about their business. They had gained forty thousand francs

each the last year; but it would be a different matter when the Press

was at work. “A rotary press, my little Frantz, rotary and dodecagonal,

capable of printing a pattern in twelve to fifteen colors at a single

turn of the wheel--red on pink, dark green on light green, without the

least running together or absorption, without a line lapping over its

neighbor, without any danger of one shade destroying or overshadowing

another. Do you understand that, little brother? A machine that is an

artist like a man. It means a revolution in the wallpaper trade.”

“But,” queried Frantz with some anxiety, “have you invented this Press

of yours yet, or are you still hunting for it?”

“Invented!--perfected! To-morrow I will show you all my plans. I have

also invented an automatic crane for hanging the paper on the rods

in the drying-room. Next week I intend to take up my quarters in

the factory, up in the garret, and have my first machine made there

secretly, under my own eyes. In three months the patents must be taken

out and the Press must be at work. You’ll see, my little Frantz, it will

make us all rich-you can imagine how glad I shall be to be able to make

up to these Fromonts for a little of what they have done for me. Ah!

upon my word, the Lord has been too good to me.”

Thereupon he began to enumerate all his blessings. Sidonie was the best

of women, a little love of a wife, who conferred much honor upon him.

They had a charming home. They went into society, very select society.

The little one sang like a nightingale, thanks to Madame Dobson’s

expressive method. By the way, this Madame Dobson was another most

excellent creature. There was just one thing that disturbed poor Risler,

that was his incomprehensible misunderstanding with Sigismond. Perhaps

Frantz could help him to clear up that mystery.

“Oh! yes, I will help you, brother,” replied Frantz through his clenched

teeth; and an angry flush rose to his brow at the idea that any one

could have suspected the open-heartedness, the loyalty, that were

displayed before him in all their artless spontaneity. Luckily he, the

judge, had arrived; and he proposed to restore everything to its proper

place.

Meanwhile, they were drawing near the house at Asnieres. Frantz had

noticed at a distance a fanciful little turreted affair, glistening with

a new blue slate roof. It seemed to him to have been built expressly for

Sidonie, a fitting cage for that capricious, gaudy-plumaged bird.

It was a chalet with two stories, whose bright mirrors and pink-lined

curtains could be seen from the railway, shining resplendent at the far

end of a green lawn, where an enormous pewter ball was suspended.

The river was near at hand, still wearing its Parisian aspect, filled

with chains, bathing establishments, great barges, and multitudes

of little, skiffs, with a layer of coal dust on their pretentious,

freshly-painted names, tied to the pier and rocking to the slightest

motion of the water. From her windows Sidonie could see the restaurants

on the beach, silent through the week, but filled to overflowing on

Sunday with a motley, noisy crowd, whose shouts of laughter, mingled

with the dull splash of oars, came from both banks to meet in midstream

in that current of vague murmurs, shouts, calls, laughter, and singing

that floats without ceasing up and down the Seine on holidays for a

distance of ten miles.

During the week she saw shabbily-dressed idlers sauntering along the

shore, men in broad-brimmed straw hats and flannel shirts, women who sat

on the worn grass of the sloping bank, doing nothing, with the dreamy

eyes of a cow at pasture. All the peddlers, hand-organs, harpists;

travelling jugglers, stopped there as at a quarantine station. The quay

was crowded with them, and as they approached, the windows in the

little houses near by were always thrown open, disclosing white

dressing-jackets, half-buttoned, heads of dishevelled hair, and an

occasional pipe, all watching these paltry strolling shows, as if with

a sigh of regret for Paris, so near at hand. It was a hideous and

depressing sight.

The grass, which had hardly begun to grow, was already turning yellow

beneath the feet of the crowd. The dust was black; and yet, every

Thursday, the cocotte aristocracy passed through on the way to the

Casino, with a great show of rickety carriages and borrowed postilions.

All these things gave pleasure to that fanatical Parisian, Sidonie; and

then, too, in her childhood, she had heard a great deal about Asnieres

from the illustrious Delobelle, who would have liked to have, like so

many of his profession, a little villa in those latitudes, a cozy nook

in the country to which to return by the midnight train, after the play

is done.

All these dreams of little Chebe, Sidonie Risler had realized.

The brothers went to the gate opening on the quay, in which the key was

usually left. They entered, making their way among trees and shrubs of

recent growth. Here and there the billiard-room, the gardener’s lodge, a

little greenhouse, made their appearance, like the pieces of one of

the Swiss chalets we give to children to play with; all very light and

fragile, hardly more than resting on the ground, as if ready to fly away

at the slightest breath of bankruptcy or caprice: the villa of a cocotte

or a pawnbroker.

Frantz looked about in some bewilderment. In the distance, opening on a

porch surrounded by vases of flowers, was the salon with its long blinds

raised. An American easy-chair, folding-chairs, a small table from which

the coffee had not been removed, could be seen near the door. Within

they heard a succession of loud chords on the piano and the murmur of

low voices.

“I tell you Sidonie will be surprised,” said honest Risler, walking

softly on the gravel; “she doesn’t expect me until tonight. She and

Madame Dobson are practising together at this moment.”

Pushing the door open suddenly, he cried from the threshold in his loud,

good-natured voice:

“Guess whom I’ve brought.”

Madame Dobson, who was sitting alone at the piano, jumped up from her

stool, and at the farther end of the grand salon Georges and Sidonie

rose hastily behind the exotic plants that reared their heads above a

table, of whose delicate, slender lines they seemed a prolongation.

“Ah! how you frightened me!” said Sidonie, running to meet Risler.

The flounces of her white peignoir, through which blue ribbons were

drawn, like little patches of blue sky among the clouds, rolled

in billows over the carpet, and, having already recovered from her

embarrassment, she stood very straight, with an affable expression and

her everlasting little smile, as she kissed her husband and offered her

forehead to Frantz, saying:

“Good morning, brother.”

Risler left them confronting each other, and went up to Fromont Jeune,

whom he was greatly surprised to find there.

“What, Chorche, you here? I supposed you were at Savigny.”

“Yes, to be sure, but--I came--I thought you stayed at Asnieres Sundays.

I wanted to speak to you on a matter of business.”

Thereupon, entangling himself in his words, he began to talk hurriedly

of an important order. Sidonie had disappeared after exchanging a few

unmeaning words with the impassive Frantz. Madame Dobson continued

her tremolos on the soft pedal, like those which accompany critical

situations at the theatre.

In very truth, the situation at that moment was decidedly strained.

But Risler’s good-humor banished all constraint. He apologized to his

partner for not being at home, and insisted upon showing Frantz the

house. They went from the salon to the stable, from the stable to the

carriage-house, the servants’ quarters, and the conservatory. Everything

was new, brilliant, gleaming, too small, and inconvenient.

“But,” said Risler, with a certain pride, “it cost a heap of money!”

He persisted in compelling admiration of Sidonie’s purchase even to its

smallest details, exhibited the gas and water fixtures on every

floor, the improved system of bells, the garden seats, the English

billiard-table, the hydropathic arrangements, and accompanied his

exposition with outbursts of gratitude to Fromont Jeune, who, by taking

him into partnership, had literally placed a fortune in his hands.

At each new effusion on Risler’s part, Georges Fromont shrank visibly,

ashamed and embarrassed by the strange expression on Frantz’s face.

The breakfast was lacking in gayety.

Madame Dobson talked almost without interruption, overjoyed to be

swimming in the shallows of a romantic love-affair. Knowing, or rather

believing that she knew her friend’s story from beginning to end, she

understood the lowering wrath of Frantz, a former lover furious at

finding his place filled, and the anxiety of Georges, due to the

appearance of a rival; and she encouraged one with a glance, consoled

the other with a smile, admired Sidonie’s tranquil demeanor, and

reserved all her contempt for that abominable Risler, the vulgar,

uncivilized tyrant. She made an effort to prevent any of those horrible

periods of silence, when the clashing knives and forks mark time in such

an absurd and embarrassing way.

As soon as breakfast was at an end Fromont Jeune announced that he must

return to Savigny. Risler did not venture to detain him, thinking that

his dear Madame Chorche would pass her Sunday all alone; and so, without

an opportunity to say a word to his mistress, the lover went away in

the bright sunlight to take an afternoon train, still attended by the

husband, who insisted upon escorting him to the station.

Madame Dobson sat for a moment with Frantz and Sidonie under a little

arbor which a climbing vine studded with pink buds; then, realizing

that she was in the way, she returned to the salon, and as before, while

Georges was there, began to play and sing softly and with expression.

In the silent garden, that muffled music, gliding between the branches,

seemed like the cooing of birds before the storm.

At last they were alone. Under the lattice of the arbor, still bare and

leafless, the May sun shone too bright. Sidonie shaded her eyes with

her hand as she watched the people passing on the quay. Frantz likewise

looked out, but in another direction; and both of them, affecting to be

entirely independent of each other, turned at the same instant with the

same gesture and moved by the same thought.

“I have something to say to you,” he said, just as she opened her mouth.

“And I to you,” she replied gravely; “but come in here; we shall be more

comfortable.”

And they entered together a little summer-house at the foot of the

garden.

BOOK 3.

CHAPTER XIV. EXPLANATION

By slow degrees Sidonie sank to her former level, yes, even lower. From

the rich, well-considered bourgeoise to which her marriage had raised

her, she descended the ladder to the rank of a mere toy. By dint of

travelling in railway carriages with fantastically dressed courtesans,

with their hair worn over their eyes like a terrier’s, or falling over

the back ‘a la Genevieve de Brabant’, she came at last to resemble them.

She transformed herself into a blonde for two months, to the unbounded

amazement of Rizer, who could not understand how his doll was so

changed. As for Georges, all these eccentricities amused him; it seemed

to him that he had ten women in one. He was the real husband, the master

of the house.

To divert Sidonie’s thoughts, he had provided a simulacrum of society

for her--his bachelor friends, a few fast tradesmen, almost no women,

women have too sharp eyes. Madame Dobson was the only friend of

Sidonie’s sex.

They organized grand dinner-parties, excursions on the water, fireworks.

From day to day Risler’s position became more absurd, more distressing.

When he came home in the evening, tired out, shabbily dressed, he must

hurry up to his room to dress.

“We have some people to dinner,” his wife would say. “Make haste.”

And he would be the last to take his place at the table, after shaking

hands all around with his guests, friends of Fromont Jeune, whom he

hardly knew by name. Strange to say, the affairs of the factory

were often discussed at that table, to which Georges brought his

acquaintances from the club with the tranquil self-assurance of the

gentleman who pays.

“Business breakfasts and dinners!” To Risler’s mind that phrase

explained everything: his partner’s constant presence, his choice of

guests, and the marvellous gowns worn by Sidonie, who beautified herself

in the interests of the firm. This coquetry on his mistress’s part drove

Fromont Jeune to despair. Day after day he came unexpectedly to take

her by surprise, uneasy, suspicious, afraid to leave that perverse and

deceitful character to its own devices for long.

“What in the deuce has become of your husband?”

Pere Gardinois would ask his grand-daughter with a cunning leer. “Why

doesn’t he come here oftener?”

Claire apologized for Georges, but his continual neglect began to

disturb her. She wept now when she received the little notes, the

despatches which arrived daily at the dinner-hour: “Don’t expect me

to-night, dear love. I shall not be able to come to Savigny until

to-morrow or the day after by the night-train.”

She ate her dinner sadly, opposite an empty chair, and although she did

not know that she was betrayed, she felt that her husband was becoming

accustomed to living away from her. He was so absent-minded when a

family gathering or some other unavoidable duty detained him at the

chateau, so silent concerning what was in his mind. Claire, having now

only the most distant relations with Sidonie, knew nothing of what was

taking place at Asnieres: but when Georges left her, apparently eager

to be gone, and with smiling face, she tormented her loneliness with

unavowed suspicions, and, like all those who anticipate a great sorrow,

she suddenly became conscious of a great void in her heart, a place made

ready for disasters to come.

Her husband was hardly happier than she. That cruel Sidonie seemed to

take pleasure in tormenting him. She allowed everybody to pay court to

her. At that moment a certain Cazabon, alias Cazaboni, an Italian tenor

from Toulouse, introduced by Madame Dobson, came every day to sing

disturbing duets. Georges, jealous beyond words, hurried to Asnieres in

the afternoon, neglecting everything, and was already beginning to think

that Risler did not watch his wife closely enough. He would have liked

him to be blind only so far as he was concerned.

Ah! if he had been her husband, what a tight rein he would have kept on

her! But he had no power over her and she was not at all backward about

telling him so. Sometimes, too, with the invincible logic that often

occurs to the greatest fools, he reflected that, as he was deceiving his

friend, perhaps he deserved to be deceived. In short, his was a wretched

life. He passed his time running about to jewellers and dry-goods

dealers, inventing gifts and surprises. Ah! he knew her well. He knew

that he could pacify her with trinkets, yet not retain his hold upon

her, and that, when the day came that she was bored--

But Sidonie was not bored as yet. She was living the life that she

longed to live; she had all the happiness she could hope to attain.

There was nothing passionate or romantic about her feeling for Georges.

He was like a second husband to her, younger and, above all, richer

than the other. To complete the vulgarization of their liaison, she had

summoned her parents to Asnieres, lodged them in a little house in

the country, and made of that vain and wilfully blind father and that

affectionate, still bewildered mother a halo of respectability of which

she felt the necessity as she sank lower and lower.

Everything was shrewdly planned in that perverse little brain, which

reflected coolly upon vice; and it seemed to her as if she might

continue to live thus in peace, when Frantz Risler suddenly arrived.

Simply from seeing him enter the room, she had realized that her repose

was threatened, that an interview of the gravest importance was to take

place between them.

Her plan was formed on the instant. She must at once put it into

execution.

The summer-house that they entered contained one large, circular room

with four windows, each looking out upon a different landscape; it was

furnished for the purposes of summer siestas, for the hot hours when one

seeks shelter from the sunlight and the noises of the garden. A broad,

very low divan ran all around the wall. A small lacquered table, also

very low, stood in the middle of the room, covered with odd numbers of

society journals.

The hangings were new, and the Persian pattern-birds flying among

bluish reeds--produced the effect of a dream in summer, ethereal figures

floating before one’s languid eyes. The lowered blinds, the matting on

the floor, the Virginia jasmine clinging to the trellis-work outside,

produced a refreshing coolness which was enhanced by the splashing in

the river near by, and the lapping of its wavelets on the shore.

Sidonie sat down as soon as she entered the room, pushing aside her long

white skirt, which sank like a mass of snow at the foot of the divan;

and with sparkling eyes and a smile playing about her lips, bending her

little head slightly, its saucy coquettishness heightened by the bow of

ribbon on the side, she waited.

Frantz, pale as death, remained standing, looking about the room. After

a moment he began:

“I congratulate you, Madame; you understand how to make yourself

comfortable.”

And in the next breath, as if he were afraid that the conversation,

beginning at such a distance, would not arrive quickly enough at the

point to which he intended to lead it, he added brutally:

“To whom do you owe this magnificence, to your lover or your husband?”

Without moving from the divan, without even raising her eyes to his, she

answered:

“To both.”

He was a little disconcerted by such self-possession.

“Then you confess that that man is your lover?”

“Confess it!--yes!”

Frantz gazed at her a moment without speaking. She, too, had turned

pale, notwithstanding her calmness, and the eternal little smile no

longer quivered at the corners of her mouth.

He continued:

“Listen to me, Sidonie! My brother’s name, the name he gave his wife, is

mine as well. Since Risler is so foolish, so blind as to allow the

name to be dishonored by you, it is my place to defend it against your

attacks. I beg you, therefore, to inform Monsieur Georges Fromont that

he must change mistresses as soon as possible, and go elsewhere to ruin

himself. If not--”

“If not?” queried Sidonie, who had not ceased to play with her rings

while he was speaking.

“If not, I shall tell my brother what is going on in his house, and you

will be surprised at the Risler whose acquaintance you will make

then--a man as violent and ungovernable as he usually is inoffensive. My

disclosure will kill him perhaps, but you can be sure that he will kill

you first.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Very well! let him kill me. What do I care for that?”

This was said with such a heartbroken, despondent air that Frantz, in

spite of himself, felt a little pity for that beautiful, fortunate young

creature, who talked of dying with such self-abandonment.

“Do you love him so dearly?” he said, in an indefinably milder tone.

“Do you love this Fromont so dearly that you prefer to die rather than

renounce him?”

She drew herself up hastily.

“I? Love that fop, that doll, that silly girl in men’s clothes?

Nonsense!--I took him as I would have taken any other man.”

“Why?”

“Because I couldn’t help it, because I was mad, because I had and still

have in my heart a criminal love, which I am determined to tear out, no

matter at what cost.”

She had risen and was speaking with her eyes in his, her lips near his,

trembling from head to foot.

A criminal love?--Whom did she love, in God’s name?

Frantz was afraid to question her.

Although suspecting nothing as yet, he had a feeling that that glance,

that breath, leaning toward him, were about to make some horrible

disclosure.

But his office of judge made it necessary for him to know all.

“Who is it?” he asked.

She replied in a stifled voice:

“You know very well that it is you.”

She was his brother’s wife.

For two years he had not thought of her except as a sister. In his eyes

his brother’s wife in no way resembled his former fiancee, and it would

have been a crime to recognize in a single feature of her face the woman

to whom he had formerly so often said, “I love you.”

And now it was she who said that she loved him.

The unhappy judge was thunderstruck, dazed, could find no words in which

to reply.

She, standing before him, waited.

It was one of those spring days, full of heat and light, to which the

moisture of recent rains imparts a strange softness and melancholy.

The air was warm, perfumed by fresh flowers which, on that first day of

heat, gave forth their fragrance eagerly, like violets hidden in a muff.

Through its long, open windows the room in which they were inhaled all

those intoxicating odors. Outside, they could hear the Sunday organs,

distant shouts on the river, and nearer at hand, in the garden, Madame

Dobson’s amorous, languishing voice, sighing:

“On dit que tu te maries;

Tu sais que j’en puis mouri-i-i-r!”

“Yes, Frantz, I have always loved you,” said Sidonie. “That love which

I renounced long ago because I was a young girl--and young girls do

not know what they are doing--that love nothing has ever succeeded in

destroying or lessening. When I learned that Desiree also loved you,

the unfortunate, penniless child, in a great outburst of generosity I

determined to assure her happiness for life by sacrificing my own, and

I at once turned you away, so that you should go to her. Ah! as soon as

you had gone, I realized that the sacrifice was beyond my strength. Poor

little Desiree! How I cursed her in the bottom of my heart! Will you

believe it? Since that time I have avoided seeing her, meeting her. The

sight of her caused me too much pain.”

“But if you loved me,” asked Frantz, in a low voice, “if you loved me,

why did you marry my brother?”

She did not waver.

“To marry Risler was to bring myself nearer to you. I said to myself: ‘I

could not be his wife. Very well, I will be his sister. At all events,

in that way it will still be allowable for me to love him, and we shall

not pass our whole lives as strangers.’ Alas! those are the innocent

dreams a girl has at twenty, dreams of which she very soon learns the

impossibility. I could not love you as a sister, Frantz; I could not

forget you, either; my marriage prevented that. With another husband I

might perhaps have succeeded, but with Risler it was terrible. He was

forever talking about you and your success and your future--Frantz said

this; Frantz did that--He loves you so well, poor fellow! And then the

most cruel thing to me is that your brother looks like you. There is

a sort of family resemblance in your features, in your gait, in your

voices especially, for I have often closed my eyes under his caresses,

saying to myself, ‘It is he, it is Frantz.’ When I saw that that wicked

thought was becoming a source of torment to me, something that I could

not escape, I tried to find distraction, I consented to listen to this

Georges, who had been pestering me for a long time, to transform my life

to one of noise and excitement. But I swear to you, Frantz, that in that

whirlpool of pleasure into which I then plunged, I never have ceased

to think of you, and if any one had a right to come here and call me

to account for my conduct, you certainly are not the one, for you,

unintentionally, have made me what I am.”

She paused. Frantz dared not raise his eyes to her face. For a moment

past she had seemed to him too lovely, too alluring. She was his

brother’s wife!

Nor did he dare speak. The unfortunate youth felt that the old passion

was despotically taking possession of his heart once more, and that at

that moment glances, words, everything that burst forth from it would be

love.

And she was his brother’s wife!

“Ah! wretched, wretched creatures that we are!” exclaimed the poor

judge, dropping upon the divan beside her.

Those few words were in themselves an act of cowardice, a beginning of

surrender, as if destiny, by showing itself so pitiless, had deprived

him of the strength to defend himself. Sidonie had placed her hand on

his. “Frantz--Frantz!” she said; and they remained there side by side,

silent and burning with emotion, soothed by Madame Dobson’s romance,

which reached their ears by snatches through the shrubbery:

“Ton amour, c’est ma folie.

Helas! je n’en puis guei-i-i-r.”

Suddenly Risler’s tall figure appeared in the doorway.

“This way, Chebe, this way. They are in the summerhouse.”

As he spoke the husband entered, escorting his father-in-law and

mother-in-law, whom he had gone to fetch.

There was a moment of effusive greetings and innumerable embraces. You

should have seen the patronizing air with which M. Chebe scrutinized the

young man, who was head and shoulders taller than he.

“Well, my boy, does the Suez Canal progress as you would wish?”

Madame Chebe, in whose thoughts Frantz had never ceased to be her future

son-in-law, threw her arms around him, while Risler, tactless as usual

in his gayety and his enthusiasm, waved his arms, talked of killing

several fatted calves to celebrate the return of the prodigal son,

and roared to the singing-mistress in a voice that echoed through the

neighboring gardens:

“Madame Dobson, Madame Dobson--if you’ll allow me, it’s a pity for

you to be singing there. To the devil with sadness for to-day! Play us

something lively, a good waltz, so that I can take a turn with Madame

Chebe.”

“Risler, Risler, are you crazy, my son-in-law?”

“Come, come, mamma! We must dance.”

And up and down the paths, to the strains of an automatic six-step

waltz-a genuine valse de Vaucanson--he dragged his breathless

mamma-in-law, who stopped at every step to restore to their usual

orderliness the dangling ribbons of her hat and the lace trimming of her

shawl, her lovely shawl bought for Sidonie’s wedding.

Poor Risler was intoxicated with joy.

To Frantz that was an endless, indelible day of agony. Driving, rowing

on the river, lunch on the grass on the Ile des Ravageurs--he was

spared none of the charms of Asnieres; and all the time, in the dazzling

sunlight of the roads, in the glare reflected by the water, he must

laugh and chatter, describe his journey, talk of the Isthmus of Suez and

the great work undertaken there, listen to the whispered complaints of

M. Chebe, who was still incensed with his children, and to his

brother’s description of the Press. “Rotary, my dear Frantz, rotary

and dodecagonal!” Sidonie left the gentlemen to their conversation and

seemed absorbed in deep thought. From time to time she said a word or

two to Madame Dobson, or smiled sadly at her, and Frantz, not daring to

look at her, followed the motions of her blue-lined parasol and of the

white flounces of her skirt.

How she had changed in two years! How lovely she had grown!

Then horrible thoughts came to his mind. There were races at Longchamps

that day. Carriages passed theirs, rubbed against it, driven by women

with painted faces, closely veiled. Sitting motionless on the box, they

held their long whips straight in the air, with doll-like gestures, and

nothing about them seemed alive except their blackened eyes, fixed on

the horses’ heads. As they passed, people turned to look. Every eye

followed them, as if drawn by the wind caused by their rapid motion.

Sidonie resembled those creatures. She might herself have driven

Georges’ carriage; for Frantz was in Georges’ carriage. He had drunk

Georges’ wine. All the luxurious enjoyment of that family party came

from Georges.

It was shameful, revolting! He would have liked to shout the whole story

to his brother. Indeed, it was his duty, as he had come there for that

express purpose. But he no longer felt the courage to do it. Ah! the

unhappy judge!

That evening after dinner, in the salon open to the fresh breeze from

the river, Risler begged his wife to sing. He wished her to exhibit all

her newly acquired accomplishments to Frantz.

Sidonie, leaning on the piano, objected with a melancholy air, while

Madame Dobson ran her fingers over the keys, shaking her long curls.

“But I don’t know anything. What do you wish me to sing?”

She ended, however, by being persuaded. Pale, disenchanted, with her

mind upon other things, in the flickering light of the candles which

seemed to be burning incense, the air was so heavy with the odor of

the hyacinths and lilacs in the garden, she began a Creole ballad very

popular in Louisiana, which Madame Dobson herself had arranged for the

voice and piano:

“Pauv’ pitit Mam’zelle Zizi,

C’est l’amou, l’amou qui tourne la tete a li.”

[“Poor little Mam’zelle Zizi,

‘Tis love, ‘tis love that turns her head.”]

And as she told the story of the ill-fated little Zizi, who was driven

mad by passion, Sidonie had the appearance of a love-sick woman. With

what heartrending expression, with the cry of a wounded dove, did she

repeat that refrain, so melancholy and so sweet, in the childlike patois

of the colonies:

“C’est l’amou, l’amou qui tourne la tete....”

It was enough to drive the unlucky judge mad as well.

But no! The siren had been unfortunate in her choice of a ballad. For,

at the mere name of Mam’zelle Zizi, Frantz was suddenly transported to

a gloomy chamber in the Marais, a long way from Sidonie’s salon, and his

compassionate heart evoked the image of little Desiree Delobelle, who

had loved him so long. Until she was fifteen, she never had been called

anything but Ziree or Zizi, and she was the pauv’ pitit of the Creole

ballad to the life, the ever-neglected, ever-faithful lover. In vain

now did the other sing. Frantz no longer heard her or saw her. He was

in that poor room, beside the great armchair, on the little low chair on

which he had sat so often awaiting the father’s return. Yes, there, and

there only, was his salvation. He must take refuge in that child’s

love, throw himself at her feet, say to her, “Take me, save me!” And who

knows? She loved him so dearly. Perhaps she would save him, would cure

him of his guilty passion.

“Where are you going?” asked Risler, seeing that his brother rose

hurriedly as soon as the last flourish was at an end.

“I am going back. It is late.”

“What? You are not going to sleep here? Why your room is ready for you.”

“It is all ready,” added Sidonie, with a meaning glance.

He refused resolutely. His presence in Paris was necessary for the

fulfilment of certain very important commissions intrusted to him by the

Company. They continued their efforts to detain him when he was in the

vestibule, when he was crossing the garden in the moonlight and running

to the station, amid all the divers noises of Asnieres.

When he had gone, Risler went up to his room, leaving Sidonie and Madame

Dobson at the windows of the salon. The music from the neighboring

Casino reached their ears, with the “Yo-ho!” of the boatmen and the

footsteps of the dancers like a rhythmical, muffled drumming on the

tambourine.

“There’s a kill-joy for you!” observed Madame Dobson.

“Oh, I have checkmated him,” replied Sidonie; “only I must be careful.

I shall be closely watched now. He is so jealous. I am going to write

to Cazaboni not to come again for some time, and you must tell Georges

to-morrow morning to go to Savigny for a fortnight.”

CHAPTER XV. POOR LITTLE MAM’ZELLE ZIZI.

Oh, how happy Desiree was!

Frantz came every day and sat at her feet on the little low chair, as in

the good old days, and he no longer came to talk of Sidonie.

As soon as she began to work in the morning, she would see the door open

softly. “Good morning, Mam’zelle Zizi.” He always called her now by the

name she had borne as a child; and if you could know how prettily he

said it: “Good morning, Mam’zelle Zizi.”

In the evening they waited for “the father” together, and while she

worked he made her shudder with the story of his adventures.

“What is the matter with you? You’re not the same as you used to be,”

Mamma Delobelle would say, surprised to see her in such high spirits

and above all so active. For instead of remaining always buried in

her easy-chair, with the self-renunciation of a young grandmother, the

little creature was continually jumping up and running to the window

as lightly as if she were putting out wings; and she practised standing

erect, asking her mother in a whisper:

“Do you notice IT when I am not walking?”

From her graceful little head, upon which she had previously

concentrated all her energies in the arrangement of her hair, her

coquetry extended over her whole person, as did her fine, waving tresses

when she unloosed them. Yes, she was very, very coquettish now; and

everybody noticed it. Even the “birds and insects for ornament” assumed

a knowing little air.

Ah, yes! Desiree Delobelle was happy. For some days M. Frantz had been

talking of their all going into the country together; and as the father,

kind and generous as always, graciously consented to allow the ladies to

take a day’s rest, all four set out one Sunday morning.

Oh! the lovely drive, the lovely country, the lovely river, the lovely

trees!

Do not ask her where they went; Desiree never knew. But she will tell

you that the sun was brighter there than anywhere else, the birds more

joyous, the woods denser; and she will not lie.

The bouquet that the little cripple brought back from that beautiful

excursion made her room fragrant for a week. Among the hyacinths, the

violets, the white-thorn, was a multitude of nameless little flowers,

those flowers of the lowly which grow from nomadic seed scattered

everywhere along the roads.

Gazing at the slender, pale blue and bright pink blossoms, with all the

delicate shades that flowers invented before colorists, many and many

a time during that week Desiree took her excursion again. The violets

reminded her of the little moss-covered mound on which she had picked

them, seeking them under the leaves, her fingers touching Frantz’s. They

had found these great water-lilies on the edge of a ditch, still damp

from the winter rains, and, in order to reach them, she had leaned

very heavily on Frantz’s arm. All these memories occurred to her as

she worked. Meanwhile the sun, shining in at the open window, made the

feathers of the hummingbirds glisten. The springtime, youth, the songs

of the birds, the fragrance of the flowers, transfigured that dismal

fifth-floor workroom, and Desiree said in all seriousness to Mamma

Delobelle, putting her nose to her friend’s bouquet:

“Have you noticed how sweet the flowers smell this year, mamma?”

And Frantz, too, began to fall under the charm. Little by little

Mam’zelle Zizi took possession of his heart and banished from it even

the memory of Sidonie. To be sure, the poor judge did all that he could

to accomplish that result. At every hour in the day he was by Desiree’s

side, and clung to her like a child. Not once did he venture to return

to Asnieres. He feared the other too much.

“Pray come and see us once in a while; Sidonie keeps asking for you,”

Risler said to him from time to time, when his brother came to the

factory to see him. But Frantz held firm, alleging all sorts of business

engagements as pretexts for postponing his visit to the next day. It was

easy to satisfy Risler, who was more engrossed than ever with his press,

which they had just begun to build.

Whenever Frantz came down from his brother’s closet, old Sigismond was

sure to be watching for him, and would walk a few steps with him in his

long, lute-string sleeves, quill and knife in hand. He kept the young

man informed concerning matters at the factory. For some time past,

things seemed to have changed for the better. Monsieur Georges came to

his office regularly, and returned to Savigny every night. No more bills

were presented at the counting-room. It seemed, too, that Madame over

yonder was keeping more within bounds.

The cashier was triumphant.

“You see, my boy, whether I did well to write to you. Your arrival was

all that was needed to straighten everything out. And yet,” the good man

would add by force of habit, “and yet I haf no gonfidence.”

“Never fear, Monsieur Sigismond, I am here,” the judge would reply.

“You’re not going away yet, are you, my dear Frantz?”

“No, no--not yet. I have an important matter to finish up first.”

“Ah! so much the better.”

The important matter to which Frantz referred was his marriage to

Desiree Delobelle. He had not yet mentioned it to any one, not even to

her; but Mam’zelle Zizi must have suspected something, for she became

prettier and more lighthearted from day to day, as if she foresaw that

the day would soon come when she would need all her gayety and all her

beauty.

They were alone in the workroom one Sunday afternoon. Mamma Delobelle

had gone out, proud enough to show herself for once in public with

her great man, and leaving friend Frantz with her daughter to keep her

company. Carefully dressed, his whole person denoting a holiday air,

Frantz had a singular expression on his face that day, an expression at

once timid and resolute, emotional and solemn, and simply from the

way in which the little low chair took its place beside the great

easy-chair, the easy-chair understood that a very serious communication

was about to be made to it in confidence, and it had some little

suspicion as to what it might be.

The conversation began with divers unimportant remarks, interspersed

with long and frequent pauses, just as, on a journey, we stop at every

baiting-place to take breath, to enable us to reach our destination.

“It is a fine day to-day.”

“Oh! yes, beautiful.”

“Our flowers still smell sweet.”

“Oh! very sweet.”

And even as they uttered those trivial sentences, their voices trembled

at the thought of what was about to be said.

At last the little low chair moved a little nearer the great easy-chair;

their eyes met, their fingers were intertwined, and the two, in low

tones, slowly called each other by their names.

“Desiree!”

“Frantz!”

At that moment there was a knock at the door.

It was the soft little tap of a daintily gloved hand which fears to soil

itself by the slightest touch.

“Come in!” said Desiree, with a slight gesture of impatience; and

Sidonie appeared, lovely, coquettish, and affable. She had come to see

her little Zizi, to embrace her as she was passing by. She had been

meaning to come for so long.

Frantz’s presence seemed to surprise her greatly, and, being engrossed

by her delight in talking with her former friend, she hardly looked at

him. After the effusive greetings and caresses, after a pleasant chat

over old times, she expressed a wish to see the window on the landing

and the room formerly occupied by the Rislers. It pleased her thus to

live all her youth over again.

“Do you remember, Frantz, when the Princess Hummingbird entered your

room, holding her little head very straight under a diadem of birds’

feathers?”

Frantz did not reply. He was too deeply moved to reply. Something warned

him that it was on his account, solely on his account, that the woman

had come, that she was determined to see him again, to prevent him from

giving himself to another, and the poor wretch realized with dismay that

she would not have to exert herself overmuch to accomplish her object.

When he saw her enter the room, his whole heart had been caught in her

net once more.

Desiree suspected nothing, not she! Sidonie’s manner was so frank and

friendly. And then, they were brother and sister now. Love was no longer

possible between them.

But the little cripple had a vague presentiment of woe when Sidonie,

standing in the doorway and ready to go, turned carelessly to her

brother-in-law and said:

“By the way, Frantz, Risler told me to be sure to bring you back to dine

with us to-night. The carriage is below. We will pick him up as we pass

the factory.”

Then she added, with the prettiest smile imaginable:

“You will let us have him, won’t you, Ziree? Don’t be afraid; we will

send him back.”

And he had the courage to go, the ungrateful wretch!

He went without hesitation, without once turning back, whirled away by

his passion as by a raging sea, and neither on that day nor the next

nor ever after could Mam’zelle Zizi’s great easy-chair learn what the

interesting communication was that the little low chair had to make to

it.

CHAPTER XVI. THE WAITING-ROOM

“Well, yes, I love you, I love you, more than ever and for ever!

What is the use of struggling and fighting against fate? Our sin

is stronger than we. But, after all, is it a crime for us to love?

We were destined for each other. Have we not the right to come

together, although life has parted us? So, come! It is all over;

we will go away. Meet me to-morrow evening, Lyon station, at ten

o’clock. The tickets are secured and I shall be there awaiting you.

“FRANTZ.”

For a month past Sidonie had been hoping for that letter, a month during

which she had brought all her coaxing and cunning into play to lure

her brother-in-law on to that written revelation of passion. She had

difficulty in accomplishing it. It was no easy matter to pervert an

honest young heart like Frantz’s to the point of committing a crime;

and in that strange contest, in which the one who really loved fought

against his own cause, she had often felt that she was at the end of her

strength and was almost discouraged. When she was most confident that he

was conquered, his sense of right would suddenly rebel, and he would be

all ready to flee, to escape her once more.

What a triumph it was for her, therefore, when that letter was handed

to her one morning. Madame Dobson happened to be there. She had just

arrived, laden with complaints from Georges, who was horribly bored

away from his mistress, and was beginning to be alarmed concerning this

brother-in-law, who was more attentive, more jealous, more exacting than

a husband.

“Oh! the poor, dear fellow, the poor, dear, fellow,” said the

sentimental American, “if you could see how unhappy he is!”

And, shaking her curls, she unrolled her music-roll and took from it the

poor, dear fellow’s letters, which she had carefully hidden between the

leaves of her songs, delighted to be involved in this love-story, to

give vent to her emotion in an atmosphere of intrigue and mystery which

melted her cold eyes and suffused her dry, pale complexion.

Strange to say, while lending her aid most willingly to this constant

going and coming of love-letters, the youthful and attractive Dobson had

never written or received a single one on her own account.

Always on the road between Asnieres and Paris with an amorous message

under her wing, that odd carrier-pigeon remained true to her own dovecot

and cooed for none but unselfish motives.

When Sidonie showed her Frantz’s note, Madame Dobson asked:

“What shall you write in reply?”

“I have already written. I consented.”

“What! You will go away with that madman?”

Sidonie laughed scornfully.

“Ha! ha! well, hardly! I consented so that he may go and wait for me at

the station. That is all. The least I can do is to give him a quarter

of an hour of agony. He has made me miserable enough for the last month.

Just consider that I have changed my whole life for my gentleman! I have

had to close my doors and give up seeing my friends and everybody I know

who is young and agreeable, beginning with Georges and ending with you.

For you know, my dear, you weren’t agreeable to him, and he would have

liked to dismiss you with the rest.”

The one thing that Sidonie did not mention--and it was the deepest cause

of her anger against Frantz--was that he had frightened her terribly by

threatening to tell her husband her guilty secret. From that moment she

had felt decidedly ill at ease, and her life, her dear life, which

she so petted and coddled, had seemed to her to be exposed to serious

danger. Yes, the thought that her husband might some day be apprized of

her conduct positively terrified her.

That blessed letter put an end to all her fears. It was impossible now

for Frantz to expose her, even in the frenzy of his disappointment,

knowing that she had such a weapon in her hands; and if he did speak,

she would show the letter, and all his accusations would become in

Risler’s eyes calumny pure and simple. Ah, master judge, we have you

now!

“I am born again--I am born again!” she cried to Madame Dobson. She ran

out into the garden, gathered great bouquets for her salon, threw

the windows wide open to the sunlight, gave orders to the cook, the

coachman, the gardener. The house must be made to look beautiful, for

Georges was coming back, and for a beginning she organized a grand

dinner-party for the end of the week.

The next evening Sidonie, Risler, and Madame Dobson were together in

the salon. While honest Risler turned the leaves of an old handbook of

mechanics, Sidonie sang to Madame Dobson’s accompaniment. Suddenly she

stopped in the middle of her aria and burst into a peal of laughter. The

clock had just struck ten.

Risler looked up quickly.

“What are you laughing at?”

“Nothing-an idea that came into my head,” replied Sidonie, winking of

Madame Dobson and pointing at the clock.

It was the hour appointed for the meeting, and she was thinking of her

lover’s torture as he waited for her to come.

Since the return of the messenger bringing from Sidonie the “yes” he

had so feverishly awaited, a great calm had come over his troubled mind,

like the sudden removal of a heavy burden. No more uncertainty, no more

clashing between passion and duty.

Not once did it occur to him that on the other side of the landing some

one was weeping and sighing because of him. Not once did he think of his

brother’s despair, of the ghastly drama they were to leave behind them.

He saw a sweet little pale face resting beside his in the railway train,

a blooming lip within reach of his lip, and two fathomless eyes looking

at him by the soft light of the lamp, to the soothing accompaniment of

the wheels and the steam.

Two hours before the opening of the gate for the designated train,

Frantz was already at the Lyon station, that gloomy station which, in

the distant quarter of Paris in which it is situated, seems like a first

halting-place in the provinces. He sat down in the darkest corner and

remained there without stirring, as if dazed.

Instinctively, although the appointed hour was still distant, he looked

among the people who were hurrying along, calling to one another, to see

if he could not discern that graceful figure suddenly emerging from

the crowd and thrusting it aside at every step with the radiance of her

beauty.

After many departures and arrivals and shrill whistles, the station

suddenly became empty, as deserted as a church on weekdays. The time for

the ten o’clock train was drawing near. There was no other train before

that. Frantz rose. In a quarter of an hour, half an hour at the least,

she would be there.

Frantz went hither and thither, watching the carriages that arrived.

Each new arrival made him start. He fancied that he saw her enter,

closely veiled, hesitating, a little embarrassed. How quickly he would

be by her side, to comfort her, to protect her!

The hour for the departure of the train was approaching. He looked at

the clock. There was but a quarter of an hour more. It alarmed him; but

the bell at the wicket, which had now been opened, summoned him. He ran

thither and took his place in the long line.

“Two first-class for Marseilles,” he said. It seemed to him as if that

were equivalent to taking possession.

He made his way back to his post of observation through the

luggage-laden wagons and the late-comers who jostled him as they ran.

The drivers shouted, “Take care!” He stood there among the wheels of the

cabs, under the horses’ feet, with deaf ears and staring eyes. Only five

minutes more. It was almost impossible for her to arrive in time.

At last she appeared.

Yes, there she is, it is certainly she--a woman in black, slender and

graceful, accompanied by another shorter woman--Madame Dobson, no doubt.

But a second glance undeceived him. It was a young woman who resembled

her, a woman of fashion like her, with a happy face. A man, also young,

joined them. It was evidently a wedding-party; the mother accompanied

them, to see them safely on board the train.

Now there is the confusion of departure, the last stroke of the bell,

the steam escaping with a hissing sound, mingled with the hurried

footsteps of belated passengers, the slamming of doors and the rumbling

of the heavy omnibuses. Sidonie comes not. And Frantz still waits.

At that moment a hand is placed on his shoulder.

Great God!

He turns. The coarse face of M. Gardinois, surrounded by a

travelling-cap with ear-pieces, is before him.

“I am not mistaken, it is Monsieur Risler. Are you going to Marseilles

by the express? I am not going far.”

He explains to Frantz that he has missed the Orleans train, and is going

to try to connect with Savigny by the Lyon line; then he talks about

Risler Aine and the factory.

“It seems that business hasn’t been prospering for some time. They were

caught in the Bonnardel failure. Ah! our young men need to be careful.

At the rate they’re sailing their ship, the same thing is likely to

happen to them that happened to Bonnardel. But excuse me, I believe

they’re about to close the gate. Au revoir.”

Frantz has hardly heard what he has been saying. His brother’s ruin, the

destruction of the whole world, nothing is of any further consequence to

him. He is waiting, waiting.

But now the gate is abruptly closed like a last barrier between him and

his persistent hope. Once more the station is empty. The uproar has been

transferred to the line of the railway, and suddenly a shrill whistle

falls upon the lover’s ear like an ironical farewell, then dies away in

the darkness.

The ten o’clock train has gone!

He tries to be calm and to reason. Evidently she missed the train from

Asmeres; but, knowing that he is waiting for her, she will come, no

matter how late it may be. He will wait longer. The waiting-room was

made for that.

The unhappy man sits down on a bench. The prospect of a long vigil

brings to his mind a well-known room in which at that hour the lamp

burns low on a table laden with humming-birds and insects, but that

vision passes swiftly through his mind in the chaos of confused thoughts

to which the delirium of suspense gives birth.

And while he thus lost himself in thought, the hours passed. The roofs

of the buildings of Mazas, buried in darkness, were already beginning to

stand out distinctly against the brightening sky. What was he to do? He

must go to Asnieres at once and try to find out what had happened. He

wished he were there already.

Having made up his mind, he descended the steps of the station at a

rapid pace, passing soldiers with their knapsacks on their backs, and

poor people who rise early coming to take the morning train, the train

of poverty and want.

In front of one of the stations he saw a crowd collected, rag-pickers

and countrywomen. Doubtless some drama of the night about to reach its

denouement before the Commissioner of Police. Ah! if Frantz had known

what that drama was! but he could have no suspicion, and he glanced at

the crowd indifferently from a distance.

When he reached Asnieres, after a walk of two or three hours, it was

like an awakening. The sun, rising in all its glory, set field and river

on fire. The bridge, the houses, the quay, all stood forth with that

matutinal sharpness of outline which gives the impression of a new day

emerging, luminous and smiling, from the dense mists of the night. From

a distance he descried his brother’s house, already awake, the open

blinds and the flowers on the window-sills. He wandered about some time

before he could summon courage to enter.

Suddenly some one hailed him from the shore:

“Ah! Monsieur Frantz. How early you are today!”

It was Sidonie’s coachman taking his horses to bathe in the river.

“Has anything happened at the house?” inquired Frantz tremblingly.

“No, Monsieur Frantz.”

“Is my brother at home?”

“No, Monsieur slept at the factory.”

“No one sick?”

“No, Monsieur Frantz, no one, so far as I know.”

Thereupon Frantz made up his mind to ring at the small gate. The

gardener was raking the paths. The house was astir; and, early as it

was, he heard Sidonie’s voice as clear and vibrating as the song of a

bird among the rose-bushes of the facade.

She was talking with animation. Frantz, deeply moved, drew near to

listen.

“No, no cream. The ‘cafe parfait’ will be enough. Be sure that it’s well

frozen and ready at seven o’clock. Oh! about an entree--let us see--”

She was holding council with her cook concerning the famous dinner-party

for the next day. Her brother-in-law’s sudden appearance did not

disconcert her.

“Ah! good-morning, Frantz,” she said very coolly. “I am at your service

directly. We’re to have some people to dinner to-morrow, customers of

the firm, a grand business dinner. You’ll excuse me, won’t you?”

Fresh and smiling, in the white ruffles of her trailing morning-gown

and her little lace cap, she continued to discuss her menu, inhaling

the cool air that rose from the fields and the river. There was not the

slightest trace of chagrin or anxiety upon that tranquil face, which

was a striking contrast to the lover’s features, distorted by a night of

agony and fatigue.

For a long quarter of an hour Frantz, sitting in a corner of the salon,

saw all the conventional dishes of a bourgeois dinner pass before him

in their regular order, from the little hot pates, the sole Normande

and the innumerable ingredients of which that dish is composed, to the

Montreuil peaches and Fontainebleau grapes.

At last, when they were alone and he was able to speak, he asked in a

hollow voice:

“Didn’t you receive my letter?”

“Why, yes, of course.”

She had risen to go to the mirror and adjust a little curl or two

entangled with her floating ribbons, and continued, looking at herself

all the while:

“Yes, I received your letter. Indeed, I was charmed to receive it.

Now, should you ever feel inclined to tell your brother any of the

vile stories about me that you have threatened me with, I could easily

satisfy him that the only source of your lying tale-bearing was anger

with me for repulsing a criminal passion as it deserved. Consider

yourself warned, my dear boy--and au revoir.”

As pleased as an actress who has just delivered a telling speech with

fine effect, she passed him and left the room smiling, with a little

curl at the corners of her mouth, triumphant and without anger. And he

did not kill her!

CHAPTER XVII. AN ITEM OF NEWS

In the evening preceding that ill-omened day, a few moments after Frantz

had stealthily left his room on Rue de Braque, the illustrious Delobelle

returned home, with downcast face and that air of lassitude and

disillusionment with which he always met untoward events.

“Oh! mon Dieu, my poor man, what has happened?” instantly inquired

Madame Delobelle, whom twenty years of exaggerated dramatic pantomime

had not yet surfeited.

Before replying, the ex-actor, who never failed to precede his most

trivial words with some facial play, learned long before for stage

purposes, dropped his lower lip, in token of disgust and loathing, as if

he had just swallowed something very bitter.

“The matter is that those Rislers are certainly ingrates or egotists,

and, beyond all question, exceedingly ill-bred. Do you know what I just

learned downstairs from the concierge, who glanced at me out of the

corner of his eye, making sport of me? Well, Frantz Risler has gone! He

left the house a short time ago, and has left Paris perhaps ere this,

without so much as coming to shake my hand, to thank me for the welcome

he has received here. What do you think of that? For he didn’t say

good-by to you two either, did he? And yet, only a month ago, he was

always in our rooms, without any remonstrance from us.”

Mamma Delobelle uttered an exclamation of genuine surprise and grief.

Desiree, on the contrary, did not say a word or make a motion. She was

always the same little iceberg.

Oh! wretched mother, turn your eyes upon your daughter. See that

transparent pallor, those tearless eyes which gleam unwaveringly, as if

their thoughts and their gaze were concentrated on some object visible

to them alone. Cause that poor suffering heart to open itself to you.

Question your child. Make her speak, above all things make her weep, to

rid her of the burden that is stifling her, so that her tear-dimmed

eyes can no longer distinguish in space that horrible unknown thing upon

which they are fixed in desperation now.

For nearly a month past, ever since the day when Sidonie came and took

Frantz away in her coupe, Desiree had known that she was no longer

loved, and she knew her rival’s name. She bore them no ill-will, she

pitied them rather. But, why had he returned? Why had he so heedlessly

given her false hopes? How many tears had she devoured in silence since

those hours! How many tales of woe had she told her little birds! For

once more it was work that had sustained her, desperate, incessant work,

which, by its regularity and monotony, by the constant recurrence of

the same duties and the same motions, served as a balance-wheel to her

thoughts.

Lately Frantz was not altogether lost to her. Although he came but

rarely to see her, she knew that he was there, she could hear him go in

and out, pace, the floor with restless step, and sometimes, through the

half-open door, see his loved shadow hurry across the landing. He did

not seem happy. Indeed, what happiness could be in store for him? He

loved his brother’s wife. And at the thought that Frantz was not happy,

the fond creature almost forgot her own sorrow to think only of the

sorrow of the man she loved.

She was well aware that it was impossible that he could ever love her

again. But she thought that perhaps she would see him come in some day,

wounded and dying, that he would sit down on the little low chair, lay

his head on her knees, and with a great sob tell her of his suffering

and say to her, “Comfort me.”

That forlorn hope kept her alive for three weeks. She needed so little

as that.