Book: Fromont and Risler, Complete

A >> Alphonse Daudet >> Fromont and Risler, Complete




These few words had their effect. Risler, indignant, but too proud to
complain, met coldness with coldness. Those two honest men, each
intensely distrustful of the other, could no longer meet without a
painful sensation, so that, after a while, Risler ceased to go to the
counting-room at all. It was not difficult for him, as Fromont Jeune had
charge of all financial matters. His month's allowance was carried to him
on the thirtieth of each month. This arrangement afforded Sidonie and
Georges additional facilities, and opportunity for all sorts of underhand
dealing.

She thereupon turned her attention to the completion of her programme of
a life of luxury. She lacked a country house. In her heart she detested
the trees, the fields, the country roads that cover you with dust. "The
most dismal things on earth," she used to say. But Claire Fromont passed
the summer at Savigny. As soon as the first fine days arrived, the trunks
were packed and the curtains taken down on the floor below; and a great
furniture van, with the little girl's blue bassinet rocking on top, set
off for the grandfather's chateau. Then, one morning, the mother,
grandmother, child, and nurse, a medley of white gowns and light veils,
would drive away behind two fast horses toward the sunny lawns and the
pleasant shade of the avenues.

At that season Paris was ugly, depopulated; and although Sidonie loved it
even in the summer, which heats it like a furnace, it troubled her to
think that all the fashion and wealth of Paris were driving by the
seashore under their light umbrellas, and would make their outing an
excuse for a thousand new inventions, for original styles of the most
risque sort, which would permit one to show that one has a pretty ankle
and long, curly chestnut hair of one's own.

The seashore bathing resorts! She could not think of them; Risler could
not leave Paris.

How about buying a country house? They had not the means. To be sure,
there was the lover, who would have asked nothing better than to gratify
this latest whim; but a country house cannot be concealed like a bracelet
or a shawl. The husband must be induced to accept it. That was not an
easy matter; however, they might venture to try it with Risler.

To pave the way, she talked to him incessantly about a little nook in the
country, not too expensive, very near Paris. Risler listened with a
smile. He thought of the high grass, of the orchard filled with fine
fruit-trees, being already tormented by the longing to possess which
comes with wealth; but, as he was prudent, he said:

"We will see, we will see. Let us wait till the end of the year."

The end of the year, that is to say, the striking of the balance-sheet.

The balance-sheet! That is the magic word. All through the year we go on
and on in the eddying whirl of business. Money comes and goes,
circulates, attracts other money, vanishes; and the fortune of the firm,
like a slippery, gleaming snake, always in motion, expands, contracts,
diminishes, or increases, and it is impossible to know our condition
until there comes a moment of rest. Not until the inventory shall we know
the truth, and whether the year, which seems to have been prosperous, has
really been so.

The account of stock is usually taken late in December, between Christmas
and New Year's Day. As it requires much extra labor to prepare it,
everybody works far into the night. The whole establishment is alert. The
lamps remain lighted in the offices long after the doors are closed, and
seem to share in the festal atmosphere peculiar to that last week of the
year, when so many windows are illuminated for family gatherings. Every
one, even to the least important 'employe' of the firm, is interested in
the results of the inventory. The increases of salary, the New Year's
presents, depend upon those blessed figures. And so, while the vast
interests of a wealthy house are trembling in the balance, the wives and
children and aged parents of the clerks, in their fifth-floor tenements
or poor apartments in the suburbs, talk of nothing but the inventory, the
results of which will make themselves felt either by a greatly increased
need of economy or by some purchase, long postponed, which the New Year's
gift will make possible at last.

On the premises of Fromont Jeune and Risler Aine, Sigismond Planus is the
god of the establishment at that season, and his little office a
sanctuary where all the clerks perform their devotions. In the silence of
the sleeping factory, the heavy pages of the great books rustle as they
are turned, and names called aloud cause search to be made in other
books. Pens scratch. The old cashier, surrounded by his lieutenants, has
a businesslike, awe-inspiring air. From time to time Fromont Jeune, on
the point of going out in his carriage, looks in for a moment, with a
cigar in his mouth, neatly gloved and ready for the street. He walks
slowly, on tiptoe, puts his face to the grating:

"Well!--are you getting on all right?"

Sigismond gives a grunt, and the young master takes his leave, afraid to
ask any further questions. He knows from the cashier's expression that
the showing will be a bad one.

In truth, since the days of the Revolution, when there was fighting in
the very courtyard of the factory, so pitiable an inventory never had
been seen in the Fromont establishment. Receipts and expenditures
balanced each other. The general expense account had eaten up everything,
and, furthermore, Fromont Jeune was indebted to the firm in a large sum.
You should have seen old Planus's air of consternation when, on the 31st
of December, he went up to Georges's office to make report of his labors.

Georges took a very cheerful view of the matter. Everything would go
better next year. And to restore the cashier's good humor he gave him an
extraordinary bonus of a thousand francs, instead of the five hundred his
uncle used always to give. Everybody felt the effects of that generous
impulse, and, in the universal satisfaction, the deplorable results of
the yearly accounting were very soon forgotten. As for Risler, Georges
chose to take it upon himself to inform him as to the situation.

When he entered his partner's little closet, which was lighted from above
by a window in the ceiling, so that the light fell directly upon the
subject of the inventor's meditations, Fromont hesitated a moment, filled
with shame and remorse for what he was about to do.

The other, when he heard the door, turned joyfully toward his partner.

"Chorche, Chorche, my dear fellow--I have got it, our press. There are
still a few little things to think out. But no matter! I am sure now of
my invention: you will see--you will see! Ah! the Prochassons can
experiment all they choose. With the Risler Press we will crush all
rivalry."

"Bravo, my comrade!" replied Fromont Jeune. "So much for the future; but
you don't seem to think about the present. What about this inventory?"

"Ah, yes! to be sure. I had forgotten all about it. It isn't very
satisfactory, is it?"

He said that because of the somewhat disturbed and embarrassed expression
on Georges's face.

"Why, yes, on the contrary, it is very satisfactory indeed," was the
reply. "We have every reason to be satisfied, especially as this is our
first year together. We have forty thousand francs each for our share of
the profits; and as I thought you might need a little money to give your
wife a New Year's present--"

Ashamed to meet the eyes of the honest man whose confidence he was
betraying, Fromont jeune placed a bundle of cheques and notes on the
table.

Risler was deeply moved for a moment. So much money at one time for him!
His mind dwelt upon the generosity of these Fromonts, who had made him
what he was; then he thought of his little Sidonie, of the longing which
she had so often expressed and which he would now be able to gratify.

With tears in his eyes and a happy smile on his lips, he held out both
hands to his partner.

"I am very happy! I am very happy!"

That was his favorite phrase on great occasions. Then he pointed to the
bundles of bank notes spread out before him in the narrow bands which are
used to confine those fugitive documents, always ready to fly away.

"Do you know what that is?" he said to Georges, with an air of triumph.
"That is Sidonie's house in the country!"




CHAPTER XII

A LETTER

"TO M. FRANTZ RISLER,

"Engineer of the Compagnie Francaise,
"Ismailia, Egypt.

"Frantz, my boy, it is old Sigismond who is writing to you. If I
knew better how to put my ideas on paper, I should have a very long
story to tell you. But this infernal French is too hard, and
Sigismond Planus is good for nothing away from his figures. So I
will come to the point at once.

"Affairs in your brother's house are not as they should be. That
woman is false to him with his partner. She has made her husband a
laughing-stock, and if this goes on she will cause him to be looked
upon as a rascal. Frantz, my boy, you must come home at once. You
are the only one who can speak to Risler and open his eyes about
that little Sidonie. He would not believe any of us. Ask leave of
absence at once, and come.

"I know that you have your bread to earn out there, and your future
to assure; but a man of honor should think more of the name his
parents gave him than of anything else. And I tell you that if you
do not come at once, a time will come when the name of Risler will
be so overwhelmed with shame that you will not dare to bear it.

"SIGISMOND PLANUS,
"Cashier."




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.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.