Book: Fromont and Risler, Complete

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




"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 coaldust 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, handorgans, 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.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Charm of that one day's rest and its solemnity
Clashing knives and forks mark time
Faces taken by surprise allow their real thoughts to be seen
Make for themselves a horizon of the neighboring walls and roofs
Wiping his forehead ostentatiously




FROMONT AND RISLER

By ALPHONSE DAUDET




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.

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