Book: Fromont and Risler, Complete

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




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.

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